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Yes, the art of creating different-looking dwarfs eludes me Yes, the art of creating different-looking dwarfs eludes me

Head shot (Instant Kill)

Arm Shot (Crossbow/Ammo dropped)

Shots causing Extreme Pain and leading to Unconsciousness (allows the opponent a few more potshots)

Team A

Weapon: Cedar crossbows

Ammo: 100 iron bolts

Armor: None

Skills: Proficient Archer

Proficient Marksdwarf | Team B

| Weapon: Cedar crossbows

| Ammo: 100 light iron bolts

| Armor: None

| Skills: Proficient Archer

| Proficient Marksdwarf | Team V

| Weapon: None

| Ammo: None

| Armor: Varies

| Skills: None

|

Test 1

Team V unarmored | Test 2

| Team V equipped with shields

| iron shield

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| | Test 3

| Team V equipped with armor

| iron breastplate

| iron chain mail

| iron greaves

| iron helm

| 2x iron gauntlet

| 2x iron high boot

| | Test 4

| Team V equipped with armor and shields

| iron breastplate

| iron chain mail

| iron greaves

| iron helm

| 2x iron gauntlet

| 2x iron high boot

| iron shield

Test No. | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Test 4 Team A avg. no. of bolts | 12.14 | 14.07 | 18.79 | 17.71 Team B avg. no. of bolts | 14.09 | 14.37 | 35.29 | 43.10

The aim of this study was to conclusively verify whether bolt weight (or, more specifically, the density of the material from which the bolt was produced) has significant effect on crossbow performance. Rigorous scientific methodology was employed in order to improve on current experimental setups and design such a one which would deliver the most objective results possible. The study concluded that heavier bolts have higher penetration, making them more useful against armored targets.A number of studies have been performed in order to verify whether the weight of a bolt has any influence on a Marksdwarfs destructive potential. Surprisingly, these studies seem to have achieved drastically differing results. Test on Bolts and Weights (July 2011), by IT 000, reported that heavier bolts did not produce a noticeable increase in crossbow firepower - squads equipped with heavy and light bolts did perform differently, but this was attributed to other, unspecified factors. A more recent study, Crossbow Ammunition Testing (July 2012) by Wrex, reported that heavier bolts caused more damage as compared to lighter bolts.In this study, an appropriate experimental setup was designed in order to resolve this issue conclusively.The experiment was based on the setup used in Test on Bolts and Weights : a 10 by 10 matrix of 3-tile cells, each containing two dwarfs separated by a fortification tile.This elegant setup enables the performance of 100 separate and isolated experiments, and obtain 100 samples for analysis. However, after testing this setup a problem related to the sequence in which the dwarfs attack was identified. This is presented in the following figure, which shows 8 ticks into the experiment.As it can be seen, all dwarfs do not fire simultaneously, but they fire in groups of 20 per tick. This means that some dwarfs achieve First Strike over others. First Strike can create serious imbalance in a comparative experiment of this kind, since the First Strike bolt can instantly incapacitate the opponent in a number of ways:The operation of the attacking algorithm is an interesting discussion in itself, but it is not the subject of this article and thus will not be further discussed.Even if the First Strike advantage was not as advantageous as suspected, another problem is the (relatively) large deviation in results obtained from such a (relatively) small number of samples. When performing experiments on a control group i.e. each cell containing a pair of identically equipped and skilled dwarfs, the results often yielded 40:60 or 60:40. This is relatively far from the predicted 50:50 scenario and means that if a 40:60 result is achieved in an experiment, then no reliable conclusion can be made due to it being within range of statistical error.The final form of the experimental setup was decided to be as follows:Light iron is a modified version of iron, differing only in density: The density of iron is 7850, whilst the density of light iron was set to 200, the same as adamantium. If the wiki weight formulas are true, an iron bolt weighs around 1.17 urist, whilst a light iron bolt weighs 0.03 urist.One experiment 10 by 10 matrix is filled with Team A vs Team V, whilst the other is filled with Team B vs Team V. Since Team V members are unarmed, they were inevitably slaughtered with no losses to the opposing team. The criterion used to evaluate the effectiveness of both teams (A and B) was the average number of bolts used to obliterate a single member of Team V. This value was obtained by checking the remaining bolts of each dwarf on teams A and B and subtracting it from the initial 100. The higher the average value of bolts needed to kill a team V dwarf, the less effective that bolt type is.4 Tests were performed, each with Team V differently armored:The results obtained are presented in the Table below:Also, here is some fun statistical data in the form of histograms:There seemed to be little to no difference in effect of bolt weight on damage caused against unarmored opponents, or opponents equipped with shields. Any differences observed are most probably statistically insignificant.There is a clear difference in the performance of heavy and light bolts when used against an armored opponents. Dwarfs equipped with light iron bolts required on average twice as many shots in order to take down an armored, unshielded opponent as there iron bolt using brethren, 2.5 times more shots to bring down an armored and shielded opponent. Interestingly, at he the end of Test 4, 5 Team V dwarfs were left standingon the Team B side, the opposing Team B dwarfs having used up fruitlessly all of their light iron bolts.Thus it can be concluded that ammo weight is indeed used in some manner in ranged crossbow attacks, adding to armor penetration. This effect is practically unnoticeable on unarmored opponents, possibly due to the powerful parameters of the vanilla crossbow. If these parameters were weakened more data could be gathered. Other future works include testing the effects of sharpness, both sharpness and weight, testing default materials (instead of modified as opposed to modified ones), testing the effect of Marksdwarf, Archer, Shield skills, etc. etc.