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[PineMarten]

One of the main problems I have with Dwarf Fortresses current state is that it is very easy for anyone with even a minor level of experience to completely avoid sieges by turtling or by spamming traps.
My suggestion to fix this is as follows: give goblins bombs. Certain goblins can be equipped with some type of explosive (magic or primitive gunpowder) which would allow it to blast away earth, stone, and walls. Then this goblin runs towards a route to the fortress that is blocked somehow and detonates its bomb, destroying the walls and allowing the goblin army to pass through.
This would reduce the amount of control the player has over the battlefield, as the goblins can now attack from many more angles. This would also encourage players to send dwarves out into the field and stop the siege before it reaches the walls.
While I'm sure that there would be creative ways to stop this and turtling would still be a viable strategy, I think that it would really balance out your siege defense options and make turtling less of an obvious go-to.

Thoughts?

[A_Curious_Cat]

I believe what you are thinking of is called a “petard”.  A petard that was tastefully shaped to look like an iron giant spiked ball was famously used during the siege of Helms Deep in the second Lord of the Rings movie.  As for it’s historicity, it fits within the acceptable time period.  I for one support our new Goblin overlords!

[PineMarten]

Yeah, I wasn't aware of a specific historical example but a petard is exactly what I was thinking of.

[Azerty]

Would the goblins have the technology for these explosives?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Would the goblins have the technology for these explosives?

Stolen from dwarves maybe, humans? Depends on how goblin tech develops when procedurally generated technology progression is added. Restricting to "goblins" is likely never going to be a thing if bombs are added.

[PineMarten]

Yeah, I didn't mean specifically goblins, that was just an example. This would work for any race. Also, in the case of goblins, I think this tech would fit. I've always liked the idea of goblins as creators of cruel, malicious devices. Tolkien said in the hobbit: “Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones.”

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yeah, I didn't mean specifically goblins, that was just an example. This would work for any race. Also, in the case of goblins, I think this tech would fit. I've always liked the idea of goblins as creators of cruel, malicious devices. Tolkien said in the hobbit: “Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones.”

Goblins have bombs in Blood Bowl, so it must be OK.
And chainsaws...

[Egan_BW]

Of course, the feature wouldn't be complete unless there were some way for the player the hoist the seigers by their own petard.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Of course, the feature wouldn't be complete unless there were some way for the player the hoist the seigers by their own petard.

Unfortunately for Shakespeare/Hamlet, the person who placed the petard and thus got “hoisted” when it went off prematurely was the the engineer’s assistant, the sapper (AKA the “sap”), and not the engineer themselves.

[Urist mcbayblade]

I think it would actually be quite cool if the petards were only available to goblins (due to there..... rulers) and could only be used by players if they were capture and perhaps reverse engineered.
Maybe this could occasionly happen in world gen too?

[Manveru Taurënér]

One of the main problems I have with Dwarf Fortresses current state is that it is very easy for anyone with even a minor level of experience to completely avoid sieges by turtling or by spamming traps.
My suggestion to fix this is as follows: give goblins bombs. Certain goblins can be equipped with some type of explosive (magic or primitive gunpowder) which would allow it to blast away earth, stone, and walls. Then this goblin runs towards a route to the fortress that is blocked somehow and detonates its bomb, destroying the walls and allowing the goblin army to pass through.
This would reduce the amount of control the player has over the battlefield, as the goblins can now attack from many more angles. This would also encourage players to send dwarves out into the field and stop the siege before it reaches the walls.
While I'm sure that there would be creative ways to stop this and turtling would still be a viable strategy, I think that it would really balance out your siege defense options and make turtling less of an obvious go-to.

Thoughts?

While bombs are decent enough idea and may very well happen at some point, just thought I'd note (since it sounds like you may have missed it) that after the steam release the plan is to get into some army/siege improvements which will hopefully fix those issues (among other things like bug fixing and finishing some stuff that didn't make it into the villains release):

We need to finish the graphical/usability update for the Steam/itch release. After that, we're going to finish some delayed features from the first villain release along with doing work on some army/siege features and other matters (listed below.) The hope is that all of this will sustain us through a necessary map rewrite, a key part of the initial myth/magic release which will unavoidably take a long time, no matter how the rest can be portioned between releases.

...

Improved sieges
Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
More highly trained attacking soldiers when appropriate
Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
Ability to build bridges/ramps
Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging

[PineMarten]

I am aware of those plans, I thought that the bombs could be a component of "Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards".

[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

I love it.

As an added thought, I think goblins should only have bombs from like the 3rd-5th and onwards, siege so the player has time to learn to handle invasions. And then when it has routine, they also bring bombs and you need to reimagine your defenses.

It would be cool if the dropped bombs on places where they can see traps have been set off in order to destroy the traps.

So it becomes harder to just spam cage traps. The goblin bomber could just throw the bomb on for the spot with the trap and it destroys all constructions in say a 3*3 box around the impact box, (For added fun the caged goblin would get blown up as well.)

[Pillbo]

Then you could have suicide bombers too. A goblin with a bomb that gets caged could blow themselves up with the cage. If they wait until being brought into the fort before blowing themselves up that would sure nerf cage traps as a defense.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Dwarves need to be able to make these!