Well, you may find that a horizontal slice would have a higher chance of hitting skinny creatures, while vertical slices would be more effective for short, stout dwarves creatures.
Exactly. That is why battlefield experience should be very important later on. The key word here is: experience. Dwarves are sparring, thus they can be masters with a given weapon. However that shouldn't be "enough" in battles. The more they fight in real battles, the more effective and deadly they will be. They will have more chance to dodge/parry the incoming blows. They will know what tactic to use vs. certain entities.
That seems more like basic logic (to the top part) than combat experience, but I can see your point. I still don't think battlefield experience should be more important in one on one fights (IE: more "controlled" fights) than actual skill, though. Even if you know everything there is to know about the battlefield, if you can't swing a sword fast and get gobbo arms off before they can react, you are dead meat. I think a good ratio would be for it to be 3 skill to 1 battlefield experience with any kind of skill used in one on one combat, while battlefield experience would be entirely dominant in the fields of ambush spotting, attack dodging against multiple opponents, bonuses (or lower penalties, I'm not sure how the combat system works) to defending against multiple opponents, less fear while also knowing when to run (IE no battle experience dwarves will generally either fight hopeless battles or flee when they have a chance, with grizzled veterans more inclined to move towards a healthy middle ground), avoiding traps, and fighting with broken or worse injuries.
Basically, your dwarves aren't running on battlefield experience until the shit hits the wall and it becomes a real battlefield.
Are you kidding? I've taken Tae Kwon Do, and I knew, even from low level training, in what ways the strikes I was taught I could disarm (if possible. Obviously, the first warning was to get behind cover if somebody pulled a gun on you), stun, knock out, and kill somebody. The only thing being on a battlefield would teach you is how to deal with death, and we already have that (used to tragedy). Granted, it could be harder to get and have better effects, but being used to the battlefield doesn't make you any more technically proficient with a weapon (except the crossbow, and that's only due to movement, which could easily be solved if we could build gear operated rotating targets. Fun!).
I can't believe I almost missed this one. 
There are many things you learn out on the streets that you can't learn in a controlled classroom environment. The first thing you learn is that no matter how good you are at fighting, if you're going up against someone who has +40 pounds on you, you will only embarrass yourself. The second thing you learn from fighting people outside of your discipline is that you don't know everything about fighting. Sure you can probably get someone in a perfect arm bar given enough time on the ground, but try going for it on a boxer and tell me how well that goes.
Yes, you can technically learn everything from a book and is almost always a prerequisite, but it just doesn't replace actual experience.
OK, 40+ pounds, to a master at tae kwon do against somebody who didn't know a thing, isn't much (especially if the Tae Kwon Do master works out, which is pretty likely). Hell, even to somebody who isn't a master but is well trained and has at least a decent amount of muscle, 40+ pounds wouldn't matter that much (of course, this depends on how much of it is muscle and how much is fat. A muscular person would pose a bigger threat, obviously). If the guy had a gun, I could see your point, but DF already has the "melee users die to crossbow users" thing going for it (which is realistic, and we should keep). Honestly, skill is far more important than weight in a fight, and to suggest otherwise was simply absurd.
Second, your example about a boxer is meaningless. You are saying that a master at Tae Kwon Do couldn't beat a master at boxing who had the weight advantage. I'm not entirely sure about the relative advantages the two styles have over each other (besides that I'm pretty sure boxers aren't trained in kicks or locks) but you aren't really giving any credence to your argument of street skills: It's two masters fighting each other, and neither profession has any inherent street skills to help in a one on one fight (not that those things usually help in a one on one fight anyway: As I've said, sparring isn't much different from one on one fights to the death, except IRL and to a lesser extent with dwarves, it doesn't have the "to the death" part).
So, besides a tasteless graphic, you haven't really contributed anything to this thread. Of course if you only take one style of fighting you wouldn't know everything, but dwarves already fight against all the different styles of martial arts that seem to exist in their universe (besides lashers) while sparring, and I already proposed increased dodging and defensive abilities for that (among other) reasons. So what, exactly, were you trying to prove?
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Topic: Military training (Read 3573 times)