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[Urist Da Vinci]

...

2. It's worth noting in the documentation, but probably not worth your time to research it further.

3. I agree that we shouldn't investigate further anything related to melee combat, as it is outside of our scope/mandate (which could be best defined as "end all arguments about which bolt material is superior and why?"). Furthermore I'd like to eventually bring the thread to a conclusion and move on to something else.

If someone else (looking at you, casual thread readers!) was to investigate melee combat, I'd start with "stabbing with daggers" since it is likely to produce similar damage to a crossbow bolt.

[Pirate Bob]

...

If someone else (looking at you, casual thread readers!) was to investigate melee combat, I'd start with "stabbing with daggers" since it is likely to produce similar damage to a crossbow bolt.

Zivilin said he was going to work on this, but I'm not sure if he's made any progress.  I don't think he's posted anything yet.

One thing I plan to do with regard to melee weapons is do a quick run to see if the deflection rate is the same as for bolts.  I think it's rather probable that it is the same, and that melee weapons just use the listed velocity multiplier as their "velocity" rather than calculating it from SHOOT_FORCE etc.  If it's not the same, then I'm not going to delve any deeper, as melee seems to work well enough right now so far as I know.  But, if it is the same, then that significantly impacts how we should write up the results for the wiki.

If Casual Reader is interested in looking into melee combat, I am always very happy to share any or all of my tools for doing combat simulations and analyzing the results. 

Edit:

Chuck these finding up on the wiki, this needs to be preserved.

We will definitely do this.  I have a draft of sorts in Google Doc format.  The biggest hesitation I have of starting a wiki post is I'd like to know if our results are relevant to melee weapons as well, or if ranged uses its own mechanism, as that will make a big difference in how we write things up for the wiki. 

Edit #2:
Doh, I'm stupid.  I ran a test last night where I varied MAX_EDGE of the armor, and amazingly that made no difference in the results  .  Perhaps changing it for the bolt material might be more interesting...  I think I will just do the proper thing and try to use Urist's DFHack script tonight. 

Edit #3:
It appears that marksdwarf and archer skills have no impact at all on armor penetration by bolts.  I must have made some kind of mistake in my initial test.  I thought something was off as I never see a plateau in %nonserious vs. force like that.  Here is a table summarizing my results for momentum for 50% protection with contact area=2 (measured using copper bolts, but it shouldn't matter):

Spoiler: Vary Skills (click to show/hide)

armor	AU=15,M/A=12	AU=0,M/A=12	AU=0,M/A=0
Adamantine	109.839	104.481	105.8205
Steel	76.3515	72.333	72.333
Iron	36.1665	32.148	32.148
Bronze	22.7715	21.432	21.432
Copper	26.79	26.79	26.79

It looks like momentum=(IF-IY/2)/(24000-AU*100) is fairly solid for predicting 50% deflection.  At some point I should vary Impact Fracture to make sure the slope is accurate, but I think it's good enough for now.  On to testing bolt and armor quality...

Edit#4:
I couldn't get my script to send commands to DFHack before I needed to go to bed, so I just ran a test changing only MAX_EDGE (of the bolt this time  ).  This made absolutely no difference in armor protection.  I also manually set up one test of copper bolts vs. adamantium at SHOOT_FORCE=78 (50% deflection) using Urist's script to change the bolt quality (and sharpness), and found no significant change here either.  I still want to do a full scan changing quality with DFHack, but so far it doesn't seem to impact deflection.  Also, so far I've only used copper bolts - I will try steel as well.

If this still produces no changes, I might consider doing an in-game test, just to make sure we didn't miss a variable that needs to be changed to adjust quality.  My initial thought would be to assume that gobbos will come wearing iron armor, and adjust SHOOT_FORCE to give 50% penetration of iron.  Then build a fort and cage some goblins, blank gamelog.txt, and release them to be shot to death with masterwork bolts.  I will have to have my analysis script separate different armor qualities worn by the goblins, but this is recorded in the logs and won't be a problem.  Also, goblins mostly will come with no quality armor.

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
I am currently running chain mail uniarmor (your armor with the [ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL] or whatever it is tag added to all pieces).  It does appear that all chain mail converts edged damage to blunt up to extremely high forces (something like force=64,000 is required to penetrate adamantine chain mail).  You definitely can get bruises through adamantine chain mail.  Chain mail can also provide total protection through deflection and/or conversion to only bruises at very low force (I think usually <20).  I will hopefully post complete results this weekend.
...

What happened to these chain mail results? I tried a few tests and found that mail can be cut through by a material with higher SHEAR_* properties, but the mail doesn't fracture under impact. Mail does appear to let blunt attacks through with only some reduction in damage.

...
Edit #3:
It appears that marksdwarf and archer skills have no impact at all on armor penetration by bolts.  I must have made some kind of mistake in my initial test.  I thought something was off as I never see a plateau in %nonserious vs. force like that.  Here is a table summarizing my results for momentum for 50% protection with contact area=2 (measured using copper bolts, but it shouldn't matter):

Spoiler: Vary Skills (click to show/hide)

armor	AU=15,M/A=12	AU=0,M/A=12	AU=0,M/A=0
Adamantine	109.839	104.481	105.8205
Steel	76.3515	72.333	72.333
Iron	36.1665	32.148	32.148
Bronze	22.7715	21.432	21.432
Copper	26.79	26.79	26.79

It looks like momentum=(IF-IY/2)/(24000-AU*100) is fairly solid for predicting 50% deflection.  At some point I should vary Impact Fracture to make sure the slope is accurate, but I think it's good enough for now.  On to testing bolt and armor quality...

Edit#4:
I couldn't get my script to send commands to DFHack before I needed to go to bed, so I just ran a test changing only MAX_EDGE (of the bolt this time  ).  This made absolutely no difference in armor protection.  I also manually set up one test of copper bolts vs. adamantium at SHOOT_FORCE=78 (50% deflection) using Urist's script to change the bolt quality (and sharpness), and found no significant change here either.  I still want to do a full scan changing quality with DFHack, but so far it doesn't seem to impact deflection.  Also, so far I've only used copper bolts - I will try steel as well.
...

3. This would be another reason why I originally got a higher divisor for the slope than 22500 when testing adamantine, as I was using test dwarves with no armor user skill.

4. We know that we need to seriously nerf MAX_EDGE and bolt momentum to have bolts do anything other than cut through everything in the cutting calculations (if they can cut the armor at all!). You probably won't be able to detect anything from raising the bolt quality and MAX_EDGE. Perhaps you should focus on armor quality. I'll probably do some pass/fail testing of my own on the armor quality.


I ran a few tests and found that the "ricochet or frangibility" deflection where bolts have low IMPACT_YIELD (or the armor has high density) is checked after a bolt fails to cut through armor, but before the blunt damage is assessed. A wood bolt, which deals blunt damage through adamantine plate but deflects off steel plate, will cut through the steel plate if given sufficiently high SHEAR_* properties.

Also, I'll eventually make a flowchart image that presents all of the calculations to date in order.

[Pirate Bob]

What happened to these chain mail results? I tried a few tests and found that mail can be cut through by a material with higher SHEAR_* properties, but the mail doesn't fracture under impact. Mail does appear to let blunt attacks through with only some reduction in damage.

Hmm...sorry it seems I forgot to post those.  I ran the simulations, and analyzed them, but the results never ended up here...

I modified Urist's uniarmor to convert it to chain mail:

Spoiler: unimail (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_ARMOR:ITEM_ARMOR_UNIPLATE]
[NAME:unimail:unimail]
[ARMORLEVEL:3]
[UBSTEP:1]
[LBSTEP:2] lower body now protected once
[SHAPED]
[LAYER:ARMOR]
[COVERAGE:100]
[LAYER_SIZE:20]
[LAYER_PERMIT:50]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:9]
[HARD]
[METAL]
[STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL]


[ITEM_HELM:ITEM_HELM_UNIHELM]
[NAME:unichainhelm:unichainhelms]
[ARMORLEVEL:1]
[METAL_ARMOR_LEVELS]
[SHAPED]
[LAYER:ARMOR]
[COVERAGE:100]
[LAYER_SIZE:20] alter this to change "thickness"
[LAYER_PERMIT:20]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:2]
[HARD]
[METAL]
[BARRED]
[SCALED]
[LEATHER]
[SHAPED]
[STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL]

[ITEM_SHOES:ITEM_SHOES_BOOTS_UNILOW]
[NAME:unichainboot:unichainboots]
[ARMORLEVEL:1]
[METAL_ARMOR_LEVELS]
[LAYER:OVER]
[COVERAGE:100]
[LAYER_SIZE:20] alter this to change "thickness"
[LAYER_PERMIT:15]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:1]
[METAL]
[LEATHER]
[HARD]
[STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL]

[ITEM_GLOVES:ITEM_GLOVES_UNIGAUNTLETS]
[NAME:unichaingauntlet:unichaingauntlets]
[ARMORLEVEL:2]
[UPSTEP:1]
[SHAPED]
[LAYER:ARMOR]
[COVERAGE:100]
[LAYER_SIZE:20] alter this to change "thickness"
[LAYER_PERMIT:15]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:2]
[SCALED]
[BARRED]
[METAL]
[HARD]
[STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL]

I then measured protection from copper bolts as a function of momentum (using targets with grand master armor user and shooters with great archer/marksdwarf).  Here are the results with contact area 2:

Spoiler: Contact Area 2 (click to show/hide)

and also with Contact Area 10

Spoiler: Contact Area 10 (click to show/hide)

As you can see, all chainmail provides 100% protection at low bolt momentum, and then drops to 30% protection (corresponding to allowing only blunt damage through) at higher force.  Here is a table summarizing the momentum needed for 65% armor penetration (the middle of the first drop)

Spoiler: Summary Table (click to show/hide)

Armor	Contact Area 2	Contact Area 10
Adamantine	58.938	128.592
Steel	29.469	68.3145
Iron	21.432	64.296
Bronze	21.432	63.585
Copper	20.0925	64.296

I also found that the conversion of damage to blunt does fail at crazy high momenta (something like 20000 for iron and 60000 for steel at contact area 2). 

I can't even begin to propose any kind of relationship between the data and material properties.  Iron, Bronze, and Copper all appear to be the same, steel is slightly better, and then adamantine protects up to roughly double the momentum stopped by steel.  Also, it appears that the cutoff more than doubles when increasing contact area to 10, so that may not follow the same rounding procedure as before either.  Also, the transition from 1 to 0.3 is much slower than for plate armor transitioning from 1 to zero.

For the very interested (perhaps Urist?) I also posted the full data set on DFFD.

Given that the behavior is kind of strange vs contact area, I think it might be worth testing what happens if dwarves are wearing 3 layers of 15 thickness mail (which is possible in-game).  I'll put it on the list...

If Urist happens to be reading this, I am working on implementing his script, but I ran into snag with making it work with my automatic testing.  I need a way to wait until the macro has finished placing all the dwarves before running the quality changing script.  Ideally it would be nice if there was a way to make a DFHack lua script loop until the number of dwarves reaches a given number, and then continue.  Barring this, I could have it pipe the number of dwarves back to perl, and have perl to the wait loop.  If neither will work, then I guess I am stuck just waiting a fixed amount of time and assuming that all dwarves will be placed.  If I do this, I will definitely need my analysis of gamelog.txt to check and make sure bolts fired are the desired quality.
Edit - it appears make lua sleep is not OS portable, but is easy on linux (for me).  Now I just have to count dorfs, which I think I can figure out... 
Edit #2 - it's somewhat embarrassing how long it took me to figure out that "#" gives you the number of elements in a table in Lua.  So it appears that #df.global.world.units.all should do the trick.   
Edit #3 - it seems my mucking around with lua was kind of a waste of time, as I have no good way to start the macro and then send a command to DFHack without shifting focus away from Dwarf Fortress, which of course hangs the macro (and apparently also DFHack and dwarf fortress in a particularly nasty way if I then run the lua checking script).  Oh well, I'll just wait a set time . 

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
I then measured protection from copper bolts as a function of momentum (using targets with grand master armor user and shooters with great archer/marksdwarf).  Here are the results with contact area 2:

Spoiler: Contact Area 2 (click to show/hide)

and also with Contact Area 10

Spoiler: Contact Area 10 (click to show/hide)

As you can see, all chainmail provides 100% protection at low bolt momentum, and then drops to 30% protection (corresponding to allowing only blunt damage through) at higher force.  Here is a table summarizing the momentum needed for 65% armor penetration (the middle of the first drop)

Spoiler: Summary Table (click to show/hide)

Armor	Contact Area 2	Contact Area 10
Adamantine	58.938	128.592
Steel	29.469	68.3145
Iron	21.432	64.296
Bronze	21.432	63.585
Copper	20.0925	64.296

I also found that the conversion of damage to blunt does fail at crazy high momenta (something like 20000 for iron and 60000 for steel at contact area 2). 

I can't even begin to propose any kind of relationship between the data and material properties.  Iron, Bronze, and Copper all appear to be the same, steel is slightly better, and then adamantine protects up to roughly double the momentum stopped by steel.  Also, it appears that the cutoff more than doubles when increasing contact area to 10, so that may not follow the same rounding procedure as before either.  Also, the transition from 1 to 0.3 is much slower than for plate armor transitioning from 1 to zero.

For the very interested (perhaps Urist?) I also posted the full data set on DFFD.

Given that the behavior is kind of strange vs contact area, I think it might be worth testing what happens if dwarves are wearing 3 layers of 15 thickness mail (which is possible in-game).  I'll put it on the list...
...

I analyzed your data set and then verified my theory below against your results for various armor materials, using copper bolts:

Mail armor (with [STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL]) is equivalent to plate armor where the armor material has [IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:50000]. That is, chainmail is modelled as plate armor that is just as flexible as actual skin (don't confuse this with my rigid metal testing skins), which allows blunt damage through the armor at any momentum. The shape of your plots for contact areas 2 and 10 are influenced by the material properties of the dwarf. The mail armors with higher IMPACT_FRACTURE seem to transmit less blunt damage to the wearer, but the relationship isn't linear.

See this Toady quote:

Right now it'll check the impact elasticity (which I guess is actually impact yield strain or something) of the outer layer, and that'll let it bypass impact fracture after a certain point (while still allowing bruises and ruptures without the layer eg skin actually breaking) even if the force is high enough (as the layer is assumed to have made way for the moving object in a sense).  So if you make a michelin man style creature that's just a purely elastic material, a mace will be unable to harm it unless it has blood flow and can bruise and so on, while relatively inelastic materials like bone will fracture, even through skin.

So mail armor can allow reduced blunt damage to pass through, while not being able to fracture because of the bypass.

Wearing multiple mail shirts might be better protection against crossbow bolts than the plate & mail combo.

[Pirate Bob]

I finally got Urist's script working with my automatic testing by just having it wait 1 minute after starting the macro which places dwarves, then running the quality modification script, and then unpausing dwarf fortress.  It seems to have worked without issues.

Here are the results for masterwork copper bolts against standard armor with unskilled dwarves:

Spoiler: Masterwork Bolts (click to show/hide)

There are absolutely no differences between masterwork bolts and basic bolts.  I believe the wiki claims that masterwork bolts do not influence hit probability either (only crossbow quality matters?) which would mean there is no advantage to using high quality bolts (and actually a disadvantage due to unhappiness when they are lost).  It is probably worth checking if bolt quality influences other things besides armor penetration eventually, but not now.

I also ran the same test with basic bolts and masterwork armor:

Spoiler: Masterwork Armor (click to show/hide)

The armor does give a modest increase to protection levels.  It appears that the force for 100% protection does not change, but the width of the drop from 100% to zero increases.  I'll probably add a table of these results later, but I need to go now.  Here is a spreadsheet of all results on DFFD.

[Urist Da Vinci]

I tried to see how the IMPACT properties scale with increasing armor thickness, and it doesn't appears to use the same round-down-to-nearest-100 rule as before.

See Pirate Bob's quote here:

Finally, here are my results for force scans of all armor materials using Urist's new uniform armor and contact areas 2 and 10. 

Spoiler: Contact Area 2 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Contact Area 10 (click to show/hide)

I ran for both copper and iron bolts at contact area 10, and the results are identical when plotted vs. bolt momentum.  Here is a table of the momentum for 50% of hits either deflected or causing only bruises.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Armor	Copper Contact Area=2	Copper Contact Area=10	Iron Contact Area=10
Adamantine	109.839	222.357	223.725
Steel	76.3515	156.7215	155.43
Iron	36.1665	72.333	71.8275
Bronze	22.7715	45.543	45.9225
Copper	26.79	56.259

It appears that Urist is correct, and the momentum required for 50% serious wounds is multipled by Contact Area*LAYER_SIZE rounded to hundreds (rounding up to 100, and rounding down for numbers above 100).  In this scheme, Contact Area 2 rounds to 100, and contact area 10 rounds to 200.  Correspondingly, the momenta for Contact Area 10 are exactly twice those for Contact Area 2.  I will eventually have to confirm this by systematically varying Contact Area.

The equation we have so far is:
momentum = IMPACT_FRACTURE * round100(CONTACT_AREA*LAYER_SIZE)/(2250000-f1(IMPACT_YIELD)) - f2(IMPACT_YIELD).
The functions f1 and f2 are not yet clear, and may depend on more than just IMPACT_YIELD. 

I also have some results for varying IMPACT_YIELD at constant IMPACT_FRACTURE which I will try to post later.  Hopefully they will help clarify things further.

Update:  Here is the full spreadsheet of these results on DFFD

In my test I increased layer size from 20 to 105, which should give the same results as increasing the contact area from 2 to 10 if the rounding rule was being followed. The armor was instead stronger than expected. More research is required on the layer size.

EDIT: looks like if the uniarmor set has a LAYER_SIZE greater than 50, the uniplate on the dwarf's upper body becomes thicker in "penetration depth" units than a crossbow bolt. Refer back to this post: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.msg3766880#msg3766880
I'm going to test again at LAYER_SIZE 50.

EDIT2: Layer size 50 has the same results as layer size 20, therefore the rounding rule should still be followed.

EDIT3: Layer size 105, with modded bolts that have penetration depth 10x larger, follows the rounding rule and fractures at roughly double the momentum required to fracture layer size 20 armor.

The momentum required for bruising to pass through the armor is roughly unchanged and doesn't really depend on the armor layer size. When the velocity required to fracture steel armor jumped from around 67 to around 133, the velocity required to cause bruising through the steel armor only increased from 45 to 55.

[Urist Da Vinci]

New research, hence the second post in a row:

I thought it would be fun and useful to determine the velocities of thrown items. To do this I possessed arena dwarves and made them throw bolts at other arena dwarves wearing armor of various materials. We know how the armors behave when hit by bolts launched at various velocities, so we can work backwards from the thrown item results.

Thrown items are given a velocity of 100, regardless of the item's weight, even for extremely heavy items (i.e. giant sperm whale corpses). The thrown item velocity doesn't appear to change with strength or skill (skill boosts accuracy though).

Spat items, such as the magma crab's basalt globs, are also given a set velocity of 100.

I tested falling items by "eagle dropping" items onto armor-wearing arena dwarves from various elevations. A bunch of aluminum bolts (unstacked) all deflected off an adamantine-wearing dwarf when dropped from just above him. When the bolts were dropped from 8z above, they all caused various damage through the armor. We know that falling objects increase in velocity (see this post http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.msg3727568#msg3727568 from earlier in this thread), and this increased velocity translates to an increase in damage.

So if you are trying to train dwarves with falling objects, drop them as short a distance as possible. If you are trying to kill enemies, you can get improved results (at a cost of trap size and delay time) by dropping the items a larger distance before they hit the targets.

[Pirate Bob]

I tried to run tests of how protection with different skills and qualities scaled with IMPACT_FRACTURE (to get a better estimate of the slope factor) over vacation, but I didn't have time to analyze any of my results while I was away.  Unfortunately, I had switch my program to adjust the ammo material parameters when I was looking at MAX_EDGE, and didn't change it back, so all my data I collected for the past few days is useless.

I did do a quick set of copper vs. steel for 3 layers of LAYER_SIZE 15 uniform chainmail today, and found it to be almost no different than LAYER_SIZE 20 steel chainmail (a tiny bit lower protection actually).  I will run a few more sets of this to be sure overnight, and post details tomorrow.  Assuming none of show a big difference, this would suggest that multiple layers of the same armor do not stack.  I should probably see what happens with stacked plate armor as well.

[Urist Da Vinci]

I tried to run tests of how protection with different skills and qualities scaled with IMPACT_FRACTURE (to get a better estimate of the slope factor) over vacation, but I didn't have time to analyze any of my results while I was away.  Unfortunately, I had switch my program to adjust the ammo material parameters when I was looking at MAX_EDGE, and didn't change it back, so all my data I collected for the past few days is useless.

I did do a quick set of copper vs. steel for 3 layers of LAYER_SIZE 15 uniform chainmail today, and found it to be almost no different than LAYER_SIZE 20 steel chainmail (a tiny bit lower protection actually).  I will run a few more sets of this to be sure overnight, and post details tomorrow.  Assuming none of show a big difference, this would suggest that multiple layers of the same armor do not stack.  I should probably see what happens with stacked plate armor as well.

Tip: Use [LAYER_PERMIT:5000] and you can wear (almost) as many mail shirts as you want.

For plate armor, do the above and also remove the [SHAPED] token when it occurs (as only one shaped item can be worn per body part).

It appears that multiple layers or increased thickness of armor that allows bruising to pass through, including mail, doesn't substantially increase the momentum required to cause bruising.

Wearing 20 layers of adamantine uniarmor (20 plates, 20 helms, 40 gauntlets, 40 boots) requires iron bolts at about velocity 250 to penetrate, as opposed to velocity 95 for a single layer of armor, or about velocity 760 for a single layer of adamantine uniarmor that is 20x thicker. So even with plate armor, it doesn't give much additional protection to wear multiple layers (maybe an additional 8 velocity per layer for my test case).

[Pirate Bob]

Here are the results of 3 layers of LAYER_SIZE:15 chain mail worn by grand master armor users against copper bolts fired by great archer/marksdwarves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I did adjust LAYER_PERMIT and remove SHAPED, and made sure that dwarves really were wearing all three layers of mail.  I also updated my DFFD spreadsheet for chainmail to add in the new results.

There is not that much difference from a single layer of LAYER_SIZE:20 chain mail.  3 layers of adamantine offers slightly less protection, and steel slightly more.  I don't have any idea why this might be, but the bottom line is that at bolt momentum above 70 all mails except adamantine offer about 30% protection (covert all edged to blunt). 

I am not sure I understand all that Urist is saying about LAYER_SIZE not increasing protection as expected.  I can say for sure that increasing contact area for LAYER_SIZE:20 increases the bolt momentum by round(LAYER_SIZE*CONTACT_AREA) to the nearest 100.  I guess I will run with LAYER_SIZE:10 with contact area 15 and 20.  Contact area 15 should give the same result at my previous run for LAYER_SIZE:20, contact area 2 while contact area 20 should give the same result as LAYER_SIZE:20, contact area 10.

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
I am not sure I understand all that Urist is saying about LAYER_SIZE not increasing protection as expected.  I can say for sure that increasing contact area for LAYER_SIZE:20 increases the bolt momentum by round(LAYER_SIZE*CONTACT_AREA) to the nearest 100.  I guess I will run with LAYER_SIZE:10 with contact area 15 and 20.  Contact area 15 should give the same result at my previous run for LAYER_SIZE:20, contact area 2 while contact area 20 should give the same result as LAYER_SIZE:20, contact area 10.

My later edits to that post indicate that it actually does follow the round-to-100 rule. It's just that you have to increase the penetration depth when testing armors of above a certain thickness.

[Stastny]

Hi, I first just want to say that this is fantastic stuff, I've just come back to DF after a two-year hiatus and I've just eaten up this whole thread.  Really great.

Have you guys tried varying with Dodger skill somebody mentioned this earlier on but I've seen no follow-up)?  I did a bunch of not-nearly-so-quantitative tests back in the day in the arena and found it to be the single most important variable in fighting quality and wounds.  Even a naked Grandmaster Dodger, fighting against an unskilled or poorly-skilled dwarf (or a number of them), could be almost guaranteed to receive only 'tearing/brusing the skin or fat' results so long as he was conscious, un-stunned and not being attacked from behind, never mind the weapon or weapon material, and that includes bolts.

I've just now run a GM Dodger, naked, weaponless, vs. 4 unskilled marksdwarves:  after a great number of misses, and some 70 bolts fired, they finally got him with a 'tearing the fat' (after a number of 'tearing the skin' results), and then on page 13 took him out with a shot from behind to the spine.  Anecdotal, I know, but I've seen just this umpteen times.  Surely this is relevant for your armour calculations?

[Pirate Bob]

I misunderstood what Urist was talking about in his last couple of posts, so I ran some more tests with LAYER_SIZE=10 plate armor and contact areas 15 and 20.  I confirmed that contact area 15

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(marked L10) gives exactly the same result as LAYER_SIZE=20 and contact area 2, as expected (in both cases LAYER_SIZE*contact area rounds to 100).  LAYER_SIZE=10 and contact area 20 also gives the same result as LAYER_SIZE=20 contact area 10 (both round to 200).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kind of a waste of time, but it definitely confirms that layer size and contact area behave as we believed.

Hi, I first just want to say that this is fantastic stuff, I've just come back to DF after a two-year hiatus and I've just eaten up this whole thread.  Really great.

Have you guys tried varying with Dodger skill somebody mentioned this earlier on but I've seen no follow-up)?  I did a bunch of not-nearly-so-quantitative tests back in the day in the arena and found it to be the single most important variable in fighting quality and wounds.  Even a naked Grandmaster Dodger, fighting against an unskilled or poorly-skilled dwarf (or a number of them), could be almost guaranteed to receive only 'tearing/brusing the skin or fat' results so long as he was conscious, un-stunned and not being attacked from behind, never mind the weapon or weapon material, and that includes bolts.

I've just now run a GM Dodger, naked, weaponless, vs. 4 unskilled marksdwarves:  after a great number of misses, and some 70 bolts fired, they finally got him with a 'tearing the fat' (after a number of 'tearing the skin' results), and then on page 13 took him out with a shot from behind to the spine.  Anecdotal, I know, but I've seen just this umpteen times.  Surely this is relevant for your armour calculations?

While this is definitely worthy of investigation, it is slightly outside the scope of what we are working on right now, which is focusing on what happens when a bolt actually hits an armored target.  I believe Zivilin tested dodging in another thread, but I'm not sure.  If he didn't already do it, I will add it to the long list of things I want to look at when I finish with this...

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
 I believe Zivilin tested dodging in another thread, but I'm not sure.  If he didn't already do it, I will add it to the long list of things I want to look at when I finish with this...

Sort of, see here:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=117284.0

EDIT: Let's use this existing wiki page to write up the results:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Material
It makes a few guesses as to how things work, but we understand some of the mechanics better now.
For example, we know real-world properties are used, but not real-world physics.

The existing page will have to move off-topic slightly as some of the properties are of weapons or armor, not materials, but I don't see the point in fragmenting the analysis among multiple pages.

EDIT2: Here's a flowchart image for tldr folks:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)