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Author Topic: Squad control grief  (Read 996 times)

Bob Kelso

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Squad control grief
« on: January 17, 2009, 07:09:45 am »

Right, so my squad leader of a group of five champions decided to take a nap in the onset of several goblin ambushes. Fine - didn't bother me, it happens. But as I sallied forth to repel the invaders with what would appear to be frightening ease (A lone hammer champion had pounded a group of goblin wrestlers into mash, after all), my shining force sees it fit to stand out in the open while hostile bowmen fire away.

Rimtar Maimsgoblinsforaliving (Champion) has bled to death.

Wait... what? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Now I know some of the many flaws of the interface of this game - and ohohoho, are there many - are kept in as fun, esoteric little quirks, but this is not one of them. This is a bug, and a stupid one, at that. I mean, my troops were all but immobilized because the commander decided to nod off in the food cellar. Why is this in the game? You'd think I'd chin up and all, but losing a legendary dwarf for an entirely irrational reason is quite maddening. As a matter of fact, squad control in general seems quite fucked; it seems if the squad leader is involved in any activity other than "Soldier", the troops more often than not won't travel to their station points.

Thanks guys. Great game, otherwise. Cannot put it down.
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Footkerchief

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #1 on: January 17, 2009, 05:27:28 pm »

They were just standing there?  Usually they'll follow the leader to the food cellar or his bedroom or wherever and hang around, unless they need to do some sleeping/eating of their own, or they notice an enemy nearby.  Were they attacking the bowgoblins or what?

Anyway, squad control is one of the main things that's getting worked on for the next version, so you're in luck.
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Bob Kelso

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2009, 07:34:27 pm »

Yes, no, no, and oh, neat.

A related question: Is there any way to "Load" your game besides ctrlaltdel-ing out and starting again? Right now my choices are:

SAVE GAME AND QUIT
QUIT AND IRREVOCABLY LOSE EVERYTHING

Why wouldn't there be an option to simply quit without saving? Don't you think that is silly?
« Last Edit: January 22, 2009, 07:44:51 pm by Bob Kelso »
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Footkerchief

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2009, 08:39:56 pm »

On saving: I was confused by that at first too.  Apparently it's one of the fuck-you traditions of roguelikes.  Quitting without saving and reloading an earlier save is known as savescumming.  Ctrl+Alt+Del is pretty much the accepted way of doing it in DF.
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ZeroGravitas

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2009, 04:25:28 pm »

Yes, no, no, and oh, neat.

A related question: Is there any way to "Load" your game besides ctrlaltdel-ing out and starting again? Right now my choices are:

SAVE GAME AND QUIT
QUIT AND IRREVOCABLY LOSE EVERYTHING

Why wouldn't there be an option to simply quit without saving? Don't you think that is silly?


It's not "silly" and it's not a "fuck you".  It's to discourage exactly what  you're trying to  do: "Oh god 1 bad thing happened, let me restore  a  saved game  so that I can make sure nothing bad ever happens".  Learn to deal with it instead of just restoring a game and making it so it never happened.
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Sowelu

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #5 on: January 26, 2009, 05:31:53 pm »

Why wouldn't there be an option to simply quit without saving? Don't you think that is silly?

Go tell that to Starflight, an old space exploration game of the 80's.  Designed for systems with minimal amounts of memory, and pathetic CPUs, when you 'created a new game' you actually copied the game onto a new disk.  Playing would store some data in memory, and modify the core data files (so once you blew up a planet, it's like it never existed).  When you saved, it committed the rest of the memory to disk.

The system meant that, while the game was in-play, certain data (like what artifacts you found, planets you blew up) were current on-disk, but things that were always needed in memory (health of crew, etc) were only current in memory.  If you lost power, or ctrl-alt-deleted in panic, there was no way to go back to an earlier save unless you backed up your disks...But even worse, your saved game was now in an inconsistant state and wouldn't even let you reload!  Because they needed to save all three of disk space, RAM, and cpu time, the game was impossible to 'quit without saving'.  It was roguelike-ish due to technical limitations.

Dwarf Fortress, believe it or not, is similar simply because it IS so huge.  If you ctrl-alt-del out of the middle of the game, you wind up with weird things going on like "the goblin squad leader is dead, but he's also walking around the battlefield", and the game starts spitting hairballs everywhere in a few years after you've already overwritten your old backups.

There is no 'quit without saving' because the game saves certain stuff about hist figs all the time, but only commits the whole map to disk when you really save.  If you WANT regular backups, you can do them yourself--or you can turn on the 'save every season' option in the init file.  It makes a brand new file with that, which you can copy around.  You can even make it preserve every single backup it's made (though you have to manage your manual backups manually).

As for your original bug report, that's getting fixed in the next version as part of the enormous squad upgrade!  Soldiers in the next version are smart enough to not obsess over their commanders, and can work alone if needed.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2009, 05:33:44 pm by Sowelu »
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Footkerchief

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #6 on: January 26, 2009, 05:37:23 pm »

There is no 'quit without saving' because the game saves certain stuff about hist figs all the time...

You sure?  How do you know?  I've never seen any inconsistencies from savescumming.
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Blakmane

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #7 on: January 26, 2009, 06:41:08 pm »

also, if this is a problem just demote the commander or have the dwarves in individual squads. There is no penalty currently for having individual dwarfsquads apart from the micromanagement involved.
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Bob Kelso

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #8 on: January 28, 2009, 02:15:46 pm »

It's not "silly" and it's not a "fuck you".  It's to discourage exactly what  you're trying to  do: "Oh god 1 bad thing happened, let me restore  a  saved game  so that I can make sure nothing bad ever happens".  Learn to deal with it instead of just restoring a game and making it so it never happened.

Oh, far be it from me to consider it silly. I merely draw my complaint from every other video game ever made after the Carter administration. It's not a revolutionary idea, dad.  ::)

And to assume I load my game after a champion dies; well sir, in defense of my ASCII gaming credentials, I do not. The absence of a "quit without saving" concerns me because sure, I can handle a single champion dwarf dying, his cheerful expression as tragic as ever amidst the great, sullen mass of bgcolor=red which now surrounds him, forgotten by his happy-faced brethren only after he is placed in the grandiose 0, a life sordidly unfufilled... I can handle that, bro. But if I were to lose control of my squad inadvertently on the way to a deceptively easy battle for the reason in my OP? I rather think I spend enough time on this game as it is, even without the exhaustive retracing of my steps.

Losing is fun, but not in this way.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2009, 02:17:51 pm by Bob Kelso »
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Draco18s

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #9 on: January 28, 2009, 04:00:22 pm »

There is no 'quit without saving' because the game saves certain stuff about hist figs all the time...

You sure?  How do you know?  I've never seen any inconsistencies from savescumming.

That's because the game copies your region to a "current game" folder and runs from there.
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Aquillion

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #10 on: January 29, 2009, 01:14:28 am »

Yes...  the hairballs thing used to happen with old versions, but since the game is not perfectly stable yet (and was even less stable back then), Toady fixed it so it backs up your game every time you load, and if it closes improperly (like because of CTRL-ALT-DELETE) it just loads the backup instead.

Preferable to obviously buggy things happening, at least.
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Draco18s

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Re: Squad control grief
« Reply #11 on: January 29, 2009, 01:15:47 pm »

And we have the hard drive space to do it these days.

(To which I mean in comparison to the aulde games that didn't back up the save file first).
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