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[Munchkin9]

I have some suggestions to make for soldiers (as the name suggests):
1. When a squad is set on duty all members should cancel what they are doing and move to stations INCLUDING SLEEPING, EATING, AND DRINKING. Also they should not do those things till you set them off duty again (so yes you will need to pay attention to your squads). I mention this because it is really annoying when a goblin siege arrives and you activate your 3 squads: the first squad has its leader sleeping so they wont be reporting for duty till next year, the second squad has 2/3 of its members eating or drinking, and the last squad reports about 2/3 of its men at the wall, who knows where the rest are.   :mad:   :mad:   :mad:

2. Another suggestion for soldiers is sparring grounds. Instead of having them fight on their beds (which is a little ridiculous) maybe have something, a statue for example, which makes a room for sparring. Like this there will not be blood all over the barracks, just a personal hatred.   :mad:

In general a lot of the stuff about soldiers needs to be improved on but I am sure Toady already planes to improve it.

-Munchkin

PS: As always it is possible I add stuff in a few minutes.

[Goblin Dragoon 085]

A agree with the general direction this is going, but not with your suggested implementation.

A better squad control would be nice, combined with an overall better way to keep civillians under control.
Hence: The Great horn!
Build a great horn (requires 3 wood) place it somewhere.
When built you cna create a room from it, which would be called "Retreat" "Bunker" or "Panic Room".
Then horn can have  3 alarm settings:
Green:
Everything just as it is now

Yellow: Military dwarves stop all non eating/sleeping/drinking duties and start picking up their on duty equipment, even when off duty (this would currently only effect bolts). They would also prepare for battle, by eating and drinking, thus allowing them to fight longer. Civilian Dwarves stop taking jobs, related to outside areas.

Red: Civilian dwarves hurry to the panic room and stay there, no matter what! (if you have food/booze/a well/beds inside the panic room they will use those.)
Military dwarves go to their posts, not matter what, they stop sleeping/drinking/eating,searching for their infants and hurry to their posts, with whatever they have currently equipped. When at their posts dwarves will walk a maximum of 10-15 tiles to get food/drink and they will also sleep on the ground near their station.

To sound the alarm someone has to operate the great horn.
So you would q the horn, then select yellow alart, and then task the horn to e sound, or maybe you have three tasks, sound green alarm, sound yellow alarm, sound red alarm. The maximum number of tiles military dwarves walk from their posts when in red alart could also be set here.

Other possible options is stuff for more precise military control.
For example: Every squad can have several posts and patrol routes.
So a squad could have the following posts:
alpha: on top of the wall
beta: behind the 2nd gate
delta: in front of the panic room.
This would allow us to form different lines of defense or have several different  defense planes, depending on the direction the enemy attacks from.
With these setup you could add the task: Sound Alpha at the horn and then all your squads would change to patrol/station alpha.

Lots of possibilities.
personally I dont mind setting up complicated patrol routes and defense or counter attack planes, as long as I can see my perfect plan executed upon the blow of a horn   Actually I would not mind being able to program the individual behaviours of every single dwarf, cause its way better to put 1h into programming a dwarves behaviour than having to change labour options every 5 minutes.

So yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with you intentions, Munchkin9

[Munchkin9]

You have a good point but there is one problem: This would not improve (completely ) when sending your dwarves out side of the fortress. As they might just suddenly sit down and sleep which would be annoying. So in other words all your ideas are good except for the sleeping on the ground part(Imho).

[Bricktop]

quote:What goblin Dragoon said

Actually, that great horn idea is really good. I think the construction materials should be a bit more diverse (I myself would like to have a golden horn when I can afford it, but would prefer to stick to a stone one until then) but apaprt from that, its a really good idea.