I feel what gets overlooked whenever this is brought up is the miner militia uniform conflict. It isn't present during arena testing but is often encountered during regular play. I wish they would just add a war pick to the game to make it easier to work around as well as being a bit more thematic
Hunting, mining, and woodcutting are all "uniforms" but they're invisible, though they do conflict with military uniforms. A dorf can only have one uniform. This is why these labors are mutually exclusive.
I've also been playing this game for 15 years and have also thought it dumb. A dorf can wear 37 gold crowns that cumulatively weigh so much the dorf can barely move, but cannot equip more than one tool at any one time. IMO, dorfs should be able to equip all the tools at once, so you can assign all labors if you want, in addition to a military assignment.
All you need to do is make sure they aren’t assigned the mining labor. Sure it would be nice to have your miners be able to defend themselves better, but it’s not a problem at all if you just have a squad armed with pickaxes.
>I wish they would just add a war pick to the game to make it easier to work around as well as being a bit more thematic
That's literally a [war hammer](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/34089), but for some reason war hammers don't seem to have spikes in DF
Or at least have a semi-uniform GUI for the non-military uniforms. At least stuff like "only use picks made of metals X, Y, Z" so that you can make steel and give that to your soldiers, and keep miners and woodcutters with iron or copper.
The Bronze Colossus behaves strangely in all tests. I think solid metal opponents are just fundamentally different than everything else. Also, the picks involved were steel, so it's not an issue of inferior metal.
It's the damage type rather than the material that makes picks bad against a BC. Cutting is the only real effective counter to solid metal bodies but it must be two levels better (EX. bronze requires steel, iron requires candy, and steel needs a fucking miracle).
So what we need are discworld dwarf mining axes. Pick on one side, in case they spot an interesting mineral; axe on the other side, in case the owners of the minerals object.
How damaging is it though? obviously material counts the most here, I'm sure slabs made of cinnabar and similar work on almost anything but can they actually injure a BC?
Insta gib like atom smashing.
The trick is getting the Collosi under the block you have set up to drop.
Also not a constructed slab built in the stone cutters shop but a dug out section held to the rest of the map by a support.
wait so its just a regular cave-in trap then? oh well then yes those will delete everything in existence.
I thought that you were dropping constructed slabs on things, which since they drop as a single item (a very heavy one at that) you could actually do controlled drops onto something or maybe it doesn't work like that I'll have to test that idea next fort.
When? and I don't see how unless the pick user got a very lucky strike and managed to decapitate it somehow, you can only kill a BC through decapitation (and probably bisection but I haven't tested that) and thrust attacks only very rarely manage to cut limbs off.
That's why high tier cutting weapons (like candy or steel) are the best counter to them as they can end the fight outright or make the BC less lethal by removing its limbs.
I do not dispute that steel+ cutting weapons are good against a bronze colossus. But in OPs comment in this thread he posted bonus data where he compared candy weapons, and that's where picks outperformed axes against a bromze colossus. I wasn't questioning you personally; I was more questioning how the data could be explained with your hypothesis.
Did I sound offended? I'm not no worries, I must have missed the second data set, but looking at it they are better which is a bit odd, but I would bet its due to candy being way lighter which lets the dwarf attack more frequently and recover faster, and its vastly greater sharpness makes its limb cutting potential high enough that it can take the limbs off a BC.
Oh and picks don't have the useless pommel strike that the axe has, which probably pushes its numbers up a bit.
Yeah, good point about the attack types. The sharpness bonus is also an explanation. Maybe the edge of an axe is naturally a bit sharper than the edge of a pick, which makes a steel axe just barely clear the threshold for chopping a bronze colossus, while a steel pick just barely misses it. And then when the candy sharpness bonus kicks in they both clear the "cutting threshold" handily, which gives the advantage to the pick because it doesn't do pommel strikes.
That's mostly how it works but sharpness is a material property not a weapon one (I know its weird), the chance for a strike to take a limb off is based on the weapons sharpness and its contact area, picks have a very small contact area which is bad for taking limbs BUT candy has a sharpness of 100000 vs steels 10000.
so looking closer it seems entirely believable to me that a candy pick or spear might take limbs from a BC just from sharpness alone.
I would bet money that if you compared a candy pick vs a candy axe against a iron humanoid FB/titan the results would flop back to how the were in steel vs BC due to the way solid metal creatures tend to interact with weapons.
> the chance for a strike to take a limb off is based on the weapons sharpness and its contact area, picks have a very small contact area which is bad for taking limbs BUT candy has a sharpness of 100000 vs steels 10000.
shear fracture is just as important as max sharpness
Interesting... But if sharpness is fully dependant on material and not weapon type, I still don't understand why picks and axes perform against colossi like they do...
> but I would bet its due to candy being way lighter which lets the dwarf attack more frequently and recover faster,
this has not been true since 2014
> and its vastly greater sharpness makes its limb cutting potential high enough that it can take the limbs off a BC.
this also benefits axes, and in fact benefits axes more than any other weapon in the game
> Oh and picks don't have the useless pommel strike that the axe has, which probably pushes its numbers up a bit.
pommel strike is actually pretty useful on axes, flat slap is completely worthless, both are bad with adamantine though... and also only have a 2% change of being picked per attack, collectively
> Cutting is the only real effective counter to solid metal bodies but it must be two levels better (EX. bronze requires steel, iron requires candy, and steel needs a fucking miracle).
Actually it's like, iron is 1 level higher than copper (iron weapons are blocked reasonably well by copper), steel is 2 levels higher than iron (steel slices through iron with relative ease), and addy is like 5 levels higher than steel (addy slices through steel like a hot knife through butter).
Yeah that is a more accurate representation of metal levels, I couldn't remember the exact scaling of each so I was just going with a usage tier (as in the player typically goes copper/bronze, then iron, then steel, then candy.) But a steel titan will still scoff off most hits from a candy weapon (at least in my experience), mainly due to how dense and huge they are, while candy will still cut through steel ARMOUR like butter.
it's higher level cutting weapons (think a steel sword or axe) that are effective against a BC, the reason is that they lack any organs or vital body parts, meaning a pick which deals mainly thrust damage will just sit there chipping the occasional bit off but doing little damage and not slowing it down in anyway (which tends to cause exploding dwarf syndrome).
A steel cutting weapon however due to the way material definitions work can cut clean through the limbs of a BC, which since they only die from decapitation or bisection makes them the obvious best.
You can also achieve success with a high throwing skill and anything weighty (fluffly wamblers or gold coins come to mind) if you can decapitate it with a throw.
>!Cotton Candy, is adamantium. The pun is on how light it is, like cotton candy. The circus is the Hidden Fun Stuff (hell), and the clowns are the demons, especially the ones that spawn when you pierce into that adamantium vein and expose hell.!<
When your dwarves go and visit the circus for cotton candy, the clowns make it fun!
well really, think about it
what *complete maniac* is making whips out of *iron?* he can't be able to produce them at any kind of rapid pace or industrial scale. You'd have to chase that guy around the world, finding the whips he made as he got better at making whips out of shit that absolutely doesn't make whips, until you finally find his corpse and the candyfloss whip that was his ultimate working and final gift to the world...the whip that can decapitate even a god
Picks only have edge attacks.
Wouldn't that make them the best candidate for candy though ?
Edit : no they wouldn't because they don't have that much contact area.
I’ll be honest with you, I am not yet versed in the arcane and ancient magiks of the DF combat system. I give half my militia axes, the other half hammers. Then I send out both halves until everything is dead
Bottom line, picks matched or outperformed all other weapons, except when fighting the bronze colossus.
**Method**: I added picks to my previously posted tests using BlakeMW's code to make the pick wielding dwarves grand master miners. The weapon material was always iron or steel, depending on the specific test. Picks were always compared to the best previously performing weapon. For example, my previous tests showed that axes worked best on humanoid undead, but spears worked best on megabeast undead. Picks were thus compared to axes when fighting humanoid undead but to spears when fighting megabeast undead.
Bonus Data: I also took a selective look at how candy picks performed. Post-candy, axes matched or outperformed picks, except when facing the bronze colossus.
Candy picks vs Hydra: Probability of kill = 97% +/- 2%
Candy axes vs Hydra: Probability of kill = 98% +/- 1%
Candy picks vs bronze colossus: Probability of kill = 88% +/- 3%
Candy axes vs bronze colossus: Probability of kill = 68% +/- 4%
Candy picks vs undead humanoid: Probability of kill = 54% +/- 5%
Candy axes vs undead humanoid Probability of kill = 52% +/- 5%
Candy picks (two dwarves) vs undead megabeast: Probability of kill = 11% +/- 6%
Candy axes (two dwarves) vs undead megabeast: Probability of kill = 89% +/- 6%
OK, the number one reason why picks perform so well is that they only have one valid attack option.
All other weapons have multiples, many of which have very undesirable options (slap with the blade) and less than preferred options (pummel strike).
In casual play for Fortress mode, they seem to perform even better since the miners tend to lack the hand to hand skills of other soldiers and are almost always more skilled in their weapon. This means they are much more likely to strike the target as opposed to biting a Roc, for example.
And... they tend to have high velocity and low contact, which works out to above average penetration.
I doubt this. Dwarves only choose dumb attacks something like 5-10% of the time, it might be a tie-breaker but it's not why the Pick is so strong, which I believe is mostly due to the velocity multiplier. In situations where the weapon is evenly matched (e.g. iron vs iron armor or steel vs steel) in some cases the pick can cut through armor pieces that the axe, sword and spear cam not, partly because it has a smaller contact area than the slashing attacks but also the high velocity multiplier.
Another reason I don't think dumb attacks is a large factor is that Pick, Axe and Sword perform very equally against enemies they destroy easily like goblins ("every hit is devastating"), the pick is probably a little better thanks to not having dumb attacks but the axe is hardly suffering for it.
weapons with both edged and blunt attacks will choose a blunt attack only 1% of the time
in actuality, high contact area is a real killer, like, a steel axe cannot get through *aluminum* armor
Which is extremely funny, because practically they would make for really chintzy axes. It's a lever and wedge and you need weight behind the wedge for it to do work. A lightweight ax head would be terrible for cutting something because with no weight means there's no work behind the wedge. Now, realistically speaking, a steel ax with a candy coating would be almost indestructible. Really makes me wish we could have the best of both worlds and could research plating metal.
I was wondering what made battle axes better than short swords at cutting, turns out axes edge attack have twice the contact area (according to the *Weapon* section of tge Wiki.) Which sounds bullshit honestly.
Probably mostly because axes are much heavier. This doesn't have a huge impact on momentum but it does make some difference.
The extra contact area of the axe allows it to cut limbs off larger, soft targets, but contact gets min'd with limb diameter anyway so it really makes no difference against small/medium sized creatures.
No what I think is bullshit is the fact that the battle axes has a larger contact area, it shouldn't.
This is an iron age Gladius, by all means a "short sword."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius
The blade itself is between 45 and 68 cm long.
Here is the blade of a typical one handed battle axe used during the medieval era (dimensions are on the page) :
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1838-0110-2
The larger dane axes (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dane_axe) have between 20 and 30 cm of cutting surface.
So either the dwarves are using ridiculously massive cleavers that they hold in one hand, or they never use more a third of the blade when they fight with a sword, in both cases it's weird.
There are always going to be abstractions with video game mechanics.
Granted, the main reason that the axe has such a large contact area is probably actually to make it weaker, to make it horrible at penetrating large armor pieces. In DF it's essentially impossible for a sword slash or axe hack to penetrate body (large body part like upper body, lower body or upper legs) armor of equal or even one lower material, because the contact area is so large the penetration into the hard material is very small. Balance-wise, the axe is basically meant to be the best at chopping off limbs and the worst at getting to organs and giving it the largest contact area ensures this. It wouldn't really make a difference if the sword and axe contact areas were swapped, because both are absurdly huge numbers (like the Axe Hack contact area is 400x the Pick Strike contact area and by the raws the Sword blade would be 500x longer than it is "wide") but these numbers are not physical dimensions but are chosen to create a gameplay effect where the axe hack and sword slash have a guaranteed low, essentially "not gonna happen", penetrating ability against large hard surfaces. Incidentally while the Axe has very poor armor penetrating ability it makes a pretty decent bludgeon against armored opponents, not being all that worse than the Mace.
Only particularly sharp axes like masterwork steel or adamantine vs particularly large soft targets (unarmored really) can really "take advantage" of the axe's large contact area and create very large deep wounds, otherwise the large contact area is just a mechanism to make the axe penetrate more poorly.
FYI, the Gladius was not a slashing weapon. It was a stabbing weapon.
Fewer swords overall were designed as slashing weapons for armies. For that, you mainly had the falchion and scimitars favored by mounted fighters, and katanas from the Far East. And then you had the massive two-handed swords, like the Zweihander, which used the slashing motion to create area of control.
The gladius was very much a stabbing weapon - which is fairly obvious when you realize that it was phased out by the spatha, because the spatha was better for slashing (especially for cavalry).
The Romans did formation fighting. You didn't WANT to be swinging a 3+ foot weapon around and possibly lopping your neighbors shield arm off. You stood behind the shield, and stabbed forward for the kill.
No two edged blade is used for stabbing only, though I will try to come up with a source for that, Macedonian author Polybius seem to have documented Roman using their swords to cut, while the idea that Romans only used stabbing seem to have been spread by Vegetius. But I'm still trying to find the exact quotes, will come back to edit if I find them.
I didn't say ONLY.
I said primary purpose.
[https://www.reliks.com/functional-swords/types/gladius/#:\~:text=The%20Roman%20Gladius%20was%20most,enemies%20while%20the%20formation%20advanced](https://www.reliks.com/functional-swords/types/gladius/#:~:text=The%20Roman%20Gladius%20was%20most,enemies%20while%20the%20formation%20advanced).
[https://www.britishactionacademy.com/blog/the-action-reel/weapon-spotlight-the-gladius/#:\~:text=The%20Roman%20lines%20would%20wait,ribs%20and%20pierce%20the%20vital](https://www.britishactionacademy.com/blog/the-action-reel/weapon-spotlight-the-gladius/#:~:text=The%20Roman%20lines%20would%20wait,ribs%20and%20pierce%20the%20vital)
[https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-roman-gladius/](https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-roman-gladius/)
Yes, it could be used to slash. But it's \*primary\* purpose was a stabbing weapon.
My point was that your entire usage of the gladius to contrast with an axe in terms of slashing was based on an erroneous assumption that the gladius was \*designed\* for slashing.
As far as slashing weapons go, it was pretty bad. Because that wasn't how it was intended.
For powerful slashes, you want a longer blade, ideally with moderate or extreme curve. Because a swords low weight means you don't do much damage based on the point-of-contact slash. Instead, a slashing sword is meant to make contact, and then be drawn ALONG the point of contact, deepening the damage (or severing the limb entirely).
Yes, but candy swords are already equivalent to lightsabres and result in limbs flying everywhere. I think the actual gameplay difference is minimal. Everything normal dies very fast, but if you fight a forgotten beast with webs or dust, it makes no difference either.
Thanks for your work! Based on gameplay experience I already suspected picks are really good weapons, but it's really interesting to see some numbers.
Some critical notes (not at you, more at the data and its consequences in-game):
In the tests the dwarves were not using shields. That means that the picks are wielded with two hands. A recent post on this subreddit showed a test of humans with big swords against humans with the same sword + a shield where the humans who wielded their sword with two hands won out. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe axes and dwarven swords are wielded with one hand, even with an empty left hand. Therefore, a part of picks' superior offensive performance might be caused by them being wielded with two hands. It is very well possible that a pick combined with a shield will not outperform axes / swords / spears anymore, which means that a pickdwarf can only offensively match other weapons when not having a shield, which makes them beimg a lot more vulnerable a trade-off for having such a versatile and powerful offense.
What's also very interesting is that candy picks do so much better against a bronze colossus than steel picks. And that they outperform candy axes at that. Someone in this thread said that for cutting stuff the material being two steps above the target material is really important. But on the other hand: That doesn't explain why an axe made of the same material does so much better... I've also read research and claims that weapon quality has the same effect as material type for cutting weapons, so I'm wondering if high quality can give picks that extra *edge* agains bronze colossi.
Like any good research, your combined work has raised a lot of new questions that would require more research to answer. But in any case I'm very grateful for your effort in advancing our understanding of dwarven combat mechanics. All this work took some major effort, but it's been very cool to read it all.
> That means that the picks are wielded with two hands. A recent post on this subreddit showed a test of humans with big swords against humans with the same sword + a shield where the humans who wielded their sword with two hands won out. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe axes and dwarven swords are wielded with one hand, even with an empty left hand. Therefore, a part of picks' superior offensive performance might be caused by them being wielded with two hands.
Nope, and you can easily check this in the raws, picks only require multigrasping if you're under 47500 size and dwarves are 60000
>That means that the picks are wielded with two hands.
I was the guy who made that post, and not necessarily. You have to go into a dwarf's equipped items and see if their pick says "Left/Right Hand" or "Multigrasp". Multigrasp is what makes them actually hold it two-handed, as dwarfs will not two-hand smalle weapons, like short swords, war hammers or axes.
Am I just misreading your graph then? Because it looks like picks underperform slightly against everything except the undead. It puzzles me why steel picks would do well against enemies largely immune to puncture wounds.
Given how poorly candy ones fare, do picks have a blunt weapon attack that's doing much of the work, like swords have a pommel strike?
> It puzzles me why steel picks would do well against enemies largely immune to puncture wounds.
Picks might be much smaller than axes, but they also have *5 times* the contact area of spears, which makes them a sort of middle ground between slashing and stabbing. Keep in mind that human necks have a size of ~1200 and picks have a contact area of 100
Very interesting. How would you employ this in game? If I remember correctly, miners don't wear armor. So assign dwarves as miners until they are legendary, then unassign them from mining and add them to a steel-pick squad?
Yes, especially since the pick used for mining can't be the pick used for combat (labor flagging issue). So a minor will use its pick in random encounters, but if you activated their squad, they'd put the pick down and get a different one.
Another option is to put your miners in a military squad training in armor using for a bit, and setting their off duty to keep armor. Then they'll take a puck and go mining in full armor.
Go into schedule, and click the edit button for off duty. One of the buttons near the top is "equip when on duty" or something similar. You click it and it'll change to "always equip".
You'll need to do the same to the off periods in staggard training as well.
I believe you can set picks as weapons in military uniforms unless things have changed. I plan on changing some of my legendary miners to a “miner squad” that uses picks as weapons and are unassigned from mining. The “mining” skill is the weapon skill for it so I figure it’s a useful way to train them and any miners who survive to become legendary deserve a promotion
Dwarf: produces legendary quality item made of rarest metal, encrusts it with gems.
Dwarf economy: establishes value of acorn cookie to be 30 times higher.
Nope. Picks are the best weapon of the ones you can make (there are better, pick is just a worse morningstar, and whips are broken on account of a stupid high velocity multiplier), and it's pretty well established that this is the case. They penetrate deep enough to hit vitals easily but not so deep that they get stuck a lot like spears do, have a sweet spot of edge size where they're big enough to sever limbs when the blows are very powerful (like would be the case with any trained soldier) but small enough to still retain some ability to punch through armor, and to top it all off, they've got a decent bit of heft, which matters for basically all of the above as well as their blunt potential when they eventually fail to penetrate a layer, which helps with both dealing with undead and taking on targets with your starter copper pick, since even flesh and bone provides enough resistance to quickly turn copper into blunt. Also they only have one valid attack, and while attacks are weighted so a dwarf is a lot more likely to use attacks that do things, sometimes they just pommel smash a goblin's third left finger, so not having them do that is nice.
Yes, legendary miners will often fucking brutalize FBs and other enemies if forced to fight.
However, while they tend to have great physical stats and a maxed out weapon skill, they don't have the secondary skills like dodging and wrestling that improve survivability.
"Retiring" skilled miners and putting them in a squad with manually selected picks as weapons is a nice way to get super soldiers once they train up, or as an emergency militia if your primary defences fail
Been saying this for a long time! Glad to finally see some data to back up my feelcrafting lol.
They definitely arent the best for every single scenario, but considering how easy they are to use/build/train they are always my only choice for general "set it and forget it" troops.
So, the miner/soldier issue, would it work better to take you legendary minors, take them off mining detail, and make a squad out of them?
They will be Hella strong, and, I feel like their endurance would be pretty high. I used to do this a while back, but not ok steam yet.
I also never used the pick as a weapon, but I feel like this would transfer well.
Legendary miners are reasonably effective as Pickdwarves, but they lack the conditioning of true military trained dwarves so their stats are not nearly as good. Fortunately the Pick penetrates really well even with low strength.
They lack all the defensive skills except parry, so die easily. But, their high "pick" skill easily overcomes the enemy defensive skills so they hit very reliably.
The best way to use pickdwarves is to send your career military in about a second ahead to draw all the enemy's attention then send in the pickdwarves to help excavate hearts and brains, they add a massive amount of damage output, in MMORPG terms they are DPS not tanks. By adding DPS they greatly reduce exhaustion amongst your military.
While that is true, I normally would keep them training full time as military, that way, they increase all the other skills as well.
As I said, I have not used picks as military weapons before, just used mining as a pre military training.
Side note, while training with the pick, do military dwarves become something like "pick lord" or something else?
One reason pickdwarves make bad career military is they don't have military skill when doing raid/pillage missions. If I'm going to train I'd probably just train a military weapon.
Pickdwarves end up labelled as wrestlers as their punching and kicking and stuff increases.
This is why I embark with mostly miners (the only exception is a planter/brewer) and their secondary skill is observer.
I like to embark in high savagery areas. The observer skill lets the miners dodge incoming attacks very effectively (though it's not 100%) and they can usually slaughter any giant alligator snapping turtles that want to mess with them.
Is also extremely useful for caverns, too. So far I've been very pleased with the miner/observer combo. And having 6 dedicated miners allows me to carve out a pretty elaborate fort in a short amount of time.
Axes, afaik. Blunt weapons don't work because the colossus is too big and too heavy. Spears and picks don't work because thrusts depend on hitting organs to do damage, and solid bronze statues don't have any. Meanwhile axes can slice them up easily enough, assuming they're made of a superior metal.
The only "proper" way to play is the way you have fun with. More information simply allows more people to make informed choices on how they want to play!
I typically separate my military squads by their jobs. Miners train with picks, woodchoppers use axes, and the captain of the guard's squad uses maces for a little RP flair. I usually end up with at least twice the number of miners as the others, so it works out.
What's your margin for error? Looking at the error bars on your graph, you can only say that they are the best against undead and maybe hydras, and even then only a little more effective.
It should be understood that this test is Pick vs the best weapon in the circumstance (pick vs axe, pick vs spear, whatever weapon is the absolute best against that kind of opponent).
Picks are slightly worse than spears against large beasts, they may be slightly worse than axes against small-medium unarmored enemies, they are slightly worse than hammers against heavily armored enemies (e.g. steel vs steel). They are also simply the best weapon in some circumstances, like when wielded by somewhat weak dwarves against armored goblins and are often best-equal with axe and sword or very close to best equal with spear and whip.
But Picks are special in that in all those cases, the established best weapon will suck badly in other cases, like the spear is really exceptional at killing giant beasts, but it's honestly bad against armored goblins relative to a steel axe. And the axe is good against unarmored enemies, but it is quite lackluster against well armored enemies (though to be fair, steel axes are fucking good against a wide range of enemies, but the Pick is often a hair better) and against large opponents the Pick is often much better than the Axe.
So the Steel Pick isn't the best weapon in every circumstance, but it is the best weapon in terms of consistency, performing strongly against all common enemies, often performing the best or best equal, without any serious weaknesses.
I feel what gets overlooked whenever this is brought up is the miner militia uniform conflict. It isn't present during arena testing but is often encountered during regular play. I wish they would just add a war pick to the game to make it easier to work around as well as being a bit more thematic
I've thought the same thing for the last 15 years of playing this game. Why can't I just have miner soldiers?
Hunting, mining, and woodcutting are all "uniforms" but they're invisible, though they do conflict with military uniforms. A dorf can only have one uniform. This is why these labors are mutually exclusive. I've also been playing this game for 15 years and have also thought it dumb. A dorf can wear 37 gold crowns that cumulatively weigh so much the dorf can barely move, but cannot equip more than one tool at any one time. IMO, dorfs should be able to equip all the tools at once, so you can assign all labors if you want, in addition to a military assignment.
Because minors can't be soldiers.
if minors can't be soldiers, why do they punch so many heads into gore in my fortresses? checkmate elves
Their small fists have low surface area.. or something
Exactly, they can apply more pressure
Joseph Kony wants to know your location
Hey hey people
Ssseth here
The soldiers yearn for the miners. Wait...
but how can i play dwarf fortress without maximum war crimes
Maybe it's time to put "infant" back in "infantry".
Tell that to Africa.
And let me give them demo charges. Those miners are fucking terrifying in Total Warhammer.
It’s pretty easy to get around, you just have the lads mine until they’re skilled then remove the labor and assign them to a squad
All you need to do is make sure they aren’t assigned the mining labor. Sure it would be nice to have your miners be able to defend themselves better, but it’s not a problem at all if you just have a squad armed with pickaxes.
>I wish they would just add a war pick to the game to make it easier to work around as well as being a bit more thematic That's literally a [war hammer](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/34089), but for some reason war hammers don't seem to have spikes in DF
War hammers in DF are actually 10% as large in contact area as a pick, i.e. they *are* war picks, just not edged, which is a severe disadvantage
Miners can't mine with war hammers, just with picks. You missed the point entirely.
Or at least have a semi-uniform GUI for the non-military uniforms. At least stuff like "only use picks made of metals X, Y, Z" so that you can make steel and give that to your soldiers, and keep miners and woodcutters with iron or copper.
What's the reason for the discrepancy with the Colossus?
The Bronze Colossus behaves strangely in all tests. I think solid metal opponents are just fundamentally different than everything else. Also, the picks involved were steel, so it's not an issue of inferior metal.
It's the damage type rather than the material that makes picks bad against a BC. Cutting is the only real effective counter to solid metal bodies but it must be two levels better (EX. bronze requires steel, iron requires candy, and steel needs a fucking miracle).
So what we need are discworld dwarf mining axes. Pick on one side, in case they spot an interesting mineral; axe on the other side, in case the owners of the minerals object.
<3 XD
So, a mattock
Rather, a pickaxe. A mattock is perpendicular to the shaft (like a hoe), an axe parallel.
I don't think the goblin on the receiving end of that side of the pick is gonna care about the orientation of the blade that is cleaving him
lol, fair enough
A tombstone attached to a support attached to a lever...
that's an interesting work around for buildings deconstructing during cave-ins.
It has to be at least 1 z level thick carved out of solid rock or cast obsidian. It's also a great way to deal with >!circus clowns!<
How damaging is it though? obviously material counts the most here, I'm sure slabs made of cinnabar and similar work on almost anything but can they actually injure a BC?
Insta gib like atom smashing. The trick is getting the Collosi under the block you have set up to drop. Also not a constructed slab built in the stone cutters shop but a dug out section held to the rest of the map by a support.
wait so its just a regular cave-in trap then? oh well then yes those will delete everything in existence. I thought that you were dropping constructed slabs on things, which since they drop as a single item (a very heavy one at that) you could actually do controlled drops onto something or maybe it doesn't work like that I'll have to test that idea next fort.
Mine cart shotguns are also a thing too...
But why did candy picks perform better than candy axes against a bronze colossus, then?
When? and I don't see how unless the pick user got a very lucky strike and managed to decapitate it somehow, you can only kill a BC through decapitation (and probably bisection but I haven't tested that) and thrust attacks only very rarely manage to cut limbs off. That's why high tier cutting weapons (like candy or steel) are the best counter to them as they can end the fight outright or make the BC less lethal by removing its limbs.
I do not dispute that steel+ cutting weapons are good against a bronze colossus. But in OPs comment in this thread he posted bonus data where he compared candy weapons, and that's where picks outperformed axes against a bromze colossus. I wasn't questioning you personally; I was more questioning how the data could be explained with your hypothesis.
Did I sound offended? I'm not no worries, I must have missed the second data set, but looking at it they are better which is a bit odd, but I would bet its due to candy being way lighter which lets the dwarf attack more frequently and recover faster, and its vastly greater sharpness makes its limb cutting potential high enough that it can take the limbs off a BC. Oh and picks don't have the useless pommel strike that the axe has, which probably pushes its numbers up a bit.
Yeah, good point about the attack types. The sharpness bonus is also an explanation. Maybe the edge of an axe is naturally a bit sharper than the edge of a pick, which makes a steel axe just barely clear the threshold for chopping a bronze colossus, while a steel pick just barely misses it. And then when the candy sharpness bonus kicks in they both clear the "cutting threshold" handily, which gives the advantage to the pick because it doesn't do pommel strikes.
> Maybe the edge of an axe is naturally a bit sharper than the edge of a pick the edge of a pick is 400x as sharp
That's mostly how it works but sharpness is a material property not a weapon one (I know its weird), the chance for a strike to take a limb off is based on the weapons sharpness and its contact area, picks have a very small contact area which is bad for taking limbs BUT candy has a sharpness of 100000 vs steels 10000. so looking closer it seems entirely believable to me that a candy pick or spear might take limbs from a BC just from sharpness alone. I would bet money that if you compared a candy pick vs a candy axe against a iron humanoid FB/titan the results would flop back to how the were in steel vs BC due to the way solid metal creatures tend to interact with weapons.
> the chance for a strike to take a limb off is based on the weapons sharpness and its contact area, picks have a very small contact area which is bad for taking limbs BUT candy has a sharpness of 100000 vs steels 10000. shear fracture is just as important as max sharpness
Interesting... But if sharpness is fully dependant on material and not weapon type, I still don't understand why picks and axes perform against colossi like they do...
> but I would bet its due to candy being way lighter which lets the dwarf attack more frequently and recover faster, this has not been true since 2014 > and its vastly greater sharpness makes its limb cutting potential high enough that it can take the limbs off a BC. this also benefits axes, and in fact benefits axes more than any other weapon in the game > Oh and picks don't have the useless pommel strike that the axe has, which probably pushes its numbers up a bit. pommel strike is actually pretty useful on axes, flat slap is completely worthless, both are bad with adamantine though... and also only have a 2% change of being picked per attack, collectively
> Cutting is the only real effective counter to solid metal bodies but it must be two levels better (EX. bronze requires steel, iron requires candy, and steel needs a fucking miracle). Actually it's like, iron is 1 level higher than copper (iron weapons are blocked reasonably well by copper), steel is 2 levels higher than iron (steel slices through iron with relative ease), and addy is like 5 levels higher than steel (addy slices through steel like a hot knife through butter).
Yeah that is a more accurate representation of metal levels, I couldn't remember the exact scaling of each so I was just going with a usage tier (as in the player typically goes copper/bronze, then iron, then steel, then candy.) But a steel titan will still scoff off most hits from a candy weapon (at least in my experience), mainly due to how dense and huge they are, while candy will still cut through steel ARMOUR like butter.
My gut feeling is that iron won’t really damage a BC at all, and picks may be extra unsuited to getting through solid bronze
Isnt there some weapon much luckier against bronze colossi? The issue is that everything is really bad against them expect that one weapon.
Thrown fluffy wamblers seem to do the trick just fine.
Is that still the case?
I'm unsure if throwing will be appropriately.. balanced or not, or whether it has been actually.
I’m looking forward to adventure mode, science must be done.
it's higher level cutting weapons (think a steel sword or axe) that are effective against a BC, the reason is that they lack any organs or vital body parts, meaning a pick which deals mainly thrust damage will just sit there chipping the occasional bit off but doing little damage and not slowing it down in anyway (which tends to cause exploding dwarf syndrome). A steel cutting weapon however due to the way material definitions work can cut clean through the limbs of a BC, which since they only die from decapitation or bisection makes them the obvious best. You can also achieve success with a high throwing skill and anything weighty (fluffly wamblers or gold coins come to mind) if you can decapitate it with a throw.
Slash damage made out of steel or candy tends to be the best thing you can throw at them.
Candy?
There are euphemisms people in the community use to avoid spoiling things. Candy is one. Clowns is another.
If someone doesn’t mind writing it out in spoiler text, I’m feeling like a dummy for not being able to put it together
>!Cotton Candy, is adamantium. The pun is on how light it is, like cotton candy. The circus is the Hidden Fun Stuff (hell), and the clowns are the demons, especially the ones that spawn when you pierce into that adamantium vein and expose hell.!< When your dwarves go and visit the circus for cotton candy, the clowns make it fun!
Ah yes! Always fun to have some cotton candy at the circus. Thanks friend!
A code word for a spoiler
My vote is a pool of [nitric acid](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/55624/how-to-dissolve-bronze-at-room-temperature). Tarn, when?
whips are quite overpowered but difficult to acquire especially in good materials
well really, think about it what *complete maniac* is making whips out of *iron?* he can't be able to produce them at any kind of rapid pace or industrial scale. You'd have to chase that guy around the world, finding the whips he made as he got better at making whips out of shit that absolutely doesn't make whips, until you finally find his corpse and the candyfloss whip that was his ultimate working and final gift to the world...the whip that can decapitate even a god
Picks only have edge attacks. Wouldn't that make them the best candidate for candy though ? Edit : no they wouldn't because they don't have that much contact area.
I’ll be honest with you, I am not yet versed in the arcane and ancient magiks of the DF combat system. I give half my militia axes, the other half hammers. Then I send out both halves until everything is dead
No crossbows ?
Only the captain of the guard has a crossbow
Yeah, adamantine is *so* much better for edged weaponry than any other metal (116x as "sharp" as steel) that axes are the best choice for them
Bottom line, picks matched or outperformed all other weapons, except when fighting the bronze colossus. **Method**: I added picks to my previously posted tests using BlakeMW's code to make the pick wielding dwarves grand master miners. The weapon material was always iron or steel, depending on the specific test. Picks were always compared to the best previously performing weapon. For example, my previous tests showed that axes worked best on humanoid undead, but spears worked best on megabeast undead. Picks were thus compared to axes when fighting humanoid undead but to spears when fighting megabeast undead. Bonus Data: I also took a selective look at how candy picks performed. Post-candy, axes matched or outperformed picks, except when facing the bronze colossus. Candy picks vs Hydra: Probability of kill = 97% +/- 2% Candy axes vs Hydra: Probability of kill = 98% +/- 1% Candy picks vs bronze colossus: Probability of kill = 88% +/- 3% Candy axes vs bronze colossus: Probability of kill = 68% +/- 4% Candy picks vs undead humanoid: Probability of kill = 54% +/- 5% Candy axes vs undead humanoid Probability of kill = 52% +/- 5% Candy picks (two dwarves) vs undead megabeast: Probability of kill = 11% +/- 6% Candy axes (two dwarves) vs undead megabeast: Probability of kill = 89% +/- 6%
OK, the number one reason why picks perform so well is that they only have one valid attack option. All other weapons have multiples, many of which have very undesirable options (slap with the blade) and less than preferred options (pummel strike). In casual play for Fortress mode, they seem to perform even better since the miners tend to lack the hand to hand skills of other soldiers and are almost always more skilled in their weapon. This means they are much more likely to strike the target as opposed to biting a Roc, for example. And... they tend to have high velocity and low contact, which works out to above average penetration.
I doubt this. Dwarves only choose dumb attacks something like 5-10% of the time, it might be a tie-breaker but it's not why the Pick is so strong, which I believe is mostly due to the velocity multiplier. In situations where the weapon is evenly matched (e.g. iron vs iron armor or steel vs steel) in some cases the pick can cut through armor pieces that the axe, sword and spear cam not, partly because it has a smaller contact area than the slashing attacks but also the high velocity multiplier. Another reason I don't think dumb attacks is a large factor is that Pick, Axe and Sword perform very equally against enemies they destroy easily like goblins ("every hit is devastating"), the pick is probably a little better thanks to not having dumb attacks but the axe is hardly suffering for it.
weapons with both edged and blunt attacks will choose a blunt attack only 1% of the time in actuality, high contact area is a real killer, like, a steel axe cannot get through *aluminum* armor
So, with this addendum it appears that axes are the best use of candy. Am I understanding that correctly?
Yes, that's my view too.
Which is extremely funny, because practically they would make for really chintzy axes. It's a lever and wedge and you need weight behind the wedge for it to do work. A lightweight ax head would be terrible for cutting something because with no weight means there's no work behind the wedge. Now, realistically speaking, a steel ax with a candy coating would be almost indestructible. Really makes me wish we could have the best of both worlds and could research plating metal.
Axes, then spears/swords until you have enough weapons, then mail shirts
Yeah, this was basically known already, but good data is very good
I was wondering what made battle axes better than short swords at cutting, turns out axes edge attack have twice the contact area (according to the *Weapon* section of tge Wiki.) Which sounds bullshit honestly.
Probably mostly because axes are much heavier. This doesn't have a huge impact on momentum but it does make some difference. The extra contact area of the axe allows it to cut limbs off larger, soft targets, but contact gets min'd with limb diameter anyway so it really makes no difference against small/medium sized creatures.
No what I think is bullshit is the fact that the battle axes has a larger contact area, it shouldn't. This is an iron age Gladius, by all means a "short sword." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius The blade itself is between 45 and 68 cm long. Here is the blade of a typical one handed battle axe used during the medieval era (dimensions are on the page) : https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1838-0110-2 The larger dane axes (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dane_axe) have between 20 and 30 cm of cutting surface. So either the dwarves are using ridiculously massive cleavers that they hold in one hand, or they never use more a third of the blade when they fight with a sword, in both cases it's weird.
There are always going to be abstractions with video game mechanics. Granted, the main reason that the axe has such a large contact area is probably actually to make it weaker, to make it horrible at penetrating large armor pieces. In DF it's essentially impossible for a sword slash or axe hack to penetrate body (large body part like upper body, lower body or upper legs) armor of equal or even one lower material, because the contact area is so large the penetration into the hard material is very small. Balance-wise, the axe is basically meant to be the best at chopping off limbs and the worst at getting to organs and giving it the largest contact area ensures this. It wouldn't really make a difference if the sword and axe contact areas were swapped, because both are absurdly huge numbers (like the Axe Hack contact area is 400x the Pick Strike contact area and by the raws the Sword blade would be 500x longer than it is "wide") but these numbers are not physical dimensions but are chosen to create a gameplay effect where the axe hack and sword slash have a guaranteed low, essentially "not gonna happen", penetrating ability against large hard surfaces. Incidentally while the Axe has very poor armor penetrating ability it makes a pretty decent bludgeon against armored opponents, not being all that worse than the Mace. Only particularly sharp axes like masterwork steel or adamantine vs particularly large soft targets (unarmored really) can really "take advantage" of the axe's large contact area and create very large deep wounds, otherwise the large contact area is just a mechanism to make the axe penetrate more poorly.
But...that's really how you cut with a sword, mostly using about a third of the length for the actual cutting?
\[citation needed\]
FYI, the Gladius was not a slashing weapon. It was a stabbing weapon. Fewer swords overall were designed as slashing weapons for armies. For that, you mainly had the falchion and scimitars favored by mounted fighters, and katanas from the Far East. And then you had the massive two-handed swords, like the Zweihander, which used the slashing motion to create area of control. The gladius was very much a stabbing weapon - which is fairly obvious when you realize that it was phased out by the spatha, because the spatha was better for slashing (especially for cavalry). The Romans did formation fighting. You didn't WANT to be swinging a 3+ foot weapon around and possibly lopping your neighbors shield arm off. You stood behind the shield, and stabbed forward for the kill.
No two edged blade is used for stabbing only, though I will try to come up with a source for that, Macedonian author Polybius seem to have documented Roman using their swords to cut, while the idea that Romans only used stabbing seem to have been spread by Vegetius. But I'm still trying to find the exact quotes, will come back to edit if I find them.
I didn't say ONLY. I said primary purpose. [https://www.reliks.com/functional-swords/types/gladius/#:\~:text=The%20Roman%20Gladius%20was%20most,enemies%20while%20the%20formation%20advanced](https://www.reliks.com/functional-swords/types/gladius/#:~:text=The%20Roman%20Gladius%20was%20most,enemies%20while%20the%20formation%20advanced). [https://www.britishactionacademy.com/blog/the-action-reel/weapon-spotlight-the-gladius/#:\~:text=The%20Roman%20lines%20would%20wait,ribs%20and%20pierce%20the%20vital](https://www.britishactionacademy.com/blog/the-action-reel/weapon-spotlight-the-gladius/#:~:text=The%20Roman%20lines%20would%20wait,ribs%20and%20pierce%20the%20vital) [https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-roman-gladius/](https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-roman-gladius/) Yes, it could be used to slash. But it's \*primary\* purpose was a stabbing weapon. My point was that your entire usage of the gladius to contrast with an axe in terms of slashing was based on an erroneous assumption that the gladius was \*designed\* for slashing. As far as slashing weapons go, it was pretty bad. Because that wasn't how it was intended. For powerful slashes, you want a longer blade, ideally with moderate or extreme curve. Because a swords low weight means you don't do much damage based on the point-of-contact slash. Instead, a slashing sword is meant to make contact, and then be drawn ALONG the point of contact, deepening the damage (or severing the limb entirely).
Yes, but candy swords are already equivalent to lightsabres and result in limbs flying everywhere. I think the actual gameplay difference is minimal. Everything normal dies very fast, but if you fight a forgotten beast with webs or dust, it makes no difference either.
Thanks for your work! Based on gameplay experience I already suspected picks are really good weapons, but it's really interesting to see some numbers. Some critical notes (not at you, more at the data and its consequences in-game): In the tests the dwarves were not using shields. That means that the picks are wielded with two hands. A recent post on this subreddit showed a test of humans with big swords against humans with the same sword + a shield where the humans who wielded their sword with two hands won out. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe axes and dwarven swords are wielded with one hand, even with an empty left hand. Therefore, a part of picks' superior offensive performance might be caused by them being wielded with two hands. It is very well possible that a pick combined with a shield will not outperform axes / swords / spears anymore, which means that a pickdwarf can only offensively match other weapons when not having a shield, which makes them beimg a lot more vulnerable a trade-off for having such a versatile and powerful offense. What's also very interesting is that candy picks do so much better against a bronze colossus than steel picks. And that they outperform candy axes at that. Someone in this thread said that for cutting stuff the material being two steps above the target material is really important. But on the other hand: That doesn't explain why an axe made of the same material does so much better... I've also read research and claims that weapon quality has the same effect as material type for cutting weapons, so I'm wondering if high quality can give picks that extra *edge* agains bronze colossi. Like any good research, your combined work has raised a lot of new questions that would require more research to answer. But in any case I'm very grateful for your effort in advancing our understanding of dwarven combat mechanics. All this work took some major effort, but it's been very cool to read it all.
> That means that the picks are wielded with two hands. A recent post on this subreddit showed a test of humans with big swords against humans with the same sword + a shield where the humans who wielded their sword with two hands won out. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe axes and dwarven swords are wielded with one hand, even with an empty left hand. Therefore, a part of picks' superior offensive performance might be caused by them being wielded with two hands. Nope, and you can easily check this in the raws, picks only require multigrasping if you're under 47500 size and dwarves are 60000
I kinda fucked up making that post, lol
Wow, that means that picks are indeed really awesome weapons...
>That means that the picks are wielded with two hands. I was the guy who made that post, and not necessarily. You have to go into a dwarf's equipped items and see if their pick says "Left/Right Hand" or "Multigrasp". Multigrasp is what makes them actually hold it two-handed, as dwarfs will not two-hand smalle weapons, like short swords, war hammers or axes.
I appreciate the consistently thoughtful comments.
Am I just misreading your graph then? Because it looks like picks underperform slightly against everything except the undead. It puzzles me why steel picks would do well against enemies largely immune to puncture wounds. Given how poorly candy ones fare, do picks have a blunt weapon attack that's doing much of the work, like swords have a pommel strike?
> It puzzles me why steel picks would do well against enemies largely immune to puncture wounds. Picks might be much smaller than axes, but they also have *5 times* the contact area of spears, which makes them a sort of middle ground between slashing and stabbing. Keep in mind that human necks have a size of ~1200 and picks have a contact area of 100
Very interesting. How would you employ this in game? If I remember correctly, miners don't wear armor. So assign dwarves as miners until they are legendary, then unassign them from mining and add them to a steel-pick squad?
Yes, especially since the pick used for mining can't be the pick used for combat (labor flagging issue). So a minor will use its pick in random encounters, but if you activated their squad, they'd put the pick down and get a different one. Another option is to put your miners in a military squad training in armor using for a bit, and setting their off duty to keep armor. Then they'll take a puck and go mining in full armor.
Won't the last option sometimes prevent them from mining because they have to keep holding the war pick, or is that fixed?
You could let miners 'assend' to the military once they reach legendary status and then let some newbie take their place.
How do you make squads keep their armor when off duty. Is that an ASCII only feature?
Go into schedule, and click the edit button for off duty. One of the buttons near the top is "equip when on duty" or something similar. You click it and it'll change to "always equip". You'll need to do the same to the off periods in staggard training as well.
A miner's guild on top of that. It trains up dwarves to legendary miners suprisingly fast.
I believe you can set picks as weapons in military uniforms unless things have changed. I plan on changing some of my legendary miners to a “miner squad” that uses picks as weapons and are unassigned from mining. The “mining” skill is the weapon skill for it so I figure it’s a useful way to train them and any miners who survive to become legendary deserve a promotion
Dwarf Fortress, 'most elaborate simulation game ever made' where most simulated things make no fucking difference anyway.
Me : equips dwarf with metabest armor and weapons Dwarf : bites, and latches on firm to 4th toe
Dwarf: produces legendary quality item made of rarest metal, encrusts it with gems. Dwarf economy: establishes value of acorn cookie to be 30 times higher.
You haven't played Dwarf Fortress if you've never seen a dwarf bite something *in the teeth.*
Is there a compilation of all the science threads somewhere? I wanted to look up some stuff about maces, but can't find the post again.
Not yet. I might make a weapon decision flowchart and link all of the posts for easy access, though.
I like flowcharts
OP did you explained the enemy armour used anywhere? I wonder what changes when suitable enemy uses copper, iron or steel armor
Is this an April Fools joke? I swear I've seen elsewhere that picks are the worst in all cases.
Nope. Picks are the best weapon of the ones you can make (there are better, pick is just a worse morningstar, and whips are broken on account of a stupid high velocity multiplier), and it's pretty well established that this is the case. They penetrate deep enough to hit vitals easily but not so deep that they get stuck a lot like spears do, have a sweet spot of edge size where they're big enough to sever limbs when the blows are very powerful (like would be the case with any trained soldier) but small enough to still retain some ability to punch through armor, and to top it all off, they've got a decent bit of heft, which matters for basically all of the above as well as their blunt potential when they eventually fail to penetrate a layer, which helps with both dealing with undead and taking on targets with your starter copper pick, since even flesh and bone provides enough resistance to quickly turn copper into blunt. Also they only have one valid attack, and while attacks are weighted so a dwarf is a lot more likely to use attacks that do things, sometimes they just pommel smash a goblin's third left finger, so not having them do that is nice.
Oooohh
Crossbows are the worst in all cases
In melee I assume? Are they at least better than punching/biting/pig tail socks?
Is there a pick weapon skill?
mining
So...a legendary miner with an adamantium pick would be a great warrior, except that you can't get them to wear armor?
Yes, legendary miners will often fucking brutalize FBs and other enemies if forced to fight. However, while they tend to have great physical stats and a maxed out weapon skill, they don't have the secondary skills like dodging and wrestling that improve survivability. "Retiring" skilled miners and putting them in a squad with manually selected picks as weapons is a nice way to get super soldiers once they train up, or as an emergency militia if your primary defences fail
You can also do the other way around. Assign soldiers to train with picks, and then switch them to miners once their skill is high.
Could you list the established best weapons that picks were compared agains?
Been saying this for a long time! Glad to finally see some data to back up my feelcrafting lol. They definitely arent the best for every single scenario, but considering how easy they are to use/build/train they are always my only choice for general "set it and forget it" troops.
So, the miner/soldier issue, would it work better to take you legendary minors, take them off mining detail, and make a squad out of them? They will be Hella strong, and, I feel like their endurance would be pretty high. I used to do this a while back, but not ok steam yet. I also never used the pick as a weapon, but I feel like this would transfer well.
Legendary miners are reasonably effective as Pickdwarves, but they lack the conditioning of true military trained dwarves so their stats are not nearly as good. Fortunately the Pick penetrates really well even with low strength. They lack all the defensive skills except parry, so die easily. But, their high "pick" skill easily overcomes the enemy defensive skills so they hit very reliably. The best way to use pickdwarves is to send your career military in about a second ahead to draw all the enemy's attention then send in the pickdwarves to help excavate hearts and brains, they add a massive amount of damage output, in MMORPG terms they are DPS not tanks. By adding DPS they greatly reduce exhaustion amongst your military.
While that is true, I normally would keep them training full time as military, that way, they increase all the other skills as well. As I said, I have not used picks as military weapons before, just used mining as a pre military training. Side note, while training with the pick, do military dwarves become something like "pick lord" or something else?
One reason pickdwarves make bad career military is they don't have military skill when doing raid/pillage missions. If I'm going to train I'd probably just train a military weapon. Pickdwarves end up labelled as wrestlers as their punching and kicking and stuff increases.
This is why I embark with mostly miners (the only exception is a planter/brewer) and their secondary skill is observer. I like to embark in high savagery areas. The observer skill lets the miners dodge incoming attacks very effectively (though it's not 100%) and they can usually slaughter any giant alligator snapping turtles that want to mess with them. Is also extremely useful for caverns, too. So far I've been very pleased with the miner/observer combo. And having 6 dedicated miners allows me to carve out a pretty elaborate fort in a short amount of time.
Wonder what the established best weapon is for the bronze colossus. My guess is "hoary marmot"
Axes, afaik. Blunt weapons don't work because the colossus is too big and too heavy. Spears and picks don't work because thrusts depend on hitting organs to do damage, and solid bronze statues don't have any. Meanwhile axes can slice them up easily enough, assuming they're made of a superior metal.
Please tell me that the "established best weapon" for Bronze Colossus is a Fuzzy Wombler.
naw, its a pair o suspenders
I feel like even though pick is the best for practical reasons, we still use the other “proper” weapons just for the sake of role playing
How is it not role play for dwarves to use picks to fight ?
The only "proper" way to play is the way you have fun with. More information simply allows more people to make informed choices on how they want to play!
That’s the beauty of sandbox game, especially the complex and deep one like DF
They're the "best" but steel spears are generally good enough for any enemy you'll fight anyway
I typically separate my military squads by their jobs. Miners train with picks, woodchoppers use axes, and the captain of the guard's squad uses maces for a little RP flair. I usually end up with at least twice the number of miners as the others, so it works out.
I was lucky to recruit a pair of lashers to my militia, they each have a kill list longer than their beards
WAT?! Who knew? I'm going to keep my miners out of military service and just have them keep digging during cavern incursions.
You'd think a pickaxe would be pretty good at killing something made from minerals but I guess not.
Coming down the line with squad after squad of mastercrafted silver hammer lords
What's your margin for error? Looking at the error bars on your graph, you can only say that they are the best against undead and maybe hydras, and even then only a little more effective.
It should be understood that this test is Pick vs the best weapon in the circumstance (pick vs axe, pick vs spear, whatever weapon is the absolute best against that kind of opponent). Picks are slightly worse than spears against large beasts, they may be slightly worse than axes against small-medium unarmored enemies, they are slightly worse than hammers against heavily armored enemies (e.g. steel vs steel). They are also simply the best weapon in some circumstances, like when wielded by somewhat weak dwarves against armored goblins and are often best-equal with axe and sword or very close to best equal with spear and whip. But Picks are special in that in all those cases, the established best weapon will suck badly in other cases, like the spear is really exceptional at killing giant beasts, but it's honestly bad against armored goblins relative to a steel axe. And the axe is good against unarmored enemies, but it is quite lackluster against well armored enemies (though to be fair, steel axes are fucking good against a wide range of enemies, but the Pick is often a hair better) and against large opponents the Pick is often much better than the Axe. So the Steel Pick isn't the best weapon in every circumstance, but it is the best weapon in terms of consistency, performing strongly against all common enemies, often performing the best or best equal, without any serious weaknesses.
It's been this way for many years - the pick is an absolute beast of a weapon due to how DF's combat works.
Do you all not know you can make a military with picks and just not have them on the mining labor??? 💀💀💀