@Romping the gay They use the same equation, it's just that adamantine's density is so low that it does matter. Like I said, it's diminishing returns: the higher the density number, the less additional density gives you. Adamantine is only 200 density and the difference in momentum between 200 and 7,850 density is actually quite significant. Much larger than the difference between 7,850 and 1,000,000 density.

@lmlsna I agree that edge attacks dont benefit from weight much cuz momentum = velocity * mass, and lighter items can be swung faster so it balances out. However, blunt attacks have to be operating on some modified equation cuz adamantine blunt weapons are terrible but silver and platinum is better. Maybe there is a speed cap or something for blunt weapons

Also, bolt thrower nerf > crossbow nerf at this point. This is problem is peanuts compared to our new dwarven machine gun vaporizing 13 goblins

In practice, crossbows are super finicky due to sensitivity to armor material and “ineffectiveness” against unarmored. (Someone did a very good experiment on bolts 2 years ago which is where I am getting this) In vanilla, dwarves with the highest possible marksdwarf and archer skills, it takes around 16 bolts to kill/incapacitate 1 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ completely naked goblin (its higher for below iron materials). This number hardly changes until the material of the bolt = material of the armor on which the bolts required triples to sextuples. Now with the changes, it would take around 3x as long to shoot the same number of bolts much less incorporating higher tier armor, shields, dodging, and non goblin enemies. Frankly, they were already slow when enemies couldn’t break down walls giving them infinite time to farm. Now that enemies can break down walls + they shoot at 1/3 the speed, I just don’t see how to use them to any degree.

What digganob is saying makes sense to me. Their job should be to apply attrition while your fort is sieged. They are necessary to make you walls actually have value beyond simple delaying. Naturally, if they killed as fast as melee they would be like a bolt thrower (overpowered). The cited 20% losses for a reinforced, solid fortress I think is a solid place to put them at against the average invasion. Balance is dependent on how long the enemy takes to break into your base which isn’t established well yet, but I am fairly certain crossbow were already a bit slow to deal meaningful damage and now are muhc too slow.

I haven't seen any of this work out in-game myself yet, but I think it's fine if ranged weapons are only marginally effective. IRL they're only useful to counter specific types of enemies or in specific circumstances, because of how effective shields are against them. If shields aren't actually that great against them in-game (I don't know how effective they are), then it makes sense that they shouldn't be too effective, or they'll just halve the numbers of an enemy force before they get into melee range.

If currently they only go so far as to cut a 100 strong army down to 80 before breaching the fort, then that's more than enough, I say. If it is much more than that in vanilla, they could probably use a nerf.

I think this really depends on data, though. How effective are they really on the grand scale? How effective are shields at blocking bolts? How many kills can you get with a ten-dwarf squad before your gates are broken down? All important for balance.

@Romping the gay I'd agree that they're worse than melee dwarves in terms of those things. The issue is that if they were as good as a melee dwarf in those things, I feel they'd completely overshadow melee. How should ranged weapons ideally be balanced in your opinion?

@ImIsna Quite surprised you feel so. I have always felt that marksdwarf are ♥♥♥♥ compared to a melee dwarf in terms of per dwarf efficiency, effectiveness, and micromanaging. They take over a dozen shots to kill anything particularly armored and take far longer than any competent melee dwarf. Especially now fortifications arent invulnerable so the time costs does matter as sieges will bypass your defences. Versatility be damned, they wont kill a troll if we waited a season lmao. Also, not your fault, but these new bolt throwers shoot like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MG42, so I cant see anyone ever using these modified crossbows. Unironically, bolt throwers probably have 80x the firepower of a crossbow in vanilla and maybe 250x in this mod and they can be manned by any dorf

@lmlsna I think your design is really well thought out and expressive. Thanks for your hard work!

@Romping the gay Nuge nerf for ranged weapons was necessary imo. They're not intended to blow you away with their raw stats, they're already strong because of their tactical applications. As it is you can trivialize an SA&M giant elephant with one marksdwarf. Kiting is very strong, and so is sitting safe behind fortifications. As for the max velocity cap, I could raise it but it doesn't seem too harsh to me. I added a couple zeroes to it to see what would happen and it didn't cause any immediately obvious change in the performance of metal bolts.

TLDR the bolt changes dont seem like they make bolts any better but you cut fire rate to 33% at high levels. Seems like a huge nerf.

I am curious about the crossbow changes. Afaik, it seems you simply cut fire rate to 1/3 and then side graded projectile attacks. You increased max velocity to 1500 but cut bolt size to 10. So pretty much you are only ever gonna hit the max velocity cap and never the shoot force cap. Altogether, it you halved momentum of bolts which halves the armor penetration. But you reduced contact area so you end up with like 80% of the original armor penetration. Maybe the speed will help do more damage to unarmored targets? However you did reduce penetration depth so its less effective against big enemies?

Makes sense. I'm looking forward to any updates, the balance is nice to see after vanilla's weirdness.

@Digganob I'll consider pushing axes further in that direction in the next update, I think that separating axe and sword slashing more would be ideal. I'll have to see how they perform relative to other weapons like that.

Ah, kind of something in between the damage of a slash, and the penetration of a stab, I suppose. Why not make axes more like that too? For dismemberment of larger creatures? I wish there were more tools for nuanced combat.

@Digganob/Romping the gay The idea with the chop is that it is a slashing attack which makes contact with less of the blade compared to the slash (I envision a perpendicular impact made close to the tip of the weapon), concentrating the force onto a smaller area (essentially making the attack more axe-like in profile, which is why it has a name that makes you think of axes). It penetrates layers more easily and makes it easier to reach organs as a result.

True, maybe just a badly named attack. there is no sword based attack that I can think of which fits this. Maybe a lunging attack of some sort.

Oh I understand the extra pen depth, I'm mostly wondering why the contact area is so much lower. I expected it to be higher for a "chop" attack, like with axes.

@Digganob the short sword chop attack has 2000 pen depth vs 1000 pen depth for slash. Its for when your dwarves go arm deep in some forgotten beast. Also contact area is helpful for lopping off body parts which isnt the only way to kill enemies. Spears have 10 contact area or something. This attack gives swords more versatility against different targets

What is the reason behind the chop attack for short swords? I see that it's got stats which are better for penetrating a little armor, but worse for purely damaging more layers, with its worse contact area. But I had imagined that was the role of axes.

Anyways, I'll not critique your balance broadly, but I am really curious as to what the chop attack is for. I would have expected something more like the axe's cleave, with a greater area.

Praise Be! Thank Armok for your expeditious update!

Damn fast update, thx

Awesome. Thank you, I do appreciate it. Hopefully I can be so swift, hah.

@Digganob It should be sometime today. Within a couple hours, ideally.

When do you suppose that will likely be? I've been preparing an update to my mod too, which integrates yours, so I'd like to avoid making two backwards-incompatible updates to it in rapid succession, if I can.

Not the biggest problem, but if you have a more precise idea of when you'll be done, I would like to know.

Update pending. It'll be a lot more than just adding the great pick, I've been working on a major rework and expansion of the mod for quite some time.

I probably should have started with this but I ran a test for the integrity of game files and it had to fix something and now it work... Thanks for the help!

Thanks for the response so quickly! I do have the load order which the patch says to use and i put it above all my other mods but below all the vanilla stuff. But ill try around with some other load orders too.

@connorwhitman That sounds like a load order issue. Combining this mod and Ava's Armory requires a specific load order which is explained in the description of the VWO patch for Ava's Armory.

Whenever I try to embark with this mod as well as MVC, SA&M, Ava's Armory, and multi hauling (plus all the major patches that make them compatible) I am not able to find any or the vanilla weapons and the only digging tools under custom embark gear is some modded type of sword from I think Ava's armory... I'm I making some dumb beginner modding mistake like load order or are these just not compatible?

@Greηdel It should help, I've toned down their firerate considerably. And while the lighter ammo means it's easier to carry a lot of bolts, it also means that the bolts have less blunt force behind them.

Will this mod fix crossbow dwarves being on absolute crack now?

@orzelek16 They already scale with strength to a higher maximum in this mod than they do in vanilla (1,500 force at 2,000 strength instead of 1,000 at 1,500 strength), so naturally I could push it further if I wanted to. It just wouldn't fit the balancing of the mod to do so.

Would it be possible to upgrade bows to take into account possibility of stats above 2000 so that they will actually shot at higher velocity? Or will that break stuff somehow?

I'll try just that, cheers

@BlackCockDown Yes, changing the skill wouldn't affect the attacks of the weapon. You could edit the mod in Dwarf Fortress > data > installed mods and change it to SPEAR even mid-save. If the mod isn't located there, you can instead make the change in Dwarf Fortress > mods > 2912571821 (15). If you were looking to upload a mod for it you could try a SELECT patch: [SELECT_ITEM:ITEM_WEAPON_HALBERD] and [SKILL:SPEAR] below it. The patch could then be loaded after this mod and make the skill change without overwriting anything else.

If you were to change the skill of the halberd to SPEAR instead of AXE, technically it will not affect any of the changes you made to its attacks, right? If it only affects the training of the dwarves could I request that change? That way, it'd pair better with Armed Dwarves in that you won't have woodcutters totting platinum halberds, as awesome as it sounds. I am aware this isn't really in the scope of the mod but I see no real way to do this that would be compatible with your mod.

Yep. Mostly I think it's the fact that there are no weakspots. If someone is fully armored in candy, there's no way to hurt them with an edged weapon. Excepting may some facial extremities, if I remember correctly.

@Digganob Agreed, there needs to be more of a range in what happens when a weapon strikes armor. It's currently very hard to avoid a binary with weapons and armor where the armor either makes you invincible or is useless. The vast majority of interactions should fall somewhere in between, even where varied materials are concerned like steel vs bronze.

Thank you. I thought that'd be the case, but was worth asking about. It would make sense that blunt weapons should be significantly more lethal. I hope armor will be made more nuanced, in the future, in matters of stopping penetration and cushioning attacks.

@Digganob Blunt weapons here are significantly stronger than they were in vanilla, this is because I found they were quite ineffective and took ridiculous amounts of time to kill things given that they're supposed to be weapons. Fights between blunt users were often won by the first one to stop using their weapon and use biting instead (despite having 0 biting skill). Slashing and piercing attacks have intrinsic advantages to them and scale sharply with both weapon quality and by using superior materials, while blunt weapons get no benefit from weapon quality and virtually no benefit from material (the higher your material density, the less additional material density matters in increasing attack momentum). As it is now in the mod, my data tells me that blunt weapons are right around where they should be. As for the sword hilt attack, it has more momentum than a stab but it also has a slower attack speed and lacks the intrinsic advantages of an edged attack.

A friend of mine says that blunt weapons are overpowered in this mod. That "a sword hilt attack is more powerful than a stab," and whatnot. I haven't seen it myself, but are blunt attacks well-balanced here? Were they made very differently from vanilla?

Just wanna say... My God is this mod amazing. Awesome stuff.

@Imlsna well.. I reinstalled game and mods and its helps. How da hell it works like that

@XZSteel The two mods have nothing to do with each other, conflict between them isn't possible. And I've used them together since the update without any such issue. The issue you're describing is what happens when ranged weapons don't have the new ranged weapon tokens applied to them, it's what I observed before updating the mod to utilize them. When you look in Dwarf Fortress > Data > Installed Mods, is Vanilla Weapon Overhaul (15) in there? Vanilla Weapon Overhaul (13) or earlier would lack the new ranged weapon tokens. Try clearing out the aforementioned folder as well as the Dwarf Fortress > Mods folder to clear out any old mod versions and verify integrity of game files using Steam.

@Imlsna I've been playing around with worldgen a bit with different mods and it seems like Vanilla Weapon Overhaul (v3.4) somehow conflicts with Skilled Animals n Megabeasts 1.3, so archers/hunters pretend to shoot but their ammo just disappears.

That is quite funny to imagine! But as long as it is up to scale with melee combat (1 swing every 4 minutes? XD), it makes sense. The faster shoot rate does seem balanced out by a seemingly reduced accuracy, at least by low skilled dwarves
Thank you so much for your mods by the way! I use a few of them :) cheers

@Duckling The funny part is that that's what them taking at least 8 minutes per shot looks like, due to the timescale that fortress mode uses. The fire rates make more sense in the adventure mode timescale.

@XZSteel, it should work by updating! Did for me.
It feels a bit like a dwarven assault rifle right now, though? They seem to fire so much faster than before ! But these are the vanilla values

@Imlsna can you look at my reddot post in helping thread pls? Mb you know what is going on