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[Art]

Oh - just remembered - perhaps most important.  To change the mace velocity you need to adjust the 2000 at the end of [ATTACK:BLUNT:20:200:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:2000] under mace in /raw/objects/item_weapon.txt to be something else.  Set it to 4000 for twice the velocity...

Yeah my tests so far have been based on setting the velocity to 4000. Thank you for the script. I will give it a go but it might be a few days. Busy week for me.

[Pirate Bob]

Pirate Bob cancels Script: Interrupted by Baby x100
...

Lol!

I have updated the DFFD post (http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=9727) so that now it contains the testing scripts already installed on DF40.13 for windows, so you can just download this and run.  I also confirmed that it is easy to run the perl script to parse the output on windows.  Just get Strawberry Perl and run it from the command line (See details in the DFFD post).

One thing I'm not 100% sure about is if side 1 and side 2 are actually equal.  I think one side may always get to hit first (maybe side 2) making them slightly unequal.  I am not sure about this though.  You might want to run some tests with the order of the mace and hammer entries in item_weapon.txt switched to effectively switch the sides (for my own testing I ran with sides switched and then added the results together for each test).  You could alternatively run with two copies of the same weapon to give both sides the same equipment and test how even they are.

Let me know if you have any problems and I can help troubleshoot.

[TheDorf]

I'm thinking the default prep/rec numbers should be higher across the board. Since I assume we're dealing with integers only, there's not a lot of nuance and differences you can stuff between 1 and 3.

This. I just don't understand why he'd use 3. Why not 10? or 30? or even 30000? I mean, the more we're allowed to fine-tune the attacks, the better, right? And it's not as if it's gonna be a huge FPS-killer to deal with a few decimals, seeing as you generally only have a few dwarves training at a time, and sieges aren't always around.

[Pirate Bob]

I'm thinking the default prep/rec numbers should be higher across the board. Since I assume we're dealing with integers only, there's not a lot of nuance and differences you can stuff between 1 and 3.

This. I just don't understand why he'd use 3. Why not 10? or 30? or even 30000? I mean, the more we're allowed to fine-tune the attacks, the better, right? And it's not as if it's gonna be a huge FPS-killer to deal with a few decimals, seeing as you generally only have a few dwarves training at a time, and sieges aren't always around.

I might be off, but I am pretty sure the number "3" is the number of game ticks between attack steps.  A decimal would be meaningless, as there cannot be fractional game ticks.  If Toady wanted to allow 10 times more ticks between attack steps while keeping the speed of attacks the same relative to other actions, he would have to make all game ticks 10 times slower, which would slow down the game by about a factor of 10.

[Insanegame27]

Idea: for a  flanged mace, increase the sharpness a little bit

[Pirate Bob]

Idea: for a  flanged mace, increase the sharpness a little bit

What do you mean exactly?  The game already has a morningstar, which is a mace with an edged attack that has very small contact area (I think it's meant to have pointy spikes on it).  You could start from this and perhaps increase the contact area if you want to make a mace that has blades on it rather than spikes.  However, if you increase the contact area much it will reduce armor penetration, which is probably not what you want.  Honestly, the current raws for a morningstar will probably give about the behavior you would expect from a flanged mace.

[scamtank]

I might be off, but I am pretty sure the number "3" is the number of game ticks between attack steps.  A decimal would be meaningless, as there cannot be fractional game ticks.  If Toady wanted to allow 10 times more ticks between attack steps while keeping the speed of attacks the same relative to other actions, he would have to make all game ticks 10 times slower, which would slow down the game by about a factor of 10.

That's right, the numbers aren't just purely relative to each other. Upping them would slow the fighting down.

But doing it to everything at the same time, cranking up the values carefully a little bit at a time, maybe leaving the upper limit at 15 or so? The pace of the battles would be more like realistic trading of blows rather than two running kitchen mixers jamming their blades together AND you'd make some room for weapons to be different over one another.

[Pirate Bob]

I might be off, but I am pretty sure the number "3" is the number of game ticks between attack steps.  A decimal would be meaningless, as there cannot be fractional game ticks.  If Toady wanted to allow 10 times more ticks between attack steps while keeping the speed of attacks the same relative to other actions, he would have to make all game ticks 10 times slower, which would slow down the game by about a factor of 10.

That's right, the numbers aren't just purely relative to each other. Upping them would slow the fighting down.

But doing it to everything at the same time, cranking up the values carefully a little bit at a time, maybe leaving the upper limit at 15 or so? The pace of the battles would be more like realistic trading of blows rather than two running kitchen mixers jamming their blades together AND you'd make some room for weapons to be different over one another.

That certainly sounds quite reasonable.  I think Toady chose 3 because that kept things about where they were in 34.11, but a moderate decrease in combat speed doesn't seem like it would be bad.  Certainly not in Dwarf mode.  It might be annoying in adventure mode if, say, attacks are slow enough that if you constantly have your opponent move out of the way before you can hit them (this already happens fairly often if something is running away).

That being said, I'm not sure I agree that with 3 and 3 there isn't currently room to fine-tune weapons quite a bit.  By changing each one by 1 independently, you can adjust overall attack speed by increments of 17%, which is already small enough that it's probably barely noticeable.

For example, someone suggested that maces should attack faster because you don't have to aim carefully.  You could decrease the prepare number to 1, leave recover at 3, and maces would get to attack 1.5 times for every 1 time other weapons attack.  I suspect that this would bring their overall power up to the same level as warhammers, with better results against unarmored targets, and worse against armored ones.  Such a weapon would be especially useful for pulping the undead. 

[TheDorf]

I might be off, but I am pretty sure the number "3" is the number of game ticks between attack steps.  A decimal would be meaningless, as there cannot be fractional game ticks.  If Toady wanted to allow 10 times more ticks between attack steps while keeping the speed of attacks the same relative to other actions, he would have to make all game ticks 10 times slower, which would slow down the game by about a factor of 10.

That's right, the numbers aren't just purely relative to each other. Upping them would slow the fighting down.

But doing it to everything at the same time, cranking up the values carefully a little bit at a time, maybe leaving the upper limit at 15 or so? The pace of the battles would be more like realistic trading of blows rather than two running kitchen mixers jamming their blades together AND you'd make some room for weapons to be different over one another.

That certainly sounds quite reasonable.  I think Toady chose 3 because that kept things about where they were in 34.11, but a moderate decrease in combat speed doesn't seem like it would be bad.  Certainly not in Dwarf mode.  It might be annoying in adventure mode if, say, attacks are slow enough that if you constantly have your opponent move out of the way before you can hit them (this already happens fairly often if something is running away).

That being said, I'm not sure I agree that with 3 and 3 there isn't currently room to fine-tune weapons quite a bit.  By changing each one by 1 independently, you can adjust overall attack speed by increments of 17%, which is already small enough that it's probably barely noticeable.

For example, someone suggested that maces should attack faster because you don't have to aim carefully.  You could decrease the prepare number to 1, leave recover at 3, and maces would get to attack 1.5 times for every 1 time other weapons attack.  I suspect that this would bring their overall power up to the same level as warhammers, with better results against unarmored targets, and worse against armored ones.  Such a weapon would be especially useful for pulping the undead.

The main problem with slowing down attack speeds is that ranged combat would remain unaffected. And - as you said - enemies will move out of range more frequently.

Anyway, if anyone feels like they are up to the task of rebalancing weapons and their speeds in a somewhat realistic, but mostly balanced fashion, I would definitely try the mod out. It's really kind of dull how a 2-hander is as fast as a dagger. I'm not feeling confident enough about weapon modding just yet though, but I'm sure it could quickly get really interesting though. Daggers could be great for turning unarmored targets into pale pincushions, while they would barely be able to scratch armour, while a 2-handed sword could easily cleave most targets in half - unless you get brained while preparing for the attack.

As for maces, I believe Pirate Bob's idea sounds like a good one. Upping the attack speed should allow for quick disposal of undead.

[Pirate Bob]

I know I suggested upping the attack speed would be good against the undead, but if you really want to make maces specialized for downing the undead the best thing would be to increase the velocity multiplier.  If I understand correctly, to down the undead you need to do a lot of damage to one body part.  This would be more likely to happen if you do a larger amount of damage with each hit, rather than having to hit the same part multiple times. 

Then again, maybe a weapon that one-shot kills the undead is too powerful (and would likely also be too powerful against the living) so multiple fast attacks is a more balanced way to go?

I just recently noticed that you can test with undead in the arena (is this new in DF2014, or am I just blind?), so if I have time I can look into it.  Right now I definitely do not have time.  It should be fairly easy to modify my macros to make undead creatures, but I don't know if I would need to parse the data differently to figure out which side wins, or if I would want to somehow try to test if a defeated corpse can still be reanimated afterwards.