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[scamtank]

That's the problem with mods like this - ALL of the intricately interlocking values are all over the place. Changing one isn't enough to make it not-crazy.

[Sergarr]

Can DFHack help with this at all? Even with that weapons and armour mod, an unarmed goblin still managed to fracture a dwarf's wrist through a gauntlet by punching it. The only wrist fractured here should be the goblin's, but if that is not possible the attack should just do no damage. For unarmed foes to defeat an armoured opponent, they should have to use wrestling and possibly tear off his armour.

Chalk that up to ridiculously overpowered melee attacks.

Just curious, how much momentum would it take to pulp say, a human arm?

Selected results from a human:

Code: [Select]

BODY PART ATTACKS
NAME    EDGE    SIZE    CONTACT PNTRT   WEIGHT  VEL     MOMENTUM(+500%/-50%)
PUNCH   blunt   108     22      108     0.54    100     55      bone
KICK    blunt   162     29      162     0.81    100     82      bone

BODY PART DEFENSE
Volume/Contact/Thickness/Material/Blunt_Momentum_Resist/Shear_Yield/Frac

right upper arm
        SKIN    4       38      2       skin    0       20000   20000
        FAT     43      38      23      fat     0       10000   10000
        MUSCLE  109     38      59      muscle  2       20000   20000
        BONE    109     38      59      bone    43      115000  130000

In the OP above I mention the pulping "rules". If we go for 100% bruised skin/fat/muscle and a 100% broken bone, we can pulp an arm in a single hit of about 50 momentum units (the example person only requires 44, I think). It looks like a solid punch from a noob could do this; however, humans generally can't pulp another human's arm in a single hit because the contact area of punches and kicks are less than the contact area of the arm. Unless your weapon is larger than the target body part, you can expect to have to hit something at least 3 times to pulp it.

Playing as a bronze colossus, I was easily able to pulp human body parts in single hits.

Melee attacks in this version of DF are quite hardcore, as you can see.

[Urist Tilaturist]

A bronze colossus easily pulping human arms is fine. Another human doing the same is not, especially not a novice!

I propose that this mod should also focus on changing what of the raws that we can to stop unarmed attacks of normal (not mega beasts) creatures from being so overpowered, especially against armour. A "combat balance" mod rather than just a "weapon balance" one. Of course we can only change what we can, but even just raws edits will improve it a lot.

[Sergarr]

There is actually a pretty quick way to change the attack power of most organic creature's melee attack.

It exploits the fact that the attacks use the lowest tissue layer for damage - bones, usually - so by artificially lowering the density of bones you can achieve the desirable effect.

I'd probably need to lower the artificially increased heads, which were added as a stop-gap to reduce the lethality of unarmed strikes, too.

That makes it two lines of changes in two files.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Another issue seemed to be that many attacks to the head damaged the muscle and fat, which around the skull are fairly insubstantial. Would it be possible to basically have skin over bone on the skull, since that is how it mostly is?

Leg, arm and rib bones can be broken by skilled fighters striking opponents, but novices should hardly ever do crippling or lethal damage with unarmed strikes. Against armour, unarmed striking should be almost useless, though wrestling can still have great effect.

[Sergarr]

Yes, removing, or at least reducing to unsubstantial amount of muscle on head is definitely possible. The easiest way of doing that would be to reduce the size of the "head" bodypart, since the "skull" and "brain" are counted as separate bodyparts.

That however is something that would require more changes, since there are multiple body plans with heads in them, fortunately, they're all in one place.

EDIT: Okay there's a bit of a problem. The head (specifically the meaty portions of it) is pulp-able. When it gets pulped, the creature dies. Even though no attack has actually pierced through the skull.

Gonna try to delegate some bones to the head body part to prevent that!

[Grimlocke]

Assuming it's just a combat announcement issue,

[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:ARG3:50:ARG2:5:ARG1:1]

Just reduce or remove arg3 and arg2.

You will have a weirdly large volume of skin but none of that should be noticeable ingame.

Adding bone to the head will probably make announcements even weirder. 'you bash the human in the head with your mace, fracturing the bone and fracturing the skull!'.

[Sergarr]

It's better than to have people die from head hits without having their skull broken in, I guess.

Though that can be interpreted as concussion kill, I guess?

[scamtank]

EDIT: Okay there's a bit of a problem. The head (specifically the meaty portions of it) is pulp-able. When it gets pulped, the creature dies. Even though no attack has actually pierced through the skull.

Not so, actually. You cannot smoosh the head until the skull has been completely crushed. That's what the [PREVENTS_PARENT_COLLAPSE] tag on the skull does. You just obliterated the thing in one swoop, destroying the skull and maxing out the "damaged soft tissue %" at the same time.

[Sergarr]

Okay so it's actually an issue with representation, since it doesn't actually indicate that the hits get through the "head muscle" wall.

[Urist Tilaturist]

I have no problems with the head being pulped in itself. It just should not happen so easily at the bare hands or feet of untrained dwarves.

This will take a lot of calibration to get right, since many values are weird now, but it should be worth the effort.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Another issue seemed to be that many attacks to the head damaged the muscle and fat, which around the skull are fairly insubstantial.
...

Actually, DF heads are rather meaty in proportion to real-life heads.

There is actually a pretty quick way to change the attack power of most organic creature's melee attack.
...

Put [ATTACK_VELOCITY_MODIFIER:x] (where x is less than 1000 for a weaker attack) in the creature's natural attack raws?

Okay so it's actually an issue with representation, since it doesn't actually indicate that the hits get through the "head muscle" wall.

Pulping notification is in the same part of the code as severing notification - it replaces the text that would have previously gone there (which would have mentioned the skull shattering).

...
You will have a weirdly large volume of skin but none of that should be noticeable ingame.

Adding bone to the head will probably make announcements even weirder. 'you bash the human in the head with your mace, fracturing the bone and fracturing the skull!'.

Yes, part of the problem is that the size of the head controls volume (damage resistance), contact area, and thickness (penetration). The relative thicknesses of the tissue layers in the head then decide what all of that thickness is made of - the head doesn't get smaller if you remove the fat/muscle layers. If you make the head smaller to have less tissue, then the head actually also gets smaller and presumably harder to hit (and would look silly if you sketch the creature to scale).

...
Also it would be a good idea to expand this mod to armor. From what I recall the stock armors have very irregular armor thickness and can be stacked in weird ways (4 mails coats and plate armor or something). It would give you more to balance the weapons against.

I think I documented it in a place or two, but several of the armor parameters multiply together, relative to the creature racial body part size, to determine the armor volume. The volume then leads to contact area, penetration thickness, and damage resistance.
I.e. stock gauntlets are much thinner than stock breastplates because the hands are smaller than the upper body.

Also, tissue thickness scales differently from clothing/armor thickness, leading to the absurdly thick clothing found on the giant-sized demon lords sometimes found running human civs. The (bugged?) clothing is thicker than the penetration value of any stock weapons.

[Insanegame27]

i went to a medieval workshop once. i got disarmed, but kicked the other guy in a gap between the plate armour, happenned to wind him, and stupidly punched his helmet while he was falling.

it is sad, but not unexpected

[Grimlocke]

...
Also it would be a good idea to expand this mod to armor. From what I recall the stock armors have very irregular armor thickness and can be stacked in weird ways (4 mails coats and plate armor or something). It would give you more to balance the weapons against.

I think I documented it in a place or two, but several of the armor parameters multiply together, relative to the creature racial body part size, to determine the armor volume. The volume then leads to contact area, penetration thickness, and damage resistance.
I.e. stock gauntlets are much thinner than stock breastplates because the hands are smaller than the upper body.

Also, tissue thickness scales differently from clothing/armor thickness, leading to the absurdly thick clothing found on the giant-sized demon lords sometimes found running human civs. The (bugged?) clothing is thicker than the penetration value of any stock weapons.

One other thing to note is that the armor thickness is dependant on the bodypart it attaches to, so a mail coat has the same thickness on the arms as it does on the body. This makes it possible to at least make armor have a consistent thickness for one species.

What I have never found out though is whether it also scales with an individual creature, for instance does a tall, broad human have thicker armor than a short, thin human?

[Urist Tilaturist]

i went to a medieval workshop once. i got disarmed, but kicked the other guy in a gap between the plate armour, happenned to wind him, and stupidly punched his helmet while he was falling.

it is sad, but not unexpected

You should not really have been fighting in a workshop. If it was a consensual sparring match, you should have gone somewhere which is not full of tools and furniture.

What happened when you punched the helmet? Were you wearing a gauntlet? I expect that the level of possible damage to the puncher would massively vary depending on this (gauntlets work like brass knuckles in protecting the fist from damage).

Armour often was inconsistent in thickness, especially if it was poorly made, but if this has very negative effects on combat it is better to have it even thickness.

@Urist da Vinci: My point about DF heads was that they had too much muscle and fat. I was referring to real heads, which do not have much muscle and fat at all. Dwarves should not usually be able to bite a goblin on the head's muscle and shake it about. Discussions about DF and reality are easy to confuse when trying to fix poorly balanced areas of the game.