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[angelious]

nerf traps.

Toady has said in the past that he wants to get rid of traps as they exist in the game.  They've been unchanged since the 2d era, and stonefall traps make little sense when the stones are apparently just hovering in midair in an open field. 

Rather, he's said he wants all traps to be things players have to designate and devise themselves, so that they're things like just having a way to order boulders placed on a retracting drawbridge, instead. 

This obviously gets trickier for cage traps, since there's no easy analogue, and there's no other real way to capture or tame any of the exotic animals we're supposed to be capable of taming at the moment.

wasnt there some talk that in the future we could assimilate other races into our dorf civ? I would suppose elves are pretty good at taming animals..

[NW_Kohaku]

wasnt there some talk that in the future we could assimilate other races into our dorf civ? I would suppose elves are pretty good at taming animals..

That's going on right now

But no, there are things in legends mode where adventurers go out and return with tame grizzlies or something, dwarf, human, or elf.  (Plus, the whole point of the dungeon master is to tame things...) The problem is there is no game mechanism for actually doing it without the animals being in cages. 

Making dwarves just try to tame when creatures are out of cages is a potential mess in and of itself.  It's like how keas can steal minecarts that are rolling along at 100mph and about to slam into them because they have the "I'mma steal something" flag active.  Or how giant cave spider webs are harmless thread piles when you have the "collect thread" job active.  Taming just sort of works by throwing food at a creature when you have the "tame creature" job active.  Cages at least require some degree of preparation.  Plus, frankly, cages make some sense.  You wouldn't want to handle a wild angry grizzly before it's been tamed by just putting a leash on it.  Safe taming should be taking place within a sealed cavern where you're ready to handle a taming that doesn't quite take. 

The problem is more that cages need to be a more serious challenge to build, especially when you're caging something large enough that their main notable feature is their capacity to prey upon elephants like an owl preys upon mice. 

[Niddhoger]

Cages need various strengths.  A shoddy wooden cage shouldn't hold a dragon, but might stand a chance at holding a wild dog.  Rodents could chew through wooden cages, and building destroyers should be able to smash cages from the inside (anything short of masterwork steel at least).  I don't care how cramped that cyclops is, he should be able to sneeze and shatter a wooden cage from within.  I understand that it is harder to break open a cage from within due to lack of room to swing, run for charges, highly constrained space... but after a certain point muscular creatures like a cyclops could flex and probably crack a wooden cage.  And for things like a bronze colossus? How... how does one even -begin- to fit within a cage yet alone be constrained by one?  Don't forget dragons- they literally can sneeze (dragonfire) to escape a cage.  Also, like weapon traps there should be a failure rate tied to the mechanisms quality.  The only thing that should be 100% safe is a masterwork steel cage triggered by a masterwork mechanism.  The idea is that beginner forts will only be able to capture weak-medium strength creatures with basic wooden traps.  They'd need iron or so traps to contain things like cave crocs or other BD1s.  Later, with masterwork steel traps and masterwork/artifact mechanisms you'd have a chance of capturing semi-megabeasts and other medium-large sized creatures.  Truly gigantic creatures should be entirely immune, since they far exceed the size of the cage ment to contain them. 

So to recap, cages would need:
Strength based on quality and material properties to check against monster strength for chance of escape
Size limitations: a chicken and an elephant shouldn't both fit comfortably within the same cage
Mechanism quality controls success of initial capture
Fire-breathing enemies should be able to melt non-fire proof cages. 

[Bumber]

This obviously gets trickier for cage traps, since there's no easy analogue, and there's no other real way to capture or tame any of the exotic animals we're supposed to be capable of taming at the moment.

I think being able to bind creatures with ropes is planned for the crime and punishment arc. We're part way there with non-lethal combat.

[angelious]

wasnt there some talk that in the future we could assimilate other races into our dorf civ? I would suppose elves are pretty good at taming animals..

That's going on right now

But no, there are things in legends mode where adventurers go out and return with tame grizzlies or something, dwarf, human, or elf.  (Plus, the whole point of the dungeon master is to tame things...) The problem is there is no game mechanism for actually doing it without the animals being in cages. 

Making dwarves just try to tame when creatures are out of cages is a potential mess in and of itself.  It's like how keas can steal minecarts that are rolling along at 100mph and about to slam into them because they have the "I'mma steal something" flag active.  Or how giant cave spider webs are harmless thread piles when you have the "collect thread" job active.  Taming just sort of works by throwing food at a creature when you have the "tame creature" job active.  Cages at least require some degree of preparation.  Plus, frankly, cages make some sense.  You wouldn't want to handle a wild angry grizzly before it's been tamed by just putting a leash on it.  Safe taming should be taking place within a sealed cavern where you're ready to handle a taming that doesn't quite take. 

The problem is more that cages need to be a more serious challenge to build, especially when you're caging something large enough that their main notable feature is their capacity to prey upon elephants like an owl preys upon mice.

tis will be fun.


there never has been seen or will ever be seen a fantasy racism at the level that will be seen when they give df players the opportunity to enslave lesser beings.

[Bumber]

tis will be fun.

there never has been seen or will ever be seen a fantasy racism at the level that will be seen when they give df players the opportunity to enslave lesser beings.

It's against dwarven ethics, though.

[NW_Kohaku]

So to recap, cages would need:
Strength based on quality and material properties to check against monster strength for chance of escape
Size limitations: a chicken and an elephant shouldn't both fit comfortably within the same cage
Mechanism quality controls success of initial capture
Fire-breathing enemies should be able to melt non-fire proof cages.

That doesn't particularly solve the problem of everything falling prey to cage traps (when weapon traps don't work the first time, just use more!) and it's just trying to use the current mechanics.  What this problem really needs is new mechanics that change how the game is actually played.

If you look at how it's done by adventurers in Legends Mode, there should be some way to approach animals peacefully to get them started with taming. (Although maybe they were building traps in the wild, as well...) It also needs to have a way to cage creatures that doesn't just rely upon arbitrary place-mechanism-get-whatever-you-need mechanics that Toady's trying to get away from.

I think being able to bind creatures with ropes is planned for the crime and punishment arc. We're part way there with non-lethal combat.

Non-lethal combat is interesting.  Having some sort of "subdue creature" command would be a more Fun way of getting the random grizzlies and such to sit still.  Restraints would have similar problems to cages, though, aside from letting things move around a bit more.

tis will be fun.

there never has been seen or will ever be seen a fantasy racism at the level that will be seen when they give df players the opportunity to enslave lesser beings.

It's against dwarven ethics, though.

Yeah, let's not start one of those debates, those tend to go around and around in circles and occasionally get locked.  Also this thread. 

[Niddhoger]

Well the idea is that even normal wildlife can break out of a shoddy wooden cage.  The larger and stronger it gets, the easier it will be to break out of the cage.  Building destroyers would get massive bonuses to this as well.  Creatures of exceptional size (anything approaching 3m cubed in size) would be completely immune.  Even goblins that still had weapons should be able to easily get out of wooden cages.  Even copper cages could probably have the bars bent by anything strong enough.  So again, the large-ginormous creatures would be safe and the building destroyers would need a legendary blacksmithing working with steel to contain.  Only low-threat wildlife would be safely captured by a small fort instead of that early fort building a shoddy wooden cave to trap the resident dragon in before even setting up the dining room properly (done it once).  So to capture anything worth while (a grizzly) would require at least a metal industry working with strong metals to contain.  For semi-megabeasts, nothing short of masterwork steel with masterwork mechanisms should stand a chance of containing them.  Full-blown megabeasts couldn't possibly be contained either. 

They'd still be powerful, but would require far more set up time.  If you don't have ready access to steel (or even iron), you'd have to make choices to how many traps you want versus equipment for your dorfs.  Personally, I don't abuse them.  I don't have them up for goblin/zombie attacks and typically just use them to capture wildlife coming out of the caverns.  However.... installing a dragon-turret out front is just a little too tempting for me >.> That being said, dragons are supposed to be intelligent creatures- why can we even tame them in the first place? They believe creating wealth yourself is for chumps and the truly powerful just take from the weak.  They also get covetous and decide they don't have enough shinies- prompting more raids.  It just seems weird to be taming an intelligent creatures like a dog.

Nets.  We don't really have nets in DF yet.  They'd definitely count as non-lethal combat for a chance to tame critters.  Beast-tamers could carry extra food and equip themselves with nets/ropes/chains as they head out into the wild looking for "new friends."  Just being able to walk up to an animal and befriend them, though, is magic more than anything else.  Sure, we domesticated dogs and cats without long training sessions in cages, but this happened over generations of giving them food, selective breeding, and not attacking them.  Bare-minimum, the animal trainer would have to be highly skilled and your civilization very knowledgeable about an animal for the trainer to be able to just walk up to and bro-down with a grizzly.  That, or magic.  Some type of elven hippie-power to pacify beasts, diety-based spell to calm wild animals, or potion that makes the trainer smell like a friendly beast. 

[angelious]

tis will be fun.

there never has been seen or will ever be seen a fantasy racism at the level that will be seen when they give df players the opportunity to enslave lesser beings.

It's against dwarven ethics, though.

im pretty sure elves are not included in the ethics of dorf kind.

[NW_Kohaku]

So to capture anything worth while (a grizzly) would require at least a metal industry working with strong metals to contain.  For semi-megabeasts, nothing short of masterwork steel with masterwork mechanisms should stand a chance of containing them.

Problem: Players don't choose which cages to fill traps with.

[angelious]

So to capture anything worth while (a grizzly) would require at least a metal industry working with strong metals to contain.  For semi-megabeasts, nothing short of masterwork steel with masterwork mechanisms should stand a chance of containing them.

Problem: Players don't choose which cages to fill traps with.

that would be a feature more than a problem i would say...

[Alfrodo]

That's a problem.

If you have a set of traps exclusively for catching invaders (I.e. at your entrance) then you'll probably want some moderately good cages, but if you're using them to trap standard, docile animals like deer or wolves. then you can probably settle for a crappy elven cage.

I'm guessing this more implies: Higher quality, Stronger Material cage = less chance of "A cage has been emptied!" alert. Larger creature = more chance of "a cage has been emptied!"

I once had three blind cave ogres crapped in wooden cages.  One of them escaped and had lots of !!FUN!!

[Niddhoger]

Then... let us choose cages to load via a settings menu? "any cage, only wood, only ___ (type of metal), no quality under ____, no quality over ____, etc.  Otherwise, the only way to "capture" something would be to abuse raising bridges like we have to do with FBs/Titans.  That isn't any more realistic either, really. 

[NW_Kohaku]

Then... let us choose cages to load via a settings menu? "any cage, only wood, only ___ (type of metal), no quality under ____, no quality over ____, etc.  Otherwise, the only way to "capture" something would be to abuse raising bridges like we have to do with FBs/Titans.  That isn't any more realistic either, really.

It is, however, more in line with what Toady actually wants to move towards than suggesting we keep mechanism-based one-tile traps.  I also don't think "more micromanagement!" is a particularly useful solution at this point.

Again, everything in the b->T menu but the lever is supposed to eventually be replaced, so trying to "fix" a stopgap is not all that helpful.

... and what did all this have to do with towers, again?

If we're all in agreement that cages are something that needs to be revised (which is already planned,) then the towers attracting new monsters that can possibly be caged and tamed thing seems like something everyone agrees would be interesting.

[Pearofclubs]

... and what did all this have to do with towers, again?

It did get a little off topic, ya?

When I saw this thread, obviously the first thing I thought of was "heaven".  It was a fairly obvious concept. Perhaps have a semi-solid cloud layer that you have to puncture before you could get there?

But thinking about it more, there should be more to it. Flying creatures are a start, but what about weather effects?

Thinning air could cause exhaustion in dwarves. During storms, there could be strong winds that knock exposed dwarves and objects around... even to the point of going over the edge.

"Urist McSplat cancels Build Wall: interrupted by gravity."
Now doesn't that sound like FUN?