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[coldmonkey]

Hello.

Now that introductions are done with I'll get straight to the point. I just had a dwarf make a Copper Breastplate artifact. It's kinda cool, menacing with spikes of copper and obsidian as it is. It's named Stesoklakish, "Moltenback". Obviously, this is one badass piece of equipment, but the thing is that I have quite alot of Masterwork Steel Breastplates littered all over the place.
According to the DF Wiki, Masterwork has an x2 armor deflection modifier while an Artifact has x3. Obviously that's higher. But which one is better, Steel x2 or Copper x3? By how much?
I did a Search but couldn't really find anything obviously relevant. So does anyone have some kind of chart for armor efficiency? Details like material and quality and how they compare to each other or something along those lines.

Anyway, thanks in advance (for being an entertaining forum if nothing else)!

Edit: Changed the Subject so nobody mistakes me for some kind of contributing poster.

[NecroRebel]

There's no strict numbers that are available. Precisely how weapons and armor interact is something only Toady knows. However, the general rule is that there's a hierarchy of materials, and a better material weapon will largely ignore a worse material armor, and vice versa.

Copper is the worst material that armor can normally be made out of, so a copper breastplate will basically only stop wood, silver, and copper weapons. Since it's so high-quality, it'll stop those pretty much any time they're targeted at the torso, but iron and better weapons will just pierce right through it. Steel, on the other hand, is second only to candy, and a masterwork breastplate has a very high deflection chance anyway, so it's the difference between stopping 90% of attacks from crap weapons and stopping 75% of attacks from anything enemies will wield at you. The MW steel is surely superior.

[coldmonkey]

Cheers for the reply, friend! And since I'm already at it, I may as well ask if this means that Moltenback is superior against beasts that aren't made out of materials that rate higher than copper weapons?

[Orky_Boss]

Cheers for the reply, friend! And since I'm already at it, I may as well ask if this means that Moltenback is superior against beasts that aren't made out of materials that rate higher than copper weapons?

I would assume, but I'm kinda new too, considering my longest lasting fort was 'boatproblom', which lasted two years, ending when I got to learn first hand what 'the circus' and 'clowns' meant.

[NecroRebel]

Cheers for the reply, friend! And since I'm already at it, I may as well ask if this means that Moltenback is superior against beasts that aren't made out of materials that rate higher than copper weapons?

Probably not, actually. Anything big enough to be a significant threat with your MW steel armor is going to be a significant threat with your artifact. When something is deflected, it's basically treated as a blunt attack, which means that blunt weapons basically ignore armor. Blunt attacks' threat level depends on their weight:contact area ratio, and their weight depends on their size. A very large creature has very heavy attacks, even for "edged" attacks that theoretically have a bad size:contact ratio; for instance, an elephant's tusks are inferior to copper armor, so will basically never pierce it, but they're so big that they're deadly anyway.

I'm... not very good at explaining that, I know. Basically, though, better material is superior to better quality, especially when it's a difference as large as that between copper and steel.

[coldmonkey]

No no, I got it down perfectly. I think, I mean, I may as well have misinterpreted. But basically, anything that has enough juice to punch through a MW Steel Breastplate with an edged attack will probably, if its attack is deflected by an Artifact Copper Breastplate, still pack a strong enough punch to do more than enough blunt damage straight through it anyway. Which makes it better to focus on protection against lower power attacks from higher quality weapons.
This has been very informative. My thanks.