Print

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

[Snaake]

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.
...

Yea, see the war hammer article on wikipedia, or better yet, the Horseman's pick. The polearm versions are relevant to the discussion as well, but they don't really appear in DF. They were actually specifically designed to penetrated later medieval steel mail and plate. The thing about swords is that especially with short swords, the amount of force you can put behind a stab is limited to how hard/fast you can push with one arm. With war hammers, you can get more kinetic energy behind a "stab"-style hit (as opposed to a cutting or hacking slash), because the swing of the weapon gives the end a higher velocity. Apparently the wiki claims that it was actually the blunt end that was used against heavier armor, especially helmets, because the greater mass helped transmit the impact through the armor, without needing to penetrate it, causing concussions etc. The spike side was used on less armored parts were penetration would be achieved more easily.

For more realism, reducing warhammer contact area slightly (not too much) would probably be justified, but the velocity modifier should be pretty high compared to a sword. Which it actually is already, at 2.0 vs. a short swords 1.25 slash. However, then you'd also have to reduce mace contact area, because it should be larger than that of a war hammer. The biggest problem for weapon realism, is that (according to dwarffortresswiki) penetration is ignored for blunt hits, when it would actually be very relevant for both maces and war hammers. Probably because penetrating hits in DF mean hits that physically go through armor, while maces and war hammers were used specifically for their ability to cause damage without actually breaking through the armor. To be able to adjust weapon stats more realistically, blunt weapons would need a "transmit impact" stat to determine if they cause injuries through armor, much like they already tend to cause more damage to internal tissues, most noticably bone, without actually cutting through the tissues above. That's assuming we'd want to keep the penetration check to see if they actually cut through the armor, but to be honest that should pretty much never happen anyway with the blunt strikes that are in the game. So it might also be an option to just repurpose the penetration value for blunt weapons to be about how well the impact is transmitted through armor rather than how well the weapon cuts through armor.

All in all, I think the only really broken velocity modifier is that on the whip (5.0 vs. scourge/war hammer/several others 2.0, flail 2.5).  It's already the smallest weapon at 100 vs. large daggers at 200. Weirdly, the whip is blunt while scourges are edged, changing whip to also be edge would probably cause it to break bones far less and instead just cause more realistic minor cuts etc. If penetration doesn't do anything for blunt weapons, it should be repurposed for them as above to make maces and warhammers the more anti-armor weapons and reduce morning stars' effectiveness slightly in that aspect. The REALLY whacky, out-of-balance stat in my opinion is the contact area, it's off for a lot of weapons.


P.S. Knife users don't have their own color? I thought I saw at least some tileset with a knife user picture (and another for legendaries), it was a pretty fancy, ninja-like getup. I might add knives to be craftable and usable by dwarves, but make them like crappier short swords (maybe slightly better penetration because the closer range means easier stabbing through weak points in armor). Large daggers have always been a slightly weird name for me, I just get a mental image of a main gauche or a 2-foot dagger with a very sword-stlye handle, a cross between a more traditional dagger and a short sword. Maybe I should just mod the "large" out and adjust the stats slightly, instead of adding knives...

[Urist Da Vinci]

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.
...

Yea, see the war hammer article on wikipedia, or better yet, the Horseman's pick. The polearm versions are relevant to the discussion as well, but they don't really appear in DF. They were actually specifically designed to penetrated later medieval steel mail and plate. The thing about swords is that especially with short swords, the amount of force you can put behind a stab is limited to how hard/fast you can push with one arm. With war hammers, you can get more kinetic energy behind a "stab"-style hit (as opposed to a cutting or hacking slash), because the swing of the weapon gives the end a higher velocity. Apparently the wiki claims that it was actually the blunt end that was used against heavier armor, especially helmets, because the greater mass helped transmit the impact through the armor, without needing to penetrate it, causing concussions etc. The spike side was used on less armored parts were penetration would be achieved more easily.

For more realism, reducing warhammer contact area slightly (not too much) would probably be justified,...

The problem is, DF does not "widen" impacts as they travel through armor - it is always capped by the contact area of the weapon or the surface area of the body part. If you have a smaller contact area, the volume of material that you have to yield/fracture is smaller. Also, DF decreases the momentum of an attack way less than it should as the attack goes through layers, so only the strongest layer really matters.

[Larix]

P.S. Knife users don't have their own color? I thought I saw at least some tileset with a knife user picture (and another for legendaries), it was a pretty fancy, ninja-like getup.

Knife user is not considered a military skill and doesn't give a profession name. As far as the military screen is concerned, it's even a nameless skill, dwarfs using a knife as main weapon will be sorted as "<rank> skilled" - from "novice skilled" over "skilled skilled" to "grand master skilled" and "legendary skilled". If they are mobilised, they'll be listed as whatever their highest "proper" combat skill is - lasher, wrestler, recruit...

[Melting Sky]

The problem is, DF does not "widen" impacts as they travel through armor - it is always capped by the contact area of the weapon or the surface area of the body part. If you have a smaller contact area, the volume of material that you have to yield/fracture is smaller. Also, DF decreases the momentum of an attack way less than it should as the attack goes through layers, so only the strongest layer really matters.

That's an interesting observation. This means that armor layering has no discernible effect? Or just far less effect than one would expect? I've never done any real testing with multiple layers of gear but subjectively it does seem to lessen injuries a bit. Perhaps that was just wishful thinking. I avoid doing a bunch of crazy armor layering while playing due to the fact it seems a bit of an exploit. Curse my curiosity. What started as simply wanting to add my two cents about how morningstars and other foreign weapons are more effective than a lot of people think is going to end in hours of reading about and testing DF physics. My thanks to those who have already done a load of excellent work on this subject.

[Splint]

P.S. Knife users don't have their own color? I thought I saw at least some tileset with a knife user picture (and another for legendaries), it was a pretty fancy, ninja-like getup.

Knife user is not considered a military skill and doesn't give a profession name. As far as the military screen is concerned, it's even a nameless skill, dwarfs using a knife as main weapon will be sorted as "<rank> skilled" - from "novice skilled" over "skilled skilled" to "grand master skilled" and "legendary skilled". If they are mobilised, they'll be listed as whatever their highest "proper" combat skill is - lasher, wrestler, recruit...

Actually if memory serves they just get called skilled dwarf, novice dwarf, etc. when using daggers. Been a while though so maybe I'm just thinking of something else.

And lashers as said aren't classed as soldiers for fort mode dwarves (still lists the skill of course.) Essentially if it's gray, it's a recruit. No exceptions. This means daggerdwarves and lashers need to be committed to training wrestling up to great or need to be trained with a different weapon first to have professionals of those weapons.

As far as layering goes the only discernible effect I've seen is against biting, with extra layers of soft materials (leather, fabric, silk) reducing the likelihood of a spider being able to tear skin and thus inject venom. Otherwise it seems like the best the multilayered set-ups did for me was change an injury into a slightly less severe compound fracture.

I've also almost never added multiple layers of gear myself, more for logistics and encumbrance than anything. A good layer of metal and being relatively fleet of foot has served me more than multi-mail shirted dozen-cloaked soldiers. The uniforms are less tedious to set up, need less mail shirts and cloaks/hoods per soldier, and they aren't weighed down as much. Mostly the first two though.

Anyway keeping an eye on this has been pretty interesting, I gotta say.

[Mr Space Cat]

-tweaking weapons for balance and stuff-

On whips, I mentioned earlier that changing the whip to edged and adjusting stats such as penetration and contact area made it effective for causing light scratches and breaking bones of unarmored targets, but it would uselessly ping against armor due to the huge contact area and minimal --ie, 1--penetration.

What if all blunt weapons were changed to edged with 1 penetration? The contact area is kept the same, so the force is kept into a small area, but penetration is terrible, which would make any hits to armor translate as blunt. I assume the small contact area would let warhammers and such be more effective than the edged whip against armor. Against unarmored targets I don't know how it'd do. Penetration is bad, but there's the small point and cutting edge to take into account.

-----

So rather than make a useless brainstorming post I made a quick testing weapon to try in arena. The vanilla warhammer copy-pasta'd with the changes made. Ignore the // comments and the extra attack I put in, that was my own earlier tweaking for flavor.

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_HAMMER_EDGED]
[NAME:edged hammer:edged hammers]
[SIZE:400]
[SKILL:HAMMER]
[TWO_HANDED:37500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:32500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:10:1:bash:bashes:head:2000] //increasing contact to 100 renders the bash attack useless against armored targets, and causes the AI to prefer the blunt claw attack for its lower contact area maybe? They seem to use the claw alot.
[ATTACK:EDGE:10:1:strike:strikes:claw:2000] //it's that curved back part of the hammer head. originally edged, changed to BLUNT because EDGE gets more priority apparently. now it's just flavor.


Spoiler: Test results (click to show/hide)

Trying it out with a fully kitted steel hammerdwarf with grandmaster stats in fighting, armor user, hammers, etc, just to make sure you can't lop off limbs with this weapon.

Trying on an unarmored kobold, and it works like a hammer. Breaks bones, also can tear skin. I tried hitting the kobold's ear and tore the cartilage. On the now unconscious kobold a hit to the lower body tears skin, bruises muscle, bruises nervous tissue, and breaks the spine. Bashing his thumb tore the skin, broke the nail, and got lodged in the wound. Unrealistic, but whatever. Bashing in the throat tears it. Killed the 'bold with a headshot.

Testing on a dwarf w/ copper armor now. Hammer breaks bones and bruises as normal. Killed with a headshot.

Testing on a dwarf with steel armor now. The steel hammer continues to be effective, despite being edged and going up against the same material it's made of. Killed w/ headshot.

Testing against adamantine armor. Still good. Chips bones and everything, despite edged and being inferior quality metal. Again, headshotted.

So, it looks like changing blunt weapons to edged is a viable, not game breaking change. Probably could change the morningstar as well by lowering the penetration but not down to a critical level like 1, to better simulate a mace covered in spikes. Haven't done extensive comparison between edged and blunt hammers, and more testing could be done against things like bigger targets, or with lower skill levels, or seeing how a higher contact area changes the effectiveness.

[Melting Sky]

So, it looks like changing blunt weapons to edged is a viable, not game breaking change. Probably could change the morningstar as well by lowering the penetration but not down to a critical level like 1, to better simulate a mace covered in spikes. Haven't done extensive comparison between edged and blunt hammers, and more testing could be done against things like bigger targets, or with lower skill levels, or seeing how a higher contact area changes the effectiveness.

Your work on modding the whip to be more realistic is good stuff. As for edged hammers I think they will act quite similar to how morningstars currently act. One of the main differences between these two weapons is that the hammer is blunt. The morningstar does have more penetration and is a slightly larger/heavier weapon to begin with but they are very similiar to hammers in velocity modifier and contact area.

[Mr Space Cat]

I didn't personally come up with that fix for the whip, that was Igfig. I just went and tested the effects of having only 1 unit of penetration on an edged weapon with a small contact area, as opposed to Igfig's fix with whips which has a really large contact area.

[Orange Wizard]

How does Sirocco's hammer fare against an armoured target? Low penetration means we shouldn't see too many limbs flying across the screen, but does it behave... hammery?

[ShadowHammer]

Just for fun I decided to run some arena fights just now. Here is the scenario. I created one dwarf clad in a single layer full steel armor set and gave them a copper morningstar. They had skill in only one thing which was expert level maceman. I then created another dwarf with the same exact armor set and gave them a steel battle axe and expert level axeman.

I knew the copper morningstar dwarf would destroy the steel battle axe dwarf so what I wanted to test was just how many newly spawned expert axe dwarfs in full steel he could kill before finally falling. After the first twenty or thirty axe dwarfs went down I realized I had to put some sort of time limit on it. I decided I would keep spawning new opponents until the copper morninstar dwarf either fell or he killed 50 axe dwarves of the same skill level and armor. He killed all 50. I didn't go through the details of every single report to check, but I never even saw him take an injury.

The arena doesn't heal the victor between battles. He killed all 50 in a row without a break or any sort of healing. That is just crazy. I still have dwarf fortress open in a window so now I am going to start spawning 5 axe dwarves at a time on the same team to see if they can kill him.

Not sure if someone already said this, and I'm too lazy to read the whole rest of the thread, but this is caused by the fact that a steel battle axe cannot pierce steel armor; therefore, regardless of how effective the Morningstar actually is, it would eventually win, due to the fact that this is the only possible outcome.
A better experiment would be two dwarves in full iron, with the same weapons and skills. This would more accurately show effective damage caused by both weapons against a realistic opponent.

EDIT: oh forgot to say that I don't use foreign weapons, mostly because they are undwarfy.

[Larix]

P.S. Knife users don't have their own color? I thought I saw at least some tileset with a knife user picture (and another for legendaries), it was a pretty fancy, ninja-like getup.

Knife user is not considered a military skill and doesn't give a profession name. As far as the military screen is concerned, it's even a nameless skill, dwarfs using a knife as main weapon will be sorted as "<rank> skilled" - from "novice skilled" over "skilled skilled" to "grand master skilled" and "legendary skilled". If they are mobilised, they'll be listed as whatever their highest "proper" combat skill is - lasher, wrestler, recruit...

Actually if memory serves they just get called skilled dwarf, novice dwarf, etc. when using daggers. Been a while though so maybe I'm just thinking of something else.

And lashers as said aren't classed as soldiers for fort mode dwarves (still lists the skill of course.)

Not for me - i have two knife+whip dwarfs in Blamelesscloister. Their highest "military" skill is knife user (named such in the unit view skill display) which gets translated to "skilled" as skill name (currently "high master skilled" and "proficient skilled") in the military screen. When active, they're the dark grey of lashers, not the light grey of recruits and don't "complain about the draft" when called upon.
I remember that when one of them had only knife user and no whips skill, they became a recruit when mobilised.

[Mr Space Cat]

How does Sirocco's hammer fare against an armoured target? Low penetration means we shouldn't see too many limbs flying across the screen, but does it behave... hammery?

sirocco's hammer==edged hammer?

Works fine against armor. I'd imagine the higher the contact area the less effective the low penetration attack would be against armor, but the greater the damage to unarmored targets. A warhammer w/ edge, 10 contact area, and 1 penetration breaks/shatters/chips bones regularly and can tear skin on unarmored targets. Haven't tried a maul, but with the 100 contact area I'd think it could do more skin tearing and stuff, since there's technically more cutting "edged" area to cut into stuff.

[Urist Da Vinci]

How does Sirocco's hammer fare against an armoured target? Low penetration means we shouldn't see too many limbs flying across the screen, but does it behave... hammery?

sirocco's hammer==edged hammer?

Works fine against armor. I'd imagine the higher the contact area the less effective the low penetration attack would be against armor, but the greater the damage to unarmored targets. A warhammer w/ edge, 10 contact area, and 1 penetration breaks/shatters/chips bones regularly and can tear skin on unarmored targets. Haven't tried a maul, but with the 100 contact area I'd think it could do more skin tearing and stuff, since there's technically more cutting "edged" area to cut into stuff.

The surface area of the upper body of humans tends to be around 117, though this does vary with creature size and body part relsizes. In comparison, the human's hand tends to have a surface area of around 20, while the gauntlet on the hand has a surface area of around 25. This is why spear stabs can sever hands, but not bisect bodies, and why bolts don't sever parts.

The gratuitous contact areas of large axes and swords mostly make the weapons do shallow cuts against large opponents (whales, colossus, forgotten beasts, etc.)

[Orange Wizard]

I meant an unarmoured target. Apparently I can't type.

[Melting Sky]

Just for fun I decided to run some arena fights just now. Here is the scenario. I created one dwarf clad in a single layer full steel armor set and gave them a copper morningstar. They had skill in only one thing which was expert level maceman. I then created another dwarf with the same exact armor set and gave them a steel battle axe and expert level axeman.

I knew the copper morningstar dwarf would destroy the steel battle axe dwarf so what I wanted to test was just how many newly spawned expert axe dwarfs in full steel he could kill before finally falling. After the first twenty or thirty axe dwarfs went down I realized I had to put some sort of time limit on it. I decided I would keep spawning new opponents until the copper morninstar dwarf either fell or he killed 50 axe dwarves of the same skill level and armor. He killed all 50. I didn't go through the details of every single report to check, but I never even saw him take an injury.

The arena doesn't heal the victor between battles. He killed all 50 in a row without a break or any sort of healing. That is just crazy. I still have dwarf fortress open in a window so now I am going to start spawning 5 axe dwarves at a time on the same team to see if they can kill him.

Not sure if someone already said this, and I'm too lazy to read the whole rest of the thread, but this is caused by the fact that a steel battle axe cannot pierce steel armor; therefore, regardless of how effective the Morningstar actually is, it would eventually win, due to the fact that this is the only possible outcome.
A better experiment would be two dwarves in full iron, with the same weapons and skills. This would more accurately show effective damage caused by both weapons against a realistic opponent.

EDIT: oh forgot to say that I don't use foreign weapons, mostly because they are undwarfy.

Yeah, I talked a bit about that in a later post, how axes are terrible at armor penetration which is why I did a set of tests using naked dwarfs with  copper morning stars vs dwarfs in full suits of candy armor with candy battle axes. The naked dwarfs still won relativly consistently. Also in the end the battle axe dwarves did beat the morningstar champion in my original test. It just took a 20 on 1 fight to do it. I later went on to test whips vs morning stars and pick axes vs morningstars to get a better feel for how well they perform against weapons known for their good armor penetration. The morningstars still won but it wasn't as ridiculously one sided as the armored axe testing. I always knew axes were poor against armor but I never really understood just how bad they are in that regard until I put it to the test myself. The edged axe attacks just couldn't cut through armor made of the same metal at all and only the pommel strikes can really do anything at that point.

All in all, it's been quite an educational little thread. I always knew some edged weapons were incapable of piercing armor made of superior metal but until now I had always assumed that any edged weapon would have at least some chance of cutting through armor made of the same material but apparently that is not the case. I've done a bit more testing in the arena and of the dwarven weapons the spear and pick axe both are noteworthy for being solid performers in just about any situation and probably come closest to rivaling some of the good foreign weapons in efficacy. When I get a chance I will do some masterwork pick and spear testing.