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[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Ok, that makes sense.

Personally, I think I basically divide wounds into the following categories:
1) The dwarf doesn't notice them and keeps fighting (light bruising)
2) The dwarf keeps fighting but will need medical treatment afterwards (broken fingers, maybe?)
3) The dwarf stops fighting / can't move on his own (broken hips, legs, arms)
4) The dwarf finally gets to use that tomb I'd assigned him.

[zagibu]

I've posted axe data. They, too, have been nerfed. So much, actually, that only steel and adamantine are worth anything in combat against armored targets. Seems like you should stick with hammers and spears in v.12.

[veok]

It's looking like Iron armor beats bronze again... or am I reading the data wrongly?

[jei]

Is there some way to put demons and FBs on testing arenas?

[zagibu]

Yeah, that's true. Bronze is sometimes worse than copper and other times better. But it's pretty universally worse than iron.

Clowns are not in the creature list, probably because this could spoil the fun of discovering them yourself. Forgotten beasts and titans are procedurally created, and also don't appear in the list.

[Rask]

I've posted axe data. They, too, have been nerfed. So much, actually, that only steel and adamantine are worth anything in combat against armored targets. Seems like you should stick with hammers and spears in v.12.

Why spears? Swords seem to inflict more heavy wounds than spears when using the better materials, especially adamantine.

Also, testing picks could be interesting. In my own tests, none of the weapons available in fortress mode took down bronze collossi as fast as picks.

[zagibu]

I've posted axe data. They, too, have been nerfed. So much, actually, that only steel and adamantine are worth anything in combat against armored targets. Seems like you should stick with hammers and spears in v.12.

Why spears? Swords seem to inflict more heavy wounds than spears when using the better materials, especially adamantine.

Also, testing picks could be interesting. In my own tests, none of the weapons available in fortress mode took down bronze collossi as fast as picks.

Yeah, you're right, if you got access to adamantine, swords and axes are certainly better. But for steel weapons, spears penetrate armor already a little better. And if you go further down in the metal hierarchy, spears become much better at that.

Maybe the wound severity analysis which i'm planning to do later might show that spears don't kill fast enough, so that swords/axes would indeed be the better choice...

[Proteus]

It might also interesting to analyse, how long it takes till the enemy is rendered harmless
(i.e. not able to put up any effective fight anymore, be it because he lost his arms and cannot wield any weapons,
or maybe because due to critical hits he constantly passes out [and/or tries to flee instead of fighting, due to the wounds sustained]) 

[Khift]

Very interesting research data; provides some real, factual basis to discussion on combat mechanics and how to gear our dwarves out.

I'm really, really disappointed in bronze. There's a huge gap between iron and steel that bronze should fill, but simply doesn't. Toady should get on that.

Maces definitely seem worse than hammers straight out. I don't see what benefit a mace would have over a hammer in this data.

With regards to hammer materials, they're all pretty equal, but I'd give a slight edge to steel. Steel seems to have a slightly higher rate of red wounds across the board. All materials of hammers are equally ridiculous against all armor, however. It doesn't matter what you're wearing; if you're facing a hammer, you're in deep shit unless you have good shield skill. This really shouldn't be.

Spears are surprising; I didn't see that one coming. It seems that spears only need to be one 'step' higher than the opponent's armor to be effective, whereas swords and axes require two 'steps' (iron -> steel counts as two because bronze should be in the middle). An iron spear happily dominates copper armor, whereas an iron axe will struggle. Steel spears, however, are outclassed by steel axes and steel swords, although not by a ton. Mix this in with the fact that spears are very effective against large forgotten/mega beasts and I think I'll have to use these a bit more often.

I have to wonder if these tests could be replicated with crossbow bolts. There's a lot of confusion as to which material to make bolts out of at the moment. It's probably an order of magnitude more complex than these tests, but it would help a ton if you could figure out a way to test it.

All things said and done, the only big change I'm planning on making is I'll be kitting my soldiers out with iron before steel instead of bronze before steel. Axes and swords are still ridiculously effective when made out of steel (or, god forbid, adamantine) and used against iron and copper clad goblins (or bronze clad humans, which turns out are actually more poorly protected). Really and truly unless you're playing a mod that adds a steel clad sieging race there isn't any need to use any other weapon. All this diversity is pretty much moot because the qualifications to turn axes into god-mode weapons are so easy to achieve (two steps above the opponent's armor material).

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Very interesting research data; provides some real, factual basis to discussion on combat mechanics and how to gear our dwarves out.

I'm really, really disappointed in bronze. There's a huge gap between iron and steel that bronze should fill, but simply doesn't. Toady should get on that.

I think Toady set the current values based on some extensive research people did re: historical accuracy (see this post). For gameplay value it might be nice if bronze were slightly better than iron, but in historical terms, it looks like iron weapons really were better.
It might be possible to look at the values Dwarfoloid researched and choose a more "optimally balanced" set, with a slightly stronger bronze and a slightly weaker iron, but I lack the expertise to do that.

It seems like picking iron/ bronze values is essentially picking the technological era of the game. Since there's plate mail and so forth, a later middle ages setting makes sense, which would mean better iron and worse bronze. But, then again, dwarves are magical, and dwarves being the only steelcrafters shows they've got a higher level of technology than the other races. So, complex problem.

Maces definitely seem worse than hammers straight out. I don't see what benefit a mace would have over a hammer in this data.

With regards to hammer materials, they're all pretty equal, but I'd give a slight edge to steel. Steel seems to have a slightly higher rate of red wounds across the board. All materials of hammers are equally ridiculous against all armor, however. It doesn't matter what you're wearing; if you're facing a hammer, you're in deep shit unless you have good shield skill. This really shouldn't be.

Yeah, hammers clearly need a slight rebalancing downward. They were too weak before, now they're too strong, maybe a middle value?

[jei]

It might also interesting to analyse, how long it takes till the enemy is rendered harmless
(i.e. not able to put up any effective fight anymore, be it because he lost his arms and cannot wield any weapons,
or maybe because due to critical hits he constantly passes out [and/or tries to flee instead of fighting, due to the wounds sustained])

The length (in lines) of any single battle log might be a good indication.

Would be nice if dwarves were automatically released of their kill orders when the target dies..

[Khift]

Very interesting research data; provides some real, factual basis to discussion on combat mechanics and how to gear our dwarves out.

I'm really, really disappointed in bronze. There's a huge gap between iron and steel that bronze should fill, but simply doesn't. Toady should get on that.

I think Toady set the current values based on some extensive research people did re: historical accuracy (see this post). For gameplay value it might be nice if bronze were slightly better than iron, but in historical terms, it looks like iron weapons really were better.
It might be possible to look at the values Dwarfoloid researched and choose a more "optimally balanced" set, with a slightly stronger bronze and a slightly weaker iron, but I lack the expertise to do that.

It seems like picking iron/ bronze values is essentially picking the technological era of the game. Since there's plate mail and so forth, a later middle ages setting makes sense, which would mean better iron and worse bronze. But, then again, dwarves are magical, and dwarves being the only steelcrafters shows they've got a higher level of technology than the other races. So, complex problem.

I can understand and appreciate the historical accuracy of it, yeah. I'm just miffed at how poor it is for actual gameplay. With how precious iron is on most maps I can't stand to use it for anything other than steel production and in the event that a new player embarks on a map with no iron at all (which is much more likely than you would expect) that player is completely screwed under this system. This could be solved by adding small iron deposits (limonite, perhaps) to select metamorphic and igneous intrusive stone layers; I am against all of them having it, but it needs to be more common than it currently is.  Perhaps give it to some of the more boring stones like phyllite, diorite, slate and quartzite, all of which have no notable unique properties as layers at the moment.

Additionally, bronze should be better when compared to copper than it currently is. It is not historically accurate to have bronze and copper be nearly identical in quality. These tests indicate that in armor bronze has a slight advantage over copper, but in weapons it frequently performs more poorly. You can't sell that as historically accurate; something is amiss here. It could definitely use to be adjusted upwards to give it a more solid position between copper and iron.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Additionally, bronze should be better when compared to copper than it currently is. It is not historically accurate to have bronze and copper be nearly identical in quality. These tests indicate that in armor bronze has a slight advantage over copper, but in weapons it frequently performs more poorly. You can't sell that as historically accurate; something is amiss here. It could definitely use to be adjusted upwards to give it a more solid position between copper and iron.

This is a really good point. I think what happened is that when Toady re-normed bronze based on the historic values, he didn't correspondingly lower the values for copper, so we've got values for modern copper vs. values for Homeric-era bronze. So copper probably needs to be dropped down a bit so that bronze is generally better than copper across the board.

I notice that often even in the "iron age," that typically meant iron weapons, not iron armor. Would it be possible to give bronze a set of values such that it was better than iron for armor, but less useful for weapons?

If the script for people to do their own testing gets posted, we should be able to run enough tests to come up with some "ideal" values for the various metals, then we can hand those to Toady as finished work and all he'll have to do is change the raws.

[zagibu]

I'm working on the script, and I've already got the general purpose simulator set up. What still needs to be done is the evaluation of the logs. I did this with a very specific perl script with lots of hardcoded data, so I'll have to work on that, too.

I think in the end it should be possible to test crossbows with the script.

[kuketski]

Nice work, gathering all the data!

forgive me if im asking, what already what have been answered, but
does size and material affects attack speed?

an attack with twohanded sword have much more momentun then attack with shortsword and time needed to finish current attack and start next one differs greatly.

and if, using size(centimeters cubed) and density (steel - 7850 kg/(meters cubed)), we calculate weight - axe(size:800)`s is 6,28kg and sword(size:300)`s is 2,355kg it`ll make sence perfectly.

And i`d say its hell of a difference!

and while axedwarf striking once with his steel battle axe(6,28kg), sworddwarf can attack twice or thrice as steel shortsword(2,355kg) is lighter and easier to handle.

EDIT: And how about pick as weapon? some tests shows, that it`s slightly better then axe in some cases.