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[ArcaneBoozery]

So in general I am loving the detailed combat system in Dwarf Fortress, but as I was reading the battle reports after my hammer dwarves disposed of a goblin siege, I couldn't help but notice that there is a lot of hand to hand fighting going on. Dwarves would punch, kick, scratch and bite their opponents on a regular basis, in between hitting them with their hammers. What made this strange for me, is that generally Dwarf Fortress is such a realistic game (one of the reasons that I love it so much). Both the dwarves and the goblins were wearing plate armor, so it seemed weird that warriors wielding weapons and clad in metal would go at each other like a couple of barroom brawlers. I understand that realistic fights can be very chaotic, so it's totally natural for an opportunity to come up to kick someone, or bite them every once in a while, but this is going on very regularly, several times in each fight (I even tested in the Arena). Also, it wasnt the case that the attacker was disarmed or anything, they had their weapon and shield (based on report messages), yet somehow still managed to punch their opponent. Some of this stuff also seems a bit counter-intuitive. For example, hitting someone's foot with a weapon is fine, but why punch/kick/bite it, especially when they are wearing plate boots? Btw, I also noticed that this was not because my dwarves were trained to be hand to hand fighters, in arena tests, I made them have no skills in HtH disciplines (striking, kicking, biting, wrestling). So I was curious, does this happen because of bug/lack of polish with combat system, or is it working as intended? If it's the latter, does anyone else find this strange? I, for one, would love it if weapon trained fighters who are holding weapons would mostly attack with those, with perhaps an occassional hand to hand move if the situation called for it, but not on a regular basis. Or perhaps a more detailed battle report printout explaining why your Hammer Lord just punched the goblin in the plate three times instead of using his silver war hammer.

[HatfieldCW]

I haven't tested this myself, and I don't play adventure mode, so I haven't seen it, but I understand that Toady recently added a new feature, "attacks of opportunity", where you occasionally get the chance to do a 'special" move in a fight, be it a weapon attack with a bonus or a poke in the eye or a bite to the ear, and that feature is available to dwarves in fort mode, so they'll be duking it out and will suddenly take a moment and stomp on an adversary's wrist or stick a thimb into their windpipe or, as the case may be, bite them on the toe.

My fortress had combat reports like you describe.  We had a minotaur, and a couple of my guys did some kicking of his arms and legs even as they went at him with their steel weapons.  It doesn't really bother me, though.  It does seem a little like a brawl, but that's in keeping with my idea of how these little guys behave.  I don't imagine them marching out there in a column and facing the enemy in a phalanx and using traditional footwork and precise blows to disable their target.  I figure they chug six beers, strap up and roll out with the intention of making something vomit.

As an aside, whenever I see them having a demonstration in the barracks, I imagine one guy getting up in front of the others and saying, "So, what you do, is you punch him right in the bottom of the nose, right?  It breaks his nose, and it shoves the bone up into his brain, killing him instantly.  Also, you can sneak of behind him, grab his head, and twist it 20 or 30 degrees.  He'll drop like a sack of dimple cups."

[Pawns4Mons]

I blame the dwarven wine, Urist Mcshitfaced is not exactly a martial arts master. Biting a plate boot while drunk seems normal.

This "problem" could be solved by more tags to make it more realistic, but I think it's more fun the way it is. I love picturing combat.

[ArcaneBoozery]

It does seem a little like a brawl, but that's in keeping with my idea of how these little guys behave.  I don't imagine them marching out there in a column and facing the enemy in a phalanx and using traditional footwork and precise blows to disable their target.  I figure they chug six beers, strap up and roll out with the intention of making something vomit.

The thing though is that everyone fights like this in DF right now, not just dwarves. I ran some arena fights between elves, and then humans, and it was the same exact thing, loads of biting, scratching, shaking, kicking and punching between plate mailed and armed combatants. Are elves alcoholics too in DF worlds? Weapons seemed to make a bit of a difference, as fights using swords had less hand to hand stuff than hammer fights, but maybe that was just my random sample, I didn't run a huge number of them.

I blame the dwarven wine, Urist Mcshitfaced is not exactly a martial arts master. Biting a plate boot while drunk seems normal.

Well, I would have no problem if combat was more chaotic than a typical stylistic game sword fight, but this stuff just seems extremely unrealistic. Dwarves might be sloppy and undisciplined fighters, but putting down your weapon or shield in the middle of a weapon fight so you can punch the other guy in his metal clad foot or bite his breastplate just kills suspension of disbelief for me. There is a difference between being undisciplined and wild, and being insane. When I read the battle reports, I like to kinda visualize the combat, and with many of these events, I just can't in a non-cartoon manner.

Would be really nice if down the line, the combat simulator took the dwarves' equipment and anatomy into account when determining how action unfolds, so for instance if both of the combatant's hands are occupied (with weapon + shield, or 2 handed weapon, or 2 weapons), they can't punch their foe unless they get disarmed, and they wont punch or bite plated hands and feet, whereas kicking and biting in general would get restricted to certain relatively rare situations (e.g. weapons locked against each other, might be a good time to kick the other guy where it hurts, etc), so that they would be more like the spice of combat rather than a weird alternative attack. This probably wouldn't be too hard to implement (compared to the super complex things already in DF), but it would give the combat a nice believable flow, and make it more fantasy swordfight and less pro-wrestling match, imho.

[Urist Imiknorris]

The one time I played Adventure Mode, that's how I fought too - I mostly took whatever move the game told me would hit easiest/most squarely.

[metime00]

Yes, some sort of weighting for the random opportunity generator would be much appreciated. It could not provide opportunities for biting if the dwarf were clad in full steel and had an axe and shield. Or perhaps having the attack aiming AI not take those kicking, punching, and biting opportunities if they had a decent opportunity for a regular steel battleaxe chop.

And I think your imagery of a dwarf putting down his weapon for a punch is off. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to give a right hook when holding a dagger or sword. Now with their shield hand is another story...

So until it's made more realistic, it's one of those crazy, over the top Dwarf Fortress bug-features!

[dennislp3]

punching and kicking seem completely realistic to me...in medieval (and current) hand to hand combat one way to take the advantage of an opponents weapon away from them is to get close enough that they cant make a meaningful swing with it...if you have a hammer and an opponent 3 feet away you could knock there head off easy...but if they are hugging you you cant do much.

I was in the Marine Corps and the basic idea was that if you cant shoot them then you need to grapple and kill them...90% of USMC hand to hand techniques are wrestling techniques....

also maybe watch UFC...dont have weapons but you see my point in that as well...

Personally I think wrestling should be utilized more in the combat equations (mostly if you have a free hand)

Most people get there understanding and visuals of fighting from movies....its NOTHING like that at all..

biting especially with fully clad enemies and all...that's weird...

[ArcaneBoozery]

And I think your imagery of a dwarf putting down his weapon for a punch is off. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to give a right hook when holding a dagger or sword. Now with their shield hand is another story...

So until it's made more realistic, it's one of those crazy, over the top Dwarf Fortress bug-features!

Yeah, I thought about that as well, punching while your arm hand is holding the weapon, but two issues with that. One, it would be nice if it was termed differently from a regular punch, if that's the case, like with swords, it says hit with the pommel of the sword, and two, while I can see something like that occassionally happening, like a dwarf's weapon getting stuck, and a quick short distance punch being more effective than a weapon swing, but if you are wielding a weapon, how often would that happen? In battle reports, punches are thrown quite regularly. If it only happened like once every several fights, then it wouldnt be a big deal, but 2-3 times per fight seems off.

And yeah, I fully realize that DF is in alpha, so a lot of stuff will change. If that's just the incomplete state of the current combat system, that's not a problem at all. I was just hoping that the final goal for combat is a bit more realistic.

punching and kicking seem completely realistic to me...in medieval (and current) hand to hand combat one way to take the advantage of an opponents weapon away from them is to get close enough that they cant make a meaningful swing with it...if you have a hammer and an opponent 3 feet away you could knock there head off easy...but if they are hugging you you cant do much.

Well, if you get in close, not only are you taking away their weapon advantage but yours as well, if you are wielding a weapon. I certainly don't have a problem with hand to hand fighting in DF in general, I think it's great if people who like it could train wrestler dwarves, or have a kung-fu adventurer, I only have an issue with armed dwarves using it so much when they are armed and armored, and trained for armed combat, where in most cases, a weapon would be much more effective and deadly.

[dennislp3]

what do you think daggers and short swords are for....they are explicitly for getting close. In real life if you are fighting someone with a longsword and you have a dagger and buckler its rather easy for you to get close, grapple with him, and stab the shit out of him while he does nothing except fight back the best he can.

Now obviously this doesn't work if your dwarfs have something else in hand...but then again considering the limitations of the computers reliance on numbers true skill and choices can not be accurately represented...as such a longsword is always "better" in this game than a dagger. Luckily this game does well with randomness and skill levels to help it all even out...the major problems are mostly noticeable when 2 people fighting have no experience (therefore relying on the weapon stats mostly) or when 2 legendary people are fighting (essentially nullifying skill and relying on the weapon stats again)...obviously the randomness offsets some of this...but yeah I think you get the point...

Now as for less theoretical talk...

To fix the issue you could remove the entries in the raws for these attacks, mod the skills of kicking/biting/punching to level up slower (they get more used as you get more experienced with them), or somehow gimp it...otherwise I have no clue....at the very least biting could be removed....since its the most unlikely to be used in combat...I think...

[Cruxador]

Have you never been in or seen a real fight? Dwarf Fortress reflects the way things actually go down. Fights aren't some sort of orderly thing where everyone is like "I have this powerful sword that does 99 damage, so I will stand hear and hit the other guy with it until he has no more HPs". People are moving and dodging and stuff. Getting in close or pulling back. People get in to weird positions, and then the best thing they can do may well be to kick or punch the other guy. Grabbing is just about the most advantageous thing you can do, because it allows you to interfere with the moving weight of the other guy, and teeth are perfectly acceptable for that if the occasion arises. Biting a guy's armored foot is pointless if you're trying to crush it, but if you're on the ground and there's a foot in front of your face, it's a good opportunity to trip a fellow.

You can't always bring your fancy weapon to bear in an easy or advantageous way. Eventually, when we get formations, this should change in most situations, but as it is now, people just charge each other and have one-on-one fights, so this is exactly how it should work.

[Urist Imiknorris]

My new goal is to play adventure mode and bite all my enemies in the head at least once (assuming they have heads).

[cameron]

I think there should still be more grappling (probably needs a wrestling update) and less biting toes off guys wearing boots. some sort of general idea of distance between opponents would also be nice

[ArcaneBoozery]

what do you think daggers and short swords are for....they are explicitly for getting close. In real life if you are fighting someone with a longsword and you have a dagger and buckler its rather easy for you to get close, grapple with him, and stab the shit out of him while he does nothing except fight back the best he can.

I was arguing for lowering the frequency of unarmed attacks in armed/armored combat, so since you are here talking about dagger and buckler usage (i.e. not unarmed), seems like you are agreeing with me.

To fix the issue you could remove the entries in the raws for these attacks, mod the skills of kicking/biting/punching to level up slower (they get more used as you get more experienced with them), or somehow gimp it...otherwise I have no clue....at the very least biting could be removed....since its the most unlikely to be used in combat...I think...

The tests I ran in arena mode had combatants completely untrained in those disciplines, yet they still used them quite a bit. Might be a bug, I don't know. In fact, that's how it would work ideally as far as I am concerned, that your dwarves would fight in the discipline you train them in. If you train them as a wrestler, they wrestle and punch and what not, whereas if you train them as swordsdwarves, they would mostly attack with swords. Then everyone is happy and can customize them as they see fit.

Have you never been in or seen a real fight? Dwarf Fortress reflects the way things actually go down. Fights aren't some sort of orderly thing where everyone is like "I have this powerful sword that does 99 damage, so I will stand hear and hit the other guy with it until he has no more HPs". People are moving and dodging and stuff. Getting in close or pulling back. People get in to weird positions, and then the best thing they can do may well be to kick or punch the other guy. Grabbing is just about the most advantageous thing you can do, because it allows you to interfere with the moving weight of the other guy, and teeth are perfectly acceptable for that if the occasion arises. Biting a guy's armored foot is pointless if you're trying to crush it, but if you're on the ground and there's a foot in front of your face, it's a good opportunity to trip a fellow.

If you read my original post, you'll see that I realize real combat is messy and chaotic. But with all due respect, that doesn't mean combatants in medieval type battles went around biting their foes' armored feet to trip them  , or even grappling much. UFC is not exactly a great way to learn about medieval combat, as there quite a difference between two half naked dudes going at each other with their bodies, and armored combatants with melee weapons. Here's a couple of medieval combat reenactment videos off youtube (there are tons of others there as well) that show fairly realistic depictions of combat by people who train with those weapons and armor (i.e. not fancy hollywood stuff):

Battle reenactment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOXyqOa4zPk

Individual combat reenactment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azy4hfX6PCQ&feature=related

Now how many times have you seen somebody punch, kick, shake, or bite someone? I might have missed some with everything going on there, but I saw one guy jokingly do a taekwondo kick after the battle is over in the first video, and a guy push his "dead" foe off his weapon with his leg at the beginning of the second. Also, at the end of 2nd, a guy hit his opponent on the head with the sword pommel, a weapon strike and not a punch mind you, but even that was pretty rare, one pommel hit per like what, 100 weapon strikes in the video? Didn't see anyone punch or bite in either, or wrestle, or grapple. The combat is messy of course, with people shoving, moving, dodging, etc, but no brawling as far as I can tell.

[dennislp3]

what do you think daggers and short swords are for....they are explicitly for getting close. In real life if you are fighting someone with a longsword and you have a dagger and buckler its rather easy for you to get close, grapple with him, and stab the shit out of him while he does nothing except fight back the best he can.

I was arguing for lowering the frequency of unarmed attacks in armed/armored combat, so since you are here talking about dagger and buckler usage (i.e. not unarmed), seems like you are agreeing with me.

I may not have been clear but I was making a point that most weapons when grappling or extremely close are useless..I was using an example where a person with a longsword would resort to anything except his sword...cause he cant. To add to it...especially when dealing with heavily armored opponents...when fighting you would be spending most your time trying to create an advantage usually by making the opponent unbalanced. When wearing heavy armor and all swinging your sword is a lot riskier than trying to kick, punch, push or pull. This is even more pronounced when you have an unbalanced or tip heavy weapon like an axe or warhammer.

To fix the issue you could remove the entries in the raws for these attacks, mod the skills of kicking/biting/punching to level up slower (they get more used as you get more experienced with them), or somehow gimp it...otherwise I have no clue....at the very least biting could be removed....since its the most unlikely to be used in combat...I think...

The tests I ran in arena mode had combatants completely untrained in those disciplines, yet they still used them quite a bit. Might be a bug, I don't know. In fact, that's how it would work ideally as far as I am concerned, that your dwarves would fight in the discipline you train them in. If you train them as a wrestler, they wrestle and punch and what not, whereas if you train them as swordsdwarves, they would mostly attack with swords. Then everyone is happy and can customize them as they see fit.

What was the sword skill level? My understanding is that the computer uses the new combat system which has calculations for hit chance and hit power...if you have played in adventure mode you may notice that a lot of times the most square hits are odd ones when you have no skills...but when you get more specialized skills the attacks seem to make more sense and be less random (unless your skills are at similar levels). So if the sword skill was not high then they were pulling from whatever has the highest chance to hit...skill affects this...so its hard to say without seeing why the computer made those choices.

Have you never been in or seen a real fight? Dwarf Fortress reflects the way things actually go down. Fights aren't some sort of orderly thing where everyone is like "I have this powerful sword that does 99 damage, so I will stand hear and hit the other guy with it until he has no more HPs". People are moving and dodging and stuff. Getting in close or pulling back. People get in to weird positions, and then the best thing they can do may well be to kick or punch the other guy. Grabbing is just about the most advantageous thing you can do, because it allows you to interfere with the moving weight of the other guy, and teeth are perfectly acceptable for that if the occasion arises. Biting a guy's armored foot is pointless if you're trying to crush it, but if you're on the ground and there's a foot in front of your face, it's a good opportunity to trip a fellow.

If you read my original post, you'll see that I realize real combat is messy and chaotic. But with all due respect, that doesn't mean combatants in medieval type battles went around biting their foes' armored feet to trip them  , or even grappling much. UFC is not exactly a great way to learn about medieval combat, as there quite a difference between two half naked dudes going at each other with their bodies, and armored combatants with melee weapons. Here's a couple of medieval combat reenactment videos off youtube (there are tons of others there as well) that show fairly realistic depictions of combat by people who train with those weapons and armor (i.e. not fancy hollywood stuff):

Battle reenactment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOXyqOa4zPk

Individual combat reenactment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azy4hfX6PCQ&feature=related

Now how many times have you seen somebody punch, kick, shake, or bite someone? I might have missed some with everything going on there, but I saw one guy jokingly do a taekwondo kick after the battle is over in the first video, and a guy push his "dead" foe off his weapon with his leg at the beginning of the second. Also, at the end of 2nd, a guy hit his opponent on the head with the sword pommel, a weapon strike and not a punch mind you, but even that was pretty rare, one pommel hit per like what, 100 weapon strikes in the video? Didn't see anyone punch or bite in either, or wrestle, or grapple. The combat is messy of course, with people shoving, moving, dodging, etc, but no brawling as far as I can tell.

Reenactments are ACTORS doing something...in combat your trying to kill someone that is trying to kill you...big freaking difference. My reference to UFC was not specifically for medieval combat but to help show that in combat the most effective way to win is by gaining positional advantages (ie two people standing up facing eachother does little for either of them). Combat is crazy...swords and things are nice but sometimes they are not the most important thing.

I personally haven't noticed it or thought it to strange...in fact my dwarfs hardly use anything but their weapons...but like I said I think that's because the weapon skill is much higher than the other combat skills...

[ArcaneBoozery]

@dennislp3

So let me see if I can picture the kind of medieval combat you are painting a picture of: A combatant would on a regular basis decide to ignore using his primary weapon (sword, axe, etc) because grappling with an armed man is more effective, then he would kick, punch, push or pull because that's somehow less risky than striking with your main weapon, even kicking which makes you completely unbalanced, on one leg and all, to unbalance his opponent, while his opponent is trying to take his head off with a longer range weapon. Then, at some point, the combatant rushes in to grapple, trying to dance around his opponent's weapon AND his shield, then he drops his own weapon or shield or both to be able to grapple at close range, and possibly takes out a shorter dagger, while he can't see what his opponent is doing, who might well be hacking his legs off, or running a sword through him, which is possible at pretty much any range (real one handed swords aren't as long as the hollywood variety), or bonking him on the head with the pommel. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this, cause that doesn't seem very realistic to me. Not saying it would never happen, but I just don't see it happening on a regular basis, as opposed to the typical sword and ax strikes.

The combat reenactments people are typically people interested in medieval times, so they study the subject matter in great detail and train using realistic weapons and armor. They are not actors in that sense, as they try to model their behavior on history. The only difference is they typically make the edged weapons blunt, so as not to really hurt each other during sparring, otherwise it's fairly realistic. There are some very educational videos on youtube from some of those people, so I would personally imagine that those videos are as good a guide as we can get (along with texts from those times) these days.

As far as the arena mode stuff I set up, I had the combatants be a grand master in their weapon skill, and shield/armor skills, no points at all in striking, kicking, biting or wrestling. As I mentioned before though, the hand to hand stuff seemed to happen a lot more with hammer dwarves, and quite a bit less with sword dwarves.