v0.31 Talk:Metal

Field Observations

It seems true that materials can't cut anything "tougher" than them. Fights between my small iron-armored military and Goblins last for ages, since my iron axes mostly bounce off the Goblins' iron armor and the Goblins' copper & silver weapons can't get through my iron armor. Iron pikes have penetrated iron armor, and are the weapons that most consistently do so (Logical, since the highest force is being applied in one place). IRON ARMOR IS NOW INCREDIBLY USEFUL.

Also, on a more theoretical note, the higher impact elasticity and shear elasticity of steel will be counteracted by much higher fracture toughness/strength. Having a dent put in your breastplate that bruises you is much better than having your breastplate fractured and getting a pike in the ribs.--Nimblewright 13:32, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

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Despite having copper, bismuth, and tin, I can't seem to make bismuth bronze. Despite having copper, gold, and silver I can't seem to make black bronze - are these broken or merely different? --Squirrelloid 09:33, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind, my smelters were slower than I thought, and they'd only smelted 1 copper total so far. *cracks whip* Get back to work you lazy bums! --Squirrelloid 10:01, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

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Impact elasticity: Used for blunt-force combat; lower is better. This is the raw value.

How sure are we about this? It seems to contradict: "Force from blunt weapons can transcend layers. For instance, a hammer can bruise the skin while breaking the bone underneath. As such, plate armor's benefits are generally ignored by blunt attacks, and leather armor would prove to be more effective." Leather as a material has a Impact Elasticity of 5000 meaning, I think, that it is much more elastic... --68.117.74.40 14:15, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The Impact Elasticity number is based on the real life bulk modulus. The higher the number the greater the pressure that is needed to compress a material a given volume, that is it is the resistance to compressibility. Intuitively, we would think that we would want a higher rather than lower number for something like a war hammer or maul so they act less like a rubber mallet and more like a hammer. However, we don't know exactly how Impact Elasticity is used and unless we do we can't draw any conclusions about it. It would seem a little odd if it is a critical factor in a weapon as in real life it is rarely used except in gas equations as the effect is generally small for solids. Usually about 1% or less at yield strength for the metals in DF. EDIT: Just to be clear, impact elasticity shares an inverse like relationship with bulk modulus so lower "should be" better.--PencilinHand 04:36, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I think this is more a question of how accurate the quote from the release info page is -- which is oriented towards how effectively armor can resist/absorb blunt damage before it effects the wearer. The quote suggests that leather armor would be more effective than 'plate' (metal I suppose). Let's assume that's true. While we don't know how the actual combat calculations work we can observe values the calculations use. The impact values are said to be specific to blunt damage so it's a good bet where the value that makes leather better against blunt damage is. Comparing material templates between various armor capable metals and leather, the value that stands out the most is impact elasticity (all metals have the same impact fracture/yield >> leather, which makes sense as leather isn't as durable). Impact elasticity is 635 for iron with most other metals being in that ball park and it is actually 50000 for leather. Climbing out on the branches of the speculation tree, the hypothesis is greater elasticity reduces blunt damage directly or disrupts ability of blunt damage to transmit to multiple tissue layers. Alas, a brief test of 50+ combats in the arena shows that one's dwarves might as well be naked when wearing leather against iron hammers/maces. Iron plate (and even mail as the dwarves had to wear shirts to keep their fragile, fragile upper arms in one piece) armor proved to be quite effective with almost every blow simply deflecting. So it seems that leather armor is not better than iron plate when it comes to blunt damage... at least in this specific case. --Deranged Imp 11:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, much more testing is needed. There are four different elements of the game that are being tested. The wound system, the armor system, the weapon system, and the material system. We know that there are deficiencies in the wound system and severe imbalance in the weapon system so it stands to reason that the same is true of armor system so tests on the material system are hideously complicated. Suppose that the intent is for leather armor to act as an under-layer buffer with metal mail or plate as the over-layer, but for whatever reason the proportions in the armor raws are limiting the material effectiveness. Measuring the effectiveness of weapons in attacking and armor in defending is complicated because the only way to do that is by interpreting a wound system which doesn't always seem to reflect the extend of the damage done. Especially if the target has [NOPAIN], [NOSICK], and doesn't bleed. You can pretty much forget about it killing something if it doesn't bleed as that is seemingly the primary mode of death right now. Thankfully, arena mode makes tests like this MUCH easier to do than in prior versions. However, it still requires a lot of effort. --PencilinHand 13:06, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Material Value vs. Material Multiplier

Is there a reason it's Value instead of Material Multiplier? It seems a bit inconsistent to me. Kiraen 06:42, 20 April 2010 (UTC) Bold text

I think this is a terminology question that might be more appropriate in the discussion page you linked. In fact, I am sure that is what this is. --PencilinHand 04:27, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Bronze is the new steel?

From the table, it looks like bronze is 'better' than steel for blunt weapons, and maybe almost as good for bladed ones? Am I reading this right? Can someone with more DF/Science knowledge make a chart for the rest of us that lists the metals from best to worst in terms of a) Bladed weapons, b) Blunt weapons, and c) Armor? That would be nice, because that chart now is informative, but not, er, helpful. --Zombiejustice 17:24, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Well Mr. mysteriouspersonwhoforgottosignhisnamelikezoro, that seems like a reasonable request. I will see what I can do. --PencilinHand 17:09, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Whoops! Embarrassing. And thank you.

I put a table with guidelines for what is better for what. Unfortunately, in the case of blunt attacks, there is generally very little discernible difference between one metal and another. More testing needs to be conducted for finer granularity, I am afraid. --PencilinHand 02:57, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone have an idea what materials are best for bolts now? They do piercing damage, so I suppose it is like cutting (steel rules), but the kinetic energy they have may be dependent on the density (the bigger is the mass the less is the impact of air friction and so on, he-he). --Snus-mumrik 17:56, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Bolts and other missiles behave somewhat oddly. The mechanics behind them work on some interpretation of the kinetic energy formula, F=(m*v^2)/2, where the bow and wielder provide the potential energy that is converted to the kinetic energy of the missile in the form of velocity. The problem with this is, for something that weighs next to nothing like Adamantine, the velocity becomes unrealistically large(like approaching or exceeding the sound barrier) which breaks the assumption that friction is negligible. To prevent this from happening Toady put velocity limits in the raws for the missiles that prevent that assumptions from being broken. The end result is the best materials for missiles roughly follows the edge weapon scale with the exception of Adamantine which is dead last. I will see what I can do to the table to get it to reflect this. --PencilinHand 16:32, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

grumble

It would be nice to have the option of making hammers or maces from rose gold, and to save a little fuel & labor by making bismuth bronze from 2 bronze + copper + bismuth. Oh, well. – unsigned comment by 216.27.178.205

1: Sign your comments ("--~~~~"). 2: If you really want to, edit reaction_standard.txt and inorganic_metal.txt. 3: Platinum would be even better than rose gold, being denser and having much lower impact elasticity. --Quietust 16:35, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

While you're at it, why not allow cutting nickel with brass to yield nickel silver, or other similar alloy "chain reactions"? Might make for an interesting micro-mod. --Onul Rigothzas 07:34, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Weapons grade metal chart

I updated the weapons grade metal chart and it's accompanying blurb to match the recent data zagibu recorded on the official forums. I left the previous blurb intact simply because the act of testing is very much a work in progress and not much is entirely settled yet.

Relationship between density and impact/shear statistics

The mechanics implied in the Arena Testing section of Weapon do not seem to reflect the mechanics mentioned here. I'm referring specifically to the lauding of silver as an excellent blunt weapon metal. How does the density of a metal alter the impact/shear numbers listed above? -- hbernier 13:55, 18 October 2010 (EST)

Hmmm, Density seems to support the assertions of the Arena Testing section as well. – unsigned comment by hbernier

For the real-world metals, at least, those are the real-world properties of the metals, converted into DF-specific units. So if you, or anybody, knows how "density" controls "impact yield" and so forth... then you've got a bright future ahead in the materials sciences industry.

As to how the combat calculations work out... I THINK that the impact stats are only slight modifiers, relative to density, when calculating blunt-force weapon attack. The impact stats are important on the blunt-force armor defense side. Edged weapons, I think, put less importance on density and more on the shear stats. And edged-force armor defense probably relies entirely on the shear stats - hence steel armor is better than anything but adamantine. --DeMatt 20:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

One can add custom metals to the raws, conduct combat tests and determine effect and relative importance of all material properties. Like create "iron_impact_high" with 100 times higher impact yield or impact elasticity, "iron_impact_low" with 100 times lower and test it against normal iron for both weapons and armor. It seems like not that hard but definite and useful project.--Another 21:25, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Material value changes

Did they nerf the heck out of black bronze's value? It used to have a much higher material value, as i recall. Which was nice, since it has a distinctive color, so it was fun to decorate nobles rooms with it.. sigh. --Squirrelloid 13:31, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Why not take a look at the 40d version of this page and see for yourself that it hasn't changed? We kept the old pages in different namespaces for a reason... --Quietust 14:20, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Elven Wood Weapons and Armor

I didn't see any discussion of this elsewhere and this seems like the most appropriate place. Are elven wood weapons/armor worthless like the table would indicate or is there special elven magic that makes them not suck? Rembrandtq 22:20, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK (which actually isn't that far), elven wooden weapons are better than dwarven wooden training weapon equivalents. Elven wooden armor is, broadly speaking, equivalent to dwarven bone and shell armor. So to put it more succintly, no - it sucks. You're dwarves, forge proper metal gear instead of depending on PLANTS to shield you. :P --DeMatt 05:39, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Shallow or Deep

What metals are shallow and which are considered deep? 69.255.200.85 12:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The metal type is irrelevant - the only thing that distinguishes "shallow" versus "deep" is location. --Quietust 13:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I did some My-Genesis deep/shallow metals charting: world quickgen "frequent" minerals.
flux & DMs: native silver -29 in granite, tetra&native copper -33 in mica&marble, tetra in marble -34 -32, cassi in schist -55
flux & DMs, flux & DMs: tetra -17 -18, tetra -38, nativegold -36, ada -39, gold & plat -40
flux & DMs: lignite -3 -5, tetra -19-21-22 -52-53-54!, galena -19 -21, cassi -26 -27 -28, cobalt -29 -59-60!
is -60 the hard limit? maybe -17 to -54 is deep.

noflux & SMs: sphalerite -7, gold -10 -11, cassi -12, -4 spha,
flux & SMs: tetra -19 tetra -20 nativesilver lots -27, tetra, maybe -29 lowest silver.
flux & SMs: garni -27 to -30 -34, limo -3 -4 -5 -6, cassi -41 -56 -60, plat -46,
SMs: -3 to -46 seen.
--TomiTapio 14:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)