Print

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

[Tolis Kadestozi]

Well looking at the previous posts i have say heart wounds are not fatal often in DF.  But I was playing adventurer recently and had a swordsman strike a goblin down with a blow to the heart.  Sorry but i don't have a picture except i do remember it clearly.  It was instant is stuck down.  It was strange considering i was used to foes bleeding out when i make a good blow to the heart.  I had landed several blows before but i don't know why it was an instant kill.  O.o

[Sutremaine]

Were the several blows you landed before to the same goblin and using an edged weapon?

[Destyvirago]

cave-ins, atom smashers, freezing and obsidianizing are also insta-kills, but they ignore the damage system.

These are all good fun when you manage to employ them in traps, but usually these kinds of deaths are not something you will see during a normal combat when some of your dwarfs bump into something hostile and you have to call out your militia.
I must admit I take much enjoyment from reading the combat log and will regularly pause to look at the blow by blow combat description. Its one of those things that make DF unique and superior to many expensive AAA titles.

But once you have read a lot of combat logs you will notice that jamming bone into the brain is the way most things die in DF. I believe that during the history of man up until the advent of firearms most people that died on the battlefield did not die from trauma to the brain, but due to blood loss caused by stabs from sword and spears. Many wounds would not be serious or fatal by themselves but blood loss from several and exhaustion caused from battle could make anyone loose consciousness. Given the medical sciences of the day recovery rate was slim even if you where lucky and your side won and was able to get you to safety. 
That is not to say that 1 hit kills didn't happen in the old days as I am sure quite a few got a spear through the eye or got slashed in the neck leading to rapid death, but most would protect their vitals as good as they could.

I was thinking the other day if it could be interesting if creatures could go unconscious in DF when tired and their blood level/blood pressure got low.  As of now creatures only go unconscious due to pain or extreme tiredness and they often awaken pretty fast. lets also say that the dwarfs and the creatures don't automatically know if an opponent is actually dead or unconscious. It could lead to battles where fighters that that have been wounded and have gone unconscious are left for dead and are not automatically finished off by an enemy. That way a dwarf may be incapacitated and later rescued by your doctors before taking lethal damage. On the other side Goblins and other creatures that you thought where dead may awaken and try to crawl off the map slowly leaving a blood trail. This would make policing the battlefield/winning the fight more important as it would allow you to recover wounded dwarfs and kill off wounded enemy.

Well, enough rambling from me.  I sometimes find it hard to contain my passion for DF 

[Telgin]

Unconsciousness from loss of blood really should be put in soon I think, since it should be a relatively simple extension of how it works now.  I know it's hard to make generalizations about other people's code, especially without reading it, but it couldn't possibly be that hard.

Right now things are pretty strange anyway.  The game keeps track of a blood level that kills you when it hits 0.  That's all there is to it.  It really should cause sluggishness at low blood levels (if it doesn't now, and it may), but should definitely cause unconsciousness at some point.  A more realistic system would also cause that to happen at thresholds above 0 blood obviously, but I'm guessing the current system isn't tracking exact blood volume so much as vital blood volume.  Supposedly 20% loss of blood volume is serious and 40% will cause rapid death, so something like that maybe.  Once things go in where it makes sense to keep a thing living when its blood volume is so low it would be unconscious and certain to die anyway.

It could use tweaking in other ways too of course.  Vampires don't need to breathe or eat if I recall correctly, but still bleed to death, which is outright strange.

[Xantalos]

Code: [Select]

[TISSUE_TEMPLATE:HEART_TEMPLATE]
[TISSUE_NAME:heart tissue:NP]
[FUNCTIONAL]
[STRUCTURAL]
[SCARS]
[TISSUE_MATERIAL:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:HEART]
[RELATIVE_THICKNESS:1]
[HEALING_RATE:100]
[VASCULAR:10]
[PAIN_RECEPTORS:5]
[CONNECTS]
[TISSUE_SHAPE:LAYER]
I can see the problem. It only bleeds about twice as much as muscle. I have no idea on the science behind major arteries bleeding, but taking 100 tiles until he bled out seems a bit much.

Another oddity I've seen is when you destroy someone's upper spine they will still crawl around on the ground trying to attack you for quite some time before they finally suffocate.

I just imagine they're using their face to move and try to kill you by head butting you in the shin.

[Dyret]

Right now things are pretty strange anyway.  The game keeps track of a blood level that kills you when it hits 0.  That's all there is to it.  It really should cause sluggishness at low blood levels (if it doesn't now, and it may), but should definitely cause unconsciousness at some point.

Yeah, I think being 'pale' and 'faint' gives a creature fairly significant debuffs already.

[Footkerchief]

Bleeding was extremely buggy last time I checked.

[hermes]

I think all of this would be solved by modelling blood pressure.  Loss of blood pressure when the heart is damaged or you bleed out is what stops circulation which incapacitates/kills.  Blood pressure should drop when wounds are external (they can bleed out) and it would rise after a while if the wound was covered or scarred over.  A sharp drop would result in unconsciousness, then bleeding out to zero, which makes perfect sense, would take a while longer.

I have no idea on the science behind major arteries bleeding, but taking 100 tiles until he bled out seems a bit much.

I've seen a chap die from an abdominal aortic aneurysm and he was "awake" a good hour or so before entering surgery.  Bleeding from a major artery is quickly fatal if it bleeds out.  If it bleeds internally then blood pressure may remain high enough to stay conscious for a while.

[itisnotlogical]

Well looking at the previous posts i have say heart wounds are not fatal often in DF

From what I've seen, slashing or stabbing attacks to the heart are almost always fatal unless you somehow manage to fast-travel before bleeding out. I screw around in Arena mode alot, and anything I've fought that had a heart has died from blood loss whenever "a major artery in the heart has been opened". It's even possible to do it with blunt weapons by jamming ribs through the heart.

[WarRoot]

From what I've seen, slashing or stabbing attacks to the heart are almost always fatal unless you somehow manage to fast-travel before bleeding out. I screw around in Arena mode alot, and anything I've fought that had a heart has died from blood loss whenever "a major artery in the heart has been opened". It's even possible to do it with blunt weapons by jamming ribs through the heart.

This has been my experience too.

No idea how the OP's goblin did that feat though, maybe it's a bug, or some weird side effect of a third party app.

[Telgin]

I've seen something close to it happen once before.  I had a soldier who was somehow hit with the falling corpse of a thing she killed in front of her, which broke a rib and jammed it through her heart.  She stood at her station for an astonishing amount of time, to the point I was beginning to question if she was going to die at all.  I knew that artery damage in the heart was supposed to be invariably fatal from bleed out, but it took her so long I was considering if it might have even been possible to get her to a hospital before it killed her.

I don't think doctors in DF could have done anything for it though.  She lived for probably half a minute at 50 FPS, but even with legendary diagnosticians, surgeons and suturers I doubt it would have been enough time.  That's if the injury would even be treated, which I'm not sure it would in the current system.

[JacobEdwards]

The flying  {capybara bone bolt} strikes The Goblin Thief in the upper body, tearing the muscle and tearing the hearth through the  ({wolf leather cloak})!
A major artery in the heart has been opened by the atttack!
The {capybara bone bolt] has lodged firmly in the wound!

The fact the bolt lodged in the wound would probably stem a lot of the bleeding. I know a bit about first aid and if you get something in a wound that is protruding you should always leave it in there, since it does block the bleeding until you can get proper help. I know this is a very serious case, and i doubt it has any effect in game, but it seems more realistic he would survive longer if the bolt stayed in his chest to me.

[Sutremaine]

I don't think doctors in DF could have done anything for it though.  She lived for probably half a minute at 50 FPS, but even with legendary diagnosticians, surgeons and suturers I doubt it would have been enough time.  That's if the injury would even be treated, which I'm not sure it would in the current system.

It can be treated, if the patient has enough blood to live that long. Major artery tears aren't diagnosed though, despite there being a slot for them in the Health screen.

Suturing and dressing the heart doesn't seem to do anything though -- the dwarf will still leave a pool or smear of blood on every tile. I suspect that the tag that gives the heart and throat major arteries puts injuries to those arteries outside the purview of the medical system, and the only reason dwarves seek medical treatment at all is for the accompanying treatable trauma to the heart tissue.

It's been a season since my test dwarf took an arrow to the heart. I'm curious now about whether the bleeding will ever stop.