How about a rescue fame?
For example, 3 dwarves were caught in the open, got injured, but got rescued by a squad who mopped up the preps. Naturally, rescued thoughts will be associated with it.
Yeah, a dwarf that was rescued should get a happy thought. If the rescuer(s) are really famous, then the thought would be considerably better.
The problem is, how do we determine the "rescue"? One possibility could be that, if a civilian has a line of sight to enemy (wild creature or invader), a dwarf who makes the kill could be counted as rescuer. If there are more than one dwarf attacking the enemy, then perhaps that dwarf who makes the final blow gets better fame and rest of the dwarves get smaller fame boost.
If a dwarf got rescued by his father, than the dwarf will think "got rescued by papa wolf", or "got rescued by mama bear" if it's his mom.
Yeah, this could expand the general case when the rescuer is not famous soldier. The thought could be better than with general situation but not as good as with really famous soldier. It should also disregard the current fame of the rescuer if they are relatives, so a dwarf who was rescued by his father, who happens to be a legendary hero, does not get the happy thought of famous soldier but the happy thought of parent instead. This could also be expanded to cover siblings and perhaps even friends.
You could have dwarves who actually think the opposite of happy about rescue squad due to his hatred of authority, or is conspiracy minded, or he got a grudge against one of the rescuer.
Absolutely! Especially if the one who was "rescued" belongs to another squad. This would simulate the situation of "Damn it, I could have killed it myself! Why did that arrogant bastard come and steal my kill?".
On a side note, if several squad joins a battle, one of the less famous soldiers could get annoyed if a one of the heroes comes and kills the target, especially if the target would net a huge amount of fame.
The more famous a rescue squad, the more suspicious some dwarves will be, although that will only be a small part of the population.(After all, what if the rescue squads like to arrive at the last minute so they can repeat rescue fame) The rest see it as simply straightfoward good deeds done.
If there is some kind of delay involved, then yes. But the suspicion shouldn't come easily, it should require several events. Basically, few times shouldn't cause any kind of suspicion, but if it occurs regularly, then it should.
You could have specific fame for killing kobold thieves or rescuing children from the hands of globin thieves.
Yep, things like that should result a constant fame as a event, the resulting fame could be modified by some factors.
Well, I think if a squad called The Swords of Reluctance manages to infiltrate a goblin tower and assassinate their lawgiver, it would be cool to have them (maybe unofficially) called something like The Swords of Shadow instead. Or, if they storm an elven forest retreat and in the resulting bloodbath put every woman and child to the sword, they could be named The Bloody Demons. Of course, this could depend on perspective; the dwarves might see them as heroes wheras the elves would absolutely hate that squad.
That could work. If a squad is renamed after certain set of events (not done by player), then the fame of old squad name should carry over to the new squad name. In such case, the old fame doesn't change unless another squad is formed by that name, all the following events and fame changes affect the new name.
Also, as you suggested, the fame should be calculated differently from the perspective of other civilizations. Of course, not everything that affects the parent civilizations should affect the other civilizations. For example, kill/death ratio; while it's important from the perspective of parent nation, the other civilizations should pay too much attention to that. Instead, they should consider the amount of entities of that specific race the squad/soldier has killed. In other words, if a dwarf kills a human, then it should give X fame points in eyes of dwarves, Y fame points in eyes of humans and Z fame points in eyes of everybody else. X would always be positive, Y negative and Z would depend on the relations between the race of killed creature and the other race. For example, goblins would see the slaughter of human as positive thing while elves don't.
Which brings me to my next point. I think that squads being renowned for things like extreme brutality or ambushing their enemies and killing them in their sleep could be cool, or on the other hand they could be known as honorable, and have a reputation of only fighting on the open field. Depending on their personality, recruits may not like joining a squad that pillages villages and executes everybody they capture, preferring a squad that punishes any of their men that go about looting and such after a battle.
There are two sides of this; personal preference and cultural preference. The cultural side could be controlled by ethic tokens, meaning that certain actions could be considered either good or bad. Personal preference should rely mostly to to the dwarf itself, though it should be slightly affected by cultural preferences. So yes, a single dwarf could see certain type of actions as bad thing even if it's culturally acceptable.
I would like if this was extending into becoming a morale system that influenced thoughts, success in battle, and the rate of desertion. And regarding the last paragraph about recruits, generally I think the squad should be happy about getting reinforcements, but if some unseasoned conscript is sent in to replace a famous soldier who died, the squad shouldn't be happy.
Yeah, that's more or less like I saw it. In normal circumstances the squad shouldn't complain about the new recruits, even get a happy thought if they have been running around understaffed from some time. But a squad with long history and famous soldiers shouldn't be happy if the new recruit is unseasoned or even infamous.
I don't know about dwarves always being upset about being led by a dwarf that isn't experienced or a war hero. Having the baron (probably with a large group of experienced soldiers as bodyguards) lead the charge should make the entire squad go into a fervor and fight better, but if the baron (or whatever other noble you send) is killed then there would be a huge loss of morale and some soldiers might surrender or flee.
It shouldn't always produce bad thoughts, only in extreme cases. Basically, if a squad that consist of famous soldiers gets a new leader that is not up to the rest of the squad, then the bad thought should occur. But only to those who could be considered better and more famous than the new leader, novice soldiers shouldn't mind.
As you said, nobles like baron should give a boost in morale during a fight. But what if the baron is known to be a bad leader? Why would they be more happy to have the baron as a bad leader instead of some random soldier as a bad leader? Again, some unseasoned recruits should feel honored to serve under the leadership of baron, but seasoned veterans should be able to see the faults of the baron, producing the unhappy thought. Of course, having a baron as leader, they would be less likely to do things like revolt or disregard orders than with random recruit.
I agree with most of that, except for the relatively meek punishments for rebels and deserters. If a fortress is in dire need of soldiers, the rebels/deserters might get off with only jail or beatings, but in real life, even just a few hundred years ago, the punishments were often a LOT more severe. In the Revolutionary War deserters from some American regiments were whipped several dozen times, and back in the Medieval times it wasn't unheard of for deserters to have their feet cut off, or for traitors to be tortured to death. Heck, I knew somebody whose dad used to live in Egypt. The dad said that the punishment for stealing in that country was to have your hands cut off (or at least it was when he left Egypt, which couldn't have been that long ago.
This is something that should be controlled by entity ethic tokens. It's also important to remember that, at least right now, dwarves are actually rather scarce resource since there can't be too many living in the fortress without making the game nearly unplayable. Those punishments that I mentioned were thought with balance in mind. Of course, when we get to the point when a single fortress can hold hundreds, perhaps even thousand, dwarves, then the punishments could be worse. In that point the death of few legendary soldiers may not hurt as much as it does currently, with about 200 dwarves. To players with weaker computers, who must use lower population, it hurts even more.
Presumably, whether or not the rebels get off lightly is the ratio of enemies to soldiers.
Yes, but only if the rebellion occurs during a siege, ambush or such. And only if the rebellion happens in forms of disobeying orders. Desertion, overthrow and even murder shouldn't use that ration, unless we are talking about some of the very rare and extreme situations. The only situation I can think of is when the squad is greatly outnumbered and the leader still demands the soldiers to attack. In that case the ration between soldiers and enemies should be taken into account, otherwise not.
What about famous dwarves and squads attracting skilled military dwarves in migrant waves? I'm thinking "Professional" grade or above, to actually lend meaning to the rank. (Sorry if this has already been addressed. I am not having a good day for paying attention on things.)
That's actually a good suggestion! There are countless examples of such situations, even in modern world. Even in Middle Ages there were soldiers that were more than happy to travel far away to join a army that was known to be victorious, even if there was a high chance that they would never be allowed to join that army.
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Topic: Squad fame (Read 1451 times)