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Author Topic: Best armour setup  (Read 5636 times)

Hatty Hattington

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Best armour setup
« on: February 06, 2015, 02:40:12 pm »

So what is the best steel armour setup (so no candy)?
Like does wearing a chainmail under a breastplate help?
Stuff like that is what I want answered

Also I am playing 34.11
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2015, 02:45:04 pm »

Quote from: dorf wiki
Armor
1 x breastplate
3 x mail shirts
6 x cloaks
Armor (cheap)
6 x dress
3 x robe
3 x cloak

Legs
3 x long skirts
1 x greaves
Legs (no foreign items)
2 x trousers
1 x greaves
Legs (cheap)
2 x trousers
1 x leggings

Helm
1 x helm
6 x hood

Gloves
1 x pairs of gauntlets
1 x pairs of mittens
Gloves (cheap)
2 x pairs of gloves
1 x pairs of mittens

Boots †
1 x pairs of chausses
1 x pairs of high boots
Boots (no foreign items) †
1 x pairs of socks
1 x pairs of high boots
Boots (cheap)
1 x pairs of socks
1 x pairs of shoes
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Reelya

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2015, 02:52:07 pm »

Someone did a thread a little while ago where he tested different armor setups and found that the full version on the wiki was no better to a reduced version. That might be the most you can pile on, but there's little evidence that wearing all that is making a difference in combat.

It really depends how the combat system works. Does it test the hit against *every* worn item sequentially? That sounds unlikely to be the case given the FPS hit involved in the calculations. Does it have a calculated "armor value" that combines the defense of all worn items? I also think this is unlikely.

I think it's most likely the case that you want to get 100% coverage for each layer for each bodypart and the game isn't really taking into consideration all 6 cloaks every time you are hit. I think the guy in the thread found that dwarves heavily loaded with all the clothing layers did worse than dwarves with just armor layers, since they don't move very fast.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 03:00:59 pm by Reelya »
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Skullsploder

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2015, 03:03:10 pm »

It does check against every item, as in if you pit the full ubermax setup against the normal breastplate mail greaves boots etc., the ubermax will always win if they're equipped with weapons that can't slice the armour (as in swords and axes of the same material). I tested. But against anything else, meaning spears of the same or better material or hammers, the lite version wins because the weapons go straight through every layer anyway wihout losing force (probably a minor bug) so being weighed down lest wins.
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origamiscienceguy

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #4 on: February 06, 2015, 03:03:21 pm »

I tend to use:
1x mail shirt
2x high boot (trade with humans for these, or mod the game)
2x gauntlet
1x helmet
1x cloak

This covers every part of the body, yet is still very light compared to the wiki version. As your dwarves or adventurer gain armor user skill, you can add extra armor like greaves, breastplates, more shirts, etc.

If you don't want to use high boots, you can make low boots and greaves, but it is heavier.
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Reelya

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2015, 03:07:25 pm »

It does check against every item, as in if you pit the full ubermax setup against the normal breastplate mail greaves boots etc., the ubermax will always win if they're equipped with weapons that can't slice the armour (as in swords and axes of the same material). I tested. But against anything else, meaning spears of the same or better material or hammers, the lite version wins because the weapons go straight through every layer anyway wihout losing force (probably a minor bug) so being weighed down lest wins.

Have you tested specifically how much the # of cloaks affects things? Because a metal armor only dwarf will be missing items from most layers, which wouldn't rule out the idea that it's a per-layer check. If you keep all the inner layers the same and compare a 1-cloak dwarf to a 6-cloak dwarf that should definitely answer the question.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 03:09:55 pm by Reelya »
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Sadrice

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2015, 03:10:28 pm »

The exact mechanics of armor and armor penetration were worked out a while back by Urist da Vinci in this thread in the modding subforum.

Yes, attacks are in fact tested against each layer of clothing and armor, and then hair, then skin, etc before it penetrates deep into a creatures body.  However, there's some weirdness.  The thread is long and confusing, and I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I believe that if you wear 6 cloaks, and a cutting or piercing attack successfully cuts the outer cloak, it will automatically bypass all equivalent or lesser layers without losing momentum.  However, if it fails, and the attack is converted to blunt, I think that the 6 cloaks will help reduce the impact.

So I think clothing layering can help, but is not all that helpful.  Not really sure, though, since the mechanics are complex and counterintuitive in many parts.

Urist da Vinci's results are based on disassembly and analysis of the game code, rather than empirical testing in the arena, and so can be considered probably correct, or at least less prone to random error.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 05:11:22 pm by Sadrice »
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Larix

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #7 on: February 06, 2015, 04:30:11 pm »

I never stack layers on my military dwarfs and don't feel like i'm missing anything. My soldiers slaughter goblins like crazy and hardly ever get hit, so armour, apart from the helm, almost never gets to do anything. I don't see the point in weighing down the recruits, who have a hard enough time wearing a normal suit of metal armour without falling over, with three mail shirts _and_ a breastplate _and_ half a dozen cloaks. They may be reasonably safe from harm - because they'll never arrive at a battle scene while the fight is still going on.

mail shirt
helm
metal legwear
gauntlets
high boots
shield

that's enough real armour for one dwarf. Adding _one_ cloak to protect ears and noses is a good idea, everything beyond that is optional and makes no real difference if you actually train your soldiers.

Just empirically speaking, from training dwarfs and letting them fend off sieges.
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Skullsploder

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #8 on: February 06, 2015, 04:47:30 pm »

I can't be bothered to find my piss-poor old write up but in a little more detail:

the main thing I was testing was whether or not it was worth wearing an extra 2 mail shirts. Thus, I tested mail shirt, breastplate, greaves, gauntlets, helm, shield, and short sword against the same with 3 mail shirts. All combat skills in all fighters were grand master. I cycled through materials, but the whole suit was always of the same material.
the fights were 20v20, with 3 fights per material.
The wiki had informed me that mail shirts covered the most of any proper armour piece and were also the only proper armour piece you could wear multiples of (besides shields), so it seemed like something worth testing in (relative) isolation.

This test was conclusive: the more mail shirts you wore, the more guaranteed your survival. I noticed with searches of the logs that there was practically no difference in amount or severity of wounds received on any part of the body but the upper arms and necks: the only parts covered exclusively by mail shirts. The single shirts would get disabled by wounds to their necks or upper arms, pretty much every time. The single shirts didn't win a single fight.
However, the gap got smaller and smaller the lower-grade the weapons material was. With copper equipment about 4 multishirts would survive each fight, whereas with adamantine the multishirts lost one dwarf once.

And when I redid the tests with spears, it was pretty much even with single shirts slightly in the lead, while with hammers single shirts consistently won 2/3 (Except with addy hammers, where the multishirts dominated again).

When I tried everything again with novice skills, every result was similar but shifted significantly in the single-Shirts' favour. So the single shirts won the copper swordfight, and only lost narrowly in the others (except addy where they still lost significantly) while there was no competition at all with spears or hammers (except addy hammers, where multishirts still won).

Later I did a much less extensive series of tests testing the single shirt setup against the single shirt with max cloth layering. The results were an almost perfect draw. There was no significant trend towards better survivivability among the clothed at all. I only tested iron and steel at max and novice skills, and only leather clothing, but it was still enough to draw a conclusion:

TLDR CONCLUSION:
The best setup is a single mail shirt, breastplate, helm, and greaves, along with a pair of high boots and gauntlets. Clothing does not provide enough protection to bother with. Multiple mail shirts are useless against same-material spears and any hammers, slow down recruits and average soldiers tremendously, and are redundant when a single steel mail shirt is more than enough against any copper or iron (non-impact) weaponry.
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origamiscienceguy

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #9 on: February 06, 2015, 04:48:25 pm »

If you have high boots and a mail shirt, greaves aren't necessary.
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Skullsploder

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #10 on: February 06, 2015, 04:54:28 pm »

If you have high boots and a mail shirt, greaves aren't necessary.

Well no that's not true. Greaves are solid plate armour, whereas mail is flexible. This means that greaves can provide impact protection while mail shirts can't. Thus if you want maximum protection you do have to use greaves.
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origamiscienceguy

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #11 on: February 06, 2015, 09:18:19 pm »

Then your upper body is flexible too, so you would need a breastplate as well. By then it gets too heavy for my new recruits to use it properly.
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Sadrice

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2015, 09:45:11 pm »

So, assuming you're correct and speed is more important than protection for recruits, the best setup for low armor user skill would be: helm, mail shirt, gauntlets, high boots.  When they get to higher armor skill and are less limited by encumbrance, add on greaves and a breastplate.  Right?
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Bumber

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #13 on: February 06, 2015, 09:56:06 pm »

So, assuming you're correct and speed is more important than protection for recruits, the best setup for low armor user skill would be: helm, mail shirt, gauntlets, high boots.  When they get to higher armor skill and are less limited by encumbrance, add on greaves and a breastplate.  Right?
Will that give them a bad thought for missing pants? Consider a leather cloak for face protection.
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origamiscienceguy

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Re: Best armour setup
« Reply #14 on: February 06, 2015, 10:26:30 pm »

no, it wont. Mail shirts cover the important part.
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