mps wrote:Polearms are not just slightly worse than M&F. If you cannot reliably exploit the range of polearms in fights, it is not worth 4 to 6 extra xp levels to use them. One extra attack is not reliably exploiting range.
Polearm vs M&F, one on one analysis:
In all cases I used a Human, with 15 str, 10 dex, and 75-80% of weapon aptitude in fighting, and the same skill in M&F and Polearms (yes, this means that the polearm will be swinging more slowly, I also used a +0 unbranded variant of each weapon
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Spear vs Mace (low level, starting weapon) vs. hobgoblin:
5 Weapon skill, 4 fighting:
avg damage/turn (AvEffDam):
Mace: 1.9
Spear: 1.8
Hobgoblins have an average of 5.5 hps, that's 2.89 turns with a mace and 3.05 turns with a spear (on average)
On average the hobgoblin will get 1.89 attacks on the mace user and 1.05 attacks on the spear user.
Obviously that's the easiest case for the spear to win, let's move up the weapon scale, and do trident and flail against an orc:
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Trident vs flail (low level one of your first upgrades) against an orc:
8 weapon skill, 6 fighting:
avg damage/turn (AvEffDam):
Flail: 3.8
Trident: 2.7
(Now we're getting somewhere, that's a significant difference in damage/turn)
Orcs have an average of 7hps, Flail takes an average of 1.8 turns, Trident takes an average of 2.6 turns.
On average the Orc will get 0.8 hits against the flail user and 0.6 hits against the trident user
Um, well, that's closer the trident still won, but maybe if the trend continues we'll see a clear winner for M&F.
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Hablerd vs dire flail (Pre-lair, sometimes first, sometimes second upgrade) against an gnoll
14 weapon skill, 11 fighting
This should work pretty well in favor of dire flails, dire flails are pretty well known to be just awesome, and 14 is min delay for dire flail
avg damage/turn (AvEffDam):
dire flail: 9.8
halberd: 6.9
Gnolls have 13 hps on average, that's 1.32 turns from the dire flail and 1.88 turns on average with the halberd.
On average a gnoll (not using a polearm himself) will get .32 attacks against the dire flail user, and.... less than 0 attacks against the halberd user???
Ok, maybe I need to put us up against a bigger thing, let's try that halberd/dire flail again against a yak, it's tougher and should last longer:
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Hablerd vs dire flail (Pre-lair, sometimes first, sometimes second upgrade) against an Yak
14 weapon skill, 11 fighting
avg damage/turn (AvEffDam):
Dire flail: 9.6
halberd: 6.8
Yaks have 39 hps on average, That's 4.06 turns from the dire flail and 5.7 from the halberd.
That means the dire flail user will suffer 3.06 hits from the yak and the halberd user will suffer 3.7 hits
Aha! a success the numbers are all reasonable, and the difference is significant.
Well maybe we should try higher up the chain still then
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Glaive vs Great mace against a stone giant
20 weapon skill, 16 fighting
Should be interesting, both weapons take the same skill (20) to get to min delay.
avg damage/turn (AvEffDam):
Great mace: 13.0
Glaive: 10.0
Stone giants have 88 average hps, it takes 6.76 turns to kill it with the great mace, and 8.8 turns to kill it with the glaive,
The great mace user will suffer 5.76 attacks and the glaive user will suffer 6.8 attacks
Well, that seems to confirm our earlier results, but let's try for end-game stuff and see how that goes:
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Bardiche vs great mace, against a draconinan
weapon skill 22, fighting 22
great mace: 11.8
Bardiche: 10.3
Draconians have average hps 64.5 It takes 5.4 turns to kill one with the great mace, and 6.2 turns to kill one with a bardiche.
The great mace user will take 4.4 attacks and the bardiche user will take 4.2 attacks.....
So what's going on here?
So the truth is that polearm's extra attack (When you only get one) is worth less when the critters you're fighting take more attacks to kill, and when there's more of them (you have to fight a pack), when they're faster and when they have ranged attacks, and worth more when a critter is on it's own, and takes less hits to kill. It's also true that polearms take more XP to get to min delay, and like all weapons, gain a lot more damage from investing XP into weapon skill before reaching min delay than they do afterwards.
On the whole this means that polearms are better than M&F in the earlier part of the game, and not as good late in the game.
I don't think the difference is enough that you shouldn't ever use polearms, even if you only take the later game into account, if you only want to survive the early game, polearms are obviously a pretty good choice.
Monday, 3rd August 2015, 04:00 
