Topic: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth (Read 3065 times)

Button · « **on:** June 17, 2013, 08:00:53 am »

tl;dr - shell, tooth and bone have identical combat stats, but in practice, shell can't pierce anything.

So I've been messing around with the shell, bone, and tooth materials in the process of cleaning up/streamlining NonconsensualSurgery's snails, and I think I've found something interesting.

Background info on the bone, tooth and shell material definitions: they're pretty much identical. Their densities in all states are identical; their important temperatures and spec heats are identical; their weapons-related properties are identical. The only differences in the raws are:

Bone	Tooth	Shell
[BONE] [ITEMS_BARRED]	[TOOTH]	[SHELL] [ITEMS_SCALED]

From my work on the snails, it looked like shell was considerably weaker as an attacking material than tooth was despite having identical stats; but since it was a creature created from whole cloth, I didn't trust the results.

At first I created arena-ready versions of bone, tooth and shell with the [IS_METAL] tag and set dwarves to fight each other; but this yielded no differences. But then, if the problem lay in the [SHELL] tag, would [IS_METAL] override that?

I therefore created the Shelltooth Python and Bonetooth Python, exact copies of the standard Python with one obvious difference each. After one trial was muddled by the CAN_LATCH tag (which I subsequently removed from all three), the results were clear:

Spoiler: Shelltooth vs Shelltooth Successful Bite Log (click to show/hide)

Attacks with shell do not pierce flesh.

I also did small control trials with bone and tooth, anticipating that I would have to do some statistical analysis, but Armok. No tearing at all. OK there was one tear but it was an internal tear of nose cartilage, caused by blunt damage.

I'm honestly not sure if this is intended behavior or not: there's nothing in the unmodded game that attacks with shell body parts, so it's hard to say. (Crustaceans and molluscs appear to use chitin exclusively for their attack parts.)

What do you think?

Spoiler: Shelltooth Python (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Bonetooth Python (click to show/hide)

And of course the body definitions used in creating them:

Spoiler: STANDARD_BONETOOTH_MATERIALS (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: STANDARD_SHELLTOOTH_MATERIALS (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: STANDARD_BONETOOTH_TISSUES (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: STANDARD_SHELLTOOTH_TISSUES (click to show/hide)

Mel_Vixen · « **Reply #1 on:** June 17, 2013, 10:36:59 am »

Quote from: Button on June 17, 2013, 08:00:53 am

Background info on the bone, tooth and shell material definitions: they're pretty much identical. Their densities in all states are identical; their important temperatures and spec heats are identical; their weapons-related properties are identical. The only differences in the raws are:

Toady is always happy to receive (well sourced) numbers for the properties of different materials since some of them are place-holders. If you know or find something you can PM him and he might incoorporate it. This way those materials might diversify

slothen · « **Reply #2 on:** June 17, 2013, 10:49:30 am »

Quote from: Heph on June 17, 2013, 10:36:59 am

Quote from: Button on June 17, 2013, 08:00:53 am
Background info on the bone, tooth and shell material definitions: they're pretty much identical. Their densities in all states are identical; their important temperatures and spec heats are identical; their weapons-related properties are identical. The only differences in the raws are:

Toady is always happy to receive (well sourced) numbers for the properties of different materials since some of them are place-holders. If you know or find something you can PM him and he might incoorporate it. This way those materials might diversify

He would still have to change the system moderately (although all doable through raws) to institute, at the very least, various tiers of shell, tooth/bone, and leather/skin. Also, I don't recall how thickness is implemented currently. Does an elephant get thicker skin by virtue of its body size? Or is it the same as chipmunk skin. There's also the issue of pain resistance, I recall an infamous test where 3 hoary marmots nibbled an elephant to death in the arena because the pain inflicted caused the elephant to pass out permanently, and it eventually bled to death through skin tearings.

Button · « **Reply #3 on:** June 17, 2013, 11:31:22 am »

Quote from: Heph on June 17, 2013, 10:36:59 am

Quote from: Button on June 17, 2013, 08:00:53 am
Background info on the bone, tooth and shell material definitions: they're pretty much identical. Their densities in all states are identical; their important temperatures and spec heats are identical; their weapons-related properties are identical. The only differences in the raws are:

Toady is always happy to receive (well sourced) numbers for the properties of different materials since some of them are place-holders. If you know or find something you can PM him and he might incoorporate it. This way those materials might diversify

Ugh, sorry for the confusion/lack of clarity in the OP. This isn't a "shell doesn't behave this way in real life!!111" post - I don't interact with real life, I play Dwarf Fortress!

The point I was trying to make is that materials with near-identical raws are behaving very differently from each other in an unexpected way. I have edited the OP to cut to the chase for ~~people who don't care about the discovery process~~ people who are, rightfully, less impressed with me than I am.

Mel_Vixen · « **Reply #4 on:** June 17, 2013, 11:43:32 am »

Quote from: Button on June 17, 2013, 11:31:22 am

Ugh, sorry for the confusion/lack of clarity in the OP. This isn't a "shell doesn't behave this way in real life!!111" post - I don't interact with real life, I play Dwarf Fortress!

The point I was trying to make is that materials with near-identical raws are behaving very differently from each other in an unexpected way.

I got that

and its interresting. Actualy i thought the shells should be more dangerous because they can be sharp as hell.

I made my comment thought because you as student of ecology might have access to some researchdata to get the actual values.

Quote from: slothen on June 17, 2013, 10:49:30 am

He would still have to change the system moderately (although all doable through raws) to institute, at the very least, various tiers of shell, tooth/bone, and leather/skin. Also, I don't recall how thickness is implemented currently. Does an elephant get thicker skin by virtue of its body size? Or is it the same as chipmunk skin. There's also the issue of pain resistance, I recall an infamous test where 3 hoary marmots nibbled an elephant to death in the arena because the pain inflicted caused the elephant to pass out permanently, and it eventually bled to death through skin tearings.

If you look through the raws toady often uses in the material_template_definition the average specimen. Thus the melting point for vegetable-oils is [MELTING_POINT:9978] although the comment to that states the various kinds are "all over the map". There are variation tags that you can stick to creatures and such to set/update the properties of your template material iirc. Right from the top of my had i can remember that the melting points for the dragon-bones was set up above normal and below dragon fire.

So if the skin of animal X is more tensile that that of animal Y that variation should be stuck to the animal. I am not big on modding though so take that as grain of salt.

Button · « **Reply #5 on:** June 17, 2013, 12:00:30 pm »

Quote from: Heph on June 17, 2013, 11:43:32 am

Quote from: Button on June 17, 2013, 11:31:22 am
Ugh, sorry for the confusion/lack of clarity in the OP. This isn't a "shell doesn't behave this way in real life!!111" post - I don't interact with real life, I play Dwarf Fortress!

The point I was trying to make is that materials with near-identical raws are behaving very differently from each other in an unexpected way.

I got that and its interresting. Actualy i thought the shells should be more dangerous because they can be sharp as hell.

I made my comment thought because you as student of ecology might have access to some researchdata to get the actual values.

I'm not actually, that was NonconsensualSurgery. I'm just a lowly code monkey who happened to find his abandoned snails on an archive trawl

.

Telgin · « **Reply #6 on:** June 18, 2013, 07:26:00 am »

Quote from: slothen on June 17, 2013, 10:49:30 am

Does an elephant get thicker skin by virtue of its body size? Or is it the same as chipmunk skin.

Because of the relative thicknesses of tissue layers, elephants should have thicker skin than most animals. The absolute thickness thus scales up with size, even if the relative thickness does not.

However, having said that I'm pretty sure that the leather produced by all animals is identical aside from name. So, elephant leather is no different from badger leather. I know there are some mods that seek to fix this with tiered leather systems, but a code based implementation that varies the leather properties is what's really needed.

Urist McDwarfFortress · « **Reply #7 on:** June 18, 2013, 04:41:40 pm »

Quote from: Button on June 17, 2013, 11:31:22 am

I don't interact with real life, I play Dwarf Fortress!

Urist Da Vinci · « **Reply #8 on:** June 18, 2013, 08:03:51 pm »

You set [ADD_MATERIAL:TOOTH:SHELL_TEMPLATE] and [ADD_TISSUE:TOOTH:SHELL_TEMPLATE]. However, the shell tissue template refers to the SHELL material on the creature, which is undefined, causing the teeth to have undefined combat properties.

Quote from: tissue_template_default.txt

[TISSUE_TEMPLATE:SHELL_TEMPLATE]
   [TISSUE_NAME:shell:NP]
   [STRUCTURAL]
   [TISSUE_MATERIAL:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SHELL]
   [RELATIVE_THICKNESS:2]
   [HEALING_RATE:1000]
   [CONNECTS]
   [TISSUE_SHAPE:LAYER]
   [SETTABLE]
   [SPLINTABLE]

My independant testing of the materials finds that the materials with identical combat properties behave identically as expected, even if some of them have [SHELL] and others don't.

Button · « **Reply #9 on:** June 19, 2013, 06:19:49 am »

I

feel remarkably silly right now.

News:

Author Topic: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth (Read 3065 times)

Button

Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

Mel_Vixen

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

slothen

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

Button

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

Mel_Vixen

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

Button

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

Telgin

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

Urist McDwarfFortress

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

Urist Da Vinci

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth

Button

Re: Materials Science: Shell vs Bone and Tooth