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[Sarda]

Yeah, higher tensile strength. However, it's more easily slashed/burnt, iirc.

Edit: Also, you can't smelt it and shape it into thick armor/alloys. Wish you could create vanadium/tungsten steel. That stuff's strong. 

[Daetrin]

Wish you could create vanadium/tungsten steel. That stuff's strong. 

You can

[Sarda]

I know of its existence IRL. That's why I remarked on its physical properties. I was speaking ingame.

[Fredd]

The thought of silk clothing providing extra protection does have merit. Modern day body armor mainly consists of a woven mesh(Kevlar), similar in principle to woven silk, displacing kinetic energy. As for archers, they used 3 types of arrow tips, War (for piercing armor), hunting(cutting), and practice points.
 Anyway, this calls for Arena experiments

[Hammerstar]

Also does chain armor block bolts at all? My military had steel chain leggings and the goblins copper bolts just went right through

Would you guess? Chainmail doesn't block bolts even in real life. Duh.

His point was that currently bolts and arrows act like armor piercing LASERS or something. They are barely slowed down even by heavy steel plate.

True enough, but crossbows were designed as the first way to defeat steel plate short of hitting the gaps. Then the plate was upgraded, thicker, whatever, to help protect against that. It was a medieval arms race, so to speak. It was the introduction of firearms that made even plate virtually pointless.

But chain, yeah, bolts would punch through it like nothing. Chain IRL is most effective at stopping slicing attacks, like a sword blade. Does nothing to protect against the force of impact, though, so shattered bones with a hard enough swing wouldn't be uncommon, and piercing strikes, such as stabs or crossbow bolts, would piece the chain easily. I haven't read through the RAWS to see how accurate DF is about chain, but from what I've seen, it works fairly properly.

[FallingWhale]

As for archers, they used 3 types of arrow tips, War (for piercing armor), hunting(cutting), and practice points.

Not quite, an arrow for hunting was generally blunted and meant for small game; thousands of years of hunting left no large targets to bleed out. Broadheads were what it says on the tin and punched through sloped steel armor with ease. It was therefor very easy to tell what someone was hunting and so it was illegal almost everywhere to have broadheads.

[SirAaronIII]

What about bodkins? Those were used to punch through chain, I believe.
There's also the very awesome way of making everybody candy pants, but that's dumb.

[wuphonsreach]

We need a way to define default uniforms... just like we can define the ammunition that hunters are allowed to use.

Or there needs to be a bug fix to the nekkid dwarf syndrome.

[Hammerstar]

Well, if the beard's big enough, you shouldn't be able to tell from the front.

[dirty foot]

Asking if a crossbow could shoot through armor is like asking if a gun can shoot through a bullet-resistant vest. There were lots of different crossbows and lots of different armor so it is impossible to answer such a broad question. And the silk shirts stuff is a myth. No thin textile will stop an arrow. The supposed idea was that it would make a barbed arrow easier to remove when it got carried into the wound.

It's actually not a myth, just a misunderstood concept. The idea wasn't that it was extremely strong and impenetrable, it was the physics of the shirt wrapping around the arrow/bolt relieving a lot of the kinetic force in the arrow/bolt. This would, as you say, make it easier to pull the arrow out, but for two reasons: the arrow doesn't travel as far in as it normally would, and the silk is strong enough to keep its structure around the arrow head. The second being extra-important, as extraction of the arrow head was not only possible, but much less damaging to the person.

[GaxkangtheUnbound]

What about candy robes?
Robes cover a lot of stuff.

[Sarda]

Yeah, but the complaint is that crossbow bolts act like armor-piercing lasers. Also, ranged damage DOES partially bypass armor.

[agatharchides]

Asking if a crossbow could shoot through armor is like asking if a gun can shoot through a bullet-resistant vest. There were lots of different crossbows and lots of different armor so it is impossible to answer such a broad question. And the silk shirts stuff is a myth. No thin textile will stop an arrow. The supposed idea was that it would make a barbed arrow easier to remove when it got carried into the wound.

It's actually not a myth, just a misunderstood concept. The idea wasn't that it was extremely strong and impenetrable, it was the physics of the shirt wrapping around the arrow/bolt relieving a lot of the kinetic force in the arrow/bolt. This would, as you say, make it easier to pull the arrow out, but for two reasons: the arrow doesn't travel as far in as it normally would, and the silk is strong enough to keep its structure around the arrow head. The second being extra-important, as extraction of the arrow head was not only possible, but much less damaging to the person.

TBH I have heard so many conflicting accounts of this stuff that I have no idea what the details were. It probably didn't hurt your chances. But taking an arrow to the chest at close range was still going to take you out. I've seen war bows send an arrow deep into old wood and I wouldn't bet on a silk shirt to do much for me if one hit me from 20 yards out. And again, there were many crossbows, from giant steel arblests used in sieges that were more like a small ballista to hunting ones you could cock with your hand. I'm not sure these generalizations are used for Df purposes since it has one generic 'crossbow' type which could be anything.

[dirty foot]

We need a way to define default uniforms... just like we can define the ammunition that hunters are allowed to use.

Wait, what?

How?

[wuphonsreach]

You can tell hunters to only use a certain material for bolts by going into the Military screen (m) and hitting (f) for ammunition.  Hit "M" for material, arrow over to the right column and pick wood / metal / bone / all.

I generally tell hunters to set aside 100 bone and 100 wood bolts.  Which keeps them away from my precious metal bolt stockpiles.