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[Bohandas]

I have a few questions regarding weapons and natural attacks:

1.) Besides affecting the question of piercing vs. slashing, how do Contact Area/ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC and Penetration/ATTACK_PENETRATION_PERC affect damage (and other aspects of an attack)?

2.) What is the cutoff point for piercing vs. slashing attacks? The Wiki Article mentions something about low penetration plus high contact area representing slashing attacks, and high penetration with low contact area representing piercing attacks. But what if they're about the same? (and Furthermore, in that case, would it make a difference whether they were both high or both low or both middling)?

3.) What is a good way to change the damage of a creature's natural attacks while minimizing changes to creature materials, relsizes and total creature size/

[Bohandas]

Seriously? No one?

[D_E]

1)  In order for an edged attack to sever a body part, the contact area and penetration depth must both be above an (unknown) threshold set by the monster's size and the body part's relsize. 

If the penetration depth isn't enough to penetrate all of a creature's tissue layers, the attack switches to bludgeoning to damage the remaining layers.  This is why you can make high-priority "BLUNT" attacks by setting the penetration depth of an edged attack to 0.

Larger contact areas distribute the force from an impact over a larger area.  This is part of the reason whips are so deadly, their small contact area and high velocity modifiers deliver a lot of force.

2)  I don't think there IS as strong difference between piercing and slashing. 

Both values being high is the default for slashing weapons (axes are EDGE:40000:6000, spears increase piercing to 10000.  A longsword slash is 60000:6000, while a stab is actually LESS penetrating, at 50:3000).

Both low makes a semi-bludgeoning weapon, with some light skin damage, as noted above.

3)  ATTACK_VELOCITY_MODIFIER.  It is believed to be percent based, ie [ATTACK_VELOCITY_MODIFIER:200] is twice as damaging as normal.

Adding ATTACK_FLAG_CANLATCH to an edged attack also increases the power of a creature, unless the creature is smaller than dwarves, in which case higher velocity attacks are better.

Use the PHYS_ATT_RANGE to up strength, agility, etc.

Use NATURAL_SKILL to boost the creature's combat skills (only works if the creature can learn).

[arzzult]

Also for increasing damage done by natural attacks, if you are using things like claws, teeth or tusks you can either make new, tough organic materials for these body parts OR just make them from existing things like iron or steel. Or adamantine if you want to get really crazy with EDGE attacks.

[Bohandas]

Also for increasing damage done by natural attacks, if you are using things like claws, teeth or tusks you can either make new, tough organic materials for these body parts OR just make them from existing things like iron or steel. Or adamantine if you want to get really crazy with EDGE attacks.

Which specific properties of iron and steel make them better materials?
(you can just give me the names of the tags if you want to. I can look up and compare the relevant values myself, as I'll probably wind up looking through the values for more than just those two metals anyway)

[Shinziril]

*insert slightly self-indulgent but useful plug here*

The relevant properties for weapon materials are listed on this wiki page. 

[Bohandas]

3)  ATTACK_VELOCITY_MODIFIER.  It is believed to be percent based, ie [ATTACK_VELOCITY_MODIFIER:200] is twice as damaging as normal.

Thanks. Ididn't know about that token. For some reason it isn't in the creature token article in the wiki (but I checked and it is in string dump, so I assume that it's valid)

[Bohandas]

Also, Could I increase the damage from a creature's claw attacks by just increasing the MAX_EDGE of their claw material?

[D_E]

Yes-ish.  It will definitely help, but bodypart size (which sets contact area and penetration depth) and mass also have a big effect.  And I believe the other physical properties also help determine effectiveness against armor.

I'll see if I can scare up a reference for that.

EDIT:  Can't find the reference.  Does anyone know anything about how the various stress/yield/etc values affect weapon performance?  I thought I saw a thread saying that density was important against armor but low strain-at-yield was more important against flesh, or vice-versa.