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Yes.

Yes, if... (please post what here)

No. I don't want the possibility to lose weapons for any reason other than MAGMA (or other reasons)!

[Admiral Obvious]

I've had a look at this wiki page.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strain_at_yield
Strain at yield is the amount of flexibility the weapon has when striking a target. A lower value here is better. Copper has a lower value than iron, and silver, so it's apparently LESS malleable than quite a few weapons grade metal, if that page is correct. It won't bend much actually, unless I've got everything backwards  (which happens quite frequently).

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Hmm, the question is which values really matter for battle. We know copper is crap, that's not debateable. But how do we get theory to match up with experimental results?


...jeez, I really like this game. I'm nerding out over some txt files with assorted numbers!

[Admiral Obvious]

Hmm, the question is which values really matter for battle. We know copper is crap, that's not debateable. But how do we get theory to match up with experimental results?


...jeez, I really like this game. I'm nerding out over some txt files with assorted numbers!

At the moment, the major factors are weapon mass depends on material. User strength and "fatness", or mass. Weapon velocity, which is tied into the weapon raw, not the mat raw, which can be altered with attack modifiers such as heavy or quick. Lastly being impact yield and fracture being valid for both weapon, armor, and body parts.

Most of the "fluff" material values like strain, probably, and the different types of yield and fracture values don't seem to do anything  (yet) excluding the generic impact value.

Preperation times are also relavent too, they count how many ticks before the impact can be made since the initiation of the attack. I'm pretty sure all weapons but whips and flails  have this value set to 3.

[Bumber]

I've had a look at this wiki page.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strain_at_yield
Strain at yield is the amount of flexibility the weapon has when striking a target. A lower value here is better. Copper has a lower value than iron, and silver, so it's apparently LESS malleable than quite a few weapons grade metal, if that page is correct. It won't bend much actually, unless I've got everything backwards  (which happens quite frequently).

Well, it's lower than bronze, and considering we make wires out of one and ancient weapons out of the other...

I suspect the difference is insignificant with regards to other factors. Also, the link says:

"Lower strain at yield materials will shatter when hit by an impact, even if the impact is an edge weapon."

That doesn't sound like a good thing. Seems like a lower value means an inability to absorb blows without breaking.

[Admiral Obvious]

I've had a look at this wiki page.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strain_at_yield
Strain at yield is the amount of flexibility the weapon has when striking a target. A lower value here is better. Copper has a lower value than iron, and silver, so it's apparently LESS malleable than quite a few weapons grade metal, if that page is correct. It won't bend much actually, unless I've got everything backwards  (which happens quite frequently).

Well, it's lower than bronze, and considering we make wires out of one and ancient weapons out of the other...

I suspect the difference is insignificant with regards to other factors. Also, the link says:

"Lower strain at yield materials will shatter when hit by an impact, even if the impact is an edge weapon."

That doesn't sound like a good thing. Seems like a lower value means an inability to absorb blows without breaking.

I'd think that would have to tie into the impact fracture value of the material in question though. The weapon would be resistant to bending, but has a greater chance to shatter (which doesn't happen as of yet, and is a part of the initial suggestion).

[NW_Kohaku]

Amusingly, the "Dwarf Fortress-inspired" (read: blatant clone) game Gnomoria has armor destruction, although it lacks weapon destruction.  Armor has a certain amount of essentially "hit points" before it will collapse into its constituent components.  (Which involve metal plates and leather straps because Gnomoria does have intermediary products and objects made of multiple materials in its favor.) These are then dropped on the floor and recoverable and reforgable after the fight.  Higher construction quality results in more "hit points" for a piece of armor.  Weapon types are also important, but in a more hard-coded way in Gnomoria - bashing weapons do more damage to metal armor and the exoskeletons of giant insects, while leather armor and most flesh is more vulnerable to edged weapons.

Generally speaking, there should be more Newton's Second Law. Puncturing of armor should be possible, at least for lower-quality armor materials, although even that should damage an edged weapon's edge.  A steel sword will probably be ruined even if someone with enough strength to do so rams it through a steel breastplate. I should also point out that trying to break a sword with a sword was disproven on Mythbusters as taking a wildly superhuman amount of strength, and being as likely to snap your own sword.  ("Whether the stone hits the glass or the glass hits the stone, it's not going to hurt the stone.") A more sane approach is to just aim for weak points in the joints of armor, which can be accomplished by making armor no longer cover 100% of body parts. 

"Denting" of armor or representing puncturing with lowered coverage percentage would be an easy way to implement damage of armor.  Cloth or leather armor could be patched, but metal armor would be difficult to repair without reforging.

Edged weapons losing their edge should also not be terribly out there, nor should some sort of blade-honing skill to repair an edge between fights. 

Blunt weapons would gain some relative advantage for being relatively difficult to break, as barring severe malformation through being of a more malleable material, they would be much less prone to significant damage, although they still could suffer from having reduced swing velocity bonuses as the hammer might become twisted or deformed and more awkward to swing, and have few easy repairs.




Also,

I've had a look at this wiki page.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strain_at_yield
Strain at yield is the amount of flexibility the weapon has when striking a target. A lower value here is better. Copper has a lower value than iron, and silver, so it's apparently LESS malleable than quite a few weapons grade metal, if that page is correct. It won't bend much actually, unless I've got everything backwards  (which happens quite frequently).

Well, it's lower than bronze, and considering we make wires out of one and ancient weapons out of the other...

I suspect the difference is insignificant with regards to other factors. Also, the link says:

"Lower strain at yield materials will shatter when hit by an impact, even if the impact is an edge weapon."

That doesn't sound like a good thing. Seems like a lower value means an inability to absorb blows without breaking.

Steel as a weapon material is actually prized for its relative flexibility.  It will bend before it shatters, unlike crude (carbon-rich) iron, and will spring back into position after bending, unlike pure iron.  If you look at weapons used for high impact like cavalry sabers, used by simply lowering them to head-level and letting the mass and momentum of a war horse do the work, they are wobbly things like a spring to be able to survive the impacts they will be put under along their "flat axis", but thick and unyielding along their "edged axis".

[GoblinCookie]

Amusingly, the "Dwarf Fortress-inspired" (read: blatant clone) game Gnomoria has armor destruction, although it lacks weapon destruction.  Armor has a certain amount of essentially "hit points" before it will collapse into its constituent components.  (Which involve metal plates and leather straps because Gnomoria does have intermediary products and objects made of multiple materials in its favor.) These are then dropped on the floor and recoverable and reforgable after the fight.  Higher construction quality results in more "hit points" for a piece of armor.  Weapon types are also important, but in a more hard-coded way in Gnomoria - bashing weapons do more damage to metal armor and the exoskeletons of giant insects, while leather armor and most flesh is more vulnerable to edged weapons.

Generally speaking, there should be more Newton's Second Law. Puncturing of armor should be possible, at least for lower-quality armor materials, although even that should damage an edged weapon's edge.  A steel sword will probably be ruined even if someone with enough strength to do so rams it through a steel breastplate. I should also point out that trying to break a sword with a sword was disproven on Mythbusters as taking a wildly superhuman amount of strength, and being as likely to snap your own sword.  ("Whether the stone hits the glass or the glass hits the stone, it's not going to hurt the stone.") A more sane approach is to just aim for weak points in the joints of armor, which can be accomplished by making armor no longer cover 100% of body parts. 

"Denting" of armor or representing puncturing with lowered coverage percentage would be an easy way to implement damage of armor.  Cloth or leather armor could be patched, but metal armor would be difficult to repair without reforging.

Edged weapons losing their edge should also not be terribly out there, nor should some sort of blade-honing skill to repair an edge between fights. 

Blunt weapons would gain some relative advantage for being relatively difficult to break, as barring severe malformation through being of a more malleable material, they would be much less prone to significant damage, although they still could suffer from having reduced swing velocity bonuses as the hammer might become twisted or deformed and more awkward to swing, and have few easy repairs.

Indestructable armour is one of the major flaws in the game, especially when we end up with giant creatures wearing cloaks  .  Gnomoria has basically got the advantage here over Dwarf Fortress (rank heresy I know ), but it does not have to worry about adventure mode.  The main logistical problem as already mentioned is the scarcity of items in adventure mode owing to the lack of post-gen production but even with this in it may be impossible to be truly realistic as it would make the game unplayable.  It would probably not be fun to have to constantly bail out of an adventure mode because your sword broke, run back to town and then come back to start the war of attrition against the weaponry/armour of your enemies. 

[NW_Kohaku]

Indestructable armour is one of the major flaws in the game, especially when we end up with giant creatures wearing cloaks  .  Gnomoria has basically got the advantage here over Dwarf Fortress (rank heresy I know ), but it does not have to worry about adventure mode.  The main logistical problem as already mentioned is the scarcity of items in adventure mode owing to the lack of post-gen production but even with this in it may be impossible to be truly realistic as it would make the game unplayable.  It would probably not be fun to have to constantly bail out of an adventure mode because your sword broke, run back to town and then come back to start the war of attrition against the weaponry/armour of your enemies.

That shouldn't be a problem forever, and the Suggestions Forum shouldn't be bogged down in present limitations, especially since virtually everything here will take many versions (if ever) to be incorporated, anyway.  Getting cities to actually harvest some of the minerals it has access to for its own use, rather than merely for trade, is not something that should take Toady very long to do if he set his mind to it.

I do have to say, however, that metal weapons and armor in the current game aren't all that rare - they're just being worn by soldiers and bandits.  You can absolutely trade with soldiers for their weapons and armor if you bring enough mangoes or whatever with you. (I don't like to rely upon cheesy "leaving forbidden armor out and letting some adventurer take the candy" methods.)

Problems like dulling axes and swords could be solved with simple possession of a whetstone, provided a sword is not hit with such force it actually deforms.  (Which steel weapons would not do under most real-life circumstances, although real-life soldiers never fought 30-foot-living statues.) Patching of leather or cloth armor would likewise be easy enough on the road.

Problems like deformed metal armor would be relatively less common and deformed hammers or swords relatively rare.  Deformed metal armor could be given field repair if one had access to a hammer and maybe a good fire built into a crude forge. Deformed weapons, although, again, those should be rare, would be difficult to field repair in any way that didn't seriously weaken the structure of the weapon.  The only real long-term solution is to give players the capacity to make a forge and let them melt and reforge their tools.

Even with the "simpler" whetstone options, however, it would make having backup weapons much more attractive to adventurers, as it's not something you can do in the thick of combat.  Steel hammers, being edgeless and hard to deform as they are, would probably be more relatively valuable, as well, although candy swords and axes would still likely be nigh-invulnerable.

[Admiral Obvious]

Well, with the most recent blogs, it's entirely possible the player will have access to forges and the like at some point in the near future.

In the context of deformed armor, how would it specifically reduce coverage? By that I mean, at which point and/or where will coverage be removed from, and under which conditions. Ideally if armor is hacked or damaged near an extremity then the armor near that area would become less usable/useful. What about denting or cracking the center, like a "permanent" dent in a bronze or copper chest plate? I guess the plate itself would potentially let in more attacks to the area the chest plate covers, but would it have an effect on other covered areas?

It's a bit to think about, but a system can be made of it somehow.

[NW_Kohaku]

In the context of deformed armor, how would it specifically reduce coverage? By that I mean, at which point and/or where will coverage be removed from, and under which conditions.

I'd ideally like to see a system where armors are tied to specific body parts, rather than something with a hard-coded tag like "[STANCE]". In that way, rather than having 100% coverage over multiple body parts, there could be body part-by-body part coverage listed out.  Pauldrons of plate armor shouldn't cover 100% in the best of cases, regardless, leaving some armpit area covered only in chain. 

Then, when you attack and hit the upper right arm, and strike the plate armor, you might go from 80% coverage of the area to 78% as you warp the edges of the armor with a powerful strike, revealing a little more of the less-armored arms below. 

A puncturing of armor (like if a spear/pike lunge actually punctures lower-quality armor) might make upper torso protection from chain armor drop from 100% to 90% to reflect a large hole for which a soldier could aim.

Repairing chain armor, notably, would be easier than plate, as you can just interlock new links of chain, which are functionally interchangeable.

I should also mention, however, that I prefer the idea of more variance in armor types and metal qualities than we currently have. Making it possible for four-in-one, six-in-one, and eight-in-one chain, for example, and for humans to have cruder steel than dwarves, (wrought iron or wootz steel,) but not rely upon outright pure, easily deformed, iron.

[GoblinCookie]

That shouldn't be a problem forever, and the Suggestions Forum shouldn't be bogged down in present limitations, especially since virtually everything here will take many versions (if ever) to be incorporated, anyway.  Getting cities to actually harvest some of the minerals it has access to for its own use, rather than merely for trade, is not something that should take Toady very long to do if he set his mind to it.

I do have to say, however, that metal weapons and armor in the current game aren't all that rare - they're just being worn by soldiers and bandits.  You can absolutely trade with soldiers for their weapons and armor if you bring enough mangoes or whatever with you. (I don't like to rely upon cheesy "leaving forbidden armor out and letting some adventurer take the candy" methods.)

Problems like dulling axes and swords could be solved with simple possession of a whetstone, provided a sword is not hit with such force it actually deforms.  (Which steel weapons would not do under most real-life circumstances, although real-life soldiers never fought 30-foot-living statues.) Patching of leather or cloth armor would likewise be easy enough on the road.

Problems like deformed metal armor would be relatively less common and deformed hammers or swords relatively rare.  Deformed metal armor could be given field repair if one had access to a hammer and maybe a good fire built into a crude forge. Deformed weapons, although, again, those should be rare, would be difficult to field repair in any way that didn't seriously weaken the structure of the weapon.  The only real long-term solution is to give players the capacity to make a forge and let them melt and reforge their tools.

Even with the "simpler" whetstone options, however, it would make having backup weapons much more attractive to adventurers, as it's not something you can do in the thick of combat.  Steel hammers, being edgeless and hard to deform as they are, would probably be more relatively valuable, as well, although candy swords and axes would still likely be nigh-invulnerable.

The problem with all these things is that the weight limit of characters is finely stretched as it is by all their weapons and armour.  Having to carry a whole array of metal tools on top of that is not going to be viable unless the tools are made unrealistically light.  Having the player create forges would be in most cases basically unrealistic since they should be far too expensive/require more skills than the player should normally have. 

I cannot really see any major mechanical problem with sites simply having forges with appropriate tools that the player can either use themselves or employ an NPC blacksmith character to fix their weapons for them, they could simply use the same mechanics that are used in fortress mode.  The problem is rather the annoyance factor of adventurers having to trudge back and forth to sites in order to fix gear that has just broken essentially randomly in the middle of battle; plus the present immersion problem of being able to just walk back in the way you came without anybody seeming to prepare for your return. 

The best solution is probably just to increase the supply of (owned) weapons lying about in all sites so that a player who does not care about upsetting people in a given site can simply take new weapons/armour from their enemies to replace losses as opposed to having to trudge back to base, whether a adventurer created site or a regular one. 

[expwnent]

It wouldn't be too bad if they wear down slowly and can be repaired in town.

[Admiral Obvious]

Realistically, field repairs of weapons would only require a whet stone, or a rock really. Granted, rocks aren't the best of sharpening tools. As for trying to hammer out bends, you'd need a mallet, a rock really (the shoddy way), or a warhammer if you were so inclined.

For major things, like chips and breaks though, you'd probably need a forge of some description. These would be mostly infeasible for the player to make on their own (especially the anvil part, along with the current "needs anvil to create anvil" logic we currently have). Crude forges have been built out of rocks, using wood as fuel though before. It can be done, but with some solid effort of hauling the anvil (or Hugh Jass boulder) where you need it to go.

I can't suggest much for the site to site immersion, as that's not my fortè, but that's something that would be feasibly fixed in the future.

[WordsandChaos]

Yes. If things could break it would add to narrative depth, more dramatic moments (what if Urist's axe breaks while they're fighting their arch enemy?), and also, later down the line, make the economy work. For an economy to work you need to be able to replace things, otherwise you hit a natural limit of what you need to produce and then you get stagnation. Technically, everything should be able to worn away or broken.

Naturally, it should be a slow process, to alleviate tedium. Even the best things should be able to be worn down over time, it gives them real value: if that adamantine breastplate is never going to break it actually loses some value in the sense that you never have to worry about it. But what if it had  hole in it, and that become Urist's Achilles heel?  Again, that adds narrative drama to every fight Urist gets into. It would also create a need to dig deeply and greedily. If you know that even the adamantine is limited, and needs to be replaced, what happens when you've dug away all the ore that you are sure is safe, and left with the potential for hell to, literally, break loose? You're left with a hard a choice: Either you continue to dig, or you hang up the glorious relics of the past, and they become a part of the history of your fortress. The Age of Adamantine is past. Stories of the legendary blades and armour live on in stone carvings, but they may never again come. Unless the spire is still there and lets say a particularly bad Forgotten beast comes by and steel won't work. Or maybe you just got a particularly ambitious ruler who wants to  raise Dwarfdom up to it's peak gain, to reclaim past glories.... And they order the adamantine dug and the blades forged. Once more, the miners go down into the depths to strike the hard blue earth... 

[GoblinCookie]

Realistically, field repairs of weapons would only require a whet stone, or a rock really. Granted, rocks aren't the best of sharpening tools. As for trying to hammer out bends, you'd need a mallet, a rock really (the shoddy way), or a warhammer if you were so inclined.

For major things, like chips and breaks though, you'd probably need a forge of some description. These would be mostly infeasible for the player to make on their own (especially the anvil part, along with the current "needs anvil to create anvil" logic we currently have). Crude forges have been built out of rocks, using wood as fuel though before. It can be done, but with some solid effort of hauling the anvil (or Hugh Jass boulder) where you need it to go.

I can't suggest much for the site to site immersion, as that's not my fortè, but that's something that would be feasibly fixed in the future.

There is the 'small detail' of having to make a very hot fire missing in your suggestion; a regular campfire or a crude stone forge along the lines you describe is not going to be hot enough to allow steel weapons/items to be fixed and making such a forge should not be within the ability of a single individual to pull off.