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[vjmdhzgr]

* Armor User - controls armor movement penalities. At legendary, the weight of armor is negated. Also appears to control the chance of something glancing off (this is a relatively recent change). Levels up at a glacier speed, though dwarves DO give armor demostrations; four years of training which had everything at Legendary+5, and armor user was still at 6 ...

When was that glancing off chance added? Also in my experience armor user trains up far faster after giving them full armor, though still quite of slowly.

In my current fort, I just spotted Give Armor Demostration. Guess they do teach that skill by demostrations. Now if there was just a way to keep them doing that.

When was the glancing off chance added though, and where did you hear of it from? I'm quite curious as I had always heard that armor user had no effect on the armor's effectiveness, and if it does than there's some significant potential effects from that I really want to be aware of.

[NCommander]

* Armor User - controls armor movement penalities. At legendary, the weight of armor is negated. Also appears to control the chance of something glancing off (this is a relatively recent change). Levels up at a glacier speed, though dwarves DO give armor demostrations; four years of training which had everything at Legendary+5, and armor user was still at 6 ...

When was that glancing off chance added? Also in my experience armor user trains up far faster after giving them full armor, though still quite of slowly.

In my current fort, I just spotted Give Armor Demostration. Guess they do teach that skill by demostrations. Now if there was just a way to keep them doing that.

When was the glancing off chance added though, and where did you hear of it from? I'm quite curious as I had always heard that armor user had no effect on the armor's effectiveness, and if it does than there's some significant potential effects from that I really want to be aware of.

I read it in other Bay12 threads, and a search show a few passing references, but I can't actually find a definitive science thread on it. I'll strike it from the article once I'm awake enough to safely edit the wall of text.

[oasis789]

If wrestlers are throwing when sparring, probably not a good idea to train near any open stairwells or pits then.

Will furniture in barracks cause issues? That is, will dwarves get hurt when thrown into tiles with weapon racks, armor stands and the like?

[Skullsploder]

Never been an issue for me. But you guys are looking at training injuries the wrong way. They are a good thing. Each time they skid on the ground after being thrown, they gain armour user skill. I have a barracks that uses a checkerboard of pillars to force the dwarves to fall when they dodge while sparring, sorta like a less exploity danger room that makes more sense and kills less children. I like to think they're doing some sort of full plate shaolin training.

Also injuries increase detchment (ddoesn't care about anything anymore) which dereases stress.
And the injuries are never serious if they're in full plate, so it gives good medical experience without risking lives.

[vjmdhzgr]

If wrestlers are throwing when sparring, probably not a good idea to train near any open stairwells or pits then.

Will furniture in barracks cause issues? That is, will dwarves get hurt when thrown into tiles with weapon racks, armor stands and the like?

I'm pretty sure they get injured just from hitting floors, but I suppose I don't actually know if dwarves can collide with furniture. Has anybody ever seen a creature projectile hit furniture, or seen on that probably should of hit furniture but didn't? I'm quite curious now.

[Max™]

Unit projectiles ignore furniture and fortifications, lord knows I've got more experience than most with this now.

I have no idea how often dorfs will try to grab walls to stop themselves in flight but I rely on it to keep myself alive as an adventurer by putting a weapon and shield in the same hand to keep the other free.

Now, what I was mainly posting about, there are certain skills which train attributes which you don't want to dump as an adventurer: focus, willpower, intuition, spatial sense, and kinesthetic sense.

Focus helps numerous combat related skills, willpower is important to keep from passing out from a broken finger, spatial and kinesthetic sense aid in aiming weapons/parrying/etc, intuition aids in blocking/parrying/dodging. There is a far too comprehensive list on the wiki about what skills raise said attributes but I know stuff like doing a bunch of knapping and wrestling small animals and such does tons for your survivability/effectiveness. I'm not sure what the most effective way to get dorfs to train spatial/kinesthetic would be but I'm sure there is one.

The armor skill and ground collision stuff is very true, I've slid like ten or fifteen tiles after flying across half of a 17x17 map and been uninjured or only had light bruising with tons and tons of "is deflected by the armorpiece" stuff.

I think the specific glances away message is when attacking material and defending material are equal or defending is better, I saw it when whacking at at a steel colossus with a steel hammer and bronze axe, similar happens when you take a copper axe to a bronze colossus. There is a size related component too though, as it happens sometimes with stuff like the freaky thick clothing on demon masters in gobby sites.

Oh, don't neglect mail shirts, they cover unique areas not protected by other stuff, helm+mail+gauntlets+high boots covers everything, then you add in the breastplate/greaves for full hard+soft coverage, with hood+cloak on top for facial feature defense oddly enough.

[oasis789]

I have a barracks that uses a checkerboard of pillars to force the dwarves to fall when they dodge while sparring, sorta like a less exploity danger room that makes more sense and kills less children. I like to think they're doing some sort of full plate shaolin training.

I'd like to see this checkerboard barracks design

[Devin]

Say, how well do picks actually work as weapons compared to spears, hammers, axes, etc?

[Tarqiup Inua]

I have a barracks that uses a checkerboard of pillars to force the dwarves to fall when they dodge while sparring, sorta like a less exploity danger room that makes more sense and kills less children. I like to think they're doing some sort of full plate shaolin training.

I'd like to see this checkerboard barracks design

I second this! It sounds interesting!

Maybe it would help to make wooden floor in the barracks, too? The injuries from collisions are dependent on the density of object into which creature crashes, so the best barracks for melee training might be featherwood floors and walls.

Then again, maybe then the injuries wouldn't happen and they may be a good thing, as Skullsploder mentioned.

[Max™]

Picks work great but get stuck in stuff a bit more than an axe or sword, lots of body parts flying through the air though.

[Skullsploder]

I have a barracks that uses a checkerboard of pillars to force the dwarves to fall when they dodge while sparring, sorta like a less exploity danger room that makes more sense and kills less children. I like to think they're doing some sort of full plate shaolin training.

I'd like to see this checkerboard barracks design

I second this! It sounds interesting!

Maybe it would help to make wooden floor in the barracks, too? The injuries from collisions are dependent on the density of object into which creature crashes, so the best barracks for melee training might be featherwood floors and walls.

Then again, maybe then the injuries wouldn't happen and they may be a good thing, as Skullsploder mentioned.

Yay people are interested in something I did! Here it is. It's a bit cluttered, since my forges haven't been running recently to get rid of the discarded equipment.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sorry for the lack of cropping. I've recently shifted to a slightly newer second hand computer and haven't got anything set up properly yet, aside from the bare essentials like DF. The barracks is that square of pillars in the centre.

Just the two level drop is plenty. AFAIK the size of the hit makes no difference to armour user skill gained. The reason this is a good thing to do is that letting your armour deflect the blow is the absolute last resort in combat. A dwarf will first dodge, then block, then parry, and then only take the hit. Since gaining armour user skill requires taking hits, sparring quickly becomes useless for armour user skill as dwarves become capable of blocking the vast majority of shots with ease. So the pillars force a situation where the dwarf cannot dodge or block. They take up to four hits per fall, and unless they fall on their cheek or something stupid they invariably receive no damage; although I don't equip them with clothing, only armour, so you may get no injuries at all.

TLDR: Hits good, injuries bad, Skullsploder's barracks force the dwarves to take hits without taking injuries.

[oasis789]

Just the two level drop is plenty. AFAIK the size of the hit makes no difference to armour user skill gained.

How about just a 1-z drop? Or even just unchannelled out ramps so they can just walk out and get back in the spar? Would that still work to cause unblockable falls?

[Devin]

How do the pillars make it so they can't block?

[NullForceOmega]

That is a pretty cool design skullsploder, it reminds me of my favored .34 design for a 'mega-training area', which combined pair sparring with a three z-level fall onto upright spear traps with training spears.  effectively fusing normal training with the 'shaft of enlightenment' and a danger room.

[Skullsploder]

Just the two level drop is plenty. AFAIK the size of the hit makes no difference to armour user skill gained.

How about just a 1-z drop? Or even just unchannelled out ramps so they can just walk out and get back in the spar? Would that still work to cause unblockable falls?

I originally had that as my design, with ramps everywhere, but they only took very few hits, and often fell without receiving hits at all. So I channeled out another layer to see how it would go and it went well. The fall doesn't interrupt their sparring match anyway, they run straight to that staircase on the right and resume sparring with their partner.

How do the pillars make it so they can't block?

They can't block fall damage, ever. So what happens is they spar on top of the pillars, and then when they dodge, they fall down into the pit and take a harmless hit when they land.

That is a pretty cool design skullsploder, it reminds me of my favored .34 design for a 'mega-training area', which combined pair sparring with a three z-level fall onto upright spear traps with training spears.  effectively fusing normal training with the 'shaft of enlightenment' and a danger room.

Yay compliments And I have been thinking about doing something similar at the bottom, like filling it with 4/7 water so they train swimming skill as well at the same time. In fact, you know what, I'm gonna go make a pond zone right now. I could probably put repeating spears at the bottom as well, but then I might as well make a danger room, and I think of this as a non-exploity way to train armour skill.
I am very interested in seeing what sort of results you got with that megacombo of hyper-training techniques. Just the pair sparring for me got me legendaries from raw recruits inside of two years; I imagine with your design you got legendary +17 in a few months.