Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sting_Auer]

So, bronze is basically just a bit weaker than iron in every way, correct?


Is it just a bit weaker for armor and weapons, or a lot weaker for one, or better for one and worse for the other? Or is bronze simply just not quite as good as iron?

[ferok]

So, bronze is basically just a bit weaker than iron in every way, correct?


Is it just a bit weaker for armor and weapons, or a lot weaker for one, or better for one and worse for the other? Or is bronze simply just not quite as good as iron?

Bronze is inferior to Iron in most cases, but only slightly.

If you have tetrahedrite and cassiterite (but not iron) on your map, it's best to equip your military in bronze and use any iron you can get your hands on to make steel.  The advantage you'd get from upgrading to Iron from Bronze would be minimal, and if you were using goblinite/merchant goods directly you'd be losing out on any bonuses from quality (as goblinite is low quality, merchant goods vary but generally low quality as well).  Once you go through to process it into iron bars, you're better off turning it into steel if you've got flux available.

Also, Bronze requires only one fuel per two bars to smelt.  Iron costs one fuel per bar to smelt.  This is a significant advantage for bronze in the absense of magma.

[Buttery_Mess]

Blue-stuff edged weapons are the best. I wouldn't even bother with blunt weapons. They're not as good as edged weapons that can slice through anything. Save your steel for armour, because you'll need a lot of it. If you can spare the candy for candy armour; well, that's ideal, but in a 'fair' fight candy canes give you all the edge you'll ever need.

[Montague]

I'm using iron chainshirts, gauntlets and helms w/ leather armor, leggings and highboots. Wooden or iron sheilds.

I'm trying to get a balance of (relative) light weight with good protection and frugality. The idea is to be able to make a mass-producible uniform that any novice lyemaker recruit can move around quickly enough, but won't get brained (or getting a finger nicked and spending the next year in the hospital) from wearing just plain leather.

Not sure how I should handle shields. Wood is cheap and lightweight, but I'm not sure how often or how relevant shield bashing is. I use axes, which don't get stuck very often, so I'm sticking with wood shields for the most part. I'm guessing if I decided to field speardwarves or something I'd maybe give them iron shields for the extra mass for bashing when their spear gets stuck?

Also noticed with the uniform I give them, they strip all their civilian clothes except trousers, a shirt and coat. Maybe layering the leather armor over the chain shirt is doing it? Not really complaining but it seems strange to see dwarves that don't wear compulsive layers of clothing all the time.

[Lagslayer]

I always go with the best armor I can get, weight be damned. For weapons, usually axes if I have better materials than they do, and blunt weapons if I do not. If I'm in the mood for a little more micromanagement, I'll train my military in a weapon 'til they become a master, then switch them over to mining picks because they are both awesome and dwarfy with any material.

[Montague]

I'm thinking of picking up warhammers or maces, instead of axes, at least for the more "full-time" soldiers.

I had 3 pages of report spam from a high master axelord beating a goblin in the head with his +Iron Axe+ to no avail ".. but it glaces off!", due to the goblin wearing an iron helm.

I'm theorizing the better skilled the soldier is with his weapon, the more he tends to hit/ aim for the head or chest, which is always armored with invading soldiers of all races.

Not sure how I feel about dwarfmode dwarves using picks. They work good in advent mode but if you don't target or micromanage in advent mode, you get the pick stuck in a leg and then endless scratching/biting/kicking/punching/shieldbashing and the occasional twisting of the pick in the wound. I'm certain dwarves would do the same thing, which is why I tend to like them using axes (asides from the fact they are good at chopping wood).

[Alastar]

Regarding spears: They're most attractive if you don't have access to good materials and in my opinion a better alternative to blunt weapons. Even copper spears have a reasonable chance to defeat iron armour, and spears are good weapons against most beasties too.
With steel, I prefer picks. With adamantine, I prefer axes. If you can get to the juicy bits on the strength of the weapon material anyway, you want something that makes bigger wounds.

Regarding bronze vs. iron: Iron makes better bladed weapons and better armour against melee threats. Bronze makes better projectiles and blunt weapons, and bronze armour seems ahead against projectiles. Very pointy things like morningstars also seem to favour bronze but dwarves normally can't make them.
The differences aren't large though; go for whatever is more convenient.

[khearn]

I'm thinking of picking up warhammers or maces, instead of axes, at least for the more "full-time" soldiers.

I had 3 pages of report spam from a high master axelord beating a goblin in the head with his +Iron Axe+ to no avail ".. but it glaces off!", due to the goblin wearing an iron helm.

Funny, I'm thinking of having fewer hammerdwarves. I've got an awesome hammer lord who is also the fastest melle type I've got. So he runs out and gets to the goblins first and immediately starts breaking arms and legs. He very quickly reduces the first goblin to a pile of quivering green meat with every limb broken. Then he just keeps pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding until just about every item in the wounds list is red. plus massive internal bruising. But the goblin isn't bleeding at all, and even with two bruised lungs he can still breathe enough to lie there and get pounded on some more. This keeps up until the goblin gives in to pain, and then the hammer lord makes a single smash to the head and it's finally over. And some of these goblins seem to have very high pain tolerances.

In the mean time, the axe lord three tiles away has chopped off both hands and one leg from his goblin, who proceeds to bleed to death in a timely manner.

Given that my primary opponent is goblins, who tend to wear iron chain mail and iron helmets in this world. In others it's bronze or copper, and maybe breastplates instead of mail shirts, but it's still a body item and a helmet. So axes of any metal still work just fine for removing hands and feet. Chop off a goblin's hands and feet and he harmless, can't run away very fast, and will bleed to death before too long. Hammers on the other hand, also work well for disabling and immobilizing the typical goblin, but don't cause bleeding. So hammers have to keep pounding away, breaking fingernails, toenails, nose and ear cartilage until they finally manage to get a headshot. That seems to be the only way a hammer can actually kill something.

If you often end up fighting fully armored opponents, then the hammer would be very nice. Maybe some of the high-combat mods provide such opponents, but I never see them in vanilla.

Now, other sorts of things like forgotten beasts and megabeasts require other weapon considerations. It seems like big critters are best faced with spears. And FBs are best handled from a long ways away with crossbows to avoid their assorted nasty breaths/dusts/blood/spittle/vomit/body odor/flatulence. Cave-ins also seem like good weapons for FBs.

I'd nuke them from orbit if I could, but my smelters don't give me the option of smelting pitchblende. Forging rocket nozzles also seems to be missing in my worlds, too.

[Funk]

steel helm

steel mail and brestplate

steel leggings and highboots

steel gauntlets

and a good Leather Cloak.

blunt weapons are a mixed bag, thay need better blows to wound as only bones and joints count.
blades have better odds of cutting arteries and nerves even if the wound is only to the muscle.
a good helm can start cases of helm grinding

[thriftshopmusketeer]

Don'te even bother with iron or bronze blunt weapons. Use silver. It's by far the densest metal workable into weapons, and it's really not that useful for anything else. A squad of silver-equipped legendary hammer/mace lords turns a siege into Goblin Batting Practice.

[RadGH]

Well, I'm not 100% positive but I think even wearing cloth and leather clothing offers protection. And apparently you can equip more than one of the same type of item, as long as you do not exceed the item's permitted size for that body part.

Wearing 3 mail shirts seems rather cheesy though, so I have a more realistic uniform. I hope that doesn't sound roleplay-ey, in my defense I don't have enough steel to supply that many mail shirts to each dwarf (yet).

Melee Uniform:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cloth Shirt
Steel Mail Shirt
Steel Breastplate (Not made yet)
Leather Cloak

Steel Helm
Leather Hood

Steel Greaves
Leather Trousers

Leather Gloves
Steel Gauntlet

Cloth Socks
Steel High Boot

Steel Shield

Ranged Uniform:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cloth Shirt
Steel Mail Shirt
Leather Cloak

Bone Helm
Leather Hood

Bone Greaves
Leather Trousers

Leather Gloves
Bone  Gauntlet

Cloth Socks
Steel High Boot

Steel Shield (I don't know if they use it while shooting, but I'm sure they will when they run out of ammo)

I use a few pieces of bone because I ran out of steel when equipping my marksdwarves. Since they are ranged, they (theoretically) shouldn't need the armor as much as melee dwarves. I'm sure I'll regret saying that soon though.

I'm also holding off on the breastplate for two reasons. One, since it covers the most vital organs (except brain) I want it to be the highest quality, so I am training my armorers. Two, it does not offer protection to the upper arms or upper legs like mail shirts do. Until they are made though, my dwarves are at risk!

As for weapons, I have 3 hammerdwarves with copper war hammers, and 2 speardwarves with steel spears, and 3 marksdwarves with copper crossbows (since they are used as blunt weapons in melee).

[Lagslayer]

I don't bother with clothing. Too much of a hassle with all the bugs involved. I'll decorate the goblinite but that's pretty much it.

[khearn]

I set both my melee and archer uniforms to be steel. I also set the priority fr the squads so that the melee squads get first pick. You can do that by m -> e -> P, then selecting a squad, then selecting where in the list you want it to be. The top squad gets first pick of gear, then the next, and so on. So my elite melee squads get put atthe top, then training melee squads, then finally archers. If you allow partial matches in the uniforms (that's the default), then if you don't have a steel breastplate but do have a copper one, it will still be used. And if you have enough iron mail shorts for everybody, then everybody will have them.

In my current fort, I have no metal at all, so I bought a bunch of wood armor from the elves and made some leather bits as well. As I've acquired metal from trading or goblinite, the members of the top squads have claimed it and the lesser materials have worked their way down through the ranks. When i have a few bars of steel accumulated, I look down the lists and find the highest placed soldier with a non-steel piece of armor and make a few of those items. So my top melee squads are in all steel by this time, everyone else has iron mail shirts and helms, since the local goblins all bring them, the training melee folk have assorted metal stuff, but some of the archers still have a few wooden bits and pieces. Eventually everyone would have all steel, if I didn't keep expanding my ranks.

[Montague]

I haven't messed with marksdwarves much lately, but I remember in 40d my golden rule was to always give them lightweight armor over anything else. Since marksdwarves didn't spar, they never gained the armor skill and heavy armor would always slow them down and you want your guys shooting as fast as possible. Its not such a big deal to leave them with just leather since they should be behind melee soldiers or fortifications anyways. Then again, setting up a danger room in the shooting range will give them all the armor skill they could ever use, so its probably irrelevant now.

I'd use steel more often for equipping dwarves, but I like to save my best equipment for my adventurers when I abandon, and with the goddamn scattering that happens, I need to make more then a few sets in order to have any hope of finding the best gear, which will be laying around outside, in the caverns, ect.

[Sting_Auer]

I think I came up with a good almost all-iron uniform for organic forgotten beast fighting:


Iron helm, leather hood, leather armor, iron chest plate, iron chain mail, iron leggings, leather leggings, iron spear, copper shield.



Would this work well? The iron armor defends against physical attacks, the leather defends against blood and spittle and whatnot, and the spear is good because it can penetrate deep into the flesh.