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[misko27]

And you get especially weird things if it's travelling near the speed of light. 

!!*Relativistic Whip*!!

Urist McUnluckyBastard has died in a thermonuclear explosion.

c.f http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

(Remamber: XKCD is relevant to everything! )



Oh, and on that brief diversion about ranged weapons, I remember someone recently doing a vast amount of spade-work regarding the archer and crossbow skills, or some such, which I think showed that there was rate of fire issues with Lengendary guys such that they'd expend more ammo because they'd still have more bolts in the air even after one of their first shots had successfully killed the opponent.

So according to that, throwing balls at the speed of light is not a viable baseball tactic

[Drazinononda]

So according to that, throwing balls at the speed of light is not a viable baseball tactic

It depends. Are you good enough at the sport to actually care about winning, or are you just trying to get the other team to give up and go home?

[misko27]

So according to that, throwing balls at the speed of light is not a viable baseball tactic

It depends. Are you good enough at the sport to actually care about winning, or are you just trying to get the other team to give up and go home?

Well, I suppose if you bribe the opposing pitcher, the bases are loaded, the score it is tied and it's the bottom of the ninth, you would, in fact, win. However, this is a quite unlikely set of circumstances.

[Drazinononda]

Well, I suppose if you bribe the opposing pitcher, the bases are loaded, the score it is tied and it's the bottom of the ninth, you would, in fact, win. However, this is a quite unlikely set of circumstances.

Given that we're discussing relativistic pitching, I don't think "unlikely" has any meaning here.

[Kumis]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urumi
I feel like this needs to be thrown in there.

[Alastar]

Why? An edged weapon that'd have a moderately large contact area is definitely not what DF considers a whip.

[Loud Whispers]

Why? An edged weapon that'd have a moderately large contact area is definitely not what DF considers a whip.

Definitely? No. It's hard to say what DF considers a whip because what DF considers a whip breaks through God-metal.

[pisskop]

Hear me out...  What if we modded the whip to weigh less?  I can't think of too much to bar this as a work around... unless whips are unmoddable.

[Alastar]

Pops up again and again - quirks result from modeling limitations.

The RAWs aren't wrong as such, but the game makes certain assumptions for its calculations - namely that the weapons are rigid, that the entire weapon moves at the speed of the business end and that it'll be made out of only one material.
In the case of whips, that means roughly 1kg of supersonic metal hitting point on, making them equivalent to rather large (40mm-ish) autocannons.

Mod size to 1 or 2 and you have a decent approximation of a metal-tipped whip: We don't even care what the rest of it is made of, it just exists to accelerate the bullet-like tip and doesn't add its mass to the force of the blows. These remain very good at disabling through pain but don't punch through heavy armour.
If you assume it to be a chain whip, contact area and size will both be larger but and the extreme speed is slightly dubious.

@ pisskop: So yes, use "effective size for impact calculations" rather than "total size" and everything is well again.
@ Loud Whispers: See above. Nothing special about whips as defined by DF, just a limitation of the modeling.

[Loud Whispers]

Except that we don't have descriptions of whips at all. We might have it entirely wrong and DF whips actually look like chainswords. Which would kinda make more sense.

[Drazinononda]

Why? An edged weapon that'd have a moderately large contact area is definitely not what DF considers a whip.

Definitely? No. It's hard to say what DF considers a whip because what DF considers a whip breaks through God-metal.

Except that we don't have descriptions of whips at all. We might have it entirely wrong and DF whips actually look like chainswords. Which would kinda make more sense.

Regardless of the whips' structure, style or design, the raws give us some insight into the nature of whips in vanilla DF: they are blunt weapons with a contact area of 1 cm, size of 100 cm^3 and a velocity multiplier 2.5 times that of all other blunt weapons in the game (with the exception of flails, which being a chain weapon themselves are apparently modeled similarly). So regardless of whip performance in game, we can say with assurance that they are closer to a chain whip than an urumi.

Due to the ease of modifying the size of whips (by altering the [SIZE] token for them in item_weapon.txt -- they're the first weapon on the list in vanilla raws) and the well-supported case that this change would manipulate the game mechanics in a way appropriate to creating a more realistic simulation, I recommend this change as a solution to the current whip overpower problem.

Additional question: is the "penetration size" attribute measured in centimeters, or what? If it is, then that value should be changed in the raws as well: even against skin, a metal whip wouldn't penetrate to 2.5 inches deep. Presumably.

[Kumis]

As for the DF whip not looking like an urumi, so? It's just nice to throw it in there and I find it quite a nice solution for how you could have a whip made of steel in a game of DF.
Another option would be a flicky, flicky foil.

Maybe it'd make a lot more sense if Toady had two different weights for each weapon, a hauling weight and a damage weight. This'd be good for whips or anything on a chain.

[Alastar]

To my knowledge, penetration depth currently has no effect on blunt weapons at the moment. Looks like 0.01cm per point to me (spear 1m, battle axe 60cm, dagger stab 10cm, whip 0.1cm which seems a little low).
May be in for blunt weapons some day, allowing whips to play merry hell with skin and nerves without touching deeper bits.

Splitting the weight seems the easiest way to account for flexible weapons, unless there's something more clever in the works I'm all for that.