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Pickaxe, strike the earth!

64 (61.5%)

Battleaxe, blood for the blood god!

40 (38.5%)

Total Members Voted: 104

[Niyazov]

5 unarmored peasants w/ copper picks & copper shields

vs

5 unarmored peasants w/ copper daggers & copper shields

again, daggers beat picks every round with minimal losses

[Rushmik]

(modify button is your friend) 

[Niyazov]

aaand 1v1 trials

grand master axedwarf, fighter, armor user, dodger, no shield, in full iron plate w/ iron battleaxe + leather cloak, mitten, hood, sock

vs

grand master knife user, fighter, armor user, dodger, no shield, in full iron plate w/ large iron dagger + leather cloak, mitten, hood, sock

knife user wins all 3 trials with brown wounds at most

what's going on here? I guess in a real game you're limited by the fact that weapons you make have quality modifiers and can be made from steel or adamantium, but the best knives available to you are no-modifier iron daggers (and occasionally +iron boning knives+, etc. from human caravans, but you can't assign them to your dwarves because the game treats them as tools)

[Rushmik]

Despite dagger effectiveness versus largely unarmored foes, I'd gamble on picks should a civilian run into an ambush or forgotten beast.

[Lagslayer]

Daggers are small for faster attacks (quicker skill-ups?), and good at penetrating armor. Picks are bigger and have better raw power, but require more strength to use. Also, picks are a more generalized weapon.

The axedwarves lost to the knifedwarves because the knives could pierce the armor better (a huge advantage because edge attacks are bad vs equal material), where normally invaders wear only a couple pieces and have vulnerable spots for the axe.

The tests were stacked in favor of the knife users. Not that knives are bad, but they are good for weak, unskilled dwarves and somewhat good at penetrating armor.

[bobahz]

Blunt damage is godly against armored foes. Try Hammers vs knives for armored dwarfs.

[Alastar]

Regarding steel vs. adamantine: In my tests, adamantine seemed to struggle against shields... maybe a matter of weapon weight (absolute or relative to shield weight? Not sure). Against iron armour, Adamantine remained ahead for axes but lost some of its edge with the introduction of shields, results were inconclusive for picks, and steel was ahead for morningstars and scourges against shielded users.

Knife user winning against axedwarf isn't a surprise. Axes are godawful against armour of equal quality because of their large contact area; don't bother unless you have superior materials. Daggers are in fact always a threat: their slashing hits are large enough to kill unarmoured opponents quickly, their stabs have a tiny contact area, smaller than even that of scourges and morningstars, and are thus adequate at defeating armour despite a lack of size and velocity.

Picks aren't ideal against unarmoured opponents - larger contact area is desirable here, and their raw power (velocity and size) is often wasted. The beauty of picks is that they can cause crippling wounds through armour by sheer force where axes glance off and spears poke clean holes that take time to disable even if they hit something vital. Against truly good armour they can't match proper can openers, but those aren't very lethal and waste time against anything but canned humanoids (also: we can't even make the good ones, hammers will have to do instead of whips and morningstars).
Picks are often excellent and never worse than decent: taking a few seconds longer than blades to kill unarmoured opponents is important only if we also fight naked. Dwarves with steel armour and picks are strongly favoured against ny goblin you're likely to meet. By contrast, a steel-armoured hammerdwarf will fight lashers at a disadvantage.

The interesting question is: do we want to use a single powerful and balanced attack, or do we want to hedge our bets? If we do, how?
Sword stabs are objectively weak, but they can still penetrate armour that would defeat a pure slashing weapon. Dagger slashes are objectively weak but still kill unarmoured opponents more quickly than pure stabbing attacks. Specialised tools give us better individual attacks, but there's a serious risk of wasting time (Hammerdwarves pounding away at opponents who long ceased to be a threat, axedwarves whacking away at armour they can't deal with).

[EveryZig]

More testing: (again using 'axepicks', picks modded to use the axe skill)

Each round:
10 grandmaster dwarfs/ no armor/ steel daggers
vs
10 grandmaster dwarfs/ no armor/ steel axepicks

the steel picks have a narrow victory of 6/10 rounds.

[Necro910]

These are interesting results indeed. So basically, if I shatter several elves rocks, I'll become the greatest Dwarven warrior?

Nice.

[EveryZig]

I still need to test picks vs axes / picks vs hammers

[Aalto]

I did some testing with a single grandmaster dwarf using a steel axe or pick (modded to use axe skill) against slightly unusual opponents - specifically foul blendecs from the fortress defense mod, which have [NOPAIN] - but clad in typical invader armor of bronze and iron with zagibu's automated arena testing script.

Axes seem to take slightly fewer hits to kill an opponent (~10% difference on both armor types, with very slightly greater advantage against bronze, but that's probably well within the margin of error), but picks had a 99% hit ratio against iron and 100% against bronze, while axes got 89% and 94% respectively. On the other hand, axes inflicted heavy wounds (as categorized by zagibu's spreadsheet) on 100% of hits, while picks did so on 97% with the remaining 3% being medium.

I also did small runs with the other types of dwarven-made weapons, and just from eyeballing the results axes and picks seem to be clearly superior to the rest, with only swords being a possible contender.

Bottom line, they're both very good, with just minor differences in armor penetration vs. stopping power. No clear winner here based on this limited test, sorry .

[Necro910]

So far, it appears picks are a jack-of-all-trades, with battleaxes being best against unarmored, and hammers best against armor.

Interesting...

[EveryZig]

Another round testing: (again using 'axepicks', picks modded to use the axe skill)

Each round:
10 grandmaster dwarfs/ full iron armor/ silver hammers
vs
10 grandmaster dwarfs/  full iron armor/ steel axepicks

the hammers and picks tie at 5/10 matches won each.

I think with the combination of use in different situations, as well as the ease of training, that picks are likely the best weapon. (Though hammers still have one advantage in that they can use silver rather than precious steel)

[Lord Darkstar]

gypsy scum

There are people who would crucify you just for that expression.
Somewehere in Brussels, i think.

Yeah, pointy ears who love their trees to much! You can't trust trees, they are always dropping stuff and falling down. And you can't trust people that trust trees!

[The Scout]

I'm so gonna start a fort where everyone is a miner, mason, and engraver. EVERYONE.