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[Grimlocke]

Not a whole lot of progress, I have been kept busy with various boring stuff. Got the worst part of the text descriptions done though.

That metallurgy mod is pretty neat, it should be fairly easy to make a compatibility patch too. All that needs doing is merging the entity and metal additions. Only problem I can see is that the time periods don't quite fit, this mod has the a 1450-ish cut-off at which point metallurgy did have a few developments like blast furnaces, watermill-powered hammers and various other things that uh, probably also won't integrate very well with dwarf fortress.

So yeah ill add it to the things to add to a next release, whenever that will be.

EDIT: The mod seems to be for a DF 34.xx. That means it also needs to be updated to work with the current version, shouldn't be a huge effort since not much changed in the way of reactions and such but a simple compatibility patch isn't going to do it.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Why will those other things not integrate well with Dwarf Fortress?

[Vattic]

You could just name a workshop "Watermill-powered hammer", but you'd need DFHack if you wanted it to require power.

[Grimlocke]

DFhack can do that? Add one reason to find out of such sorcery works.

Raw modding at least is rather limited when it comes to adding industrial stuff. For instance I can't make a continuous reaction process for blast furnaces, can't make them multi-level, or require power. Sure you can make a workshop and call it blast furnace, but it will just behave like a bigger smelter.

Heat treatment, etching, gilding, etc. can be added but only with really clunky mechanisms where you won't be able to select what gets etched, you can only have it say 'it is decorated with etchings', and for heat treatment you would have to do something silly making reaction that heat treats bars which only then get forged into anything, which is just not how that's supposed to work.

Things like plate armor were historically made in very large workshops with numerous smiths all working a small number of specialized tasks, whereas in DF a single skilled smith can churn out armor faster than you can ever produce metal for. You could make a separate 'armorers workshop' or something, but there is no way to influence the time reactions take or any way to remove reactions from the stock forge and still have the metal be used for entity-generated stuff.

...

So uh yeah big headache, I wager DFhack can solve some of these problems though.

[Urist Tilaturist]

DFhack can achieve all kinds of things, but I am no expert with it.

[Vattic]

DFhack can do that? Add one reason to find out of such sorcery works.

Here is the documentation for powered workshops using DFHack.

[Cryoshakespeare]

This is a very good weapon pack, and it seems to have a lot of potential to further realise the combat system of Dwarf Fortress. However, there are two specific points that I would like to make, which are not so much criticisms of your mod, but rather observations about the general combat system of Dwarf Fortress.

1. Weapon Speed

The speed of a weapon, in terms of how quickly one can strike with it, is often far less important than the speed-advantage that weapons with superior reach possess. Polearms of all sorts were the dominant military weapon for armies, as they had a considerable range advantage over shorter sidearms, such as swords, maces and axes. Swords became very popular in a historical context because of the ease with which they could be carried and their effectiveness in a non-military combat situation, in close-quarters and relatively domestic scenarios. However, by-and-large, polearms had superior advantages in battle over sidearms, but their disadvantage was that they were difficult to transport effectively, as a soldier needed space to carry provisions, clothes, and other such equipment while on a campaign. The problems with large two-handed swords (Bidenhänder or Doppelhänder used against pike-formations by primarily Swiss mercenary Doppelsoldners) were similar.

It seems to be an issue with the combat system in Dwarf Fortress that it cannot handle this intricacy. Using [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:X:Y] to simulate this effect can make it tricky to do justice to the differences between the weapon types. A polearm-user will be able to use distance as a method of keeping his opponent's weapon away from him/her and to keep his/her weapon trained on the enemy. However, in a close-quarters environment, sidearms and smaller weapons will be able to attack more quickly due to the user not needing to spend time moving towards the opponent. A possible solution using [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:X:Y] is to make the length of a weapon scale its prepare/recover ratio (ie. long-weapons are faster to prepare and slower to recover), which does a reasonable/mediocre job at simulating how a polearm/long-weapon user will utilise their reach advantage in combat. It also simulates how a sword user will need to maneuver him/herself past an enemy's spear-thrust (via parrying, grabbing and dodging) before being able to deliver a blow to the spear user.

------------------------------

Do you consider it possible to implement a reasonable system for this, given the current mechanics of DF combat? If you are curious, I have gathered the majority of my information from Scholagladiatoria, a (in my opinion) very reputable individual on Youtube who frequently posts content about this, I'd imagine you know of him.

------------------------------

2. Weapon Skills

The mechanics of swinging a one-handed sword, axe or mace/hammer are really quite similar. Granted, edge-alignment plays a somewhat more important role in sword-use, though it still is important with axes and at times with maces/hammers too.

We have eight melee-weapon skills at our disposal in DF, however in my opinion, being able to use a one-handed sword is much more like using a one-handed axe than it is using a longsword. In a similar vein, a two-handed axe is rather more similar to a two-handed mace than it is to a one-handed axe. The difference is moreso in how one grips the weapon and delivers strikes, rather than how exactly the weapon delivers its force in a strike.

So as a provisional idea for a revised weapon-skill system, I'd like to suggest the following:

Sidearms-User (for the use of one-handed sword, mace and flail)
Axe-User (as unfortunately weapons using the axe-skill are used for woodcutting... instead of it simply being a tag applied to a weapon -_-)
Spear-User (for spears intended to be used one-handed and with a shield, different enough from sidearms and different enough from a spear wielded with both hands)
Longspear-User(?) (for spears wielded with both hands, and potentially including pikes)
Longsword-User (for the use of longswords and possibly larger Bidenhänders)
Greatarms-User (for the use of larger two-handed axes and maces... getting slightly more into fantasy here )
Poleaxe-User (for the use of weapons such as glaives, halberds, voulges etc.)
Polehammer-User (for the use of polehammers, perhaps bec-de-corbins and the like)

Of course, the naming scheme leaves something to be desired, and unfortunately the only melee-weapon skill that generates users without a shield is the pike-skill, which makes classifying all weapons intended to be wielded with two-hands differently quite difficult... there are certainly challenges, but in my opinion it is an interesting idea that is worth considering.
 
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Anyway, just thought I'd share some thoughts with you. While I am -by no means- an expert, in any way, shape or form, on this stuff, I have researched a whole lot on Scholagladiatoria's channel and he does seem to represent realistic combat in a way more similar to this. What are your thoughts?

[Grimlocke]

First off, thanks for the in-depth commentary! Posts like this and Urist's testing and commentary really help mods along, as I will undoubtedly miss flaws and potential opportunities.

I actually have seen most of Scholagladiatoria's stuff along with that of Lindybeige and Skallagrim, they make some very informative and entertaining stuff! Quite a bit of the research of this mod came from these guys, along with wikipedia, myarmory.com and various other sources.

Your points on weapon length are entirely correct. Sadly actually keeping enemies at bay with a longer weapon is just impossible to mod in right now, but the weapon length-to-prepare-time is actually already in the mod. Its just a bit hard to see from game itself. An arming sword for instance has 4:2 on both stabbing and slashing, whereas a halberd has 1:5 for stabbing and 1:7 for the hack/spike attack to account for the considerable momentum of the weapon.

Daggers and short one-handed weapons get 5 prepare time, medium length one-handed gets 4, short two-handed weapons (longswords, longaxe, etc) 3, medium-length polearms (most spears, poleaxes, etc) get 2 and long polearms (halberds, pikes, etc) get 1.

The item descriptions will make this a bit clearer, they give a short summary of the weapons properties and their attacks.

(This I all typed as I was thinking, sorry if its a bit rambly)

I was actually thinking of reducing the number of weapon skills for some future version, leaving weapon skill unused doesn't seem to have any particularly bad effects on the game.
What I was considering was just using the pike skill for all two-handed weapons, spear skill for one-handed spears and sword skill for the rest of the one-handed weapons. I didn't think of the tree-chopping problem, though I might be able to get around that by adding a felling axe as a tool instead of a weapon and renaming the axeman to 'woodsman' or something (or if that fails as a training weapon). I really don't want to make it possible to cut down a tree with a mace

I considered moving one-handed weapons to the dagger skill to force the AI to use them as side-arms but the entity soldiers and such don't actually spawns with dagger in the first place so that would only cause them to pretty much disappear from the game. Not really desirable or realistic, while less common dedicated swordsman did exist. I sadly have pretty much zero control over what the AI places on soldiers so better to have them in poor proportion then not having them at all.

There's a couple issues there though. For one, I have no idea what to do about the names. Invading squads are going to show up as an absolute mish-mash of weapons, etc etc.

On the weapon-skill sets you posted: I would at least merge sidearms+axes, longspear+poleaxe+polehammer and longsword+greatarms.
Axes because I can probably circumvent the wood axe somehow.
Two-handed polearms are all fairly similar, in fact the poleaxe, polehammer and bec-de-corbin/crow's beak are historically all referred to as 'pollaxe' and are described in single entry of the various arms treatises (the art of using them referred to as 'Jue de la Hache', or 'Axe Play'). The reason I split them up is because having five weapons with the same name would get all sorts of confusing.
Longsword and two-handed axe/warhammer/mace are... not entirely similar, but having longsword as a single skill seems inconsistent as the other skills cover a fairly large number of weapons.

I wouldn't mind splitting up two-handed non-polearms and two-handed polearms. At the very least it will make naming a bit easier, and Mount & Blade made it work so why wouldn't DF. Lets see...

Armsman (sword skill) - One-handed weapons.
Greatarmsman (axe skill) - Two-handed non-polearms. EDIT: derp, NOT axe skill, but mace or hammer.
Spearman (spear skill) - One-handed spears.
Stavesman (pike skill) - Two-handed polearms.

'man' can of course be replaced with 'dwarf' and such.

The problem with that however is as you mentioned that only the pike skill prevents the whole 'two-handed sword + shield' soldiers, which I kinda hate seeing. The whole entity equipment in general is sort of a trainwreck though. It just picks one single body armor, one single helmet and uses that for every soldier for that entity. No arm/leg protection, it will completely ignore armor levels (I have had them use a greathelm with a gambeson) and dagger don't actually seem to get used anywhere.

Regardless I think I will give this idea a try, at least after I finish up those item descriptions, address a few balance issues and do some work on entity equipment distribution (which is a bit of a mess now).

If anyone can think of a name covering all two-handed weapons, I'd gladly hear it!

EDIT: I wonder what it would do if I hijacked the blowgunner skill for one of the two-handed weapon classes... They don't get placed with shields, though also often not much armor...

[Cryoshakespeare]

Awesome Grimlocke!

My apologies, I had only briefly checked the raws but clearly I had missed that you had already incorporated the weapon timings! :O

Mount and Blade certainly does seem to handle weapon skills in a fairly elegant manner, and to be sure it's very important to view the skill layouts in the context of this being a game, not to pursue a kind of realism at the cost of all style and simplicity (though DF is hardly simplistic...). Anyway, you're right that having longsword as it's own separate skill is inconsistent with the rest of the changes. There was also another fairly considerable point I was ruminating on:

The development of weapons and armour has always been consistent with their associated historical context. In Dwarf Fortress, people are entering combat not only with other moderately-sized humanoids, but also with much greater foes, ie. semi-megabeasts and megabeasts. This would suggest that weapons, armour and skill-sets would develop accordingly to handle both these threats. Against humanoid enemies, weapons and armour would likely be similar to how they were in real-life, and so this mod currently addresses that part of the context very well. However, given that these greater foes do exist and seem to be a natural part of the world, is it not reasonable to suggest more specialized weapons, armour and skill-sets for handling these threats as well? You would be sacrificing real-life historical-accuracy for in-game realism.

Now, how exactly to go about approaching this from a design perspective is quite the matter, but I just thought I'd bring it up. Any thoughts?

[Grimlocke]

I can't imagine armor developing much different, as these were already developed around the limits of the human body. If armor could be made heavier without reducing the wearer to a crawl, they would have already done so in history.

Weapons might be a bit more interesting, I can see larger version of bear spears and catch poles being used against cave trolls and such but sadly weapons that grapple are not really possible as it is now. I could include a few extremely heavy polearms, 'beast halberd' or whatnot, and make it a really slow but hard-hitting weapon.

What I'm guessing the best way to fight giant monsters with medieval tech would be to build siege gear. They had mobile spike-barricades, giant pavise shields that got carried by a specialized guy (a very well paid one too!), and of course ballistas, catapults and all manner of towers, ladders and movable walkways. I wheelbarrow with some really long spikes attached should give giant charging animals a pause at least.

None of that is really possible to incorporate into the game though... Well there's traps, and I did add a few trap items, but nothing particularly innovative.

But if you have any suggestions id gladly hear them.

[Urist Tilaturist]

I can't imagine armor developing much different, as these were already developed around the limits of the human body. If armor could be made heavier without reducing the wearer to a crawl, they would have already done so in history.

Weapons might be a bit more interesting, I can see larger version of bear spears and catch poles being used against cave trolls and such but sadly weapons that grapple are not really possible as it is now. I could include a few extremely heavy polearms, 'beast halberd' or whatnot, and make it a really slow but hard-hitting weapon.

What I'm guessing the best way to fight giant monsters with medieval tech would be to build siege gear. They had mobile spike-barricades, giant pavise shields that got carried by a specialized guy (a very well paid one too!), and of course ballistas, catapults and all manner of towers, ladders and movable walkways. I wheelbarrow with some really long spikes attached should give giant charging animals a pause at least.

None of that is really possible to incorporate into the game though... Well there's traps, and I did add a few trap items, but nothing particularly innovative.

But if you have any suggestions id gladly hear them.

Historical armour was as heavy as it could sensibly be, though super heavy troll armour in the same style as real horse and elephant armour would make goblins much more powerful and I think is within reach of modders.

Pretty much every adult except for those in the most primitive tribes should have a dagger to eat with, and it should always be available as a secondary weapon. Elves can have obsidian daggers if they hate metal for some reason.

Spider silk armour would be a good addition, since it has basis in real life, though not before 1400. Making it incredibly hard to weave, maybe even starting with the elves and spreading by civilisations inviting craftselves to work there (guilds were very secretive in the past and knowledge spread slowly, but DF worlds can have 1000 years of history), would balance its incredible lightness and resistance to anything except smashing.

[Cryoshakespeare]

Historical armour was as heavy as it could sensibly be...

That's a pretty misleading statement, and is quite dependent upon your interpretation of the word "sensible". Armor was designed to be as light as possible, while still providing adequate protection.

"For warfare, arms and armor must, above all, be practical, affording the utmost protection and functionality without impairing body movement because of excess weight or inflexible material. Even such practical equipment, however, was often decorated, care being taken that the decoration would not impede its function."

During the Renaissance, a considerable number of swords, maces, firearms, shields, and armor were made specifically for ceremonial purposes. They were intended to imitate the heroes of antiquity, but in truth were quite impractical. Unfortunately, these ceremonial items are often used as references in popular-culture, and are made out to be historically accurate depictions of arms and armor that were used in combat.

"Since these accoutrements were not intended to face the risk of damage or loss in battle, many of the functional and protective qualities of "normal" arms and armor—lightness, practicality, and the "glancing surface"—had been abandoned in favor of theatrical and symbolical effect."

The truth is, armor was consistently being redesigned to be made lighter and lighter (except in cases where a specialized compromise was required). As metallurgy and metalworking developed, armorsmiths found increasingly efficient ways to provide the same level of protection, while using less metal in their design. We often think of armor and weapons as relatively crude implements, but in reality their design was constantly being improved on, and armor progressed to quite a high degree of technological advancement, before it fell out of use with the firearms industry taking over.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Armour only fell out of fashion for a few centuries. German sappers wore plate armour during World War 1, and US forces issued body armour to some units from the Korean War onwards. Now there is even talk of exoskeletons.

A 60kg suit of armour is not sensible except on a creature larger than human size. Fighting and moving in it would be exhausting and make the fighter near useless, never mind the massive cost. I would say the upper limit for sensible mass of armour is 30kg, about the same as modern military webbing.

[Grimlocke]

Sadly armoring pets and mounts is out of reach of raw modding at least, unless you do something odd like making a creature with an extra layer of steel skin you call armor.

Which might be a somewhat decent approach, except if you capture some and let them breed you get 'barded horse foal' and such. You can't armor any normals horses with a dead invader horse's armor either.

...

I wonder what the game will do if I make horses and trolls intelligent. Will it give them entity armor? Probably not I guess it would be more like the old glitch that gave animals in abandoned forts clothes. Once came across a camel with socks, shoes, coat and a hat of some sort.

Anyhow, dagger placement! Its already there for civilians in adventurer mode, if you look around you will see them with a variety of daggers, some eating knives and the occasional cudgel. If you look at various medieval art of cities and their various inhabitants you will notice that almost everyone is openly carrying a dagger of some sort. The game however cannot be convinced to actually put them on soldiers as a sidearm, quite annoying.

As I mentioned before the entity equipement system is kind of the worst enemy of this mod. I was recently adventuring about and came across '+bronze cudgel+', and later a silver mallet, which I give a volume a wooden mallet would have and as such weighed over 20kg. Gah! Just gah! The raws for those tool items have [MAT_WOOD] and no other material tag so at that point is game is just ignoring its own raws. The ones civilians carry around are mode of the proper material, but in city keeps and tombs there is chests with weapons that the game just makes out of whatever...

[Urist Tilaturist]

Coming back to this months later:

How much progress has been made towards the next version?