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[ImagoDeo]

Shields are best made out of copper. Material doesn't matter for blocking, and weight doesn't matter for potential encumbrance when the rest of your gear is so light

I understand your premises, but not your conclusion. Why not just wooden shields?

Copper at least has a decent density in case your dwarf decides to bash something with the shield. Adamantine and wood aren't nearly so heavy and won't do as much damage.

Here you go.

Thanks!

[doublestrafe]

Shields are best made out of copper. Material doesn't matter for blocking, and weight doesn't matter for potential encumbrance when the rest of your gear is so light

I understand your premises, but not your conclusion. Why not just wooden shields?

The weight of the shield determines how hard dwarves smack enemies with it, when they decide to do so. Heavier is therefore better.

[smjjames]

How good are adamantine spears? I figure they'd be ultra-sharp.

[BoogieMan]

Why no adamantine breastplates? Just to conserve the material costs?

[Sutremaine]

Yup, copper shields are the best thing you can mass-produce. If a dwarf is wearing a bunch of steel they might be pushed over the encumbrance limit by the weight, but if they're wearing adamantine then they have plenty of capacity. Once the encumbrance limit is reached, speed drops quite quickly with even a little extra weight.

Adamantine spears will indeed be very sharp, and will poke through steel or lesser armour incredibly well. On the other hand, so will any other adamantine weapon.

The breastplates are left off to save on material, yes. The mail shirt will give you a layer of adamantine. I think that anything that can kill a dwarf wearing full adamantine sans a breastplate would be able to kill them just as well with the adamantine breastplate, but I'd be happy to see any evidence to the contrary.

[dahn]

I presume the reason for not using Adamantine for the breast plates is because they'd be crap at deflecting an attack from a blunt weapon?  Steel being better for this.  I read this somewhere :-/

As for the shields, I thought wood would be better, but seeing that it could be used as a weapon then Steel or Iron should be the choice, not Copper.  The reason being that the mass of Copper is higher than Steel.  Other than availability of the resource, copper has no benefit over Steel/Iron.

Assuming I'm not talking a complete load of *whistles* then without layering, Adamantine would be best used as follows:

  - Mail Shirt   (6 * Adamantine wafers)
  - Breastplate   (3 * Steel bars)
  - Helms   (2 * Adamatine wafers)
  - Gauntlets   (2 * Adamatine wafers)
  - Leggings   (5 * Adamatine wafers)
  - Greeves   (6 * Adamatine wafers)
  - High boots   (2 * Adamatine wafers)
  - Shield   (1 * Steel/Iron bars).

Adamantine used here is 23.  So slap in an Adamantine battle axe (4 wafers) and all is peachy.  Enough to kit out 27.7 dwarfs.

[Larix]

As for the shields, I thought wood would be better, but seeing that it could be used as a weapon then Steel or Iron should be the choice, not Copper.  The reason being that the mass of Copper is higher than Steel.

For shield bashing, only weight should matter - i.e. copper should be slightly better than other metals, but it's still about 98% irrelevant, since shield bashes are a very weak blunt attack. Even with a metal shield, they'll be barely more efficient than a bare-fisted punch and it's a very rarely chosen attack anyway. If your priority is cheap production and low encumbrance, use wood or leather, if you must be wary of fire-wielding attackers, use whatever metal is plentiful (can be adamantine, which is very fire-proof _and_ light). Optimising for shield bashes should almost never be a concern.

  - Leggings   (5 * Adamatine wafers)
  - Greeves   (6 * Adamatine wafers)

According to the wiki, leggings and greaves are both [SHAPED], so cannot be worn with each other. A mail shirt and high boots already cover all of the lower body among them, so the most attractive choice are greaves, which should offer extra protection against blunt attacks.

Adamantine is a great armour material, but not spectacularly better than steel, so i tend to emphasise weapons and trap components. With 750 raw, you can of course equip a dozen soldiers in all blue and arm a dozen traps with three serrated discs each, and make a dozen each of every edged weapon and still have some left to play with.

[kiwiphoenix]

Just a thought.
If you're making mail shirts (body + upper legs) and high boots (feet + lower legs), then why not do steel for the leggings/greaves?
You'll still have a full layer of adamantine, and can save 5-6 wafers. Might help stretch your existing supply.

[TheDarkStar]

If you're trying to split stacks of adamantine stuff for remelting, use stacks of coins instead or arrows.. Making coins give 1 stack of 500; split these up through selling or buying them by low numbers (like one at a time) to get 50 bars out of the 1 used. Macros work well for this; if you have a skilled enough trader, you can trade just fine for things of equal value. Get one coin sold to them, and then trade 1 for 1 over and over. At the end, rebuy anything left. It works well with multiple stacks, too; just sell 1 from each stack for a single one from the depot and then rebuy things.

Of course, some people consider this cheating.