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[Carcer]

At first, yes.

An alternate system to the one currently proposed is to have sieging enemies on the map generate a bad thought, which increases as the number of enemies, or squads, increases. Enemy elites, leaders and champions will generate a larger bad thought all on their own.

This gets counter acted in two ways. First, your own military. Your dwarves get a positive thought during a siege for every soldier you that not just a recruit, they get a better thought for elites and a very good thought for champions, who can almost walk through goblins squads at times.

Secondly, if you kill a goblin, your dwarves should get a moral boost, killing a leader would bring a larger boost. This won't work particularly well in the current version as the goblins tend to flee when they take casualties, but we ever end up where they properly siege, long periods of waiting with small, bloody fights, then this would be more useful.

Similarly, the goblins should also get moral boosts as they kill dwarves, which would stop them from retreating so quickly.

Finally, as Footkerchief says, the negative thoughts from invaders should start out stronger than the positive thoughts and then die down, while the positive thoughts from your army should get stronger for a while and then also die down.

This would simulate the initial panic as invaders arrive, and then as they become confident that the enemy is being held at bay. Then they get complacent, which is represented by the lack of positive or negative thoughts.

[kotekzot]

roll out the cage traps?

[RAM]

The initial post gave me the strong impression that it was intended to make sealing the entrance impossible, I get the feeling that few participants want this. Can we change this from a discussion about preventing a sealed fortress, and turn it into a discussion about the potentially insignificant psychological impact of this?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At first, yes.

An alternate system to the one currently proposed is to have sieging enemies on the map generate a bad thought, which increases as the number of enemies, or squads, increases. Enemy elites, leaders and champions will generate a larger bad thought all on their own.

This gets counter acted in two ways. First, your own military. Your dwarves get a positive thought during a siege for every soldier you that not just a recruit, they get a better thought for elites and a very good thought for champions, who can almost walk through goblins squads at times.

Secondly, if you kill a goblin, your dwarves should get a moral boost, killing a leader would bring a larger boost. This won't work particularly well in the current version as the goblins tend to flee when they take casualties, but we ever end up where they properly siege, long periods of waiting with small, bloody fights, then this would be more useful.

Similarly, the goblins should also get moral boosts as they kill dwarves, which would stop them from retreating so quickly.

Finally, as Footkerchief says, the negative thoughts from invaders should start out stronger than the positive thoughts and then die down, while the positive thoughts from your army should get stronger for a while and then also die down.

This would simulate the initial panic as invaders arrive, and then as they become confident that the enemy is being held at bay. Then they get complacent, which is represented by the lack of positive or negative thoughts.

I would want this to be relative to the greatness of the fortress, if the initial 7 seal themselves off from a 20 goblin ambush, then that will be a serious threat. If 20 goblins are camping outside of a 200 dwarf strong settlement then, even with no military at all, locking them out is likely to be seen as more of a convenience than desperation...

There should be many more ways to maintain morale than just military. Traps and ballista should count. Stockpiles of high quality armour and weapons should encourage people who are facing military conscription. Fortifications, especially those that are raised relative to one of their facings should multiply the effects of archers and siege weapons. Not to mention what happens if a goblin paths over a tile that has a clear line between it and a floodgate that is holding back a large quantity of magma...

 If a siege of unprecedented magnitude turns up, it shouldn't drive your entire fortress insane simply because you didn't have enough military dwarves. But I can see people getting upset because a large horde of murderous thugs turned up with the intention of beating people to death with their own entrails... Of course, if this has happened before on a regular basis, people may get used to it, and may even be happy about it if they are running low on iron ore...

[LegoLord]

The initial post gave me the strong impression that it was intended to make sealing the entrance impossible, I get the feeling that few participants want this. Can we change this from a discussion about preventing a sealed fortress, and turn it into a discussion about the potentially insignificant psychological impact of this?

Looking at the past few posts (including some of mine), I'd say this has already happened.

[irmo]

I would want this to be relative to the greatness of the fortress, if the initial 7 seal themselves off from a 20 goblin ambush, then that will be a serious threat. If 20 goblins are camping outside of a 200 dwarf strong settlement then, even with no military at all, locking them out is likely to be seen as more of a convenience than desperation...

No, that's going to be seen as cowardice. We're locked up in here because of TWENTY DAMN GOBLINS? What the hell? What kind of pansy is running this fortress, anyway? Twenty goblins isn't an invasion, twenty goblins is up there with swatting a mosquito.

There should be many more ways to maintain morale than just military. Traps and ballista should count. Stockpiles of high quality armour and weapons should encourage people who are facing military conscription. Fortifications, especially those that are raised relative to one of their facings should multiply the effects of archers and siege weapons. Not to mention what happens if a goblin paths over a tile that has a clear line between it and a floodgate that is holding back a large quantity of magma...

I think this whole "morale bonuses for having military/traps/weapons/fortifications" idea is a mistake. Seriously, you want a morale boost for a goblin walking in front of a floodgate?

During a siege, you should get morale penalties for getting killed or wounded, and morale bonuses for actually killing or capturing invaders, by whatever means, but not for anything else.

[LegoLord]

I think this whole "morale bonuses for having military/traps/weapons/fortifications" idea is a mistake. Seriously, you want a morale boost for a goblin walking in front of a floodgate?

During a siege, you should get morale penalties for getting killed or wounded, and morale bonuses for actually killing or capturing invaders, by whatever means, but not for anything else.

That doesn't make any sense.  Soldiers used to get huge moral boosts if they thought the location they were in was difficult/nigh impossible to capture by the enemy, as would civilians. 

This complaint about floodgates makes no sense, seeing as how it is a FLOOD gate - not something designed for fortifications.  Then doors.  A troll can kick a door down (which they can really do with floodgates as well).  Small moral boost at best.  No one ever said "a goblin sees a fortification, every dwarf gets a moral boost" except you.  Don't go putting words into people's mouths.

[Derakon]

RAM's post gave a long list of things that are good ideas to do for defending your fort, and implied that having them should improve the morale of your dwarves by leading the list off with "There should be many more ways to maintain morale than just military."

In my opinion, being under siege should be a strict morale penalty. Even if your fort is badass enough to swat the goblins away, they're still out there. Civilians might get hurt (if they were stupid enough to go outside, or if they wandered too close to the walls), traders can't get through, migrants are just outright dead unless they're very lucky, and of course, there's freakin' goblins out there, they need to die! These are all bad enough things to more than offset any bonus for having an impervious fortress. A morale bonus for repelling the siege? Sure. But no bonuses until then.

Once sieges become a more long-term thing, it might be worth having bonuses for repelling attacks, but since the current siege is basically just a bigger battle, I don't think that's really appropriate yet.

[LegoLord]

No . . . the point is that you can have an impervious fort, just that it will be another challenge.