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[simonthedwarf]

I've got 100-200 hours of Magma on my back now. I believe I'm burned behind the ears. Yes I hate elves, cats and babies. Also I hate dwarves. Silencio!

My suggestions are as following:

- Add another hostile CIV that survives world generation on par with Goblins but that arrives in smaller, more elite groups with better abilities aimed towards penetrating traps, loot that cannot be aquired other than killing or capturing them.

- Elves should not trade wood with you. Why would they give wood to the woodchopping woodburning dwarves?

- Elven wood equipment should be tiered, have the grunts use the current stuff, but add a wood type that equals to iron and one to a something between steel and candy that their leaders carry and use.

- Add in trade requests for elves and human caravans if your fort is of a certain size or have offered a certain amount of wealth.

- Redo the training weapons. Right now they are just skipper or abused for woodcutting. They should make your guys train better or have another unique, purposeful quality.

- Ballistas and catapults. Make them check for targets within their range at the same 1 z level and above and under. Make a calcuation as to whether or not the shot got aimed, if it did at least make it shoot or angle in a somewhat useful direction.

- Add "rental" or captured craftsmen. A human one that allows you to build a exotic weapon forge. A elf that allows you to build bows and arrows. A goblin that allows you to build a torture pit which you then can assign dwarves to. Over time watching the torture of another sentient creature gives them the "doesn't care about anything" hardening.

Thank you for reading, happy Dorfing. I hope Toady will take the time to read this and at least consider one or more of the proposals.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Lots of ideas!

I've got 100-200 hours of Magma on my back now. I believe I'm burned behind the ears. Yes I hate elves, cats and babies. Also I hate dwarves. Silencio!

My suggestions are as following:

- Add another hostile CIV that survives world generation on par with Goblins but that arrives in smaller, more elite groups with better abilities aimed towards penetrating traps, loot that cannot be aquired other than killing or capturing them.

Hmm, some sort of trapavoid, elite force?  Maybe accompanied by some sort of super-powerful material?  Dig deeper, my friend!

There are also a lot of mods that do this.  I've heard good things about Fortress Defense mod, if you want to have a look.

- Elves should not trade wood with you. Why would they give wood to the woodchopping woodburning dwarves?

Maybe they're hoping that if they provide it, we won't need to kill the trees?

Elves didn't used to trade wood (nobody did, actually).  Without wood, there was very little reason to try to remain on peaceful terms with the elves.  I think a return of elven diplomat functionality would do well for this, and I expect it to return, because it was fun.  The elves would institute woodcutting limits on you, and if you refused or failed, they'd go to war with you.  Not that they're necessarily so hot at war, but they stop trading you wood when they're at war.

- Elven wood equipment should be tiered, have the grunts use the current stuff, but add a wood type that equals to iron and one to a something between steel and candy that their leaders carry and use.

Between steel and candy?!?  So you have dug deeper!

I wouldn't be surprised to see Toady implement some stronger wood in the future.  It's a feature of a lot of mods, and everybody agrees that elves are a bit of a pushover.  Do you really think it needs to be that powerful though?

- Add in trade requests for elves and human caravans if your fort is of a certain size or have offered a certain amount of wealth.

I think this is a good idea, and wouldn't require too much fiddling.  The only reason not to is to maintain significant differences between the caravans.

- Redo the training weapons. Right now they are just skipper or abused for woodcutting. They should make your guys train better or have another unique, purposeful quality.

The original idea with training weapons is they had less chance of leading to sparring injuries.  But it doesn't look like dwarves ever suffer sparring injuries anymore.  I think they're just on hiatus, not gone.  I once saw my best speardwarf strike down his second who had picked up the spear I had designed especially to my best's tastes...  Maybe it was just coincidence.

- Ballistas and catapults. Make them check for targets within their range at the same 1 z level and above and under. Make a calcuation as to whether or not the shot got aimed, if it did at least make it shoot or angle in a somewhat useful direction.

That's a good start.  I doubt that Toady considers siege engines to be finished.  They strike me as placeholders more than anything.  Siege in surface-to-air, I don't think so, but certainly, catapult targeting could use some work.

- Add "rental" or captured craftsmen. A human one that allows you to build a exotic weapon forge. A elf that allows you to build bows and arrows. A goblin that allows you to build a torture pit which you then can assign dwarves to. Over time watching the torture of another sentient creature gives them the "doesn't care about anything" hardening.

That's actually a really interesting idea, at least for the extra workshops.  One thing is that according to the raws, dwarves are supposed to have very low tolerance for slavery or torture.  They're not completely evil, you know.

You can kind of already built a torture pit.  The polite thing to call it is an "arena."  Just nod and pretend that the "combatants" (prisoners) have a reasonable chance of winning.

Thank you for reading, happy Dorfing. I hope Toady will take the time to read this and at least consider one or more of the proposals.
[/quote]

[simonthedwarf]

No doubt Long Ears trading wood is helpful from a gamey perspective, but it doesn't really fit in with the rest of their shtick.  Magma. Elves trading wood when they are peaceful and aquiring wood being the supposed reason to why they go to war it becomes awfully convenient for the Dwarves.

Other stuff I would point out:

- Food and traps have too high wealth modifiers and allow you to clean out the caravan
- Rough gems need to produce 2 encrustable items, right now gem industry is much hassle with meager benefits
- Plump helmets is too easy. To reflect its easiness of produce, it should be unable to made into legendary meals. It should be gravel. If you give it your noble he will get a unhappy thought from it. Urista Mccountes was upset by eaten a lousy peasant meal lately.
- Beds. Wood dependence should be a conscious choice or a result of no magma.  Right now its needed for a lot of early game items: Bins, barrels, beds, bolts etc etc. My suggestion is that a combination of cloth and rock/metal could be used to make beds as well. The others can be helped, but beds being locked to wood is kinda fruity. Dwarfs don't even like wood. If you were a dwarf would you prefer to rest your testicle-thong butt on a painful-for-sleeping-purposes stone bed or some douchedwarf wooden contraption?

Hmm, some sort of trapavoid, elite force?  Maybe accompanied by some sort of super-powerful material?  Dig deeper, my friend!

There are also a lot of mods that do this.  I've heard good things about Fortress Defense mod, if you want to have a look.

Ahh but they should be raiders from the surface. Not everyone digs down. The bottom guys seem a bit cheap to me with defenses vs everything normally smart to use against overwhelming forces.

Elves didn't used to trade wood (nobody did, actually).  Without wood, there was very little reason to try to remain on peaceful terms with the elves.  I think a return of elven diplomat functionality would do well for this, and I expect it to return, because it was fun.  The elves would institute woodcutting limits on you, and if you refused or failed, they'd go to war with you.  Not that they're necessarily so hot at war, but they stop trading you wood when they're at war.

While you're right, its also a circular argument. Either way you get wood. If however they didn't trade regular wood but had other more interesting stuff you could weigh in the decision of whether or not to trade for the better stuff or burn down the forests.

I guess my impression is that Wood is pretty balanced ingame. It's a tiered but necessary resource. You can't really make great items or wealth out of it, but you need it for beds.

Between steel and candy?!?  So you have dug deeper!

I wouldn't be surprised to see Toady implement some stronger wood in the future.  It's a feature of a lot of mods, and everybody agrees that elves are a bit of a pushover.  Do you really think it needs to be that powerful though?

I think they need good stuff to stand up against the DF players. Wouldn't you agree? There should also be a sense of reward for beating them. When your fortress gets sacked by goblins, don't you imagine them robbing your riches? This should go both ways. I imagine only the squad leader or the siege general having this.

[antymattar]

Do you ant the standard answer to ideas like this. Fine:

Rant Rant Rant! This is possible with modding! Here, have a ton of links to ideas just like yours etc...

Anyway, I think that the idea about having an elf/human/goblin special dude do stuf for you, seems a bit too... I dont know. It doesnt fit into dwarf fortress. In DF, youd have the goblin/human/elf not be that special and actually just live in your fort.

[Dae]

- Elves should not trade wood with you. Why would they give wood to the woodchopping woodburning dwarves?

They're elves, they do that. It's unclear whether they only use dead wood, use magic to bend wood without killing it or are just a bunch of hypocritical jerks. It is their one and only use in the world, and without it, trading with the elves have no interest.

- Elven wood equipment should be tiered, have the grunts use the current stuff, but add a wood type that equals to iron and one to a something between steel and candy that their leaders carry and use.

I agree that the wood they use as weapons is ridiculously weak, yet they shouldn't get the same advantages as dwarves. Dwarves dig the earth to get the ore. They face the dangers deep down. They deserve what they get, whatever it is. Meanwhile, elves reproduce and eat people. What you propose is the current trend of balancing different races/faction by giving them the exact same gameplay ability and just call them different names. It results in all races being the same except for skins and item names. It's not really what DF has been about so far.
On the other hand, I support the ability for elves to steal the weapons of their foes, and occasionnally their armor when they can wear them.

- Add in trade requests for elves and human caravans if your fort is of a certain size or have offered a certain amount of wealth.

Isn't that already in ? I'm not sure what you mean.

- Redo the training weapons. Right now they are just skipper or abused for woodcutting. They should make your guys train better or have another unique, purposeful quality.

They already have a unique, purposeful quality. With training weapons, your soldiers don't kill themselves in training. Well, very much less so. Perhaps you weren't playing then, but there was a time when training a recruit by making him/her spar with your legendary axedwarf would systematically result in lots of little bits of recruit everywhere. So, by letting your  soldier not tear each other limb by limb, one can safely assume they make your guys train better.

- Ballistas and catapults. Make them check for targets within their range at the same 1 z level and above and under. Make a calcuation as to whether or not the shot got aimed, if it did at least make it shoot or angle in a somewhat useful direction.

Suggested time and time again, and discuss in great length. You should go check on the threads on it.

- Add "rental" or captured craftsmen. A human one that allows you to build a exotic weapon forge. A elf that allows you to build bows and arrows. A goblin that allows you to build a torture pit which you then can assign dwarves to. Over time watching the torture of another sentient creature gives them the "doesn't care about anything" hardening.

It wouldn't be in the spirit of DF to say "so he's a human, that allows you to build this specific workshop". When you can have migrants from other civilizations, they will surely know how to perform their respective jobs. If they're from a far away land and know how to make deadly lashes, great ! But that'd be because this character has learned this somewhere else, not because they just happen to be human. There have also been a lot of discussion over multicultural fortresses, whether humans or elves would be under your orders as any dwarf or if they'd just run their own business on your map. You should check out one of these discussions, you'd perhaps have something useful to add

Rant Rant Rant! This is possible with modding! Here, have a ton of links to ideas just like yours etc...

In a suggestion, you're asking Toady to spend time on a feature. if a feature is already possible by modding, then there is no reason to spend his precious time on it. Also, if your idea has already been suggested, you have nothing new to offer and the topic will just waste Toady's time when he reads it. See it as a curtesy towards him

[katana]

- Elves should not trade wood with you. Why would they give wood to the woodchopping woodburning dwarves?

They're elves, they do that. It's unclear whether they only use dead wood, use magic to bend wood without killing it or are just a bunch of hypocritical jerks. It is their one and only use in the world, and without it, trading with the elves have no interest.

- Elven wood equipment should be tiered, have the grunts use the current stuff, but add a wood type that equals to iron and one to a something between steel and candy that their leaders carry and use.

I agree that the wood they use as weapons is ridiculously weak, yet they shouldn't get the same advantages as dwarves. Dwarves dig the earth to get the ore. They face the dangers deep down. They deserve what they get, whatever it is. Meanwhile, elves reproduce and eat people. What you propose is the current trend of balancing different races/faction by giving them the exact same gameplay ability and just call them different names. It results in all races being the same except for skins and item names. It's not really what DF has been about so far.
On the other hand, I support the ability for elves to steal the weapons of their foes, and occasionnally their armor when they can wear them.

- Add in trade requests for elves and human caravans if your fort is of a certain size or have offered a certain amount of wealth.

They already have a unique, purposeful quality. With training weapons, your soldiers don't kill themselves in training. Well, very much less so. Perhaps you weren't playing then, but there was a time when training a recruit by making him/her spar with your legendary axedwarf would systematically result in lots of little bits of recruit everywhere. So, by letting your  soldier not tear each other limb by limb, one can safely assume they make your guys train better.

I've played for ~20 forts with iron weapons, no armor soldiers. They train, never get hurt. Ever. This isn't 40d anymore, where iron war hammer sparring is a form of migrant control.
Problem is, Toady changed BOTH sparring injuries and added training weapons.

[Waparius]

- Elves should not trade wood with you. Why would they give wood to the woodchopping woodburning dwarves?

A friend of mine theorises that what the dwarves think of as "wooden logs" are actually "pet trees".

[Maklak]

Toady said something about Elves being able to get wood without hurting any trees.

Actually I just had a sublime thought: In a multicultural fortress make all the Elves woodcutters with no-quality wooden axes  

[IT 000]

- Add another hostile CIV that survives world generation on par with Goblins but that arrives in smaller, more elite groups with better abilities aimed towards penetrating traps, loot that cannot be aquired other than killing or capturing them.

Possible through modding, but Goblins are planned to become more difficult overall when the army arc comes out and sieges become more difficult.

- Elven wood equipment should be tiered, have the grunts use the current stuff, but add a wood type that equals to iron and one to a something between steel and candy that their leaders carry and use.

I agree entirely. Perhaps not better then steel, but at least on par with it.

- Add in trade requests for elves and human caravans if your fort is of a certain size or have offered a certain amount of wealth.

Moddable, but each one had their own 'trade liaison' in past versions. The humans would make trade requests, the elves would demand you put a woodcutting cap on your fort. They will be making a comeback at some point in time.

- Redo the training weapons. Right now they are just skipper or abused for woodcutting. They should make your guys train better or have another unique, purposeful quality.

I couldn't agree more.

- Ballistas and catapults. Make them check for targets within their range at the same 1 z level and above and under. Make a calcuation as to whether or not the shot got aimed, if it did at least make it shoot or angle in a somewhat useful direction.

I really like this idea, on top of that siege operators shouldn't get scared when a goblin comes withing smelling range.

- Add "rental" or captured craftsmen. A human one that allows you to build a exotic weapon forge. A elf that allows you to build bows and arrows. A goblin that allows you to build a torture pit which you then can assign dwarves to. Over time watching the torture of another sentient creature gives them the "doesn't care about anything" hardening.

Dwarves find slavery unacceptable. Other then that, it is planned to have non-dwarven species migrate to your fortress. Probably with their own special advantages.

- Food and traps have too high wealth modifiers and allow you to clean out the caravan

Agreed

- Rough gems need to produce 2 encrustable items, right now gem industry is much hassle with meager benefits

Great idea! Currently the gem cutting industry is slow or infeasible. Gems either need to come in slightly bigger clusters or need to produce more then one cut gem.

- Plump helmets is too easy. To reflect its easiness of produce, it should be unable to made into legendary meals. It should be gravel. If you give it your noble he will get a unhappy thought from it. Urista Mccountes was upset by eaten a lousy peasant meal lately.

Agreed

- Beds. Wood dependence should be a conscious choice or a result of no magma.  Right now its needed for a lot of early game items: Bins, barrels, beds, bolts etc etc. My suggestion is that a combination of cloth and rock/metal could be used to make beds as well. The others can be helped, but beds being locked to wood is kinda fruity. Dwarfs don't even like wood. If you were a dwarf would you prefer to rest your testicle-thong butt on a painful-for-sleeping-purposes stone bed or some douchedwarf wooden contraption?

Besides being moddable, I like beds, and bins to be made out of wood. It gives wood a purpose larger then pissing off the elves. Wood needs to be for something important otherwise it isn't worth the risk of sending dwarves outside. Furthermore, Dwarves are perfectly fine with wood. In fact, it is quite the opposite, every dwarf likes one kind of wood and receives a happy thought from having items made from it. It's the players opinion and is not necessarily other player's opinions or the opinion of the Toad.