As per means of persistence and whatever changes may be coming our way for the future embark scenarios and Toady's outlying vision to enroll more zones & building types into the flexible location type, here is my suggestion for a nearer-future revamp of barracks in order to bugfix some of the annoyances of the existing military system's looseness.
In world-generation
barracks in world-generation sites will be a place for non-hearthspeople historical entities to rally to and build their armies up from, you may find idle groups of soldiers training and armories of weapons to steal in adventure mode here, in many ways existing buildings like human castles which also serve as prisons are also barracks while armies without barracks buildings do their activities in tents off map.
> Subsequently depending on the current level of population there may be more active barracks soldiers training in a large city than a over-population of guards patrolling, ironically making petty crimes easier to commit & en-masse rampages easier to punish when the military levy become aware and trot out of the castle to slay you.
> Nobles inside the castle such as the owner of the town may be protected from violence with a ring of soldiers in this protected area, making it much more difficult to take a town by force without the willful support of the local population to serve as meat shields.
In fortress mode
The conventional dwarven player fortress may have lots of checkpoints and individual rooms being used to host militias scattered around wherever they are needed, but a barracks is mainly composed up of a collection of room types assigned to the location itself like a inn. Barracks are off limits to idling dwarves and neutral intruders who walk into them are automatically set to be killed (neutrals will path around barracks)
Many of these rooms are restricted for soldiers only
Mess halls - Grubby table rooms where drink & food is served to soldiers by their regular meals and where they resupply themselves here when out in the field rather than take from public stockpiles.
Sleeping Dormitories - The current arrangement of beds that you can find assigned to a bedroom currently but to station all of the barracks members assigned by militia squad rather than individuals
Armories - Self explanatory, where soldiers equip their gear, further controls on weapon, boxes & armor racks may be able to let each soldier have a personal or shared 'locker' of their equipment to use, this may involve stashes of spare bolts, and specialist soldiers being able to equip their own loadout in the barracks, uniform items can be assigned via the locations screen en-masse for squad equip and are carried over per-militia squad stationed there automatically.
Training room - Instead of being assigned to furniture they are assigned to floor zones as the barracks default zone allowing more range and flexibility while leaving armories free to function in their own way as storage, there are also some furniture pieces like wooden dummies that can be used in these zones for practice.
Militia squads are upgraded to '
soldiers' when they join the barracks, and are submitted entire squads at a time rather than individually meaning
it is possible to house a large amount of soldiers and send them out as a singular combined unit under a platoon name. This should in theory decrease the maintenance and fiddlyness of hosting many different smaller militia bands while hopefully better controls will make military quirkyness more bearable.
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Topic: Barracks Location Area (Read 378 times)