It could also mean that we can set up wall and ceilings made from cloth of variaous kinds which dont resist any stress or support other stuff. It would be a nice feature i think.
How are tents handled? Are the just some sort of 1tile building akin to a bed or do the consist from Multiple parts like walls ceilings etc made from cloth (and supports/poles). Would it possible to set up a "cloth wall" in Dwarf mode?
Tents in DF would be good for setting up shelter to begin with. Sleeping in a tent would give bad thoughts except for military dwarves, on the order of bad thoughts from sleeping rough underground, but not as bad as sleeping outside in the rain. Outside tents would also provide protection from deadly weather.
Tents would be useful, for example, to set up a military camp in the caverns, without waiting to carve out a barracks down there. They might also be useful on setting up camps on large maps, when the FPS optimisation goes in.
Armies should be an entity option. Historically, there were standing armies, conscripted armies, and militias. Militias are pretty much standard in Dwarf Fortress. Conscripted armies would be grabbed from the entity population in time of war, and would afterwards be dissolved. Standing armies would either be made up of professional soldiers (varying depending on the economy and amount of war present). There are also warrior nobility such as knights. Some beings such as wizards (when we get more magic in the game) would be capable of immediate participation in war if necessary.
Adventurers might not get tents even if the armies can use tents. Tents were brought up during the addition of the Night Creatures, so it might not be that low hanging of a fruit. For this release.
The question is whether it should be possible to entirely evade bogeymen by sleeping in a tent. That's a difficult one to deal with; it appears to eliminate one challenging aspect of the game, but then bogeymen were only added around half way through DF2010, and it seems reasonable.
Isn't the current behavior of doors and building destroyers is the the BD comes up a attacks it until the wear quality goes down to x, xx, then destroyed?
How is that actually tracked internally?
Actually I don't think it is. I've had buildings destroyed, but they then exploded into their constituent components, possibly with some wear. Well most of my experience has been with forgotten beasts; the one or two times I've had trolls, the general solution was drowning or resorting to their own stupidity. Then I've green'd it for you.
ToadyOne also spoke about sending off folks from your fort to train soldiers in the hill dorfs to get an army though. I think its a little bit ambiguous if those are standing armies from the hill dorf or conscripted peasants.
The deal is that if the population is not consisting of historical figures, when you get to view the battle you will likely have named dwarves fighting. This means you'll end up generating historical figures.