Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ozyton]

Did a quick search for this but wasn't entirely sure what to look for so I came up with nothing.

Looking at the armor currently in DF there aren't too many options. Looking at all the entries with an 'armor level' you can see there's only 1 (2 counting metal caps) head armors, 3 body armors (and one is only partial coverage), one hand armor, two leggings, and two boots. Additionally there's only two kinds of shields. There's a better choice for weaponry but some of them could perhaps be refined even further.
Regarding armor, let's go from head to toe.

Armor
When I think of 'helm' in terms of DF I think of a fairly basic bascinet, nasal helm, or kettle hat of some sort. These types of helmets were, basically speaking, a piece of metal shaped to fit over the head, usually curved in a way to direct vertical blows down the sides (this is why you see many helmets with those funky spikes on top). They provide almost no protection to the face or neck. If you wanted to protect those areas you could wear something like a mail or padded coif, which is basically a hood that would also protect the neck area made from mail or padded cloth or maybe leather. You could also wear an 'aventail' which is the coif concept applied to 'regular' helmets, it allows one to wear something like a bascinet and have the mail aventail protecting the neck. Finally, you could have a 'full helm' which would protect the face, either by being closed or having a visor. A bascinet could have a visor, for example, and additionally an aventail for the most protection.
In DF, oddly enough, attacking the head results in it flying off, but really attacking the head would more likely split it in two. If you want decapitations you would target the neck, and adding things like aventails or coifs would help protect from that (and from vampire noms too). Of course, all this could be abstracted if you don't want to have all those different items. You could make the progression go from "light helm" which would simply be a nasal helm of some kind, "footman helm" which would have a padded or mail aventail, and "great helm" which would have all the goodies.

Now for body armor. I think there should be another armor class in the same category as leather armor called 'padded armor'. A gambesson/padded jack would have similar coverage to the current leather armor, but it would protect from blows differently and obviously be made out of plant fiber. It could also be dyed if you're stylish. I'm not 100% sure but it appears padded jacks were fairly good at stopping arrows, and people who wore a gambesson underneath their mail would have fairly good protection against arrows (even bodkin arrows). It was also obviously cheaper and easier to make than mail, and could be equipped to the lesser footsoldiers.
In addition to having the alternate armor, something like a vest that only protects the chest region would be neat, just something that can be massed produced and fitted easily to less experienced soldiers or militia or townsfolk. Just something for a bit more variety =p

Not much for me to say about the other armors. You can have mail, leather, or plated gauntlets. Having specialized gauntlets such as a locked one which would keep you from being disarmed, or one with a special blade of some sort could be possible and might be interesting to see...
Leg armor... well, the upper legs were many times actually protected by the body armor itself in the form of a skirt or something similar. This is why the body armors have an [LBSTEP:1] tag right now.
Boots... Right now they are just 'metal' but plate, mail, and leather could be distinguished.... but what would the differences between a mail and plate boot be in terms of the game?

I'll try to briefly cover shields. There could probably be at least one more category of shield, 'large shield' or 'tower shield' which would do things like benefit people around you in some way, or use an action to use the shield like a wall, deflecting all mundane projectiles. The problem with that would be determining which direction the character is facing, so perhaps a larger projectile deflection rate would be simpler. Using this kind of shield in typical melee combat would be rather unwieldy, and would be best in formations. Now, in contrast, the buckler seems to be something nobody uses. A buckler has its own advantages, such as being able to completely deflect enemy attacks and open them up to counterattack more easily provided you were skilled enough. Small shields could also be used by bowmen and if they're simply strapped to the arm or the wrist or something it would mean you essentially have a free hand to do things like wrestle or hold items with.
A final kind of shield could be a 'pavise' shield, which could be deployed by troops (typically crossbowmen) and it would act as protection from projectiles as they shot or reloaded from its cover.

Finally, since you can tame war beasts, it would be nice to be able to create specialized armor for any beast you've tamed. Instead of individual pieces, it could perhaps be a complete set that has decent coverage. This way you could have 'steel bear armor' and equip it to your war bear instead of having 'steel war bear helm, steel war bear mail armor, etc.'. Maybe you could make it so some beast armors enhance their natural abilities, such as adding little spikes to your war bear breastplate for Fun bear hug times.

Weapons
Dwarves can by default create all the most basic weapons, leaving some of the more fun ones to the other races. Battle Axe (good for choppy chop), Mace (good for bashy bash) and spear (good for stabby stabs) being the basic ones covering all the 'damage types' as it were. Short swords combine slashing of battle axe and stabbing of spears in exchange for doing neither as efficiently, which is a cool thing to have, and warhammers are like the mace except... uhm, better if what I've read is true. Crossbows are nice and basic ranged weapons, though they should probably use the mace skill, not hammer when it comes to using it in melee... unless dwarves build their crossbows to actually have a hammer point on them similar to how guns were fitted with bayonets, which wouldn't actually surprise me .

There's two weapons I'd like to see added to the dwarve's default stock: wooden spears and cudgels. Wooden spears/pointed sticks are actually fairly effective against mundane creatures with no armor, and would make decent hunting, fishing, and peasant weapons as well as being cheap to produce. As for cudgels, there is currently no 'training mace' and this would fill that role, as well as being a fairly effective weapon in and of itself. Training with it would be more risky than the current blunted training weapons just because of its mass, but it also makes it much more dangerous against enemies than the other training weapons.

Ah, I can't believe I almost forgot staves. Quartstaves and varieties of it would be pretty neat, especially with the new 'multi-attack' functionality being implemented. A regular quarterstaff could have a fair number of attack options which would basically decpict attacking while holding the quarterstaff in varying positions. A stab might not have as much speed behind it but all the force is applied to a point, or you could do a wide swing which takes longer to do or shorter swings. I expect to see some kickass 'monk' combat going on in the coming release =)

On to ranged weapons, the default crossbow is pretty good the way it is right now and the way it will be once reloading and other actions are separated from movement. Crossbows are typically loaded by placing the front end of it on the ground (usually there's a small metal bar to brace against the ground) and then pull the mechanism back manually, leaving the loader immobile. If the crossbow were considered to be fairly light or there were special loading mechanisms, then bracing against the ground might not be necessary, allowing the loader to move while reloading. Perhaps this could be offset by making them a bit weaker than they are right now. With these changes it would be nice to have a 'super crossbow' that would basically be the 'hand canon' for the dwarves, and the Arbalest is as good a choice as any. Arbalests are quite a bit larger than regular crossbows and require much greater strength to 'draw' the bow, knowing the dwarves it would be using a mechanism that would leave them immobile during loading. This also got me thinking about what kinds of special quarrels could be used to fire, such as a quarrel with high drag, or a sabot of some kind, loaded with small pellets, acting like a shotgun as the 'shot' is propelled from the quarrel and spreads out. I don't know if anything like that exists/existed but that would be pretty sweet.

On the topic of throwing weapons, I just searched and found a few of them already, here, here, and here.
Basically, you would either equip throwing weapons in your hand and fire them like crossbows, have them in your inventory and fire them like crossbows if you have a free hand, or simply 'Throw' them like you would any other item. Anything not thrown like a javelin, or anything thrown with a spin to it, has a chance of not landing point-first. There's already been topics on it so...

As for slings, they are made of leather or plant fiber and have some kind of cup or other method of holding ammunition, and are then swung (depending on what kind of sling is being used the method is different, but for DF that distinction might not be necessary) with the ammunition released towards the enemy. A sling is much more deadly than simply throwing due to the momentum. Slings can either be loaded with rocks found lying around, or with bullets. Getting hit by a solid lead bullet from a sling is not good times. Making clay bullets could also be possible as described in the video. (In fact, I suggest watching all the 'weapons and armor' videos he's got, even if you don't agree with everything he says. It's interesting to watch).

Atlatls are a similar concept to slings, but they are used for throwing darts or javelins. They are sticks with a cup at the end which holds the butt of the projectile, then the projectile is thrown, using the extra length the atlatl provides essentially making your arm significantly 'longer' for the purposes of throwing. Lacrosse sticks use the same kind of principle.

That's about all I have, I was going to go into the non-dwarf weapons and mention something about the range of spears and such but there's some topics I can reference you to, here. I'm also aware that some of this stuff can be modded in, but I'd still like to see a bit more variety in vanilla =p

[Revanchist]

I think more varied weapons would be nice. I support this.

[Ozyton]

I probably should have mentioned things like hooked weapons... maybe I will when I'm in the mood to write another wall of text.

Weapons like partisans, ranseurs, battle forks, guisarmes... so many fun things. Weapons that are used to disarm people, weapons that hook onto people and pull them off mounts and trip them etc. Bolas are a good example of a projectile tripping weapon, and could be used to catch people running away or take them down for an easier kill.

Then there's weapons that could use multiple weapon skills to attack, like the halberd currently (but for some reason it only uses axe skill?). A Bec de Corbin/Lucerne would be a great all-around weapon because it has a poking end, a bashing end, and an armor-piercing end.

Try searching for medieval weaponry (I had a link to some interesting things but it was lost once I switched computers) and you might find something interesting.

[CrzyMonkeyNinja]

I agree with everything here. Especially this:

I think there should be another armor class in the same category as leather armor called 'padded armor'. A gambesson/padded jack would have similar coverage to the current leather armor, but it would protect from blows differently and obviously be made out of plant fiber. It could also be dyed if you're stylish. I'm not 100% sure but it appears padded jacks were fairly good at stopping arrows, and people who wore a gambesson underneath their mail would have fairly good protection against arrows (even bodkin arrows).

Padded armour is not respected enough in modern culture. Not only would it have been more common for a normal foot soldier than full mail in the 1400's (I think) but also one would NEVER wear mail without a proper padded garment underneath. This neglect is probably because it's neither as shiny as metal nor as rugged as leather. Anyway, I agree with everything here.

[Revanchist]

Wasn't their chainmail more dangerous to them without proper cusioning? I believe that even with good underarmor, they were almost certain to bruise heavily, as well.

[CrzyMonkeyNinja]

Wasn't their chainmail more dangerous to them without proper cusioning? I believe that even with good underarmor, they were almost certain to bruise heavily, as well.

I can back up the first statement, though I'm not sure as to the second. As far as I know, it's correct. There have been finds of skeletons with chips in the bone where unpadded mail had been hit with a blade. I believe the chips were on the tibia where there isn’t much skin or muscle for natural padding anyway, but I think we all get the point. Also, these were from Viking-age skeletons when a hauberk would have hung down past the knees, which would not have been padded, so it is not a reason to believe that mail would have been worn unpadded on the torso ever or during DF’s reflected time period.

[Revanchist]

So a physical penalty, or even injury, from combat or wearing of chainmail armor without underarmor?

[assasin]

Personally what I want to see is the option [for weapons] of having multiple heads and handles and letting players pick the combos they want. a small knife blade on a tiny hilt would give dwarven sized dagger while a small knifeblade on a longer piece of wood would give a spear. change the knife with a axe and you'd have a nice, long two handed axe a dwarf could use to deal with cavelry or whatever.
Preferably I'd like the ability to stick a number of things on one weapon and have the weapons weight/balance give penalties to stop players from going overboard. so a tiny hammer/mace on the hilt of a sword would allow better blunt damage.

[Spyton]

I really support this, and honestly its probably planned. That being said my two cents on this Padded jacks were worn underneath chainmail in order to pad blows from weapons, but they also were amazing at stopping arrows. they stopped arrows well enough that one could hardly pierce Chainmail and then the padded jack, with the padded jack doing most of the work. And chainmail stopping the blades.

On top of this if you take guns out of the mix, Quarter staves have actual inflicted more deaths through all of history than any other war weapon, and I'm a little bit surprised its not in the game.

I would like to be able to make morning stars as dwarves, as its not much different than a mace and maces are very dwarfy .

Now as far as completely new weapons id like too see, maybe a repeating crossbow, and Of course a Dwarven version of the roman Scorpion. Emplaced lighter version of the ballista that have much better range than a crossbow and better aiming than a ballista.

As far as armor goes, id like to be able to see Padded jacks>chainmail>Plate armor on Characters all at once as this is very good defense against everything and was actually done, Maybe it could finally decrease marksman from being "Rail gun carrying T-1000s".

[Gaybarowner]

So a physical penalty, or even injury, from combat or wearing of chainmail armor without underarmor?

Better to be bruised then have half your body sliced open

[locustgate]

Wasn't their chainmail more dangerous to them without proper cusioning? I believe that even with good underarmor, they were almost certain to bruise heavily, as well.

Soooo since when was being bruised worst than being cut open? Mail is like a bullet proof vest, it doesn't keep you from getting hurt it just keeps you from dieing as easily .

[RockBiterSon]

It always irked me that there's no Gorge. (e with a French accent over it, can't replicate on this keyboard) It's simply a leather or metal collar that protects the neck. What warrior would go into battle without some sort fo protection for his neck?

Also why doesn't crossbow bashing use the "miscellaneous item" combat skill?

[Ozyton]

I wasn't expecting this much interest in this topic =o

When I mentioned padded armor I was mainly trying to push padded armor on its own. Right now you can stack multiple shirts of mail over your character, so it only makes sense you would be able to put on your aketon and then the mail over that (and then shaped armor like plate). What you guys are talking about are penalties for wearing certain things without proper protection. This would also potentially apply to weapons, such as wielding a magical flame sword in a future version without also wearing the special pot holder gauntlets, or firing a bow without wearing anything on your weak hand to protect from the string. The question is, what kind of penalties would there be? If you have low armor user skill does the game occasionally 'attack' you with your own armor and if you don't have an aketon or something to absorb the 'blow' then you get bruised?

Personally what I want to see is the option [for weapons] of having multiple heads and handles and letting players pick the combos they want. [...]

So what you're saying here is that you want to be able to go into a 'weapon designer' similar to how games like Master of Orion and Sword of the Stars have a 'ship designer' and you basically get to determine all the stuff that would normally show up in the raws for a weapon... but in-game? Interesting. People would be constantly trying to design the perfect weapon, but just how much would they be able to change or effect the weapon's outcome?

[...] Quarter staves [...] be able to make morning stars as dwarves [...] repeating crossbow, and Of course a Dwarven version of the roman Scorpion [...] Padded jacks>chainmail>Plate armor on Characters all at once [...]

I didn't know that about staves, pretty unassuming weapons hmm? =p
A few more options for dwarven weaponry would be nice... perhaps something that's really dwarfy. In D&D the dwarves have what they call an 'urgrosh' which is basically an axe which can be turned around and used like a spear (which is kinda weird considering halberds exist and do the job less awkwardly). So... perhaps something the Dwarves designed themselves, something that's really powerful and able to take on megabeasts and such, maybe? I imagine they'd want to be designing some pretty nasty weapons if they go up against big nasties all the time.
Repating crossbows could work considering dwarves are adept at mechanisms like that. It could fire quarrels rapidly but take a long while to load all the quarrels once they're fired. The Scorpion hmm, could be interesting... like a medieval portable Crew Served Weapon? It could function like CSWs work in modern times, where one squaddie carries the tripod while the other carries the weapon itself, then they take some time to set it up and can really ruin somebody's day once they finally do. I would like to see more siege equipment in the game, actually, but we'll see.
With the way the game currently works you can wear multiple suits of mail, so wearing a padded jack>mail>breastplate shouldn't be too much of a problem.

there's no Gorgé. [...] why doesn't crossbow bashing use the "miscellaneous item" combat skill?

I'm trying my google-fu and I'm coming up with 'gorget.' "Middle English, from Old French gorgete, diminutive of gorge, throat; see gorge." In any case, considering there's many types of 'exotic' things in the game right now like head veils and masks it could be interesting to see 'unusual' armor. In fact, in my first post up there I mentioned an armored vest of some kind could be used for peasants or militia, but it didn't occur to me that it could be used by animal men tribes who might not have developed how to make proper mail or some such.

I suspect crossbow melee uses hammer skill so you can more easily train your marksdwarves to use it in melee by having them practice with a hammer. Honestly though, it should either change to 'misc item' or it should be set so they have a bayonet of some kind. Can marksdwarves be equipped with melee weapons without breaking them right now? That could be an alternative.

[RockBiterSon]

Ah, yes well I remembered that it's from french and probably should have looked it up before guessing how to spell it.

[Ozyton]

I suppose I will now talk a bit about potential game mechanics, I do like seeing what you guys think on the subject otherwise I wouldn't bother posting these so feel free to speak your mind.

Melee range/reach
Melee weapon range
Mostly I'm talking about 'range' weapons such as spears, pikes, and most polearms in general. I think it's possible to enable varying ranged melee weapons to have benefits and disadvantages without having to really rewrite the melee combat system to keep track of 'distance' and such. In fact, with the way Toady is describing the new combat mechanics makes it much easier. From what I understand, he mentions that not only is attacking and reacting separated from actual movement speed, but there's also three phases to an attack (pre-attack, the attack, and post-attack or backswing). What can happen is that each weapon is given an effective range through a [RANGE:100:500] tag for example, where 100 is the minimum range that the weapon can effectively engage and 500 is its maximum reach, perhaps even another number with the 'optimal' range for maximum effectiveness. These can either be applied to the weapon itself for simplicity, or to specific attacks, such as making a pommel strike much shorter range than a swing of the blade. The ranges do not represent tiles, but are mostly used to check against the opponent's weapon, whether or not they are grappling you, and their size. The 'ranges' could also be modified by the creature's natural striking range to account for arm length and their natural size.

If an enemy grapples you they could be considered to be at range 50 (for example) and most weapons would have difficulty hitting them because of how awkward the swing is; range 0 would basically be them hugging/phasing into you. Grappling 'range' could also perhaps be based on a creature's natural weapon range (strikes and kicks etc.) so a kobold might have to 'be closer' to someone to grapple them while a giant orangutan man with its huge arms could have an easier time grabbing someone from 'further out'.
But anyways, the mechanic could work so that if a character moves next to another character it checks what kind of weapons they have. If Norb has a pike and Dag has a dagger then Norb would get the first strike barring Dag being insanely fast and Norb a sloth. If Norb's pike is of sufficient length then maybe he can simply use it as an area denial weapon, forcing Dag to either constantly dodge back out of the adjacent square to avoid getting hit or get lucky and parry the weapon to approach. Once they are in adjacent tiles then it starts making checks based both on Dag and Norb's speed and their weapon lengths. If Dag's speed is high enough then he can be considered to be facehugging Norb most of the time, giving him an advantage with his shorter reach weapon. There's probably plenty of other factors that could play into this, but it would basically make it so you don't need to have weapons be able to 'reach' out to 2 squares away or other nonsense in order to have weapons with 'reach' while also making your choice of weapon factor into your strengths more.

As for weapons themselves, I kinda consider the 'spear' currently in the game to be some kind of short spear which could be useful in dueling opponents. There could also be a more traditional spear for use in formations and then of course the pike. Doing this would also reinforce the notion that dwarves would create their own weapon for fighting things larger than them, due to their short nature they might want to be able to smash something much larger than themselves without having to rely on 'conventional' weapons or magma to do so.

Wonderful hooks
Ever seen a guisarme? There's plenty of variations and in fact many weapons with a sort of hook on them were just called 'guisarmes,' and things like a bill with a hook would become a bill-guisarme. You could put a hook on many weapons, such as a voulge, and reap the benefits without really effecting how the weapon works in combat. So, how they could work in the game? Weapons with a hook could get a 'hook' attack, or use the wrestling option and choosing the weapon to wrestle, and the weapon then has to hit the opponent. The hit might not do much damage, and armor might mitigate it entirely, but if he weapon manages to catch on to the armor or clothes or your meaty meat skin then you can be 'taken down' or tripped or manipulated in some other fashion. The weapon can't be used to attack during this time except for releasing the victim or applying more pressure/dragging them across the ground etc. Guisarmes are quite useful for taking opponents off their mounts, and then finishing them off while they're on the ground.

... hmm.. could've sworn I had more to say but I guess not. Well, what do you think?