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[Reese]

But feel free to challenge the assumptions we're all making on their effectiveness.

I rather think I will...

looking at the different material raw values, leather and shell are pretty much worthless, but...

The attributes that mirror the levels of effectiveness of the different armors are the four yield and four fracture statistics(excluding compressive, which is the same across all metals). Out of all the alternate armor materials, generic bone has yield values between silver and iron, and fracture values below them, but not nearly so far below as the other non-metal materials.  I think that bone could be as effective as copper and silver armor.

Pretty much all metals have the same max edge value. (except fun metal... which has all it's stats an order of magnitude better than steel, and no elasticity at all) so it comes down to the yield, fracture, and elasticity stats (and molar mass for hammers and maces- fun metal has the same density as iron, but a molar mass much much lower)

elasticity is all across the board, its hard to tell if it plays a role in effectiveness.

based on the tissue_template_default and inorganic_metal raw files in the 31_01 .zip file, including leather, wood, bone, scale, shell, chitin, copper, silver, iron, bronze, steel, and fun metal.

[zagibu]

But feel free to challenge the assumptions we're all making on their effectiveness.

The attributes that mirror the levels of effectiveness of the different armors are the four yield and four fracture statistics(excluding compressive, which is the same across all metals). Out of all the alternate armor materials, generic bone has yield values between silver and iron, and fracture values below them, but not nearly so far below as the other non-metal materials.  I think that bone could be as effective as copper and silver armor.

Wait, so you could make goblin bone armor and it would even protect you from their iron whips?

[Geti]

As a sidenote and to back up what someone said before, it'd be awesome to be able to make weapons in layers, like a steel mace with a lead core, or a bronze axe with an copper core etc, so you could save on metal if you cored edged weapons with something cheap like copper, but also have heavy blunt weapons that last a lot longer than they would as just the soft, heavy metal (assuming we get weapon damage at some point)

[Reese]

But feel free to challenge the assumptions we're all making on their effectiveness.

The attributes that mirror the levels of effectiveness of the different armors are the four yield and four fracture statistics(excluding compressive, which is the same across all metals). Out of all the alternate armor materials, generic bone has yield values between silver and iron, and fracture values below them, but not nearly so far below as the other non-metal materials.  I think that bone could be as effective as copper and silver armor.

Wait, so you could make goblin bone armor and it would even protect you from their iron whips?

Looks that way.  Of course, there's the matter of just what sort of coverage you get from bone armor... you can only go to the craftsdwarf workshop in vanilla and have the option for bone leggings, greaves, gauntlets, and helms, which means your torso, feet and upper arms will remain unprotected.

[o_O[WTFace]]

Looking at those results, there's something immediately clear to me, is that the effectiveness drop of is way too sudden.

This.  There needs to be a pretty wide range of "partial" armor protection.  So say an iron sword should penetrate a bronze plate enough to cause minor injury and bleeding fairly often, as if you managed to cut like an inch into it.  On the other hand an iron armor should be enough to make it difficult to chop off limbs, because it provides some protection even if you cut through it.  I don't know how realistic that is, but lesser metal = bounces off, better metal = lightsaber just isn't good for balance.  There really are only a few situations where whipping out a bone helmet would be better then just looking for iron or tossing down a few traps (aquifier, or fighting animals very early?), especially considering you can buy bronze and steel and mine goblinite...  Of course some of the raw numbers seem to be placeholders, so its all in progress I guess.

I believe you could mod in "layered metals".  You could say, make a reaction that takes a bar of steel and two bars of lead and makes "steel plated lead" thats almost as heavy as lead and somewhat less strong then steel, an then only allow its use in weapons.  It would be slightly odd to see a steel plated lead sword or dagger, but I guess you could make a steel plated iron or copper cored bronze for that. 

[endimiao]

Theory: the law of opposite inferiors - if a weapon material bests the armor quality in absolute terms then the weapons most likely to damage are slashers > piercers > bashers. If the weapon is worse or equal than the armor bashers > piercers > slashers in regards to hitting stuff. Exception being made of adamantine bashers wich are always inferior.


Anyways we should start to try to apply these discoveries to practical terms in regards to dwarf mode, threaths considered, and in this ORGANIC weapons/armors are really important, specially if we consider traps and all.

A) Animals and Undead - Is leather usefull? Is iron enough against bone? How effective is wood/glass/stone/etc versus shell/bone/leathery armors?

B) Elves and primitive civs - Ive pitted several iron elves versus wooden ones (wielding spears) and the last ones actually didnt do as badly as one would expect. Plus some primitive civs may have some tough hides. And the wooden spear is the standart "poor civ" melee weapon.

C) Goblins and Kobolds - Whats the best material they have? Iron? I noticed

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

that humans have bronze listed as a reaction and kobolds dont have the minor_metal tag anymore

. In light of these discoveries is it safe to assume that are bronze weapons the best minimum metal good enough to deal effectively with goblins, while any metallic armor other than adamantine is close enough that even if we wore copper or steel w'ed be similarly protected against their iron swords anyways?

D)Megabeasts and Demons - Well, what gives? Fireballs: silk > metal? The same? And so on...

[CognitiveDissonance]

From reading this topic, I draw several conclusions, and really want to run regression analysis on this.
Posting this now, so I can come back to it later and contribute to SCIENCE!

EDIT: I haven't had a look at the .zip files. How many details are there?
For testers, could you post more specific numbers about successes, failures and partial successes in the testings? ie. out of 10 tests, 3 won, 5 lost, and 2 won while badly injured

Need them for weapons vs armor, shields vs. no shield, naked vs. armoured, weapon vs other weapon

[SIGVARDR]

Something i was thinking about:How deadly are picks now? they represent real war hammers far better than the ones that seem to be called hammers in this game.The piercing attributes of a spear with the ergonomics of a hammer would make me think them deadly.are they?

[Orkel]

The combat system needs more randomness in it's weapon and armor penetrations, adding that would easily fix the "penetrates each time or deflects everything" mentality that different material armors and weapons currently have.

[zagibu]

No surprises in the axe data. I've almost finished the script extracting the wound details...it already works, but there are some small errors still, as it does not extract all the data yet (only about 90%). The new data generated this rate is pretty detailed (deflected blows, glances, blows that went through armor, other blows, how many blows were deflected until first went through, wounds light, wounds medium and wounds heavy per bodypart per round), so I will updload the data in raw format and try to break it down in a sensible way to display in the original post.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I've had pretty extensive martial arts training with a spear, and a spear can be absolutely devastating in melee combat. The idea is to not to use it like a phalanx would use a pike, but like one would use a staff, that happens to have a pointy end on it.

Not terribly dissimilar to a 2-handed sword with a mostly unsharpened blade.

There's a lot more to it, ofcourse, but if the spear isn't much longer than your body, there's a surprising number of angles from which you can strike with both the point, and the butt, at very close range. 

Think of a pool-cue, and how close a player might get to the ball before striking.


I think it would be fantastic if we could add metal spikes and studs to weaponry, with appropriate effect.
Swords, probably not, but it would be a great way to improve/balance maces.
The downside, ofcourse, would be additional effort, and maybe something to do with the quality level of the spikes, themselves. If quality levels mattered a lot with the spiking, that would make metalcrafters-as opposed to weaponsmiths-of increased importance. Not a bad thing.

Coring is another possibility for hammers, particularly HFS ones. Lead would be the obvious choice here, because of the much higher melting-point of platinum. Trying to melt, and then pour, liquid platinum, should be prohibitively dangerous, even for dwarfs.

Platinum is probably realistically too heavy to use in combat, at about 4 times the weight of iron, but I haven't seen anything mentioned on the size of the hammers in the game. Are we talking mallets, or something like a ball-peen hammer? The ball-peen hammer is the more realistic of the two. With a long handle, a 2 kilo hammer with a very small head (equivalent to a 1 lb ball pean head) could be doable.

A lot could be done to make weaponry more complex. Everything from spikes and studs, to "layered" blades. A small amount of HFS might go a long way, if all you were doing was welding a fine layer to the blades of your swords.

You're right about picks, SIGVARDR, they should be ideal against armour--although some kind of "war pick" would be appreciated. Maybe a bec de corbin or Lucerne hammer?
Mining picks are just too unwieldy to use in sustained combat--trust me, I've dug a few ditches.
 
High quality steel plate should be hard to dent or pierce. Not only because of the metal itself, but also the angles, and "scalloping" of the plates.

From the above example, think of how difficult it can be to strike that pool ball directly on center when you're coming at it from a bad angle, to make a difficult shot. Now imagine that ball was swinging an axe at your head...

The steel itself was rather thin, historically. The plates were designed to sit easily across the entire body-instead of hanging off the shoulders, like a chainmaille shirt, and it's been proven that people could easily move, and even swim in full suits of plate.

It had a lot more to do with how the armour itself was configured, than the weight of the steel. Blows which might impale an unarmoured opponent, or cut of a limb or head, should often fail to even successfully land on someone wearing field plate. Even when a strike was "true", the plates were still pretty effective at distributing the force of the blow across themselves. More than, say, chainmaille.
 
Skill and training made a huge difference here-a highly skilled opponent should be able to find and penetrate gaps, as well as land solid, directed blows, onto individual plates, to shatter or pierce them, instead of sliding/glancing off. The German school of fencing, for instance, contains a whole section on dealing with armour, that was entirely different from the unarmoured section, because very different techniques were effective, in each case.

For that matter, a "miss" on a heavily plate-armoured opponent realistically should carry the risk of weapons rebounding on their wielder, or atleast the wielder overbalancing. Again, not something you'd see happen nearly as often with maille.

"Knights in shining armour" were absolutely deadly on the battlefield, and very difficult to take down in melee. That really should be reflected in the game, especially for dwarfs--which I agree should probably be better and more heavily armoured than their human equivalents. Not only due to their high level of armouring skill, but also considering their low center of gravity, "squat and broad" body configuration, and possibly increased bone and muscle densities.

[SIGVARDR]

Good points in all that you said above.Of course,In the end it is up to toady and to that end,to the limitations of the programming software on what is modeled and done to the combat system.

I would like to see Un-skilled dwarfs simply stab with a spear,while expert spear users take full advantage of what the weapon has to offer,and execute complex maneuvers and such.Replace spear with any of the weapons and you get my meaning.

Very true in that a mining pick is unwieldy.a war version of the pick would be dorfy and suitable in a world where most people wear plate armor.

Plate armor is actually very thin,for the most part.It can be made thick,but i haven't myself seen one like that,and you would have to lose the chain mail,probably.

I have no doubt that this combat system we have now will give way to a better one before the end of alpha.Then we must make another thread about how it's not realistic enough

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, ToadyOne has mentioned martial arts, from time to time. So we can hope he's got some inclination towards making the use of weapons a more complex operation, as skill levels increase.

By the way, axes should tend to do more damage than swords, and be harder to stop with armour or deflect, but in turn, difficult or impossible to parry with. Axes are pretty easy to maintain, but the blades do chip and dull, and the handles are vulnerable. Axes can also get stuck in wounds, more easily than a sword. A highly skilled axewielder can make extremely quick frontal strikes, by "twirling" the blade over and under, a bit like a baton (Vikings did this, historically). Double-bladed axes (to clarify: one head, with two blades on either side) are more useful than single-bladed axes, but also more dangerous for the wielder.

Hammers are basically axes without a blade. They're extremely simple to use, and won't get stuck in wounds, but there's only so much you can use them for. They also don't do as much damage as an axe, although they're the most durable of weapons--The don't requre a lot of maintenace, and no sharpening. A rusty hammer works just as well as a new one. To give an example: I actually own a hand forged ball-peen hammer that I dug out of a riverbed after it had lain there for atleast a century, and it still works just fine. Better than a lot of modern ones, actually. I've had a lot of handles break, but I don't think I've ever had any hammer head so much as crack or chip (although "claws" do occasionally break off on a clawhammer). They can parry a little better than an axe, but nowhere near a mace, spear, or sword.

Swords get their strength from versatility. You can design a sword to do practically anything, and get more and more out of it, the higher your skill. Without quality or skill, however, it's basically just a metal club. Swords need a great deal of maintaining, even if they're dull, and blades can chip, and sometimes break. Swords can be used to either slash or thrust, but they can get stuck in wounds. A properly designed sword will puncture plate armour, effectively. Unlike other melee weapons, swords can be used to disarm an opponent. Of all the weapons here, a shortsword requires the least amount of room, and is the easiest to use, in formation, but are very difficult to throw, effectively.

Maces, on the other hand, are pretty flexible, second only to swords, with the additional advantages of simplicity, and durability. They can be used to parry, and can be used to "catch", and even break a sword blade. They require more skill to use effectively than a hammer. The biggest disadvantage of a mace is it's unwieldiness--swords and axes are lighter and much faster, while hammers are easier to use, and slightly better against armour. Another disadvantage is that maces are fairly easy to disarm. They also don't make great throwing weapons. You can think of a mace as being, very basically speaking, a "poor-man's" sword, with a handful of advantages. 

Finally, spears are fairly simple to use, but harder than a hammer, and they do require more room than a sword, to use optimally. Particularly when used in formation. It's also harder to thrust effectively, than it is to slash or bash, especially when using a spear, in combination with a shield.
A spear can be used for all three, ofcourse, but it should be obvious that they're primarily a thrusting weapon. A speardwarf with the same skill as a sworddwarf should have the advantage (of reach), out in the open, but be at a slight disadvantage in a tunnel, etc. Spears are probably the most "delicate" of these weapons, and require just as much maintaining as a sword, with added handle vulnerability, which is greater than an axehandle.

It would be nice to see our dwarfs getting daggers, "morningstar" type flails, halberds (if they can wield spears, they can wield halberds), and maybe have the "shortsword" broken into a couple of different types (makhaira, baselard, kopis, cutlass, arming sword, cinquedea, gladius). Dwarfs should also atleast get some kind of 2 handed axe (hafted axe/lochaber axe), in my opinion, and maybe mauls, as well. Allowing our dwarfs access to halberds, hafted axes, and mauls, would give us the tactical choice of "shield/no shield". A nice choice, when your dwarfs might be facing off against hordes of goblins, or a single hydra--especially when you've got access to high quality plate.

The lucern hammer could function as a "two-handed pick" weapon, for that matter.

Longer swords, especially the zweihand variety, and pikes, could remain the domain of humans, while elves get longbows, and goblins get scourges.

[zagibu]

I doubt that a "properly designed" sword can puncture plate mail. Maybe it could, with enough impact, like if you shot it from a cannon, but not if a fighter uses it in a thrust. It would mostly be deflected, because combat plate armor has as few flat/concave parts as possible, and when it would indeed strike ideally, the impact would not even dent the plate but twist the sword from the hands of its wielder instead.

Against plate armor, you can either try to hit the gaps with a thrust of a sword or a spear, or you can use a heavy hammer or mace to disable (and eventually kill) its wearer. Plate armor also withstood arrows and bolts and even the first firearms.

[Rolan7]

I doubt that a "properly designed" sword can puncture plate mail. Maybe it could, with enough impact, like if you shot it from a cannon, but not if a fighter uses it in a thrust. It would mostly be deflected, because combat plate armor has as few flat/concave parts as possible, and when it would indeed strike ideally, the impact would not even dent the plate but twist the sword from the hands of its wielder instead.

Against plate armor, you can either try to hit the gaps with a thrust of a sword or a spear, or you can use a heavy hammer or mace to disable (and eventually kill) its wearer. Plate armor also withstood arrows and bolts and even the first firearms.

The Wikipedia article for plate armour has a rather weak section which claims plate armour is "virtually sword-proof", except against "long tapered swords" like estocs.  Sounds like slashing through plate armour is impractical then.

I guess currently the combat system represents swords as always slashing.  Ideally combatants would instead try to stab plate-wearing opponents.  It'd also be nice if concussive force was a factor, even for slashing and piercing weapons.  Getting hit in the helm with an iron sword should cause some trauma, though not as much as lead hammer would. 

This reminds me of how realistic the wearing of multiple layers was, in d40: in reality you wouldn't wear plate armour over bare skin (:  You put padding underneath it to absorb impacts, and probably mail too.