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[someone12345]

Which is better for edged weapon and armor, orichalcum or steel? Orichalcum has better properties, but it is heavier. Which one is better in most circumstances?

[vjmdhzgr]

Weight matters very little to a fully trained soldier. At legendary armor user armor effectively weighs nothing. So, if orichalcum has better stats, it would be better as long as the soldier can handle it. Also weighing more makes edged weapons slightly more powerful, at least inn the case that it can't cut through the enemy's armor and it's damage is converted to blunt, but I think in general it helps a bit.

[zach123b]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Masterwork:Metal
there's a page on the wiki for the metals. i think its updated for 6.2, i don't think metals haven't changed in the beta version for df 40.24

it just says the raw stats and if its ok-good for certain applications.  if you're up to it, the page also explains what the raw stats are used for.  also orichalcum (i think gold/silver can too) can be made into thread/cloth for even more protection

[vjmdhzgr]

also orichalcum (i think gold/silver can too) can be made into thread/cloth for even more protection

Doing so however is pretty much a waste of a valuable and rare material in almost all circumstances as the protection is minor compared to making armor from it, and clothing will degrade over time while armor doesn't so you'd only get a few years of slightly increased protection.

[zach123b]

i remember hearing it was great against edge attacks.  yeah it does degrade (forgot that >>) but can't you resmelt it? at a lost in material (i assume) and micro managing, which is probably not worth it

[vjmdhzgr]

i remember hearing it was great against edge attacks.  yeah it does degrade (forgot that >>) but can't you resmelt it? at a lost in material (i assume) and micro managing, which is probably not worth it

I don't think you can recycle clothes in vanilla, but I suppose I've never tried with metal clothing, and I think masterwork did add in clothes recycling, but I'm not sure how it works. As for its protection, somebody supposedly found that clothing material doesn't matter in protection at all, but I know from adventurer experience that leather clothing is definitely harder to cut through with a knife than silk clothing. However I don't know if there's ever been any testing on how protective it can be. Anyway though, by orichalcum's very nature, you're not going to have much of it. If you constantly have two smelters and ore processors being run by legendary dwarves, you won't have much of it, so it would still be best to save it for valuable things like the masterwork sword or breastplate of your militia leader.

[Niveras]

Weight matters very little to a fully trained soldier. At legendary armor user armor effectively weighs nothing.

But it takes a long time to fully train armor user (unless using danger rooms or the like), so weight is still a consideration if your dwarves suffer a speed malus for decades while fighting it before they manage to reach legendary.

[Ishar]

I have doubts about that whole 'hard to train' thing. It used to be very hard to train military skills compared to everything else. I'm not sure when that changed (either in vanilla, MW or Reborn), but now, with the current reborn version, simply making squads of 2-3, and letting them train as they want for a few months helps tremendously. Individual training, demonstrations, especially sparring work well.

They may not become legendary overnight, but I tend to quickly train a couple of guys to a reliable level.
So yes, I think the quality of the armor matters far more than its weight, and heavier weapons are almost always better. You WILL use your axes and swords for blunt damage after all: pommel strikes, flat of the blade, bone breaking through armor, just to name a few. Ranged weapons are in a league of their own of course, but who makes an orichalcum crossbow anyway?