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Author Topic: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics  (Read 11819 times)

Urist Da Vinci

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #15 on: October 02, 2013, 09:08:59 am »

Also for general interest:

IMPACT material properties are used in blunt protection calculation (doesn't boost damage)
SHEAR material properties are used in edged damage and edged protection calculation
TENSILE is used with shaking a creature after a bite latched
COMPRESSIVE is used with pinching/gouging wrestling moves
BENDING is used with joint lock wrestling moves
TORSION <unknown>

smjjames

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #16 on: October 02, 2013, 09:16:19 am »

Well, torsion is twisting, so maybe it's for when you twist a weapon in a wound?
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Walkaboutout

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #17 on: October 02, 2013, 04:44:18 pm »

This is interesting stuff, thanks for this info and for the patch too. I don't have a lot to add, beyond offering my thanks, except to comment on the Bronze Colossus, Platinum Maul, and Rabbit, issue.

While I didn't test that scenario, I'd like to point out similar experiences in-game with some war hammer wielding soldiers. I had this idea that I would replace Candy with Mithril, and then recreate Candy with heavier stats. It was, in this game, slightly heavier or maybe equal to (I don't recall perfectly what I set it at) gold. It was still otherwise inferior to platinum in weight considerations for blunt weapons.

What I noticed was, with some pretty well trained hammerers, who had at least average strength, I really did see quite a few glancing or bouncing blows, against armored targets and such. I was a bit disappointed in it all. It was still fun to have the differing metals, one for edged and one for blunt of course (though both materials would work nicely for edged too)...but still.

Any thoughts? Is that basically because, as this shows, weight just doesn't make THAT much difference as long as you aren't swinging around something as light as a cork? Or, in my case, is the deciding factor the strength and training of the dwarves with the hammers?

At any rate, thanks again for this info and patch. Awesome stuff, I love this sort of weapon science.
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smjjames

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #18 on: October 02, 2013, 06:27:45 pm »

Well, I kind of imagined the maul being wielded by the BC to be massive, so the rabbit would have exploded under it.

Maybe the glance is kind of like a barely missing, but you lightly clip the target? Also I didn't actually test against a properly armored target.
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Walkaboutout

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #19 on: October 02, 2013, 06:37:31 pm »

Well, I kind of imagined the maul being wielded by the BC to be massive, so the rabbit would have exploded under it.

Maybe the glance is kind of like a barely missing, but you lightly clip the target? Also I didn't actually test against a properly armored target.

I wonder if the BC's skill with that type of weapon begins to factor into the equation in this case? I imagine it does, because of course the whole point of this thread is just that there's so many different variables in these equations (which is awesome, haha).
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smjjames

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #20 on: October 02, 2013, 06:52:26 pm »

Well, I kind of imagined the maul being wielded by the BC to be massive, so the rabbit would have exploded under it.

Maybe the glance is kind of like a barely missing, but you lightly clip the target? Also I didn't actually test against a properly armored target.

I wonder if the BC's skill with that type of weapon begins to factor into the equation in this case? I imagine it does, because of course the whole point of this thread is just that there's so many different variables in these equations (which is awesome, haha).

Hm, maybe, which is something I should check out.
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Urist Da Vinci

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #21 on: October 02, 2013, 07:45:16 pm »

Well, I kind of imagined the maul being wielded by the BC to be massive, so the rabbit would have exploded under it.

Maybe the glance is kind of like a barely missing, but you lightly clip the target? Also I didn't actually test against a properly armored target.

I wonder if the BC's skill with that type of weapon begins to factor into the equation in this case? I imagine it does, because of course the whole point of this thread is just that there's so many different variables in these equations (which is awesome, haha).

The rabbit paws (feet), tails, and ears are only made of fur and skin. The game only checks the skin material when you hammer the rabbit paws, and doesn't check the bone material. The legs do have bones.

They don't appear to have skulls or brains, as I can bash them in the head with a very skilled human using a normal war hammer, and it only bruises the skin and sends them flying. They just bleed to death.

The bug is probably that Toady originally only had "vermin" creatures below body size 1000. Rabbits are size 500. Creatures larger than size 1000 appear to have proper body parts.

Zaroua

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #22 on: October 03, 2013, 12:02:53 pm »

...
Thank you for the info on what weapons I should equip my militaries with in this edition, it's most informative, I'll just have to remember that their days of awesome are numbered.

Weapon selection isn't THAT simple:

Edged weapons:
Choose weapon materials with a high SHEAR_FRACTURE and MAX_EDGE. Weapon quality matters as well. Due to the shear fracture difference, steel has a 2.3x easier job of severing someone's unarmored leg as an iron weapon. Adamantine is 69x better than iron and 161x better than steel (based on SF and max edge), but this is offset somewhat by the decreased weight and momentum of adamantine weapons. Your edged weapon can't cut materials that have better SHEAR properties than the weapon.

Don't use edged weapons with large contact areas on giant-sized creatures such as forgotten beasts. You end up placing shallow cuts across a large area. Stabby things are better there. Save the battle axes for man-sized targets. Picks are still better weapons than battle axes because of the velocity modifier.

Blunt weapons:
Pick a weapon with a high momentum and small contact area. I recommend war hammers. Weapon quality doesn't seem to matter here. If attacking something big and heavy with a small blunt weapon, your weapon needs to have a high IMPACT_YIELD and IMPACT_FRACTURE to not bounce off (but these material properties don't boost damage!). This prevents people from punching bronze colossuses with their meaty fists, I guess.

I've actually did some rough testing with all weapon types in a controlled environment and came to different conclusions. I created a "base" save in fort mode and had a particularly large and strong dwarf kill the same 10 trolls, 5 war cave dragons and one 80,000,000 sized giantess (10x the normal size, I mod the mega back into megabeast). I modded my game to give dwarves access to all weapon types and tested each weapon multiple times using only masterwork steel for each tested weapon. Obviously, this is for vanilla and not with your patch so things would undoubtedly change with the patch applied. Anyways, the results:


Picks are good for limb damage on trolls (severs, fractures, nerve dmg, etc) but not cage dragons or the giant. Picks are excellent at inflicting organ damage on body strikes, even tearing organs on the giant.

Maces have a small change of bruising and shattering against troll limbs, otherwise it's fractures; almost entirely useless for limbs against the dragons and the giant. For body hits, only bruises for all 3 target types and bruised organs didn't always cause secondary problems like vomiting or suffocation. Overall, the only way this weapon killed trolls/dragons/giant was through inflicting enough pain to make the target pass out and then bashing in the brain or tearing the spine to cause suffocation.

Warhammers were mostly the same as maces except that they had an easier time damaging limbs and were slightly more effective for body hits. Also noticeably more effective at finishing off the giant with headshots once the giant went down.

Morningstars and scourges behaved the exact same as maces and warhammers.

Mauls were completely useless. We're talking about a 7200 maxblood dwarf with 4438 strength wielding those things, too.

Flails were much better at shattering troll limbs, but each hit was either a shattered bone or a bruised muscle, about 65% shatter and 35% bruising. Replace shattering with fractures on the dragons and the giant. For body hits, it was the same as mace/hammer/morningstar, but flails were significantly worse at inflicting lethal headshots once the targets went down; but flails were also significantly better at inflicting pain and incapacitating the enemies than the other blunt weapons were.


Spears fractured/chipped bones and inflicted other nerve/ligament damage, also sometimes dismembered the trolls; same results on the dragons and giant but minus the dismemberment. Body shots always resulted in torn organs. In other words, spears pretty much disabled on the first hit either through function loss or pain.

Short swords slashes dismembered trolls limbs almost all the time, stabs inflicted heavy bleeding, on dragons there were still dismembered limbs and each hit still caused heavy bleeding and severed arteries, same on the giant minus the dismemberment.

Battles axes dismembered trolls or caused massive artery dmg on every hit, dismembered dragons frequently and still caused heavy bleeding but didn't cause a whole lot of damage besides light bleeding to the giant. Body slashes tore organs and severed arteries for all 3 targets, but battle axes had a hell of a hard time finishing off the giant with headshots once the giant passed out.

Pikes were the same as spears. Maybe they'd fair better than spears in the hands of a weaker dwarf.

Great axes sliced up trolls like those infomercial kitchen knives do vegetables. Dismembered the dragons often enough, otherwise caused serious bleeding. Sucked at doing limb damage against the giant though, only fat damage or nerve damage. Same as battle axes for body and head shots.

Great swords did the same limb damage as great axes. Unlike axes though, they managed to cut trolls in half some of the time and decapitated dragons every now and then. Stabs did great against the giant's body, but slashes were useless.

Daggers were all around useless.

I didn't test whips because of their lightsaber properties, seemed kinda pointless.


The biggest thing to point out though is that a candy great sword was able to cut war cave dragons in half about 10% of the time on  body shots, which is pretty freakin' awesome. Overall, my "research" pretty much concluded that spears are good for big things and axes are good for small things and that blunt weapons may as well be useless compared to stabbing and slashing weapons. These tests obviously don't help much in choosing which blunt weapon to use against modded invaders covered in steel, but it should give a decent idea on what to use in vanilla. Worth pointing out that once you get masterwork steel in fort mode, the only thing you need to worry about are bronze colossi and metallic/rocky FBs. In adventure mode, I'd stick to swords: sword and board for general adventuring with a backup greatsword for when you need to kill stuff fast.
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smjjames

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #23 on: October 03, 2013, 01:00:00 pm »

Daggers would still be useful in case you lose your primary weapon and have no other weapon available.

Did you test against more typical foes like goblins?
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Zaroua

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #24 on: October 03, 2013, 04:16:34 pm »

No all my goblins were from decades ago and all their clothes had rotted away so I felt it wouldn't be a very accurate test.
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Urist Da Vinci

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #25 on: October 03, 2013, 07:41:09 pm »

...
I've actually did some rough testing with all weapon types in a controlled environment and came to different conclusions.
...

Upon reading your post, I don't follow how your conclusions are different.

Zaroua

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Re: Patch for 0.34.11 momentum bug & notes on combat mechanics
« Reply #26 on: October 03, 2013, 08:13:10 pm »

Picks were mostly useless at inflicting limb damage on the cave dragons and the giant (keep in mind that my giant is sized 80 million, not the normal 8 million) while the battle axes and to a lesser extent, the short sword with its slash - the short sword stabs were pretty effective at tearing organs, think I forgot that part - were inflicting limb damage and the same body damage as picks did. Also spears, both in this test and from countless speardwarf-only forts, seemed to be especially apt at disabling targets through pain on the first strike - barring bad hand/foot hits - regardless of target size. Anyways, my conclusion is that short sword is the way to go for adventurers and spears > battle axes > picks is the way to go in fort mode for large creature while battle axe > pick = spear.

And unless I'm crazy, I do remember reading some strange logs where picks couldn't break through clothes. Or maybe it was scimitars. Either way, slightly different conclusion, if you'll excuse my pedantism.
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