Bay 12 Games Forum

Will caste requirements for different jobs/positions be introduced to civilizations at some point? This could have a lot of potential for modding, specifically. For instance, an insectoid civilization which has worker miners and soldier soldiers, or an amazonian kingdom which only allows females into the military and positions of power. I know this wouldn't be top priority, but is it on the easier side of things, or is it relegated to the "far future," if at all planned?

As mikekchar said it's more related to potential damage. You might think of squareness as your character's perception of how much damage your weapon will deal if you strike the target. Also, squareness is trying to take into account things like positioning of combatants, positioning of body parts, etc. All that is not usually very clear from just looking at the local map. So, you are getting a relative estimate of the end results, if. It's not a guarantee as that perception does not take into account the entire attack process.

The defender might dodge or parry making perceived squareness meaningless.

In your case reaching the point of the armor effectiveness check can render it meaningless. A "Very Square" attack on a lucky defender means you smack the armor squarely, the armor deflected the attack squarely, and no damage got through. A "Can't quite connect" attack on an unlucky defender means you get through the armor and deliver some hurt. I suspect the relatively low skill levels of the combatants you spawned are what's allowing the randomness factor in the armor check to dominate the results. Relatively low, as compared to such skills as most adventures quickly reach, or what militarized citizens obtain with even only a modest training program in fortress mode.

If nothing else your setup demonstrates how important armor is. Even the lower material quality iron armor is proving itself useful against a higher material quality steel weapon.

Now, feel free to chow down on a grain of salt. While my explanation might sound authoritative, I'm not (and am far from being) the resident expert on combat mechanics.

I thought I once read a post thoroughly detailing a step-by-step walk through of the melee attack process, highlighting the various interactions with lots of gloriously gory details as the player-base and community understand them. Even if I'm misremembering what never was someone ought to compile and post such. Such a guide might not reflect the exact algorithm Dwarf Fortress combat follows, but it would certainly help.

I have indeed heard that squareness affects damage, though it appears not to be through actual attack momentum, as momentum is more directly related to armor penetration.

I suppose that squareness as you suggest, might have to do with potential damage, but particularly in what the strike damages. Mayhaps a grazing strike, even if the momentum is quite high because of the attack type and weapon, will only damage surface tissues, and not any organs. Or perhaps it has to do with penetration, so that an attack which technically has enough momentum to bisect a creature will instead only get through half of it.

Anyways, just from the limited testing I did, it doesn't appear that squareness has a consistent effect on armor penetration at all, which seems to indicate its effect is secondary. Which, I suppose, makes some sense... but also doesn't. If a stab is squarely against armor, shouldn't it have a higher chance to penetrate? The other factors in penetration are otherwise completely invisible.

As for information on combat, these posts:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131995.135

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=142372.0

Seem to give the most information on how momentum and penetration work. But they appear to be, in large part, outdated, as my calculations of some equations seem to indicate certain attacks to be unable to penetrate, when they can do so consistently. But I may have missed something in how the equations work.

Anyways, your comment gave me some leads on what to test next for research on this subject, so thank you. I'm trying to work on a mod which introduces new weapons and armor, so I'm doing research in order to practically balance weapons and weapon attacks. For instance, I would want to make penetrating iron mail with an iron sword difficult, requiring a heavy attack, even then having a chance to deflect, and a small chance for that same iron sword to penetrate a steel mail shirt. In particular, it seems very difficult to figure out how exactly momentum and armor volume are connected, though they apparently are. The combat formula on the wiki appeared erroneous in that regard. But more testing is required, and variables must be isolated.

I'll probably try to bring this general subject up at the Future of the Fortress, especially if I can get some good practical data on how this stuff works.

Artifacts should have a chance to have various kinds of inscriptions carved upon them. For instance, a sword which has some short phrase, or random proverb or platitude, written somewhere on it, perhaps related to the creator's personality. I think this would do a lot to add flavor to artifacts.

They could also have some commemorative inscription, such as "in memory of (creator's friend or family)." Or even something relating to a worshipped deity.

These could have a lot of story-telling potential. They add another dimension to the personality expressed in each artifact.

Why wouldn't it be? You're not really going to use the whole side of the sword, else you'd lose a bunch of momentum. I assume the curved shape of the axe head figures in also.

Since contact area in a strike is determined also by how small the limb you're attacking is, the contact area of a edged attack only really matters if you're hitting a larger creature, in which case, having more is usually better as you can do more damage (and dismember limbs). So you're not going to be using the whole sword, or axe even generally. It just seems to me the contact areas are switched. The shortsword being 20,000 and the axe being 40,000.

A curved axe head actually decreases the contact area of a strike, which is partially why curved axe heads are used in various applications. It means that there's always a small contact area to start with with a strike, which makes it easier to penetrate, and the area then increases after penetration to allow more damage. The curve also means the strike is always going to hit squarely along that vertical axis, even if your axe is tilted forward or back a little.

I seem to have either run into an issue either with my own calculation of momentum and penetration using the formulas provided on the following page:

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Material_science#Attack_Momentum

Or otherwise, the formulas provided are obsolete, or simply wrong.

I calculated the momentum of a steel spear's stab like so, with an average human being the wielder: 1000/(1000000/70000 + 10*(1/3.14)) = 57.2395833333

Then I calculated the momentum required to penetrate an iron mail shirt, like so: ((155/430) + 21*(310/720))*12 = 112.825581395

There are bits left out of these formulas because they are irrelevant, particularly armor and weapon quality, which are 1, as well as the velocity multiplier of a stab, which is also 1, and so do not impact the formula whatsoever.

Now, as the momentum of a steel spear thrust is lower than the momentum required to penetrate an iron mail shirt, it shouldn't be able to pierce with a normal attack, right? Obviously not, a steel spear easily pierces, as I'm sure most of you would know, and testing easily proves that.

An additional observation is that if you calculate a battle axe's momentum using the same formula, you get a different result than is indicated in the table of momentums you would get with an average dwarf, that is: 85.574127907

This would indicate perhaps some inconsistency between the formulas, or some error on my part, but I am at a loss as to what may be the case. Can anyone see or tell me what the issue is here? Because obviously there's some error somewhere, and having reliable formulas for the use in modding custom materials and modifying existing ones is absolutely necessary, so if this is an issue with the formulas themselves then this is a major issue. I hope I'm the one who's made the error, and that I can simply be corrected.

Silver weapons are also common? About as copper is? Huh, I didn't think I'd seen that before. Maybe I just haven't played the game enough.

Bit of a shame. I was hoping to give some influence over rarity. I suppose I'll give it a value between iron and steel and hope for the best. And maybe cut out copper and silver as weapon materials, because honestly, that's a little silly for fully fledged civilizations to be using copper still for weapons, and very silly for anyone to be using silver so! And a little strange for it to be valued as highly as iron, too.

Quote from: Digganob on December 04, 2023, 09:48:52 pm

So theoretically, could a longsword and a spear both have the same minimum contact area when getting a very "square" hit in combat?

As far as I know, "squareness" has nothing to do with contact area. Theoretically, if both weapons were used to stab a body part with 20 or less contact area, they would both use that contact area, so yes, but that would be a very small body part.

Quote from: Digganob on December 04, 2023, 09:48:52 pm

So that the only major difference is the likelihood that they will actually get that minimum contact area?

The only major differences are that:

• the spear stab can go about 233% deeper
• a spear will very rarely ever sever a body part
• a long sword is 75% heavier, thus more momentum

You might be interested in the Sword v. Spear results (and that was a short sword)

I wonder what part of a strike "squareness" plays, then. The combat page on the wiki just indicates it increases "damage," but how it does so is apparently a mystery. I would have thought it would at least increase momentum or something else, as it is a representation of a strike's ability to carry out momentum into a target effectively, or else be another factor, but it doesn't seem to be factored into the combat formula at all. Strange indeed. I remember doing a test with iron spears VS iron chainmail, and I thought it strange how a perfectly square stab on the torso could not pierce, no matter how many times I tried. I suppose then that I would need to have a much stronger, skilled combatant to be able to pierce armor with a spear.

Ideally for my mod, it would be very possible, but difficult, to pierce same-material armor with stabbing weapons. Perhaps I should try messing with various values and see what can realistically be changed to achieve that kind of result, in the arena. Squareness not apparently affecting penetration is a bummer, though. I had the impression it was what made or broke an attack, for whether it penetrated, in those edge cases. That makes sense intuitively, and realistically after all. But alas.

That data is interesting, that you've sent me. I'll see about looking at those closely. It might help guide me with balancing.

Anyways, thank you for all the help. I don't know why, but a lot of the information on the wiki just seems to pass right through me. I appreciate help in parsing it.