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[Pirate]

Does the data from the first post apply to the latest version (0.31.17)?

[zagibu]

The data was gathered at the beginning of September 2010, with Version 0.31.12, IIRC, so if there have not been combat modifications since, it should still be current.

[darkflagrance]

Well, the adamantium we have now might be stronger than the addy that was tested.

Am I reading that right? Do silver hammers actually get 80 percent hits and do mostly moderate damage against adamantine armor?

Not necessarily.

I did a few short tests in .13  with two adamantium-clad dwarves wielding steel warhammers in the arena. (Adamantium values of 5,000,000 in the raw were all modded down to 4,000,000 because I heard that the five million ones make it unmineable. This makes the tested adamantine weaker than the unmodded one)

The difference between the fighters was that one was a grandmaster armour user, while the other was unskilled in armour use. For the grandmaster, his adamantine armour reliably deflected the steel warhammers, while for the dabbler, every hit bruised something. Thus, armour use is much more important than I thought. Also, all kills on the grandmasters were headshots. I assume they hit the area left unprotected by the helmet. Since I cannot make adamantine hoods in the arena, I cannot test that theory.

[zagibu]

Well, testing with different skills is certainly going to yield different results. But yeah, things really might have changed.

I've posted the hardcoded evaluator script that produced the results in the original post. The generic evaluator turned out to be much more complex than I imagined, and is currently on hold. I also don't have the time to re-run the tests myself, ATM, but maybe someone else can do it with the provided material.

I've also posted a spreadsheet into which the results from the perl script can be pasted, for easier summation and averaging.

[Pirate]

Thanks. I'll try to find some time this week and run some tests myself.

[Smackinjuice]

I'm bumping this to see if anyone has figured out more changes, or if there are other threads going on that i haven't found.

I been doing a LOT of tests myself, and they seem to change every day! this game is like random to the max

seems like everything just influences, but is not the end all.

[zilpin]

seems like everything just influences, but is not the end all.

It's worse than that.
You don't even know what all the influencing factors are.
I think that the way body and organs are simulated heavily influences this.  Especially, bleeding.

After modding standard flesh layers to not bleed, but leaving internal organs bleeding, results were a bit more consistent.
But then nobody dies from dismemberment, so next I'm modding bone to bleed.

In DF, realistic results require supremely unrealistic data be fed to the simulator.

[Norseman]

It seems to be not quite balanced yet. A bronze-clad platinum-hammer wielder wins almost every time against steel armored dwarves, no matter what weapons they have (except slade hammers, which are even better, of course). Every blow seems to break bone, even through the armor.

Why is this bad?

A platinum hammer would have considerably more force behind it than a steel hammer, assuming one was strong enough to swing it. Bronze is arguably a much better metal for armor than iron and is probably as good as steel, or so close as to make little difference. The platinum hammer, being far denser than steel, is going to shatter armor and bones quite easily.

Seems to be alright to me.

There's a few problems. More weight is not always better - there is an ideal strength:weight ratio. There's also differences in metal strengths, and bronze is not a great choice for armor.

We can look at two different kinds of strength to compare the different metals you mentioned.

Shear strength is the kind of strength that is important when deciding if your hammer's handle will break. You have shear stress when you're using your hands to push it one way, but the target's body is resisting, or the end of the hammer is very heavy and needs a lot of force to move. This is measured by the Shear modulus. Low shear strength would mean the handle breaks, or is a bit wobbly, like it's made of rubber.

Compression strength is the kind of strength that is important when your hammer's head strikes your enemy's armor. There will be a lot of force in the impact, and the head of the hammer will be compressed. If it has high compression strength, it will do a lot of damage because it will not yield on impact - it will simply smash through what it hits. If it has low compression strength, it would be like a wet towel - no matter how fast you swing it, it's going to be soft when it hits, so it will transfer all of its impact energy slowly, causing less damage. Compression strength is measured by the Bulk modulus.

While a rubber stick with a wet towel on the end of it might be loads of fun for smacking people, it's not likely to kill anyone no matter how heavy the towel is, so you want as much shear strength and compression strength as possible.

Let's compare the shear strength, compression strength, and density of platinum, bronze, and steel.

Metal,	Shear strength,	Compression strength,	Density
Platinum	61 GPa	230 GPa	21.5 g·cm−3
Bronze	44.8 GPa	112 GPa	8.96 g·cm−3
Cast steel	78 GPa	139 GPa	7.8 g·cm−3

Reference for shear strength.
Reference for compression strength.

So, we can see that platinum is awesome for hammer heads - it's both incredibly dense and has enormous compression strength. Steel is clearly better than bronze, but it's a bit light. It happens to have better shear strength than platinum, however, so it might make for a nice handle, since it's both lighter and stronger in that role.

For armor, bronze is a bad choice because its shear strength is only 57% of steel's shear strength. To make matters worse, bronze armor would be denser, so you'd either have to use thinner armor to make it comfortable, or make the armor nearly twice as thick (and very heavy) to provide about the same protection as steel. Bronze is inferior to steel in just about every way.

Now, that's not all that's wrong with those results. I mentioned weight above, so let's look at that now.

Different weights should be ideal for different levels of strength. Clearly, an extremely dense hammer is not going to be helpful to someone who isn't very strong. Even if they could pick it up, they wouldn't be able to get it going fast enough to do any real damage. In a low-speed impact, you simply get pushed back a little bit, and maybe a bit bruised if you're not wearing any armor. In a high-speed impact, your body doesn't get the chance to move much before the damage is done. This is why a 1 lb. hammer will do more damage than a 100 lb. hammer, unless you happen to be really, really, really strong.

A modern steel sledgehammer might weigh 15 pounds. If you make it out of platinum, either you'd need to make it very thin (and weak), or you'd need to make it very heavy, in other words, it would weigh 41 pounds instead of 15 pounds. Now, that's great if you're really strong. However, for a dwarf without any strength enhancements, 41 pounds would probably be too much, and that kind of sledgehammer would be damn slow. You could easily dodge it, and, even if it did hit you, it would do much less damage than if that same dwarf used a 15 pound sledgehammer.

Tl;DR Ideally, a dwarf would be armed with a sledgehammer with a platinum hammer-head, a steel shaft, and steel armor, and, ideally, the hammer would be made larger or smaller to fit the dwarf's strength.

[zagibu]

So the ideal warhammer would have a steel shaft and a platinum cylinder with the diameter of a nickel encased by steel (to make it lighter compared to full platinum) as a head?

[Norseman]

So the ideal warhammer would have a steel shaft and a platinum cylinder with the diameter of a nickel encased by steel (to make it lighter compared to full platinum) as a head?

The steel shaft and platinum cylinder are correct, but the diameter of a nickel and the steel casing are not ideal.

The steel on the hammer-head is unnecessary. You want the hammer-head to be heavy - not too heavy, but heavy enough that you can still swing quickly and do some serious damage. The reason is because the hammer head will be moving quickly, so it's the part which will do damage. The shaft will not be moving as fast as the hammer head, so the shaft's weight will not contribute much to the damage that you do. A heavier shaft will just make you tired, while a heavier hammer-head will cause more damage, at least until it gets too heavy and you start swinging very slowly.

What you've described is a bit more like a pick - a fairly light head with a narrow tip designed for piercing. I can see how a war hammer like you've described might easily get stuck in a shield. If you don't want to pierce creatures, then the tip should be broad enough so that it won't go through things. Ideally, the head would have about the same diameter as a tennis ball, but it should be flat, of course.

Edit: Also, keep in mind that different dwarves would be best suited to different war hammers. A very strong dwarf might need a war hammer with a very long shaft and very heavy hammer-head so that he can use his strength to inflict as much damage as possible. Imagine giving a child a 1 lb. hammer, and a 15 lb. sledgehammer. The child will do much more damage with the 1 lb. hammer. Now give those two hammers to an ordinary man. Now the sledgehammer is the better choice. This is simply because you need to get the sledgehammer up to a reasonable speed before it can do any damage, and, if you're strong enough to do that, then a 1 lb. hammer will not make full use of your strength. A child can't get the sledgehammer to move quickly, so it's not very dangerous. An adult can get a 1 lb. hammer to move quickly, but it doesn't have as much leverage or mass, so it doesn't provide the same impact as a sledgehammer.

[zagibu]

What i meant was something like this:

Code: [Select]

_________
/         \
===========
\_________/
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    |_|
    |_|
    |_|
    |_|
    |_|
    \_/
The ===== would be the platinum cylinder (not to scale, just to give the idea where it would be located). My idea was to keep the platinum part as small as possible. The steel around the platinum cylinder would only be for additional weight, if the platinum cylinder alone was not heavy enough.

[Rowanas]

What i meant was something like this:

Code: [Select]

_________
/         \
===========
\_________/
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    |_|
    |_|
    |_|
    |_|
    |_|
    \_/
The ===== would be the platinum cylinder (not to scale, just to give the idea where it would be located). My idea was to keep the platinum part as small as possible. The steel around the platinum cylinder would only be for additional weight, if the platinum cylinder alone was not heavy enough.

Not nearly narrow enough. That's nothing like a warhammer.

[zagibu]

Yeah, I know, it's more a maul than a real-world warhammer. The head on a real-world warhammer doesn't really allow an additional steel mantle.

But DF warhammers don't have to be like real-world warhammers. Dwarves are certainly strong enough to wield onehanded mauls, and an important part of real-world warhammers (the beak or thorn) is missing anyway, if I am not mistaken.

Maybe it could look like this instead:

Code: [Select]

_
| \____________________
|  \____               \
| P ____|   Steel      |
|  /___________________/
|_/       |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |   |
          |___|
          |___|
          |___|
          |___|
          |___|
          |___|
          |___|
          |___|
          |___|
          \___/


[qoonpooka]

Metal,	Shear strength,	Compression strength,	Density
Platinum	61 GPa	230 GPa	21.5 g·cm−3
Bronze	44.8 GPa	112 GPa	8.96 g·cm−3
Cast steel	78 GPa	139 GPa	7.8 g·cm−3

Reference for shear strength.
Reference for compression strength.

I don't have the skills for clever ASCII art, nor do I think it would help in this instance but...

Part of this discussion, which to my current reading seems to be absent, is the use of compound materials. (The exception being the steel-handle/mount, platinum-head notions.)

At issue is the lack of striking mass in the Adamantine and Steel hammers.  Historically a lack of striking mass is solved by simply hollowing out the striking body and adding something cheap and heavy: Lead.  A quick check shows that lead is denser than silver (the current 'best' material for hammers) though not as impressive as gold and platinum.  Lead is, however, otherwise useless and undesirable (unless you're a Lay Pewter fan).  This seems like an opportunity to add the realism that DF seems to crave.

Obviously this is in create-your-own-recipe modding territory at the moment, but lead-filled stuff is clearly within current dwarven technology and adding a reaction class that made weapons (like maces and hammers) heavier seems likely to be useful here?  Thoughts?

[forsaken1111]

I make all of my barrels out of lead...