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[Johann Canteloupe]

Hi all,

So I was playing Adventure mode recently, primarily with a crossbow user, and it seemed to strike me that bolts didn't weren't as good at penetrating armour any more.

I took this to the Testing Arena, and it seems to be the case, that at least with steel plate, bolts are no longer capable of punching through armour made of the same armour.

For the experiment, I had dwarves face off against each other, armed with Crossbows and steel or iron bolts, each one in full (steel) plate.

Each dwarf was initially a capable Marksdwarves and a master of armour use.

After 100 bolts, I don't think a single bolt managed to fully penetrate plate, with the exception of bolts that got to exposed areas (face and neck, primarily).

I tried altering some factors, and started with making them masters in Marksdwarf, whilst Novice in Armour User.

Once again, it seems that the plate was able to deflect bolts (now all steel). The duels seemed to be resolved quicker, but this may simply be to the dwarves allowing the bolts to hit uncovered areas.

Before doing anything else with this, I was wondering if anyone else had noticed this, or if I am treading old ground?



TL:DR Bolts seem to bounce off armour in 2014 judging from preliminary testing, has anyone else noticed this, or am I treading old ground?

[AceSV]

I think for armor piercing, you actually want denser materials, copper, bronze or silver, instead of steel, or so I have read. 

[Diamond]

Well, iron bolts never were good against armor, especially steel and higher. Use silver or copper for better results.

[Vilkku92]

They sure seem to be less effective than they once were. At least, it's been rare for arrows or bolts to do much anything to my military, and I've mostly outfitted them in just copper (shallow fort and nothing but malachite). I believe ranged weapons were massively nerfed in 2014, so they aren't those railguns they used to be.

[Montieth]

Better armour piercing relates to hardness AND density. Lead is a poor armor piercing material.

You are looking for the force of the projectile to overcome the sheer strength of the material it's hitting. A hard/strong metal that's thin will be overcome by a large heavy but soft impacter. That's when armour is over matched just because of the force/strength differences. This is why armor is now including composite materials for increased prortection levels for an equivalent amount of weight.

Copper would be poor for AP over something like a steel penetrator. Harness relates as well because harder metals are going to resist a softer impactor which will flow or break up. Silver too.

Now, a lead bolt with a hard steel tip would have some advantages as the steel provides the penetrating component and the lead provides energy retention.

It effectively comes down to a combination of strength of the projectile vs strength of the armor.

[Pirate Bob]

I think for armor piercing, you actually want denser materials, copper, bronze or silver, instead of steel, or so I have read.

This is not true any more.  It used to be in 34.11 (or at least in the sense that heavier bolts had higher momentum, but all metal bolts pierced all armor in 34.11 so it didn't matter much), but in 40.05 Toady fixed a rounding error which caused this.  Now steel and better armor will stop all bolts made from ordinary metals (iron, bronze, copper, silver), and other armor made from ordinary metals will do practically nothing against bolts/arrows.  I believe that wood/bone bolts can be stopped by all metal armors, as there is a maximum velocity cutoff for bolts which results in very light bolts having lower momentum.  There is no difference in effectiveness between all metal bolts, so for adventure mode the biggest difference is that iron/steel are lighter to carry.

Having spent the better part of a year testing this, I am happy to give more details if anyone is interested (also see the post in my sig), and also can explain how to mod to get whatever crossbow/bow behavior you like.  However, to answer the original post, no bolts/arrows you can find in adventure mode will pierce steel armor, all other metal armors are pierced by all metal bolts, and bone/wood bolts are not so good.  Also, Toady is definitely aware of this behavior, having intentionally adjusted crossbows/bows to be stopped by steel armor in 40.05.

[Max™]

He also tweaked the hilarious machinegun firing rates, which was hilarious but a pain because they ran through so much ammo training before I learned how to make the drop recovery pits.