Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Scott Cee]

I was doing some thinking on this topic earlier in the suggestions forum, but then I stopped because it hurt so much.
Anyway, unarmoured dorfs running out in the middle of a siege to recover the wounded is annoying and mostly they end up getting themselves wounded or killed in the attempt, right?

So, I hit upon the idea of creating a squad of dorfs, armouring them up and deliberatly not giving them weapons, disabling all labors except for recover wounded  (and disabling that for all other dwarves not assigned to burrows, such as actual soldiers) and never giving them any orders.
Ex-soldiers, wounded such that they are no longer particularly effective in battle, would be useful for this due to having good armour proficiency, I think.

Your thoughts?

[dexxy]

Maybe it would be easier to make a safety burrow, link it to a military alert, and confine your civs to that burrow until the danger has passed? Then after that they can recover the wounded without being attacked.

[Scott Cee]

I'm very protective of my military dorfs, mostly due to the time and effort I spent learning how to make them work, and would prefer not to see them bleed out on the battlefield while their comrades are dismembering their enemies (or one another) and everyone else hides in their burrows.

One, my favourite, the one-handed champion I've mentioned before, has racked up 47 notable kills. I'd prefer she not die due to a lucky gobbo with a crossbow or something, but by... single-handedly (pun very much intended) chargin a dragon or something. Something, y'know, particularly dorfish and stupid.
This is a dwarf who didn't even bother going to the hospital when she lost that hand.

[dexxy]

It would probably work. The bearers might get scared if they see the enemy, but that means they would run away. If they are off-duty, they shouldn't run at the enemy and try to attack them unarmed. Maybe you could give them crossbows?

You would probably have to make sure that no unarmored dwarfs have recover wounded job set.

[SpiralDimentia]

Well, if they're active, they'll fight instad of recover wounded. If they're inactive, I think they'll run away instead of recover wounded.

[Scott Cee]

But somehow, I'm sure I've seen it happen though I can't recall any particular incident, regular non-burrowed dorfs will come on to battlefields to recover wounded and not run away when hostiles are near.

[WealthyRadish]

I would definitely give them crossbows as well, and a shield. But yeah, good idea... though really, what's keeping you from giving everyone crossbows and light armoring anyway?

[Scott Cee]

I have reached the popcap in the non-modded game (I think). I've got 212 bearded alcoholic depressives running around, and arming the vast majority of them will, when everything inevitably goes wrong, only hasten the demise of the Bronzemark.

It might not be pretty, it might not be well-designed, but it works.
And it's the first fortress I've made that hasn't spectacularly imploded either due to my own incompetence or the incompetence of my military.

[Garath]

arming everyone with crossbows is very popular and tantrumers will usually use it to strike instead of shoot, plus you can assign everyone a helm and chainmail, which will really improve everyones durability

recovering wounded the way you say it would probably require new coding to make dwarfs not run away but also not attack. To quote Loud Whispers: remove their eyeballs. that would work.

The one where a wounded was recovered during a fight was probably pure luck. Dwarfs sometimes take some time to realize there is any danger, so he might have gotten in, picked up the soldier and gotten out of LOS before bad things were noticed. You can see the slow notice time at work when having cage traps for wildlife. They will happily carry a new cage to one and only when they are already busy loading it do they notice that several giant badgers are watching, have been watching for some time now. Then it's "Oh, Giant badgers."..... "RUN."

[Scott Cee]

I don't want to mess around with the coding or whatever, because I am stupid, but would it be possible for someone with some !!SCIENCE!! to remove the flee response for dorfs with the recover wounded labor enabled?

Theoretically, I'd wager yes.
Practically, probably not.

[Snaake]

Another problem: using a civilian alert burrow to stop civilians from wandering onto the battlefield would also stop the stretcher bearers from doing so.

You might be able to avoid this by having their squad be set to have no orders (or train min 1, and squad size 2+) but always active, and only recover wounded enabled. Preferably select only dwarves who like to help others, too (can't remember if it affects recovering wounded, though). I think that would mean they'd count as soldiers all the time, but just idle until you had some wounded.

They'd probably still get negative thoughts from long duty though, unless you use crippled, retired axelords or something). So you should ideally have 2 shifts (squads) of them, eg. 2 months on duty, 2 months off. Or since long patrol duty thoughts are bugged, just keep them happy with good rooms etc.

[Garath]

I don't want to mess around with the coding or whatever, because I am stupid, but would it be possible for someone with some !!SCIENCE!! to remove the flee response for dorfs with the recover wounded labor enabled?

Theoretically, I'd wager yes.
Practically, probably not.

yes, it's possible
Remove their eyes. If they can't see the goblins, they don't flee, but it seems they can still find other stuff, probably by their beards. Loud Whispers was advocating this for some time a while back. More for siege operators, I think, but it'd work