DeanF

I suspect that it scales with damage, too. It might need to be changed to a separate weapon characteristic. Arrows should have very limited knockback, for example. If you want to shove someone off of a ledge then a spear is the way to do it.

Obviously this should be a switch that is only available to the admins of multiplayer servers, not a default. The Problem: If I understand this correctly, on multiplayer servers, when a player is not on the server while another one is, time passes, and the absent player's perishable food stores can spoil and rot. I imagine that it really sucks to get back on the server when you haven't had time in a while only to find all of your food spoiled because someone had been playing while everyone else was offline. Yes, you can be careful to load all of your food stores into your personal inventory before you log off, but this is a rather awkward work-around. My Solution?: Let us optionally assign owners to storage containers. When that owner is not on the server two things should happen: Time should not pass for the contents of the containers when the owner is not on the server, so items would not spoil. Other players should not be able to access that container's contents (to prevent exploits). Discussion: Yes, I know that there will be competitive multiplayer servers, but I suspect that most servers are cooperative and run buy a group of friends. Ours is, frex. We've got a little village going on. And it turns out that the one guy in our group who never gets to play the games that he prefers loves Vintage Story, and everyone is happy. So this functionality is for the cooperative players. But on a competitive server it could be left off so that players could raid one another. I do feel like such functionality should only apply to things that are meant specifically to hold food, like the clay storage containers. Not chests, etc. In fact, possibly only the clay storage containers. If you want to preserve a crock, put it in a storage container. Since I haven't progressed very far in the game, are there any later-game containers that are food-specific?

Hopefully. I mean, conceptually the whole idea of a spear is to keep the enemy at a bit of a distance, right? And stop-thrusts are a thing. A spear's longer reach already does some of that. I suppose that my proposal has solidified to this: Make knockback the spear thrust's niche, and add a Tier to spears when thrown so that they perform better against armor. I'm perfectly ok with the lower damage for spear thrusts if it is truly needed for game balance, but give it something. That something could be a bit of knockback. I presume that heavier targets get knocked back less, right? Hopefully. Because even with a bit of knockback you should not be able to knock a bear back and kite circles around it it with a spear in your hand, I think. A bear should just plow over you and use your spear to pick it's teeth when it is done with you.

I have proposed this before, too. But I think that for the devs it comes down to a game balance issue. Game devs in general- across the board- have learned that passive income can really kill a game's intent. (Well, in this sort of game.) And having something that you only have to set up once and then stop by and pick up the result every now and again is passive income. It's the same issue as when players enslave villagers in Minecraft, only in this case it is the bees who are being "enslaved". That's why they have settled on old-fashioned straw skeps that have to be destroyed to harvest them. Rebuilding the skep and capturing another swarm is effort that you have to make, so it is not passive income. That being said, we absolutely should have smokers. The dummy thing seems silly, and smoking beehives dates back to the 5th Dynasty in Egypt. And I certainly wouldn't mind more detail in the whole honey/wax processing part. Just "squeezing it into a bucket" seems crude. But on the other hand maybe they did it that way to be sure that apiculture was possible with stone age technology?

I thought that, but then I kept finding cattails near salt water. Which I guess might not be totally inappropriate, since there are cattail species that like brackish water. But not on a beach! Brackish, not full salt water! Suffice to say that identifying salt water seems much more difficult in the game than IRL. Heck, you can smell it.

No, your point does not stand, and I don't care about "out-arguing" you. That seems more like your goal. You kept trying to hang your hat on KE=mv^2 to model the energy in a spear thrust. We can all go back and see it, so you cannot gaslight the issue. I explained why that wasn't the right way to model it- because it works differently than a simple projectile. And you poo-pooed that and refused to consider the possibility that you were wrong. You weren't open-minded. In fact, you are in essence still claiming that you were right! Your barn post is wood- not a good model for sticking a spear into an animal. Unlike with a soft, squishy animal you cannot drive it deeper with a follow through during a thrust. In effect, the wood is armor. But if you want to say that the thrown spear should "hit harder", well, that's a poorly-defined term, but it is supportable. I'll even make the argument for you: As I pointed out earlier (because I'm intellectually honest) the thrown spear definitely has a higher peak force and that could certainly be interpreted as "hitting harder" in layman's terms. So it penetrates armor better. And if the spear thrust cannot penetrate that armor when a thrown spear can then, well, the thrown spear is definitely superior. Yet against lesser armor the thrust seems superior. But terminal ballistics is more than any one metric, such as energy or peak force or even penetration. So enjoy your win. And I don't think that I ever brought up game balance? That was LadyWYT. You may be confusing us. But yes, I agree that these models are a bit much to dump into a silly voxel game engine like Vintage Story. (Even if it is becoming my favorite game of all time.) That's simply not what such games are about, and I'm not proposing that- at that point I just wanted to know the answer. I'm a scientist, I'm like that. But with the way the game simply assigns an arbitrary Damage score (and I guess Tier?) such modeling isn't a good fit. But maybe there is a way to do it a little better short of turning the game into a hardcore physics simulation? I'm not sure that I really understand how damage works in the game, but to represent the better armor penetration of a thrown spear maybe thrown and thrust damage could be closer to the same but raise the spear's Tier when it is thrown? Would that represent better armor penetration? Again, I'm not sure how the game works on this subject. And I'll certainly conceded that chucking spears at wolves is fun. You could definitely make game assumptions that result in a spear having damage 2 for thrust but damage 5 thrown. For instance, assume that the thrust is just a quick jab, as in the flawed study that I cited. But that really leaves the spear thrust inappropriately sucking as a weapon, and in particular would mean very poor knockback. But the game doesn't model the other disadvantages of spears, so yes balance becomes an issue. I guess that given those constraints what I would most like to see is good knockback, and have that be part of the advantage of a spear thrust compared to a thrown spear. The thrown spear should have very little knockback, though not so little as an arrow. I suspect that the impulse of a spear thrust is probably also more than a sword swing, for instance, but I'm not sure. The biomechanics seem to make it harder to apply ongoing force to a swing compared to a thrust. As a quick check, I can deform my mattress a lot more with a punch-like push with my fist than with my fist held out at arm's length and pushing downward like a swing. So I suspect that a swung sword does act more like a projectile. Yes, a sword strike would have follow-though, and it probably would have more total "damage" due to being a lever, I just think it would probably be less of an impulse than the spear and thus have a bit less of a knockback effect. So, anyway, that's my bottom line take- make the spear thrust the knockback specialist. But I'm done with you. I wish you well.

Not AMD. I have a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.

I'm having this issue too, in Win11. I get stuttering any time I move, not just in certain locations or looking at objects. I've been trying to find out if this is a bug and I should report it, or if it because of my settings or something. For instance, I had thought that it might be my view distance setting, but I tried turning that way down and it did not improve things. I also tried removing all mods- the stutter is still there. (I only use StepUp, anyway.) Notably, I did not have this issue in 1.21.

I'd be happy if I could just identify seawater.

Oh, I don't think that you have anything to tell me. I'm not the one who wrote that snark, and then proceeded to get the physics wrong. That's always funny. So who started it? Well, I was the OP, so I guess that you could still argue that I started it... Any criticisms about rigid robots in spear thrust testing applies equally to the thrown spear. High stress will impact perfect technique for throwing a spear just as much as for thrusting a spear. This was even shown in the data- the best energies of the thrown spear rely upon prioritizing effort over aim (their words). And it turns out that you cannot miss hard enough to kill a bear. Also regarding your No True Scotsman argument about labs versus reality- no model is perfect. But some are useful. They tell us something. (I would certainly agree that ballistic gelatin is far from a perfect model.) Not to mention that you are complaining about something that I had already acknowledged- as I said, the enemy gets a vote, and a perfect spear thrust might be uncommon. And I do try to be intellectually honest, so I also spelled out the situation in which thrown spears truly do rock- armored opponents. That may be why javelins continued to be used late into antiquity even after simple bows became de rigueur otherwise. See: Roman Army. I'm guessing that the longbow and crossbow ended the reign of the thrown spear and javelin. Eh, maybe I shouldn't be so critical. You were, after all, big enough to acknowledge the point when you saw it in a more convincing form. And you did so even after that argument, which got a little heated. That's truly uncommon, especially on the internet. So I give you credit- it speaks well of you, and I can forgive the sour grapes at the end of your last post. Personally, I'm still working on me.

I kind of like it. Hard-tack should also be a thing, probably.

I've been digging around more in the experimental archaeology literature, and I found some interesting things. I was motivated to get to the answer, and I learned a lot. I apologize, though, because these papers are are behind paywalls for most people- I get access through my organization's library account. First, there was a flawed study that would seem to show what Pizza Lady alleges. See: Ballistic Study Tackles Kinetic Energy Values of Paleolithic Weaponry, Archaeometry, Coppe et al. (2019) This study does directly compare thrown spears versus spear thrusts using a ballistic pendulum, and they got data that seems to roughly agree with Pizza Lady. But it turns out that their methodology was flawed. When the spear thrust was tested, they did so with the spear impacting the pendulum at the extreme end of the thrust. So someone was just barely tapping the pendulum with the spear held out as far as it could reach. It had no follow through as a human would actually use in real life. Which meant that their results corresponded well with KE=mv^2. Their values for the thrust spear were something like 2-5 J, which is simply ridiculous because there is tons of data on human punches from the athletic literature and a human male can punch 200-500 J, with truly elite professionals reaching 1200 J. It is ridiculous to believe that a spear thrust would generate so much less. So they were widely criticized for this. The exact words used in some critiques were that they "failed to replicate the full thrust event". So this is the sort of things you get when non-physicists try to play with ballistic pendulums or use equations that they don't fully understand. But studies like this (there were other earlier ones) motivated other investigators to do it correctly, and those papers are out there, too. So these are not theoretical values derived from formulas- they are actual measured results using pressure plates, ballistic pendulums, and ballistic gelatin. And they used the correct technique, with follow-through on the spear thrusts. See: Early Spears as Thrusting Weapons: Isolating Force and Impact Velocities in Human Performance Trials, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Milks, Champion et al. (2016). These investigators used military personnel who had had bayonet training, so that they would thrust correctly. And it turns out that thrown spears and spear thrusts have about the same energy. From all of these various papers: A typical realistically thrown spear mustered 70-180 J. With poor aim and maximal effort they got more like 100-200 J. And there were outliers up to 400 J. A spear thrust generally generated 100-400 J. But the spear thrust more reliably attained the higher end of the scale, rather than 400 J being such an outlier. But the really good studies tend not to focus on Joules; they show Force-Time curves instead, and that tells us some things. Please see the first figure, attached. Disclaimer- all of these graphs were AI-generated and are idealized to demonstrate the concept, though the numbers do correspond roughly with the various studies. So even though the total energy is about the same, the thrown spear applies a very high force for a very brief time, whereas a spear thrust applies a lower but more constant force over a much longer period of time. And this has implications that I alluded to in prior posts. Frist, I have to make a correction about one of those earlier posts of mine. I used the word impulse, but I used it incorrectly. I should have said peak force instead. On the graph, peak force is obvious, since it is the highest point on the curves- very high for the thrown spear and lower for the spear thrust. In layman's terms peak force translates into armor penetration. But impulse is represented as the area under the Force-Time curve, and is the amount of momentum change inflicted upon the target. Or in layman's terms impulse is how much "knockback" the strike produces. Obviously, the spear thrust has much higher impulse than the thrown spear, whereas the thrown spear has a much higher peak force. As I said, the area under the Force-Time curve is impulse (N*s). But Force x Distance is work (N*m = J), and the area under a Force-Distance curve is energy delivered to the target (also J). Please see the second figure, attached. The important point is that with good technique and a long follow-through, the spear thrust can exceed the energy delivered by the thrown spear. This is why the spear thrust would more reliably produce energies at the higher end of the scale. That being said, it is easy to understand why an ideal long thrust might not happen reliably in a real fight- the enemy gets a vote. The thrust spear will also often penetrate more deeply than the thrown spear, but only assuming an unarmored target or one with armor that the thrust can penetrate fairly easily. Please see the third figure, attached. Because that is the strength of the thrown spear- armor penetration. That's what the high peak force means. It will punch through armor. But regarding an unarmored target, well, skin fails at about 10-30 MPa (thickness varies by body location). That's a low bar, and the spear thrust will penetrate skin easily. Ergo, excellent penetration against unarmored targets. Please see the fourth figure, attached. Assuming that a person thrusting a spear can maintain the thrust for at least 150 milliseconds or so, penetration will usually be deeper than for the thrown spear. But that's only against the bare skin of an unarmored target, or at least one with light armor that the spear penetrates easily. The thrown spear will better penetrate through heavier armor because of the high peak force, whereas the spear thrust might not penetrate at all if the armor is heavy enough. Note though that "knockback" probably still applies even without armor penetration. But this should all demonstrate why penetration is governed by pressure and work, not just kinetic energy.

I'm not sure that bears need to be nerfed. But they are probably damned difficult to balance. During a fresh start, yes, bears can be annoying. (So can wolves.) They just feel like an RNG "You Die!" event sometimes. But that's only for a short while. Not long after that you are hunting bears, and they can't be nerfed too much or that's too easy. So early in the game, yes, you need to act like a prey animal rather than a predator. Move carefully, pay attention to your surroundings, avoid dense brush, etc. Don't run- walk, especially in forest or brush. And keep your ears open, because you will almost always get a warning sound that a bear is near and alerted. Then once you have some spears and a shovel with which to dig a bear pit, go hunting bear! The danger makes it exciting. The bear hide armor is always one of my early stone-age goals. One small thing that you can do to lower the lethality of bears and wolves is to turn down the swimming speed of animals. The default is 200%, which I think was done to inhibit some exploits that players were using by luring or flushing animals into water to kill them more easily. But if you turn it down a bit you can use water to get away from bears and wolves. In reality, though, polar and brown bears can swim faster than anyone but Michael Phelps, on the order of 6mph. And they can do it for days. Other bears are slower, though. And wolves are almost comically slow swimmers, just like dogs- about half the speed of a human recreational swimmer. They almost never pursue prey into water deep enough to require swimming, although they will cross deep water to continue a pursuit on land on the other side. There are exceptions- there is a pack in Alaska that has learned to hunt sea otters. But grabbing a sea otter is not the same as grabbing a larger prey animal in the water. So in general, water really should be a handy way to escape wolves.

I've been digging around in experimental archaeology papers where folks attack ballistic gelatin with spears, and I think we were probably both wrong. Or less accurately, we were both partially right. But to be clear, you are still inappropriately using KE = mv^2 to model a thrust spear. I have explained why, even if you refuse to hear it. That only works for the thrown spear, because it is a projectile, a closed system. But a thrust spear is an open system, with the wielder shoving more energy into the target over time, so you have to look at the total work, W = ∫F dxW. A thrust spear will deliver more energy to a target than a thrown spear. But the thing is, even though you did the math wrong your conclusion isn't wrong. Or at least no more wrong than mine was. As I said quite a while ago, terminal ballistics gets complicated... and messy. The method of energy delivery matters. For instance, a pointy projectile will penetrate deeper than a blunt projectile of similar energy. Ah, but that blunt projectile might slow more and actually stop inside the target, thus transferring all of it's energy to the target, whereas the pointy projectile passes completely through the target and dumps less energy into it in the process because it wastes some to fly on uselessly after it leaves the target. A thrown baseball and an arrow have remarkably similar kinetic energy, but one is going to penetrate a lot better than the other. Lots of factors matter. Messy. So, what is "damage"? Total energy? No, probably not, which is unfortunate for the thrust spear. Total tissue disruption? Might be on to something, but you could disrupt a lot of non-vital tissue without degrading the target much. Depth of penetration? Again, partially- the deeper you penetrate the more likely you are to hit a vital structure. The FBI though that depth of penetration was the answer after the Miami Shootout, leading to their adoption of 10mm handguns, but they have now reversed themselves on that and gone back to 9mm. (Firearms terminal ballistics is one of my areas.) Another thought experiment- would you rather be impaled all the way through by a smallsword with it's 1.5cm-wide blade, or cleaved halfway through by a battleaxe? And which has "better penetration"? So, back to experimental archaeology. Bottom line- it turns out that thrown spears do penetrate very well, even though they have less energy. Because energy application over very short timescales helps for penetration, and that's what a thrown spear does- less total energy, but it is applied nearly instantaneously. And that equates to penetration because of the high impulse, J = F dt. (I think that I mentioned something like that earlier?) The thrust spear will deliver more total energy, but more slowly, so it has less impulse and doesn't punch deeply very quickly. You can get a thrust spear to penetrate deeply, but it takes a while of applying the force, and also depends upon the medium- some are easier than others. But it is still more total energy, so for instance the thrust spear will push the target back much further than a thrown spear will. W = F*d, and the thrust spear does a lot more work. And if the target is pushed against something that doesn't move so that none of the energy is wasted moving the target and can instead get put into penetration, then the thrust spear will generally out-penetrate the thrown one. Well, depending upon the medium. So, my one comment that perhaps the thrust spear just needs more knockback may have been wisdom from the mouths of babes. You can push with a thrust spear in a way that you cannot with a swung sword, for instance. Which spear penetrates better also depends upon what you are trying to penetrate. Naked flesh (i.e. ballistic gelatin) is different than leather, which is different than plate. Sometimes a thrown spear works better and sometimes a thrust one does. Generally, the thrown spear outperforms the thrust one against harder targets, like armor, and less against naked flesh, where the thrust spear can penetrate very well pretty quickly. As I said, the medium matters. And here's a point that neither of us brought up: precision. The thrown spears often missed the target entirely, whereas thrust spears never seemed to. Recall that I mentioned that penetration does sort of matter because you have to reach a vital structure? Well, shot placement matters too when trying to hit a vital structure, and it turns out that the thrust spear is much more precise. The thrust spears hit the center of the gelatin blocks much more reliably than the thrown ones, and thus might more reliably target vital structures like heart or lungs. So... it's complex. This is all unfortunately spread out over many different papers, and yes there is a lot of my interpretation in that summation above. There is no paper that I can find that directly compares them.

Oh, the hyperbole in this discussion! Nothing is "game-breaking" about this. It's a possible fringe use. If someone really wants to work that incredibly hard to "skip the stone age" for some reason, what is it to you? It's a solo game. And you can already skip the copper age if you get lucky.

I don't feel the need to memorize the subtle differences in appearance between ripening fruit and fully ripe fruit for twenty or so different berries. It's not game-breaking to put a little berry icon on the tooltip that pops up.

I like the new berry bush mechanics. A lot. But especially in a fresh start I'm not so interested in a detailed report about all of the various characteristics of a given bush. I just want to know if it has ripe, pickable berries. So a little berry icon to catch your eye next to the word "Ripe" might be helpful.

Ok. Just FYI, that was not a response to you.

Wow. I proposed that we be able to mantle up two blocks and you slapped me down, and now this?

I think you missed the proposal that hand-gathering grass should be mind-bogglingly slow. So, handy to make a torch or a fire pit in a pinch, but morning should come before you can make a hay bed that way, and winter should come before you can thatch a house that way. (Bit of hyperbole, there- forgive me.) Huh. Good to know. Still not very compelling- it is pretty clear (to me, at least) that we should be able to make a firepit with grass and sticks without tools. And yes, I would bet you that in fact it is as simple as changing a few files, unless you want to get OCD about the firepit model that shows firewood, in which case that's not really a big coding challenge either. (Not that there might no be downstream effects that need to be fixed, but heck, every update changes hundreds of things already.) Fuels clearly already have a trait that describes how long and how hot they burn, so that just has to be added to sticks. You sort of make my argument for me, there. "The player should..." That's railroading. They might not, or might choose not. And it's a simple change. So my question is essentially unanswered- why not? And yes, it annoys me as well that peat cannot be used to make a firepit- throw that issue into the same bucket. If you think that peat should be viable, then it's very hard to understand why you oppose sticks. For when one does not have a knife, as I already explained. Or more likely, when one only has an almost-broken knife and wants to preserve it for some other task. And again, why not? I'm not saying that it should be a priority, but it should obviously be possible.

Well, for once I agree with everything that LadyWYT said. I will add that most mundane creatures shouldn't generally throw themselves upon defensive works unless goaded, so Ideally that wouldn't be a problem. A trap would be different, of course, so I'm not as sure of that. (Have you tried pit traps? They work already.) But the traders have abatis, so why can't I? Drifters presumably would try to breach defenses, and would take damage. I suspect that Shivers would just climb over something like an abatis without injury, though.

No, I have a demanding day job. And I'm probably too old to learn coding- my brain is not plastic enough any more.

No, mine came from knowing ballistics, albeit what I really know is firearms ballistics, but I do know the physics involved. I was completely honest when I explained why I recommended that you ask an AI- I thought that you might find it more convincing than some dude on the internet, and I didn't expect you to constrain the question by specifying kinetic energy. That was a very leading way to phrase the question, especially when you tell the AI that you are in an argument on the internet- it acts as if you want to "win" by making a good argument, not necessarily by being right. Because it is optimized for engagement, so it amplifies pre-existing biases... just like a social media algorithm. But my AI's summary is a pretty good one: And I just thought of a better way to explain the error that you made: We are comparing a thrown spear with a thrust spear. But by just using the simple K.E. equation for both of them you are treating the thrust spear as if the wielder lets go of it at the moment of impact. And that is not the case. It is not a projectile. Calculate the total work instead. That being said, yes, your point about the models used in video games is well taken. But the bottom line remains that a thrust spear should do more "damage" than a thrown one. Vintage Story is not crunching the KE equation- it just has an arbitrary damage number in a file somewhere. But yes, I'm probably being too obsessive about it.

But I'm OCD enough to want the vanilla game to be right, dammit. But I'm aware that's a me problem. I'm still working on myself.

Ah, so yes, you phrased it to get the answer that you wanted! Though it was almost certainly not intentional. I am absolutely not going to assume malintent on your part- that seems very innocent. AIs are not smart- it went straight to the kinetic energy equation because you mentioned it. I had a long learning session with AIs when they first became available, and asked it a lot about itself, and learned how they tend to give people the answer that they want. They are not terribly unlike social media algorithms that way. So as a proof of concept I fed ChatGPT this: Here is the answer: That effectively tells the AI: Use kinetic energy as the criterion Compare two delivery methods under that lens So the model will almost inevitably anchor on: KE=12mv2KE = \tfrac{1}{2}mv^2KE=21mv2 m1m_1m1 m2m_2m2 vvv m1m2 …and then reason: Thrown spear → higher velocity Thrust spear → lower velocity → therefore higher KE for the thrown spear That’s not wrong within that frame. It’s just incomplete. 2) It quietly excludes the actual point of contention Your argument (correctly) lives in: force over time impulse work during penetration continuous vs. one-time energy delivery But the question filters those out by design. An AI will usually not override the user’s chosen metric unless prompted. So it answers: “Which has higher KE?” → thrown spear Instead of: “Which is more effective at delivering force into a target?” → thrust often wins 3) Why that can mislead Kinetic energy is a snapshot at impact, not a full description of what happens next. Two key limitations: (a) KE ignores how energy is delivered Thrown spear: energy delivered in a very short impulse Thrust: energy continues to be added after contact (b) KE ignores force profile Force depends on how quickly momentum changes: F=ΔpΔtF = \frac{\Delta p}{\Delta t}F=ΔtΔp A thrown spear may: have high KE but lose it almost instantly on impact A thrust: may start with lower KE but keeps applying force over time and distance 4) Analogy (more faithful than the knife one) A better comparison than knives is: Hammer strike vs. hydraulic press Hammer: high kinetic energy, very brief impact Press: lower speed, but sustained force → more total work on the material If you only ask “which has more kinetic energy,” the hammer wins. If you ask “which deforms or penetrates more,” the answer can flip. 5) Bottom line Yes, her question biases the answer toward “thrown spear has more KE.” That answer is technically correct but incomplete It does not resolve the real-world effectiveness question, which depends on: impulse sustained force work during penetration control and alignment If you want to pin this down cleanly A more neutral question would be something like: “Which delivers more force into a target and achieves greater penetration: a thrown spear or a hand-thrust spear, and why?” That forces consideration of: KE and impulse and sustained force …and you’ll get a much more balanced (and realistic) answer. You have to be careful about phrasing questions for AI. They can be extremely powerful, but they are also focused and literal. I use OpenEvidence for medical issues, and you have to be careful even with phrasing for such a specialized AI, too. You could potentially claim that I just did the exact same thing- asked a leading question. But I think that I phrased it well. Play around with the AI and see what you think. Ask it a more open question, like mine. Because AIs do tend to give you the answer that you think you already are sure of if you are not careful. So I apologize- that was my fault in directing you to the AI. I also pasted your first AI quote into mine, and got: That’s true—but then it quietly treats them as if they should be compared using the same constraint (initial KE). That’s the flaw. Why it matters Thrown spear: Energy available after impact is capped at initial KE → once it hits, energy only goes down Thrusting spear: Energy is not fixed at impact → work continues to be added during penetration So the statement: “energy is the primary upper bound on mechanical work available at the moment of collision” is only valid for projectiles, not for systems where force continues to be applied. 3) The missing equation (this is the crux) Work during penetration is: W=∫F dxW = \int F \, dxW=∫Fdx A thrown spear: Large FFF, but over very small xxx (it rapidly decelerates) A thrust: Smaller FFF, but over much larger xxx (you keep pushing) That’s the whole game. 4) Why “KE at impact” is not decisive Her AI implicitly assumes: Higher KE → more work → better penetration That only holds if: all energy is actually transferred efficiently, and no additional energy is added afterward Neither is reliably true. Reality: Projectiles often lose energy to: deformation deflection non-ideal angle A thrust can: maintain alignment keep adding energy adapt to resistance in real time So KE is a ceiling for a thrown spear, but only a starting point for a thrust. 5) The “biomechanics limit” argument cuts both ways Her AI says thrust is limited by human strength—which is true. But that doesn’t rescue the conclusion, because: A human can sustain hundreds of newtons over significant distance That can yield comparable or greater total work than a light spear’s KE Example (order-of-magnitude, not cherry-picked): Thrust: 600 N over 0.3 m → W=180W = 180W=180 J Thrown spear: 150 J KE → capped at 150 J total So the thrust can equal or exceed the projectile in total work, despite lower velocity. 6) Where her AI is actually right (and where it isn’t) Correct: These are “different interaction models” Thrown = high velocity, short duration Thrust = lower velocity, sustained force Incorrect implication: It treats those as non-competing, when in practice they are competing on: penetration force delivered to a target lethality / effectiveness And in those domains, sustained force often dominates. 7) The clean rebuttal (short version you can use) If you want something concise to drop into the argument: You’re right that a thrown spear can have higher kinetic energy at impact, and that KE limits the work a projectile can do after release. But that comparison only applies to closed systems. A thrusting spear is an open system—energy is still being added during penetration. The relevant quantity isn’t just KE at impact, it’s total work: W=∫F dxW = \int F\,dxW=∫Fdx. A thrown spear has a fixed energy budget that rapidly dissipates on impact. A thrust can apply force over a much longer distance, adding energy continuously. So higher KE at impact does not imply greater penetration or force delivered overall—it just means a higher initial impulse. Bottom line Her AI gave a physically correct but narrowly framed answer It does not invalidate your argument The real disagreement is about: initial energy (projectile view) vs. energy delivered over time (contact mechanics view) And for spears used at close range, the second is usually the one that actually decides outcomes. I am very confident that I am correct. But at this point we're just posting AIs arguing with one another. I'm ready to bow out if you are.