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[Melting Sky]

I finally did some tests comparing copper morning stars of base quality vs masterwork steel battle axes. I had always assumed that the high quality of our dwarven weapons would even the scales but I might have been wrong in that assumption.

You have to use DFHack changeitem on each individual axe to change the quality to masterwork so its a bit tedious to set up. The set up was 10 vs 10 with both sides in full base quality steel armor that was one layer thick. One side was given masterwork steel battle axes and the other side was given base quality copper morning stars. Both sides had expert skill in their chosen weapon and no other skills. The morningstars won without losing a single man. Given how annoying it is to set up these battles where I must DFHack each weapon individually and how one sided the fight was, I probably won't run this again. It's pretty clear that the morningstars were still much better against heavily armored dwarf sized opponents regardless of metal or workmanship quality when compared to our beloved masterwork battle axes.

It should be noted that battle axes are not very good against armored foes. We just don't notice this much in actual play because our enemies are generally very poorly equipped. Maybe I will try morningstars against masterwork war hammers or picks next. In many ways dwarven picks act a bit like morning stars as far as their ability to punch through armor goes and the nasty wounds they tend to cause. I think the key to a good weapon is being versatile. The pure blunt weapons like whips and hammers can hit through armor almost like its not there but they tend to not cause very devastating wounds unless its a head shot where as large edged weapons cause devastating wounds but don't cut through armor well. Weapons like picks, spears and morning stars both cut through armor pretty decently and cause very serious wounds. Thus they excel against pretty much any enemy.

[BoredVirulence]

Generally speaking, morning stars suffer from the same bug that knives and whips do, small contact areas.
I typically mod all weapons a little to even the scales. Increasing contact area, reducing velocity, reducing penetration.

Slight mods to those can help tame some of the more ridiculous weapons. And personally, I'd rather have boring dwarven weapons than overpowered undwarven weapons. That being said, I also mod some foriegn weapons. Knives, because dwarves obviously use knives for something (I never equip dwarves with them, maybe if I armor up my peasants), (nerfed) morning stars are quite dwarven to me, and I always mod war hammers to be more like a maul. Because when I picture a war hammer, I picture the weapon Ajax carries in the movie Troy, and I don't care that it's wrong.

[Melting Sky]

Generally speaking, morning stars suffer from the same bug that knives and whips do, small contact areas.
I typically mod all weapons a little to even the scales. Increasing contact area, reducing velocity, reducing penetration.

Slight mods to those can help tame some of the more ridiculous weapons. And personally, I'd rather have boring dwarven weapons than overpowered undwarven weapons. That being said, I also mod some foriegn weapons. Knives, because dwarves obviously use knives for something (I never equip dwarves with them, maybe if I armor up my peasants), (nerfed) morning stars are quite dwarven to me, and I always mod war hammers to be more like a maul. Because when I picture a war hammer, I picture the weapon Ajax carries in the movie Troy, and I don't care that it's wrong.

Out of all the weapons in the game the only ones I find a bit off putting are the whip and scourge. A morningstar, for instance, was a weapon designed for wrecking armor and getting hit by one would literally shatter bone and do all sorts of massive soft tissue damage in real life. Weapons with small contact areas such as spears and pikes were similarly made for punching through armor and deep into opponents and I see no issue with them doing so but a whip exploding somebody's head through a steel helmet is just plain silly.

I don't bother modding out these things as the game has its own balance in its craziness. I mean look at how ridiculous cage traps are. You can literally take out a 30 ton eldritch abomination made of living magma which has been terrorizing and worshiped by entire civilizations as a God since before the dawn of time with nothing more than a rickety trap made of wooden sticks and some spider silk. It's so anti-climatic and unrealistic that its just hilarious. I think the reason foreign weapons tend to be overpowered is to balance how under geared our enemies are vs how over geared dwarves tend to be. It's for this reason I don't mind it so much when an almost naked neophyte goblin comes along with a whip and with a single lash he explodes the head of my candy clad axe lord and champion. I do hope that someday Toady One tones down traps and whips so they aren't so game breaking and funny but in the mean time I can live with it.

On the subject of weapon testing I did a couple of quick steel armored runs last night with picks vs morning stars and they were much less uneven than with the axes. Axes apparently are very poor at getting through armor that is made of the same or worse material.

[Jack Smythe]

Personally, I love daggers and knives. Don't know why. I tend to play human outsiders in Adventure mode just so I can train in the knife skill. I used to have a dagger I passed down from fortress to fortress. It started as the weapon of an adventurer of mine, who died exploring a fortress that I then reclaimed. I then started a trend of reclaiming old fortresses, and would always carry the dagger there in adventure mode so it would continue. Bloody thing had a massive list of kills. And then it got lost when the adventurer carrying it was killed when he dodged into a volcano.

[Mr Space Cat]

I've been making various changes to my own DF copy's weapons. By doing so I've noticed that Toady's reasoning behind how some weapons work just seem odd.

For example, a sword's stabbing attack has a contact area of 50 units. A war hammer's contact area is 1/5 of this, at 10 units. This would make a war hammer have an absurdly small, probably microscopic point compared to a sword tip, which is already pretty darn fine and sharp. The only reason the war hammer isn't spiking things with its absurdly sharp point is the BLUNT tag. But changing the contact area of the hammer to a more realistic size makes it way less effective. Then there's the obvious candidate for whacky weapon mechanics, the vanilla whip.

Point being, DF's weapons seem to have some handwaving behind the mechanics in regards to stuff like size, penetration, velocity, etc. I think there's been several different attempts at converting DF weapon numbers to follow more consistent rules. Here's one that comes to mind.

Might be interesting to look at if you guys are into how DF makes combat work.

[Melting Sky]

Personally, I love daggers and knives. Don't know why. I tend to play human outsiders in Adventure mode just so I can train in the knife skill. I used to have a dagger I passed down from fortress to fortress. It started as the weapon of an adventurer of mine, who died exploring a fortress that I then reclaimed. I then started a trend of reclaiming old fortresses, and would always carry the dagger there in adventure mode so it would continue. Bloody thing had a massive list of kills. And then it got lost when the adventurer carrying it was killed when he dodged into a volcano.

That's awesome. Your legendary dagger had a fittingly epic Tolkienesk ending to it's reign of carnage. On the topic of daggers, they are actually very effective weapons. Recently in my fort, my captain of the guard lost his foot to a kobold thief who was wielding an iron one.

[Splint]

Personally, I love daggers and knives. Don't know why. I tend to play human outsiders in Adventure mode just so I can train in the knife skill. I used to have a dagger I passed down from fortress to fortress. It started as the weapon of an adventurer of mine, who died exploring a fortress that I then reclaimed. I then started a trend of reclaiming old fortresses, and would always carry the dagger there in adventure mode so it would continue. Bloody thing had a massive list of kills. And then it got lost when the adventurer carrying it was killed when he dodged into a volcano.

That's awesome. Your legendary dagger had a fittingly epic Tolkienesk ending to it's reign of carnage. On the topic of daggers, they are actually very effective weapons. Recently in my fort, my captain of the guard lost his foot to a kobold thief who was wielding an iron one.

The bitch about using daggers (or whips) is that they aren't classed as actual weapon skills for some reason. It may be because they're lumped under recruits since there isn't a separate color for those weapons. I had legendary+ lashers and daggerdwarves who still complained about long patrol duty long after they should've stopped. Point being they can effective all they want but they're essentially worthless for making professional soldiers in fort mode, at least for your own troops.

[Melting Sky]

I've been making various changes to my own DF copy's weapons. By doing so I've noticed that Toady's reasoning behind how some weapons work just seem odd.

For example, a sword's stabbing attack has a contact area of 50 units. A war hammer's contact area is 1/5 of this, at 10 units. This would make a war hammer have an absurdly small, probably microscopic point compared to a sword tip, which is already pretty darn fine and sharp. The only reason the war hammer isn't spiking things with its absurdly sharp point is the BLUNT tag. But changing the contact area of the hammer to a more realistic size makes it way less effective. Then there's the obvious candidate for whacky weapon mechanics, the vanilla whip.

Point being, DF's weapons seem to have some handwaving behind the mechanics in regards to stuff like size, penetration, velocity, etc. I think there's been several different attempts at converting DF weapon numbers to follow more consistent rules. Here's one that comes to mind.

Might be interesting to look at if you guys are into how DF makes combat work.

To be fair real world war hammers often did come to a point. They were more like picks in a sense but I totally see where you are coming from. A war hammer's point shouldn't be sharper than a sword's. Due to how complex real world physics are, even dwarf fortress's rather complex take on modelling them still comes up short which is why you see a bit of "hand waving" to make things act a little closer to real life. The failure to take into account material flexibility and weapon weight distribution is a big part of what makes whips act so oddly. The game basically treats the supper sonic tip of the whip as having the entire weight of the whip behind it which is why you get exploding heads and such. For those who are trying to "fix" the whips I think rather than increasing its contact area you might want to decrease its size. That way the whip's handle and body aren't added into the weight of the blow. It's really only the tip's innertia that should be getting counted so if you decreased the whips size drastically it would likely produce much more realistic results. Since whips can already be wielded by any race, changing the size won't alter who can wield them.

The problem with modding whips and scourges to be more realistic is that if they were realistic no self respecting goblin warrior would EVER bring one into battle. Whips, as far as I know, were never really used as primary weapons of war beyond being an implement of torture and intimidation. You can mod whips to make them do only the superficial damage they would realistically cause but then you have the ridiculous scenario of entire squads of goblins showing up to battle armed with completely unsuitable weapons for combat. It's like having real enemies show up with a bunch of nerf bats which is just as silly as the whips causing people's heads to explode.

[Jack Smythe]

Personally, I love daggers and knives. Don't know why. I tend to play human outsiders in Adventure mode just so I can train in the knife skill. I used to have a dagger I passed down from fortress to fortress. It started as the weapon of an adventurer of mine, who died exploring a fortress that I then reclaimed. I then started a trend of reclaiming old fortresses, and would always carry the dagger there in adventure mode so it would continue. Bloody thing had a massive list of kills. And then it got lost when the adventurer carrying it was killed when he dodged into a volcano.

That's awesome. Your legendary dagger had a fittingly epic Tolkienesk ending to it's reign of carnage. On the topic of daggers, they are actually very effective weapons. Recently in my fort, my captain of the guard lost his foot to a kobold thief who was wielding an iron one.

I wish I had one of those. There is nothing funnier than seeing a legendary dwarf in steel armor with a copper dagger. And still winning fights. Daggers do seem ridiculously effective all things considered. I once bisected a farmer with one while on a husk rampage. Not sure how that's physically possible, but its DF, so logic need not apply.

The bitch about using daggers (or whips) is that they aren't classed as actual weapon skills for some reason. It may be because they're lumped under recruits since there isn't a separate color for those weapons. I had legendary+ lashers and daggerdwarves who still complained about long patrol duty long after they should've stopped. Point being they can effective all they want but they're essentially worthless for making professional soldiers in fort mode, at least for your own troops.

I solved that by having him, after training enough in daggers to be good for the time being, spar with training weapons for a bit, so he got spear skill. I dumped a copper outsider spear with the next dagger move, and used that from then on. Spear wasn't anything worth remembering, besides its long existence. The spear's still out there, in the hide of the giant dingo that killed the dagger-holder.

[BoredVirulence]

Out of all the weapons in the game the only ones I find a bit off putting are the whip and scourge. A morningstar, for instance, was a weapon designed for wrecking armor and getting hit by one would literally shatter bone and do all sorts of massive soft tissue damage in real life. Weapons with small contact areas such as spears and pikes were similarly made for punching through armor and deep into opponents and I see no issue with them doing so but a whip exploding somebody's head through a steel helmet is just plain silly.

My problem with morning stars is how deeply they penetrate. The effectiveness of their tips will vary, either they are small, don't penetrate deeply, but will more often than not penetrate causing relatively minor damage, or they have large tips that are wide, penetrate less often but further. I also have a problem with the way the game models their hit. Because of the many points, its likely that several points will hit the target at different angles, which will absorb much of the momentum, but right now when they hit, only a single point is taken into account.

My problem with knives is contact area, but we could potentially argue velocity. They pretty much pierce everything (much like the morning star). An iron dagger will, by nature of material and momentum, have a hard time piercing iron armor. Right now they seem to be modeled after ice picks that don't blunt during strikes.

...The game basically treats the supper sonic tip of the whip as having the entire weight of the whip behind it which is why you get exploding heads and such. For those who are trying to "fix" the whips I think rather than increasing its contact area you might want to decrease its size...

Thats a great idea, I'll probably use that too. I'd argue that the contact area is still too small though.

Whips could be used in "combat," but suffer from a few problems. Armor will completely negate any damage. In the context of DF, that means fighting villagers, not heavily armored dwarves. So I could see some goblins using whips quite often, but not when attacking a fortress. Of course, we could argue that goblins are just that stupid?..

[Splint]

I'm all for the goblins being complete morons theory.

[Melting Sky]

I'm all for the goblins being complete morons theory.

Well they do run strait into Indiana Jones styles halls of death after watching 6 of their buddies get cut to shreds in front of them so you do have a point there. 

When I look at this thing I can see how it would cause horrible wounds and punch through armor.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

These things were specifically designed for punching through armor.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This thing... not so much.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Mr Space Cat]

The nerf for whips my game (Accelerated Modest Mod) uses is changing the blunt tag to edge and giving it a contact area of 10000 and a penetration of 1. So it comes out to be

Code: [Select]

[ATTACK:EDGE:10000:1:lash:lashes:NO_SUB:5000] changed by IgfigThis results in whips being pretty effective at shallow cuts and bone breaking unarmored targets but bad against any sort of metal armor. Testing in arena, a copper whip is constantly deflected by steel armor. To be effective you'd need at least a steel whip against steel armor, and even then any damage would probably be altered to blunt due to penetration being so low. Due to the penetration, there is no chance of lopping off limbs with an edged whip.

There is some silliness, such as being able to butcher things with a whip in adventure mode. The same can be said for morningstars though. "I'mma just butcher this giant dingo with my big spiky mace here, perfectly normal thing to do."

[Urist Da Vinci]

We do have a fairly good understanding of how the game calculates weapon damage - however you would need to read a few threads over in the modding forum to get a feel for it. It does depart from reality in a few areas, so don't stress out over the real-life comparisons.

Here is a thread I made on the topic: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131995.0

Here is a DFHack lua script that may give some idea of the actual combat effectiveness:

Code: (combat.lua) [Select]

--Calculates combat info for weapons/armor. Alpha version!

--Future goal is to calculate info for body part weapons (using attack info), wounded tissue layers
--ranged weapons
--misc objects?

unit=dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit()
if unit==nil then
print ("No unit under cursor!  Aborting!")
return
end

print("Creature size (base/current): ", unit.body.size_info.size_base, unit.body.size_info.size_cur)
print("Creature strength (base): ", unit.body.physical_attrs.STRENGTH.value) --should update to use curse strengths etc.
print(" ")

for k,v in pairs(unit.inventory) do

vitype=df.item_type[v.item:getType()]
print(vitype)
material=dfhack.matinfo.decode(v.item)
matdata=material.material.strength
vmatname=material.material.state_name.Solid

vbpart=unit.body.body_plan.body_parts[v.body_part_id]
print(vbpart.name_singular[0].value)

if vitype=="WEAPON" then
print(vmatname, v.item.subtype.name)
v.item:calculateWeight()
effweight=unit.body.size_info.size_cur/100+v.item.weight*100+v.item.weight_fraction/10000
actweight=v.item.weight*1000+v.item.weight_fraction/1000
if v.item.subtype.flags.HAS_EDGE_ATTACK==true then
print("shear yield, shear fracture: ", matdata.yield.SHEAR, matdata.fracture.SHEAR)
print("Sharpness: ", v.item.sharpness)
end
print("NAME", "EDGE", "CONTACT", "PNTRT", "WEIGHT", "VEL", "MOMENTUM(+100%/-50%)")
for kk,vv in pairs(v.item.subtype.attacks) do
vvel=unit.body.size_info.size_base * unit.body.physical_attrs.STRENGTH.value * vv.velocity_mult/1000/effweight/1000
vmom=vvel*actweight/1000+1
vedge="blunt"
vcut=""
if vv.edged==true then
vedge="edged"
vcut=100
end
print(vv.verb_2nd, vedge, vv.contact, vv.penetration, actweight/1000, math.floor(vvel), math.floor(vmom))
end
actvol=v.item:getVolume()
print("Blunt deflect if layer weight more than:", actvol * matdata.yield.IMPACT / 100 / 500)

end


if vitype=="ARMOR" or vitype=="HELM" or vitype=="GLOVES" or vitype=="SHOES" or vitype=="PANTS" then
print(vmatname, v.item.subtype.name)
actvol=v.item:getVolume()
v.item:calculateWeight()
actweight=v.item.weight*1000+v.item.weight_fraction/1000
vbca=actvol*matdata.yield.IMPACT/100/500/10
vbcb=actvol*(matdata.fracture.IMPACT-matdata.yield.IMPACT)/100/500/10
vbcc=actvol*(matdata.fracture.IMPACT-matdata.yield.IMPACT)/100/500/10
deduct=vbca/10
if matdata.strain_at_yield.IMPACT >= 50000 or v.item.subtype.props.flags.STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_WOVEN_THREAD==true or v.item.subtype.props.flags.STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_METAL==true or v.item.subtype.props.flags.STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL==true then
vbcb=0
vbcc=0
end
print("Full contact blunt momentum resist: ", math.floor(vbca+vbcb+vbcc))
print("Contact 10 blunt momentum resist: ", math.floor((vbca+vbcb+vbcc)*10/actvol))
print("Unbroken momentum deduction (full,10): ", math.floor(deduct), math.floor(deduct*10/actvol))
print("Volume/contact area/penetration: ", actvol)
print("Weight: ", actweight/1000)
vshyre=matdata.yield.SHEAR
vshfre=matdata.fracture.SHEAR
if v.item.subtype.props.flags.STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_WOVEN_THREAD==true and vmatname ~= "leather" then
if vshyre>20000 then vshyre=20000 end
if vshfre>30000 then vshfre=30000 end
end
print("shear yield, shear fracture: ", vshyre, vshfre)
end

print(" ")
end    --end of unit inventory loop


--printall(unit.body.body_plan.attacks) --wait for next DFHack version?
--print(" ")

print("BODY PART ATTACKS (some assumptions!)")
print("NAME", " ", "SIZE", "CONTACT", "PNTRT", "WEIGHT", "VEL", "MOMENTUM(+100%/-50%)")
for k,v in pairs(unit.body.body_plan.body_parts) do
if v.flags.STANCE==true or v.flags.GRASP==true then
--ASSUME THAT ALL GRASP/STANCE PARTS ARE COMBAT
partsize = math.floor(unit.body.size_info.size_cur * v.relsize / unit.body.body_plan.total_relsize)
contact = math.floor(partsize ^ 0.666)
partweight = math.floor(partsize * 500 / 100) --bone, change to 8250 for bronze colossus etc.
vvel = 100 * unit.body.physical_attrs.STRENGTH.value / 1000 --some assumptions
vmom = vvel * partweight / 1000 + 1
print(v.name_singular[0].value, partsize, contact, partsize, partweight/1000, vvel, vmom)
end
end



[Melting Sky]

Sorry about the crazy large morningstar photo. I'm really not sure what's up with that, must be some sort of stretch to fit tag in the html of the page I linked to. My bad.

I'm curious. Has anyone created mods to buff whips? They are already pretty funny, but it would be great to make them true light sabers. Maybe triple their weight and give them an edged attack and battle axe levels of penetration? It would make goblins actually kind of scary.

On that note it would be pretty neat to mod in platinum bones for all creatures since their bones are used to calculate natural attacks. The combat reports would be amazing. The elephants... they would be feared again like the days of old.