Print

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

[Satarus]

Bows are the only things that make ambushes and sieges deadly.  The reverse is also true.  Elite marksdwaves will trivialize such things.

If you want truely difficult megabeasts, throw in CAN_LEARN and TRAP_AVOID tags.  Then up their size and damage block.

[Heliomance]

My latest megabeast was a dragon. He showed up while the goblins were sieging me. He died to the goblins before my military got there.

[shadowform]

Yeah...   megabeasts are sort of underwhelming right now.  The game seems to assume that most soldiers spend about 95% of their time on patrol, with their combat skills trained just high enough to give them the relevant descriptor of 'wrestler', 'swordsman', and so forth, whereas most dwarven militaries seem to spend about 95% of their time training and reach legendary status within a year or two.

The problem here is probably in the relative skill level of most player-controlled dwarven militaries, rather than in actual sieges.  Capping the amount of experience dwarves can gain through training (e.g. unable to pass 'skilled' through training alone) would probably be the best way to fix this in terms of game difficulty, although actually coding it in might be difficult.

[Loyal]

The problem here is probably in the relative skill level of most player-controlled dwarven militaries, rather than in actual sieges.  Capping the amount of experience dwarves can gain through training (e.g. unable to pass 'skilled' through training alone) would probably be the best way to fix this in terms of game difficulty, although actually coding it in might be difficult.

It shouldn't be hard at all to make it so that if a dwarf has Proficient+ in any weapon skill (crossbows would be considered mutually exclusive from melee weapons for the purpose of this check), he or she simply won't spar/train/learn from instructors, off duty or otherwise.

[Holy Mittens]

I've actually found titans to be one of the tougher megabeasts. You just need to have a fairly long world gen. The longer the world gen, the more fights the titan can get in. Since (in vanilla) titans are the only megabeast that can learn, it can gain skills and stats through world gen. Stats and skills are extremely important, especially when a creature is larger than your dwarves.

A titan-sized creature that has even gained decent levels of wrestler can be pretty deadly. But a titan that has only had 100 years or so of world gen won't have had enough fights to gain much skill and will thus be a cake walk to any dwarf that has trained up a bit.

[atomfullerene]

My very first megabeast was a dragon.  I was excited to fight it...marshalled my military and opened my gate.  As I prepared to charge out to meet the dragon it crossed a stonefall trap and was killed instantly.  Kind of anticlimatic

[nenjin]

I know in our succession fortress, the guy who gen'd the world stopped it at 50 years on the assumption that more mega-beasts would survive.

We never really accounted for the strength of said mega-beast though. Never really thought about them gaining experience.

I expect most of people's complaints are going to be addressed in the next version. Mega-beasts and forgotten creatures will be tougher all around, they aren't going to show up with crippling injuries gained 100s of years ago, and some will be procedurally generated so they'll have breath weapons and other things. Traps may or may not get addressed....but for sure the capabilities of seiging units will be. I'm not sure if that will include smashing down constructed walls or not...but maybe they'll be able to climb over, or something.

[Particleman]

Would it be possible to mod megabeasts to travel in packs? One dragon might be essentially harmless to an experienced soldier, but a dozen at once could probably put up a decent fight. Assuming of course you don't abuse traps.

[vorpal+5]

Has anybody heard something about the patch on moats filling and walls destruction? Because right now you dig a moat and that's it, you are safe from anything, which is silly.

[Thorik]

I always thought of dragons and the like as very solitary creatures.  Like the T-Rex.    travelling in packs makes them seem less awesome, just make them MUCH stronger.  in the Hobbit one dragon took a whole mountain of hundreds of dwarves and killed 99 percent of them, plus the man town of Dale, all in one day too.  but of course, that would ruin the fun of the game, eh?

[o_O[WTFace]]

Well if the flying AI is fixed moats and walls should be less important.  I don't know about construction destroying but that would be great.

Anyway, think about what a basic military champion would look like converted into a standard creature.  With a year of sparring thats legendary wrestler and moderate weapon, armor and shield skills and maybe 5 stat points in each stat.  A set of Iron Plate armor with some quality would be about 10 damblock or so easily.  The shield would block probably half of all attacks including potential criticals, I think the best way to represent that would be doubling the speed in addition to to the massive agility bonus.  That means fastest creature in the game, by far.  Legendary wrestling basically means [noexert], because anything else is going to get tired first.  Also it gives a chance to dodge, stun, and throw the enemy onto the ground but I don't know how to represent that.  I would say 5 toughness is closer to [nopain] then not having nopain, without it things break a foot and then fall unconcious and usually get killed immediately (thats kills tons of megabeasts in worldgen).  Iron axe should be at least 1-11 slash damage.  A quality or two would easily mean 15 max damage and I think combat skill would justify a much higher minimum damage, so maybe 5-15?  Five Strength and Toughness would become 2 or 3 extra creature size, I think, so [size:9].  Military Dorf = King of Megabeasts even without steel or a masterwork clown suit. 

[smokingwreckage]

I had a Titan show up and wreak great slaughter a few forts back, but in my recent fortress a Dragon and a Hydra have been killed by my lone hunter, and a Titan stepped on a trap and got vivisected.

[jryan]

All of the deadliest thing I have encountered, other than clowns, have names that start with "Giant Cave...".  Giant Cave Swallows:  your worst nightmare.

Well, if you are dumb like me and build an open fortress centered on a bottomless pit....