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But there's gonna be a better one in the future

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[Xilian]

Thank you very much for all the answers.

I have been modding in weapons of my own based on the formulas you described and it has been going well so far. However, if you don't mind I have some more questions regarding the ammo. I take it the contact area is a value of the blade width ratio of the used arrowhead. However the penetration depth is based on what, is it part of the shaft length? As for the javelins, are these calculations based on the ammo calculations or weapon calculations for spears?

[Sver]

However, if you don't mind I have some more questions regarding the ammo. I take it the contact area is a value of the blade width ratio of the used arrowhead. However the penetration depth is based on what, is it part of the shaft length? As for the javelins, are these calculations based on the ammo calculations or weapon calculations for spears?

Contact area for the broadhead ones equals arrowhead blade width, yes. For other types of ammo, it's a bit more arbitrary: they are given with armor-breaking mechanics in mind and can be safely copied for any other ammo that you intend to be armor-piercing.

For penetration, arrows and bolts use part of the shaft length, yes. Piercing types get about one half of the length and broadhead types get about one third.

Javelins are a specific case. Let's just say that the contact area is taken from the sharpest spear in the mod, the penetration is based off the metal part of the pilum and the velocities are given with pilum's specifics in mind (e.g. the bending shank).
In the upcoming version, there'd be a new type of javelins based on the fletched javelins. For them, attacks will be like these:

Code: [Select]

[ATTACK:EDGE:125:1670:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:700]  shank can bend on hit
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:125:3500:thrust:thrusts:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:800:125:cut:cuts:NO_SUB:50]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
with the shaft length in mind being about 60 inches, thus, penetration is either a bit more than one half of the shaft or is one half of the previous value - depending on the attack. Contact area is the roughly calculated head width (couldn't find a precise source) and velocity is applied on the same principle as for arrows.

[Sver]

v1.3 Released

Major changes:
* Optional: Adrenaline interaction (with some tweaks) from the Grimlocke's History & Realism Mods is included with the author's permission. It gives a substantial boost in willpower and endurance to all live creatures in combat, making fights longer and invaders less affected by the randomness of their physical stats.
* Thickened joints and ribs and gave a bit more reasonable thickness to spine, courtesy of DF Revised.
* Lots of small fixes to material templates, courtesy of DF Revised.
* Increased the strength of cartilage (to that of bone/sinew) for a bit more durable fingers, toes and such.
* Several tissue fixes: fat does not bleed; damage to bone causes more bleeding; removed pain from brain (as it's effects appear to be redundant).
* Added a new type of ammo: war darts. They are used by atlatls and are better suited agaist flesh than armor, very effective against large beasts.
* Added new weapon sets: shepherd arms (sling + mace), ravager arms (sling + headhunting axe), trapper arms (atlatl + hawk axe), beasthunter arms (atlatl + executioner sword), ambusher arms (atlatl + spear).
* Lowered the velocity for all 'thrust' attacks (to that of normal stabs) and gave them slower recover, as they were too good at cutting off limbs.
* Rearranged the multi-attack bonuses/penalties for all weapons. Changed some prepare and recover times accordingly.
* Readjusted the speed for all trap components and made them generally slower.
* The 'hook' attack for halberd was replaced with 'strike' (with spike). A new 'hook' attack is more in line with other weapons.
* Expanded the attacks for falx. Now it can also 'snatch' and 'cleave'.
* Increased the velocity for hammerhead bolts (1.25x modifier).
* Added another "fake" attack to (sling) bullets to make slings more random.
* Renamed 'mail hauberk' to 'mail coat' and 'mail byrnie' to 'mail shirt' for simpler naming and changed the tags accordingly.
* Renamed 'tasset' to 'tassets' as that is more appropriate. Now it only gives 60% block, but requires less bars. Also, lowered its weight. Actually added it to the entity lists, as I forgot to do it the first time.
* Renamed 'plackart' to 'lower plate' for simpler naming and changed the tag accordingly. It now grants 100% block, but requires more bars. Also, lowered its weight.
* Changed the tag for greatsword to fit its name, for easier searching in the entity files. Goodbye, Grutte Pier reference

Minor changes:
** Renamed 'giant club' to 'war club', in accordance with the new DF Revised.
** Renamed 'atlatl dart' to 'thorn dart', to emphasize the wood-only focus.
** Renamed 'hat' to 'warm hat', as that is a more precise description.
** Fixed the 'hook' attack for horned axe having too high velocity.
** Fixed the skill for javelinman arms to DAGGER.
** Lowered the material requirements for broad spear and bladed spear.
** Raised the two-handed size requirement for hatchet to 18000.
** Made glaive a bit slower on attack, but easier to parry with. Overall speed stays the same. Also, removed the 'hook' attack.
** Made hawk axe a bit less penetrating.
** Made war cleaver a bit better at damaging armor.
** Some attack renamings for scimitar and war cleaver.
** Made large arrows heavier and a bit less penetrating.
** Slightly lowered the weight for plate armor, breastplate and chestplate, to simulate their efficient weight distribution.
** Made lamellar armor a bit heavier.
** Lowered the weight of gambeson and padded armor to a more realistic value. Now even more layering possible!
** Slightly inceased the layer permit of pauldrons.
** Fixed the shin guards layer type to COVER and slightly increased their layer permit.

[Sver]

A new poll is up.

[Sver]

A-and...

v1.3.1 Released

Added war darts to entity lists. A very small fix, as I simply forgot to do this.

[Sver]

The development is coming along, and for the next release we already have an optional metal rebalance (more reaistic values, higher cost for armor and weapon grade metals, new steel types for better progression and more dangerous invaders, etc.), extensive fixes/balancing for ranged weapons and ammo and some ongoing balancing for weapon attack speeds to make the Fighter skill and movement speed more important in combat and generally make combat better paced. If I'll have enough time, I might also add some new reactions for larger bolt and arrow stacks, as well as the long promised reactions to make spears cheaper to forge.

My plan is to wait for the next Revised release with more detailed bodies, so I could include the required armor rework right away. Before that, it would be highly appreciated if more people would vote on the legwear question, so we could have a definitive winner.

[fonzacus]

great mod overall, it eases the pain when marksdwarves arent smart enough to switch to their 2nd weapon.

the more sensible naming thing is nice with the update. i also took it a bit further by renaming chain mittens and chausse to mails, and gave leggings a padded prefix for a bit more 'sensibilty'.

id like to request some magic. is it possible to have an unholy baby of a quiver/flask/backpack? or probably a ranged weapon set + quiver? recently ive been seeing a few dwarves having missmatches from usually quivers, and sometimes flasks. it happens from time to time in vanilla. DT says the dwarf was missing specific quiver/flask. removing them/their equipment usually fixes this.

i played a lot long time ago and have always been careful around miners, woodcutters and hunters so it isnt that.

[Sver]

Thank you =)

Yeah, I went with "chain", because mail is, in fact, a more vague term (it can simply mean "armor"), and vanilla has "chain leggings", so the naming convention stayed the same. I don't have anything against players renaming/modifying stuff to their liking, though.

Unfortunately, I can't do anything about that. Quivers, flasks and backpacks cannot be modded, at least, not through the raws alone.
I've never really run into this issue, but then again I almost never use the "Carry food/drink" options, because my militias are usually within the stockpiles' reach anyway.

[wickys]

How does this mod differ itself from Grimlocke's realism or any of the other realism mods? Or is this a kind of cherry pick of the best parts of all of them in one?

[Sver]

This post and the next two are my take on what the differences between this mod and the Grimlocke's one are, plus some related questions and answers.

Overall, the mod is mostly my personal musings and opinionated balancing, although, it does borrow from several other mods - where it's credited.

[Grimlocke]

Hi there! Noticed this mod some time ago, and just got around to reading up on what exactly it does. I havn't played much DF in the last year or so, but its still interesting to see someone else's take on this given the amount of time I've spent piddling around with the game melee combat balancing.

Mostly, you've got a more modest but still worthwhile take on the whole 'historic-ish combat rebalance', which really ought to help people integrate this with other mods. With mine that's kinda fallen in the toilet a lot of the time because the changes I made aren't all obvious, not that well documented but still instrumental to making the balance scheme work. (particularly the materials rebalance, which nobody ever extends to modded materials)

That said, I do take issue with some of the assumptions you made in this post:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Thank you

I've never really played or arena-tested with the Grimlocke's mod, so I can only compare it by the raws and the feature list. So, please, take note, that these are mostly my musings and/or personal opinion. Grimlocke's mod does some thing that my mod doesn't, such as reworked material properties of metals, lowered bone density and interactions that make creatures more resistant to fatigue and pain. All of these probably affect how armor and weapons really perform in combat. All tests for my mod are done with vanilla metals, densities and creature attributes in mind, so I can only judge the raws from this perspective.
* Melee weapons. In Grimlocke's mod they seem much more powerful: even sword slashes have small contact areas, very deep penetration and very high velocity. As a result, Grimlocke's weapons are not as functionally different between each other as the weapons in my mod. In my mod, each weapon type has a distict combat purpose (heavy armor breaking, light armor breaking, quick bloodletting, limb chopping, organ damage) in which it excels, then certain subtypes excel in two things at once, but to a lesser degree, and so on; in Grimlocke's mod, most axes and swords would probably perform very similar. As the weapons in my mod are weaker, successful hits aren't always as deadly (thus, a bit less luck based combat) and it's harder to fight off large beasts, especially inorganic ones; in Grimlocke's mod, the weapons seem to be very deadly against everything. Regarding attack speed, in Grimlocke's mod short weapons are easier to parry with, while long weapons are harder to defend against; my mod uses a more simplistic system, where weapons have a gradually growing advantage the longer they are.
* Ranged weapons and ammo. My mod has more variety and functional distinction for ranged weapons: there is a steady progression of power and material cost (and/or min body size limit). My ammo is a lot lighter and shoot velocities are lower, thus, archers in my mod are not as slow, but not as deadly either. Also, in my mod it is possible to have archers with offhand weapons (so called "weapon sets"), so it's entirely possible to train squads that both fight and shoot just as good, and out-of-ammo invaders retain some level of danger.
* Unarmed attacks. My mod doesn't touch creature files at all. Compared to Revised (which I recommend to use together with my mod), Grimlocke's unarmed attacks are significantly weaker, although, even in Revised they are quite non-deadly. Due to tissue changes in my mod (see below), bruising multiple internal organs may render the opponent temporarily disabled, so unarmed combat may serve as a viable non-lethal way of fighting, while in Grimlocke's mod it's plainly nerfed.
* Armor. My mod has a bit more functional differences between armor pieces and more possible combinations. Also, my mod has a broader variety of plate armors, allowing for cheap, lightweight additions to put over existing uniforms, including other plate. These additions partially protect the main armor piece from damage, which might be quite useful when the armor is made from a low-grade material. Armor in my mod is generally lighter, thus, armored soldiers don't get tired as quickly. Some body armors in my mod protect facial features to a varying degree (helms are unable to do this within the game's mechanics), up to metal plate, making actually full plate armor achievable.
* Tissues. My mod does some tissue rebalancing that Grimlocke's mod doesn't. Force transitioning mechanic is significantly nerfed in my mod, which means no more neck snapping from a punch to the head and no more open joint fractures from a strike to the limb; without these fixes even the very best armor would be pretty lame, because it offers zero protection from force transitioning. Additionally, organ wounds have much more severe effects, so torso protection is vitaly important. Together, these changes make the armor in my mod much more powerful and important, while in Grimlocke's it mostly functions the same as vanilla. In my mod, a good enough armor can finally compete with the all-blocking power of a shield, making two-handed weapon wielders viable; doing the same in Grimlocke's mod is not a very good idea, as almost any hit can still deliver debilitating damage. Also, broken fingers in my mod don't cause as much agony, limb damage causes a bit less agony and skulls are more durable (all of this makes combat less inane and luck based).
* Shields. In Grimlocke's mod they are a lot less protective (22% max blockchance, compared to 85% in my mod) and don't seem particularly balanced between each other. In my mod, there is a steady progression of blockchance and weight, thus, larger shields are encumbering, but quite useful. This makes fighting certain creatures (such as dragons) easier in my mod, at least, with due preparations.

Something like this.

I say assumptions, because a lot of this would have proven false with some basic arena testing. For instance, while 'my' weapons are significantly more powerful than in vanilla, so is the armor. Swords have a smaller contact area because the game processes the larger ones in... strange ways, making large-contact area weapons really weak against even basic protection. Swords and other light weapons are still pretty useless against anything above mail armor, facial features are fully protected by helmets since I've made facial features embedded, joints don't break without some very significant force (I did it through material and joint bodypart modification instead).

I guess this is a sign my documentation and raw commenting is kinda crappy. Ought to fix that one of these days.

Your shields might be a tad bit overpowered, since that block chance is a base value that increases with shield user skill. Even with my fairly modest shield stats, skilled shield users generally have an advantage over two-handed weapon users, both armored and especially unarmored. Two-handed weapons generally only have an advantage against poorly skilled shield users, or armored, low weapon skill combat where the one-handed weapons fail at breaking through armor.

Anyhow, keep up the good work. I might reverse-inspire some features when/if I get back into DF modding

[Sver]

Oh shit, here comes Grimlocke himself!
I mean, your mod was one of the initial inspirations for me, so it's really nice you've stopped by.

Regarding my post, those are, indeed, assumptions, as I've clarified in the beginning. I'll link your comment there to make it fair.

Your mod is obviously more vast and, thus, has a balance that is more "self-oriented", while my mod tries to keep the focus on vanilla. That's pretty much why I've kept the relatively larger contact areas: they offer the desired disparity between the weapons, so, say, an axe can hack through padded armor right away, while a sword needs at least 3 slashes for the same feat. Also, I've felt that average contact areas don't really need a boost, as, in vanilla, limbs go flying off way too often and it's getting especially ridiculous at higher skill levels. But that's obviously just my opinion again.

If you don't mind, I've got a couple of questions regarding how you've resolved the issues with joints and facial features:
1) Does making facial features internal has any side effects, aside from making them covered by helmets? Are they no longer available for being targeted (say, by an adventurer)? Do HFs still lose them more often than limbs in worldgen? Can they be wrestled (gouged etc.)?
2) How exactly did you strengthen the joints against the constant "force pulls limb, tearing the muscle" without altering the materials? Did you do something similar to prevent the necks from snapping?

While balancing the shields, I was refering to this study on shield blocking, plus my knowledge of the fact that blocking with a shield is an action and drains stamina. The study suggests that there is about 1.5x disparity between a buckler and a shield at high skill levels, while on low skill levels there is almost no difference, so I've reasoned that this disparity only grows larger with higher blockchances. In the end, however, my shields are mainly balanced around the stamina and encumbrance question: large shields can become a serious liability when the heavily armoured user is outnumbered, but are great otherwise. As in my mod a proud owner of good, full plate armor is pretty much invinsible (aside from wresting/biting), until xe falls to the ground from over-exertion, stamina is the primary concern for most humanoid-on-humanoid battles. It is possible I will cut the blockchances a bit for the future version, though, even if not by much.
Also, small weapons in my mod are much weaker than in vanilla, while two-handed ones are reasonably strong - essentially, "if you want to do a lot of damage, go with two-handed, if you want to play safe, go with weapon and shield". This should be further magnified by the future update with attack speed rebalance, which I'm currently working on. I do agree, though, that at Legendary skills there is almost no difference between anything really, but this is an inevitable part of game mechanics.

Thanks for your insights!

[Grimlocke]

Fair points regarding the balancing, keeping the general idea close to vanilla has its merits if only for mod integration and player familiarity.

As for the questions: I made the facial features embedded rather than internal, though these are functionally quite similar. Eyes were already embedded, and can still be gouged. The other parts can still be damaged on head-hits, but can't be independently targeted or cut off any more. Its a tradeoff, but my soldiers gradually running out of ears and noses annoyed me more than the lack of ability to bite off someone's nose in adventurer mode (fun as that was). I tried other solutions for a while, among which trying to make ears and noses 'cover' the head the same way eyelids cover eyes, but that feature seems to be a bit broken. This solution seemed the least broken, even though it came at the cost of hilarious adventure mode shenanigans.

Joint damage is a bit different from other damage, in that its currently the only thing using the torsion, bending and tensile material properties (for twisting, bending and pulling respectively). My solution was to change those in the material templates for muscle and other tissues used by joints, and increase the joint bodyparts in size to have their relative strength make sense. This also takes effect on necks and creatures that don't have joints (which take joint-damage on bodypart one step towards the upper or lower body).

As for shields, first time I'm seeing that shield research topic! Thanks for the link, I'll have a read through this later today. Now that I think about it, with my current balancing scheme its fairly rare for fights to go on long enough to run soldiers out of stamina. I wonder if there are ways to make fights more tiring in a shorter amount of time without affecting running stamina? My armor is overall a little weaker, because the DF AI doesn't quite understand how to aim for weak spots in armor and fights would just go on forever. Being out of the game when poleaxed in the head is not entirely unrealistic either, and I just like the idea that a hard enough hit with an iron maul is going to be a bad day no matter the armor

Anyhow, I'll experiment with the shields some later and maybe release that along with some other stuff I havn't been bothered to finish up properly and release. Feel free to ask me stuff!

[Sver]

My solution was to change those in the material templates for muscle and other tissues used by joints, and increase the joint bodyparts in size to have their relative strength make sense.

Huh, I didn't notice it the first time looking over your raws. I got pretty much the same solution, although, I've just plainly increased the sturdiness of muscle and sinew. The thing is, I went with much higher numbers. Is FRACTURE:22000 enough to prevent limbs from being disabled by force transfer all so often? Or do you intentionally keep it not too high, so that torn muscles will still occur from time to time? I'm having a hard time finding a sweet spot where light weapons cannot break armoured limbs, while heavy weapons can.
And it's pretty much the same with the nervous tissue: it got tiring to see almost any successful strike (including punches) to the head end up in inevitable death by suffocation, but increasing the material strength high enough made it so that not even a poleaxe can deal with it.

My armor is overall a little weaker, because the DF AI doesn't quite understand how to aim for weak spots in armor

I'm not sure if I've seen what I've seen, but throughout the armor-vs-shield testing I've been noticing that the AI have been consistently focusing on bodyparts not covered by armor. I've staged several 1x1 fights between a human who worn almost full plate armor with no shield and a lightly armored human with a large shield: the shield user very often attacked the facial features, which were uncovered. There was a similar pattern in the other test, where one side had no hand protection. I'm not 100% sure that wasn't just a coincidence, though: as in, there were many blocked strikes in those tests, and they could've been aimed at something else.
And, if any consideration, AI got pretty good with removing armor from unconscious opponents. That is another benefit of two-handed weapons, btw - units with a weapon and a shield cannot do this.

How exactly the armor in your mod is weaker?
In my mod, there are several weapons which can pierce right through plate of the same material, even if only when the target is prone. Seemed fair enough to me, taking into account that plate in my mod is very expensive to make, and any damage to it is a hole in the fort's smithing resources. Together with the armor-removal AI and more protective shields, this creates a system where fights are long, but will immediately speed up the moment one of the sides looses their ground. I personally love the fights this way. Not a fan of wall-to-wall combat, where, in the end, it's all about the relative skills/stats and some luck. In this system, both sides flail on each other with only occassional casualities, until either one side starts getting tired/panicked or the other gets some tactics up and outmaneuvers the foe.

Now that I think about it, with my current balancing scheme its fairly rare for fights to go on long enough to run soldiers out of stamina. I wonder if there are ways to make fights more tiring in a shorter amount of time without affecting running stamina?

I don't really think there is any way to separate those. It's either longer fights (with the help of stronger defenses and/or slower weapons) or lower stamina in general. As you see, I went with longer fights.

[Grimlocke]

Is FRACTURE:22000 enough to prevent limbs from being disabled by force transfer all so often? Or do you intentionally keep it not too high, so that torn muscles will still occur from time to time? I'm having a hard time finding a sweet spot where light weapons cannot break armoured limbs, while heavy weapons can.
And it's pretty much the same with the nervous tissue: it got tiring to see almost any successful strike (including punches) to the head end up in inevitable death by suffocation, but increasing the material strength high enough made it so that not even a poleaxe can deal with it.

The values I have make for only very occasional damage by joint/tendon/nerve damage, mainly very heavy blunt weapons get it on good hits. I'd have it be a bit more common, but the joint damage scales only with amount of force applied in total, not force/area, so it was impossible to make it also happen on smaller contact area weapons and not be all sorts of broken.

I doubt my values will copy over to a vanilla kind of balancing scheme though. As I said, I also increased the size of the joint bodyparts, since the smaller the part is the easier it was to crush which made joints very weak compared to the neck, so that weighs in as well. Basically in your case, just increase the force until the ingame behaviour makes sense.

I'm not sure if I've seen what I've seen, but throughout the armor-vs-shield testing I've been noticing that the AI have been consistently focusing on bodyparts not covered by armor. I've staged several 1x1 fights between a human who worn almost full plate armor with no shield and a lightly armored human with a large shield: the shield user very often attacked the facial features, which were uncovered. There was a similar pattern in the other test, where one side had no hand protection. I'm not 100% sure that wasn't just a coincidence, though: as in, there were many blocked strikes in those tests, and they could've been aimed at something else.
And, if any consideration, AI got pretty good with removing armor from unconscious opponents. That is another benefit of two-handed weapons, btw - units with a weapon and a shield cannot do this.

Hm, the AI has a really strong and weird preference for attacking tiny bodyparts, usually with unarmed attacks or other secondary attacks. I'm fairly sure this is due to the 'critical attack chance' though, the thing that gives a randomly attack on a random bodypart greatly increased odds of hitting. The AI almost always seems to use those if they come up. That mechanic doesn't weigh likelihood by bodypart size, and there are a lot more small bodyparts (fingers, toes, face parts) than large ones, so the AI does a lot of biting enemies in the toe and such (with both standing and wearing a helmet...)

I haven't ever noticed the AI prefer unarmored bodyparts, but admittedly its been a while since I tested that. I'll give it another science later.

How exactly the armor in your mod is weaker?
In my mod, there are several weapons which can pierce right through plate of the same material, even if only when the target is prone. Seemed fair enough to me, taking into account that plate in my mod is very expensive to make, and any damage to it is a hole in the fort's smithing resources. Together with the armor-removal AI and more protective shields, this creates a system where fights are long, but will immediately speed up the moment one of the sides looses their ground. I personally love the fights this way. Not a fan of wall-to-wall combat, where, in the end, it's all about the relative skills/stats and some luck. In this system, both sides flail on each other with only occassional casualities, until either one side starts getting tired/panicked or the other gets some tactics up and outmaneuvers the foe.

With the setup I went for, most fights is an exchange of parried and blocked hits, hits glancing off armor until finally one gets a shot on a limb, either disarmed the opponent or dropping them on the floor. Its fairly similar, but shorter and a large skill disparity can make you almost unassailable in adventurer mode as long as you can keep from being outnumbered. Being outnumbered is probably bad news in both these mods though, since you just get spammed, knocked on the floor and turned into canned soup. This is historically accurate though, and how things should be