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Pickaxe, strike the earth!

64 (61.5%)

Battleaxe, blood for the blood god!

40 (38.5%)

Total Members Voted: 104

[fallofthechosen]

Looking over the raws, I think I may see why pick-axes are the most effective, and why steel seems to be the best.

First off, picks have a contact area of 100. Compare this to an axe, which is 40,000, and the pick is much more similar to a spear with a contact area of 20(on a stab).

Second, penetration for the axe is 6000, while the pick is 4000. This may seem like the axe is better, but when taking in to account
the contact area, axes will have a much harder time piercing harder materials since there is more contact space it needs to break
through.

Finally, we have the velocity, and I think this final part is what gives picks their major edge. An axe's velocity is 1.25, so heavier
materials help, but a sharp edge is more important, making addy axes better. With a pick though, velocity is 2.0, same as a
warhammer. This means weight matters! But since a pick is an edged attack and not blunt, sharpness also matters, hence we
end up with the balanced option of steel being the best pick.

As an aside that has nothing to do with the topic of what is better in DF, I don't think you saw tons of picks on the battlefield, they are great for chipping away stone, but they would have a high tendency to get lodged in your opponent in a way that would be very difficult to remove, and while 1 on 1, you get the other guy, good. In mass conflict, losing your weapon after dropping one
guy really doesn't bode well for your survival. So if it was difficult to unstick a pick after getting it lodged. But it isn't, so pickaxes for everyone!

[Edited for typo on contact edges]

[Alastar]

Decent velocity? Check.
Decent size? Check.
Decent penetration depth? Check.

No other edged weapons does this. Contact area is always a trade-off, 100 is a nice balance to make the brute force count whether you hit exposed flesh or need to dig through something tough like armour or some beastie's skull. Picks are objectively powerful, not just the right tool for a given situation.

*

Since daggers were brought up again: those are credible threats for entirely different reasons. A lack of weight and velocity means their attacks aren't individually powerful... but they don't need to be. Any slashing attack will be adequate against unarmoured opponents, even a relatively wimpy one every second hit is a noticable advantage over stabs/blunt hits.
The very fine tip (dagger stabs have the smallest contact area of all edged weapon attacks) means not much force is required to defeat armour, and dagger stabs have the potential to penetrate deeper than scourges/morningstars.

So they're useful to invaders who are likely to face either helpless civilians or military in superior armour. Daggers aren't very impressive when put against inferior but significant armour (slashes may still glance off, stabs penetrate easily but so would more substantial ones) or against large beasts... can't reach the vitals through the blubber, won't inflict enough trauma to kill efficiently via blood loss.
Here the lack of raw power becomes apparent: It's only good if it's the right tool.

[Lytha]

The pick is more important, because you won't be able to mine the metal ores without one. No metal ores = no battleaxes.