Part II: A Farewell to ArmsThat's right, it's time to escalate the amputations in an effort to create booze-powered kicking machines. Since dwarves don't really like to kick things, we have to remove as many alternative attack options as possible... with +large, serrated green glass discs+. Again, not a new idea, but I don't think there's anything out there like this write-up.
Since these dwarves lose the ability to grasp, they can't do most labors, so these dwarves should be
condemned to honored with lifetime military service. Since I thought I might need some extra hands (hehe) for future projects, I only allowed three dwarves to join the Bearded Hitmonlees.
Mostly ArmlessThe surgery rig used to create the gimp squad is again the best way to liberate small body parts. But to make sure you don't liberate too much blood, it's best to do one arm at a time. First, send the dorfs in wearing full steel armor (breastplate + mail shirt) except the left gauntlet, let them heal up (make sure they're no longer "pale" or "faint"), then send them in wearing everything but the right gauntlet.
This procedure will remove the hands and lower arms from your dwarves, but it will leave the upper arms intacts--that is, "mostly armless." You may remove the upper arms, if you wish, by taking off the dwarves' mail shirts, then sending them back into surgery. Removing the upper arms takes away a possible (though infrequent) wrestling attack and a potential target for enemies (upper arms are relatively easily injured). However, the dwarves will have no way to put the mail shirts back on, leaving the throat exposed and reducing protection to the body.
TrainingThe Hitmonlees are unusually difficult to train. For whatever reason, it appears they cannot spar, so they do a lot of useless individual combat drills and slightly useful demonstrations. Incidentally, they have absolutely no problems leading or watching striking demonstrations. Danger rooms would not be effective either, because dwarves can't parry with their feet. Danger rooms would still train Armor User and Fighter, though. This leaves live training as the most effective option.
Since the kickers cannot use shields, dodging is twice as important as usual. Fortunately, since they can't block, they'll gain dodging experience faster.
Combat PerformanceThe Hitmonlees probably do about 55% kicking, 42% biting, and 3% wrestling. The kicks are generally the most effective attack, fully capable of shattering bones and skulls. Kicks seem to be closer in effectiveness to steel crutches than to platinum, frequently bruising bones instead of breaking them, and generally failing to break troll bones. To be fair, the kickers are not yet fully trained, so I may have to re-evaluate later. Kicks seem unusually likely to target small body parts, like fingers and toes. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since those bones are easier to break and still cause plenty of pain.
The bites do mainly soft tissue damage, tearing fat, muscle, nerves, and arteries. Unfortunately, once a dwarf latches on, he tends to keep shaking the same limb around long after he's done all the useful damage, wasting precious combat moves. Biting allows the kickers to bleed FBs to death when kicking is ineffective.
The wrestling moves are kind of a crapshoot. I did observe a dwarf choke out a goblin with his stump once, but I haven't seen wrestling produce any other results yet. Dwarves will often do stupid things with wrestling, like grabbing an enemy and immediately releasing it.
ConclusionCreating kicking dwarves is more work for less benefit than creating crutchdwarves. Kickers are harder to train and less effective against goblins than crutchdwarves, although they do have an edge vs. crutchdwarves against FBs, due to biting. They can't use shields, so they have to get very good at dodging to be effective. All in all, armless dwarves are mediocre soldiers, but if you happen to have a dwarf on hand who lost his arms, he's not useless, by any means.
Further Research OpportunitiesIt should be possible to test kicking dwarves in the arena by modding away their arms. I'm not likely to do it myself, but I would encourage anyone interested in doing a little Science to give it a try. Some possibilities:
--relative effectiveness (vs, say, warhammers, punching) against dwarves in various types of armor
--effectiveness vs different-sized unarmored enemies, hopefully finding the maximum size against which kicking is effective.
--effect of attributes on kicking effectiveness.
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Topic: Dwarven "Special" Forces (Read 21688 times)