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[Telgin]

(Including the fact that the brain is immune to blunt force trauma so to speak)

Err... do you mean in real life or DF?  In DF wouldn't most of the 'bruising the brain!' results come from blunt trauma?  I'm pretty certain I've seen this without a broken skull.

[Neonivek]

Brains can only be bruised by blunt for Trauma as of right now.

Any enemy that cannot be harmed by Brain Bruising can be nearly impossible to kill.

At least I assume so... I've fought enemies where I kept dusting their skulls over and over again with what is essentially a blunt pick and couldn't kill them until the game decided I jammed their skull dust into their brain since my weapon has no effect on their brain.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Many enemies immune to brainshots have blood or heads to chop off.
Strangely enough, the head matters for brainless creatures.

[Hyndis]

I definitely do agree that dwarves are brained too easily. This is particular problematic with the dwarven injustice system, where a single dwarf can murder dozens of dwarves in a single punch each time, which I think is far too lethal.

It also means that the healthcare system isn't used frequently, as injuries are all too often binary. Either a dwarf is perfectly health, or they get brained and instantly killed. There isn't much in between.

Reducing the chances of being brained would also make things more interesting, as you would have a dozen badly injured dwarves slowly healing up in the hospital or too injured to work or fight again, rather than simply having a gap in your roster which may trigger a new migrant wave, instantly replacing your losses with a new dwarf.

Having to take care of the injured veteran warriors would be an interesting addition to a fortress.



As an aside, is there any good way to modify the raws so brains are more sturdy?

[NO_THOUGHT_CENTER_FOR_MOVEMENT] is something I tried. Dwarves will still bleed out, die from being chopped up, and will die from infections, they simply cannot be brained even if they get knocked unconscious and have an entire goblin siege smashing the poor dwarf's head into paste. While this tag certainly makes dwarves immune from being brained, I think it makes them too tough.

[AutomataKittay]

I definitely do agree that dwarves are brained too easily. This is particular problematic with the dwarven injustice system, where a single dwarf can murder dozens of dwarves in a single punch each time, which I think is far too lethal.

It also means that the healthcare system isn't used frequently, as injuries are all too often binary. Either a dwarf is perfectly health, or they get brained and instantly killed. There isn't much in between.

Reducing the chances of being brained would also make things more interesting, as you would have a dozen badly injured dwarves slowly healing up in the hospital or too injured to work or fight again, rather than simply having a gap in your roster which may trigger a new migrant wave, instantly replacing your losses with a new dwarf.

Having to take care of the injured veteran warriors would be an interesting addition to a fortress.



As an aside, is there any good way to modify the raws so brains are more sturdy?

[NO_THOUGHT_CENTER_FOR_MOVEMENT] is something I tried. Dwarves will still bleed out, die from being chopped up, and will die from infections, they simply cannot be brained even if they get knocked unconscious and have an entire goblin siege smashing the poor dwarf's head into paste. While this tag certainly makes dwarves immune from being brained, I think it makes them too tough.

Back in 31. version, I saw someone experiment with replacing dwarves' skull with metal instead of bone for material. Apparently, copper and iron did decently to protect the brain while still allowing deadly brainshot from weapons or beating up a lot. I don't know enough about raw modifying but since you did looked into it, you could ask over in the modding forum

[Hyndis]

Back in 31. version, I saw someone experiment with replacing dwarves' skull with metal instead of bone for material. Apparently, copper and iron did decently to protect the brain while still allowing deadly brainshot from weapons or beating up a lot. I don't know enough about raw modifying but since you did looked into it, you could ask over in the modding forum

I tried changing brain material to give it the toughness of iron. It certainly makes dwarves a lot more durable, but still allows for some weirdness with instagibs for no apparent reasons.

The no thought center leads to some amusing situations where a dwarf really should die. It can look like the oddly immortal assassin from Austin Powers at times. But overall, the no thought center seems to be reliable enough. Dwarves will still bleed to death. While a brain is not required for life anymore, brains still bleed a lot, so a sufficiently injured brain will cause a dwarf to bleed to death. Also you don't get any more lifelong cripples, assuming they have all of their limbs intact. Broken spine won't cause them to crawl around forever. They'll walk it off.

[Jetman123]

Having to take care of the injured veteran warriors would be an interesting addition to a fortress.

You already do, in a way. The healthcare system does tend to be a bit underutilized with this problem, but I've always found I've had plenty of crippled veterans. One of my militiamen lost an arm and a leg - literally - and survived, and I immediately transferred her off of duty. She became a legendary weaponsmith after getting a fey mood, and has been happily assisting the war effort ever since. And after two sieges in two years, my sickbay is piled up with injured dwarves, some of whom may never be able to fight at 100% again.

For those that don't have skills for civilian life but aren't too mangled (i.e, they still can hold a weapon and have at least one functioning leg), I transfer them to the Captain of the Guard. During an ambush or siege, they stay with the population underground and act as the last line of defense. When not under threat, they patrol around, looking for snatchers, which they can still easily kill.

I often lose more military dwarves to injury than I do to combat losses. Maybe it's just that I give them all leather armor but metal helmets, since it seems like the head is kind of important, especially with this bug floating around.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I often have dwarves die of infection and the like, when they don't stupid themselves to death and/or mysteriously drown.

[Jetman123]

I often have dwarves die of infection and the like, when they don't stupid themselves to death and/or mysteriously drown.

In my case, the infection more seems to slow down wound healing time than anything. Maybe I just have really good healer dwarves. I didn't have soap until recently - now that I do, and I have four medics attending to casualties, the patients are being cleaned enough that infections for new casualties are thankfully rare. In the time between that last post and this one, most of the sickbay has become ambulatory again, although one of them has permanently been assigned to the Guard due to motor nerve problems. Lost the use of his right hand, but he can still make a good worker, and he has a nasty scar to show for it, too!

The last remaining dwarf in the sickbay is a miner with a broken nose who is inexplicably still in a traction bench. I would assume he had an overlapping fracture that has since healed, but I am heavily amused by the idea of the traction bench being used to hold his shattered nose together.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I skimp on hospitals and soap. That might be the issue.

[Telgin]

I've literally only seen two deaths related to infection.  Far, far more common is torn brains from skull fragments.  Second to that is generally exsanguination, which is itself almost always due to FB dust.  Actual bleeding to death seems to be quite rare.  Infection seems to be fairly rare in the first place, and it is often harmless when it does show up.  If you're unlucky and have a dwarf who is slow to heal and who is susceptible to disease they're probably a goner, but that's rare itself.  Most dwarves eventually recover or can live for decades with infections (by which point the fort is probably dead due to FPS death).

I'd like to see some rebalancing that caused bleeding deaths to be a lot more dominant, and thus, making healthcare more relevant.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Bleeding to death is pretty common for me when the dwarves aren't massively outclassed or outsized by their foes. For me, infections are deadly to...at least half or two-thirds all dwarves who don't die to exsanguination, neglect, or whatever.

Different play styles, I guess. Again, I rarely make soap (most dwarves don't reach the "survive the injury and get fed" part for me, so I don't bother).

[Hyndis]

I've been playing with the modification that makes brains non-vital for life, so a dwarf can survive even with severe brain damage. This probably explains how they behave anyways.

I do like the change. Must less instagibbing, and a lot more dwarves recovering in a hospital. I even have the dwarven injustice system up and running in my fort, which consists entirely of a squad of dwarves roaming around the fortress beating up other dwarves at random. No one has been killed by this, though they may have some broken bones and they do spend time in the hospital. This gives the doctors something to do.

Downside to this is that some of the weirdness with traction benches can appear, where dwarves will remain in traction forever unless the traction bench is deconstructed, so thats an annoying bit of micromanagement.

If clean water and soap are both available infections are extremely rare, to the point of being almost nonexistent.