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Author Topic: Endgame armor  (Read 7801 times)

Arkangel

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Endgame armor
« on: January 11, 2015, 12:59:28 pm »

I'm attempting to set my military up with the best arms and armor possible, following the wiki list of maximum armor coverage possible.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have a couple of questions regarding materials. Should I just make all the metal parts out of candy? I think I remember reading somewhere that steel is actually preferable for breastplates. I believe leather is preferable for hoods and cloaks, but I can't make socks out of leather. Which type of cloth should I prefer (I don't really want to use cotton candy)? Is it currently even possible to equip socks and high boots?

Regarding weapon materials, I think I've got those figured out, but I'll just list them real quick anyway:
Candy: Swords, Axes, Spears
Silver: Hammers, Maces
Copper: Shields (for maximum bashing power)
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Aslandus

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #1 on: January 11, 2015, 01:29:05 pm »

I don't think cloth actually has any difference in material strength, just value  (so whatever cloth you have more of). As for metal, I'm pretty sure candy is better than steel in every way, with a big factor being weight. Candy weighs almost nothing and block just about everything, while steel will drop a dwarf's dodging ability significantly. If you have the resources, candy would be best for all armor except shields. You may want to consider giving each soldier at least one candy cloak, just so their face will have full protection instead of being protected only by normal cloth

Socks and high boots can be equipped at the same time, but you have to order them to wear two of each, because otherwise they'll choose to wear only a high boot on one foot and only a sock on the other for some reason.

Dwarf4Explosives

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #2 on: January 11, 2015, 03:00:01 pm »

Candy is good for anything except mail (breastplates are actually the one that should be candy), and, if you want to give your dwarves the ability to shield bash effectively, shields (duh). For shields and other blunt items, platinum is best. For sharp stuff, candy is what you need.

Sadly, candy canes (crutches) are currently useless.
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Centigrade

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2015, 03:09:42 pm »

Hello!

I cannot speak to anything that may have been changed in DF2014, but I got partway through what would have been some very extensive testing concerning exactly the question you are asking. I did not feel like putting in nearly the amount of crazy effort to present it attractively, as others like Urist DaVinci have done, but I came away from a limited, inconclusive run (i.e., <95% CI) fairly convinced that I had come upon the optimal kit for a well-trained military dwarf of average body size.

The specific may vary depending on how exactly you prefer to outfit your dwarves, but below are given the best values for damage reduction against hits that are received.

With proper layering concerns applied, you want: adamantine mail; steel rigid armour bits; copper crossbows; adamantine edged weapons or silver blunt weapons; adamantine shields; adamantine clothing items.

If you allow for artifacts, then you instead want: adamantine mail; steel rigid armour bits; platinum crossbows; adamantine edged weapons or platinum blunt weapons; adamantine shields; adamantine clothing items.

Knowing all of this, I also know that the benefits offered by the best possible kit are negligibly better than the benefits offered by a considerably more conservative kit which is: adamantine mail; steel rigid armour bits; adamantine edged weapons and copper crossbows, or silver blunt weapons; the lightest masterwork shield in your price range; silk clothing items.

Your shield material only matters for three concerns: bash damage, price/rarity, and weight, the former being negligible even when optimised and the latter having numerous effects on combat. Any shield will fully block any attack, including dragonfire, regardless of its material so there is no practical reason to invest in anything but the lightest, masterwork shield you can find. You want steel rigid bits because adamantine is not dense, which prevents it from stopping blunt damage and projectiles as well as denser metals; depending on what mods or moods you have, you might even prefer silver or platinum or slade for the rigid bits, though these would obviously slow down your dwarves due to weight. Steel is the happy medium. Adamantine really shines for clothing items, mail shirts, and especially edged weapons.

Speaking of weapons! I know you did not ask about those, but I will talk about it anyway. Crossbows are terrible bludgeoning weapons, so the super-optimised option of silver or platinum will give only negligibly more throughput than copper, and the numbers really become muddied if you are comparing across skill levels and quality levels; simply, copper is close enough to perfect, especially if you just use the highest-quality ones you can. If you are going to give a dwarf a crossbow, then he should also be given a battle axe and vice versa; marksdwarves will actually use battle axes in melee, and axedwarves will actually use crossbows at range, when they have both assigned so long as the shield and weapons are in the right order: shield, then crossbow, then axe. It is arguably not worth giving a marksdwarf a blunt weapon, or a blunt weapon user a crossbow, since most of the time dwarves with silver warhammers will still keep using their copper crossbow in melee.

My military is usually a squad of axedwarves/marksdwarves and a squad of hammerdwarves/macedwarves, with the fortress guard a squad of exclusively marksdwarves with wooden bows and no melee weapon.
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Sirbug

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2015, 03:37:09 pm »

Candy is good for anything except mail (breastplates are actually the one that should be candy), and, if you want to give your dwarves the ability to shield bash effectively, shields (duh). For shields and other blunt items, platinum is best. For sharp stuff, candy is what you need.

Sadly, candy canes (crutches) are currently useless.

Adamantine Mail isn't good? Why?
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mlwestman

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #5 on: January 11, 2015, 04:02:57 pm »

Candy is good for anything except mail (breastplates are actually the one that should be candy), and, if you want to give your dwarves the ability to shield bash effectively, shields (duh). For shields and other blunt items, platinum is best. For sharp stuff, candy is what you need.

Sadly, candy canes (crutches) are currently useless.

Adamantine Mail isn't good? Why?

Mail works against blunt damage, so candy's negligible weight works against you there. Or, at least that's what I think I remember.
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AbanShakehandles

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2015, 11:38:37 am »

Candy is good for anything except mail (breastplates are actually the one that should be candy), and, if you want to give your dwarves the ability to shield bash effectively, shields (duh). For shields and other blunt items, platinum is best. For sharp stuff, candy is what you need.

Sadly, candy canes (crutches) are currently useless.

Adamantine Mail isn't good? Why?

Mail works against blunt damage, so candy's negligible weight works against you there. Or, at least that's what I think I remember.
You want steel rigid bits because adamantine is not dense, which prevents it from stopping blunt damage and projectiles as well as denser metals

"rigid bits" = steel
mail = candy

I think of Bilbo's mithril chainmail shirt to help me remember this tidbit.
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catten

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #7 on: January 13, 2015, 12:59:06 pm »

Candy is good for anything except mail (breastplates are actually the one that should be candy), and, if you want to give your dwarves the ability to shield bash effectively, shields (duh). For shields and other blunt items, platinum is best. For sharp stuff, candy is what you need.

Sadly, candy canes (crutches) are currently useless.

Adamantine Mail isn't good? Why?

Mail works against blunt damage, so candy's negligible weight works against you there. Or, at least that's what I think I remember.
You want steel rigid bits because adamantine is not dense, which prevents it from stopping blunt damage and projectiles as well as denser metals

"rigid bits" = steel
mail = candy

I think of Bilbo's mithril chainmail shirt to help me remember this tidbit.
Exactly right.

tl;dr: candy for mail, steel for rigid, silk for clothing (if you don't want to waste candy on things that wear out)

In general, armor stopping a type of attack uses *precisely* the same material properties as the weapon delivering that attack.

Edged attacks depend almost entirely on material properties, with only a small effect from weight/density. So candy mail is great for stopping any edged weapon up to and including candy. However, mail of any material does basically zero to stop blunt attacks from weapons like war hammers (or even from the floor during a fall, for that matter). Your candy mail shirt will also turn almost all edge attacks into blunt, since they can't piece it. So you need something else underneath to stop the blunt from breaking bones, bruising organs, etc.

Blunt attacks depend first on mass/density, with material properties being a significant but secondary factor. That's why silver is so good in spite of having awful material properties, and why copper is second-best (being the densest of the weapons-grade metals). That's also why steel wins for plate armor---it's the strongest "normal" weight metal.

Meanwhile, for outer layers, you want silk. There was a post about this somewhere that I can't find now, but a trip to the raws confirms it:

Plant   
Leather   
Silk
Density (lower is better)
1520
500
500
Shear strength (higher is better)   
600k
25k
1200k

Silk is 1/3 as heavy as plant fiber, and twice as strong. Leather, meanwhile, is just as light as silk but only 1/50 as strong. It should really be worth more than plant (currently it's worth much less).
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Centigrade

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2015, 01:13:53 pm »

catten,

How does the behaviour of projectiles now interact with armour? Back in DF2012, all weapons-grade metal projectiles effectively behaved like warhammers: highly focused bludgeoning damage, which made them easily capable of punching through adamantine plate.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2015, 01:15:26 pm by Centigrade »
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catten

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2015, 03:33:43 pm »

How does the behaviour of projectiles now interact with armour? Back in DF2012, all weapons-grade metal projectiles effectively behaved like warhammers: highly focused bludgeoning damage, which made them easily capable of punching through adamantine plate.
Dunno. I've had a devil of a time getting anything to invade my forts and so my marksdwarves have been shooting unarmored wildlife. I've heard bolts are much more reasonable now, though.

As for adamantine plate, don't do that (see my previous post, and others' as well). Adamantine is good for mail, steel is much better for plate. Ideally, your military dorfs wear both for full coverage.
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Sergarr

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2015, 05:21:23 pm »

Just don't use multiple mails. The defense improves by very little, while the burden slows down the dwarfs severely.
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Centigrade

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #11 on: January 14, 2015, 06:38:34 pm »

I think people really need to have hammered into them that adamantine is not the be-all, end-all of metals. It is supremely good at what it is good for, but many people seem to wrongly believe that just making a full suit of adamantine is the way to go when in reality that is inefficient, less protective, and wasteful of a limited commodity. The wiki page for armour even treats it as though this is an open question, rather than addressing the strong evidence towards the superiority of steel for rigid armour bits.

Do you suppose the reluctance to soberly compare adamantine's qualities has to do with the bay12 community's overall reluctance to talk about  :) cotton  ;) candy  :D clown  ;D car  >:( carnival  :( rides  :o and  8) hidden  ??? fun  ::) stuff  :P, or some other reason?
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Ancalagon_TB

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #12 on: January 14, 2015, 07:06:59 pm »

Posters in this thread are making contradictory claims - is it mail for adamantine, steel for plate, or vice verso?
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Centigrade

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #13 on: January 14, 2015, 07:16:44 pm »

That one is the correct one. The opposite, or pure adamantine, is the common misconception.
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NonconsensualSurgery

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Re: Endgame armor
« Reply #14 on: January 15, 2015, 01:09:30 am »

That one is the correct one. The opposite, or pure adamantine, is the common misconception.

I tested this one some in arena mode.

Steel > Adamantine > Iron

It doesn't seem to matter what kind of weapon the testing dwarves are armed with. Silver warhammers, iron battleaxes, silver whips - all about the same. Everyone got grandmaster skills, a candy chain shirt, a copper shield, and then either steel or candy hard armor consisting of two boots, two gauntlets, a helm, greaves and a breastplate.

I tried it again a few times with zero skill.

Adamantine ≈ Steel

What I think is going on here is that high armor user helps offset the weight of the steel. Remove that and the deathmatches between squads of ten are much closer and less predictable. I'd need to do a bunch more trials and make spreadsheets to prove it but I suspect that adamantine might actually be very slightly better than steel until they get to high levels.

So don't cry if you made a ton of either adamantine or steel armor.
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