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Author Topic: Can dwarf use dual weapons?  (Read 9117 times)

mikekchar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #15 on: July 27, 2017, 06:37:20 am »

Wow!  Awesome.  I need to script up a setup like that.  Doing it by hand is *painful*

I discovered something interesting though.  I realised that in by dual axe vs axe and shield, I had neglected to set observation level.  I re-ran with observations and discipline (for  no reason) at competent and it was 5/5 (as opposed to 2/8 without observation).  So I think that means that parrying needs observation level (which makes sense).

I also did dagger & shield vs axe & shield: 7/3 in favour of the dagger.  Finally I did dual axe vs axe & shield while wearing armour (iron helms, iron mail shirts and legging, iron gauntlets and iron high boots.  5/5 again.

So like you said, very unexpected.  Dual weapons is definitely viable! Yay!
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #16 on: July 27, 2017, 08:33:28 am »

Well, it's in large part macros. Macros with liquids plugin to make the 2x2 areas, macros to place dwarves, macro to count the alive dwarves of a given side (that is, single down-arrow and find how many down-arrows you need)

For code, few lines changed in
If you don't want Legendary +5, just edit the 20 for skill level in code to something lower. More realistic to set different skill levels, tbh, legendary armour user being far rarer than legendary observer.

And custom script to change all weapons in game at once.

Spoiler: "ChangeAllWeapons.lua" (click to show/hide)

The difference between 7/3 and 5/5 is two coin flips, so I'd try to run those trials with more dwarves (am not fan of large daggers myself, though). Also, remember that you can save in arena and that dwarf trances change/lopside the course of battle in case of multiple vs multiple rather than 1 vs 1.

Finally, remember that you can save arena and then run it multiple times.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2017, 08:35:26 am by Fleeting Frames »
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Cathar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #17 on: July 27, 2017, 01:29:00 pm »

Dual weapons is definitely viable! Yay!

Viable, yes. But even in melee, as your own results say, dual axes do not provide any significant advantage over shield and axe. You factor in the costs of production (wood for shields, metal for axes), and you add +silver arrow+ into the mix and you end up with a very expensive way to downgrade your troops.

What you want to test is how much you lose in terms of ranged defense compared to a shield.

Edit : That said, it's pretty clear they can, but should they. I'm going to run some tests of my own when I have time

Edit 2 : Alright. So, first test at mid level. All dwarves are lvl 5 in all relevant skills. 8vs8, 3 marksman on each team, the infantry is composed by dual axe for team A, axe+shield for team B. Team B wins 8/2 for the first test.
Two melee dwarves are heavily injured, which may be a factor in a fortress.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2017, 02:07:56 pm by Cathar »
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #18 on: July 27, 2017, 03:24:39 pm »

My results use a bit more tests than 10 :P For now I'd say dual axes are definitely superior versus sieges than shield and axe, provided your dwarves wear armor (I wouldn't worry about bolts - stories where people fail to kill captive goblins with thousands bolts or where 40 rangers fail to lay hurt in a siege that had to be mopped up by 5 melee dwarves have kinda demonstrated that for bolts equal or superior material trumps).

The advantage is probably bigger than ~x1,84 (average of all sharp out of 1551 surviving dwarves) on last page, given that weapon skill skyrockets past blocking usually and that you don't split exp.

(The metal costs isn't much of a concern for player - given automated workflow, the initial setup cost is the main issue. Plus in 43.05 wooden shields require more maintenance. )

However. I'm more concerned with procedurals. Okay, split frozen extract has been relatively harmless for me, even if I don't recall if you could parry it, but webs and dust...may be ranged but can't be blocked. That leaves just the occasional fire breath, which could be handled alongside webs and dust by diagonal/wet battlegrounds or ambushes (as otherwise ground on fire with both blind and burn all melee dwarves, no matter if using shield or not).


Nonetheless, even dismissing ranged thus, natural attacks are important, as shown by the advantage of shield+pick over dual picks vs roc. And, hm. How does that fare with ⛭picks⛭ and level 10 (Accomplished) instead of 20 shield user (since that skill lags behind weapon skill)? Not sure I can increase other skills appropriately easily (and should, especially given mining moods into weapon skill, especially given a check with long-lived fort's queen/blocking trainer gives 45 blocking and 69 weapon/95 fighting/134 observer), but eh...
pick+shield: 83
pick+pick: 77
Rocs: 37
Also, whoops, discover I set rocs with master dodger, biter, fighter. Since that resulted in rocs having a chance, kept it. (Though the biter probably tweaked results a bit - can you block a bite?)

Well, this new data is within standard deviation of previous, though double picks did get slightly closer on average to shield-pick, (150/200 versus 88 earlier / 83 now);


Now, what to use?

Could choose separate siege and beast squads with enough soldiers, but lets say you use all your military versus sieges and beasts and don't control things so that shield users will arrive first versus beasts and such. Not as simple as 84>10,7 (or 14 or 17 if you're more optimistic - mind the standard deviation).
If your fort's military deaths have been along the likes of 10 to siege's weapons and 100 to being kicked in the face by procedurals, shield will grant superior success on average.
Hard to actually check this, though, especially as procedural typically kills dwarf via syndrome cloud or webs, and raw log statistics would have to check if dwarf was webbed when kicked to death.

(Note: When sending all the military at everything, the weapons should probably be either axes or perhaps picks for facing anything in melee, per fragfish's 43.05 combat testing, as long as you're not in reanimating biome - will outperform mixed squads.)

(PS: I'm still curious on stats crossbow + sharp implement performs versus beasts, but my estimate of that, as well as the importance of silver crossbow there, has risen considerably - I thought parries were rare.)

For your own tests, can you state the version number and what armour versus what bolts the dwarves were using?
Also, mind the trances (make squad battles more random with causing the squad who trances first and harder to win usually). (Though can't point you at tool to analyse in-depth logs for bolts versus dual axes versus bolts versus shield and axe.)

Cathar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #19 on: July 27, 2017, 04:04:38 pm »

For my tests, I use no armor to eliminate it as a factor for now. Further tests will be done with mid range armor, again when I have more time. Iron bolts and version 43.03

As for armor mitigating the lack of a shield, it's the same thing as relying on legendary weapon skill to parry. Yeah, you can do that. If you are an advanced player, have a full set of adamantium armor including two set of chainmails, you can probably make a team of legendary wrestlers and supplex your way through massive sieges or kill a dragon with a leather bag, but it tells you nothing about the specs of a strategy.
This is why I prefer tests at mid level both in equipment and skills, as I find the results more representative of the common experience and give a clearer picture imho... and this is why I believe team tests would be more representative than simple duels to test the viability of a defense strategy.

In fortress mode, especially when dealing with a siege, you're not only worried about overpowering the opponent one on one. Your dwarves are fighting while being peppered with copper and silver bolts, and in the event you're not fighting clad in endgame gear (which require you to survive until you reach that point), you have to figure out the best of your options... in a game where a single projectile can take a fighter out of commission permanently.

TL;DR I don't think it's wise to handwave away the projectiles especially since it is the major difference between the two styles and I think we need a test method fit to reflect that

Edit : also yes you can block a bite
Edit 2 : Yah, trances are a factor... But ultimately it should disapear statistically given enough tests ... I think. If we can find a way to design a representative test method on arena mode, and if we do enough tests so trances and other RNG become irrelevant, we could arrive at solid conclusions I think

Edit 3 : After reflecting on it, I think one way we could have a clear picture is by doing old school LD50 test. I'll take a population of 6 dwarves armed with just an axe, and add goblins until I can achieve a stable result of a dwarven victory with three dead. The number of goblins needed will be noted, and the same will be done for dual axes and shield+axes. We'd have clear and easy to exploit values of their survivability.

Edit 4 : LD50 tests are forbidden on animals but ethics won't stand in the way of dwarven science

« Last Edit: July 27, 2017, 05:35:56 pm by Cathar »
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mikekchar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #20 on: July 27, 2017, 06:40:31 pm »

I have to admit that I was expecting shield users to absolutely wipe the floor with dual wielders, so even being close to parity is a surprise for me.  I think armour is important to test with, though, because on inspection, dual wielders have the advantage that if they lose an arm that they still always have a weapon.  If they didn't die from sudden trauma, they didn't die.  In my one armour test, though, what tended to happen was that whoever got a lucky shot in first, won (for example if they nauseated their opponent).  So I also think that that weapon choice is crucial for dual wielders.  I think this is why daggers are so powerful (stab is OP) -- but getting non-copper daggers is pretty difficult.
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Cathar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #21 on: July 27, 2017, 07:17:29 pm »

So... tests

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Im as surprized as you are, actually. I was expecting shield users to vastly outperform dual wielders. But versus melee enemies, they perform similarly.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2017, 07:24:08 pm by Cathar »
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mikekchar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #22 on: July 27, 2017, 08:22:00 pm »

Very interesting.  I did another much less scientific test: 5v5 identical teams.  All wearing full copper (helm, mail shirts, leggings, gauntlets and high boots).  1 marksdwarf, 2 dual wielding axedwarfs, 2 hammer and shield dwarfs on each team.  All skill set to competent.  Formation for each team was in a pentagon with the marksdwarf at the back, the 2 dual wielders in the middle (and out to the side) and the 2 hammer and shield dwarfs at the front.

Most survivable: marksdwarf -- in almost every battle a marksdwarf survived.  Probably because they were at the back and avoided confrontation.  Apart from that, I saw no pattern in longevity.  The order of death appeared random.  By the end of the match there was usually only 1 or 2 dwarfs alive.

The marksdwarfs barely had any effect on the combat at all (probably you need more of them).  They averaged only 2 hits per match.  Almost all bolts were dodged instead of blocked, even for shield wearers.  The major effect the marksdwarfs had on combat was that once they ran out of bolts (they started with 15), they ran in and removed helmets.

I'm trying to remember what kind of percentage of archers goblin sieges have, but 1 in 5 seems about right to me.

I also tried a test of dual wielding silver crossbows and iron short swords.  It was highly disappointing.  Granted, I couldn't give any ammo to these dwarfs (because no blasted quivers in arena mode).  The main problem was that as has been reported, they virtually don't use the crossbow -- even for parrying.  I saw the occasional parry with the crossbow, but practically these dual wielders acted as single wielders -- and were decimated each time.  I'd like to try it again, though, because I have a feeling that I must have set something up incorrectly given how badly they performed (possibly I forgot to give them hammerdwarf skill???)
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #23 on: July 28, 2017, 04:45:22 am »

@Cathar:
I personally never set up/send melee dwarves into battle without armour. Sure, leather/bone armour will get armor user experience, which I do use for that, but between 7 partially-armored meleers and 2 completely covered meleers and 5 rangers (due lack of embark points) I've always chosen the latter so far. Don't need adamantium to mostly ignore copper and iron bolts, either, standard bronze gear from cassiterite/malachite embark will do. Do you set up your military differently, i.e. sending in lot of unarmored dwarves with just an axe / shield instead of lesser number of fully covered dwarves?

Agreed on relying legendary weapon skill to parry, though by the time you get a legendary mining/axing your shield users from zero are what, Proficent? Won't be there for first summer (undead) siege, in any case.


Still, as to not handwave the projectiles away...

I wonder. Will a dwarf trance if projectile users are behind Fortifications, facing just 1 goblin in melee?

*tests*

Yep. Alas. Though OTOH, it's a way to keep trances present without snowball effect.

(Say you have two squads of 10 proficent/competent skills dwarves. Dwarf 1 trances first, and kills their opponent first, then goes and finishes off 2 more with the trance bonus before opposite squad can get a trance going. Then you have 10 dwarves versus 7 dwarves, leading to to 3 smaller squad's dwarves getting teamed up on, which can dodge-stun-lock them. Assuming other 4 fight as normal, you have end result of 8 dwarves of squad 1 winning with 2 dying, a result that looks lopsided in favour of squad 1 but actually is just a coin flip.)

Thus, I use goblins in multi-squad tests - their attributes are somewhat similar to dwarves, more than elves anyway, and they don't trance. You're testing weapon and shield versus weapon and weapon, not dwarves, after all. The snowball effect is still present, but it's not as big.

If you can block a bite, the rocs I used are fine. Mite more deadly than normal, but don't have a materially different attack profile.


LD50 is an interesting idea, but due snowball effect I would not check for LD50 of a members of a squad but 50% of squad winning or dying when using hundreds of tests. As you saw yourself, you have dwarves often either dead or fine.

It's also harder to macro setting up and counting 200 squads. Hm, lets see....You could set up squads in 98 25-tile spaces in arena, setting the macro to increment team once for each placement, and then place first member of a squad, then go back to start, reset number, place second members of a squad, etc...Using numbers 1-98 for one side, and all 99 for the other side, then just count how many squads of the 1-98 you had survive.

Ideally with a script, ugh.

Might want to edit macro so you can set it up in one go with 99 and go make tea. Hm, don't really have any squads I want to blow a hour or two on right now, though. With inability to properly set up archers in arena, I guess the only tests I should run is the ones I did on last page with proper skill setups from an actual fort, and perhaps ones with full bronze versus full bronze, to simulate embarks where starter military don't get steel weapons.

@mikekchar:

What material weapons, copper? In that case I'd expect the hammer+shield users to dominate (which I also had perform the closest to dual weapon - unlike morningstar users. Might be due preferring edged damage/pommel smash being bad, though.)

Amount of archers in goblin sieges...Hm, of the 19 military weapons goblins have, 2 are ranged: crossbow and arrows. Alternatively, 2 ranged skills out of 10 different melee skills.

And yes, crossbows use hammerdwarf skill to parry and bash with (as shown by parrying with them in danger rooms draining hammerdwarf*). In close range, a silver crossbow would mean getting through armour where cutting weapon would fail once the enemy falls unconsicious, but otherwise inferior as backup melee weapon to second steel sword (also, skill splitting).


*Hm.

That's a neat way to find how much dwarf uses secondary weapon versus primary weapon to parry, ain't it?

Hm, there's three cases here: same weapon for both, 1 edged and 1 blunt weapon, two different edged weapons (and fourth shield + weapon).   

Ah fuck it, imma do all four.

Testing: Kol Zuglarbal, starting with 3 exp in dodging and 31 in striking/fighting, as well as 1362 in Observer (for Adequate skill level). Equipped with steel high boots, mail shirt, helm, gauntlets and a llama wool cloak. 43.03, so the steel is unnecessary, but helpful for finding armor user exp and tiredness.

Testing ground: 2 squares of 3 training spears linked to a lever in a temple ( so dwarf doesn't walk away after pulling lever put keeps pulling. Not as good as minecart setup, but this is on the quick. ).

Weapon setup 1: Candlenut training axe and candlenut training sword, equipped in that order. Both superior

Result after a month:

Great Axedwarf (4%)
Great Swordsdwarf (2%)
Competent Armor user (81,9%)
Adequate Dodger (29,7%)

Conclusion: Given equal-ish skill, dwarves use both weapons equally when parrying.  Call it 11,05k for the weapon skills.

Second try, with axe and no-quality crossbow:

Great Axeman (25%)
Great Hammerman (15%)
Competent Armor user (84,8%)
Adequate Dodger (40%)


Realized training weapons are blunt. Redid test with no-quality copper battle axe and crossbow:

Great Hammerman (10%)
Great Axeman (0%)
Competent Armor User (88,4%)
Adequate Dodger (32,3%)

Few % variance. Conclusion: Dwarves will parry equally with blunt and sharp weapons. Also, seems that quality has almost no effect, at least versus spears.

Third try, with axe and superior candlenut shield (old science shows this doesn't affect block chance, though):

Professional (9) Axeman (27,9%)
Great Shield User (71,9%)
Competent Armor User (45%)
Adequate Dodger (16,9%)

Conclusion: Overall obtained experience is lower? Also, dwarf obtained ~44% more exp with shield than with primary weapon.

Note that the artificial training herein doesn't raise fighter or observer, which might be important.

Fourth try: copper and training axe.

Legendary Axeman (91,5%)
Competent Armor user (31,5%)
Adequate Dodger (38,7%)

Brief interruption by giant fireflies (thx exterminate). The overall skill gained is lower than two different weapons but highe than weapon and shield. Also, lowest armor user experience gained so far - the first setup with 40% dodger had 17% more armor user experience.

Overall:

Defensive blows dodged/being hit by were about the same for all options, with best option being two of same weapon. Shield was in-beween the two and two different weapons were worst, with about 21% more hits on armour for two different weapons over two of same weapon. Curious that with shield the weapon got 70% of the experience of other cases.

These results mean that overall, the advantage of two weapons versus 1 + shield that I got on last page is at least halfway due having second weapon to attack with - either as backup or as multiattack.

Mind the non-trained fighter and only adequate observer here - those could affect things.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2017, 04:51:34 am by Fleeting Frames »
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Cathar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #24 on: July 28, 2017, 05:52:04 am »

@Cathar:
I personally never set up/send melee dwarves into battle without armour. Sure, leather/bone armour will get armor user experience, which I do use for that, but between 7 partially-armored meleers and 2 completely covered meleers and 5 rangers (due lack of embark points) I've always chosen the latter so far. Don't need adamantium to mostly ignore copper and iron bolts, either, standard bronze gear from cassiterite/malachite embark will do. Do you set up your military differently, i.e. sending in lot of unarmored dwarves with just an axe / shield instead of lesser number of fully covered dwarves?

Oh no, I use elite troops, but I think I haven't made my point clear (sorry, it was late)
What I want to test is the practicability of dual axes versus axe and shield, let's say at an abstract level. Which one of those styles is more effiscient, ie how much kill power you can squeeze out of a single dwarf using either of those styles. I chose to disreguard armor to eliminate it as a factor.

For instance, let's say you can have a set of masterwork handwavium armor totally imprevious to arrows. Both 2axe and shield+axe will be then imprevious to arrows and subsequent tests will give you no data to the ranged defense of both styles.

Quote
Yep. Alas. Though OTOH, it's a way to keep trances present without snowball effect.

Thus, I use goblins in multi-squad tests - their attributes are somewhat similar to dwarves, more than elves anyway, and they don't trance. You're testing weapon and shield versus weapon and weapon, not dwarves, after all. The snowball effect is still present, but it's not as big.

You're absolutely correct, subsequent tests I'll do with goblins.

Quote
LD50 is an interesting idea, but due snowball effect I would not check for LD50 of a members of a squad but 50% of squad winning or dying when using hundreds of tests. As you saw yourself, you have dwarves often either dead or fine.

Would you consider it a valid investigation method once the trance factor is removed ?
LD50 was the gold standard in the industry until recent (2012 I believe) coission on ethics. But animal may have rights, dwarves do not!
Also I agree setting up large squads would be more representative, but also harder to set up

Fleeting Frames

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #25 on: July 28, 2017, 06:54:22 am »

Hm. That's an interesting perspective on ranged. However, even if testing purely ranged versus parry I believe you still should use your default armour. Lets say you have this setup:

100 dwarves sitting in 1x1 boxes behind fortifixations with crossbow in one hand, 30 bolts in other, seeing 100 enemy dwarves (everyone seeing only one dwarf) with 2x2 box.

If the dwarves being fired upon are naked other than for weapon and weapon/shield, the first bolt that gets through will weaken them, potentially suffocating them or causing them to drop their equipment. So you end up with situation where perhaps all bolts past the first good hit land.

If they're wearing your usual armour, they will not take abnormal amount of damage from first bolt that gets through parry/block/dodge and can keep dodging like in siege.

You'd make a new gamelog.txt and afterwards find how many instances of "misses", "blocks" and "bats out of the air" you have - or alternatively, find out how many armor user experience points all dwarves gained. Knowing you fired 3000 bolts, easy to figure out how many got through.


When it comes to melee versus melee, I would also use armour - the effectiveness of weapons, slashing in particular, is mitigated to at times nigh-complete extent by armour one uses. Doing masterwork bronze armour and pick test (quick hack to setup) with 400 dwarves:

100 pick/shield and 96 pick/pick users survived, with survivors in both cases being relatively unharmed, few having lost a limb (once you're down a limb, it's all downhill). Hm, though bronze pick would punch through bronze with the 2x velocity, but this is unusual - deflections, severing of nerves and brusing the fat were more common - deaths were also by bleeding, cutting off the neck, suffocation and kicks to head quite a lot, checking the logs.

Quite the contrast with steel weapons on iron armour.


And I don't mean larger squads, I meant larger amount of squads. Larger squads are important too, but the larger the squads are the more there can be 1 vs multiple situations and the more it can snowball - important, as single strong enemy doesn't really simulate multiple weaker enemies stunlocking target. That said, if the results are consistent enough/standard deviation low enough, it'd work.
What do you think of simulating fort mode siege combat with 1 better skilled/armed combatant versus, say, 5 low-skilled ones and 3 trolls/beak dogs?

PS: As bonus, did ⛭hammers⛭ versus those same Rocs: 3 dual hammers and 10 hammer+shield survived (and 187 rocs on the other side). Yeowch!

E: Further versus Roc-tests: ⛭axes⛭: 77 dual, 74 shield+axe, Rocs 48. ⛭spears⛭: 79 dual, 88 spear+shield, Rocs 31 (lowest yet). Copper -stars-: 72 dual, 87 shield+star, Rocs 40 (Certainly not just 25% heavier hammers!). ⛭short swords⛭: 79 dual, 81 shield+sword,Rocs 39. Silver whips: dual 49, whip+shield 67, Rocs 81 (also better than hammers. However, against armored sieges macers/hammers are slightly better.).
« Last Edit: July 28, 2017, 07:59:32 am by Fleeting Frames »
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mikekchar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #26 on: July 28, 2017, 07:52:20 pm »

@Fleeting Frames: I used iron weapons with copper armour -- mainly because I didn't want to wait forever for the battle to end :-)  But also because I figured that's a realistic setup for a lot of people: what little iron you get your hands on ends up as edged weapons, while you make do with copper and silver for everything else until you get your hands on enough goblinite.  What I didn't really consider was that it's atypical of the opponents who in sieges are either full copper or full iron (or naked recruits).

It's a good point about using goblins instead of dwarfs for testing because now that you mention it, first trance usually decimates the opponents.  And besides, if we are experimenting, we should probably be doing so on creatures that were created just for that purpose :-)

@Cathar I also think that armour is a must in these tests because it affects the results considerably (from my experience).  Dual wielders seem to do better if they survive longer (because having 2 weapons they can weather damage to both arms).  So insta-death scenarios that armour could prevent, penalises them.  On the other hand, a lopped off weapon hand for a shield user is practically a death sentence.  Gauntlets are much more necessary for them.

I really like the LD50 approach because it removes a lot of variables from the equation.  I think you can probably use Bayesian inference to determine effectiveness, even with snowball effects (which are going to be hard/impossible to remove even without trances).

Bayes inference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

It's been a while, so I need to get a pen an paper to work this out.  I'll write a new post with details once I've figured it out.  But the advantage here is that we don't need to do hundreds of trials.

Edit: It may take me a while.  I'm actually stuck on P(E|H).  So if we observe 8 dwarfs surviving, what is that probability given that the hypothesis (the average number of survivers is greater than 5) is true?  The problem is that I actually need the area under the curve, and even if I'm assuming a normal distribution (which is probably untrue) it's more work than I'm prepared to do :-)
« Last Edit: July 28, 2017, 09:20:43 pm by mikekchar »
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peasant cretin

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #27 on: July 28, 2017, 08:39:36 pm »

In terms of testing (or just gameplay in general), I try to keep in mind that the combat decision tree looks a good deal like this:

+ Attacker rolls to hit (succeed or fail).
++ If attacker roll to hit fails, then combat message is attacker misses.
+++ If attacker roll to hit succeeds, then defender rolls to dodge/block/parry (succeed or fail).
++++ If defender roll succeeds, then combat message is defender jumps/rolls away (dodge message), attack is blocked, or attack is parried.
+++++ If defender roll fails, then combat message is defender is hit.


* Attacker roll to hit is determined mainly by attacker (weapon/natural) skill level versus defender dodger skill level. Side and back attacks countermand defender dodger in determining attacker roll to hit. There are likely a few other factors, but what's mentioned are the most significant.

So say, for testing unarmored weapon/shield versus unarmored dual wielder, I'd filter for noise. This would be any hit that is the result of side/back, as you wouldn't want those modifiers muddying up the comparison. That's a pathing issue as a testing group of any size, allowed to battle royal in an open field, will have plenty of side/back results.

The only way to control this is to keep the pairings of weapon/shield versus dual wielder separate.

This could be done by keeping each pairing in a 5x5 tile arena mode tree enclosure if you want to see the full gamut of defender rolls (dodge/block/parry), or by making avenues/columns of trees where each pairing could meet (this is more limited as it removes most dodge tile options).

Separation of combatants gets rid of martial trances, but won't remove charging (stun cuts all stats in half). This too gives you a less than clean result. Standing attackers get 2x momentum versus grounded defenders and that impacts things like contact area of the weapon used (which may make it seem like a weapon was quite effective).

Of course, your mileage may vary on this depending on what you're looking for.
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Cathar

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Re: Can dwarf use dual weapons?
« Reply #28 on: July 31, 2017, 09:22:31 pm »

[...]

This conversation is taking a turn I really like. I'll have a look at Bayesian Inference and see what I can use. I'll have more time in two days after I'm done with some formalities at work which stress me out a bit.
All of it may take some work, but in addition of falsifying the dual weapon effisciency hypothesis, we might eventually devise a method of testing previously established !!science!! in the end. I'll certainlydo my part :D
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