Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sinoth]

This has been discussed before here, but I wanted to bring it back into conversation.  Whenever a goblin siege arrives at my fortress wall, I imagine a massive horn sounding, striking fear into the enemy and rallying my forces.  Beyond aesthetic value, I think it would be a good mechanic to gather your military to a central point.  War drums could  serve a similar purpose.

I apologize if this is already on the todo list, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

[mickel]

Having a massive horn blasting an alarm seems a good idea to me. I imagine the humans would use alarm bells or something, and gobbos sound more like the drum types to me. And so are the elves. Maybe a massive brass gong? That's pretty gobbo too...

Anyway, striking fear into the hearts of the enemy and pouring courage into your own troops implies morale, which I am all for. We already have items that menace with spikes, why not let people be menaced by them too?  

[mikefictiti0us]

I agree. At the very least, all I really want is a way to force my military to stop eating, drinking and sleeping, so that they only perform these acts if they are on the very edge of starvation, dehydration or are about to pass out from exhaustion.

Demons in the Deep! Oh, no time to fight the demons, because three quarters of my military force decide that a tankard of ale or an afternoon nap would REALLY hit the spot right about now.

[mickel]

It would also be a good "GTFO" signal for the civilians.

[Tormy]

quote:Originally posted by sinoth:
<STRONG>This has been discussed before here, but I wanted to bring it back into conversation.  Whenever a goblin siege arrives at my fortress wall, I imagine a massive horn sounding, striking fear into the enemy and rallying my forces.  Beyond aesthetic value, I think it would be a good mechanic to gather your military to a central point.  War drums could  serve a similar purpose.

I apologize if this is already on the todo list, but I couldn't find it anywhere.</STRONG>

You were watching the LotR movies too much.
 
Anyways good idea.

[BurnedToast]

I think this is a great idea, right now a military seems to me to be nearly useless (except for killing trap immune monsters if you don't want to cheese drawbridges).

IMO, the gong (or drums, or horn, or...) should basically put your fort into 'military mode' when it is used. All your activated troops should have their station point put on (or near) the gong and like mikedictitious said they should stop eating or drinking or sleeping unless they are about to die (excepting rations and waterskins of course).

The other thing it should do is every civilian should drop EVERYTHING and move to their rooms (and lock the door?). If they don't have rooms, they should move to the nearest barracks. If they don't have a room and there is no barrack (or it is full) they should.. I don't know.. run as far from the horn as possible? As long as the fort is in 'military mode' they should not do ANYTHING else but sit there, or maybe if they are about to starve risk going out for a bite and then run right back to the room.

When the threat was gone, you could just use the gong again to turn military mode off. If it was destroyed (or stolen, ha) maybe it would end immediately? I dunno.

This way maybe having a military would be a viable defense option, instead of just locking doors and relying on rows of traps (and/or flooding the room/world with lava).

[mikefictiti0us]

quote:Originally posted by BurnedToast:
<STRONG>they should stop eating or drinking or sleeping unless they are about to die (excepting rations and waterskins of course).
</STRONG>

The problem with waterskins is that, according to the wiki, they can't (for some strange reason) hold alcohol. With that in mind, I've never given my military waterskins. It would encourage laziness. (ed: actually, it'd be better to disable waterskin carrying but stockpile a few stacks of waterskins at the barracks and, during a crisis, enable them to carry waterskins for the duration of the crisis...)

But yeah, a system where you can set the hunger/thirst/exhaustion thresholds to different levels would be great, and it'd save a lot of lives during sieges and demon invasions.

[ August 21, 2007: Message edited by: mikefictiti0us ]

[Retales]

I'm all for this idea. The idea of the military mode sounds very good. The non-military dwarves hiding in their rooms would propably get unhappy thoughts  from fear and not knowing how the battle is going.

This way you shouldn't sound the alarm every time a kobold thief approaches, but save the use for real emergencies

[Deathworks]

Hi!

I am not really sure whether making all your civilians completely inactive is such a good thing. After all, by the time you get any real sieges, your fortress is a major operation with farming, mining, craftworking and who knows what going on. In addition, it usually covers quite a lot of ground so that even if the defenses were dented, dwarves working at the other end of the fortress would not be affected.

In addition, if something was able to breach your defenses thoroughly enough to reach your main business area, you are probably on the way out anyway.

So, I don't really see the benefit of paralyzing your entire fortress. After all, after a siege, your dwarves will also be busy collecting the loot and getting rid of the refuse, so in the end, you only cripple your fortress.

What would be interesting would be an improved versopn of the "Dwarves may not go outside" where you could designate a rectangular area as your fortress core. When the alarm is given, civilian dwarves may not leave the area of the fortress core and if they are not within it, they are to move there ASAP. This way, you could protect your civilians, have them out of the way of your soldiers and still keep business going. And you could place defenses in all directions with having a defense zone against the outside and against the demons on the inside, with the civilian area calmly between them.

Deathworks

[Lightning4]

I like the idea, though civilians shouldn't be inactive. They should just, y'know, not be stupid and run right in the middle of battle to grab a stupid shoe that got yanked off a freshly dead goblin. Of course, the new traffic designations likely will solve the problem, but this might give an additional bonus buffer between the fighting. And perhaps they have a greatly enhanced enemy sense, like a sort of paranoia. I mean, if you're in the middle of a fortress during a siege, you're going to be far more alert to your surroundings than usual. So if a civilian sees a goblin down the corridor, he's gonna split in any direction available. If he can't split, and the goblin is coming for him, he'll take off for anything available nearby and use it as a weapon to defend himself, or push the goblin over and take off. Or additionally, if the goblin is blocking the only exit, and the goblin hasn't spotted him yet, he can duck behind a corner and wait there, hoping the goblin leaves.

But yeah, it should also offer a small bonus to military, and a small negative to the opposing force. Basically something any fortress might want.
Quality of the horn has a greater effect...
And maybe even a horn-blower skill

[Reign on your Parade]

And they train said hornblower skill how? I suppose you could create a soundproof room out of lead...

[Lightning4]

quote:Originally posted by Reign on your Parade:
<STRONG>And they train said hornblower skill how? I suppose you could create a soundproof room out of lead...</STRONG>

Practice on trumpets?

[Klokjammer]

I was thinking of having alarm objects (i.e. bells, whistles, horns) be placed around the fortress and have a range of effect (that can be set like room size but have a range cap?) that any panicking dwarf can use it when they see a hostile like a goblin, a known dwarf criminal, tantruming dwarves, or Kobolds (set off by really cowardly dwarves).

And/Or

link these objects to levers or pressure plates for a larger alarm system.  Or better yet flag a lever as an alarm lever so panicking civilians can use them w/o orders, but impose a limit that these levers are usable ONLY for alarms and NOT bridges, doors, or floodgates.  Better watch out for those mischievous gremlins, don't want them to put your fort in a panic.

[mickel]

Alarm traps are a good idea, and so are alarm buttons. A fire alarm might be interesting, though with the current situation, it'd cause the firefighters to run up and pick up everything that was burning, and then run around randomly in the fortress...