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[Loud Whispers]

10 minutes of research tells me that copper was never used for armour either. and if it ever was the only reason to use it over silver would be due to it being alot more common and cheaper.

And i'm sure i've seen films where people had bear/tiger skulls turned into helmets.

Early Ancient Greeks used copper armour and weapons, but ditched it when they found out how to make bronze out of it. And we all know bone armour looks cool, but it is honestly absolutely useless against pretty much everything.

[Buttery_Mess]

Bone and wooden armour is pretty much just to counter bone and wooden bolts, and the like. I suppose it could also soften blows from blunt weapons.

[Loud Whispers]

Bone and wooden armour is pretty much just to counter bone and wooden bolts, and the like. I suppose it could also soften blows from blunt weapons.

It's better than nothing.

...Until DF adds splinters.

[Ashsaber]

Maybe silver armor'll make the enemies stop and go "That must be expensive" while the dorf get close enough to hit.

(or, y'know, kill the dorf, relieve it of said armor, then go "this must be expensive").

[krenshala]

Bone and wooden armour is pretty much just to counter bone and wooden bolts, and the like. I suppose it could also soften blows from blunt weapons.

It didn't help the elves against my legendary hammer user migrant I got one fort (when i accidentally selected a civ at war with elves at embark).  He just broke their hands, forcing them to drop their weapon/shield, then broke everything else until they either died of bloodloss or (more likely) passed out and took a shot to the skull.  The four recruit speardwarves together did more damage, and got all but one kill, but without his insane ability to break their weaponhands on the first attack the elves would have managed to hit someone, most likely killing a recruit or three (despite being armed with riot batons rubberwood swords).

I think that fort starved, as I focused on military and forgot to make sure I got food.

[Wannazzaki]

This is not a case of opinion, RAWs wise silver for armour is pathetic. Its numbers are lower than other metals for numbers relevent to armour. Just about anything is better than silver. Consult this wiki. http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Metal#Weapon_.26_Armor_Quality


Using the buttons on the categories will rank the metals.

[Callista]

However bad it would be, it should still be possible to make silver armor. I think that in our history, it's not the unsuitability of silver for armor that prevented us from trying it, but simply because silver is too scarce, and thus considered too valuable; and it is also quite easy to shape into objects with minute details, making it a suitable substance for jewelry and decorative objects.

I wouldn't be surprised if it has been used for ceremonial armor; but anyone rich enough to afford silver armor would also have been rich enough to afford armor with better protection--even if the resources in the area were particularly poor and only copper or leather were available.

But in DF, that's different. You may very well have an abundance of silver and very little copper in your embark site. If that's so, then their roles might be reversed--silver might be the material that's plentiful but not very good for armor; and so you make armor out of it until you can find something better. Sure, if you had anything better, you'd use that; but what if you didn't?

[Wannazzaki]

However bad it would be, it should still be possible to make silver armor. I think that in our history, it's not the unsuitability of silver for armor that prevented us from trying it, but simply because silver is too scarce, and thus considered too valuable; and it is also quite easy to shape into objects with minute details, making it a suitable substance for jewelry and decorative objects.

I wouldn't be surprised if it has been used for ceremonial armor; but anyone rich enough to afford silver armor would also have been rich enough to afford armor with better protection--even if the resources in the area were particularly poor and only copper or leather were available.

But in DF, that's different. You may very well have an abundance of silver and very little copper in your embark site. If that's so, then their roles might be reversed--silver might be the material that's plentiful but not very good for armor; and so you make armor out of it until you can find something better. Sure, if you had anything better, you'd use that; but what if you didn't?

You CAN use silver on armour for what it's good for. Blinging. Harvest a planets worth of silver ore, smelt it and set a metalcrafter to studding everything not nailed down with silver and silver will eventually be used for it's intended purpose. Bonus points if you made a custom reaction that did the same but made menacing spikes

[King DZA]

I do think it would be nice to have the choice to make silver armor. Then again, I also think it would be nice to make it out of things like gold, or a full suit of bone armor.

Who cares if it completely sucks? It's the fact that we can do it regardless that's important. But I suppose that's why Toady made the game so moddable....

[flieroflight]

of course, if gauntlet matirial affected punchesm silver would be nigh unstoppable in the right hands

[MadocComadrin]

Just as a point of information, bone and wood were used as armors. Wood (and paper) was good at taking arrows and dull weaponry, and bone was better than nothing against stone. They were primarily used in areas/times where iron and steel weaponry were nonexistent. Wood was also used by some peasants in the east and in the Americas.

[Loud Whispers]

Gauntlets don't make you swing any harder, they just make sure your fist is protected, and won't give way
Giving way = Broken hand

Just as a point of information, bone and wood were used as armors. Wood (and paper) was good at taking arrows and dull weaponry, and bone was better than nothing against stone. They were primarily used in areas/times where iron and steel weaponry were nonexistent. Wood was also used by some peasants in the east and in the Americas.

Wood is used by elves as armour -_-

[Teneb]

Wood and bone are good if there is absolutely nothing else around, so would be silver, I guess. But if you have something else there's no excuse for having your militia use those.

[Wannazzaki]

Well it all boils down to why use a metal you can use bare hands to alter the shape of, especially in plate form (thin sheets) or chain (Pull them apart) for armour? Heres the thing. In DF it's the pure article you use, i don't believe there are any alloys of silver you can use for armour either (Except Genesis, black bronze being the densest motherfucker around makes great hammers, which is copper, silver, gold and...er..something else). You COULD mod the option in or have the option by why would you want to? If you want bullshit blinging ceremonial armour for your one commander guy wait for an artifact, it's less effort in the end. Choice is never a bad thing but i become leery when it's followed by "but why would you want to?". If it changed the colour of your dorf like different metal bins and barrels have fancy colours i would be a bit more in favour of it (Perhaps modding in electrolisis plating for the colour changes? Adding spikes/studs doing the same?) But it doesn't. So ...to me it seems pointless and i can't imagine ever wanting to. As for wood and bone. In FD mod i will occasionally make full suits of demons bone and stuff just to create something to decorate with bone to use up all of the bone i accumulate, wood gets chucked into the volcano or atom smasher and leather is a universal underlayer (Genesis mod i only use Deephide which is metal grade leather, again i can't fathom using anything worse. If i can't get it the complex system of bridges and trap corridors can deal with sieges)

[Demetrious]

Being a bit of a metalcrafter myself, let me tell you that silver is hilariously soft.  So soft that people don't use fine silver much, but instead use sterling silver.  Fine silver is 99.9% silver, sterling is usually 92% or therabouts, with the rest composed of mainly copper and maybe trace elements.  That 8% copper content is enough to increase the strength enormously - you could dilute silver with cardboard and make it stronger.  24k gold, which is 99.9% gold and comparable to silver in terms of density and strength, is soft enough that you can squeeze it between your thumb and finger and leave an impression.

Incidentally, this is why "silver bullets" would work just fine; fine silver is somewhere between copper and lead in hardness, (the two common metals used in modern bullets). So Urist LoneRanger would do okay if he could use pistols. Especially if he made them with low-grain loads... so they won't tumble.

Of course, like everything else in this gods-cursed game, that comes with infinite problems of its own.

Urist Browning cancelled forge pistol - needs recoil springs.