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[dwarfhoplite]

Which weapons dorfs can wield only 2h? which with shield in other hand? and which dorf can not wield at all?

I'm a dumbass.

[Pan]

Wait, the quality of non masterwork weapons and armor don't matter? But on the wiki, it says that well crafted to exceptional are better than standard, and masterworks are better than both.

And it also says whips are good against unarmored targets... Someone should update it.

[Elisebambi]

Just throwing this in real quick as I don't pretend to have fully grasped the combat calculations. I believe the wiki entry on armor states that against heavily armored opponents, blunt attacks are very effective as they will ignore the fact that they can't pierce the armor and instead cause crushing injuries. That is of course, provided that the weapon is of high mass.

In short, mix up your forces since there's no all-purpose Dwarven Nuke Hammer.

*scribbles raws for pitchblende maul*

Related: I make all my atom smashers out of pitchblende

[tmrt]

Just throwing this in real quick as I don't pretend to have fully grasped the combat calculations. I believe the wiki entry on armor states that against heavily armored opponents, blunt attacks are very effective as they will ignore the fact that they can't pierce the armor and instead cause crushing injuries. That is of course, provided that the weapon is of high mass.

In short, mix up your forces since there's no all-purpose Dwarven Nuke Hammer.

*scribbles raws for pitchblende maul*

Related: I make all my atom smashers out of pitchblende

For roleplaying purposes it's better to dump a single pitchblende block (representing enriched uranium) to the smashing area every time you erase something from the plane of existence with an atom smasher. Just makes more sense.

[UristMcHuman]

Try and get as many scimitar-wielding corsair dorfs as possible. I've used a scimitar in adventurer mode and it seems that they have a much greater chance to sever an arm or a leg or a head.

Or mod the game to let your dorfs make human weapons like long swords or scimitars or halberds or pikes and other crap.

[Alastar]

I've done a fair amount of weapon testing, and unfortunately a lot of half-truths get repeated endlessly. For one thing, whips are almost but not quite entirely unlike lightsabers.
They're still better than they should be: the game calculates the impact of ~1kg of rigid metal moving at supersonic speeds, rather than just a bullet-like tip accelerated by the rest.

*

Despite the modeling quirk, whips aren't something to wield in numbers in the unmodded game. Their main advantage is that they almost ignore armour, and that they can be decent at impairing (not killing) tough material beasties. Against softer targets, a good blade will perform better; whips are equalisers rather than the ultimate weapon.
Lashers are barely favoured against naked miners, but they remain a threat to candy-clad champions who laugh at almost everyone else.

Morningstars concentrate a lot of force (decent size, high velocity) in a very small point. As such, they penetrate steel armour quite handily regardless of their own material and are more lethal than blunt weapons despite not penetrating very far.
Very dangerous to our dwarves, and if we need dedicated can openers they're worth using over hammers, maces and even whips.

Scourges have the same contact area and velocity, but are smaller and penetrate even less deeply. They're not very lethal but capable of causing grievous wounds through armour... and very overrated as a consequence (an instakilled dwarf may be written off as bad luck, one missing all the small bits hammers it home that the weapon defeats our armour consistently).

Daggers hedge their bets quite successfully: The slashes are weak but any slash is an asset against unarmoured civilians. Their extremely fine stabs get through most armour despite not having much force behind them, and twice the penetration depth of morningstars means that they may actually hit something important.

Long swords do the same for the other end and would be great weapons for dwarves above average size: wide slashes to utterly butcher soft targets, respectable stabs to kill harder targets that axes would struggle with. The only problem is that blades with a large contact area really require a decent weapon material to shine.

*

The others aren't terribly interesting: Scimitars are an almost exact short sword clone, flails suck (large contact area makes them relatively poor can openers and blunt weapons are outclassed for everything else) and even if our dwarves can wield the big stuff, it's not worth giving up a shield.

[dwarfhoplite]

How to know if dwarf is big sized? is there an attribute for height in dwarf's "personal menu" If dwarf is incredibly fat does it mean he's more likely to wield big weapons

[Lexx]

Lashes, whips, scourges and flails can be fun to have in a squad. As said above not one to field en-mass but the ability they have to maim/cause pain allowing more lethal weapons to finish an enemy off can work very well in combat. More a class of support weapons I'd say.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Why is there any concern over unarmored enemies? If they aren't armored, anything will kill them anyway.

Personally, I consider whips bugged and in my games I mod them to be significantly less effective. They're basically lightsabers, it's ridiculous.

[Sutremaine]

Despite the modeling quirk, whips aren't something to wield in numbers in the unmodded game. Their main advantage is that they almost ignore armour, and that they can be decent at impairing (not killing) tough material beasties. Against softer targets, a good blade will perform better; whips are equalisers rather than the ultimate weapon.

Against your steel-smothered dwarves they're an equaliser. Against enemies whose only armour is helms, upper body armour, and a shield, their specialisation don't apply to many body parts. On the other hand, their ability to both sever and crush probably provides a nice mix of bleeding damage and control through pain.

How do they do against shell, or creatures modded to have tough outer layers (eg. illithids)?

[franti]

Arguably, due to its incredibly small contact point, high sharpness, and high velocity, not to mention the criticals, the humble spear is the best weapon for use against both armoured and unarmoured. I recomend parring it with a buckler: buckler can be used to swing.

Most fights with my Talented Speardwarves VS Goblin go like this:
The Spear severed a hand! The Spear stabbed the goblin in the gut! The Goblin retches! The Spear stabbed the Goblin in the head, tearing the brain!

[Alastar]

@ Dr. Hieronymous Alloy, Sutremaine:

Performance against barely armoured opponents still matters. An adamantine-clad dwarf with a silver whip doesn't have much of an advantage against a goblin with a silver whip. Other blunt weapons, daggers and morningstars also remain dangerous.

A masterwork adamantine (or even steel) blade will give the goblins less time to land a crippling blow and also kill many beasties more quickly.
Not sure about hard-shelled monsters - I only tested extensively against fleshy things and bronze colossi.

*

@ franti: Spears don't have a high velocity multiplier, contact area is small but not incredibly so... several foreign weapons have us beat there (daggers, morningstars, scourges) and are consequently better can openers.
As of 31.x, criticals no longer exist either.

Still, I agree that they are adequate general purpose weapons.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

@ Dr. Hieronymous Alloy, Sutremaine:

Performance against barely armoured opponents still matters. An adamantine-clad dwarf with a silver whip doesn't have much of an advantage against a goblin with a silver whip. Other blunt weapons, daggers and morningstars also remain dangerous.

Ok, I can see the point that with highly lethal yet fragile & unarmored enemies, a quick kill might matter. I've modded whips to more "rational" values (as per here: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2712&nbn=13 ) so I don't have that concern, but since I also don't use danger rooms to train blocking, goblin archers still present lots of potential lethality.

In my current fort, I have a mix of ten axe dwarves, five spear dwarves, and three squads of hammer/crossbow dwarves (two of which are set to archery and one hammer at any one time, so they build defense skills as well).
In general combat, the axe dwarves are by far the most lethal, but the spear dwarves seem much better at taking out forgotten beasts (perhaps due to the increased penetration? Although my sample size so far is admittedly small).

[RAKninja]

Why is there any concern over unarmored enemies? If they aren't armored, anything will kill them anyway.

Personally, I consider whips bugged and in my games I mod them to be significantly less effective. They're basically lightsabers, it's ridiculous.

never had to fight trolls or ogres?  aside from the broken robes and cloaks of large creatures acting as better armor than steel (due to large size, impact gets absorbed by the whole thing)  they are not quite as susceptible to a whipping as are things wearing metal armor.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Why is there any concern over unarmored enemies? If they aren't armored, anything will kill them anyway.

Personally, I consider whips bugged and in my games I mod them to be significantly less effective. They're basically lightsabers, it's ridiculous.

never had to fight trolls or ogres?  aside from the broken robes and cloaks of large creatures acting as better armor than steel (due to large size, impact gets absorbed by the whole thing)  they are not quite as susceptible to a whipping as are things wearing metal armor.

Not sure I follow -- I don't assign whips to my dwarves, those are orc weapons . Trolls as such never give me much of a problem, they seem to fall to my axe and spear dwarves just fine. Haven't run into any ogres yet in 31.25.

 As programmed currently in the raws, whips are clearly bugged -- they act as if the whole weight of the metal whip was travelling at supersonic speed.  If there's going to be a steel-and-candy-clad-champion killer weapon, it should be the crossbow, not the whip (and the crossbow *can* do exactly that, if the steel-clad defender isn't a skilled shield user).  When I spend five years or more of game time training my warriors without using a danger room, and go to the additional trouble of encasing them all in all-masterwork gear, having a single squad of lashers kill off the entire military is ridiculous. At least with crossbow/archer goblins, I can defeat them with careful positioning, use of l-bends, etc. Lashers are just broken.

(For reference, I'm using the values suggested in the prior thread -- [ATTACK:BLUNT:10:10:lash:lashes:NO_SUB:2000] ). That may actually be a little weak, but I don't know enough about how the system works to calculate a "better" value, I just know that that seems to give more reasonable results.