Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Malsqueek]

Ubiquitous Disclaimer: So, I did a browse through the search engine and found nothing of the sort I'm about to mention, so apologies if anyone has mentioned this before.

A lot of people have mentioned that there are pretty huge discrepancies between how effective the different weapons seem to be in prety much all situations.

Axe> Sword> Spear> Mace I believe it is...

Axes are great because they chop stuff up and cause massive bleeding, swords can do the organ damage, but don't remove limbs nearly so well, etc.

Long story short, to what degree does target size determine the capacity of a weapon to damage it? Why wouldn't a spear be a better weapon to fight those larger creatures with, since they can not only actually reach those vital organs for critical hits, but also stay lodged in, and allow for the spear holder to somewhat control the creature.

I think that larger creatures should suffer somewhat less damage from axes and swords, since it would be harder to chop off larger appendages, and the swords wouldn't be able to reach all that far into their body.

[Warlord255]

Weapons in general need some rebalancing, I think.

[opsneakie]

Weapons in general need some rebalancing, I think.

Not this. Each weapon has a well-defined role that it excels in. The spear is the spikiest of the weapons (no pun intended) when it comes to damage output. It can stab to the arm and do almost nothing, or rip through internal organs with ease, it's all about the hit location. Similarly, while axes are great the sword is from my experience much better against armored foes, especially those in plate armor. Maces do wonders against larger creatures like trolls.

Spears are great weapons, just train your dwarves with them and they'll cripple their enemies extremely quickly. Spears are also a great way to get killing blows due to the massive piercing damage they inflict.

[Aquillion]

The problem is that internal bleeding, organ damage, and small spear-wounds are not doing as much damage as they should at the moment, and it's basically impossible to kill things with them.

Once that is fixed, non-axe weapons will be better.

[Stromko]

The problem is that internal bleeding, organ damage, and small spear-wounds are not doing as much damage as they should at the moment, and it's basically impossible to kill things with them.

Once that is fixed, non-axe weapons will be better.

Quoted for truth. Right now, a hammer can break every bone in a creature's body and it won't die, not until you get a lucky hit on the head and cave in the skull. My first adventurer was a hammerdwarf and he had to spend about 80 rounds of combat to kill each wolf that he ran into.

Just in general it seems to take forever for things to die, though. I've had eight swordsdwarves, many of them adept or higher, hacking away at a single goblin spearman in fortress mode, and it took about 5 minutes for the bastard to die. My own soldiers never die unless they get stranded alone against multiple tough enemies.

I'd just have to say that things are far less decisive than they used to be, although that may be better than how it used to be when you could churn out champion dwarves that would kill enemies in one hit and move like lightning.

[Mel_Vixen]

Spears also lag a slash attack which they normally should have even thought the blade is pretty small.

[Andeerz]

Spears also need reach.  Heck, all polearms do.

[Firehound]

Spears also need reach.  Heck, all polearms do.

spears real life bite is removed by the lack of reach.

[LordDemon]

Does anyone know if spears get bonus for enemies charging in? I would assume someone running into a spear would impale themselves much deeper then someone stationary who is hit by one.

[AncientEnemy]

I think this is less a problem with the weapons themselves and more the way damage is currently handled. cumulative wounds that should be fatal are not. I had an unarmored militia commander go dozens of pages of combat with three goblins wielding silver spears. every other attack in the list should have killed her, but she only died when one finally pierced her brain. I think once the new combat system has been tweaked a bit, the individual weapons will work themselves out for the most part.

[Andeerz]

Agreed.  I still think spears and polearms need reach represented somehow after the fighting system gets worked out better, as reach is a huge part of why these weapons were designed the way they were and were effective IRL.

[Rowanas]

As it is, they're actually just daggers.

[Ilmoran]

In addition to reach, there should be hooked polearms who's purpose isn't so much to do damage (though they still do damage), but more for immobilization and bringing a larger creature to the ground.  This should be handled as low reach weapons not being able to hit certain parts of larger creatures until it is brought to the ground, either by severely mangling it's legs (this allows for short range weapons to still kill large creatures, just not with a single lucky hit), or by using a hooked reach weapon to drag it down.

Ideally, I think hooked reach weapons for dragging creatures down would also run off of both spear and wrestling skills.  Spear skill to set the hook, and wrestling to drag it down (maybe even allow non-spear wrestlers to drag down a creature by grabbing a hooked polearm that was lodged in by a speardwarf).

[Safe-Keeper]

Spears also need reach.  Heck, all polearms do.

There don't exist plans to let you do things like stabbing someone with a spear through fortifications, does there?

[Andeerz]

If there isn't, there should be!