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[Impaler[WrG]]

I once again lost some fishers and herbalists to ambushing today, the attackers weren't revealed until their ax's were swinging towards their victims heads.  It's exceedingly annoying to have ambushes that are simply impossible to defend against short of building a wall around the whole map (which in reality would not work, hostiles can easily cross unguarded walls).  Hidden hostiles are a good thing but detecting them must be possible prior to actual contact with a dwarf.  This might be a CPU load issue to giving every dwarf a 'reveal' radius and updating that as they move so I propose a skill that would keep the necessary checks to only a handful of dwarfs.

This new skill simply called Scouting, naturally its in the Ranger family, a scout performs the simple but vital function of revealing in a large radius around himself the normally invisible enemies on the map.  Scouts aren't military and don't try to engage opponents, and instead keep just out of their sight range.  Scouts can be given a lookout point either in the open or in a tower (perhaps later in a tree if they become multi-tile) or ordered to scout at will in which case they rome around the map possibly trying to keep a perimeter around other dwarfs.  A Scout will use Ambusher skill when moving, like a hunter so they train that skill and will often have cross-over potential to be good hunters.  The more skilled a Scout the further they can detect and the stronger the detection is in adverse conditions like rain/snow/darkness which normally reduce its effectiveness.  A detection radius of up to 40 tiles might be necessary for Scouts to be tactically useful in protecting a forts outside workers from Ambushing.  With a good scouting corp it should be possible to provide excellent though never perfect protection to Herbalists/WoodCutters/Fishers and traveling Caravans, though at the cost of utilizing a good deal of labor that could otherwise go some ware else.  Also when off-map movement is added Scouts will be invaluable for intelligence gathering in these actions.

[Silverionmox]

Good suggestion. To ease the LOS-calculations, it could also be turned around: if someone is sneaking, check if someone sees him/her/it, instead of checking for every dwarf if they might notice someone who might be there or not.

[Scarpa]

I think this is an excellent suggestion. I particularly want to be able to use watchtowers effectively to spot ambushes before hostilities commence.

[Tormy]

Good suggestion.

Indeed, and I think this hasn't been suggested yet. 

[Sunken]

What about tracking, for your patrols?

<Shocked intake of breath>...elephant tracks!

[Impaler[WrG]]

Adding tracks might be possible but given the size of the map its not likely to be of much use.  I'd assume that it would work by the same method that grass trampling works on, each time a trample event occurs the ground is also marked with some additional information such as a direction and creature type and some kind of 'group ID' that tells us that the tracks are associated (this way we can pause and give "Tracks found" message when a track is revealed to the player and then skip the message for all the remaining tracks with that group ID avoiding the equivalent of Microcline spamming with every newly discovered footprint)

I do not think that invaders currently cause trampling, at least not when invisible, if they did you would be able to see a line of trampled grass moving across the ground which would be very silly.  So if this was implemented the grass tramples themselves would need to remain invisible until detected by a scout.  Only a Dwarf who is actively 'scouting' generates the checks necessary to reveal these tracks and their would probably be a check against their skill level to see if they succeed.

The trick to making all of this computationally efficient is to have a small number of things generating the 'pings' of detection.  This could be either the scouts OR the invisibles.  A combination of techniques might be the better solution.  First start with the Invisibles as they are usually going to be in a group use the maps block structure which could have an "invisibles in this block" flag, even the largest war bands would rarely cover more then 4 of these blocks. Then have the detector skill be equally course grained with it applying a "Detector viewing this block" flag again a very powerful detector can would cover only a few such blocks, these course grained flags are extremely easy to update every single cycle, just wipe the previous flag and mark the flag true while iteration over creatures, each time one of the flags is raised check to see if both are true, if so a more fine-grained tile-by-tile check is needed but because this fine-grained check is happening only at the final moment when actual detection is possible it will be SOOOO infrequent that its cost can practically be ignored.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Due to positive feedback I've added this to Eternal Suggestions.  Any one want to throw some votes at it?

[Pilsu]

Scouting skill seems kind of silly. A real LoS and sound detection would be more realistic approach than a guy that can see far because his job is to see

[Impaler[WrG]]

Actually it make perfect sense, a person doing some other activity (fishing, wood cutting, collecting herbs) is going to be distracted and not as aware of their surroundings as someone purposefully trying to be aware.  That's why I stated the increased detection radius occurs only when in an active "scouting" job is being conducted.

You could of course argue that the detection radius of about 1 tile currently used for all creatures is far too short and I would completely concur.  Even distracted people should be able to notice approaching enemies before they are at arms length unless the enemies have high Ambusher skill, currently creatures seem to be able to 'see' each other and 'agro' each other when their about 10 tiles apart but only after they are revealed.  It's thought that the present system exists primarily for CPU limitation reason and a scouting skill & job are a good work around. But even if all creatures were given decent detection radius their would still be good reason to have scouts to extend that normal radius and detect enemies easier and earlier and most important without the enemies detecting your units either which requires a greater detection range.

[Steely Glint]

The whole stealth system in general needs an overhaul... and I'm sure it will get it a few years in the future. I'm not sure how you'd train the detection skill, but it will probably be more effective if you have a high rating in the right mental ability (perception, wisdom, or whatever it ends up being called).

[Footkerchief]

The next version already has a Situational Awareness skill.  Not sure how well they'd mesh together.