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[Angel Of Death]

Don't let the name "whip" fool you. They're really lightsabers and the goblins are really the Sith.

[Alastar]

Some weapons really need a little better modeling. Urumis or chain whips don't really fit... they'd be slower, have a larger contact area and, for urumis, be edged weapons. If they are meant to be leather whips with metal tips, they're heavier than they ought to be. This increases the main problem with whips: for impact calculations, the game assumes the entire weapon is moving at ludicrous speed; reduce the size to single-digit figures and you have almost realistic behaviour. If we take them at face value, fine wire (twisted or braided like rope?) ending in a solid tip would take the most sense, but damage calculations still assume the thing is rigid.

DF currently isn't trying to match overall real-world effectiveness, it just attempts to simulate single hits. Being balanced towards the tip is a straight-up benefit at the moment as the higher velocities are modeled, being less controllable (slower to reocver, less suitable for parrying etc) isn't. So some weapons like mining picks are considerably better than they ought to be, even without modeling artifacts like we see in whips.

Also, could we PLEASE stop referring to whips as lightsabers? They don't sever things easily, they aren't particularly lethal, they crush/chip rather than cut/burn. 40mm cannon rounds would match the statistics (roughly 1kg of metal hitting point on at supersonic speed; thankfully the game drops penetration calculations if there's no edge) but they're just what they are: Whips with a modeling quirk that puts 10-100 times the weight it should into the blows.

[Doro]

http://www.cjmas.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=3117
thats how it works. seems inpractical to me but i guess it hurts

[Triaxx2]

Who says it's a quirk? The crack of a whip is actually the tip of it breaking the sound barrier. There are also several types of whips, from the long flexible bullwhip, to the nearly as long, but stiff buggy whip, which only has a small flexible end so can reach out and encourage the horses.

Nothing says that a metal whip is necessarily a bull whip.

[Alastar]

The quirk is that the game doesn't account for flexibility and assumes the entire weapon is moving at the speed of the tip, in the same direction. If it's a whip you can crack (implying supersonic speed), any metal tip will probably be very small (maybe 1% of the total weapon), and very little leather (or whatever material is used) behind will apply its inertia to the impact. Most of the weapon just exists to give you reach and slack to accelerate the tip to ludicrous speeds.

The given contact area and velocity seem a little too extreme to be representative of a chain whip... but let's assume it's referring to one of these. Again, not the whole weapon moves at the speed and in the same direction as the striking surface, 1 or 2 segments of the typical 9 or 11 may contribute to the impact with their inertia. Again the rest is there to control and accelerate the tip (or whatever else actually hits).

[synkell]

But from the combat reports I have gotten so far are that while whips dont really server limbs like lightsabers , IMO they behave like hammers ... Really fast ones. Correct me if im wrong somewhere.

[BurnCruise]

Whips act like super hammers.

[Gnauga]

Scourges are akin to lightsabers. Whips are like supersonic tiny hammers.

The velocity reflects the speed of a whip well enough, but the model still doesn't account for the fact that the whip doesn't use its entire weight, or even a majority of it in the impact. Hence why it's buggily powerful in-game.

[Alastar]

Scourges are interesting weapons and odd in a number of ways. The material hierarchy for example: Arena tests against steel armour implied steel > silver > adamantine. This actually makes some sense if you consider that they don't need much help to achieve penetration but are a little on the light side.

They sit between blunt implements and most other sharp weapons: They penetrate armour better than most edged weapons and can occasionally send small bits flying, but unlike larger blades or lightsabers they will not create showers of limbs or inflict deep wounds. Scourges are a threat because they carve up naked civilians more quickly than blunt weapons and they can still inconvenience a steel-clad military... but their effectiveness is greatly exaggerated.
Maybe players learned to fear all lashers, as whips are the single biggest threat to well-armoured dwarves. Maybe horribly maimed survivors are easy to misinterpret: They imply the weapon is good at landing hits, but they also imply the weapon that did it isn't particularly lethal.

Unlike most other weapons, scourges are completely dominated by another: Morningstars have all the benefits (same speed and contact area) and none of the drawbacks (decent penetration depth and size)... and I have heard surprisingly few claims that they are better than lightsabers.

[MythagoWoods]

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the Belmont family using a chain whip to destroy the forces of evil.

[Flying Dice]

i kinda imagine that they're more swinging around scorpions GET OVER HERE! thing...so just a whip with a metal barb at the end >.>

and really, the only thing a whip should be effective against, are undead and vampires...

And Nazis. At least, if you're an incredibly unrealistic archaeologist.

[FallingWhale]

The game thinks the whole whip gets to mach 1 rather than just a metal slug on the end.

[Ubiq]

Unlike most other weapons, scourges are completely dominated by another: Morningstars have all the benefits (same speed and contact area) and none of the drawbacks (decent penetration depth and size)... and I have heard surprisingly few claims that they are better than lightsabers.

How common are morningstars as weapons though? They're not something that you often run across in Adventure Mode in shops or from looting the corpses of whatever bandits you happen across and rarely, if ever, show up in Fortress Mode either.

Goblin Lashers, on the other hand, are annoyingly common in their incursions and Lashers in general are a tremendous pain in Adventure Mode. It's easy to see why whips would get that reputation and another weapon would not.

[Gnauga]

It's similar to pre-nerf carp. It's not that they can take out half your dwarves. It's that they're fucking CARP and they can take out half your dwarves.

[SirAaronIII]

Morningstars are only used by goblins, I think. So the only way to get them is within a larger shipment of goblinite.