@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

Updated for the vanilla ranged weapon changes. The Ava's and FFF patches will need similar updates, expect those in the coming days.

I think I remember one older 12bay thread that did some tests with a bronze colossus that reached the conclusion of smth like If an attack generated 60000 momentum it would be enough to knock away a dwarf by one tile if it hits the head, upper or lower torso and every extra 60k would be one extra tile up to the max of 15 I believe. But I think the site still undergoing maintenance so I can't check it

The axe lord was managing to propel goblins away on their first strike, smth like "...tears the muscle, shaters some ribs and tears the lung..." followed by the propelled away message and they also managed to propel one away with a pommel strike, but I don't remember if they were already prone on that one

@Moonwarden64 I'm not sure what exactly the logic is for creatures being propelled away by attacks, it's not something I've done testing for and I haven't seen detailed information about it online. I'd speculate that it's based on attack momentum vs the target's mass. If that's the case, you'd be more likely to see it against small and prone enemies, since attacks against prone enemies get x2 momentum. The most important factors for attack momentum are creature size, strength, weapon skill, and the attack's velocity multiplier. So in theory the Maul should be most likely to propel away something, other factors being equal. But maybe the Great Axe is lowering its target's mass by severing body parts and that makes it more likely to propel them?

oop, scratch a little of that the maul one just propelled a goblin away after hitting the lower torso of a prone goblin

Like I have an axe lord minotaur with a great axe (FFF mod), hammer lord one with a war hammer and another one with a maul, all 3 with "unbelievably strong" strenght but only the axe lord attacks are actually able to propel away a goblin or similar creature

Hey Imlsna, since you made this mod would you happen to know somewhat what's the major factors responsible for "... is propelled away by the force of the blow" events? Like, do attack stats like "contact area", "penetration area" and velocity matter as much as the strenght and size difference between attacker and attacked?

@Imlsna ty for your reply. I get what you mean now. I think i what meant was not speed but reach. But nonetheless i understand what you mean now, ty!

@Pandaman The slash, stab, and beak attacks all have the same speed. Only the shaft bash has a faster speed, and the reason it has a faster speed is that it's significantly weaker than the other attacks. The other attacks will outperform the shaft bash generally, but you might use the shaft bash when you judge that a weaker attack will still accomplish what you want in order to save a little time and allow for your next attack to happen sooner.

@ImIsna hi thank you for reply author. Hmm just to be sure why does one use anything but the stab/slash attacks because its so fast compared to the beak attack/shaft attacks?

sorry new to the game overall

@Pandaman The beak attack is the halberd's most effective attack for armor penetration because its momentum is superior to that of the shaft bash and its momentum:contact area ratio is slightly better than that of the stab. The main purpose of the shaft bash on the halberd is to trade off power for speed, since it's slightly faster than the halberd's other attacks. Whereas the advantage of the stab compared to the beak attack is higher maximum penetration depth (so it's better at reaching the organs of giant creatures).

Hi for the halbard can I ask when I would want to be using the beak attack? I feel like i never need to use it because i would be using the shaft bash for blunt, slash for edge, and tip for pierce.

thank you very much for the anwer author. Great mod, looking forward to more mods that makes adventure mode even more fun!

@Pandaman The weapons which require multigrasp make up for the lack of shield by having more powerful attacks. This is mostly achieved through higher velocity multipliers that lead to significantly higher attack momentum, especially when they are used with high strength and skill. They also tend to have greater reach than single-grasp weapons, which can give them the advantage of making the first attack in combat.

hi thank you for this mod. it made weapon play so much more fun in adventure mode. quick question tho. How does multi grasp benefit compared to one handed now like you mentioned