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[Marsunpaistii]

Im wondering if I should use my Diedhumor the artifact gold mace (that is worth 1.7 million urists) for my military. How good are gold maces exactly? Heres a pic of the description too:

[Stormcloudy]

Maces are not as good as war hammers. I don't know the hard data. Gold is very heavy, so is goodish for blunt weapons. I don't think hardness is really taken into account. Half a ton of -tallow- could kill anybody pretty easily.

[Nidokoenig]

I think that unless you're flooded by weaponsmiths mooding and making gold hammers, any artifact is worth pressing into service. War hammers are better, but I don't think they're so awesome that a masterwork war hammer is better.

[FritzPL]

Platinum is highest density(21.40 g/cm3) metal,followed by gold(19.32) and silver (10.49).

No way to make platinum or gold weapons without a mood,so you GOT pretty lucky there. Silver is highest density metal available to dorfs,so if you like have your little big army made of bone crushing drinking idiots,pick silver. Also,on magma wiki its said

Steel has a slightly higher rate of critical wounds, while silver is slightly more likely to penetrate armor.

so.

Mace also has got a bigger size and contact area than warhammer.


I have a feeling this topic name should be renamed to "Why we love maces"

[Alastar]

t's probably going to be better than regular dwarf-made blunt weapons, but worse than scavenged whips. Not terribly useful unless you modded the game or see a need for silver (gold?) bullets against your own military dwarves:
Spears and picks are still ahead of dedicated can openers against any armour you're likely to face, while also performing very well against large beasts.

I'd put it in a weapon trap as a room decoration, and make someone insanely happy.

[synkell]

Give it to your legendary mace dwarf , if he kills alot of stuff with it , eventually he will be featuring in your cravings

[Anathema]

I'd give it a try. As has been said, maces aren't the best weapon type, but gold should be a much better material for blunt weapons than anything dwarves can normally use (i.e. silver, steel), and of course the craftsmanship craftsdwarfship is the best possible. I'd expect that very good material and good craftsdwarfship outweighs suboptimal weapon type - but trying it out is the only way to really know, since our understanding of the combat formulas is limited. Post any interesting combat log results, particularly successful hits against well protected enemies and how much damage they cause.

[nanomage]

Everyone seems to repeat "warhammers are better than maces" like a mantra.

look, guys, this is only based on arena testing and in arena testing you get dwarfs with average attributes. They are simply too weak to swing maces effectively!
Looking at the raws, one can easily see that maces are in fact better than warhammers! They have twice the contact area and twice the mass, thus meaning the same armor piercing capability but larger wounds.
What arena testing proves is that for average dwarf hammers is better because he can swing it effectively and can't swing the mace.
But who puts average dwarfs to the military and moreso, to be blunt weapon fighters? Even if someone does, what dwarf remains at average strength after two years of military drill?

We should make macehumans or macetrolls figth hammerhumans and hammertrolls in the arena to acquire results more likely to reflect the real effectiveness of the mace in hands of mighty or very strong dwarfs. I haven't done it yet, but i'm sure maces will win as they should.

Back on topic, gold is awesome for blunt weapons and gold mace with that crapton of decorations seems an ideal weapon for your general.


EDIT: i've actually done a quick test with 10Hammertrolls vs 10Macetrolls, all in steel armor (helm, breast, shirt, high boots, greaves gauntlets and shields) and skilled in Dodge, Armor Use, Shield use and corresponding weapon.
Macetrolls have won 4 fights of 4, taking 2-3 troll casualties.

[Supercharazad]

Everyone seems to repeat "warhammers are better than maces" like a mantra.

look, guys, this is only based on arena testing and in arena testing you get dwarfs with average attributes. They are simply too weak to swing maces effectively!
Looking at the raws, one can easily see that maces are in fact better than warhammers! They have twice the contact area and twice the mass, thus meaning the same armor piercing capability but larger wounds.
What arena testing proves is that for average dwarf hammers is better because he can swing it effectively and can't swing the mace.
But who puts average dwarfs to the military and moreso, to be blunt weapon fighters? Even if someone does, what dwarf remains at average strength after two years of military drill?

We should make macehumans or macetrolls figth hammerhumans and hammertrolls in the arena to acquire results more likely to reflect the real effectiveness of the mace in hands of mighty or very strong dwarfs. I haven't done it yet, but i'm sure maces will win as they should.

Back on topic, gold is awesome for blunt weapons and gold mace with that crapton of decorations seems an ideal weapon for your general.

Contact area is a bad thing, the smaller the better.

I'd assume that warhammers (toady did mention this) are the armour piercing kind, and as such are better versus armour. Maces MIGHT be better versus unarmoured people (Though really, a mace is a non-spiked ball on a stick)

[psychologicalshock]

The issue is that a large contact area should in principal be something that smashes apart multiple body parts at a time. I think if this feature was given to maces we'd see them become balanced against hammers.

[nanomage]

Contact area is a bad thing, the smaller the better.
I'd assume that warhammers (toady did mention this) are the armour piercing kind, and as such are better versus armour. Maces MIGHT be better versus unarmoured people (Though really, a mace is a non-spiked ball on a stick)

The issue is that a large contact area should in principal be something that smashes apart multiple body parts at a time. I think if this feature was given to maces we'd see them become balanced against hammers.

Contact area is bad when piercing armour.
When you calculate the pressure of the impact, contact area goes to the denominator, and that's why the larger the worse. But in numerator, you will have the momentum of the striking weapon, which is mass times velocity. In maces both numbers (mass and area) are two times that of hammers' and that means the same impact pressure and the same armour piercing capability given equal velocity. I'm fairly sure DF does it this way, as it's the only feasible one.

When calculating how much damage is done, contact area is good. Here i am not positively sure, but it _should_ be. At least, you can see that for edged weapons: large conact area or axe and sword slashes  _does_ mean that they cause more damage and cause bigger wounds. While atm weapons can't hurt several body areas at a time, game most likely keeps track of how large the wound on each part is.

[Jelle]

Just out of curiosity, do  you have any info on how often those trolls striked with a hammer instead of a mace? And maybe if there's a difference for dwarves. Could be that dwarves are just to small to fling a mace quickly compared  to trolls? I wouldn't know I'm not expert on combat.

[nanomage]

Just out of curiosity, do  you have any info on how often those trolls striked with a hammer instead of a mace? And maybe if there's a difference for dwarves. Could be that dwarves are just to small to fling a mace quickly compared  to trolls? I wouldn't know I'm not expert on combat.

well i have the logs but i have no tool to build statictics from them. I don't even know how to export them to text.
That's my entire point actually that average dwarves are too small and weak to swing a mace, and trolls are not.
In military, you have mighty dwarves, which _may_ be strong enough to use maces effectively, or _may_ be not.
To find it out through arena mode testing, we should mod in a race with average strength the same as that of a mighty dwarf and then make members of that race test maces versus hammers. I am weak at modding so i can't do this right now, maybe i'll try it later.

[EddyP]

IMO maces are better than warhammers. I handpick all my military dwarves based on strength, agility and toughness, and the macedwarves seem to be better. Even if hammers are better, use the mace anyway - a) it's a golden artifact and b) the difference between maces and hammers is pretty small anyway.

[Alastar]

I expect heavy weapons to become better (relative to lighter but otherwise comparable alternatives) with increasing strength... but let's keep in mind that gold is very heavy and that maces are quite large. If steel maces are too heavy for arena mooks to wield effectively, it's quite likely that gold maces are too heavy for the elite.

In my tests, maces were already ahead of hammers against unarmoured opponents (consistently enough), and maces seemed to favour lighter and stronger materials (less sure about this... material performance differences are subtle enough for blunt weapons anyway).

Still, can anyone tell me what we'd actually need blunt weapons for?