Missile vs Shield

[mivayan]

Folket said:
Can someone make a mod with unarmoured tower shield welding hoburgs?

Then we can look at the damage.

markata_greathideshield.dm:
#modname "Markata with great hide shields."
#version 1.0
#description "Markata get great hide shields, for testing."

#selectmonster 1118
#name "Markata of shield"
#hp 1
#armor "Great hide shield"
#end

Then I did a few tests. 200 Ulm crossbowmen with arbalests(14 AP) vs 2000 markatta modded to have 1 hp and a great hide shield. The crossbows were set to 'fire', the 4 groups of 500 markata set to Guard commander, the commander to "hold x5, retreat". almost all markatta left between shot 3 and 4. I tried it 5 times with the mod, 5 times without it (normally they have 5 hp, 0 prot, no shield, size 1).

Great hide shield, armor #112. prot 10, def -1, parry 6.
600 arbalest bolts were fired each game.

Summary:
with shield mod: 73, 89, 68, 68, 72 dead. Average 74
Without mod: 366, 372, 375, 381, 407 dead. Average 380

An arrow has a 76% chance to not hit the ground when landing on a tile full of unshielded units. 380 kills means about 380/0.76=500 arrows landed on someone each fight. So about 74/500 =15% of arrows got past the shield in the first scenario. Could be 10% or 20% perhaps, but not 6% like formula suggests.