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[Owlbread]

I'm aware that this has been discussed numerous times over the last few years, but people have mostly been suggesting things like allowing civilians to carry daggers and knives and the like. I think that's a pretty good idea, but it's not really what I'm here to propose, same goes for the threads that proposed a huge overhaul. I couldn't find a thread that was the right one to bump, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to just put my idea out there as its own thread.

All I'm going to suggest is allowing us to equip our Dwarves with "exotic" weapons like bows, whips, scimitars, daggers and blowguns. Production is less important because that's a bit of a can of worms; artifact blowguns won't be as cool after that, plus you've got cultural stuff to think about. I still think we should be able to produce them anyway, but I'm saying that it's complicated. Maybe it could just be the Dwarven preference for the current weapons, and that's what you'd mostly see Dwarves using in AI civilisations, but players would have more of a choice so we could have bowdwarves with daggers in their boots and a whip at their side.

At least allow us to equip the Dwarves with the items, because even if a dagger is less effective than a sword in a straight fight, it's still fun to have daggerdwarf squads. I know some of you are going to say "just edit the raws", but I've heard people say that there's issues involving the hardcoding of soldiers in fortress mode, even to the point that one guy complained that when he modded in humans he couldn't get his soldiers to use the bows they were producing. In any case, I don't think we should be forced to edit the raws for something like this. It just makes sense for our Dwarves to be able to use exotic weaponry in combat.

[Demonic Gophers]

Can't you already do this?  I haven't equipped a squad with daggers myself, as I prefer to give my soldiers high quality equipment forged by the fortress's master smiths, but foreign items are options on the uniform and equipment sections of the military menu.  I thought the troubles with being unable to use bows in a modded human fortress and such were all solved by the current version of the military control screen.

[Putnam]

You can equip the dwarves with the items.

[alexandrite]

My City Guard currently use Iron Scourges.  This is totally possible.  What would be awesome would be some way to acquire the ability to forge foreign weapons through diplomacy or trade.

[Revanchist]

Is it ridiculous to think the fortress-dwarves are too inebritated to take a look at imported weapons and try to copy it? They are creatures of industry, and it doesn't seem totally unrealistic.

[Owlbread]

It would be nice if we could just make any weapon rather than being limited.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Is it ridiculous to think the fortress-dwarves are too inebritated to take a look at imported weapons and try to copy it? They are creatures of industry, and it doesn't seem totally unrealistic.

Maybe, but it's not easy for a society to pick up new techniques, and more importantly...why? Most of the exotic weapons are either modifications of dwarven weapons (mauls, pikes), or else not terribly useful for combat in theory (large daggers, whips).

It would be nice if we could just make any weapon rather than being limited.

Again, societal limits and why would dwarves make them?

[Owlbread]

Is it ridiculous to think the fortress-dwarves are too inebritated to take a look at imported weapons and try to copy it? They are creatures of industry, and it doesn't seem totally unrealistic.

Maybe, but it's not easy for a society to pick up new techniques, and more importantly...why? Most of the exotic weapons are either modifications of dwarven weapons (mauls, pikes), or else not terribly useful for combat in theory (large daggers, whips).

It would be nice if we could just make any weapon rather than being limited.

Again, societal limits and why would dwarves make them?

Because it's fun for us. Nothing more, nothing less. There's no real practical reason for having beekeeping as an industry, yet we still do. No real reason to make pots and stuff out of clay, yet we still do. It's just a fun feature to break the monotony of "crossbow, sword, axe, hammer". We barely even use macedwarves nowadays.

[Putnam]

Then mod it in.

[C27]

People already tend to forget that they can use picks as military weapons.

[Owlbread]

Then mod it in.

We shouldn't have to, it should be in the vanilla game. If we cut out all the suggestions which include things that could be modded in, we'd have a very thinned-out suggestions archive.

I don't understand the technicalities of making a game like DF, but considering how Toady can tackle reasonably-sized features in a month or two nowadays, surely he could do this one pretty easily.

I was not originally aware that soldiers could be allowed to use things like large daggers and the like in the current version, although I think I'm going to bite the bullet and strongly support Dwarven production of "exotic" weapons. If we'd like certain weapons to be exclusive to certain races, why not have things like special, upgraded bows and swords and hammers and whips and such for each race?

[10ebbor10]

Then mod it in.

We shouldn't have to, it should be in the vanilla game. If we cut out all the suggestions which include things that could be modded in, we'd have a very thinned-out suggestions archive.

I don't understand the technicalities of making a game like DF, but considering how Toady can tackle reasonably-sized features in a month or two nowadays, surely he could do this one pretty easily.

I was not originally aware that soldiers could be allowed to use things like large daggers and the like in the current version, although I think I'm going to bite the bullet and strongly support Dwarven production of "exotic" weapons. If we'd like certain weapons to be exclusive to certain races, why not have things like special, upgraded bows and swords and hammers and whips and such for each race?

Nah, not really.

I just don't see the problem with dwarven not being able to make exotic weaponry. They obviously can, but there's no reason from a story point they'd want to. The vanilla game, follows the vanilla story, and as such doesn't give you the option. If you as a player want to make exotic weapons, you can mod it. It's not that hard, I believe. Same reason why the game doesn't have multiple castes of dwarves, or any of the other features all the mods provide.

[Owlbread]

Nah, not really.

I just don't see the problem with dwarven not being able to make exotic weaponry. They obviously can, but there's no reason from a story point they'd want to. The vanilla game, follows the vanilla story, and as such doesn't give you the option. If you as a player want to make exotic weapons, you can mod it. It's not that hard, I believe. Same reason why the game doesn't have multiple castes of dwarves, or any of the other features all the mods provide.

I just think it would be fun is all. If the story limits us in that way we should maybe think about the story. Technically though, why would they want to make maces if they can make hammers? There's not really a reason for why they would want to... Why then, if we can make maces, shouldn't we be able to make morningstars, an exotic weapon? Why can't we make large daggers for "any" purpose at all, whether it's a secondary weapon as some people have suggested or as a primary one? Not even as a hunting tool. I could understand where you're coming from if we were just talking about whips and scimitars here but there's still stuff that could be pretty useful for Dwarves that we can't make.

As things stand, a Dwarven hunter will try to hunt by shooting the animal with his crossbow, and if it gets close he beats the christ out of it with the butt of his weapon. Why can't he just pull out his dagger in his boot and stab it in the head? Because they don't have any, that's why. Their society is incapable of making knives or daggers so he has to use a wooden... club, basically. I think that's a bit silly. Same goes for soldiers who get disarmed and don't have a secondary weapon to rely on. What are they going to do, punch the goblin? Beat it with their shield? Why don't they just slash its neck with their dirk? Oh, wait, Dwarven society doesn't make dirks or daggers or anything like that. I suppose they're screwed then if they don't want to have the bother of carrying two short swords on their belt along with all the rest of their kit.

[Nonsequitorian]

my grandfather was named dirk. nobody used him to slash things up. why would the dwarves? hurr hurr hurr

[10ebbor10]

I'm not disagreeing that dwarves don't need daggers, but I think the idea and mechanics of exotic weaponry need to be preserved.

After all, it will make more sense when we get serious cultural differences between civilizations.