Print

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

[Neowulf]

Moving this out of the little questions thread.
Anyone else have some experience with these? So far I've found the discs to be passable, haven't tries anything else.

My setup has been exceptional and masterwork mechanisms and green glass discs.
Against a minotaur and a giant, the discs did a good job of severing extremities (hands, feet, ears), though the combat log shows a lot of crushed bones.
Against vultures, birdies go splat. I had to expand my refuse stockpile to accommodate the number of pieces those birds were chopped into.
Against cloth armored goblin thieves, pretty much every one of them lost a limb or head.
Against copper breast plates the discs didn't fare too well. None of the ambushers made it past my 3rd pair of traps (out of 20 invaders), but the combat reports show no-quality copper breastplates deflect the discs no problem.

[Cotes]

Glass has no set max edge value, which means it has a completely random max edge. If I remember correctly it gets randomized every time you load.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Glass has no set max edge value, which means it has a completely random max edge. If I remember correctly it gets randomized every time you load.

That was fixed in 31.24 (or .23, I forget which).

[Neowulf]

The bug got fixed, that's why I started this. I want to know how effective they are now, maybe get a bead on the new static values since they aren't in the raws.

One thing I noticed is, unlike my steel disc traps from previous versions, I have yet to see a glass disc trap get jammed. Fluke? Or could glass have a material property that makes jams less likely?

[Cotes]

Ah, that's good.

The bug got fixed, that's why I started this. I want to know how effective they are now, maybe get a bead on the new static values since they aren't in the raws.

Aren't they? Wiki says (now) otherwise:

Code: [Select]

INORGANIC:GLASS_GREEN]
[STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:DARK_GREEN]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:SOLID:green glass]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:SOLID_POWDER:ground green glass]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:SOLID_PASTE:green glass paste]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:SOLID_PRESSED:pressed green glass]
[STATE_COLOR:LIQUID:RED]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:LIQUID:molten green glass]
[STATE_COLOR:GAS:RED]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:GAS:boiling green glass]
[BASIC_COLOR:2:0]
[BUILD_COLOR:2:0:0]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:2]
[SPEC_HEAT:700]
[MELTING_POINT:13600]
[BOILING_POINT:16000]
[SOLID_DENSITY:2600]
[LIQUID_DENSITY:2240]
[IMPACT_YIELD:1000000]
[IMPACT_FRACTURE:1000000]
[IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:2222]
[COMPRESSIVE_YIELD:1000000]
[COMPRESSIVE_FRACTURE:1000000]
[COMPRESSIVE_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:2222]
[TENSILE_YIELD:33000]
[TENSILE_FRACTURE:33000]
[TENSILE_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:47]
[TORSION_YIELD:33000]
[TORSION_FRACTURE:33000]
[TORSION_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:113]
[SHEAR_YIELD:33000]
[SHEAR_FRACTURE:33000]
[SHEAR_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:113]
[BENDING_YIELD:33000]
[BENDING_FRACTURE:33000]
[BENDING_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:47]
        [MAX_EDGE:15000]
[ITEMS_HARD]
[ITEMS_GLASS]

[Neowulf]

They aren't in the raws, if you read the line above those on the wiki it says those were obtained through memory hacking.
The history shows the max edge of 15000 was added to there a couple days ago, while the text of it being a bug was removed yesterday. No mention in the talk or on the page itself about the bug being removed or the new values found, just a stealth edit to add it in.

And just knowing the max edge still tells us little about how they fare as trap components. Max edge of 15000 is 50% sharper than iron, yet they're deflected so easily. Previous versions with the random value people were occasionally getting vorpal level edges and it actually slicing and dicing, yet sharper than steal is getting deflected quite easily.

[Cotes]

Well, they are available anyway. Now we just need someone who actually understands half of it.

[Neowulf]

Bah, we just need to do !!Science!! ourselves.
Going to try screws and spikes next.

[Alastar]

Looks worth using to me.

I tested (fake) obsidian short swords some time ago, and while they seemed more deadly against unarmoured foes than the lesser metal ones they were outperformed by metal axes across the board. Sharpness didn't trump contact area against naked flesh and didn't trump toughness against armour. With twice the shear strength as obsidian and on a trap component optimised against bare flesh, glass should be attractive even if it's not quite as sharp.

Given goblins' propensity to wear better armour on their torso than their extremeties, I expect this to be messy but very effective: few instant kills, many removed limbs -> lots of cleanup, more body parts to harvest, less jamming (afaik that only occurs on instant kills, not from a hit that will cause bleeding out soon).

[devek]

This will be the df version of, "Will it blend?"

[Neowulf]

Good idea, going to redo my entrance to cage trap volunteers, build some test chambers, mod in a portal gun, and drop them in to see how they fare. Just wish I could equip my dwarves with lab coats.

[Lav]

You can, but you'll have to mod it into the game, so it's too late for the current fortress. :-)

[Torgan]

I've been using weapon traps with five giant green glass axe blades, they've been pretty awesome at chopping up invading forces.  And all the herds of camels that keep wandering across my bridge across the river.  I did have a legendary mechanic so all the mechanisms were masterwork and the axe blades are mostly superior+ after I got lucky with a glassmaker immigrant.

I've only got two lines of four traps at either end of my 2 wide bridge to thin out the invading forces so my military can mop up the remnants, seems to work fine.  Thieves never make it past them, seems to make short work of any ambushes but they are pretty poorly armoured I think, copper breastplates and caps is about it usually.

[Lemunde]

My current fortress has a rather long array of 10x glass disc traps. So far no goblin has made it past the first 8. The goblin armor seems to range from cloth/leather to a few copper pieces like helms and shields. Any goblin wearing cloth/leather seems to get sliced up rather quickly while gobs with copper armor dodge and block their way past a few traps before succumbing.

My conclusion is any kind of metal armor is pretty much impenetrable with glass components. However if a goblin has even a single part of their body exposed it will get lopped off eventually. So if you're going to go with glass traps you will need a lot of them to be effective. A good strategy might be to have a few glass traps out in front with cage traps in the back.

[Neowulf]

Only attacker so far has been an ettin, which died to my first trap. Masterwork mechanism + 10x exceptional menacing glass spikes. Severed the left head jugular on the first spike, the other 9 attacks all chipped bones in the arms and legs.