Not to mention that Toady has read "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" so he is aware of even some fictional Siege weapons.
there was plenty of fictional stuff in RTK, but i don't remember any siege weapons that were fictional. probably is just can't remember it.
I think there was a mention of stuck-in weapons having more effect in the wound. If you twist a stuck-in battleaxe, I expect you'd do some damage, and loosen the axe.
if you look at how axes are attached the their handles it is unlikely to loosen it, break it maybe.
Even if you were wearing full plate, the helmet is the weak point, right? You can't really spread the force out that much, so the brains splat or the neck snaps if hit right with a blunt object.
About the adamantine casings proposed, can dwarves actually attain temperatures necessary to melt adamantine in their forges? Making thin sheets to cover an existing lead hammer's head might be more easily done.
Along the same lines, will item modifiers like menacing with spikes ever affect the damage of a weapon? It might be cool in the future if a warrior became fond of a copper sword and refused to fight with any other weapon, but you could send it back to the forge to add spikes to the pommel to upgrade the sword a little. It would probably create a micromanaging nightmare though.
While I was on wikipedia looking at war hammer stuff I came across this page about surface or case hardening. Does anyone know more about this?
For those that don't want to look through the page:
What does case hardening do?
Case hardening involves packing the low-carbon iron within a substance high in carbon, then heating this pack to encourage carbon migration into the surface of the iron. This formes a thin surface layer of higher carbon steel, with the carbon content gradually decreasing deeper from the surface. The resulting product combines much of the toughness of a low-carbon steel core, with the hardness and wear resistance of the outer high-carbon steel.
The traditional method of applying the carbon to the surface of the iron involved packing the iron in a mixture of ground
bone and
charcoal, or a combination of
leather,
hooves,
salt and
urine, all inside a well-sealed box. This carburizing package is then heated to a high temperature, but still under the melting point of the iron, and left at that temperature for a length of time. The longer the package is held at the high temperature, the deeper the carbon will diffuse into the surface. Different depths of hardening is desirable for different purposes: sharp tools need deep hardening to allow grinding and resharpening without exposing the soft core, while machine parts like gears might need only shallow hardening for increased wear resistance.
Seems pretty dwarven, and I believe its the right tech era, 14th-15th century, or late medieval. It would also work well in an item upgrade system, in this case upgrading iron items.
effectively one is creating microscopic carbon fibers in the material in question, it has been done much earlier, and with many more materials than just iron. essentially as the material tries to move the carbon fibers must slide against one another, but since that involves breaking the bond between them and the iron, as well as friction against one another you end up with a velcro effect in which many really small forces are working together to create one really strong force, in this case rigidity of the iron. what would be pretty cool is if this was considered magic (as it once was) and there were checks involving micro fibers in an object to create objects dynamically.
maybe something in the raws that states that something can be a microfiber, like creating an adamant solution then sealing a glass weapon in the solution then using it at a kiln would result in an adamant hardened glass weapon, which would be roughly the tensile strength of adamant added to the glass weapon, making it super hard.
it would make a great story, imagine a bunch of primitive kobolds being exterminated by dwarves. the dwarves wipe out kobold settlement after kobold settlement, then they come to a settlement built on the side of a casm. confident the dwarves march forward, imagining the cowardly kobolds trying to jump the casm. the kobolds gather their crude obsidian weapons and and stand calmly for battle, much to the surprise of the dwarves. the dwarves chuckle as they surround the kobolds, safe in their steel armor. as the dwarves close they don't even try to avoid the blows of the kobolds. kobold limbs fly every where, the captain smiles as he is bathed in blood, but just as he reaches the kobold shaman he is struck by a spear which impossibly penetrates his armor. as he falls he looks around him, and as he had cut a swath into the kobolds he failed to see his fellow dwarves getting hacked to pieces by seemingly fragile obsidian weapons. in his last breath he utters a curse upon the kobold shaman and his magics.
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?
what about your assessment of split ring construction (not used today), and the rare crescent style chain (can't remember what it is called, but each ring was made from two half rings riveted together).
Now, questions?
Well, I think we might have addressed most points by now, but for the record, the original question was more about what the advantages of say a mail over a plate would be, if any. I think it would be mostly issues of flexibility (for movement, not protection), etc.
don't forget that a hole in chain is easier to repair than plate. not to mention fitting/refitting.
It was also available for centuries before plate was, so a great many more people had the training to make it.
actually, no it wasn't. think about it, it is a fairly common misconception. making a sheet of metal more difficult than making interlocking rings? greeks used bronze to make a cuirass which is too soft to make into decent chain armor. carbon fiber vests were used before that and dubbed linothorax, which is quite different than medieval padded cloth.
Keep in mind that you didn't have just one guy outfitted in chainmaille, but a whole bunch of them. Not your whole army (why bother equipping the peasants?), but your trained infantry and archers who would directly benefit from having a means to stop sharp edges.
Making chainmaille ring by ring is exceedingly time consuming, and very inefficient to make. While the mass produced solid rows (which were formed by casting) were not as high-quality, who cared? Not the nobility, who wanted their men to have enough protection to win.
Only the nobility ever had full, link-by-link maille; today's hobbyists are demonstrating how far machining has come in terms of drawing and shaping wire.
I would think that chainmaille jewelry is entirely historical. My mother, for example, has an ornamental purse that is made of god knows how many tiny interlocking rings of metal. It feels like silk. The purse is smaller than most of our hands, as well. I can't imagine that kind of thing ever being done on a massive scale before workforce mechanization, and this thing looks quite old. It's probably not medieval, but it is an argument in favor of maille jewelry.
there are many times in which standard soldiers were armored with link by link chain, after all it is much easier to fit chain to some one compared to plate, and yet roman legionaries at one point had plate armor as a standard uniform.
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