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[EnigmaticHat]

Will there be combat bonuses, such as increased hit chance, for attacking while undetected? I've always wanted to backstab a goblin.

You can do that now. You can attack things from behind.

Not exactly.  From what I can tell, the game keeps track of which direction a creature recently attacked in.  So if you stand on one side of a bandit and your buddy stands on the other, and the bandit attacks your buddy, your attack on the bandit might be "from behind" and get a bonus.  It has very little to do with sneaking and even if you sneak up on someone the game won't tell you which way they're facing.  The game also treats the attack as from the front in all other respects, aka you can stab someone's nose from behind with a knife.

[hermes]

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Following on from this answer you gave...

Caravans aren't on the road yet, but yeah, this'll make life troubling for them.  The bandits don't set up road tolls at this point.  It's certainly a fair thing for them to do, but it won't matter until there are people on the roads, or the adventurer is given an incentive to use roads.

When are you planning to get caravans moving?
What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

[Rockphed]

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

I expect that the rate of animal and bandit attacks will be lower on the roads, but bandits will be more powerful when they do attack on a road.  Though I almost never get attacked by animals currently, so this might be a non-issue.

Anyway, it is good to know that goblin sites might be in for the next version.  Being able to take out the fiends who killed my followers is fun.  Being able to go kill their families afterward will be even more so.

[My Name is Immaterial]

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

I expect that the rate of animal and bandit attacks will be lower on the roads, but bandits will be more powerful when they do attack on a road.  Though I almost never get attacked by animals currently, so this might be a non-issue.

Anyway, it is good to know that goblin sites might be in for the next version.  Being able to take out the fiends who killed my followers is fun.  Being able to go kill their families afterward will be even more so.

I would expect that roads are easier to travel along than wilderness, so you can go farther faster, and probably eat and drink less.

Also, Is there a hard limit to the amount of attacks that you can preform at once? If so, what is that limit? Or is it based off of a stat?

[theqmann]

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

[Jables]

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

I have no idea about the surface area of feet and stuff.  It makes sense that a creature with large feet and a low mass in tough soil might not leave tracks at all, but I haven't delved into it.

Overall, there has to be some reason to travel on roads.  Right now they are meaningless.

Since some of the stuff about incentivizing adventurers to travel on roads appeared in the context of tracking, I sort of assumed that you won't leaving tracks if you travel along a road. This would have the advantage of preventing bandits from following your tracks straight to you, but on the other hand you could run into roadblocks if that is implemented.

[tahujdt]

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

That would have to use scouts, whic you can assign using said map. Scouts should be chosen based on their tracking and sneaking skills. You send them out, and they come back and report. They might get caught, or lost, or eaten.  They can report on enemy army size, race, what kind of weapons, general (If the scout isreally good), etc. Toady's probably not going to do that, at least not any time soon.

[Shinotsa]

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

I have no idea about the surface area of feet and stuff.  It makes sense that a creature with large feet and a low mass in tough soil might not leave tracks at all, but I haven't delved into it.

Overall, there has to be some reason to travel on roads.  Right now they are meaningless.

Since some of the stuff about incentivizing adventurers to travel on roads appeared in the context of tracking, I sort of assumed that you won't leaving tracks if you travel along a road. This would have the advantage of preventing bandits from following your tracks straight to you, but on the other hand you could run into roadblocks if that is implemented.

I don't know about you guys, but I definitely don't move as quickly or as easily through a forest when picking through the trees compared to when I'm on a path. Now that we have the basic necessities of life (eating, drinking, and sleeping) in the game as well as a combat/movement speed split, it seems the main incentive to stay on the road would be that it's faster. This would save you daylight, food, water, and energy. This might be good if you want to travel for two days without stopping, whereas the same trip cutting through thick forest, tall grasses, swamps, etc. could potentially wear you out in half a day.

On the topic of road safety, will caravans always travel with a large enough number of guards to protect them, or will there be guards from the different civs patrolling the roads to keep them safer?

Also, now that goods are tracked from town to town, are caravan goods actually going to be tracked from their origin to their destination? For example, if a caravan carrying dwarven metalwork is ambushed on its way to a human town the mountainhome, will the bandit camp be filled with +steel short sword+ and ☼lead barrel☼? Would those same goods have showed up in human shops had the caravan arrived, or would they just be stored in the warehouses?

[My Name is Immaterial]

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

That would have to use scouts, whic you can assign using said map. Scouts should be chosen based on their tracking and sneaking skills. You send them out, and they come back and report. They might get caught, or lost, or eaten.  They can report on enemy army size, race, what kind of weapons, general (If the scout isreally good), etc. Toady's probably not going to do that, at least not any time soon.

I bet it will arrive around the same time that he lets us send out armies.

[eux0r]

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

I have no idea about the surface area of feet and stuff.  It makes sense that a creature with large feet and a low mass in tough soil might not leave tracks at all, but I haven't delved into it.

Overall, there has to be some reason to travel on roads.  Right now they are meaningless.

Since some of the stuff about incentivizing adventurers to travel on roads appeared in the context of tracking, I sort of assumed that you won't leaving tracks if you travel along a road. This would have the advantage of preventing bandits from following your tracks straight to you, but on the other hand you could run into roadblocks if that is implemented.

I don't know about you guys, but I definitely don't move as quickly or as easily through a forest when picking through the trees compared to when I'm on a path. Now that we have the basic necessities of life (eating, drinking, and sleeping) in the game as well as a combat/movement speed split, it seems the main incentive to stay on the road would be that it's faster. This would save you daylight, food, water, and energy. This might be good if you want to travel for two days without stopping, whereas the same trip cutting through thick forest, tall grasses, swamps, etc. could potentially wear you out in half a day.

-snip-

yeah, that toady-quote is from the response to my question, so its not only about tracking but also about difficulty of terrain. i was also asking about sinking in in a swamp, which is something along the lines "you walk... you walk... you die" if you dont know what youre doing. so thats a pretty good incentive to travel on roads. then there are things like quicksand in other terrains and slipping on loose rocks in mountain areas, there are many dangers of serious injury or death if you pack all your adventurer skillpoints into strengh and sword-hacking and none into "i know what im doing, at least when i _walk_"

[theqmann]

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

That would have to use scouts, whic you can assign using said map. Scouts should be chosen based on their tracking and sneaking skills. You send them out, and they come back and report. They might get caught, or lost, or eaten.  They can report on enemy army size, race, what kind of weapons, general (If the scout isreally good), etc. Toady's probably not going to do that, at least not any time soon.

I bet it will arrive around the same time that he lets us send out armies.

We could just get a map that can see everything until scouts and armies are implemented

[Spish]

Are those crimes not reported by witnesses?  I don't remember where that is at. 

I've seen the crimes reported (or at least the Report Crime job assigned to dwarves standing near tantrumers) but nothing beyond that in the punishment system.

Yeah. Well, it's good to see that it's not intentional, at least.

[Neonivek]

I can't wait until I see how dangerous the Hydra becomes once it has several free acting heads to chomp everyone with.

Mind you it will still have a bit to go... but given that it is going from the weakest to one of the strongest Megabeasts... it is quite the achievement.

Toady are you planning on redoing Titans at a certain point or adding something that can see if a Titan is worthwhile or not or what? Since a lot of the titans generated couldn't fight their way out of a paper bad (no really, the paper bag would probably kill the Titan)

[FearfulJesuit]

I still have a few things I'd like to do with tracking, but I'm going to jump back up to the larger scale issues for a while now, so that the game'll achieve some level of coherence. First up, the surrounding situation at the beginning needs to be revealed somewhat, to give you some leads to follow, for instance, and you'll need a few ways to learn about anything that changes (like a nearby town being invaded). The two trickiest parts with starting exposition will be (1) the first game you play after world generation, since the world is passing from vague to specific at that point and no actual events are underway (aside from general states of war, etc), and (2) how to deal with the player choosing a starting civilization which is just absolutely dull. We're still considering how to best handle it. Overall, we're hoping to flesh out some possible courses of action that resemble a successful adventure from start to finish, probably something culminating at a goblin site or human castle, and then to get the humans to patch themselves up if their civilization survives all the horrors (all the repopulation and succession stuff). The main goal is to try to keep everything a strict simulation that doesn't warp too deeply around the player, while at the same time allowing you to experience something more involved than simple one-off quests (or random fortress invasions for that matter). I'm going to try to avoid sinking into tracking/sneaking/etc. style mechanics again until we have the full skeleton in. We'll see how that turns out...

Discuss.

[MrWiggles]

No.