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[Broken]

Why are danger rooms an exploit?  You put dwarves in a room where they constantly have to dodge/deflect blows with armor, and they get better at dodging and moving around in armor.  Seems very much in the spirit of both DF's skill-based advancement system and Rocky-style training montages.

The concept of danger rooms is not exploity. Actually, it is a really cool trianing method.
The problem come from its absurdly overpowered effectiveness. This is a side effect of the simplistic exp method that Df actually uses: Do
something 1000 times, and you are good at it. It doen't matter if "something" is blocking dragonfire or the atacks of a crippled, disarmed goblin.

[A_S00]

Have you used danger rooms? Where is the fun in getting a squad of legendary soliders in just a season.

I totally get why somebody might choose to do training in the field because it's more fun.  That seems unrelated to it being an exploit, though; more like building above ground because it sounds like fun.  Exploits, to me, are things that are blatantly unrealistic and obviously not intended, like water reactors, coin-melting for infinite metal, quantum stockpiling, etc.

Danger rooms are both extremely effective and boring, so I see why somebody might not use them, but they're not especially unrealistic (dwarves get good at skills by doing them a lot...danger rooms allow dwarves to use dodging and armor user skills a lot...therefore they make dwarves good at those skills).

[osunightfall]

Blatantly unrealistic and obviously not intended...yeah, sounds like a danger room to me. Unless you think you can become a master swordsman by standing in a room full of spears with fixed position and ocassionally tapping one with your sword. One might almost say you are "exploiting" the nature of the XP system and the fact that traps force you to dodge, parry, and take hits.

If we take it as given that the intended method of training a military was through...wait for it...military training, then yes, danger rooms being 20x more faster and more effective than that argues for them being an exploit. Does anyone really think it's intended that you can have something that spits out a literally unlimited number of legendary dwarves in no time at all with basically no upkeep once it's in place? At a far greater rate than you can produce legendaries of any other kind? I think someone is in denial.

That said, I don't necessarily blame people who use them at this time, because military training is kinda broken. Danger rooms are just the lazy, easy way to make up for that. However, I've still never had to use them.

[Psieye]

I usually make the invaders pass through a corridor with traps (not full of them, just a few traps to give them the chance to avoid them). At the end of it I place the militia and a squad of marksdwarves supporting them.

That way they fight less enemies and some of them are partially injuried. That way the soldiers fight with advantage and have a better chance to level up. Of course some of them die or are injuried in the process, but... it's a war after all.

I do this except instead of a corridor with walls around it, it's a catwalk with pits around it. My milita then camp at the bottom of the pits and kill off goblins that fall in. I try to make sure none of the goblins actually land ON the dwarves, as that's lethal now.

Exploits, to me, are things that are blatantly unrealistic and obviously not intended, like water reactors, coin-melting for infinite metal, quantum stockpiling, etc.

Danger rooms are both extremely effective and boring, so I see why somebody might not use them, but they're not especially unrealistic (dwarves get good at skills by doing them a lot...danger rooms allow dwarves to use dodging and armor user skills a lot...therefore they make dwarves good at those skills).

On paper they don't seem all that unrealistic. But the way people actually build them, they are very much unrealistic - you have a fat stack of sticks that simultaneously lunge out to you all at once. Your dwarves will treat this as exactly the same as if each stick separately lunged out at leisurely intervals.

It's realistic for someone to dodge or parry 95% of a practice machine's lunges. It's unrealistic for that probability to remain exactly the same even when the practice machine is simultaneously making 10 lunges at once - how the heck do you "dodge away" from a stick when THE ENTIRE ROOM IS DENSELY PACKED WITH SIMULTANEOUSLY LUNGING SPEARS FROM ALL ANGLES WITH NO SPACE IN BETWEEN?

[Deepblade]

Posted to wrong topic. Ooopsy

[maddwarf]

After a brief distraction involving titanic water blobs and careful magma hunting, I've ordered the troops to start training in 2-man squads, each squad with identical weapon specialties and equipment.

I also have a nice hoard of goblin and mount cages after a full-scale siege, so it looks like all the preparations are in place!

Let's see how this turns out...

[saurio]

Here's my patented Lazy Player's easymode (for DF standards) godly military dangeroom-less method for the vanilla game. It has probably been invented several times already but anyway:

Step 1: pick dwarfs who come with 'Competent Whatever' combat skills.
Step 2: custom-profession your dwarves as the squad they will be part of, for example 'MELEE 1', 'MARKS 1' or whatever (caps help locate them in the menus)
Step 3: set said dwarves' labor to stoneworking, pump operating, furnace operating etc. (optional)
Step 4: create 4-dwarf squads. Assign them a proper uniform, with choice weapons (as each has his own 'competent' weapon skill), always replacing clothing.
Step 5: set all squads to train 2 minimum
  This way, at all times, you'll have 2 dwarves training and the other 2 doing the associated labors, thus gaining stats
Step 6: sit back
Step 7: eventually your dwarves will reach godly status without you having to do anything else.

It's also kind of awesome seeing your military dwarves being legendary stone detailers, then masterfully engraving their own exploits.

PD: This may sound pretty dumb to the more experienced players, but it offers good results with a minimum of effort.

[Mohawk_Bravo]

Hmm, yes - I'd heard of danger rooms but was hoping to avoid them, as it looks like they tend towards being an exploit, unless the only other option is to wait for the regular training.

I don't think it should really count as an exploit. Extremely dorfy, yes, but not an exploit. If you think about it, a constant barrage of wooden spears trying to pierce every part of your body well you are equipped in metal armor and carrying weapons. After a few months, you have to have learned to dodge (or, you know, be dead).

[Magistrum]

Bravo, it's not an exploid cause it don't happens in the Real World, it's an exploit cause it's cause it's a way too much effective.

[maddwarf]

Right, a training report:

I assigned my men into squads of two, each specialising in a certain thing, and set some captured, disarmed goblins loose (one at a time) for them to train on. Training weapons only were used.

- A Speardwarf squad sustained slight injury but both became Spearmasters after only a few rounds!
- A Swordsdwarf squad lost one man to infection from a goblin bite, but the other trooper is now at least Proficient in Swordsdwarf and Fighter.
- An Axedwarf squad had a field day bludgeoning a goblin to death with their training axes. One of them sustained upper body injury, but both have again seen a huge jump in skill.

On the whole it's working better than I'd hoped! I'll try to contain the goblins better in future, as very often they seem to escape and go running rampant around the fortress, only to meet a grisly end by a Master Speardwarf. Whoops! Overall though, this seems like a very effective alternative to danger rooms.

That sounds like an interesting method also, saurio. I may well give it a go.

[Loud Whispers]

The only real soldier I've got is my militia commander, who's fairly good, but sending in the troops (2 squads, 10 men total) to clean up two remaining goblins after a siege attempt led to 2 dead dwarves

How can you fight without expecting casualties? Twenty percent is good for a victory.

[Mr Space Cat]

The only real soldier I've got is my militia commander, who's fairly good, but sending in the troops (2 squads, 10 men total) to clean up two remaining goblins after a siege attempt led to 2 dead dwarves

How can you fight without expecting casualties? Twenty percent is good for a victory.

Yes, but that's against two goblins. Not that great for ten versus two.

I'd recommend you piss off the elves, OP. Elven ambushes are really easy to kill in vanilla. Just give your dwarves metal armor and just some wooden training weapons and they're almost guaranteed to win eventually. now, against an elf siege you may want more troops and better weapons, but elf ambushes can be useful for training.

[Loud Whispers]

The only real soldier I've got is my militia commander, who's fairly good, but sending in the troops (2 squads, 10 men total) to clean up two remaining goblins after a siege attempt led to 2 dead dwarves

How can you fight without expecting casualties? Twenty percent is good for a victory.

Yes, but that's against two goblins. Not that great for ten versus two.

Ten militia against two seasoned siegers. Good for a victory.