So, as a final test, I checked the behavior of chain mail against bolts in 40.05. This is where things get silly again. Here is deflection of copper bolts of various chain mail as a function of momentum:
I modded the uniarmor I have used elsewhere (uniform thickness, single layer) to have a layer thickness of 15 and the [STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL]. In other words, arena dwarf targets were covered head-to-toe in chain mail. I find that at momentum=50 (the value used in 40.05) this provides
COMPLETE protection! This is somewhat absurd given the protection provided by plate armor:
As you can see, at momentum=50, steel and addy provide complete protection, but all other armors do nothing. This is because chain mail converts edged damage to blunt damage, and at momentum=50 a blunt attack is not enough to do serious damage to a dwarf. For reference, I also included a curve showing the impact of a blunt bolt with contact area 5 on a naked dwarf, and you can see that there is very little difference from most of the chain mail results.
Therefore, while I whole-heartedly applaud Toady's efforts to fix ranged attacks, and greatly appreciate the improvements he has made, there is still a little ways to go to get something fairly realistic. Fortunately, with the many bugs he fixed this is much easier to accomplish with modding than in 34.11. First, I'm going to increase the contact area of bolts to 10. For chain mail, this doesn't change things much:
Because the layer thickness of chain mail is 15, increasing the contact area has no change on the armor behavior. The contact area is only included in a factor that gets multiplied by the layer thickness and floored to the nearest 100 - in both cases this factor is 100, so no change in the armor behavior. There is a minor change to the amount of damage that a blunt attack with contact area 10 does to a naked dwarf, which in turn shifts the chain mail curves slightly.
However, changing contact area to 10 has a very large impact on the behavior of plate armor. The breastplates, gauntlets, and boots have layer thickness 20-25, meaning that increasing contact area to 10 will double the effectiveness of this armor:
I didn't actually run simulations of all armors for this case, but I used the formula I explained in the previous post (which you can see fits all the available plate armor data extremely well) to fill in (dashed lines). Helms, with a layer thickness of 30, are 3 times more effective against contact area 10 compared to 5:
Adamantine and steel helms are off the chart here, but protect up to about momentum 335 and 234, respectively. I wanted to zoom in on the lower helms, as I assume most people will want steel and addy helms to be 100% effective.
Greaves have a layer thickness of 15, and their protection is unchanged by increasing contact area from 5 to 10, so they will provide the protection shown in the first plate armor plot. Keep in mind that breastplates also cover the lower body, so greaves are really only relevant to the upper and lower legs. If you are wearing high boots, those also cover the lower legs. The upper arms, neck, and facial features are not covered by any plate armor, and can only be protected by chain mail shirts.
Anyhow, if you stare at these plots for a long time, there are a couple of interesting choices of momentum that jump out:
momentum=75 (Shoot_force=1500):
Addy plate and chain mail 100% effective
Steel greaves 60% effective, other plate 100% effective, chain mail %35 effective
Iron helms %100 effective, other plate %20 effective, greaves useless, chain mail %35 effective
Copper helm %100 effective, other plate useless, chain mail %35 effective
Bronze helm %10 effective, other plate useless, chain mail %35 effective
(note, the statistics for protection from chain mail at high momentum are noisy because broken bones quickly cause the targets to fall over, after which I stop recording data. All chain mail provides about 35% "protection" up to mometum=10,000 as this is the percentage of the time that bolts hit only muscle, causing bruises, and do not hit any bone that can be broken. The details of the chain mail curves are noise - not real).
momentum=70 (Shoot_force=1400):
Addy plate and chain mail 100% effective
Steel plate 100% effective, chain mail %50 effective
Iron helms %100 effective, other plate %60 effective, greaves useless, chain mail %40 effective
Copper helm %100 effective, other plate useless, chain mail %35 effective
Bronze helm %40 effective, other plate useless, chain mail %40 effective
momentum=60 (Shoot_force=1200):
Addy plate and chain mail 100% effective
Steel plate 100% effective, chain mail %100 effective
Iron helms %100 effective, other plate %100 effective, greaves useless, chain mail %100 effective
Copper helm %100 effective, other plate 7% effective, greaves useless, chain mail %100 effective
Bronze helm %100 effective, other plate useless, chain mail %100 effective
momentum=155 (Shoot_force=3100):
Addy helm and most plate 100% effective, greaves uselss, chain mail 35% effective
Steel helms 100% effective, other plate 50% effective, greaves useless, chain mail %35 effective
Iron plate useless, chain mail 35% effective
Copper plate useless, chain mail 35% effective
Bronze plate useless, chain mail 35% effective
For comparison, the current situation
Contact area=5, momentum=50 (Shoot_force=1000)
Addy plate 100% effective, chain 100% effective
Steel plate 100% effective, chain mail %100 effective
Iron plate useless, chain mail 100% effective
Copper plate useless, chain mail 100% effective
Bronze plate useless, chain mail 100% effective
Anyhow, the current situation is worlds better than 34.11, but to me it still seems kind of silly. I am by no means an expert on medieval armor, but I suspect that if an arrow can pierce plate armor 100% of the time, it will also likely cut a hole in chain mail.
Anyhow, if you are adventuring in 40.05+ and don't want to do any modding, I suggest you get an iron chain shirt and leggings. If you want to do some modding, I suggest you change contact area to 10 and then modify [SHOOT_FORCE] as described above. If you are looking for something different from the cases I listed, I would be happy to calculate for you. I will also try running some detailed tests of survivability etc. for some of the cases.
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Topic: Dwarven Research: 40.05 combat physics (Read 18581 times)