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[NW_Kohaku]

heh, in one of my experiments for my Stonehall mod, I was playing with my spider-man-like aranea and some of my other races...

Due to random size differences, my (snake-man-like) lamia was considered smaller than the female aranea, so all her attempts to constrict her opponent failed.  I was taking control of the lamia until I just got bored.  Her tail slams, which relied on her quite large tail, however, were powerful enough to damage both lungs, the heart, pancreas, guts, stomach (vomitted three times a turn), liver, and several other important organs.  The aranea was flashing red "+", which seemed to imply she was going down for the count.

The aranea, on the other hand, would keep trying to bite, but was incapable of doing anything but "glancing away" with its bite attack (which had paralytic venom).  After about a thousand attacks, nothing so much as dented the skin.  Surprisingly, the webbing attack, which didn't even have thickweb, would incapacitate the lamia whenever it was used. 

I eventually got bored of waiting for the aranea to just freakin' die of all the internal organ injuries that the aranea had suffered, and went back to arena mode... and the aranea won the fight, in spite of vomitting roughly 140 times a minute (which really shouldn't happen on several levels), and in spite of not being able to break the skin in any way.  I presume this occured because the aranea finally figured out how to grapple, and just strangled the lamia to death, which seems to be the ONLY way an unarmed creature gets kills without modifying teeth to be sharp or something.

In short, the core problem is that combat is utterly broken right now - even massive internal organ failure means nothing, and you can repeatedly "shatter" a skull without the skull ever actually ceasing to function.  Death only occurs by brain death, blood loss, asphyxiation, torso seperation, or extreme temperatures.  Blunt attacks do not cause bleeding, not even internal bleeding, not even when you significantly and repeatedly damage the heart, making the combat system fairly broken from a hardcoded standpoint, which means you're probably not going to "balance" this game's combat without making all attacks basically the exact same attack (probably just copying code off of an axe).

[Max White]

Combat is broken, and one MASSIVE problem can very easily explain why.

I want you to look down at yourself, and say 'This is me!'
Now were I to cut your arm off, you wouldn't look at your arm and call it you, you would call it your lobbed off arm, and the rest of it is you.
Chop off another arm, and the same applys.
There goes the legs, so your just a torso and head, and those four limbs aren't you, there just your hacked off limbs and the rest of you is still living.
Cut out the liver, spleen and kidneys, well that doesn't matter because you don't currently need them (But hopefully will it later versions)
As long as you have lungs, heart and brain, and don't die of blood loss, your fine. Now if you didn't need ANY of those, and you didn't have blood, then yes, you are immortal.

While most games just recognize a living thing as a single object, dwarf fortress makes living things out of all there body parts, but does not yet define enough ways to die. This can be a pit of a problem.

Of coarse this is just one problem, there are several out there.

[Deon]

I don't get the sentense about "this is not you, this is your lobbed off arm". DF does the same, it calls the chopped off arm "someone's arm".

[Max White]

I don't get the sentense about "this is not you, this is your lobbed off arm". DF does the same, it calls the chopped off arm "someone's arm".

Exactly. Some games decide OH LOOK! HES MISSING AN ARM! HE MUST BE DEAD! Dwarf fortress, on the other hand, makes a distinction between a person and hes arm.

[Deon]

Ah, this. Yeah. Ability to dismember is cool but sometimes bleeding from a chopped off arm stops too quick while a cut in a lip may last forever. Regeneration needs some balancing .

[Shoku]

I think that sufficient damage to arms and legs should force creatures prone to the ground. If your arms and legs are all shattered and split open you couldn't do much but lay there and try to bite people, except at a much slower pace than they would be able to hit you.

Shattered skulls should probably result in passing out so if attackers tried to make lethal hits or at least smash the skull of prone targets and then kept at aiming for lethal hits on unconscious targets we should have something a bit more functional.

I would bet this has all been said already though. Really we've got to wait for Toady to sort out stuff like the melting bug.

[Frumple]

On the OP, I've gotta' ask... are dogs really that pathetic? I just tossed a dog trio into the arena, where they proceeded to sequentially (that is, in a series of 3v1 matches) murder a good 10 or so goblins before even being damaged, and even then, only after I started giving skills to the gobbos. Boosting fighter by a level every ten goblins, I got up to expert before getting bored: To put a number on that, 82 goblins died to those three dogs.

Wait... wait. They really are that pathetic, apparently, just not against naked goblins. The first dog didn't die until I starting giving the goblins clothes. At that point, a single novice wrestler/striker murdered all three. The goblin ended up with a cut and dented hand, and a cut foot.

It's the clothes, folks. The clothes. What? Apparently dogs can't do much to silk, or something. It's pretty freaking wonky, I'll agree, when something (three dogs) can murder 80 somethings naked, then be ground into the dirt by a single one that put on clothes.

Tentative conclusion: If you can strip the goblins of their clothes, the dogs can win! ... good luck with that.

--

Anyway, size increase would help. Changing the attack (upgrade tooth material!), maybe adjusting the skin or bones or something. Give 'ems a stat boost, or deadly dust, or something. That was a bloody sad thing to watch...

[Box]

Strictly dogs:

If you want war dogs to be balanced as of now, you're best off simply defining a whole new set of teeth for the pooch.  Modifying the teeth they use now will result in some extremely wacky combat later when not-dogs start using those same teeth to bite, when they're also larger and stronger... or [INTELLIGENT].  Elves are cannibals, after all.

Furthermore, for actual dogs, they should be a little bit faster than normal humanoids.  One of the reasons K-9 units exist today is because dogs run faster than your average fleeing criminal, and most importantly, take them to the ground.  It's why dogs are used, period.  If they're equal speed or slower than a fleeing enemy, then they're useless.  Right now I think they run at the same default speed as a dwarf, which is kind of silly unless they are perhaps miniature schnauzers. (Bearded dog for bearded mountain-dwellers)  They should probably end up about between 2/5 and 1/2 a dwarf's size.  I think beyond size and speed, the rest is pretty much superficial.  Are canine default combat tactics still Charge + Close Combat as well?  That might affect something as well, if they aren't.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Strictly dogs:

If you want war dogs to be balanced as of now, you're best off simply defining a whole new set of teeth for the pooch.  Modifying the teeth they use now will result in some extremely wacky combat later when not-dogs start using those same teeth to bite, when they're also larger and stronger... or [INTELLIGENT].  Elves are cannibals, after all.

Furthermore, for actual dogs, they should be a little bit faster than normal humanoids.  One of the reasons K-9 units exist today is because dogs run faster than your average fleeing criminal, and most importantly, take them to the ground.  It's why dogs are used, period.  If they're equal speed or slower than a fleeing enemy, then they're useless.  Right now I think they run at the same default speed as a dwarf, which is kind of silly unless they are perhaps miniature schnauzers. (Bearded dog for bearded mountain-dwellers)  They should probably end up about between 2/5 and 1/2 a dwarf's size.  I think beyond size and speed, the rest is pretty much superficial.  Are canine default combat tactics still Charge + Close Combat as well?  That might affect something as well, if they aren't.

This makes me want to make multible castes of dogs, the defualt will be boasted, and a fighting dog that is bigger and a tiny bit faster then a dwarf and has many types of attacks (plus thoughness and strength and other goodies like less winding and faster healing) and a fast dog that can be assigned to guards to catch and hold an invader of theif until the guard can come and murder the fool.

[Peasant]

Then again they're just "dogs". They may very well be tiny poodles with extremely dull teeth and a bad breath. Imagine that sight, "Oh no, more elves. Send the dogs, Urist!" "Oh, you mean the tiny poodles?"

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Then again they're just "dogs". They may very well be tiny poodles with extremely dull teeth and a bad breath. Imagine that sight, "Oh no, more elves. Send the dogs, Urist!" "Oh, you mean the tiny poodles?"

hehehehehe
I should add those in too

[Squeegy]

Strictly dogs:

If you want war dogs to be balanced as of now, you're best off simply defining a whole new set of teeth for the pooch.  Modifying the teeth they use now will result in some extremely wacky combat later when not-dogs start using those same teeth to bite, when they're also larger and stronger... or [INTELLIGENT].  Elves are cannibals, after all.

Furthermore, for actual dogs, they should be a little bit faster than normal humanoids.  One of the reasons K-9 units exist today is because dogs run faster than your average fleeing criminal, and most importantly, take them to the ground.  It's why dogs are used, period.  If they're equal speed or slower than a fleeing enemy, then they're useless.  Right now I think they run at the same default speed as a dwarf, which is kind of silly unless they are perhaps miniature schnauzers. (Bearded dog for bearded mountain-dwellers)  They should probably end up about between 2/5 and 1/2 a dwarf's size.  I think beyond size and speed, the rest is pretty much superficial.  Are canine default combat tactics still Charge + Close Combat as well?  That might affect something as well, if they aren't.

Besides [MAX_EDGE:#], what can we give these teeth to make them better? Also, strength actually does affect attacks.

[Baneslave]

I think modifying these:

[BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
[BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
[BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]

would also make sense, as dog sizes have huge variations. At this moment the smallest dog is only 20 percent (or so) smaller than the largest dog.

[Max White]

So we could always implement the caste system and conduct a breeding program to obtain specific breeds of dogs.

This will, of course, be temporary, and become obsolete when a cross breeding program is initiated in game to address the issue of horses and donkeys producing mules.