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[Alastar]

@ Cathar: That's incorrect as far as DF physics is concerned, and has remained constant in rigorous testing as far as the game allows.
Blows are never turned aside, penetration calculations simply care about force:contact area.
A dagger stab in DF doesn't need to find a weak spot, it punches straight through armour.
An axe will struggle against armour compared to all other weapons, and their hits are terrible when deflected as well (far too high contact area to be effective, same unimpressive velocity modifier as most edged weapons).

At adamantine, sword stabs are wasted opportunities. Axe hits with their higher contact areas will penetrate anyway because of the vastly superior material, and creat a much bigger mess, and even have a deper theoretical penetration limit (as far as the blade will go, the wielder's hand is against the victim's body).


Below adamantine, picks imo do a better job of hedging bets than swords despite their single attack type:
If penetration is a possiblity, pick strikes are twice the conctact area of sword stabs with more than twice the momentum (penetrate more easily, cause more grievous wounds).
We may miss sword slashes against unarmoured humanoids but we're good anyway - pick strikes are wide enough to take off limbs.
If penetration is unlikely, picks work well just through blunt force. Same high velocity multiplier as most blunt weapons and a reasonable contact size, basically a one-handed maul (war hammers are something much more concentrated, a dedicated can opener). This is a huge exception, most edged weapons suck when they fail to penetrate. Morningstars are the other outlier, but that's a dedicated can opener anway (very fine stabs, works as a war hammer when they fail to penetrate).

[Cathar]

Can I see the rigorous study you mention please ? As it runs countrary to my experience, it'll allow me to improve my understanding

[Splint]

A bit late to the party, but I'm going to have to throw in with Cathar on this one in regards to observed effects and performance in play. Arena tests are all well and good, but in actual gameplay we'll virtually never have ideal conditions, and to my knowledge nobody has done super strenuous material !!SCIENCE!! in a long time now. Especially since material appears to matter way more than it used to (it's worth mentioning a lot of material science was simply carried forward from 34.11 and was never strenuously tested or updated as far as I know/remember.) My iron and bronze-wielding militias struggling against zombies in steel or iron armor are testament to that.

Equipment and stats in regular play will generally be of highly variable nature, both for our own units and our enemies. Gear generally being of incredibly whacked out material and quality compositions also means they're just not going to behave the way they would in standardized arena testing.


In regards to the topic, even if it was settled, I'd have to agree with Putnam in regards to short swords. They may not perform any one function as well as their dedicated counterparts, but that's kind of the point. They can do everything - stab like a spear, slash like an axe and bludgeon with their pommel strike - but they'll never do those jobs as well as an axe, spear/pike or hammer/mace. For perspective, while I've gravitated towards non-uniform militias recently for variety and fun, I used to field militias comprised entirely of swordsdwarves and never had any issues - besides the clean up that is.

[Salmeuk]

from a nonfunctional perspective,

Swords were associated with nobility and power throughout history. their form occasionally being exactly that - a wearable aesthetic signal of your superiority to the common folk. there are as many reasons for this as there are forms of sword, including difficulty of manufacture and need for certain rare metals to form effective blades.

Axes? stick a chunk of sharpened steel on the end of a stick, boom. ugly but effective. Sometimes they were similar to swords in their function as displays of status and wealth. I'm thinking certain periods in chinese history, and arguably neolithic when these kinds of tools were first being accumulated..

However, things get messy when you start trying to parse other influences. Axes being associated with dwarves might be traced back to Tolkein, but even he wrote about dwarves fighting with all kinds of material. and this notion of dwarves as smiths stems from nordic myths.

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Axes

one might over-interpret this trope and insist that dwarves only use axes or hammers, but then again, DF's  world generation creates experts in every weapon which might spoil your narrative.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

ignore statistics and functionality in favor of style and story and you can never go wrong

[Putnam]

Can I see the rigorous study you mention please ? As it runs countrary to my experience, it'll allow me to improve my understanding

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Material_science

This gives the exact numbers in combat. I implemented these for a simulation myself and in general they agree. I test it out in game and get results like this:



Axes do not work against armor of the same material, flat out. This is a grandmaster axe dwarf vs a totally unskilled dwarf.

EDIT: Even worse, steel battle axes can't get through copper, though it does break the armor much faster:



And of course a short sword slash vs stab:



Axes are objectively terrible against armor.

[Cathar]

Alright, thank you for the tests, it's a more effective way to settle the discussion. Did you, by chance, tested adamantine axe against copper breastplate, so OP has his answer ?
If not, Ill do it after work. Pretty sure adamantine axe can go through copper breastplate, but in case it doesn't, that's a shut case for adamantine axes.

Edit : It also want to conduct tests to see if using adamantine axes vs adamantine swords result in a significant fighting advantage by comparing the average number of strike each needs to kill an armored target but it may take a bit of time to test.

Edit 2 : Adamantine axes have no problem penetrating copper breastplates, as predicted.


I may have been wrong on the armor piercing ability of the axe, gomennasai. At adamantine level it doesn't matter though.

[Putnam]

Yes, adamantine goes through everything. I mentioned that earlier, actually:

Adamantine axes are best, yeah, no doubt. The area doesn't matter; adamantine is 116x as good as any other material when it comes to edged offense/defense. There's no contest, adamantine wins against everything, even at low momenta (assuming it's edged). So, yeah, if you've got adamantine, go for axes. But for steel, bronze and so on, swords simply cannot be hard countered, which is the main thing you're worried about.

[ltprifti]

axes for slashing, spears or bolts for poking..... swords can do both and if you have limited fighters and need broader usability swords are nice; but having specialized units for certain asks aint the worst of ideas, send the spearment in for the heavily armored and rangers in for things you want to stay away from and axes in for chopping off heads

[ltprifti]

Yes, adamantine goes through everything. I mentioned that earlier, actually:

Adamantine axes are best, yeah, no doubt. The area doesn't matter; adamantine is 116x as good as any other material when it comes to edged offense/defense. There's no contest, adamantine wins against everything, even at low momenta (assuming it's edged). So, yeah, if you've got adamantine, go for axes. But for steel, bronze and so on, swords simply cannot be hard countered, which is the main thing you're worried about.

what do you mean hard counter?

[WereDragon]

Yes, adamantine goes through everything. I mentioned that earlier, actually:

Adamantine axes are best, yeah, no doubt. The area doesn't matter; adamantine is 116x as good as any other material when it comes to edged offense/defense. There's no contest, adamantine wins against everything, even at low momenta (assuming it's edged). So, yeah, if you've got adamantine, go for axes. But for steel, bronze and so on, swords simply cannot be hard countered, which is the main thing you're worried about.

what do you mean hard counter?

A hard counter is a weapon being nearly useless against certain enemy types. I.e hammers have to pulp extremely large creatures, crossbows and spears being extremely unsuited for dealing with undead or things that cant feel pain and slashing damage (axes) being a poor choice  for fighting armored targets.
Swords can do all fairly well, so there’d nothing a sword cant kill reasonably effectively.