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[SabbyKat]

Hello! You likely have no idea who I am, but I've been an avid follower of the masterwork mod since near its inception years ago and is the sole reason why I still love DF and play it every 1-2 months, like a terrible drug addiction I cannot get rid of! Hahaha.

I've been working on a handful of documents proposing changes and additions to improve balance and functionality (without major changes) for most of the mod to try and help get a better balance to it all. I've brought it here, to see what you the community feels about it.

Please refrain from mindless insults, one liners, or the classical 'it's overpowered, but don't use it if you don't like it!' or such strawmen arguments. It's not going to amount to anything productive for either side.

Without further blabbering, this is the first edition, document one of eight - Defense Overhaul!

Traps

unarguably, the biggest part of DF is not creativity - but surviving. Whether against disease and famine, or the horrors of the depths, there are many things out to end poor urists life in horrible, (and often hilarious) ways. That is why we utilize many distinct methods to try and ensure our dwarven minions survive and fulfill our goals by protecting them from outside dangers. Often, our first line of defense is our old pal: The trap.

Positives/strengths:
 
~ Very cheap to setup a early, yet effective defense.

~ offer a wide variety of traps for various uses and functions.

~ Mingles extremely well with other defenses, allowing a great deal of cross-compatibility between animals, turrets, and other defenses.

~ Have almost no maintenance cost beyond basic setup time/material.


Negatives/Weaknesses:

~ They are your first, and often, last line of defense and can practically defeat everything in the game without much trouble with some simple engineering. Even HFS can be decimated by them alone!

~ While there is quite a variety - many variations of trap types are simply totally useless.

~ Some traps added by MW are totally misunderstood/poorly documented, such as barbed wire and are rarely used due to this.

~ Straight out, they are too strong by default. Why? I will explain this below.


The Problems and how to solve them:

#1 The synergy. The ability of traps to synergize with engineering and other variations of 'traps and defenses' is what makes them deadly. Trap_avoid is the counter to make traps not god mode (in vanilla) for example, yet web turrets nullify that entirely with no danger and only a few fortifications to protect it. This can be expanded further to flaming webs, or any variation - traps are just icing in the cake. Similar to turrets (bullet/slade) which can cause foes to 'dodge' and fall off ledges to be impaled on spears, or similar synergies.

The issue is not the synergy per say - but the simple overpowered, or underpowered aspects. How difficult is a web trap to setup? Extremely minimal effort. How long does setting up a ballista hallway take? a good deal more, it requires dwarves actively working on it, and can lead to a literal apocalypse to your fort if your defenses fail.

Solution: Without speaking of WEAK synergy, but instead, the problematic overpowered synergy that makes the game laughably easy, I would say the only clear solution to balancing this WITHOUT a ton of changes, would be to Remove Web Turrets entirely.

besides making traps extremely overpowered (especially when combined with flames), they offer an infinite rare-silk farm with absolutely no risk/effort (prior you had to trap a forgotten beast and that was a VERY harrowing, deadly business - high risk, high reward), and the cost to acquire/create them is laughable compared to the power they offer. I truly do love them - but they are just too overpowered in their current incarnation and in turn, make traps too deadly by essence of causing foes to fall onto traps, and making trap_avoids fall onto said traps ensuring every race and threat almost, can be destroyed by 30-40 well placed weapon traps and 2-3 web turrets.




#2 Some trap types are utterly useless, while others, are quite overpowered. How often do you use axe-blades over serrated discs? (when they were in game). How often do you use rams over something serrated? How often do you use barbwire, or do you even understand what it is?

Solution: redo them. Clean slate all the various trap components, alter the ones used in other production (like sawblades, etc) to be unusable in weapon traps or similar, and then create new items specifically designed for traps. My proposition is below.

~ Serrated disc - Slashing (moving Sawblades for use in buildings only). These are simple, basic 'slashing' attack trap components with a single strike. Excelling at fleshy foes, but being utterly negated by armor.

~ Spike - Piercing. These already exist, and are efficient in their abilities to do heavy pierce damage. I would argue spears should be placed here, but spears are weapons, and spikes over-all are fairly close to spears in penetrative/piercing strength.

~ Weight Ball(name sucks, sue me ) - Bludgeon. These offer pure, improved bluntness over simple stone traps (depending on material of course) and are designed to be improved 'ammo' for stone traps or even weapon traps to help smash and disable attackers who are quite heavily armored, but rarely kill.

The above three are your 'generic' trap components to provide singular attack styles.

~ Blunt Blade. Slashing-bludgeon. These are a variation of 'axe blades' designed to have a much wider impact area for slashing, but a heavier impact that can penetrate armor somewhat providing a solid middle ground against lightly to moderately armored foes, able to slice off smaller parts of the body if lucky, which its serrated disc brother could not.

~ Serrated Spike. Slashing-piercing. Similar to the spike, but with serrated edges allow it to sacrifice some pierce, but have a fairly powerful slashing aspect to severe off smaller body parts and cause extreme bleeding.

~ Spiked ball. Bludgeon-pierce. Similar to the old wooden spiked balls, adding the benefit of a blunt strike while giving additional minor-to-moderate pierce against victims causing pain from wounds and bone injuries inflicted. very effective against heavily armored foes, not so much against light/unarmored foes.

The three above are hybrid trap variations. These are all listed merely for 'sake of example' and could be expanded upon further,  such as giving specific traps functionality only for specific types (I.E Spikes and Serrated Spikes can only be utilized in spear traps/upright-weapon traps, allowing each trap type to have 2-5 specific trap components for variety).

This is all literally just 'loose thoughts' how to redo trap components - I am uncertain what limits there are in the code to what we can change (trying to find info on it has been fruitless) and as such, I've kept effort to a minimal amount until I know what the true limits are, and what Meph actually desires.


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Turrets and advanced contraptions

One of my favorite editions of all time. I've always loved towers and turrets in RTS's and figuring out how to best utilize them with various other aspects of the game to give me a solid edge. DF is no different, and they've proven to be extremely valuable in a multitude of ways. Yet despite this, the system is far from flawless and below, I am going to go over each turret and list its quirks and issues.


- Bullet Turret

Your grunt in the army of turrets, it's reliable, general in use for bombarding animals or siegers alike, and really is a 'jack of all trades, master of none'.

Positives:

~ Fairly cheap and easy to produce later on in a forts life.

~ Reliable for 'supression' bombarding and pestering animals and siegers alike.

~ is useful in tactical use, to cause skilled invaders to 'dodge' and fall off a ledge into your lava or similar 'fun' pits/traps.

~

Negatives:

~ Absolutely terrible at killing anything. It can pelt a poor animal to the point almost every bone in its body is fractured, broken, or shattered - and still not be able to finish it off.

~ Entirely useless against armored foes, barely able to inflict anything more then a bruise.

~ Is only able to made from a research that is quite late in the game, far after this turret would be very useful (such as early game against light siegers and wild beasts).

Improvement suggestion:

~ Add variations of of it. Have say five 'types' of bullet turrets based on metal used to make it (Copper, Iron, Steel, Mithril, Adamantite) and alter the bullets to fire a similar 'glob' material, increasing its general power with it.

~ If the above is not viable, increase the bullet turrets general strength. give it more 'piercing power' so it can cause shallow flesh injuries (lodging into the wound) but not deep enough to hit the heart or similar vital spots. This would allow it to be more effective at causing actual injury - yet not making it a 'machine of death'. Against poorly/non-armored foes, it should be strong and able to injure them regularily, yet be almost hopeless against anything that's large/armored.

- Slade Turret

The Slade turret, the 'big hitta' who just... doesn't really hit that hard.

Positives:

~ Wider and heavier impact often means if it's a head shot, it's fatal.

~ Is slightly more prone to break bones against smaller creatures (mostly animals).

~ Has superior knockback.

Negatives:

~ costs almost 40% more then a bullet turret, yet has no real strong redeeming trait over it.

~ Is very poor against anything that is about a human or larger in size, rarely inflicting anything more then a bruise or a 'bone bent' even if the foe is unarmored.

~ Is much less accurate (or it seems) then a bullet turret of equal skill.

~ Fires slower (again, I can't say for certain - just feels this way).

~ It really is just an inferior version of a bullet turret.

Improvements:

~ keep the speed/accuracy lower then say, the bullet turret.

~ Increase the impact power/penetration - it should logically be shattering bones and causing great injury to unarmored foes, and causing less extreme harm to armored foes.

~ If you're worried about balance, shorten the fire range of slade turrets (half of bullet) and make them short range 'cannons' so to say, slow firing, lower accuracy, short ranged - but very heavy hitting. Doing this would make them and bullet turrets synergize well, one being a long range 'sniper' meant to chip away at enemies, while the slade is the heavy hitter (not per say fatal) who excels against armored foes the bullet turret cannot defeat or even harm.

- Fire Turret

Why waste time starting a fire, when this beauty can cook, roast, and even clean away all your problems?

Positives:

~ it shoots fire. COME ON! Don't tell me imagining goblins running around screaming while engulfed in flames doesn't make you giggle evilly.

~ Very good for starting fires on the map, or accidentally roasting soldiers. Since siegers generally lack clothing, they don't burn very well though...

Negatives:

~ Short ranged to an extreme.

~ VERY volatile and dangerous. Using it with moss covered floors, the surface, or flammable dwarves is often grounds for FUN!

~ Really has limited use, especially compared to its big brother - the hellfire turret.

Improvements:

~ The fire turret is a pickle to make stronger, as it relies on destructive abilities by catching clothing or other flammable objects on fire. Generally speaking, simple burns alone aren't enough to slay foes (normally) and since most siegers/animals/titans/FB don't tend to have anything flammable on them, along with its general destruction tendancies for dwarves, and short range - it makes it a quite poor weapon.

~ Any thoughts how to improve it - or do you think it' fine as it is? If so, how?

- hellfire Turret

Positives:

~ Dude. It shoots dragon fire. DRAGON BREATH! Watching that plume of flame spew across the field and seeing invaders literally vaporize is just priceless.

~ It's EXTREMELY powerful and if a victim is struck, is almost assured death.

~ It devours 'ranged' units with great ease, giving a powerful solution to deal with those pesky gobins or elves and their bows (when used in a properly devised engineering trap).

Negatives:

~ Is VERY costly and difficult to build, or buy. Not per say a negative, as this keeps it balanced.

~ it has a fairly short range.

~ it is almost entirely useless against a foe with a shield. A shield seems to entirely negate the fire from this turret.

Improvements:

~ You would think I'd be calling for this turrets removal. But there's two factors why I think it should stay, and is arguably, one of the most balanced turrets in the game at the moment.

The first being the cost/effort to produce or buy them, is quite astounding. They are NOT cheap and really.

The second point, they are VERY strong - but have a hard counter. Any melee unit with a shield is practically safe from this turret, meaning while it's 'holy crap instant death' powerful against some, against others, it's totally useless meaning you can't just spam these and beat everything that comes your way and instead have to be intricate in your defenses.

Assuming the web turret is removed (or entirely redone) the hellfire turret needs no improvements or changes, and is a very solid, devestating turret.


- Web Turret

Spider Pig, Spider Pig...

Positives:

~ Has INSANE use, able to bring 'flying' units to the ground either to be attacked by soldiers or to activate traps, or to be mixed with other turrets for terrifying flaming webs of death.

~ Can be utilized to mass produce infinite rare silk cloth without any risk/danger/cost.

~ Is a great utility turret.

Negatives:

~ It breaks a lot of the game. Flaming webs can wipe out almost any foe, and if not - webs can make victims fall onto traps which makes trap_avoid mobs now trappable and easily dispatched.

~ It negates a legit cloth industry. Why grow cloth or go through the risk of giant drow spiders or forgotten beasts and the feats of engineering/danger they cause, when you can just move a web turret over, close a door, hit a switch and have infinite cloth forever?

Improvements:

~ There is only two real paths to fix web turrets. Make them fire a SINGLE web only, non-rare silk, on a fairly slow fire rate (since you can easily acquire 15-20 of them later in a fort without much hassle)

~ Remove them. I love them, I truly do - but they just break the balance of the game in so many aspects it's silly.




Warp stone and acid are two turrets I have never found a good use for, and have VERY little experience with. I am going to acquire a few in my current fort and test them extensively to give proper feedback on them.


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General quirks on defenses

Some major issues I've seen that further screw up any sense of balance, is constructions. How often do you encounter a siege that you cannot defeat, andi nstead of being in danger - you just hit a switch, close your bridge, and shrug your shoulders carrying on?


~ Walls are too strong. Simple. The addition of new siegers who dig and topple walls is great!... until you realize, only two fairly rarely seen races are capable of doing this. Of course, making more able to do it will make your base a disaster of tunnels/broken walls and be a giant pain to deal with, and I do not believe we can improve this outside of toady. My only suggestion would be to allow the option to turn digging/deconstruction ON in the launcher for each race as you've done for skills - let players choose their difficulty.

~ Bridges need to have something done to them to make them more in line. They are the most used method to 'lock out' siegers, and really are entirely unstoppable for anything from titan's, FB, and siegers. I am uncertain what we can do to make them balanced without totally negating their use... any thoughts?

~ I would argue a lot of the siege races are bland and similar in aspect, and we need a few new ones to really thrown a wrench into our system - especially ones that can strike at our soft underbellies (the inside fort) as with a bit of sensibility and construction - you can have your interior safe as could be without a worry, and NOTHING can stop you generally, without you making a terrible mistake. I have various ideas I know are possible within the games constraints for this topic - but will avoid bringing them up here.

~ DANGER ROOMS! These need to go. I know many are going to cry 'don't like it, then don't use it!' - that's not how designing a game works, you fix things that are clearly broken and danger Rooms are a 'bug' - not intentional. With the addition of libraries now, training soldiers safely is entirely viable where before it was basically send them in unskilled and pray they survive long enough to gain a few skills, or use the danger room - both extremes suck. Libraries are the new middle ground to that, and I feel libraries warrant the removal of danger rooms. Simply, it wouldn't be difficult to remove or rework the training weapons to remove the ability to do a safe danger room. Many are going to rage at me for this - but I use it myself. Now with libraries, I've found they are very solid alternatives with a bit more work involved and feel like a legal, fair way to train up your guys and danger rooms have no excuse to be allowed to continue existing.



ANYWHO! I'm done my maddening rambles for now. I'll refine this later assuming some form of civilized discussion occurs, and not the classical 'attack the author, I want my broken stuff, screw you!' mentality that often develops when someone suggests things like this!

Hopefully we can have a good, fun discussion to help Meph get the mod balanced better and in turn, be more fun for everyone.

[mahrgell]

While I agree with your judgement on most elements, I certainly do not agree on your conclusion.
DF is not a competitive game. DF has no missions, goals or whatever. However you play, whatever you want to achieve, it is all up to you.
You want to play the invincible fortress, that is will never fall? Wall yourself in, take some protective measures against those diggers and go ahead. You think it is fun, if no matter what shows up is caught in a webbed cage trap or dodges into oblivion? Do it. You want a challenge and play an open above ground fort (like in my current fort), that will certainly fall? Well... your choice again. It is completely up to the player what he deems fun and what not, what possibilities he uses and what not. Or do you prefer a no-item embark? Hell yeah! Some like their dwarven recruits to own FB 1on1 by using 2 man squads and danger rooms, some love the lemmings feeling. ^^
So just mark the following the following list for yourself:
[]drawbridges or BD-safe doors/hatches (those are actually way more cheaty then drawbridges)
[]2 man squads, danger rooms
[]magma
[]mine carts
[]cage traps
[](flamed) web turrets
[]whatever limitation or choice is there to make your game harder or easier (volcano embark in good biome vs freezing evil glacier with 2 necrotowers...)

So now to my personal conclusion:
What I would like to see is less redundancy. For turrets I am quite happy as they are. Each turret fulfills it's role, and they hardly overlap, or if they do, there is basically an early weaker version and a stronger late version (e.g. the fireturrets). So I would say the game design is perfect here. Nothing redundant, and nothing useless, they do what they are supposed to do. And nothing is innately overpowered actually, it is just that some turrets can be used in OP ways (like drawbridges). Maybe slade and bullet turrets could be merged, but that's it. If you like or dislike certain turrets or combos, it is up to you to (not) use them.
So you may ask, when I would call the game desgin bad? Well, either look below at my point about traps, or just imagine, if there would be only one fireturret, and that would kill everything on sight. Would pretty much suck, if you would like to incorporate a flame turret in your fortress, but can't do it without pressing 'I win'.
Though even though i personally hate cage traps, I think their design is fine. They are not innately OP. If you want to use cage traps, without instawin, just use just a couple instead of the usual 40 and everything is fine. It is up to the player to decide, how to use them. Bad would be, if a single cage trap would cage infinite guys...
But with the other traps, I'm way less happy. There are too many options, that completely overlap in their uses. All those trap components are way too similar and barely differ from weapon X being put into a weapon trap. There is no need to have an option for each damage type for everything. This also goes for ranged ammo. Throw axes, if you want to cut off limbs. And stop using bolts for it. This feels like a bit of feature bloat in the current version.
The same kind of bloat happens with weapons. Can anyone tell the difference between all these melee weapons? It would be fine, if those weapons would be race specific and not attainable. But right now, you can get all those weapons giving you meaningless choices. I figure, some people like to have 15 different kind of swords, well I don't, but i just ignore them mostly and am fine, if they are left in the game for those swordfetishists. ^^

[Meph]

I am all for reducing bloat. A complete release is on my todo list about this, but currently its Warlock time.

About the traps:
 - I cant alter cage-traps.
 - I cant alter stonefall traps-
 - I can redo the trap-comps to have less redundancy.
 - I cant make them weak, because otherwise people dont use weak trapcomps, but simply use axes, swords and maces in them. If the sawblade and spike are so bad, people use spears and pikes in upright-spike traps. Thats nothing I can influence.

About the web-turret:
 - Removing it solves nothing, because it does exactly what any spider does. If web-turrets are horribly overpowered and negate all sieges and make unlimited silk, so do spiders. They have the same AI and same effect after all. Web turrets have plenty of negative sides, like a short range, friendly fire, making the webbed traps a danger to your own dwarves. They are also expensive when you buy them and late-game when you can build them yourself.

About synergy:
 - Its a strong point of the game that people can experiment. Once I figured out that a 20z drop, a 1 tile floor-bridge filled with traps kills most sieges, because they dodge do their doom and down into the refuse stockpile next to my butchers, I was quite proud of myself. I designed this. It works. Yeah me. Of course there are exploits, but even vanilla DF has the very simple goblin-grinder setup that can undo all invaders. You have to remember that there are players of different experience and skill. Most dont know about most synergies, like webbed traps that trap trap-avoid creatures. Most people do not know this. And therefore wont use it. I have to agree with mahrgell (this time written correctly ) that its up to the players choice. DF, or MDF, should just give the right tools.

About bridges and walls:
 - Both are hardcoded, I cant affect them in any way.
 - Adding the digging/razing invaders to all civs is a good idea. I will make a note and let splinterz now of this, he has been taking care of the GUI lately. I have honestly not seen them dig/raze things ingame, I only have the word of others for this. ^^

Turrets:
 - Warp and Acid dont kill anything, but soften the targets up with pain and necrosis. Just saying, because you said you dont know exactly how they handle. They have the same range as a fireturret and do friendly fire.
 - Bullet and Slade turrets use globs as ammo. I cant change that. I can only give them blunt globs. Mithril and Adamantine would be horrible, because the only thing that influences the attack is the density of the material. Thats why I took one metal and slade, the heaviest and therefore strongest of materials for this.
 - I can change ranges, target numbers, how fast they shoot and how likely they can hit (which is currently done with the "upgrade turret" reactions. I could certainly change the bullet turret to be a sniper and the slade turret to be a shotgun. That sounds very good, and would split their uses further.
 - I dont need more types, but I can add different upgrades for them, like a second barrel or a high hit-rate. Or even adding a flamethrower on a bullet turret. At some point I even wanted to do a base-turret creature, and then you can add the parts (flamethrower, barrel, net-thrower) and the like yourself, making a modular system for them. But I never got around to it, partly because its low on the list of features, because its so.... high-tech non-1400-century style. IndigoFenix is working on his gnome/steampunk race on something like this, so I wouldnt want to do the very same for dwarves. Its on the list though, just not very high.

On race:
"lot of the siege races are bland and similar in aspect"
 - We have a stealing civ (kobold), a ambushing and kidnapping weak invader (goblins), a stronger invaders that camps outside and actualy does a proper siege (orcs), a magical invader that ignores your armor and should be fought with ranged units or contructs (warlocks), a multi-caste and multi-armed underground invaders with 1 weapon and 3 shields that can dig (antmen), a smallish ambushing mischivious underground race with piercing and long-range weapons (gremlins), a blunt-force underground ambusher (troglodytes), a amphibious building and wall razing giant race made of ice that drops the second-best metal upon death (frost giants), and clockwork constructs that use guns and emit hot steam when hit, without feeling pain or exertion, while having a metal skin (automatons).

What exactly do you mean with bland and similar? I made them as diverse as possible. I cant restrict mounts to specific races (sadly), otherwise I would have added fitting war-mounts to each, but I honestly wouldnt know how I should make them more different from each other. There are only 4 AI options (ambush, siege, kidnap, default).

On my list I have skaven, underground tech-warpstone race with poisons and AoE effects. Shades, single thieves that start summoning an army inside your base. And Shapeshifters, when near death/fleeing change shape into Werebeast, fully healing themselves. Snaga, amphibious, unarmed snake-people that siege early and use natural poison as weapon.

That would have been my option for the next update that includes races. 1 weak invader, 1 strong invader, 1 underground invader, 1 skulking race (the shades).

About danger rooms:
 - They are already changed in the mod. Training spears are edged instead of blunt and cause way more damage to your own dwarves then before. I dont mind synergy or inventive trap-usage, or even walling in, but I dislike danger rooms.

[sjohne]

Ever since Orkkagnotz the forest spider bit off the head of my favorite dwarf I rejoice in webbing and eating as many enemies as possible. No but seriously I think the best about DF is that you can play it like you want. That's why I love MW GUI... I just hate animalmen so I switch them off. I think animal farming is too much micromanagement so I go fishing.

Also don't forget that many "overpowered" features both of vanilla DF but also of MW can easily backfire. Everything you do in DF is associated with a benefit... and a cost. Farming is the easiest way to feed your fortress but creates a big - hard to control - empty space for random things to die and become a reanimated mountain tuskox wool zombie (which managed to wipe out my 50 dwarves fortress).

Sure magma can kill everything. Everything includes dwarves :-). I've never used flaming web turrets because I am pretty sure I'd just burn my own fortress down. I've also never used traps in four years of DF because well I dunno. But it's nice that I theoretically COULD use traps! 

[IndigoFenix]

Keeping an eye on this topic.  Gnomes will be very dependent on traps, pets, and constructs for defense and figuring out a way of balancing their playstyle will be tricky.

[Meph]

Keeping an eye on this topic.  Gnomes will be very dependent on traps, pets, and constructs for defense and figuring out a way of balancing their playstyle will be tricky.

I hope you have seen this: http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2609-dragonenginefirsttest

[IndigoFenix]

Keeping an eye on this topic.  Gnomes will be very dependent on traps, pets, and constructs for defense and figuring out a way of balancing their playstyle will be tricky.

I hope you have seen this: http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2609-dragonenginefirsttest

I'm liking the look of that one...now comes the question.  What frequently-run job should require a powered workshop?

[Meph]

Custom siege engines, forges, everything that cuts, shredders or destroys something, everything that produces machinery, pressure-chambers, anything with moving parts like a mint or printing press...

[SabbyKat]

I am all for reducing bloat. A complete release is on my todo list about this, but currently its Warlock time.

About the traps:
 - I cant alter cage-traps.
 - I cant alter stonefall traps-
 - I can redo the trap-comps to have less redundancy.
 - I cant make them weak, because otherwise people dont use weak trapcomps, but simply use axes, swords and maces in them. If the sawblade and spike are so bad, people use spears and pikes in upright-spike traps. Thats nothing I can influence.

About the web-turret:
 - Removing it solves nothing, because it does exactly what any spider does. If web-turrets are horribly overpowered and negate all sieges and make unlimited silk, so do spiders. They have the same AI and same effect after all. Web turrets have plenty of negative sides, like a short range, friendly fire, making the webbed traps a danger to your own dwarves. They are also expensive when you buy them and late-game when you can build them yourself.

About synergy:
 - Its a strong point of the game that people can experiment. Once I figured out that a 20z drop, a 1 tile floor-bridge filled with traps kills most sieges, because they dodge do their doom and down into the refuse stockpile next to my butchers, I was quite proud of myself. I designed this. It works. Yeah me. Of course there are exploits, but even vanilla DF has the very simple goblin-grinder setup that can undo all invaders. You have to remember that there are players of different experience and skill. Most dont know about most synergies, like webbed traps that trap trap-avoid creatures. Most people do not know this. And therefore wont use it. I have to agree with mahrgell (this time written correctly ) that its up to the players choice. DF, or MDF, should just give the right tools.

About bridges and walls:
 - Both are hardcoded, I cant affect them in any way.
 - Adding the digging/razing invaders to all civs is a good idea. I will make a note and let splinterz now of this, he has been taking care of the GUI lately. I have honestly not seen them dig/raze things ingame, I only have the word of others for this. ^^

Turrets:
 - Warp and Acid dont kill anything, but soften the targets up with pain and necrosis. Just saying, because you said you dont know exactly how they handle. They have the same range as a fireturret and do friendly fire.
 - Bullet and Slade turrets use globs as ammo. I cant change that. I can only give them blunt globs. Mithril and Adamantine would be horrible, because the only thing that influences the attack is the density of the material. Thats why I took one metal and slade, the heaviest and therefore strongest of materials for this.
 - I can change ranges, target numbers, how fast they shoot and how likely they can hit (which is currently done with the "upgrade turret" reactions. I could certainly change the bullet turret to be a sniper and the slade turret to be a shotgun. That sounds very good, and would split their uses further.
 - I dont need more types, but I can add different upgrades for them, like a second barrel or a high hit-rate. Or even adding a flamethrower on a bullet turret. At some point I even wanted to do a base-turret creature, and then you can add the parts (flamethrower, barrel, net-thrower) and the like yourself, making a modular system for them. But I never got around to it, partly because its low on the list of features, because its so.... high-tech non-1400-century style. IndigoFenix is working on his gnome/steampunk race on something like this, so I wouldnt want to do the very same for dwarves. Its on the list though, just not very high.

On race:
"lot of the siege races are bland and similar in aspect"
 - We have a stealing civ (kobold), a ambushing and kidnapping weak invader (goblins), a stronger invaders that camps outside and actualy does a proper siege (orcs), a magical invader that ignores your armor and should be fought with ranged units or contructs (warlocks), a multi-caste and multi-armed underground invaders with 1 weapon and 3 shields that can dig (antmen), a smallish ambushing mischivious underground race with piercing and long-range weapons (gremlins), a blunt-force underground ambusher (troglodytes), a amphibious building and wall razing giant race made of ice that drops the second-best metal upon death (frost giants), and clockwork constructs that use guns and emit hot steam when hit, without feeling pain or exertion, while having a metal skin (automatons).

What exactly do you mean with bland and similar? I made them as diverse as possible. I cant restrict mounts to specific races (sadly), otherwise I would have added fitting war-mounts to each, but I honestly wouldnt know how I should make them more different from each other. There are only 4 AI options (ambush, siege, kidnap, default).

On my list I have skaven, underground tech-warpstone race with poisons and AoE effects. Shades, single thieves that start summoning an army inside your base. And Shapeshifters, when near death/fleeing change shape into Werebeast, fully healing themselves. Snaga, amphibious, unarmed snake-people that siege early and use natural poison as weapon.

That would have been my option for the next update that includes races. 1 weak invader, 1 strong invader, 1 underground invader, 1 skulking race (the shades).

About danger rooms:
 - They are already changed in the mod. Training spears are edged instead of blunt and cause way more damage to your own dwarves then before. I dont mind synergy or inventive trap-usage, or even walling in, but I dislike danger rooms.

From the top, johnny!

So as I feared, traps are entirely untouchable. Ugh. Such limits are frustrating as hell.

Web turret spider wise, I ask you - why are spiders acquirable then? if they're so obviously overpowered, what is the purpose of allowing them to be acquired via trade or similar? The logic puzzles me. Trying to trap a wild drow spider or similar into a 'farm' is far more difficult and worth the reward than 'oh, here's a free one that never needs taming and lasts forever for all your needs'. Simply put, this IS a major imbalance it does need to be addressed. Whether you agree is up to you of course, but I am adamant in my views after playing at least over 1000 hours in the game (god I hate saying that ).

Synergy wise - I'm not going to bother arguing as this is a strawman argument (not trying to sound insulting) that is really impossible to argue with, as people will just stand by 'I like to play like this, don't touch my stuff, bro!' - the key is for a proper mod/game, you need to have structure with choice. Wild choice that removes the purpose of many other choices, is a bad design and needs to be fixed. I do agree creativity/choice IS vital - but when you can negate core parts of the game with no true effort/repercussion, that's a problem.

I feared as much for walls/bridges.

As for digging/razing, I've actually not encountered it myself. The two races that do it (I have cavern races off as in undead biomes, they die slowly then infest the caverns with up to thousands of corpses lol), orcs I've seen ONCE in all my days playing. Never understood why I've not seen them more often... and I've not met a titan/FB that does it yet. Though, most titan's I've met are hilarious lately made of snow, or crystal glass (sounds bad, but they shatter in one hit lol) so they often just die from a stray mastiff or such wandering about. But yes, enabling them to dig/etc would be a good option imo, as it's a choice - not forced. And choice is good, mmmk?

Acid/warpstone - really? swore they caused nausea/dizziness, they did when I tested it - but that was... hell. a long time ago. Probably a year ._. why I didn't want to comment on them. I didn't see any changes to them thus far either. Huh. I need to test them both properly - see how fast necrosis kicks in, etc. As for 'friendly fire' - don't worry, I got that covered. After I lost half my fort to morons running to 'clean off' weapon traps with webs on them, falling on them, and seeing at least 60+ dwarf legs, arms, hands, toes, feet, fingers, ears... fly everywhere (while I like a monster burst out laughing hysterically) - I learned you make damn sure dwarves cannot go without 50 feet of a turret or trap while active to enemies. Period.

Ahhh, so the 'globs' are not per say an object you created - but basically a item category in game, aka, altering it is impossible (for penetration, etc).

So you can change the principles of the turret in range and such, that's good to know. As for slade/bullet, I would think that's a good idea and why I suggested it. They stop stepping on each others toes and make each distinct. If I had to shoot numbers off, I'd argue increasing the bullet turrets range by 25% or so (I'll test in game to ensure my memory is right) would make them fairly sniper-like, their current speed and accuracy is fine as they are fairly non-lethal. Slade I'm guessing about the range of a fire turret and similar is solid. Fire rate and such I'd have to wait for the changes and test extensively to give proper input, as yeah. hard to say.

The modular turrets IS a great idea - but I agree, it fits gnomes more. I would see dwarves kind of 'reverse engineering/cooperative technology exchanging' with gnomes for their tech, while gnomes being the superior tech race by nature. Believe me, i'd love that thing in dwarf mode... really, REALLY love it... >.>... but I'd prefer its kept balanced for races to make them distinct.

See, when I speak of siege races - I count the EXTRA siege races too. The ones you have in are solid, but the 'extra' races are all... generic. You can say 'well, don't use them!' - but variety is good. Also as for warlocks, have they been fixed? The 'invisible ambush that rots half your fort without even knowing they are there' issue? I have warlocks and frost giants disabled (frost giants due to my bug report about them stealth-breaking everything and then assaulting my dwarves rather than fleeing, and they show up early as year 2).

Key with underground races, you don't NEED to face them. You can simply ignore them all game as what purpose is the cavern? I can dig out a dirt layer, breach the cavern, seal it, and forget it while the grass grows in my 'farm-layer' and get all the trees/plants I would from the caverns. You can argue that down to my choice, but above ground siegers can't really be stopped (bar walls and such, but yes ). I've not had the ants dig up into my fort to date, so they're not even a threat like that (if they were, they would be my #1 concern as yes, they are nasty sons of a *****'s ).

Skaven sound moderately interesting, but sound again like a problem like warlocks who cause WAY too much harm that can't be negated. Of course, I can't say anything until we see them.

Shades I very much like, as yeah. That's the issue - you can make your interior your safe haven with no real way to be breached quite easily. thieves can often sneak past (especially if higher skills) and makes stopping them a high priority danger.

Shapeshifters... hm. I can't say much yet. That could be fun, or horrifically overpowered. Now, if only we could keep infected were-dwarves from eating each other, and start a full fledged 'evil dwarf' base... >.>...

Snaga could be interesting, especially if they use water properly. Make for an interesting lake or sea side race that causes havok where you think you would be safe (since most land races don't swim well for sieging ).

I'll toss you my own thoughts later on for races. I do understand you are constrained to the limitations of the code of course.

Danger room is changed? Huh? I used it like 2 patches ago... never got injured even once. Just a bit o steel armor and that's that - totally safe. ._. unless that changed recently... I'll have to test that on a small scale later.

In a bit of a rush - sorry for the sloppy response. But it also seems the threads gone totally off topic after meph's response. Ah well.

[IndigoFenix]

I have a suggestion which may or may not be a good idea: a siege race (NOT ambushers!), pathetically weak in close combat, that will, after a certain amount of time of remaining on the map, start to use a long-range, wall-penetrating interaction to attack.  Gradual bleeding out one dwarf at a time, small random chance of turning someone opposed to life or berserk, basically something that puts pressure on you to go out and face them - and any other invaders that might be waiting outside with them - if you don't want your fort to die a very slow death.  No more immortal sealed fortresses.

[nukularpower]

Just wanted to say that I find the web turrets quite overpowered as well, and would prefer an option to just disable them.  While they may be no better or worse than spiders in effect, they are wayyyy easier to acquire, and far less risky - at worst, you may web some of your dwarves, while a spider forgetting it's training is likely to cause quite a mess, and an FB is obviously trouble waiting to happen.

This is pretty offtopic, but what was said about the turret globs does relate to a question I had:  Is "normal" ranged-attack ammo more moddable than turret attacks?  Can you increase contact size and so on?  I ask because the talk of webs got me thinking about how Airkins spam them, which seems rather unthematic to me... so I was curious if some sort of special ranged ammo only useable by them might be feasable.  Like, something with a very high contact area and weight, but low density, ideally suited to blowing an enemy all over the place without causing much direct damage.  Basically, an "air blast" - something like that would certainly be more fitting than web-spam, though I doubt it's actually possible.   

If the above method did indeed work, it might make for a better attack for Earthkins, too, basically allowing them to sling "boulders" via a special sling-type thing and ammo with similar properties to some heavy stone.   Boulder-slinging wrestler champ Earthkins would be much more entertaining than the current ones, imo
 
Sorry for the derail, but that didn't seem worth making a new thread over.

[Urist McTeellox]

As a small note, orcs often start with drowspiders as their caravan hauling pack animals. I haven't checked, but I suspect that they're common domestic for evil races.  I'm totally happy for them to get nerfed. 

[nukularpower]

As a small note, orcs often start with drowspiders as their caravan hauling pack animals. I haven't checked, but I suspect that they're common domestic for evil races.  I'm totally happy for them to get nerfed. 

It seems to me like orcs *always* have drowspiders, not just "often".  I'd be happy for them to get the axe, honestly - sick of seeing them in every game.

As a side note, my latest fort is a "cavern fort" - I ran straight to C1 to start, and now the topside is usually totally sealed off aside from the caravan inlet.  It's been quite a fun, bloody game - but I have yet to see anything aside from a few Trogloydyte ambushes, no antmen or anything at all.

[Meph]

why are spiders acquirable then? if they're so obviously overpowered, what is the purpose of allowing them to be acquired via trade or similar? The logic puzzles me. 'oh, here's a free one that never needs taming and lasts forever for all your needs'

They are not overpowered. I said that they have many negative sides, like webbing your own dwarves and making your traps trigger on your own dwarves. Webimmune enemies will laugh at them. They are also not free, and wont last forever.

over 1000 hours in the game

Now imagine you just started, played 10 hours. Or even 50. Do you think these people will have the same point of view? "The game is too easy? I just make my special entry hallway with webturrets hidden in fortifications, which trap my 10x serrated glass disc and cagetraps...so obvious." You have to think of other players as well.

Synergy wise - I'm not going to bother arguing as this is a strawman argument (not trying to sound insulting) that is really impossible to argue with, as people will just stand by 'I like to play like this, don't touch my stuff, bro!' - the key is for a proper mod/game, you need to have structure with choice. Wild choice that removes the purpose of many other choices, is a bad design and needs to be fixed. I do agree creativity/choice IS vital - but when you can negate core parts of the game with no true effort/repercussion, that's a problem.

You should talk to Toady One. Because he is writing a simulation, and doesnt care much for balance like a RTS would have.

Acid/warpstone - really? swore they caused nausea/dizziness,

That as well. All kinds of sickness syndromes, but they wont kill anything quickly or lob limbs of.

Ahhh, so the 'globs' are not per say an object you created - but basically a item category in game, aka, altering it is impossible (for penetration, etc).

Yes. I wasnt amused either. They dont use normal ammo, with attack values.

See, when I speak of siege races - I count the EXTRA siege races too. The ones you have in are solid, but the 'extra' races are all... generic. You can say 'well, don't use them!' - but variety is good. Also as for warlocks, have they been fixed? The 'invisible ambush that rots half your fort without even knowing they are there' issue? I have warlocks and frost giants disabled (frost giants due to my bug report about them stealth-breaking everything and then assaulting my dwarves rather than fleeing, and they show up early as year 2).

The extra races I didnt write and wont alter. Its a different mod. The warlocks and frost giants are not broken. They are designed like that. Frost Giants are building destroyers that send saboteurs, and warlocks should be fought with traps, constructs or ranged units.

Key with underground races, you don't NEED to face them. You can simply ignore them all game as what purpose is the cavern?

Well, you dont need to play with invaders at all. Or face them when they show up. Its a bit odd when you say we are using straw-arguments like "dont use it if you dont want to", and you reply with "cavern invaders are pointless, because I dont fight them if I dont want to."   

just a bit o steel armor and that's that - totally safe

Danger rooms have been changed since the first release of the mod. In vanilla DF, CLOTHING is enough against training spears. In MDF you need full armor. Thats the difference. So instead of sending your embarking 7 in there, just with a yarn cloak, you now need to make full suits of armor first.

[FengYun]

SabbyKat, I have no idea why you are doing this, but I find walls of text that you leave very strange. It seems like you are trying to fill them with unnecessary rudeness, while nobody has said anything bad to you yet. Just a point to consider.

As for the suggestions you made:
1. Web turrets - I don't see them overpowered, since is difficult to obtain them, at least for me. And I don't use them for silk farming just because I think it is unfair.  It takes some time and effort to equip a silk farm even when you have a turret: they don't build themselves. Infinite amount of silk or whatever is bad, because it affects FPS.
An option in the GUI would be nice, of course, if some players want to disable it. The fire rate could be slowed as well, I think.

2. Traps - I did not get why your system is better than the existing one. Serrated Spikes seem overpowered, because they would be effective against both armoured and unarmoured targets - why use anything else? I got too tired, when I got to this paragraph already. Adding more items to place inside traps is not a good idea, to my mind.

3. Turrets - They are OK as they are. You want the range of slade turret to be shorter? Fine, this can be done, but it's not a major change really. As for the rest, I did not see any suggestions worth of discussing, mostly it's just some text that makes not much sense.

4. Bridges and walls - They can't be changed. Walling in when siege comes is what Toady designed Dwarf Fortress to be. Without bridges it would be a different game.

5. Digging invaders - It's already done. An option in GUI can be made, but I personally would not use it. Because I am not that hardcore gamer like you are, I guess, and my computer is not powerful enough to sustain reasonable FPS, when these digging guys appear. And you don't play with them yourself...

6. Danger rooms - Meph has done enough to discourage players from building them. Again, they don't build themselves, so it is a choice of individuals that you so much strive for. I don't use them myself and at the same time don't see any reason why somebody who wants to use them should be stopped. If you don't want them, then just don't use them: no need to ask Meph to stop you, seriously.