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[Halnoth]

So, my and probably a lot of peoples problem with the new DF is the complete lack of attacking enemies. I've been downloading mods and trying to figure out how to remedy this and after playing dark ages (where stuff like nightmares show up to kill you) a thought occurred to me.

Is it possible to add say goblins as a roaming animal group to all biomes? Can't the attack trigger tag for semimega and mega beasts be added to these bands to make them show up at the appropriate times?

To fix the issue of these types of monsters not showing up with armor, the body of these could be composed of say bronze with swords for hands.

If this works a modder could add any number of "civs" or bands of monsters with any attack trigger they wanted and they would show up at a players fort to wreak havoc.

Population might be an issue but that can be increased as well right?

Of course you wouldn't get a fancy siege tag but an ambush doesn't give that anyway and you can mod the creatures to be stealthy I believe.

[Meph]

Yes, it's possible, but not a good work-around. There are many other ways for modders to simulate attacks and threats to your fort. No need to make fake-goblin animals with natural armor/weapons.

[Halnoth]

Ya there are other ways but the bug still exists where they won't show at your fortress. I played fortress defense and went years without sieges. My own mod uses opposing spheres and ethics to get them to show but this causes the dwarf civ to get nearly destroyed in world gen. It also still does not guarantee sieges.

So that leaves dfhack I suppose but spawning enemies when I feel like it is not the same thing as them randomly showing up.

Maybe I'm missing something but I havent found a mod so far where sieges show up reliably. (although the winged undead dudes show up pretty fast in dark ages)

But you are right, fake goblin animals with bronze skin is not in any way ideal.

Oh well it was just an idea, maybe toady will finish this release and we can have real danger in our fortresses again.

[Meph]

My idea was to use spawnunit.lua in an alternated form to spawn entire sieges. Instead of spawning 1 unit at the cursor, it spawns X units at the map edge together with equipment. This could be done automatically with triggers (wealth, units, exports) or time, or specific items created (artefacts, adamantine weapon/armor, etc).

Script isnt done though. I think some developement was done, then forgotten. ^^

[Halnoth]

Oh that sort of script would be amazing, too bad it isn't finished.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

I've done some roaming monster bands with natural equipment, only issue is making the castes for different loadouts CASTE:MALE_RSWORD_IRON,
CASTE:MALE_LSWORD_BRONZE,
CASTE:FEMALE_RMACE_IRON_LMACE_BRONZE(dual wielding), etc etc

and then setting up all the attacks to mimic the weapon attacks, however there is a vastly different math calculation to a Item and a bodypart attack of size weight and contact area. So some values have to be tweaked to prevent say what the attack values for a sword slash is not 10x more powerful when directly slapped onto the creature attack

(Where a weapon will always be the same size either if a Giant or a Kobold is holding it, a bodypart scales with the creatures size. so contact area needs to be lowered in bodypart attack, and velocity and such.)

I've done it, it works just a bit more clunky. One I enjoy most is my Undead zombie civ(for ambushes/invastions) with their wildlife clone of feral zombies that roam about.

EDIT:
Another issue is when they get chopped up and you manage to butcher them they will leave "<metal name> chunks" that belong to them, but you can atom smash those parts or have a custom reaction to try to salvage the metal from BODYPART itemtypes. All depends on how much work and detail you want to go into for that. It is possible just a bit finicky for balancing it. And dealing with the outcome, Also natural shields don't work for blocking, and would have to be a rather thick bodypart to 'deflect' blows to it without being severed from heavy blunt attacks or really sharp items (The dwarf slashes the goblin's bronze shield with their Cotton Candy Sword, the servered part flies off in an arc)

Plus if you don't customly define all the natural attacks for different size creatures you have to make due with an easy generic one that you have to accept that a smaller creature will have a smaller contact area and can cut into things better (like a spear) and a larger one like a giant will basically have a sharp club (may or may not cut things but rather bludgeon them to death due to the size of the natural part)

[Meph]

I'd actually kinda like that sort of idea for caverns. CLUSTER_SIZE:10:50 with these metal-clad monsters that appear in cavern 1, 2 or 3? Perfect. Because the damn underground sieges/civs have two problems: They appear even if the cavern isnt opened yet, resulting in constant SIEGE tag; and they spawn in a random depth, which is silly.