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[Kamamura]

I think stone weapons beside obsidian short swords should really be and option - think stone age, hammers and axe/maul hybrids, or stone-tipped spears. Beats wooden weapons (literally) any day. They could be even traded from troglodytes!

[Uristocrat]

I think stone weapons beside obsidian short swords should really be and option - think stone age, hammers and axe/maul hybrids, or stone-tipped spears. Beats wooden weapons (literally) any day. They could be even traded from troglodytes!

Stuff like that would likely be combination wood/stone weapons (not that we don't have that already, in a way, with obsidian short swords).  There has been a lot of discussion about having weapons made from discrete parts, though, allowing for hybrid weapons.

So you might have a steel short sword with a golden handle, or a warhammer with parts made of lead and steel.

[NW_Kohaku]

Currently, you make an axe out of solid copper, which is pretty silly, and would probably be a wood handle and a metal head.  It's reasonable to say that stone weapons could be the same - a stone hammer is just a stone hammer head, but because there aren't multi-part weapons, the wooden handle just gets made of stone, too.

All you really need to make stone weapons make sense is item damage and better stone material property data, like what you've been doing, Uristocrat.

[Uristocrat]

Currently, you make an axe out of solid copper, which is pretty silly, and would probably be a wood handle and a metal head.  It's reasonable to say that stone weapons could be the same - a stone hammer is just a stone hammer head, but because there aren't multi-part weapons, the wooden handle just gets made of stone, too.

All you really need to make stone weapons make sense is item damage and better stone material property data, like what you've been doing, Uristocrat.

Yeah, finding the solid density is pretty easy.  But finding "impact yield", "impact fracture", etc. is pretty hard.  The closest thing I can get is Mohs hardness for most minerals and I don't know if that's even properly related to any of those things, let alone how to convert it to something DF recognizes.

I have a post about that in Gameplay Questions right now, actually, hoping that someone can, say, look through the Wolfram-Alpha data I linked to and tell me what, if anything, there is that I can convert to something useful to DF.

[NW_Kohaku]

Mohs hardness measures the point at which a material is scratched, which is a permanent deformation, so I would go with "Impact Yield" as the closest corrolary, I suppose.

Wikipedia, however, lists copper's moh's hardness as 3, and iron as 4 and steel as 4.5.  Meanwhile, there's nothing close to that proportionality in the properties of steel and copper, so it may just be that material values like shear yield are just too different from moh's hardness to really be included in the list.

Of course, the way the game's property checks work, they don't really check the right properties, anyway.  Steel's propensity to flex elastically (rather than plastically) under stress is actually one of its best attributes, but it's a negative attribute in combat models now.

[Funk]

you do need them sad as right now all stone has marbles propertys  bar mass

[RTiger]

I can see having ordinary hard stone mauls/hammers fairly easily. For sharper weapons, stick with metals, or just have a normally sharp weapon be more blunt instead.

[Girlinhat]

Stone weapons don't make good edged weapons, but that's sorta the point.  They're sub-par, but available.  I'd rather have a sharp rock if I'm fighting a wolf, rather than letting it tear me apart while I say "Oh god I wish I had a steel axe right now!"

[RTiger]

Well there are wooden weapons.

[Girlinhat]

For elves.  For dwarves, they're training weapons, using light materials as a blunt weapon.

[Uristocrat]

Mohs hardness measures the point at which a material is scratched, which is a permanent deformation, so I would go with "Impact Yield" as the closest corrolary, I suppose.

Wikipedia, however, lists copper's moh's hardness as 3, and iron as 4 and steel as 4.5.  Meanwhile, there's nothing close to that proportionality in the properties of steel and copper, so it may just be that material values like shear yield are just too different from moh's hardness to really be included in the list.

Of course, the way the game's property checks work, they don't really check the right properties, anyway.  Steel's propensity to flex elastically (rather than plastically) under stress is actually one of its best attributes, but it's a negative attribute in combat models now.

Research says Mohs hardness is ordinal, not linear, so you can't get useful data from it because the gap between the numbers is highly variable (see the Wikipedia article).  Looks like you have to go for more complicated stuff to get useful data.

[Dwarfoloid]

Mohs hardness measures the point at which a material is scratched, which is a permanent deformation, so I would go with "Impact Yield" as the closest corrolary, I suppose.

Wikipedia, however, lists copper's moh's hardness as 3, and iron as 4 and steel as 4.5.  Meanwhile, there's nothing close to that proportionality in the properties of steel and copper, so it may just be that material values like shear yield are just too different from moh's hardness to really be included in the list.

Of course, the way the game's property checks work, they don't really check the right properties, anyway.  Steel's propensity to flex elastically (rather than plastically) under stress is actually one of its best attributes, but it's a negative attribute in combat models now.

AFAIK, hardness is always converted into ultimate strength (or fracture in game terms).

If you are talking about elastic moduli in the last paragraph, those mostly mean how much visible deformation the given material will experience before the plastic deformation begins. High value means stiff material. It's the ability to deform plastically and absorb energy that's important for weapon and armour grade materials. Ie. steel is good because it's a fine combination of strength, hardness and ability to deform plastically under stress.

On the flip side, if the current ingame adamantine was booted into real world it would likely shatter or snap under high stress (like combat) but it's a fantastic metal so applying real world material science to it is bit off.

BTW back when I was rummaging the net for material values for iron, bronze etc. there was a link to interesting site about mesoamerican stone weapons. IIRC, chert was the best against steel (being the only one that managed to achieve any kind of penetration) presumably because it was tougher than obsidian, the latter having significant problems with shatter and fracture. I'll see if I can find that link again.

[Uristocrat]

BTW back when I was rummaging the net for material values for iron, bronze etc. there was a link to interesting site about mesoamerican stone weapons. IIRC, chert was the best against steel (being the only one that managed to achieve any kind of penetration) presumably because it was tougher than obsidian, the latter having significant problems with shatter and fracture. I'll see if I can find that link again.

Interesting.  From what I saw, I would have expected it to be an unremarkable sedimentary layer stone.  Even its density is average.  It's weird, but after researching so many, I suddenly have a pretty good idea of what the density for all kinds of stones should be.

Ilmenite?  Oh, that's pretty high.  Jet?  Wow, that's almost as low as soil.  Peat?  Well, that depends a lot on the water content...  Cobaltite?  Great for use in stonefall traps and catapults!  (Its value was set even before I started modding; it's better than anything but your smeltable metal ores.)  Undersea soils?  Those are a lot more dense than regular soil!  They're close to your average rock.  Pitchblende?  Well, what's the UO₂:UO₃ ratio?  I'm doing that from memory.  I feel like I just finished cramming for a geology final.

[Dwarfoloid]

Interesting.  From what I saw, I would have expected it to be an unremarkable sedimentary layer stone.  Even its density is average.  It's weird, but after researching so many, I suddenly have a pretty good idea of what the density for all kinds of stones should be.

If you want to make a weapon out of stone it first needs to fracture in a way that produces an usable edge. It also needs to be able to hold the said edge for some time. Looking at the densities you posted in the other thread, most of the knappable stuff seems to be in the ~2500kg/m3 range (give or take few hundred). Jade being an exception, but I think the blades made out of jade were typically of the ceremonial sort (and Jade is usually carved).

Out of ingame rocks and minerals, I think at least flint, chert, quartzite, jade, some chalcedony style "gems" (chalcedonies, agates, jasper, onyx etc.) and at least rhyolite, dacite and obsidian out of the volcanic rocks should qualify for weapons. The full list would technically be much longer than that, since lots of stuff can be carved into simple axehead.

Also found the links to the site. First on stone itself: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/d.wilding3/Macquahuitl/Materials.html.
And testing: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/d.wilding3/Macquahuitl/Test1.html.

Edit: Apperantly mudstone, shale, diorite and sandstone have been used as well in early human cultures, as well as andesite and basalt.

[NW_Kohaku]

Interesting.  From what I saw, I would have expected it to be an unremarkable sedimentary layer stone.  Even its density is average.  It's weird, but after researching so many, I suddenly have a pretty good idea of what the density for all kinds of stones should be.

Ilmenite?  Oh, that's pretty high.  Jet?  Wow, that's almost as low as soil.  Peat?  Well, that depends a lot on the water content...  Cobaltite?  Great for use in stonefall traps and catapults!  (Its value was set even before I started modding; it's better than anything but your smeltable metal ores.)  Undersea soils?  Those are a lot more dense than regular soil!  They're close to your average rock.  Pitchblende?  Well, what's the UO₂:UO₃ ratio?  I'm doing that from memory.  I feel like I just finished cramming for a geology final.

Working on the farming thread has done the same thing to me - I never even heard of NPK before I started, but now I know that if I want to raise the Phosphorous levels of the soil, it's best to use rabbit manure, since they have uncommonly good phosphorous levels in their waste.

Also, I'm actually buying a bat house to put out in my backyard because of looking up how to manage pests and working on food webs.  (They eat up to ten times their own weight in insects every night, and their guano is extraordinarily useful as a nitrogen source because of this.)

Oh, and pottery - now I can look at pottery, and know what sort of metals probably went into their glazes, and whether those pieces of pottery are stoneware or earthenware.

Dwarf Fortress - You will never be more excited about learning random boring topics no matter how well you do in school.