v0.34 Talk:Material science

I don't understand what the first paragraph in the "Effects on Combat" section mean, so I am leaving them alone for now. If no one else can make sense of them they should probably be removed. I am starting to add the results of our ballistics testing to the combat section. --Pirate Bob 22:19, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

It would be very nice to add Urist's flowchart to the "Interactions between projectiles and armor" section. It might also be nice if the flowchart could somehow be highlighted to emphasize which sections of the text correspond to which parts of the flowchart, but I don't know if this is feasible. --Pirate Bob 22:49, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

The ratio involved in "The projectile absorbs the force of the collision" seems kind of odd. We should investigate if there are actually more parameters determining this at some point.--Pirate Bob 23:11, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that, the fraction 800/157 is equal to 40000/7850. It is this way because a size 100 ammo will deflect off iron armor if the ammo has an IMPACT_YIELD less than 40000. We did investigate the other parameters and they don't apply to that equation. --UristDaVinci 06:11, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we should put links to Toady One posts on the forums in a section on this page, as "Word of Toady" on how the system works. --UristDaVinci 06:11, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Updated page

Good work updating the page, but I'm a little confused by "As explained below, wood bolts are capable of fracturing through the strongest metal armor, and would fracture copper or steel armor were it not for the higher densities of those metals." Emufarmers 10:24, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Look at the flowchart. If copper, steel, bronze, or iron were not so dense (or wood so fragile), wood bolts would be able to fracture a hole in the armor and deal damage. Adamantine is stronger than steel, but provides less protection against wood bolts only because of the low density of adamantine. Can you think of a better way to explain that? --UristDaVinci 20:45, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I was just looking at the numbers, and it appears according to our formula that adamantine actually should be able to deflect most wood (density 600) with 34.11 parameter values. Adamantine should provide protection against bolts up to momentum ~110, and a density 600 bolt (mass 0.090 kg) will travel at SHOOT_MAXVEL=1000, and have momentum 90, and should be deflected. I used pine (density 510) in my original tests where I found only 58% deflection of wood bolts off adamantine armor, so I have no idea what's going on there. I guess I'll have to check deflection of wood off adamantine again...--Pirate Bob 22:05, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Update - I confirmed that addy can block tower cap bolts >90% of the time. I suspect what was going on before when I found 56% deflection is I was using normal dwarves, and the probability of armor penetration goes up dramatically if the dwarf is passed out (which happens rapidly due to hits to unarmored areas causing chips). Anyway, the correct thing to say is that adamantine barely stop wood bolts under ideal conditions, and no other armors would stop them using the "armor absorbs the collosion" mechanism.--Pirate Bob 22:05, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

There are a variety of Wood densities, and I think I was testing with a denser wood, like mangrove. --UristDaVinci 05:32, 3 December 2012 (UTC)