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[Ivan Issaccs]

Axes for chopping off limbs. Good for unarmored
Hammers are better than maces for anti-armor. Heavier materials are better.
Pickaxes are actually somewhat batter for impaling than spears. Impalement is good for unarmored critical hits.
Swords for more all-round fighting

Crossbows are your only practical ranged option without modding. Bolt material matters more than crossbow material.


Also give your soldiers some leather robes/cloaks. Their defense value isn't high but they can protect against lucky shots and contaminants.

In addition, iron isn't actually that bad for blunt weapons, but it's third-worst for edged weapons.

4 fourth worst and and 3rd best
Iron>Bronze

Is it though? I've seen it said otherwise since the new version and the views on the wiki seem to change fairly regularly.

[Bognor]

Their armor is going to be a copper shield, iron breastplate, iron chainbody, iron chain leggings, iron helm, and possibly iron greaves.

Pretty sure a dwarf can't simultaneously wear leggings and greaves.  You're missing low boots or high boots, either of which can be worn with leggings or greaves.

[kotekzot]

Yep, leggings and greaves are both shaped armor, so only a single item of either can be worn at a time. You can wear 2 pairs of trousers under a set of grieves, though.
Shields don't really benefit from their material except for bashing, where denser materials make for better attacks, so a leather shield is just as good as a copper one for purposes of defense, and won't slow them down if they aren't too strong.

[Dradym]

gauntlets too, and the limit for wearing things....it wierd, i couldnt find any definites in the wiki only a complex system based on item size+how its worn. i think you can wear chain leggings and greaves, also many shoes/boots, like 12 cloaks or something...etc

[Sting_Auer]

OKay, since you can't wear greaves at the same time as leggings, then I'm only equipping them leggings.


Iron spear, iron chestplate, iron chain mail, iron leggings, copper shield, iron high boots, iron gauntlets.

These guys are my defenders, who are basically going to huddle at the entrance to my fort and kill the few people that get through the cage traps.


Also, I'm going to change the title to "Ideal uniform discussion", since that's what it seems to be turning into.




Newest question: I have access to galena on my latest fort (Yeah, I abandon forts a lot), and lots of it too. I also have access to tetrahedrite, and I think that I have some of the tin material. I am going to use squads with bronze-armored hammerdwarves and a few bronze-armored marksdwarves using copper crossbows and silver bolts for ranged backup.

Is this a good plan until I get access to iron for armor?

[Darkmere]

Greaves provide better coverage than leggings. Bronze is close enough to iron for armor purposes that you might as well make bronze armor, import/mine flux and use the iron for steel to save time.

[Acperience]

Head
2 x leather caps
1 x metal helm
6 x leather hoods

Upper Body
1 x metal breastplate
3 x metal mail shirts
6 x leather cloaks

Lower Body
2 x leather trousers
1 x metal greaves

Hands
1 x pair of metal gauntlets
1 x pair of leather mittens

Feet
1 x pair of cloth socks
1 x pair of metal high boots

ideally all the metal is adamantine
all the leather is dragon leather, or leather from another fire-proof animal

[Montague]

Chausses are better then socks, if you don't mind putting them into the dwarf entity entry.

But anyways, blunt weapons are pretty crappy unless you are playing a modded game or have some particular use for them. All of the enemies that might wear armor really don't wear that much protection.

A typical human or goblin soldier will have exactly two peices of armor in the current version:
Torso: A single leather armor, chain shirt, or a breastplate.
Head: A metal cap or helm.
Any of the metal items will be copper, bronze or iron and will almost always be of standard quality. Sometimes they'll have their civilization's symbol decorating one of them, which is neat, but not going to help them much.

Basically, the armored enemies are not very well-armored at all and a limb-hewing type of weapon will probably be a better all-round choice, even if they gen with iron breastplates and iron helms. Picks and spears are good, bad-ass even, but if a dorf gets his weapon stuck in an enemy, he'll resort to punching and shield-bashing which is crap.

I go with axes, and I assign everyone either as a miner, wood-cutter or hunter so every civilian is armed and the militia are ready to retaliate if activated.

[Funk]

weapons
the best weapon changes with the enemies

size, is the first point to ask.
an Elephant is harder to kill than a Groundhog due to its size, it larger mass gives to more blood and makes its limbs harder to severe as well as adding to its charge.

attack,
a Polar bear is two times the size of a Giant desert scorpion(GDS) but due to its attack the GDS is the more power full.
why? the bear can only claw and bite your dwarfs to death, the GDS can rot there brains.

weapons?
is it armd?, has it got a range weapon?,poisons

to counter weapons you need shields, and armor for when one get past.
with armor as much as you can get, made from the best metal you can.

[Acperience]

weapons
the best weapon changes with the enemies

size, is the first point to ask.
an Elephant is harder to kill than a Groundhog due to its size, it larger mass gives to more blood and makes its limbs harder to severe as well as adding to its charge.

attack,
a Polar bear is two times the size of a Giant desert scorpion(GDS) but due to its attack the GDS is the more power full.
why? the bear can only claw and bite your dwarfs to death, the GDS can rot there brains.

weapons?
is it armd?, has it got a range weapon?,poisons

to counter weapons you need shields, and armor for when one get past.
with armor as much as you can get, made from the best metal you can.

Not talking about weapons anymore.

[thriftshopmusketeer]

One thing I find is always a good ad to any uniform is a good leather cloak. You'd be surprised how many attacks will be deflected by even a no-quality leather cloak. Furthermore, if you want to use a danger room, it's a must-one cloak will deflect even 10 masterwork wooden training spears more or less indefinitely. 

[Sting_Auer]

I don't have much experience, but from examining the stats on the wiki for different weapons, and the info I have been given here, warhammers are great against armor, unless you have weapons made of a better material than the iron.


Let's say a human comes by with iron armor. All you have right now is copper stuff. You had best start making warhammers.

However, if you have access to steel, then make steel spears/battle axes/swords, because the better, harder, sharper material can get through the weaker iron armor much more easily.

is this correct?

[celem]

Yes.  Also the comment above about greaves covering better than leggings is true but only sometimes relevant. 

If your civilization has high boots then you can use leggings.  Leggings + high boot covers like greaves + low boot.  If looking at the raw files for armour pieces, the UBSTEP tag shows when a piece extends past the part of the body its worn on upwards.  I think LBSTEP indicates a piece overlapping to the next bodypart downwards

[Africa]

To go back to weapons for a second, is there anything that can make spears good? If it's made from adamantine, would that make it good enough to pierce through most armors?

[ferok]

Head
2 x leather caps
1 x metal helm
6 x leather hoods

Upper Body
1 x metal breastplate
3 x metal mail shirts
6 x leather cloaks

Lower Body
2 x leather trousers
1 x metal greaves

Hands
1 x pair of metal gauntlets
1 x pair of leather mittens

Feet
1 x pair of cloth socks
1 x pair of metal high boots

ideally all the metal is adamantine
all the leather is dragon leather, or leather from another fire-proof animal

This is from the wiki, and I believe it applies to adventure mode more than fortress mode.  But either way, even if you could get your fortress dwarves to equip all of that (which is basically impossible in practice as far as I'm concerned) you'd still have to produce it all.  Producing it in copper should be simple with ample tetrahedrite and good practice for your armorsmith, but ultimately not very effective (since it's copper).  Producing it in Steel from Goblinite would take a prohibitive amount of time, and producing it from bluestuff would be nearly impossible under any normal circumstances.

It's much more practical to use a setup that doesn't over-do the layering.  This is what I use and I generally find my dwarves don't have any issue following it, and it still provides full coverage:

Head:
1x Helm
1-2x Leather Hood

Chest:
1x Breastplate
1x Mail Shirt
1-2x Leather Cloak

Legs:
1x Greaves
1x Leather trousers

Hands:
1x Gauntlets
1x Leather gloves

Feet
1x High Boots:
1x Socks (cloth is the only option)

Shield:
1x Copper Shield