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[muldrake]

So considering the platinum is like twice the weight for little to no gain I'm going to consider it a bad choice and remove it from my work orders (probably not in DFHack just my own, I may suggest it to Myk, but I'll leave it up to him how he wants to handle it).

I rarely use platinum for weapons because I think it is one of the best (and rarest) metals for increasing room value, so when I become the Mountainhomes, stuff made of platinum is how I build royal-quality rooms.  That and aluminum.

I make exceptions for when there are specific Legendary dwarves who could make great use of a masterwork-quality weapon.

[Metruption]

So considering the platinum is like twice the weight for little to no gain I'm going to consider it a bad choice and remove it from my work orders (probably not in DFHack just my own, I may suggest it to Myk, but I'll leave it up to him how he wants to handle it).

I rarely use platinum for weapons because I think it is one of the best (and rarest) metals for increasing room value, so when I become the Mountainhomes, stuff made of platinum is how I build royal-quality rooms.  That and aluminum.

I make exceptions for when there are specific Legendary dwarves who could make great use of a masterwork-quality weapon.

aluminum is so lightweight, it makes for great cages and other things dwarves will frequently haul

[Urist McShire]

Bronze is basically iron for most intents and purposes. It's perfectly effective for armor against goblin/human/elf weapons just as iron is, steel is slightly better but it's way more important to at least have iron/bronze armor and steel is just a slight upgrade except in the rare cases of steel weapons (some cavern dwellers, enemy dwarves). In contrast, just like iron, bronze is severely sub-optimal for any edged weapons precisely because edged weapons have trouble cutting through same material armor. It is highly optimal to make edged weapons out of steel, and basically to only use edged weapons made of steel since they severely outperform blunt weapons against nearly everything unless you have modded steel clad enemies.

Good point and I do generally try to sell off the early bronze weapons (especially the seriously sub-optimal bronze edged weapons).  The absolute worst is when your starting military squads get attached to crappy weapons.  I try just not to have them on the map, or at the very least, not in military stockpiles.  About the only thing worse is if you aren't paying attention and they get attached to one of those miserable wooden training swords the elves always bring.

I used to let that bug the shit out of me too, but then life is full of disappointment, why should the dwarves be exempt. They can suck it up and deal with it when I take their crappy stuff away to give them masterwork steel. I haven't had a tantrum spiral from it or really anything other than bugs in many versions so as long as you go to reasonable lengths to keep order you should be good(other than what amounted to a civil war that I gave up trying to figure out WTF happened)

So considering the platinum is like twice the weight for little to no gain I'm going to consider it a bad choice and remove it from my work orders (probably not in DFHack just my own, I may suggest it to Myk, but I'll leave it up to him how he wants to handle it). The silver all things considered is still not an awful choice I guess. We're talking war hammers, maces and crossbows only of course. What do all y'all think? I mean you generally have steel or you don't have steel so it isn't like there's a need to conserve it usually. Maybe I will drop the silver down below steel, which the numbers above support (right now the upgrade path goes copper>bronze>bismuth bronze>iron>steel>silver>platinum and the work orders are chained to choose based on what you have to work with) So it'd still make sense to use silver if you don't have steel.

Well, now that more !SCIENCE! has been done, I can stop worrying about having my elite Hammer Lord squad all carrying around masterwork platinum war hammers and just let them use any old material. Now I can have them all using up those masterwork copper/silver/iron/bronze war hammers my weaponsmiths can churn out like crazy from all the practice they got making menacing spikes and stacks of bolts.

[dikbutdagrate]

Worth testing. I just did a quick test (96 samples) with various materials, peak physical highly skilled dwarves:

Code: [Select]

| weapon                   | mean  | stdev | confidence_level | margin_of_error | lower_bound | upper_bound |
|--------------------------|-------|-------|------------------|-----------------|-------------|-------------|
| silver war hammer        | 14.07 | 8.57  | 0.95             | 1.72            | 12.36       | 15.79       |
| shining metal war hammer | 16.29 | 8.17  | 0.95             | 1.64            | 14.66       | 17.93       |
| wagon wooden war hammer  | 21.92 | 9.57  | 0.95             | 1.91            | 20.00       | 23.83       |
| adamantine war hammer    | 38.94 | 14.90 | 0.95             | 2.98            | 35.96       | 41.92       |


Hey Panando, I know that we know the differences here are negligible, but I'm curious, is there any chance you're interested in seeing how iron, bronze, and black bronze compare?

Relevant: I just encountered some people the other day who have yet to see accurate data pertaining to a silver vs. iron comparison, and so their default assumption in the absence of any evidence that specifically proves otherwise, is that silver is a categorically superior material for blunt weapons, obviously.

[Goldbeard]

Relevant: I just encountered some people the other day who have yet to see accurate data pertaining to a silver vs. iron comparison, and so their default assumption in the absence of any evidence the specifically proves otherwise, is that silver is a categorically superior material for blunt weapons, obviously.

This remains my assumption, and I've read the thread.

And although I never commented at the time, my main point of interest was silver - I've been preferring that since a much older edition, and never examined the assumption. High performance of steel was a big surprise to me - but then that silver/steel order reversed in one of the lower repeat tests. So how much of that order is noise from low sample counts? Or, just how much is DF combat randomized anyway, I guess I've never known. But even if I question the exact rankings that still leaves "they're all about equal" as a stronger possibility, as Panando points out.

And really I'm just thinking out loud, I'm in no position to take the time to do higher sample tests, so I'm grateful for any all !!Science!! when I'm not contributing.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Steel is still the safest choice vs normal enemies I guess?

[Urist Mchateselves]

The wiki should be updated with this information.

[Garfunkel]

Steel is still the safest choice vs normal enemies I guess?

The differences between platinum, steel and silver are so tiny that it really doesn't matter. As a rule-of-thumb, just make all your weapons from steel if you can and you're good to go.

[Drakonis]

Testing for optimal enemy smushing is great. But out of curiosity, what would tue best (worst) hammer be for justice purposes?

Could we get a comparison between woods and adamantine?
Glumprong x Wagon x Feather x Adamantine?
So we could also get an idea of how wood density eschews the lethality of beatinga?

[Putnam]

Feather wood's gonna be the worst by far, no doubt, but they won't use one of those. Adamantine is really, really bad, so's divine metal, but both can still cause pretty bad injuries.