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[Pilsu]

You can train skills all your life but you'll never be elite without field experience. Sure, that karate kid could probably chop my spinal cord in 3 pieces with one kick but things get a bit different when the enemy has swords, maces, bows and whatnot and is coming at you with numbers with the intent to kill

Archers shooting at a stationary target for years wouldn't be master marksmen in the field


Considering how much fodder immigrants you get, it wouldn't really increase difficulty. Non elite troops already beat up forces larger than their own. Sure, that orc mod would probably be too difficult now but that's for you to tweak

[Footkerchief]

Oldboy taught me that punching a wall for 15 years will make you an unstoppable terror.  So there's that.

[Tormy]

Heyyas, been a long time since I posted (DF was still 2d back then).

I had some ideas concerning training.
1. Training dummies for non-archers. This would give other weapon users something to train with without needing to spar.
2. Supervised training. Basically a dwarf with a high combat skill could monitor another dwarf training and give pointers, which could increase the skill gain a bit. This could work both when using practice dummies or sparring partners.

Keep em short.
DM

1. This has been suggested before many times already.
2. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_now.html
10/10/2008
The new body system might be enough to get rid of enough of the permanent nerve damage during high-level sparring (as there'd be bones to protect sensitive tissues),and I'll probably put in commander-guided sparring for low-skill dwarves (with a few associated skills for that, and perhaps some well-defined stages for that).

[Milskidasith]

Pilsu, you are pretty damn incorrect. It is ENTIRELY possible to become a master at a skill without having to kill somebody with it. As I said, I'm fine with dwarves having a battlefield experience stat, and crossbowmen needing to train on moving targets, but there is neither in-game reason nor real life logic behind keeping somebody from being a "master" with a weapon because they haven't killed somebody with it.

[Tormy]

Pilsu, you are pretty damn incorrect. It is ENTIRELY possible to become a master at a skill without having to kill somebody with it. As I said, I'm fine with dwarves having a battlefield experience stat, and crossbowmen needing to train on moving targets, but there is neither in-game reason nor real life logic behind keeping somebody from being a "master" with a weapon because they haven't killed somebody with it.

I don't agree. Me and you, or anyone on this forum don't have the necessary experience to judge this.
In fact I agree with Pilsu. Battlefield experience should be the most important. Just think about the dark medieval ages for example, when the soldiers were fighting with melee weapons on the battlefield. They surely received some training before they started to fight in the varius wars/raids etc. but I am pretty sure that after they've killed X number of enemies, they became much better and more effective. Afterall hitting a training dummy/practicing with a friend is absolutely different then fighting for your life in a real battle. [Samurais are also a good example I guess.]

[Milskidasith]

Err.... well, it's clear you don't know what samurai's did. Samurai's trained UNTIL they were masters and then went out to fight. And their fights weren't "duels" so much as they were "who can slice the other guy across the chest" faster. They lasted up to six seconds at best, and it always ended death for the loser.

Anyway, you still never proved your point about weapon skill being technical proficiency. Sure, footsoldiers were better once they were on the battlefield, but they didn't exactly get the highest quality training possible before being sent out. Also, yeomen were simply peasants trained with a bow and they were as deadly as any grizzled veteran of combat simply through training.

I've already said: Battlefield experience should play a part, including overall deadliness and ability to avoid strikes during combat. It should NOT limit technical proficiency with a weapon, both for flavor (real life) reasons, and in game reasons (Having a military composed entirely of crappy soldiers is not fun).

[Impaler[WrG]]

Assuming that sparing accidents are reduced my next most highly requested feature would be a player defined set of military ranks or squads such that promotion from low ranking squads to high ranked ones occurs automatically once certain skills are attained.

So you could define a 'rookie' squad that accepts recruits and is assigned only training, when a dwarf hits the necessary exiting skill level they move into another rank and squad that would have different sets of training and/or duty levels as well as different equipment load outs and all the advancement and upgrading equipment occurs automatically so your soldiers are sorted by the conditions you want automatically

[JoshuaFH]

Oldboy taught me that punching a wall for 15 years will make you an unstoppable terror.  So there's that.

I frickin' LOVE that movie.

As a sidenote, i'm sort of lost. are you guys talking about what most realistic pertaining to real life or talking about what would be the best direction for DF?

[Milskidasith]

I'm talking about both, and forcing dwarves to hit a "cap" on weapon proficiency (especially one below great, as was suggested) is both unrealistic in terms of RL and adds a whole shitload of fake difficulty and micromanaging annoyance (if you ever want a champion, or even a couple lords instead of a bunch of people a tenth of the way towards great) for the game aspect of DF.

[Tormy]

Anyway, you still never proved your point about weapon skill being technical proficiency. Sure, footsoldiers were better once they were on the battlefield, but they didn't exactly get the highest quality training possible before being sent out. Also, yeomen were simply peasants trained with a bow and they were as deadly as any grizzled veteran of combat simply through training.

You haven't proved anything either. We are just theorizing.
Anyway...

I've already said: Battlefield experience should play a part, including overall deadliness and ability to avoid strikes during combat.

This is what I was talking about, and that is what matters.

[Milskidasith]

No... you were saying it should limit the dwarves technical proficience with the weapon, which is what I disagreed with.

[Sunday]

Right now I'm reading Ishmael Beah's book.  He was a child soldier in Sierra Leone in the early nineties.  The reason child soldiers are so effective is not because of their 'skill level' - they aren't better trained than other soldiers, they aren't stronger or faster, they're just completely willing to kill you.  And most people aren't willing to kill a child, even if that child is running at you with a machete.

I think a lot of modern military training tries to train this, but there's only so much you can do in a theoretical framework.  In the real world (and maybe dwarves are different, I don't know) there are a whole lot of psychological blocks in place that stop us from hurting each other, let alone killing each other.  It's why people get traumatized in war situations after they have to kill someone, even in self defense.  I have some martial arts training, but I'm not a very good fighter because (while I have a pretty high pain tolerance) I can't force myself to hurt someone else.

Basically, you can teach the raw skills, but those aren't going to matter one bit if you involuntarily pull your punches.  And I think that it's actually easier psychologically to kill someone today, with a gun, than it is/was with handheld weapons.  You don't have to force a chunk of metal through the muscle and gristle of another screaming, flailing, emphatically alive human, you just have to pull the trigger.

[Tormy]

No... you were saying it should limit the dwarves technical proficience with the weapon, which is what I disagreed with.

Well yeah, as I see we were talking about 2 different things. Yeah, probably soldiers shouldn't be limited in weapon skills, even if they haven't been in any real battles, but deadliness/effectiveness is the most important thing in battles, agreed? That is why I said, that battlefield experience is very important. IE. the conclusion is: X master swordsman with battlefield experience > Y master swordsman without any battlefield experience.

[LegoLord]

No... you were saying it should limit the dwarves technical proficience with the weapon, which is what I disagreed with.

Well yeah, as I see we were talking about 2 different things. Yeah, probably soldiers shouldn't be limited in weapon skills, even if they haven't been in any real battles, but deadliness/effectiveness is the most important thing in battles, agreed? That is why I said, that battlefield experience is very important. IE. the conclusion is: X master swordsman with battlefield experience > Y master swordsman without any battlefield experience.

Their skill with the weapon DOES determine how deadly they are.  A competent swordsman shouldn't make a better soldier than a proficient swordsman just because he's killed. What you are suggesting is to have two different skill sets that affect how efficiently a dwarf uses his weapon, when it should only be one.  I really can't see people praising a swordsman who hasn't fought a real battle with his weapon as a "master," much less legendary.

Also, training with a dummy, how on earth would you get much better than competent?  It just sits there, taking the blows.

[Milskidasith]

Dwarves spar, not train with dummies. However, dummies and stationary archery targets WOULD make nice ways to prevent low level combat injuries (for melee weapons, an instructor would be near there).

About master: Once again, that is more a matter of semantics than actual skill. Although quite a few people ARE praised as such things as grand master for sparring skill alone (once again, karate). I admit, legendary is a stretch, but I was already in support of expanding (and rewording the system) to where grand master is where legendary +5 is and legendary can only be obtained by creating an artifact or, in the case of combat, having a certain amount of kills (or in the context of this thread, a high enough battlefield experience stat).