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[Alastar]

First, I can't stress enough how awesome it is to simply assign different materials real-life properties and have the game take care of everything that follows. However, this requires the entries to make sense in the first place. I thought I'd make a thread to suggest tweaks to make DF even more of a geeky delight.



I'll start off with something that doesn't exist in the real world, adamantine. I'm not challenging the sheer structural strength of the stuff. As a mythic metal, a lot is justifiable here and I'd only worry about his after the more problematic entires are taken care of.
However, do the following feel right?

1) It has roughly the density of balsa wood, aluminium is approximately 13 times as heavy.

2) The edge it can carry, given as a unitless number. Most metals including steel have 10000 (there probably should be some variation here, but I don't have specifics atm), obsidian has 20000, adamantine has 100000. Afaik, nothing in the real world carries a finer edge than obsidian (although some are similar and have other desirable properties - hardness, durability etc), so this seems very extreme as well.

3) There is no elasticity and no plastic deformation; it doesn't give at all before snapping entirely (which would, of course, take quite a bit of force). Parrying a blow with something that light and that inflexible would probably result in either cutting straight through their weapon or having yours knocked out of your hand.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yeah, and adamantine has a melting point so high, and convection doesn't exist in DF, so you could literally make an adamantine submarine that could sail through the outer layers of the Sun like an ocean.

All of adamantine's properties are LOL BULLSHIT numbers pulled out of thin air.  Frankly, as most bodily organs (including bones) are being defaulted to density half that of water, it's not terribly surprising.  In fact, as density is generally a good thing when it comes to weapons, it makes most forms of weapons made of adamantine fairly useless (while slade is allmighty in warhammer form).


Elasticity, plastic deformation, fatigue strength, those are all known problems that have been raised before... I have no idea whether Toady has said he would revist them, but considering how much trouble it is to put them in (possibly save breaking), I'm not sure we're going to see them any time soon.

[Omegastick]

Adamantine is not a normal metal but one blessed by the gods. As such it can't be broken, it is, however, not very dense at all and is about as dense as balsa wood.

1) Adamantine is only as dense as balsa wood, but unbreakable because it is blessed by the gods.

2) The edge it can carry is the same as any other metal but it acts much finer when it comes to chopping because it is blessed by the gods.

3) why do you think that it never says: The flying arrow strikes Ursit McAdamantine in the chest but is blocked by the admantine sword.?

[NW_Kohaku]

Keep in mind that Obsidian has molecular-level sharpness.  Adamantine has five times its sharpness. 

Yeah, sure, I've seen it used supersilliously in video games before, but sub-atomic edges are just a little BS.

[Shades]

Keep in mind that Obsidian has molecular-level sharpness.

They can be, but they fracture as well so you end up with some parts of you edge that are molecule thick and others that are 3 or 4. Furthermore a obsidian isn't a single element, mostly silicon dioxide if memory serves, in which cause an adamantine edge could not only be a stable single molecule thick but also have smaller molecules, doesn't need to be sub-atomic.

[Footkerchief]

1) It has roughly the density of balsa wood, aluminium is approximately 13 times as heavy.

2) The edge it can carry, given as a unitless number. Most metals including steel have 10000 (there probably should be some variation here, but I don't have specifics atm), obsidian has 20000, adamantine has 100000. Afaik, nothing in the real world carries a finer edge than obsidian (although some are similar and have other desirable properties - hardness, durability etc), so this seems very extreme as well.

3) There is no elasticity and no plastic deformation; it doesn't give at all before snapping entirely (which would, of course, take quite a bit of force). Parrying a blow with something that light and that inflexible would probably result in either cutting straight through their weapon or having yours knocked out of your hand.

In case you want to see Toady's explanation for those properties:

The high impact and shear numbers will make it resistant to all attacks and also cutting attacks specifically.  In game terms, the yield=fracture means that if you manage to hit the adamantine hard enough, it won't dent but will fracture immediately.  I don't think the low elasticity (which is probably actually something like yield strain, but I found inverting the moduli convenient -- I think it's strain with scale 1000 times the percent deformation at yield) will matter for items at this point, as it only is used so far in determining some skin/soft tissue like behaviors for attacks on creatures.  It also makes the current notion of adamantine thread something that needs some explaining.  Since I threw the numbers in haphazardly without considering that, one can now start to come up with some sort of weird hooking together sewing thingy that the dwarves do -- either that or some miracle chemistry they do that lets them get around the raw mechanics.  Since the elasticity number doesn't matter for adamantine items, perhaps it could also be changed, but I currently like the starkness of it.  In terms of adamantine weapons, the edge and shear properties mean it will be able to slice through steel for example quite easily, even though the low density means that it won't be effective in bludeoning weapons.  Normal cutting weapons won't be able to slice through your adamantine armor, but you can still get knocked around.

[thijser]

What I wonder is how do dwarf manage to shape adamantine using magma forges.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, with a melting point of 15,000 degrees Farenheit, any kind of fire is a moot point, they obvoiusly can either temporarily make it a flexible fabric-like substance with magic, or it's naturally a flexible fabric that you can magically make rigid and forever after unchanging.

[Eugenitor]

Well, it could be that adamantine strands are extracted rather easily, then adamantine thread is spun into cloth just as normal thread would be, and only when it's truly forged with high heat into its final object form does it "set" into its properties as described in the raws, similar to cement drying.

There's no material in the real world that actually works like this, of course, but it provides an explanation.

Can dwarves melt adamantine objects? I've never tried.

[NW_Kohaku]

There effectively IS no "high heat" that dwarves could apply to adamantine.

Once again, the melting point is 15,000 degrees Farenheight.

For reference, magma in this game is 2032 degrees Farenheight.

For reference, THE SURFACE OF THE SUN IS ONLY 10,000 DEGREES FARENHEIGHT.

Even the Earth's core is "only" about 12,000 degrees Farenheight.

You'd have to go into the depths of the Sun for that kind of heat.

Unless you plan on replacing your magma forges with Utsuho Nuclear Fusion Forges, you're not using "high heat" on adamantine.  (And that's if you can even "tame" the nuclear hell crow.)

[scira]

For addy vs other weapons, I just assumed (until durability is added) that weapons were crafted in a way that they wouldn't need constant sharpening, so while you COULD create a copper sword as sharp as an addy sword it would deform the first time you struck something hard.

For melting points, thats to turn a solid into a liquid, right? i know some cultures used molds, but maybe the metal only needs to be softened? Think of the movie image of a smith pounding on a red hot blade with a hammer. That would also account for making magma-safe items in a forge made out of only fire-safe materials.

[Alastar]

Thanks for the quote, Footkerchief!

I still think these values are too far out-of-this-world even for an out-of-this-world metal. You can melt down adamantine objects, which indeed raises questions about dwarven furnace technology. And it would pretty much have to be molten to be shaped as it's extremely brittle - doesn't flex, doesn't deform... nothing happens until it snaps. Unless there's some alchemical trick to it that isn't simulated.

Thematically, it'd make sense if the prospect of working it with the best dwarven technology has to offer was just about plausible. As it is, it sounds like faerie magic. With regard to game mechanics... really, what could possibly go wrong when making it less extreme? If no set of realistic values will make it immune to steel... well, proper weapons grade steel is pretty impressive stuff as well, and I'm sure we'd get something markedly superior. And something that doesn't result in clown hammers for comic relief.

I think these things shouldn't be fudged, as this takes a bit of the coolness out of having everything based on actual physical properties.
Time for some research, then Research... I'll look up the values of various impressive real-life materials and cherry pick from them to see if something works out in gameplay.


@ NW_Kohaku: The day a procedurally generated nuclear-powered hell raven shows up in Dwarf Fortress and throws miniature suns at dwarves, the universe will collapse into a singularity of awesomeness.

[Eugenitor]

There effectively IS no "high heat" that dwarves could apply to adamantine.

Well, what I was going to say is that it doesn't *gain* its melting point until it's actually forged. That is, adamantine thread is semi-soft, adamantine cloth is just cloth, wafers are just pounded that way, but once you apply heat to it, it suddenly stiffens up and gains the physical properties we see in the game.

I know- that makes no IRL physical sense. (And dwarves can just melt it down again anyway, which kind of breaks that idea.)

But we're talking about a metal that melts at temperatures that would have long since turned everything else in existence to plasma.

[NW_Kohaku]

The problem with that is that raw adamantine is also a stone, capable of being treated like a stone, and has the same properties as "processed" adamantine.

It's property of shattering before bending (like glass, I suppose you could say) would also make it extremely difficult to work with - how do you put two pieces of adamantine together?  You can't melt it into a semi-liquid state (even a semi-liquid state requires temperatures relatively near melting point), so what do you do?  Hammer two pieces of adamantine together, and hope they somehow start sticking to one another?

@ NW_Kohaku: The day a procedurally generated nuclear-powered hell raven shows up in Dwarf Fortress and throws miniature suns at dwarves, the universe will collapse into a singularity of awesomeness.

Actually, even though there is a Touhou mod out there, what I'd REALLY like to see is a mod that makes the Subterranean Animism characters pop up when you Dig Too Deep.  Suddenly, there is Nuclear Hell Raven, psychics with superpower-cloning abilities, a Super-Cave-Spider that can shoot webs and spread plagues, and an impossibly strong, impossibly tough giant that brushes off all attacks as mere fun and sport, and is COMING FOR YOUR BOOZE! (It NOT EVEN DROP!)

[CapnMikey]

It seems kind of silly to be talking about realistic material properties for a metal imbued with the power of the Gods, created for the sole purpose of trapping magical fire demons...

But I dunno, there could be some annealing process, hot as molten steel but far below adamant's melting point, that makes it malleable without needing to melt it.  Once shaped, it would be tempered to its more familiar hard, brittle state.  The only implication would be, if the sword gets hot as molten steel during combat then its material properties need to be adjusted accordingly.  This must definitely be simulated, of course.

I would prefer if it could only be shaped by magical means (or some combination of magical and mundane), because it is a magical metal.  But that's a long way off, if ever.