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[SirHoneyBadger]

Hmmm...I thought the swords our dwarfs can produce are of the piercing variety? I could be wrong about that.

And yes, swords absolutely can pierce through plate. Some, like the estoc, were designed for that. For that matter, a kitchen knife can puncture a steel can.

I don't have a clue what you mean about the sword "twisting from the hands of the wielder", but a lot of sword designs-and gauntlet designs-were made specifically to prevent dropping the weapon.

Slashing through plate (as opposed to piercing) was mostly impractical, but even so, this was thin steel, the quality of which is questionable, and part of the point of "slashing" at someone in plate, was to cause impact damage, and wear them out.

In any case, it was preferrable to locate a gap in the armour, and then drive a sharp object through that gap.

[Reese]

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.

The entire reason that the military pick was invented was as a way to readily pierce plate armor.  And, generally, a real war hammer tends to have a striking face on one side of the head and a pick/beak on the other side for piercing armor or catching on the enemy and pulling them off balance or down from their mount.

[SirHoneyBadger]

The entire reason that the military pick was invented was as a way to readily pierce plate armor.  And, generally, a real war hammer tends to have a striking face on one side of the head and a pick/beak on the other side for piercing armor or catching on the enemy and pulling them off balance or down from their mount.

That's exactly right. Infact, notice in the pic how long that spike is. You had to be careful not to get it stuck in the guy you were swinging at, after it went through the armour--and sometimes into the bone beneath.

Good for destroying the brain, which has become an issue in the latest version, with some of the bugs that have been seen.

[Dwarf]

As far as I know, the estoc is much less designed for head-on plate piercing (due to the angled surfaces, you would slide off most of the time) but for exploiting small weaknesses in armour, that is, the small gaps where plates connect.
Stabbing with an estoc through a 14th century 1.5 mm hardened steel breastplate is no easy task at all, especially since the Catalan Forge actually produces steel of good quality.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Hit data for projectiles?

[zagibu]

Hmmm...I thought the swords our dwarfs can produce are of the piercing variety? I could be wrong about that.

And yes, swords absolutely can pierce through plate. Some, like the estoc, were designed for that. For that matter, a kitchen knife can puncture a steel can.

I don't have a clue what you mean about the sword "twisting from the hands of the wielder", but a lot of sword designs-and gauntlet designs-were made specifically to prevent dropping the weapon.

Slashing through plate (as opposed to piercing) was mostly impractical, but even so, this was thin steel, the quality of which is questionable, and part of the point of "slashing" at someone in plate, was to cause impact damage, and wear them out.

In any case, it was preferrable to locate a gap in the armour, and then drive a sharp object through that gap.

I still don't think you can pierce through steel plate. It might be possible with extreme luck, if you used a long sword like a spear and put your whole weight behind it, but even then most such attacks would be deflected, as you'd have to hit the plate at perfectly the right angle. This article also states that in armoured combat with swords, you either use the pommel/guard of the sword as hammer, or you try to find gaps in the armor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_school_of_swordsmanship#Armoured_combat

Dwarven swords are also used for stabbing (about 30% of the attacks). They can be used for slashing, stabbing and slapping with the flat of the blade or the pommel.

Hit data for projectiles?

If I can find good testing parameters...

[Reese]

Hit data for projectiles?

If I can find good testing parameters...

The issue is keeping them(attacker and defender) from closing to melee and just whacking each other with their assigned weapons, yes?
Are there issues with getting an attacker to shoot at an enemy they have no path to?
If so, maybe setting up the combat with the attacker to test the different ammo, a defender to get hit with the shots, and a blocker to occupy the defender's attention (and who is on the same team as the attacker)  Then the only issue is the attacker running out of ammo- judging by the size of those combat logs, 100 rounds might just not cut it.  Maybe several dwarfs with ranged attacks vs. the single defender- ten dwarfs with 100 bolts is 1000/accuracy data points...

How many hits do you typically get per round in the melee experiments?

[zagibu]

Depends on how well armor protects. The rounds in which a weapon penetrates armor are over pretty fast, with 10-50 strikes, whereas the rounds in which a weapon is mostly blocked by armor tend to accumulate data of 200-2000 strikes. It also differs with weapon types. Spears need around 50 hits to kill a target, axes are usually done in under 10 strikes (Urist McAxedwarf hacks Urist McVictim in the lower body with his steel axe and the severed part sails off in an arc).

[Randomone]

Hit data for projectiles?

If I can find good testing parameters...

The issue is keeping them(attacker and defender) from closing to melee and just whacking each other with their assigned weapons, yes?
Are there issues with getting an attacker to shoot at an enemy they have no path to?
If so, maybe setting up the combat with the attacker to test the different ammo, a defender to get hit with the shots, and a blocker to occupy the defender's attention (and who is on the same team as the attacker)  Then the only issue is the attacker running out of ammo- judging by the size of those combat logs, 100 rounds might just not cut it.  Maybe several dwarfs with ranged attacks vs. the single defender- ten dwarfs with 100 bolts is 1000/accuracy data points...

How many hits do you typically get per round in the melee experiments?

Try to seperate the crossbow dwarfs from the targets by trapping one group in the castle with obsidian walls, and then creating a cage using the same method to keep the other group close to the fortifcations of the castle.

[zagibu]

Well, I'm not doing it manually...this would be hell to set up using a script. But I think it's possible to modify the arena map before the game loads, so that might help.

[jokermatt999]

Yeah, check arena.txt in /data/init.

[Dwarfoloid]

If you give the being-shot-at party a bow with wooden arrows and encase the shooter in any kind of metal armor, you should be able to run 100 shot tests.

I'd also request testing with all silk clothing. It has the second highest shear values after adamantine, so it will propably give some protection against edged weapons and lousy one against blunt.

(Edit) In case someone doesn't read the suggestion forum, or does and can't be arsed to read the walls of text I posted there, I'd like to mention here as well that I found values of iron to be rather lacking. They seem to be based on cast iron atm, which is wrong. Hopefully this will be corrected down the road, and iron will be stronger in future.

[Shinziril]

Given that the "iron" is made without flux, it would then be old-style wrought iron, which is a slag-riddled mess on the inside.  It still works acceptably well, but adding a little flux to get rid of the silicate slag and a tiny bit of carbon to make good, sturdy steel is a lot more effective, at least for weapons purposes.  If you're just making furniture and stuff out of it it works pretty well (it's particularly good in compression, since that reduces the effects of the slag fibers on the strength of the bulk material). 

I admit that cast iron might not be quite right, as that's a lot higher carbon and much more brittle than even highly slaggy wrought iron. 

[Ken Jiang]

This:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_HAMMER_WAR]
[NAME:war hammer:war hammers]
[SIZE:400]
[SKILL:HAMMER]
[TWO_HANDED:37500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:32500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:50:1000:bash:bashes:head:2000]
[ATTACK:EDGE:10:500:pierce:pierces:spike:3000]

Cracks goblin-iron breastplates like eggshells. Try it out for yourself.

BIG thanks to you nikov, this really works ... I love you man ......... cool

[Dwarfoloid]

There are now easily understood hard values posted in my iron suggestion thread.

If you are knowledgable on the subject and have comments, the thread can be found in the following link:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=55348.0