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[Baughn]

I wonder how soon it'll be before 40d17 comes out now since they're making progress.

40d17 is basically working fine, now. Toady has a bit of cleanup to do in adventure mode - which works, by the way, it just occasionally drops keys if you're too fast - and I'm trying to figure out why world-gen is slower than it could be, but it shouldn't be long.

[Reese]

Goodness... the way people keep talking I am starting to seriously wonder what the point of Chainmail is.

Though... I have EXTREMELY contradictory information on it. (In one, Chainmail can stop arrows from piercing flesh. In another it cannot)

That's probably going to depend on the quality of the chainmail and the tightness of the rings. Big, loose links, all they'll do is stop cuts and spread the force of blows slightly (basically making whatever leather/cloth backing it's over, more effective) but piercing attacks will go through the links. Small, teeny-tiny links, of masterful skill, you're basically wearing a metal mesh, and attacks aren't going to pierce that any more than they're going to cut it.

And on level of ring making technology... one of the developments in making maile more resistant to arrows was to begin riveting the rings closed so that they could not be easily forced apart by an arrow head.

[RedKing]

In the monarch entry...

[SPOUSE_MALE:king consort:kings consort]
[SPOUSE_FEMALE:queen consort:queens consort]

Those singulars/plurals seem pretty strange to me. Shouldn't that be more like
[SPOUSE_MALE:kings consort:kings consorts]
[SPOUSE_FEMALE:queens consort:queens consorts]
?

(Edit: That is, assuming apostrophes in raws are no-nos, I'm fuzzy on the specifics there. Else king's/queen's?)

No, it's plural, not possessive.  In a monarchy,  you will have a king and a queen.  Historically, the king almost always is the ruler, but not always.  The ruling monarch is the King/Queen Regnant.  The monarch who is the monarch by virtue of marriage is the King/Queen Consort.

As for pluralization issues, Consort here is basically an adjective, as it is specifying what kind of King/Queen.  When you pluralize a term, it's only the noun that gets the "s".  Green Apple becomes Green Apples (as opposed to Greens Apples or Greens Apple).  By the same rule, One Notary Public, two Notaries Public.  One King Consort, two Kings Consort.

I could have sworn the correct plural was actually "Princes Consort". After all, we Brits have Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, not King Philip.

I didn't see that anyone else had answered this correctly, so here goes:

Prince Phillip is simply a Consort to the Queen. The title "Prince" is actually his own (former) hereditary titles as Prince of Denmark and Greece. He's also technically Duke of Edinburgh, which is his highest English hereditary title.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_titles_and_honours_of_Prince_Philip,_Duke_of_Edinburgh.

The upshot is that people call him "Prince" because he was one (of foreign nobility) up till he married the Queen, and the British press wasn't sure what to call him, so they just kept calling him "Prince Phillip".

[Mel_Vixen]

hmmm with the material rewrite i guess artifact weapons (and possible armor?) are nerved down or do they get some magical, weight, shearpoint, yield modifiers? Also what about the elven wood-weapons? Do the elves now manipulate the materials in some faschion?

Artefact weapons wouldnt be a big loss for now i guess but advanced elven weapons would give them a advantage to survive a serious fight - thankfully they outbreed theyr losses.

[Funk]

mail is a wast of time vs arrows and points
but vs slashing attackes it rocks
vs chops it stop you geting cut at all

a Gambeson or padded jack is need to help stop broken bones , arrows and prevents chafing.

there basicy thick jackets stuffed with cloth sraps and the like.

[Khym Chanur]

Will caravan merchants and caravan guards be controllable in the entity raws?  Specifically:

1) Can the armor and weapons of the guards be controlled?  How skilled they are?

2) What about the ratio of guards to merchants?

3) Could the merchants be made to defend themselves without having a guard?

And while on the subject, could the trade liaisons be made defend themselves (hopefully while carrying armor and weapons)?

[Funk]

 

3) Could the merchants be made to defend themselves without having a guard?

And while on the subject, could the trade liaisons be made defend themselves (hopefully while carrying armor and weapons)?

thay both fight back as it is but only when attacked and thay cant run.

[Mel_Vixen]

Jians or rapiers would be nice weapons for a trader because they dont look so menacing althought they are a bit out of the timeframe.

[Khym Chanur]

3) Could the merchants be made to defend themselves without having a guard?

And while on the subject, could the trade liaisons be made defend themselves (hopefully while carrying armor and weapons)?

thay both fight back as it is but only when attacked and thay cant run.

For the merchants I was thinking along the lines of giving them crossbows and having them stop their wagons and fire when hostiles get close enough.  For the trade liaison, I was thinking of circumstances like when a rhesus macaque pack gets between him/her and the fortress; a liaison to a frontier settlement should be prepared for some danger, and should have no problem carving a path through some monkeys to get to their meetings (though improving the AI so that liaisons wouldn't go out of their way to slaughter the local wildlife would probably be another issue).

[Mephansteras]

mail is a wast of time vs arrows and points
but vs slashing attackes it rocks
vs chops it stop you geting cut at all

a Gambeson or padded jack is need to help stop broken bones , arrows and prevents chafing.

there basicy thick jackets stuffed with cloth sraps and the like.

Chain is actually decent against piercing weapons. There are plenty of accounts of warriors in chain getting hit by multiple arrows but remaining unharmed, although a thick gambeson underneath certainly helps prevent minor wounds. Depends a lot on the strength of the blow, the shape of the arrow/spear point, etc.

What chain doesn't do so well is protect against blunt attacks. Plate is by far the best for that, although thick leather also works well.

[Genoraven]

ZOMG a chainmaille discussion! Being someone who actually makes it i think I'm qualified to join in. FUNK is right, Chainmaille is designed to protect against slashing.


"Goodness... the way people keep talking I am starting to seriously wonder what the point of Chainmail is."

In DF right now, yes you are right, but in real life chainmaille is flexible where plate is not. Which is why even when plate became very popular they would still wear chainmaille underneath to protect the joints.


As to the arrow vs. maille discussion:

It depends on a number of factors, like material quality, ring size(AR) and the closures.

Quality is....well quality, if you have it made out of like pigiron or some crap like that your maille wont stop anything.

Ring size plays an important roll as does the AR (Aspect Ratio which is the ratio between the inner diameter of each ring to the wire diameter.) High ARs result is maille that is very loose where the opposite is true for a Low AR.

There are 2 types of closures for historical maille. They are butted rings and riveted. Butted maille is maille where each ring is "closed" by butting the ends together. You would be very lucky to have butted maille stop an arrow as there is nothing to prevent the rings from being pushed apart as the arrow impacts. Riveted maille is where each ring is riveted shut, buy having the ends of each ring flattened, then punching a hole through them and riveting them. This can be supplemented in strength by replacing every other row of rings with solid rings. That is, ones without closures. Riveted maille is much much stronger than butted maille in every regard, but it also takes about twice as long to make. Now an arrow hitting a riveted ring with an arrow there is still a chance the rivet can break and split the ring apart. But an arrow hitting a solid ring would likely stop an arrow depending on how much energy it still has.

All that being said, maille was never arrow proof or anything like that.

Also, adamantine chainmaille would be INCREDIBLY difficult to make, because of its hardness. It would make the chance of a ring breaking when you bend it shut and if it doesn't break the ring will likely be warped which would compromise the strength of the maille.


Now, questions?

[Orkel]

I swear, the first thing I'll do with the new version is to make a chain-clad dwarf fight a bowgoblin in arena mode to see how DF handles it.

[Genoraven]

Also while I'm on the topic of chainmaille.

Would it be to much of a request to have Chainmaille jewelry implemented at some point?

http://www.theringlord.org/forum/Index.php?app=gallery&module=cats&do=sc&cat=5?s=b798147b3a311788df65417441861f1f  Here is a gallery showing off chainmaille jewelry.

[Lancensis]

3) Could the merchants be made to defend themselves without having a guard?

And while on the subject, could the trade liaisons be made defend themselves (hopefully while carrying armor and weapons)?

thay both fight back as it is but only when attacked and thay cant run.

For the merchants I was thinking along the lines of giving them crossbows and having them stop their wagons and fire when hostiles get close enough.  For the trade liaison, I was thinking of circumstances like when a rhesus macaque pack gets between him/her and the fortress; a liaison to a frontier settlement should be prepared for some danger, and should have no problem carving a path through some monkeys to get to their meetings (though improving the AI so that liaisons wouldn't go out of their way to slaughter the local wildlife would probably be another issue).

To be honest, I've never seen why the liaison doesn't just arrive as part of the merchant's convoy. I know there's that incredibly long trade agreement process that usually won't be dealt with untill spring of the next year, but that could stand to be cut down to about a quarter of its current length.

[Neonivek]

Well how they make ANYTHING out of Adamantine is a mystery in it of itself since it is incapable of bending without breaking. It also has such a high boiling point that the Furnace would suffer a meltdown before it would ever soften the metal.

I assume magic is involved. Perhaps not in spells but in that maybe there is some sort of secret technique that takes advantage of an unseen/unknown property of adamantine to mold the strands the way they want.

(That is right. Adamantine is Woven)

Though they COULD be put together like some sort of odd endless monkey chain.