Re: ARENA: Weapons Stats

From: carl@gergo.tamu.edu (Carl D. Perkins)

Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1993 00:30:00 +0000

In article <srt.748711515@aerospace.aero.org>, srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner) writes...
>You are ignoring the fact that with an Axe you have to hit with the
>blade.  Of course the Mace is easier to use; you can whack with any
>part of the head.
>
>I'm pretty happy with the weapon stats.  Both medieval historians and
>veteran SCA combat people of my acquaintance have verified the list as
>generally accurate.  It will take a pretty strong argument to convince
>me to change the weapon stats.
>
>						-- Scott T.

As someone who has fought in the SCA (with a mace even - backup weapon
when using a spear) I have seen that striking with the edge of a weapon
is not usually a significant problem after a fairly small amount of training.
If held properly (and the primary weapon will be - I used a mace as a backup
because it doesn't matter what orientation it is in when you grab it - making
edged weapons take a bit longer to retrieve for use as backups than impact
weapons certainly would make sense) the edge is in the place with which you
will normally be striking the opponent anyway.  Without the need for hitting
with the edge a mace does allow you a few additional types of blows, but these
are mostly a bit awkward and not commonly of much use so it is a minor
advantage.  You should also bear in mind that a large portion of the time
involved in using a weapon is recovery time - getting the weapon into a
position to take another shot - which is about the same for weapons of the
same mass, distribution thereof, and attack type (swing or thrust, mostly).

Part of the problem with determining how accurate the list is comes
from not knowing any details about how the stats are used in the game
program.  For example, I don't know what use is made of the weapon length
value or even if it is used at all.  The other problem is that all but
one of the weapons is in the Dex range of 0 - 2 (the pike is the only 3).
This corresponds to a 0 = fast, 1 = medium, and 2 = slow (and 3 = very slow)
set of ratings.  Not a large set of choices which makes weapons that
are near the dividing line seem rather off - for example, in a system
that uses the same rang but allows 1 digit after the decimal point the
mace might be a .9 and the axe a 1.1, but that works out to a 0 and a 1
in the single digit system, which is considerably different.

--- Carl

References

ARENA: Weapons Stats
nicholas@wam.umd.edu (Ronnie Simonds)
Tue, 21 Sep 1993 14:12:53 +0000
Re: ARENA: Weapons Stats
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Tue, 21 Sep 1993 15:21:19 +0000
Re: ARENA: Weapons Stats
carl@gergo.tamu.edu (Carl D. Perkins)
Tue, 21 Sep 1993 21:15:00 +0000
Re: ARENA: Weapons Stats
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Wed, 22 Sep 1993 15:25:15 +0000