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[Lancensis]

...given that plate also made the wearer virtually immune to arrows, as long as they kept their visor down (but it's impossible to shout orders without raising it).

Perhaps a helmet shaped like a megaphone, with a metal grille at the end would have been useful?

[talrave]

In fact it would probably be good to give every creature made out of some normally inanimate material some kind of "blood." I think it works well both story wise (everything needs a life force, except the truly unliving, like undead, who don't really have sentient thought)

In that same thought,  why not give Undead "Blood" in the form of, say... negative energy or something like that?  think of it as they dont BLEED OUT so much as they lose too much of that energy and thus...  "die"

[Mephansteras]

I was considering giving undead some sort of critical 'energy core' organ or something that kills them if it is destroyed.

[KaelGotDwarves]

I was thinking about what Toady said about the concept of "souls" and having skeleton creature's life-force tied either to a "stone" in their chest or in the head.

Seems almost too hackney'd of an approach though.

[DarkDragon]

I was thinking about what Toady said about the concept of "souls" and having skeleton creature's life-force tied either to a "stone" in their chest or in the head.

Seems almost too hackney'd of an approach though.

At least we could still fight the undead hordes though.

This is a placeholder bugfix anyways, what's less disturbing? No undead at all in terrifying biomes or undead that die when you hit their magic rock?

[KaelGotDwarves]

Yes, it definitely works as a better placeholder for the current nearly-unkillable system.

Though right now my attention is focused on "why is brass better than steel for weapons" and other materials oddities. I will take more of a look at skeletons shortly.

[Pips40]

No wonder i was so awesome on adventure mode, every time i did a slash attack my foe would lose that body part

[Meanmelter]

Did you also make Martial arts ( I call it that, it is really called 'striking') more deadly?

A legendary striker should do WAY more damage than knock 1 tooth out or bruise a Lung or something. I allready edited my raws to make em way more deadly for more of a 'legendary' feeling.

[Lancensis]

A legendary striker should do WAY more damage than knock 1 tooth out or bruise a Lung or something. I allready edited my raws to make em way more deadly for more of a 'legendary' feeling.

How did you do that?

[gilrad]

My solution to skeletons/colossi:

Make a tissue layer underneath the outermost layer in the upper body called "structural integrity", and flag it as though it is a vital organ. If your attack penetrates the outer layer into this one, it damages it. When it takes enough damage, the creature "dies" due to the body being unable to support the limbs.

You can also make a layer for other body parts, such as linking vision to the head, and the use of the arms and legs (similar to severing nervous tissue, right?). Thoughts?

[Meanmelter]

A legendary striker should do WAY more damage than knock 1 tooth out or bruise a Lung or something. I allready edited my raws to make em way more deadly for more of a 'legendary' feeling.

How did you do that?

CREATURE_STANDARD.txt file.

[Shima]

My solution to skeletons/colossi:

Make a tissue layer underneath the outermost layer in the upper body called "structural integrity", and flag it as though it is a vital organ. If your attack penetrates the outer layer into this one, it damages it. When it takes enough damage, the creature "dies" due to the body being unable to support the limbs.

You can also make a layer for other body parts, such as linking vision to the head, and the use of the arms and legs (similar to severing nervous tissue, right?). Thoughts?

I like this idea.  I wouldn't know if it can be done to skeletons or not, but it could solve the Colossus problem.


Just throwing this out here, but this might help with some of the chainmail and sword stuff.  The Sword Buyer's Guide's been doing longswords lately, including tests on steel helmets and hauberks.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXtqpbUnpwM

[Zangi]

A legendary striker should do WAY more damage than knock 1 tooth out or bruise a Lung or something. I allready edited my raws to make em way more deadly for more of a 'legendary' feeling.

How did you do that?

CREATURE_STANDARD.txt file.

What did you change to make that awesome effect?

[kalida99]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Somebody recently told me that chainmail was the most effective armor against arrows, not plate as was often said, which is amusing since the "common wisdom" always held that chain was worst (the point of the arrow finding the "holes" in the mesh, supposedly." That someone said it was because the chain has a bit of "give"' in it and catches the arrowhead like a net- which is exactly how Kevlar weave stops modern bullets. Sounds like another example of historians who know jack about ballistics or the concept of modern testing making empirical statements again. -.-

In terms of pure protective capabilities, mail really wasn't that far behind plate.

The absolute #1 advantage of plate armor is maneuverability.  A mail hauberk has every single ounce of weight hanging from your shoulders.  Plus, to get decent protection against blunt trauma you needed about 4" of padding, minimum.  So mail was incredibly fatiguing and hot to fight in.

Plate, in contrast, spreads the weight out over the body (and a full set of later plate armor weighed about the same as a mail hauberk, about 60 pounds), and doesn't need hot, insulating padding.  Warriors in plate were maneuverable enough that King Henry III would do somersaults and cartwheels in full armor, to entertain guests.

I haven't looked at armor that closely, but 40D, anyway, had the exact opposite.  Of course, it could very well be that dwarven plate is overengineered and tremendously thick compared to human stuff.

Anyway, though, chainmail was pretty much proof against arrows.  But then, so was plate.  You may've seen recent "research" on whether bodkin points could pierce plate, but that study was very unrealistic.  The guy that did it even acknowledged that the carbon content (and thus hardness) of the bodkin points used were far in excess of any known historical example.  That's led a lot of people to the wrong conclusion about arrows vs. armor.  Historical examples of bodkin points are made out of metal that's softer than what plate armor was made from, so their chances of punching through a plate, even on a perfectly aligned close range shot, was slim to none.

Bodkins really weren't effective against mail armor, either.  The logic goes that maybe a bodkin point could slip into a ring and force it apart, but at realistic combat distances, the arrow doesn't have anywhere near enough weight or velocity to do that.  It's far more likely that bodkins were simply a point that was very easy to mass-produce, a good design to find small gaps in armor (especially around the visor), and would be much more effective against boiled leather armor, like a fellow peasant-soldier might wear, at long range.  Historically speaking, though, the majority of armored knights who were killed by arrows, were shot in the face while their visor was up.

Some people also like to cite the battles of Agincourt and Crecy when discussing the effectiveness of arrows vs. plate, but French tactics in both cases were so utterly moronic, that it was physically impossible for the English to have lost either time.  The worst the English could've done would have been a tie, and that only if they had committed mass suicide!  Even a retreat would have resulted in piles of dead French knights at the bottom of a bog.

No, the English were victorious in those battles not due to any real advantages of the longbow, but because the French were idiots (they also disobeyed orders from their king, saying to hold back, both times).  They thought, first of all, that a knight on foot would be just as effective as a knight on horseback (big surprise, they weren't).  And second, they thought that a 3 foot deep muddy bog was perfectly safe for a guy with 60 pounds of steel to wade through (how could that ever go wrong?).  And third, they thought that no adjustment of tactics whatsoever was necessary to compensate for the lack of horses or bad terrain, like they insisted on sending their crossbowmen out without whatchamacallits (those portable shield things that you can hide behind while reloading).

The majority of actual "kills" (as opposed to technical suicides) of French knights, in both battles, were actually inflicted by billhooks and other hand weapons, on Frenchmen who had been "lucky" enough to fall on their backs in a shallow spot, but who still couldn't get up because of the mud.  Arrows were mainly useful for taking out French crossbowmen, and that because they had been sent out without their shields.

Anyway, though, I guess it is technically true that mail armor stops arrows the same way that kevlar stops bullets.  But that has little to do with anything, given that plate also made the wearer virtually immune to arrows, as long as they kept their visor down (but it's impossible to shout orders without raising it).

The inaccuracies of "research" on piercing capabilities of bodkin points is mostly acquainted to our inability to replicate the impurities of the armor of the period, but of course when compared to modern materials the bodkin pierces chain, and punches holes in plate. But the supposed usage of the bodkin point is a "armor piercing" replacement for the broadhead, their unique shape of a thin square-pyramid gave them an advantage compared to the large triangular tip of the broadhead. It served the post better than the broadhead because of the ease of manufacture, and the concentration of force on a small point could cause a much more serious wound on a target causing more than just laceration, or gashing. Although it still was not a very good armor piercer, working best on lightly armored people.

The longbows advantage was that it did not require the downward inertia of the falling arrow (like a normal bow)to achieve the maximum power, but rather because the unique make and composition of the yew longbow, it allowed the archer to fire directly at his target with full force giving it a great advantage. The draw weight of the bow was also insane (100lbs-185lbs) compared to the modern 60lbs standard (which would likely send the arrow quite far through an unarmored person), these factors combines with the range of the bow (the standard practice range was 220yds by order of Henry III) gave English bowmen the advantage over the standard archer.

[/historical_blathering]

I'm happy i found this mod before i actually starting getting into large fights. Too bad you couldn't have multiple arrow types with a single bow, It'd be awesome if you use special arrows without making a custom bow just to use that ammunition.

[Arrkhal]

The inaccuracies of "research" on piercing capabilities of bodkin points is mostly acquainted to our inability to replicate the impurities of the armor of the period, but of course when compared to modern materials the bodkin pierces chain, and punches holes in plate.

Actually, from what i've seen, the real reason for inaccuracies is people with various vendettas and agendas and pet theories, that they will go to any length to prove.  British ethnocentrism is the root cause of a lot of it.

One test I saw, the guy used some sort of BS mathematical rigamarole to try and say that a 110 pound draw weight longbow would shoot an arrow so fast, that the retained velocity at 250 yards was the same as the point-blank velocity of the 75 pound draw weight longbow that he was shooting!  He also didn't use any significant padding behind the chainmail.  Needless to say, most of the arrows went right through.

Though I do believe it's 100% possible for a bodkin point to penetrate mail armor if it was shot from a powerful enough bow at a very close range.  There are accounts of knights being wounded by arrows in areas protected by mail (without padding underneath), when they were ambushed at a distance of about 30 feet or less.  But in field combat, being within 30 feet of an armored and mounted knight was pretty much suicide for an archer, unless they were really lucky, so it's pretty unlikely that bodkins were intended for that type of shooting.

So I definitely agree with you, bodkins were just easier to make, and could penetrate deeper at the extended ranges at which ranged combat actually took place.

Oh, one thing I discovered while doing some research into ranged weapons.  Turns out that even though the theoretical maximum rate of fire for a longbow is about 24 shots per minute, no yeoman could realistically be expected to actually shoot more than about 6 per minute for any real length of time.  I.e., a guy might shoot 12 arrows in 30 seconds, but then he'd need to sit down and rest for several minutes.

Given that hand-drawn crossbows and muskets both had maximum and sustainable rates of fire of about 3-4 shots per minute, and the same maximum range, they didn't stack up that poorly.  And a 3-man team with 2 crossbows (which was standard in some countries) could sustain a rate of fire of 8 shots per minute per crossbow, which actually beats the longbow over the course of a long battle.  It needs 1.5 times as many guys, of course, but yeomen were so much more expensive to train up compared to crossbowmen, it probably wasn't that big a difference cost-wise.

It also annoys me when people misinterpret "training" as being skill-based training, in the context of the longbow.  It wasn't.  It was strength training, (over)developing the muscles needed to pull a 100 pound plus bow.  Which, if you think about it, is a much more logical reason for yeomen requiring such intensive and regular training.  If you learn a skill, take a break for 2 months, then return to it, how much do you lose?  Not a lot at all.  But if you start lifting weights, get pretty strong, then decide to be a couch potato for 2 months, what happens to your progress?  A couple months is enough time for a lot of strength training to just vanish.

But I'm getting a little off track.  Anyway...

I'm happy i found this mod before i actually starting getting into large fights. Too bad you couldn't have multiple arrow types with a single bow, It'd be awesome if you use special arrows without making a custom bow just to use that ammunition.

Are you sure it's impossible?  I'm pretty sure it used to be possible in 40d, at least.  Anything with [CLASS:ARROW] can be shot from any weapon with [RANGED:WEAPONSKILL:ARROW].  And unlike weapon skills, ammo classes can be customized.  I had CLASS:BULLET for bullets, in my old personal 40d mod.  They were shot by both slings, and bullet crossbows.  I'll do some testing tomorrow.  For now, sleeeeeeep.