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[mikekchar]

There are 2 things that happen when A hits B.  1: Some of the momentum is transferred from A to B, accelerating B.  2: Some of the momentum deforms B.  The ratio between #1 and #2 depends on the surface area of contact and the speed difference between A and B.  Let's ignore surface area for the moment.

Imagine standing next to a glacier that is slowly sliding down a mountain at a rate of about 10 cm a year.  Because it is HUGE, it has a ridiculous amount of momentum.    The speed is about 1.14e-8 km per hour.  Let's say it is 1 km x 1 km x 100 m of ice, or 1.0e23 kgs. If you stand next to it, it will very, very, very slowly push you down the hill and you will not take any damage.  Now imagine a truck weighing 5000 kg.  To have the same momentum as the glacier, it will need to travel faster than the speed of light...  So pick any ridiculous speed you want and imagine how much B will be deformed.  Basically it will be vaporised before very much momentum is transferred.

When talking about damaging the head, what often happens is that the head is accelerated, causing the brain to hit the skull.  You can think of your brain as a passenger in a car.  If the car accelerates quickly, the passenger is pushed into the side.  Same basic principal.  If you want to cause this kind of damage (to knock someone out, for example), you want to strike relatively slowly, but with a lot of strength (force).  This minimises the deformation and maximises the acceleration.  On the other hand, if you want to deform the head (crack open the skull), you want to hit very quickly.

This is one of the reasons that boxing uses boxing gloves.  It minimises broken bones, but at the potential expense of internal damage.  The padding absorbs some of the impact, which effectively reduces the impact.  If you are strong, you can punch "through" your target, accelerating it.  This allows you to position your opponent and also knock them out.  It also allows people with relatively poor striking form to hit without breaking their own bones (oddly, due to physics, if A strikes B, A is more likely to break).

Very quickly, I want to discuss the matter of bicycle helmets because I think it's kind of important to understand in real life.  I'll explain in 2 dimensions because it is easier, but it applies equally in 3 dimensions.  Let's say your head is 2 meters above the ground when you are riding your bike.  If you fall over with nothing to slow you down, your head will be travelling about 22.5 km/h when it hits the pavement.  This is why people routinely die from hitting their head on the pavement if someone knocks them out (important note: *never* get into a fight -- it's more dangerous than you think).

Now, imagine that you are riding forward on your bike at 40 km/h and you fall off your bike.  At what speed does your head hit the ground?  Answer: 22.5 km/h.  Why?  You are still going forward at 40 km/h, but in a *forward* direction.  The speed in the *down* direction is still the same as if you weren't moving forward at all.  The only difference is that pavement will pull all the skin off whatever is on the down side.  Just to help the logic sink in, imagine falling off your bike and *just* before you hit the ground, you hit a street light.  How fast do you hit the street light?  40 km/h.  And then you hit the ground at 22.5 km/h...

Now, here's the thing.  Bicycle helmets are tested by dropping them 2 meters onto an anvil.  In other words, *it is tested at 22.5 km/h*.   It will save your life if you fall off your bike at any speed *as long as you don't hit anything in the forward direction*.  If you hit anything in the forward direction, you are pretty much toast.   It is only meant to protect you from hitting the pavement.  However, *most* accidents happen that way.

And just for some useless anecdata: When I was first dating my wife we went for a bike ride.  I had bought a bike helmet for her, but she didn't want to wear it.  Eventually she agreed to shut me up.  About 30 km out, my wife managed to get her wheel caught in a grate.  I watched as over she went, landing directly on her head.  It split the helmet in two.  We cycled home.  She never gets on her bike without a helmet any more.

[assimilateur]

That's a scary story mate. Glad she was OK.

So anyway, how do we mod this force translation stuff to behave more reasonably? As others have said, someone slashing at your steel-gauntlet-clad hand with a copper sword should not result in a smashed wrist and permanent nerve damage unless it's literally the Hulk doing it, in which case he'd be better of using his fists anyway.

Personally, I already mod my raws to take out nerves from anything, as they have been too ridiculously flimsy ever since they got introduced as a separate tissue. But I'm completely in the dark when it comes to modding weapons, materials, or other tissues to behave more realistically.

[Rumrusher]

That's a scary story mate. Glad she was OK.

So anyway, how do we mod this force translation stuff to behave more reasonably? As others have said, someone slashing at your steel-gauntlet-clad hand with a copper sword should not result in a smashed wrist and permanent nerve damage unless it's literally the Hulk doing it, in which case he'd be better of using his fists anyway.

Personally, I already mod my raws to take out nerves from anything, as they have been too ridiculously flimsy ever since they got introduced as a separate tissue. But I'm completely in the dark when it comes to modding weapons, materials, or other tissues to behave more realistically.

from my experiments with force messing it seems like you do that by either Modding everyone* to have higher toughness while having lower strength or make everyone hamstermen.
*the races your going to play as, since Everyone would take time to Mess with and by then your spent more time Modding than you have Playing.
might be good use to pop over to DFmodding to see if anyone could help.

[assimilateur]

I'd rather avoid mods like that. I'm assuming there has to be a way of modding tissues and materials that would make this work somewhat more realistically.

[bloop_bleep]

I'd rather avoid mods like that. I'm assuming there has to be a way of modding tissues and materials that would make this work somewhat more realistically.

Raise the toughness of joint bodypart tissues like elbows and ankles.

[assimilateur]

Could you be more specific? I don't think there's such a thing as an "elbow" tissue.

[bloop_bleep]

Could you be more specific? I don't think there's such a thing as an "elbow" tissue.

Perhaps

Code: [Select]

[RELSIZE:BY_CATEGORY:JOINT:300] or something like that, to increase the mass of joints?

[assimilateur]

Please start by clarifying which raw that is even supposed to go to. I checked the tissue template default, body default, and creature standard files and they don't look like the right file for this.

[bloop_bleep]

Dwarves have [RELSIZEE:BY_CATEGORY:LIVER:300] to triple the size of their livers. Place it in the same place that goes.

[assimilateur]

Found it now. I'll see what I can do with this tonight.

[hertggf]

I think what you would want to change is [MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:CARTILAGE_TEMPLATE] in material_template_default.txt.  Maybe [MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SINEW_TEMPLATE] as well

The current values don't seem to have been given much thought; every soft tissue material *_YIELD and *_FRACTURE is just set to 10000 except for SHEAR_*

In particular giving cartilage higher IMPACT_FRACTURE (but not _YIELD) and lower IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELD might help.

[random_odd_guy]

The only thing about game balance I ever really had a problem with was the crossbow cheese of versions past, in which a singular crossbow bolt from some bandit recruit would instantly perforate the torso of a steel clad hyper legendary adventurer who fights off bronze colossi with ease, tearing straight through the armor, piercing the lung, and causing them to instantly collapse mid fight with no hope of recovery.

It was just plain obnoxious that bandit camps were more difficult quests than megabeasts. Bronze colossi? Psssh. Dragons? Nah. But as soon as one dude with a crossbow showed up it was all over...