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[G-Flex]

I considered mentioning thickness, but didn't include it because its a different problem than materials, and making animals have thicker skin wouldn't make the leather armor of that skin better, since that's an armor attribute.  Implementing a dozen or so new material templates for skin/hair/nail/bone would be quite simple and have the side benefit of differentiating the derived products of those materials.  Wouldn't even be that much work, he could probably do it in a couple hours.

Problem: Realistic material values will not result in realistic behavior unless the thickness of the tissue is also realistic. Kludging material values that are still unrealistic just because they happen to result in realistic behavior in the face of unrealistic tissue thickness is A Bad Idea. The goal should be to get all respects as realistic as possible, in my opinion.

Obviously it's more work, and would still result in slightly-problematic leather (especially being able to make leather from, say, chicken skin), but it would be better in the long run.

Also for clumsy animals, the support is there to add natural skills to animals, and its not very complicated to do.  Aggressive creatures need a base fighter, striker, and biter skill.  Hoofed grazing creatures could do with a kick natural skill, but no fighter.  Primates should get dodger.  Every change for this could be done entirely in the raws.

It's worth noting that animals currently aren't given any natural attributes either. That would be a reasonable thing to do along with natural skills.

[NW_Kohaku]

Obviously it's more work, and would still result in slightly-problematic leather (especially being able to make leather from, say, chicken skin), but it would be better in the long run.

Well, there's also the whole thing about the process of making leather out of hides being able to make leather have varying degrees of rigidity depending on how you work the material.  That's partially the reason behind the alchemical property token suggestion, to let people perform modifiers on top of existing materials.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

it just seems to me that the combat engine is more important than almost everything else, so why not fix it?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Because there are things more important to Toady than combat.

[NW_Kohaku]

Combat tends to be the most important thing to a reasonably large chunk of players because that's what Toady basically added first. 

Except for magical stuff, mounts, and sieges, combat more-or-less has a working framework, and only needs relatively minor tweaks.

Meanwhile, go look at that devpage list, and look at what Toady is trying to do with cities.  Towns before this were a few random 5x5 buildings.  Now they are pictures of urban sprawl.  And he's only laid down the groundwork, he's going to put in much more detail on this.

Look at how little you can do in Adventure Mode right now, and look at the overwhelming number of things that are listed in that devlog.

Now, players don't come to DF for Adventure Mode, they come for the Fortress Mode, and maybe dabble in Adventure Mode.  When Toady adds all that, however, there's going to be a whole new demographic of players that are going to be interested in playing DF, and they aren't going to necessarily be the same types of people who play for the same reasons you are playing. 

Besides that, Toady likes to add things in broad, sweeping arcs, and doesn't care too much for tweaking and optimizing the things he's already built in general, which is a rather unfortunate fact, as it means that almost all the "easy fixes" remain broken until Toady feels like scrapping everything.  (And that's partially why I think we need to make a "Giant list of easy things to fix in the raws" thread, since only giant things get his notice.)

So while there is obvious reason for Toady to fix the things that are broken and annoy the most players that he already has, there is also reason for Toady to focus upon expanding his game so that more types of players can come into the DF experience to begin with.

[Captain Crazy]

Meanwhile, go look at that devpage list, and look at what Toady is trying to do with cities.  Towns before this were a few random 5x5 buildings.  Now they are pictures of urban sprawl.  And he's only laid down the groundwork, he's going to put in much more detail on this.

I thought that the townships in 40d had stuff like inns, and that mountain halls and goblin towers had physical presence?

[NW_Kohaku]

I thought that the townships in 40d had stuff like inns, and that mountain halls and goblin towers had physical presence?

They did - he tore them out because he didn't want to upgrade them, he's going to start over from scratch.

Toady doesn't improve on things or make minor changes - he tears out whole systems and starts over on them from the beginning.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Also, wood weapons being deflected by clothing - wooden bolts fired from siege engines being deflected by clothing - is very silly.

[NW_Kohaku]

Siege engines operate as if being gently nudged through the air by fairies at the moment, so their bouncing off harmlessly isn't a matter of clothing being too strong.  Likewise, wood weapons are more akin to wiffle bats, and damage in general is determined by whether or not something is actually shattered, which leads most dull, blunt weapons to being underpowered in general, since bruising is functionally meaningless.

[Neonivek]

Siege engines operate as if being gently nudged through the air by fairies at the moment, so their bouncing off harmlessly isn't a matter of clothing being too strong.  Likewise, wood weapons are more akin to wiffle bats, and damage in general is determined by whether or not something is actually shattered, which leads most dull, blunt weapons to being underpowered in general, since bruising is functionally meaningless.

Even Low contact area Blunt weapons are underpowered (Ignoring whips...) mostly because the game it very oddly and protects soft-tissue from it to too much of a degree.

A Halberd to the head should actually pierce you (Assuming you didn't use the hammer end).

Which is also odd because the game makes pathetic blunt weapons too strong. Such as fists from weak individuals. Since the game treats a "chipped bone" as a earth shattering injury that will knock you out... Though at the same time what PROPERLY happens with accumulated damage through weak punches doesn't happen... Being punched multiple times even if no bones are broken kills you because it actually ruptures and injures organs.

Which is kind of odd since...

Real Live Vs. Dwarf Fortress

1) Being poked by a blunt needle
DF: Bone shatters and needle may get stuck in the skin
Real life: You get a painful needle shoved into you

2) Being kicked in the head multiple times
DF: Your head is shattered and a bone jabs your brain and you die
Real Life: The strikes to the head causes concussions which could even lead to brain damage. Possible skull fracturing.

What is sort of funny is fixing the combat system would actually make the Magic Kung-Fu Babies harmless... since their punches and kicks should be nearly harmless.

[Bytyan]

Combat tends to be the most important thing to a reasonably large chunk of players because that's what Toady basically added first. 

I disagree. I think the first thing people latch onto in dwarf fortress is the combat, but the people who stick around tend to either try and fix it themselves or experiment with the deeper elements of the game; people instinctive measure success of a settlement by it's military power, and have to unlearn that to a degree to manage a settlement in a balanced way. Really, the combat in vanilla isn't going to hold most peoples full attention in the long run.

Except for magical stuff, mounts, and sieges, combat more-or-less has a working framework, and only needs relatively minor tweaks.

Working as in functioning, yes. But it seems to me a strange double standard that we must learn that elves will only accept items decorated with certain kinds of glass that can be made without ash, because ash is most commonly gathered from trees, but we should ignore the fact that kitchen knives make armored innards explode, 'cause that's just how it is. Anal obsessive detail mongering here, easygoing acceptance there. We can't have our pie and decapitate our enemies with it too.

Meanwhile, go look at that devpage list, and look at what Toady is trying to do with cities.  Towns before this were a few random 5x5 buildings.  Now they are pictures of urban sprawl.  And he's only laid down the groundwork, he's going to put in much more detail on this.

Look at how little you can do in Adventure Mode right now, and look at the overwhelming number of things that are listed in that devlog.

Now, players don't come to DF for Adventure Mode, they come for the Fortress Mode, and maybe dabble in Adventure Mode.  When Toady adds all that, however, there's going to be a whole new demographic of players that are going to be interested in playing DF, and they aren't going to necessarily be the same types of people who play for the same reasons you are playing. 

Besides that, Toady likes to add things in broad, sweeping arcs, and doesn't care too much for tweaking and optimizing the things he's already built in general, which is a rather unfortunate fact, as it means that almost all the "easy fixes" remain broken until Toady feels like scrapping everything.  (And that's partially why I think we need to make a "Giant list of easy things to fix in the raws" thread, since only giant things get his notice.)

So while there is obvious reason for Toady to fix the things that are broken and annoy the most players that he already has, there is also reason for Toady to focus upon expanding his game so that more types of players can come into the DF experience to begin with.

It really depends on your perspective of dwarf fortress. The game really doesn't cater to the broad audience of people who come to this game to simulate a military installation, and I can understand their frustration. People come to build their army and defend their fortress against the innumerable hoards of bizarre and fantastic creature they have read about on the wiki, and find themselves running a rich economy they never expected to find, waiting sometimes hours for something interesting to happen while they try to balance their barrel production so they don't have food rot or massive multiroom empty barrel stockpiles. I think that it would be reasonable request from toady to have more ways to goad the surrounding world into hating you and sending their finest to try the taste of dwarven steel*. Maybe a noble option to taunt surrounding warlords, or just the ability to turn up ambient animosity easily ingame would help people to learn to love copper flask mandates.

*fun fact; 9/10 humans agree that -dwarven steel- tastes better than most =dwarven roasts=. They want how much for a ground cat with ground cat and ground trip cat patte?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I play all the modes, but it was the combat engine that drew me to the the game and the warfare that keeps me interested in forts mode.

[slothen]

Problem: Realistic material values will not result in realistic behavior unless the thickness of the tissue is also realistic. Kludging material values that are still unrealistic just because they happen to result in realistic behavior in the face of unrealistic tissue thickness is A Bad Idea. The goal should be to get all respects as realistic as possible, in my opinion.

Obviously it's more work, and would still result in slightly-problematic leather (especially being able to make leather from, say, chicken skin), but it would be better in the long run.

moving away from all skin/bone being identical is a realism thing.  Doing this can simultaneously cover for weaknesses/limitations in other areas of the combat/creature-body-definition engine.  It just happens to be that adding additional templates for body materials is an easier and more pragmatic fix than putting in different thickness definitions for every layer of every body part of every creature.  In other words, it would be worth doing anyway, but covering for the insufficient modeling of thicknesses is just a bonus.

[G-Flex]

moving away from all skin/bone being identical is a realism thing.  Doing this can simultaneously cover for weaknesses/limitations in other areas of the combat/creature-body-definition engine.  It just happens to be that adding additional templates for body materials is an easier and more pragmatic fix than putting in different thickness definitions for every layer of every body part of every creature.  In other words, it would be worth doing anyway, but covering for the insufficient modeling of thicknesses is just a bonus.

Realistic material values without realistic tissue thickness values still results in unrealistic behavior. There is no way to have realistic behavior unless all aspects of the system are actually realistic. The only other way to approximate realistic behavior is to have unrealistic values that make up for other unrealistic values, and that is not a good idea.