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[atomfullerene]

Start by figuring out what advantages maces had over hammers in the real world. There's got to be a reason they were used, hopefully they weren't just easier to make

[PsyberianHusky]

The spike should glance on plate. There's a reason they didn't just make it a pick.

The question remains, how do we make the mace less useless in comparison? Surely there's some advantages to it over a hammer.

Hammers have a "face" to them maces are equally effective from all directions, you can more easily backhand with a mace, idk how to make that work in the game engine but think about that

[NinjaE8825]

Faster recovery time from attacks? More durable (durability isn't in yet, of course) due to their simpler design? More accurate due to bigger striking area?
Maybe they should stun and knockdown easier than hammers?

[Andeerz]

Well, I do know a little about the relative prevalence of maces vs. hammers, and it seems that throughout the age of plate armor (1300's till 1600's), single handed maces, hammers, and axes were all used frequently by knightly warriors on horseback.  On foot, whether peasant, noble, mercenary, or man-at-arms, pole weapons were used with two hands seldom with shield, whether with an axe-like (halberd), spear, hammer, or mace head.  As hammers and maces were both used in the same periods with similar frequency, I would say that IRL each were certainly effective, probably equally so, though I can't say for sure since my source for this information (Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight) doesn't go much into matters of design considerations of blunt weapons other than that they were meant to be used more against armored opponents.

Hmmm... perhaps durability might be an advantage of maces over hammers, but some maces have similar construction to warhammers with wooden shafts.  Some maces have metal shafts....  I don't know how much I buy the backhand  hypothesis posited earlier, since I'm having trouble imagining a situation where this would be the case, but it could be true. 

One thing that maybe could be an advantage/disadvantage (though I don't know if it's realistic) is maces to not being as able to be stuck within the opponent as easily as hammer heads maybe perhaps maybe.  I'm going to have to go hunt for more sources on the matter. 

[Narmio]

Blunt weapons are already extremely powerful. I had a macedwarf take out seven trolls single-handed without a wound on him. Shatter bones, internal bleeding, it all already happens as far as I know. Blunt weapons don't need balancing.

This does not tell us that blunt weapons are extremely powerful or that they do not need balancing.  One example in which they did well is not indicative of anything other than the fact that blunt weapons can, in some situations, do well.

Blunt weapons can only actually *kill* things by fracturing the skull and driving it through the brain, or fracturing the ribs and driving them through an organ causing death or fatal bleeding.  You can shatter someone's skull over and over without any effect, because there's no model of concussion.  You can bruise every inch of flesh on a creature and shatter every bone in their body over and over again and the creature will not die.  In arena tests with a steel hammer against a steel-armoured dwarf, this process of constant attacking went on so long that the dwarf died of an infection from a mangled finger after weeks of being pounded on constantly. Although that's more of an issue with the placeholder material properties still in the raws and the ensuing binary nature of armour and penetration.  Even if that were fixed, though, the system really does need internal bleeding and a better model of compounding damage caused by multiple serious but non-fatal hits to larger body parts.  Not to mention also greater impairment for serious but not mortally injured combatants and some kind of target-prioritisation to go along with that - seeing five dwarves all bang on one unconscious goblin while being hacked up by the other dozen is kinda funny, but not very tactically prudent.

The new combat system is really, really cool, but it is not balanced in the slightest yet, Toady knows that, and hopefully these forums are providing helpful information for when he chooses to go about rebalancing things.  It's a bit myopic, not to mention detrimental to that goal of improving the system, to claim that hammers are just A-OK because one of your guys totally whomped a bunch of trolls one time.

[czolus]

Maces really do have the advantage (over hammers) of backhanding---you don't have to attempt to reorient the weapon to attempt to strike in a new direction.  As I recall, both are similarly effective on armor (including shields) except in the event where a hammer can penetrate (which, given its smaller striking area, is slightly more likely).  With that said, on a metal armored target, both have a very low chance of penetration, so both would generally do damage by concussion---giving you your broken bones, internal bleeding and whatnot.  Moreso, hammers and maces were often preferred to axes/swords on (metal) armored targets due to their ability to cause damage without a need to penetrate.

[Hondo]

Moreso, hammers and maces were often preferred to axes/swords on (metal) armored targets due to their ability to cause damage without a need to penetrate.

Yes, that. In my mind, blunt weapons should be equalizers that take less skill and material quality to be effective vs. armored enemies. If you have a material advantage (adamantine vs steel, or steel vs copper, or something), especially with high weapon quality, then edged vs armor should do just fine.

And of course, edged would be better vs anything unarmored that bleeds and/or has very important internal organs to stab. And blunt would be better against shatterable enemies like skeletons, where a sword might tend to glance or break rather than explode 4 parts at once into dust due to the huge impact force.

[Andeerz]

If you have a material advantage (adamantine vs steel, or steel vs copper, or something), especially with high weapon quality, then edged vs armor should do just fine.

Assuming armor/weapon damage is implemented in that case, I agree to a good extent.  But I believe a sword being used purely for slashing would have to be much harder (i.e. steel vs. copper) in order to damage the armor significantly.  Even then, the damage through the armor would be reduced.  This is where real life tests would be in order methinks. 

It's my opinion that a plate of any metal as hard or harder than copper would still reduce a sword of any material to an inferior blunt weapon, even if the plate gives a bit, but it would still have a concussive effect that could be effective if a direct hit.  In this case, a sword's concussive blows would have a much harder time than a hammer/mace/axe doing significant damage against the body parts of a non-stationary, self-defending target unless it's a direct hit to the fingers/hand, face (especially if an open-faced helm) and head (through concussion).  This is assuming the sword can't thrust into the kinks of armor and the wielder of the weapon isn't mounted.  An axe would be much better than a sword with regard to slashing due to its mass and sectional density, basically amounting to a mace or hammer that glances off more often, and that could do a good deal of damage to the armor and wearer beneath...  If it's a thrusting weapon, although the plate would cause it to glance off more, if the plate is made of much softer material than the weapon, the weapon could penetrate, though probably not far if the material of the weapon isn't too much stronger.  I hope I'm making sense.

Swords against skeletons would still be decent, and probably wouldn't break (if made of iron or steel) against such a relatively soft material as bone.  I agree that a mace or hammer would be better, with maces being possibly better than hammers due to a larger striking surface; the hammer has a much smaller striking surface than the mace and could conceivably be more likely to glance off or get stuck between ribs or in the skull or something.  But the getting stuck could play to an advantage in some cases maybe, like for wrasslin'...

Another thing relevant to this topic: keep in mind that there are different kinds of plate armor.  A one-piece breast plate of the late 14th century and beyond will not have as many exploitable kinks as a coat-of-plates of the early 14th century and earlier.  This could play into the efficacy of different weapons vs. plate armor.  For the sake of simplicity though, I assume the plate armor in this game is intending to simulate a late 14th c. full plate harness.     

[scira]

Realism aside when I think of a mace I think of a spiky metal ball on a handle that uses its mass to drive the spikes through things,like an axe except stabby instead of choppy. When I think of a hammer I think of a large block used to crush, break, knock things around, or at least bruise.

But as for how this applies to the game I'm still too much of a newbie.

[LegoLord]

War hammers are actually similar to a standard work hammer in shape, with a small area used for blunt striking and a spike on the opposite side.  A huge block would actually be worse; while it would have a lot of mass, all the force going into the swing would be going into a large area, spreading the force out and allowing more material to take the burden of the blow.

A mace could have all kinds of designs, from flanges (I believe they are called - plates coming out from the center), to spikes, or even just a head that is maybe an inch or two wider than the shaft.  The head can be spherical or cylindrical, or just be the segment of shaft the spikes or flanges come off of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(club)  - Note that the article could use more citation, but there are pictures as well.

[Andeerz]

You know, I'm almost tempted to say that hammers and maces should pretty much almost behave the same way and just be a matter of taste which one is used...  Superficially at least, it seems that way IRL.

[Hondo]

words

Yeah, it's actually complicated. A sword vs a well armored dude would depend hugely on material and skill, because (ideally) a highly skilled swordsdwarf would know how to get into chinks or hit unarmored parts with some reliability. And yeah material could also bring that up to where a good strike against a protected part might go from "ow that broke my arm" to "oops my artery's open", but it shouldn't be all or nothing even then. My feeling is that even with a material advantage it should still be a matter of wearing the enemy down and good/lucky strikes, not just cutting straight through because steel > iron or something.

Mainly it seems like a problem with the combat formulas/functions. The material and bodypart systems probably need changes, but they're still basically raw material for the code to mash into good gameplay. They don't need to respect real world physics even if the items have real world attributes.

[Andeerz]

Yup yup!  You nailed it on the head, Hondo.  :3  I think its the body part systems that need the biggest changes.  The materials also could use some changes too, especially in the way Arrkhal(sp?) suggested in another thread.  But that can largely be changed in the raws as a place holder, whereas the body parts system needs a bit more attention.

[Belteshazzar]

I suspect that the main problem here is that Dwarves can't tell when an enemy is 'down' without it being very dead.

 A group of hammermen are likely to keep smashing stuff until it's pulped, when all they should have to do are break a few limbs and leave the cripples to desperately try and crawl away from the 'looters'  ie: (haulers with dirks.)

[Narmio]

I suspect that the main problem here is that Dwarves can't tell when an enemy is 'down' without it being very dead.

 A group of hammermen are likely to keep smashing stuff until it's pulped, when all they should have to do are break a few limbs and leave the cripples to desperately try and crawl away from the 'looters'  ie: (haulers with dirks.)

Aye.  Target prioritisation is another thing that would be needed to balance instant-kill weapons like axes with delayed-kill weapons like spears.

So I guess our feature "wish list" for combat would be something like this:

 - Internal bleeding.
 - More impairment from shock/trauma/concussion/pain/breaks.
 - Prioritisation of targets that are able to fight back.
 - For a given attacking strength, a smaller contact area should mean more transferred force.

Keeping in mind that this is just features, there are bug fixes and tweaks to current variables etc that are mentioned elsewhere.  Have I forgotten anything?  We should package up some suggestions and put them on the Eternal Voting List.