Bay 12 Games Forum

Abstracting the UI and letting the end users make it would be the best solution.

As far as DF's UI being superior, I disagree.  Stronghold's UI is much nicer.  Cursor based into instead of info based cursor (I hate having to esc out of k to do v and then reposition the cursor).  Spending 20 min figuring out that a building can be forbidden and had to be reclaimed is lame, the color of the building could just be red to be forbidden and I would have instantly understood it.

This would let Stonesense be an interface to play the game.  The UI commands can be made via xml and focus on what you want instead of what Toady think is best (with all due respect, we disagree in some places and this is fine).

This is an excellent business move as well.  A graphical enduser UI will make DF much more popular and a bigger player base means more revenue.  If you dont like the graphics, use the ASCII interface.

Economic vs Range weapons - Both right.

There was no guarantee that the one peasant with succeed killing a knight with his crossbow before the knight got into range.  There is a reasonable level of certainty that 50 peasants (untrained) with crossbows could take down an armored knight.  The peasants and crossbows where cheaper by far.

Saying that it was an economic development might be true.  One could then ask what started that development.  Is it that a crossbow shortened the lives of the fighting nobility and the smart rulers saw the need for change and adapted first appearing to lead the trend?  Economics is very reactionary, meaning something else causes change, not economics itself.  Medevial society was very, very resistant to change, to the point of actively purging those who were not the norm.  Being a man-at-arms and acknowleging crossbows as deadly makes one look at how he can react to it.  That man-at-arms does give up his position in court because society would be better served by a different military.  Saying because the nobility funded the research does not mean they wanted to give up their positions in court.  The changes to society they wrought were done in self interest and self interest alone.  As the world view at the time was one where everyone had their place and any change was bad, if Charles the Bold of Burgundy had tried to change society, he would not have been viewed as the most chivalrous, as part of the code of chivalry is to maintain the current order.

Biggest case in point to how reactionary thought had been in the past can be shown with the lack of change in warfare from 1400 to 1900.  Even with the rising power of ranged weaponry, troops were always tighly packed.  This was exploited in 1400 because peasants were recruited to fire crossbows based on their reload speed, no accuracty (they just pointed in a direction and shot, farthest recorded kill for a crossbow was 5 miles it was a complete luck shot off a tower ontop of a cliff into an advancing army).  It took 500 years for people to figure out standing in the middle of a field is a bad idea if people are shooting at you.  Yes, this is very simplistic, but the point I am trying to make, the English had a hard time with the French and Native Americans in the mid 1700s because they did not "stand up and fight", and they still hadn't changed their tactics to fight WWI.

I would actually posit that society itself caused the unnecessary extension of the man-at-arms life.

Military hammer heads look like spikes (wiki is unclear on what a poleaxe is, it could refer to hammer/axe on one side and hammer/spike on the other).  The point is to concentrate the energy into a small area.  That energy will punch thru armor, funny enough, crossbows at medium range will do just that.  Most "blunt" weapons are covered in spikes or flanges for this very reason.

Deflections are largely based on angle of attack and a little based on the weapon.  Yes, even a blunt weapon will deflect.  If the attack is at a right angle to the armor, there is no deflection.  Therefore, NO armor defects perfectly.  Deflection works great, untill the energy of the blow causes the armor to deform and the edge cuts in.  Stiffened leather armor is less effective against edged weapons for this very reason.

Energy to make a small hole thru the armor is lots less then the amount needed to crush it.

Check out the estoc.  A thrusting sword made to slide into the gaps of armor made in the late middle ages.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoc. 

Thats hard to say.  In modern terms, things are really bullet resistant, not proof. 

Very few things are immune to attack (the concept of proof). IRL, if the USA can see it, the USA can kill it.  The only real protection is secrecy. 

We are talking about people wearing high quality armor.

At no point, EVER, would I fight without a helm in SCA combat.  It rates right up there with the cup as necessary equipment.

The point I was trying to makes was even with daily practice, I preferred a 4 lb sword.  To get those 100-300 shots in takes time and energy.  If I had to rest after every 3rd swing because I was tired from a 6lb sword, the training time would increase from a half hour a day to 2 or 3.  And yes, increasing the weapon weight by 50% is a huge deal.  And then there is associated muscle strains that come from using too heavy of a weapon.  Sword elbow anyone.

Living in combat is not about hitting hard.  It is about keeping control of you and your opponent.  If I have mobility and speed while my platinum wealding opponent does not, I get to dictate how the battle happens.  To the point of when the opponent can attack me.

Ned Kelly's armor - That was poorly made stuff (not evenly annealed and worked cold).  They were mounted.  Yes, I can get 1/4 steel and place it all over my body and be hard to hit.  And be hard to move.  If this were a successful tactic, it would be standard today.

A word about ancedotal evidence - Just because some armor might stop bullets, doesnt mean all should by any means.  Even the wood stick breaking my steel helm would have to ruled out (missing part of the story is it had wear).

Pell word and control - I suppose stopping might have been an idea to work on.  I have innate agression issues (very aggressive), so I focused on using the bounce doing multiple peices of tape in order... onside flat snap (first peice), offside snap (second).  Its rare the first shot kills, it usually is to setup a string of attacks... flat snap, offside, offside, deep butt wrap(leftie here).  One must always be prepared for the miss (instead of a bounce), I had a friend sprain her wrist cause I moved my sword out of the way.

Sword lenght.. eh I perferred a slightly longer sword... the tip could hit the ground... probably different now with the new fangled thrusters (yeah, its been a.. decade for me).

Blunt doesnt work right to penetrate armor.

The desired "crush" effect requires more energy to deform the armor, which would cause the deformation of the flesh benight, than to simply peirce it.

Imagine this:  Use a normal household hammer and hit the hood of a car.  The dent(deformation) is the total damage the flesh underneath is going to take.

Now take the same hammer, and get a 16p nail and use the same force to hit the nail in the hood.

The energy is the same, but the nail penetrated to its full depth, where the hammer might get an inch.  Simply add more energy to the hammer to get a bigger deformation, but that ramps up quickly.  I.E. to get a 2in dent with that hammer, I guess 4x the energy is required because more metal has to be deformed.  The nail, penetrating its full depth, does not get value out of more energy.

Over the top example - Armor Pirecing Discarding Sabot tank rounds.  This is a projectile that is designed to penetrate armor, and because it is physically hard to accelerate to the desired speed given is narrow width, they made designed it with something that falls off in-flight it could be bigger in gun.  The weight combined with the narrowness makes it the best tank to tank round out there.