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DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Silver vs Steel Warhammer Test
« on: February 11, 2020, 07:51:18 am »Bronze pickaxe vs iron pickaxe wouldn't be a bad test. Just for those really early fights, so you know which one is better to bring along for your initial tools.
Pick Axes are one of if not the most powerful native dwarf weapon on average or at least they were last time I checked. Back in the day I did a load of weapons testing and I remember some of the standouts being pickaxes and morning stars. It also really comes down to what you are fighting, but a legendary miner with a steel pick is one of the worst dwarves you can ever have go berserk. You can easily lose even highly skilled military dwarves in full gear to them.
Iron pickaxes are better than bronze if I remember correctly, but the difference is slight. Pickaxes are odd in that they use mining skill instead of weapon skill for combat calculations and although they are edged weapons their tiny contact area and high force multiplier make even picks made of soft metals somewhat effective against armored foes. Generally slashing weapons need to be made of harder metals and bludgeon weapons do better with denser ones. This still holds true with pickaxes, but its less of an issue due to their small contact area and heavy impact.
I don't have any old testing logs around anymore but there were a lot of interesting results. For instance I remember testing a bunch of equally highly skilled dwarves in full addy with battle axes against an equal number of naked dwarves with bronze or copper morning stars and the naked dwarves would win.
What prompted my testing originally was I witnessed a berserk legendary miner with a steel pick and civilian clothes kill like a dozen other dwarves including several of my fully geared military stand outs. That along with some other quirky observations such as just how lethal whip and morning star wielding goblins seemed to be compared to all the other gob trash made me decide to do a load of controlled tests in the arena.
Some general observations from back then were small contact areas on bludgeons and stabbing weapons are paramount. The above example in this thread really illustrates this well where we see the hammer actually performing similarly the mace which has almost twice the mass and should otherwise beat it hands down.
On slashing weapons it depends on the foe but generally your slashing weapons are there to remove heads and limbs so you want a large enough surface area and penetration to be able to cut through the targeted body parts. Against armored foes slashing weapons with large surface areas must absolutely be made with a harder metal than the opponent's armor.
Weapon weight and velocity multiplier are important stats that should not be ignored and penetration is extremely important on stabbing weapons vs large foes. A stabbing weapon is garbage if it can't reach deep enough to hit internal organs. Similarly stabbing weapons are trash vs anything that either lacks or doesn't need its internal organs like undead. The one exception to this rule is morning stars which are technically edged stabbing weapons with terrible penetration, but in practice most of the morning star's damage is done by the impact force like a blunt weapon. Although I haven't tested anything recently, what made morning stars lethal to dwarves and other armored foes was they are essentially heavier war hammers that do additional slashing damage so they cause all the same sorts of blunt trauma injuries as the hammer but they also open up arteries and sever nerves on top of it.