Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker - Dwarf Fortress
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IDProjectCategoryView StatusDate SubmittedLast Update
0002633Dwarf FortressAdventure Mode -- Combatpublic2010-07-11 13:232014-08-13 13:24
ReporterTomiTapio 
Assigned ToFootkerchief 
PrioritylowSeverityminorReproducibilityalways
StatusconfirmedResolutionopen 
PlatformOSOS Version
Product Version0.31.10 
Target VersionFixed in Version 
Summary0002633: Elven wooden swords have same sharpness as normal wood, defeated by simple clothes
DescriptionElven wooden swords lose to fiber cloth, the weapons lack qualities such as stabbing through cloth.

Cedar spear seems to work fine vs. cloth.
Steps To ReproduceStart an elf adventurer with sword skill and attack your home town's folk.
Additional Informationsuccess vs. hood:
You stab The C in the head with your larch long sword, tearing the fat and bruising the muscle and bruising the skull through the rope reed fiber hood!

lose vs. robe and cape:
You stab The C in the upper body with your larch long sword, but the attack is deflected by The C's rope reed fiber robe!
You slash The C in the right lower arm with your larch long sword, but the attack is deflected by The C's rope reed fiber robe!
Tagsclothes, clothing, elf, Elves, material, weapon
Relationships
related to 0000033resolved Toady One Bronze colossus, skeletal creatures, fleshballs, and others are impossible to kill 
has duplicate 0003025resolved Footkerchief Iron axe cannot pierce cave spider silk clothes 
related to 0004843confirmed Footkerchief Clothing thickness scales linearly with body size => giant creatures have insanely thick clothing 
Attached Files
Issue History
Date ModifiedUsernameFieldChange
2010-07-11 13:23TomiTapioNew Issue
2010-07-11 13:26smjjamesNote Added: 0009958
2010-07-11 16:58FootkerchiefNote Added: 0009978
2010-07-12 07:42TomiTapioNote Added: 0010026
2010-07-12 07:44TomiTapioNote Edited: 0010026bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010026#r3872
2010-07-12 07:45TomiTapioNote Edited: 0010026bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010026#r3873
2010-07-12 07:47TomiTapioTag Attached: Elves
2010-07-12 07:47TomiTapioTag Attached: material
2010-07-12 07:47TomiTapioTag Attached: weapon
2010-07-12 07:47TomiTapioTag Attached: elf
2010-07-12 07:47TomiTapioTag Attached: clothes
2010-07-12 07:48TomiTapioNote Edited: 0010026bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010026#r3874
2010-07-12 07:49TomiTapioNote Edited: 0010026bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010026#r3875
2010-07-12 08:22FootkerchiefNote Added: 0010029
2010-07-12 09:53FootkerchiefNote Edited: 0010029bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010029#r3877
2010-07-13 09:00TomiTapioNote Added: 0010142
2010-07-13 09:03TomiTapioNote Edited: 0010142bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010142#r3931
2010-07-13 09:09FootkerchiefNote Added: 0010144
2010-07-13 09:14TomiTapioNote Edited: 0010142bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010142#r3932
2010-07-13 09:15TomiTapioNote Edited: 0010142bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010142#r3933
2010-07-13 09:37TomiTapioNote Added: 0010148
2010-07-13 09:42TomiTapioTag Attached: clothing
2010-07-13 09:44TomiTapioNote Edited: 0010148bug_revision_view_page.php?bugnote_id=0010148#r3935
2012-02-20 18:52FootkerchiefRelationship addedhas duplicate 0003025
2012-02-20 19:09FootkerchiefRelationship addedrelated to 0000033
2012-04-08 10:31FootkerchiefNote Added: 0022161
2012-04-08 10:31FootkerchiefTag Attached: AWAITING UPDATE
2012-04-08 16:13thvazNote Added: 0022168
2013-09-23 09:25FootkerchiefTag Detached: AWAITING UPDATE
2014-01-26 09:42FootkerchiefRelationship addedrelated to 0004843
2014-07-23 11:28thvazNote Added: 0027334
2014-07-23 19:11UristDaVinciNote Added: 0027373
2014-08-13 13:24FootkerchiefSummaryElven wooden swords lose to fiber cloth => Elven wooden swords have same sharpness as normal wood, defeated by simple clothes
2014-08-13 13:24FootkerchiefAssigned To => Footkerchief
2014-08-13 13:24FootkerchiefStatusnew => confirmed
2018-04-12 20:56HuntthetrollIssue Monitored: Huntthetroll

Notes
(0009958)
smjjames   
2010-07-11 13:26   
Isn't that the whole point of wooden weapons?

With a spear, you're concentrating the force on a single point, so it goes through easier.
(0009978)
Footkerchief   
2010-07-11 16:58   
success vs. hood:
You stab The C in the head with your larch long sword, tearing the fat and bruising the muscle and bruising the skull through the rope reed fiber hood!

lose vs. robe and cape:
You stab The C in the upper body with your larch long sword, but the attack is deflected by The C's rope reed fiber robe!
You slash The C in the right lower arm with your larch long sword, but the attack is deflected by The C's rope reed fiber robe!

Three data points is not enough to prove there's a major balance problem. There are all sorts of combat parameters not mentioned in the combat log, such as the squareness of the hit.
(0010026)
TomiTapio   
2010-07-12 07:42   
(edited on: 2010-07-12 07:49)
Those were examples, not the whole combat log. I didn't want to post ten screenfuls of text into the bugtracker. Other users can try the wooden sword adventurer too to verify this.

With sword's stab attacks the force should be spear-like?

Do wooden baseball bats cause significant damage? Mass and strength behind the weapons should not dissipate into clothes.

This is an issue that weakens the elven civilization, perhaps getting them wiped out in world history. Perhaps Toady might want to look into giving the elves special swords -- or metal.
(0010029)
Footkerchief   
2010-07-12 08:22   
(edited on: 2010-07-12 09:53)
Those were examples, not the whole combat log. I didn't want to post ten screenfuls of text into the bugtracker.

That's reasonable, but if you're trying to establish that wooden swords are consistently incapable of piercing cloth, or that there's a discrepancy between hoods and robes, we'll need you to condense those combat logs down to numbers.

One common strategy is to use large numbers of combatants in the Arena -- 10 fighters with equipment A vs. 10 fighters with equipment B.

With sword's stab attacks the force should be spear-like?

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_SPEAR]
[ATTACK:EDGE:20:10000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_SWORD_LONG]
[ATTACK:EDGE:50:3000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]

As you can see, the spear stab has a significantly smaller contact area (20) than the sword stab (50), which makes the spear better at piercing materials.

Mass and strength behind the weapons should not dissipate into clothes.

Toady commented on that problem here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59642.msg1377750#msg1377750 [^]
(0010142)
TomiTapio   
2010-07-13 09:00   
(edited on: 2010-07-13 09:15)
So I set up an arena, with 11 "skilled swordsman elves" using larch long swords and some fiber clothes (no shoes).

I imported log into OpenOffice spreadsheet so can separate into sortable columns at "," and "'". And texteditor-replaced "through" into ",through".

255 instances of cloth deflecting an attack and 65 instances of damage getting through cloth.
(15+2+12 strikes did damage without mentioning clothes.)
CSV spreadsheet file at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8967397/elf%20sword%20log.csv [^]

Other arena:
16 skilled spearelves with robe, cloak, pine spear.
18+20+1476 rows of damage through cloth
12 deflections by robe or cloak.
CSV at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8967397/elf_pine_spear_log.csv [^]

Yeah the sword puniness got my attention in elf sword adventurer fight.
(0010144)
Footkerchief   
2010-07-13 09:09   
Interesting... looks like the stabs get through sometimes, but the slashes don't at all (except one slash through a mitten, which might be thinner or something).
(0010148)
TomiTapio   
2010-07-13 09:37   
(edited on: 2010-07-13 09:44)
Okay, one more elf free-for-all.
16 skilled spearelves with robe, cloak, copper spear.

2x spear bash negated by cloak.

16x stabs in the head. 5x heart artery opened.
4x in the left hand. 7x in the right hand.
40x in upper body. 25x in lower body.
40x lodged firmly in the wound.
37x fractured a bone

CSV log http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8967397/elf_copper_spear_log_.csv [^]
(0022161)
Footkerchief   
2012-04-08 10:31   
Reminder sent to: TomiTapio

Is this bug still present in 0.34.01?
(0022168)
thvaz   
2012-04-08 16:13   
I did a quick test in the arena, and though we haven't elven weapons there, I tested with a wooden training sword confirming that this still happens in 34.07.
In fact, that unarmed man dressed in rope reed clothes won against the armed man, also wearing the same kind of clothes.
(0027334)
thvaz   
2014-07-23 11:28   
Still in 0.40.xx
Tested two battles, both groups with Adequate swordsman,adequeta dodge, adequate armor, birchen long swords, one group with plant fiber clothes in all body, the other naked.

12 x 12

The group with clothes won the two battles, one with 9 alive, other with 10 alive, so yes, plant fiber cloth makes a huge difference.

In single combat, even with a legendary swordsman, I noticed the behavior of the strikes inconsistent with reality. Although the clothes should occasionally avoid slashes, the blunt strenght of the strike would still cause damage, and this is not the case. The cloth most of the time completely avoid any damage.
(0027373)
UristDaVinci   
2014-07-23 19:11   
I don't find a bug here, rather an emergent property of the combat and material system. This is related to bug 0005346 where obsidian swords strike as blunt weapons.

1. STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_WOVEN_THREAD caps the shear yield at 20000 and shear fracture at 30000 for the clothing. This means that a wooden sword can cut through an adamantine cloak. This was presumably done to prevent silk clothing from protecting against animal bites and so on.

2. Wood only has [SHEAR_YIELD:40000] and [SHEAR_FRACTURE:40000], and a low MAX_EDGE. Wood weapons are typically very light.

3. DF uses a momentum-based combat system. Due to the relative properties of the clothing to the wood, the wood has to work hard and use up a lot of momentum to penetrate the clothing. The amount of momentum available depends on attacker body size, strength, weapon weight, and many other situational variables.

I recommend that modders experiment with the SHEAR_YIELD and SHEAR_FRACTURE properties, not the weapon item properties. Perhaps also use denser/heavier wood weapons to get the benefit of increased momentum?