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[Thorik]

from what I know, Adamantine is the equivalent of Mithril, extremely rare, valuable, and when mined, bad things crawl out (BALROG!)  But ya, we should have a... Lord of the Rings mod for this game hehe

[sunshaker]

from what I know, Adamantine is the equivalent of Mithril, extremely rare, valuable, and when mined, bad things crawl out (BALROG!)  But ya, we should have a... Lord of the Rings mod for this game hehe

But how would everyone feel about the Elves? I think I'd miss the DF ones.

[Arrkhal]

I do kind of wonder how different materials could be made while still being useful, given the new material system.

Density, yield strength, fracture strength, elasticity, and "edge."

Not sure what "fracture strength" is supposed to be.  Sounds like it could be either ultimate tensile strength, or impact strength.

Going to need different tempers of materials at some point in the future.  You don't harden weapons and armor to the same degree, no matter what they're made of.  Harder versions of the same material should have a higher yield strength and "edge," but lower fracture strength (whether it's ultimate tensile or impact).  Elasticity changes would depend on the material.

And I don't really know why elasticity is on there at all.  It's important for durability, certainly, but everything I've read says elasticity will be part of what determines effectiveness.  That's not really right.  If something deforms, it deforms, whether it bounces back afterwards or not.  If it dents badly and stays that way, then that should be represented by your -copper short sword- becoming a XX-copper short sword-XX after the first blow, not by reducing the effectiveness of all attacks.

I think weapon and armor wear is supposed to make it into the coming version, so hopefully that is what elasticity will do, and someone, somewhere, oversimplified the explanation.

[Igfig]

I've always wanted to add mithril to the game, probably as a [DEEP] metal of some sort, but I really don't think it would work well.

The problem is that adamantine, as DF does it, shares the traditional properties of both mithril (very light and ductile) and adamantine (incredibly hard).  Mithril, if it were added, would either have too much in common with adamantine or be different to the point that it wouldn't really feel like mithril any more.

My idea situation would be to keep adamantine's hardness and inflexibility, but increase its weight significantly until it's perhaps 50% heavier than steel.  I'd also remove [ANY_USE] so it wouldn't be threaddable.  Mithril, on the other hand, would be incredibly light, somewhat harder than steel (but not massively so), fairly flexible, and [ANY_USE].

The two materials would therefore have very distinct roles.  Adamantine would still be the "King of Metals", incredibly effective for any weapon or armour but just too heavy for a novice to use effectively.  Mithril, on the other hand, would be excellent for some things--swords, spears, chainmail--but serve poorly as a hammer or plate mail, due to its weight and flexibility.  You could also weave it into clothes, of course, which is awesome.

Alas, that will never be.  Toady has a very specific idea of how adamantine should work, and I'd feel like I was being disloyal to his vision if I changed it.

The amorphous metal idea is pretty cool, though.

[Krelos]

I modded Mithril into my game.
I made it quite common but very expensive to produce. See, when you smelt the raw ore what you get is an impure Heavy Mithril that's about the same as Iron, though lighter of course. Then when you refine it at the expense of 2 flux and coal, you end up with 1 WAFER of pure Mithril for every 3 Bars of Heavy. Meaning that to make anything, you have to mine 9 times as much as other metals. It's just over half as good as Adamantine but only for armor, in weapons its the same as copper. Mithril can be made into cloth and clothes of course.

[Tellemurius]

I modded Mithril into my game.
I made it quite common but very expensive to produce. See, when you smelt the raw ore what you get is an impure Heavy Mithril that's about the same as Iron, though lighter of course. Then when you refine it at the expense of 2 flux and coal, you end up with 1 WAFER of pure Mithril for every 3 Bars of Heavy. Meaning that to make anything, you have to mine 9 times as much as other metals. It's just over half as good as Adamantine but only for armor, in weapons its the same as copper. Mithril can be made into cloth and clothes of course.

wtf weapons and armor as good as copper?! damn ever saw LOTR when the idiot hobbit sat there and watched the Troll stab him with the trident only to survive due to his MITHRIL chainmail? of course that was a mithril alloy shirt.

[G-Flex]

It's also only equal in actual strength to beaten copper (about 300 MPa tensile).  Human hair has a tensile strength of 380 MPa, making it actually stronger than copper or corundum.  Do you like me new armor?  It protects me worse than me beard!

There are other important things to consider than tensile strength. It doesn't matter if something can hold the weight of an entire building by a single string if you can cut that string with a pair of children's scissors.


Also, those values are probably per unit mass, and good luck wearing hair armor with enough weight to it to equal that of whatever else you'd be using.


... Not that I'm saying corundum would be a good choice for armor. People tend to conflate hardness with strength, and this is wrong (see: diamond).

[Arrkhal]

There are other important things to consider than tensile strength. It doesn't matter if something can hold the weight of an entire building by a single string if you can cut that string with a pair of children's scissors.

I'm betting that there will be a humorous bug which causes hair to protect better than copper due to the superior tensile strength, though.

Plus, a corundum strand that's equally as thick as hair would be just as easy to cut with scissors, anyway.

I kinda doubt DF's units will be per weight.  That would be completely crazy, especially since armor and weapons have a given volume (multiplied by density).  Or if you meant the real life units, then no, MPa are defined as force per area.

[G-Flex]

Yeah, I was being confused about units. I think I was interpreting it as force accidentally.

For tensile strength, is that in terms of cross-sectional area of the thing receiving the tension? I guess that would make sense, for a cylindrical strand.

[Deon]

from what I know, Adamantine is the equivalent of Mithril, extremely rare, valuable, and when mined, bad things crawl out (BALROG!)  But ya, we should have a... Lord of the Rings mod for this game hehe

We had it for a long time. I've made it and it had quite a lot downloads. I've stopped to get a feedback thus it was abandoned somewhere in 38c I believe, along with a Legends of Faerun mod (baldur's gate/neverwinter nights/icewind dale/drizzt series (Salvatore) world), although it would be easy to port (I've ported my Elder Scrolls mod from 38c to 40d with ease).

[Thorik]

Well, the DF elves are only good for killin', I wouldn't miss'em.  And Deon, holy crud theres a Lord of the Rings mod?  Please port it! 

[Arrkhal]

For tensile strength, is that in terms of cross-sectional area of the thing receiving the tension? I guess that would make sense, for a cylindrical strand.

Yep, it is.

Also, I forgot to say earlier, 60 pounds of dwarf-beard armor would be completely awesome, and actually would make you largely invulnerable due to the sheer thickness.

Actually, if dwarf beard hair is kinky enough (like wool), it would be possible to make felt out of it.  And felt can be made well over 1" thick.  Let's see, felt's specific gravity is 0.346, compared to steel at 7.85.  Felt armor would need to be 22.7 times as thick as steel to achieve the same weight.  So if a steel breastplate is 3/16" thick, that's 4" thick dwarf-felt armor.

4" of thickness is exactly right for cloth armor, such as a padded gambleson worn underneath chainmail, or Aztec cotton armor.  Both were historically described as being "one hand thick."

So hair armor actually is... okay, I won't go so far as to say it's practical, but it is possible.

[Thorik]

No self respectin' dwarf would take off their beard to make nothin' out o' it.  Maybe instead we can boost dwarfs defensiveness since their large beards protect them like adamantine eh?

[Arrkhal]

No self respectin' dwarf would take off their beard to make nothin' out o' it.

I was actually thinking about that.  Hair decomposes much more slowly than flesh, so if you waited until a dead dwarf had rotted away completely, nothing would be left but bones, hair, and beard (and maybe some gross stuff like corpse wax, eeww).  A dwarf culture which considers the use of bones and hair for things to be a great show of honor and respect for the dead, actually might use felted dwarf-beard armor!

Maybe instead we can boost dwarfs defensiveness since their large beards protect them like adamantine eh?

Not quite as well as adamantine, but like I said, hair's tensile strength is slightly greater than that of beaten copper, so the beard would be intermediate between copper and bronze, at least against light slashing and gore attacks, not bludgeoning or piercing.

And some biologists do believe that beards serve to protect the neck from predators.

[shadowsofwhite]

I modded Mithril into my game.
I made it quite common but very expensive to produce. See, when you smelt the raw ore what you get is an impure Heavy Mithril that's about the same as Iron, though lighter of course. Then when you refine it at the expense of 2 flux and coal, you end up with 1 WAFER of pure Mithril for every 3 Bars of Heavy. Meaning that to make anything, you have to mine 9 times as much as other metals. It's just over half as good as Adamantine but only for armor, in weapons its the same as copper. Mithril can be made into cloth and clothes of course.

wtf weapons and armor as good as copper?! damn ever saw LOTR when the idiot hobbit sat there and watched the Troll stab him with the trident only to survive due to his MITHRIL chainmail? of course that was a mithril alloy shirt.

Not quite, my friend. Even iron, before tempering, is merely somewhat better than that of appropriately tempered bronze. Tempering alters the crystaline structures of metals, which allows the alteration of material properties; thusly, if you want to be super realistic about it, mithril probably would not be able to be much better than well tempered iron.

Keep in mind, mithril is a fantasy material, which allows for fantastic properties, much like that of adamantine (which was fabled to be so strong due to the infusion of diamond-like crystalline structures, in many cultures).

Deon, you made aFaerun mod? Were ther Illithids (mindflayers)? I must see this mod, even if it is from 30c!