[MUD-Dev] Source data on Crossbow

[Matt Chatterley]

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Orion Henry wrote:

> 	This brings me to something that I have been puzzleing over
> forever.  How can one express all the numbers in a role-playing game
> with the laws of physics.  What is "damage"?  Is the kenetic energy
> DIRECTLY proportional to the ability for a weapon to puncture armor
> and destroy flesh and bone?  Where does force come into play?  How
> could you express a "Strength" stat?  Would it be a force?  A power
> source?  What?

You could represent most of the 'physical' things in a mud as forces
(collisions, tensions, strains and stresses, etc), but would probably find
it useful to also take energy into consideration - ie: calculating the
energy a player has from food (etc), and using it up as (s)he moves around
carrying heavy gear.

Kinetic energy probably has fairly little to do with the penetration power
of a weapon (although linked to it via forces, and such, its not directly
involved, really). Force of impact, and angle of incidence (as well as
stress/strain considerations) are more important for suchlike.

> 	Could someone come up with a scheme that could figure out 
> how hard you could hit a target with a handheld weapon given the
> attackers strength (in watts?) the mass of the weapon, its length,
> weather its being swung or thrust, if its being used with one hand
> or two, how far apart the hands are to grip the weapon giving more
> leverage, where the center of blance of the weapon is (axe vs sword)
> etc etc..

Watts? Use something like N/m (newtons per m^2) and work with forces for
collisions, rather than in power (which is a rather abstract concept to
the immediate aim). Do conversions to energy later. You could do this, but
it would be far from a simple model. :)

> 	This is something that I have been working on for months and
> have yet to come up with a model that I truly like.  Do any of you
> people with more of a physics bacground than myself shed any light
> on the possible of expressing combat with physics equations.
 
Not a particularly easy task, is the short answer, although worthy of
consideration. :)
 
> > If anyone is interested, I can try to turn these fps figures into impact
> > forces given average missile masses. I'm not terribly good at applying the
> > above, though. :)
> 
> 	Go for it!

I tried once, and gave up, having botched embarrasingly badly.

According to my (mis)calculations, the arrow in the example figures would
strike a target 100 metres away with a net collision force of 3N. 3N being
equal to the force exerted by a 300g mass in earth's gravity. To quote
someone whom I have forgotten, "I think.. not."

> 	Orion Henry
> 
> 


Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's
	mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell