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[janmusija]

I've read a degree of information in various threads, some pertaining to older versions of DF, about the efficacy of blunt weapons composed of different materials. In particular, I remember seeing information about maximum momenta attainable by weapons, which therefore leads to an upper limit on how much force they can hit with, even if they're composed of some extremely dense material. Thus: how much more effective are artifact blunt weapons composed of, say, gold, compared to those composed of silver? Are they significantly more effective, or just marginally so? Are platinum blunt weapons significantly more effective than those composed of gold?

Also, how do thrown objects behave with respect to momentum? Do they also have caps on momentum?

[Alastar]

Density will only make a difference of a few percentage points in momentum, so little it gets lost in the noise as long as it's somewhere between that of iron and platinum.

At the same time, the only other characteristic that matters for blunt weapon is impact yield, and that's in a pass/fail check that dedicated blunt weapons will pass easily in normal situations. It only matters at very specific contact areas larger than that of typical blunt weapons, mostly relevant for nonpenetrating hits of slashing weapons against certain body parts.

[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

I've read a degree of information in various threads, some pertaining to older versions of DF, about the efficacy of blunt weapons composed of different materials. In particular, I remember seeing information about maximum momenta attainable by weapons, which therefore leads to an upper limit on how much force they can hit with, even if they're composed of some extremely dense material. Thus: how much more effective are artifact blunt weapons composed of, say, gold, compared to those composed of silver? Are they significantly more effective, or just marginally so? Are platinum blunt weapons significantly more effective than those composed of gold?

Also, how do thrown objects behave with respect to momentum? Do they also have caps on momentum?

Based on adventure mode, weapons quality and metal does make a difference - but a lot of other things also makes a difference, so at the end of the day you don't NEED to max out weapon quality/metal. Stats imo matters WAY more than how good your weapon is. It's nice to have great weapons but it's not a comnat system where it is so imporatnt.

If your stats are way above the opponent, you can win by using any random crap as a weapon, like a musical instrument or a bottle.

[rhavviepoodle]

I feel obligated to mention the wiki's material science page. Idk whether it's still up to date, but I assume a good chunk of this still applies.

Tl;dr: weapon quality does matter (it gives a multiplier on accuracy), but weapon density has heavily diminishing returns. If I had to guess why:

Since momentum = velocity * mass, and lighter items can be swung faster, attack momentum is largely independent from weapon weight.

The momenta tables on this page also indicate this. I believe it is because the density itself is a small proportion added to a separate value:

M = 0.06 * Str * Vel / (1 + i_Size/(w_density*w_size) )

In other words, most of an attack's momentum comes from attack multipliers (like the x2 battle axes get), race size, and strength. Meaning that barring extreme circumstances or extremely small individuals, momentum increase from density is small.

It's worth noting that for a blunt attack to not be deflected, a weapon's material must have sufficient impact yield. However, since war hammers and maces have small contact area, this shouldn't be a problem. A platinum war hammer or mace should have almost three times the necessary impact yield to bypass this check against copper armor.

The matsci page is pretty dense but very informative, I'd recommend it.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I still appreciate making blunt weapons out of electrum, rose gold, or platinum, if only for cool points. If you wanted a good balance of impact yield and density, then my recommendation would be steel (very high impact yield) or bronze (for a solid mixture of density and IY).