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Pickaxe, strike the earth!

64 (61.5%)

Battleaxe, blood for the blood god!

40 (38.5%)

Total Members Voted: 104

[Aalto]

To follow up on this, I set up a vm to run mass simulations in the background, doing 100 tests of each weapon against a few different creatures. I'll probably post exhaustive results in a more general thread when it's all done (shouldn't be long now), but preliminary results indicate that steel picks are actually superior to steel axes in every way, altho not by much against invaders.

The startling difference is vs. very large creatures (which tend to be a problem when you get goblins riding in on cave crawlers or rutherers or something) - I tested elephants, because, yunno, elephants. Axes take six(!) times longer to kill one than picks, the difference being that axes can't get through the skull and so end up only killing by blood loss, while picks routinely destroy the brain. Swords also do relatively well - taking twice as long as a pick - and in fact seem to be about as good as axes in other situations too, and spears are almost as good as picks but inferior against smaller armored creatures.

I haven't done cotton candy yet, and I also have to rerun a few of the tests I did before I made a few raw modifications to reduce random factors (the dwarf would occasionally get a few too many bruises, pass out and eventually die from repeated headshots from a training axe and so forth), but based on these results I do believe we have a clear winner.

[Alastar]

Well,  I have been recommending picks for a while. However, from my testing steel axes were ahead against (mostly) unarmoured humanoids because of their easily detachable bits. Axes aren't balanced weapons: if getting through something tough, be it metal or bone, is at all a problem the large contact area will make it much harder. Picks have a balanced attack type, sword stabs are useful when slashes glance off even though they're not all that great (contact area between picks and spears; neither the power of picks nor the penetration depth of spears).

Axes became a lot more attractive when made of adamantine though.

[Cyroth]

Axes became a lot more attractive when made of adamantine though.

Everything becomes way to effective when made from adamantine (well, exept blunt weapons ), that is why I avoid it at all costs.

[Necro910]

Axes became a lot more attractive when made of adamantine though.

Everything becomes way to effective when made from adamantine (well, exept blunt weapons ), that is why I avoid it at all costs.

Hammererererererererers?

[Alastar]

Axes became a lot more attractive when made of adamantine though.

Everything becomes way to effective when made from adamantine (well, exept blunt weapons ), that is why I avoid it at all costs.

The important bit is that they become more attractive relative to the alternatives, I thought it was apparent in context. If you get through any armour you're likely to face on the strength of weapon material alone, the abysmal anti-armour performance of axes ceases to matter. Their tendency to cause bigger wounds and inflict incapacitating hits even when hitting extremities remains relevant.

Also: definitely not true. Adamantine is extremely tough, but also ridiculously brittle and has the density of styrofoam... which may create problems that aren't commonly realised.
Adamantine is poor for blunt weapons and projectiles, it seems inferior to steel for pointy melee weapons in some situations, for armour it has at least some disadvantages (definitely against projectiles, apparently against things like scourges/morningstars under some circumstances, unsure about blunt weapons. Need more tests because armour type may matter: shields/chain/plate). However, it's consistently ahead when it comes to slashing blades and protecting against them.

Haven't tested it exhaustively, but weapon size may also matter because the effect of weapon weight doesn't appear to be linear.

[nanomage]

To actually know which is better we shouldn't be making armoured legendary pickdwarfs and axedwarfs beat each other.

I think we should try to simulate an actual ambush or early siege - 8-12 goblins in leather clothing with half copper/half iron shirt/breasplate, helmet and shield, all competent or skilled in weapon skills.
Then we make them fight either "early military" or "emergency miner squad"
"early military" is 6-8 (all 10 soldiers aren't going to be all awake and close and not stupid enough to be in place in time) dwarves in full iron armour wielding iron, maybe steel axe or two, and shields, adequate to skilled in combat skills.
"emergency miner squad" is 6-8 Talented to Master miners with assorted picks - 2 copper, some iron, bronze and steel and without shields or armor. (This can be simulated by modding pick to use AXE skill).
I'll update the post as i would have conducted the experiments

update:

i've done some arena testing
early military was 6 dwarver in iron helm, mail shirt, greaves, gauntlets, high boots, with a wooden shield and an iron axe. All combat skiills compenent
miner squad was 6 dwarves with bronze axepicks (picks modded to use AXE skill)dressed in leather clothing, with Professional axedwarf and no other skills.
goblin ambush was represented by 8 goblins competent in combat skills, dressed in leather clothing, iron mail shirt, iron shield, iron helm and iron weapon.
10 gob squads with differrent weapons had to fight early military and miner squad.
The simulation is meant to somewhat model a second spring or summer ambush.
the negative/positive number indicates survived uninjured or lightly injured dwarves/goblins, the number with "i" multuplier means severely injured ones (severed limbs and\or unable to stand)
The top string is selected weapon of goblin ambushers.
      warhammer   mace    flail  s. sword   halberd   b.axe    spear   whip      pike   l. sword   maul  mstar    scourge  g.axe
em      5+2i    6+2i     -2-3i     5+3i           -6      3+2i    3+3i      3+4i      -5-i
ms      -4-i                   -2     -3-i                    -4-i                 -5                   -4           -6   -4        -4         -6

According to this simulation, pick in hands of well-trained miner (you are going to have them anyway) is much better at fighting goblins then any military you can have early in the most of games - miners never lost a single match, and the axedwarves were only able to defeat goblins with large unwieldy weapons.

[MarcAFK]

I don't quite understand your results, but i am impressed that the merely leatherclad miners did better than the axedwarves

[darkflagrance]

The data looks like it might be usable as the basis of an article on the wiki, but it would be nice to have it presented more clearly.

[ral]

I agree... wikiwikiwiki!

[czolus]

Picks.  A 60 dwarf mining militia creates (and solves) its own problems.

[elitepastafa]

You axe if I like a pick or an axe. When it comes to weapons, I pick a pick. Those dwarves of mine sure can mine goblinite! But when it comes to lumber, I ain't no hack, axes are the best! They get my work done, chop chop!

[The Scout]

You axe if I like a pick or an axe. When it comes to weapons, I pick a pick. Those dwarves of mine sure can mine goblinite! But when it comes to lumber, I ain't no hack, axes are the best! They get my work done, chop chop!

..... Please.... no more....

[elitepastafa]

...You never read the Literal Face Palm thread, did you? 4 pages of tree puns.....so beautiful.

[sambojin]

I've been wondering about the effects of picks in various situations. I never did get around to testing with zagibu's scripts (lazy me), but they have always seemed as good as axes in general gameplay.

There's also a few other things that picks have going for them:

#1 Easy training. You can skill up a group of no-hopers pretty quickly in picks. And just picks. No dodging or anything. This isn't actually a good thing. But it IS a great thing when you get an immigrant with great combat skills but likes using a short sword or mace. It's a very easy weapon change over for some immigrants.

#2 Picks mood. Mining is a moodable skill. This is friggin awesome. One minute your miner is happily mining away in a squad (training or just regular mining), the next he grabs a stone-crafters workshop, makes an nice coffee mug and comes back as superman. You get more "Legendary" level soldiers quicker from pick users than you can with any other weapon. And without using danger rooms, prisoner torture or any other route that you might consider "exploity". Plus you get a nice artifact that draws more goblins to you, only to be slaughtered by your now heroic miner.

#3 You'll probably want to mine at some point in this game. So having good miners isn't such a bad thing anyway.

If they are equal to axes yet have the above advantages, why wouldn't you use them?

[veok]

Large Daggers have the best penetration in the game, if I'm remembering correctly. Even iron will pierce adamantine just fine.