I haven't read the whole thread so forgive me if i'm rehashing some points.
Well done, I just did, between forgetting much of it and a large amount of repetitiveness(and not the sort that would be avoided by people reading previous posts...) I really can't say with confidence that it was a worthwhile use of forum time.
Personally, I'm in favor of tunneling units, I'm really in favor of anything that makes the game challenging without having to impose handicaps upon yourself (okay, i wont make my fort invincible, or too many traps... or should i build no traps... what's fair? etc)
As far as I can tell, What's fair is whatever you want. This is a single player game and cheating will only serve to limit your experience, maybe some experiences you don't want, if you like sieges that actually attack you, don't use anything that they 'cannot' overcome, if you don't like being slaughters before you've set up an archer tower and built a supply of bows, then shamelessly exploit drawbridges until you have it. If you can't figure out what you enjoy, don't expect Toady or the forum to figure it out for you...
Personally, I love traps, and I would like it if everything a lone civilian doesn't have a decent chance against were vulnerable to traps. Of course, vulnerable to traps doesn't need to mean defenceless, seeing some trap resistance percentages would be nice, a chance to spot them, a chance to avoid them, a chance to disarm them etc., but no immunity. But I digress...
although I think tunneling should be limited, only used rarely and only by certain threats. I think two steps that should be included before tunneling with regards to sieges:
-goblins being able to build crude bridges or rafts to cross channels/moats (or being able to swim over small ones, perhaps with a chance to drown in the process)
-goblins being able to break down any constructed walls/barriers after some time (and perhaps requiring multiple goblins working on the same tile). this would give a more realistic under siege feel, with archers trying to kill off the invaders while the invaders try to break in, instead of current seigers milling around on the other corner of the map while you sit inside comfortably.
I agree wholeheartedly, crossing barriers should slow enemies down and keep them in one place, making them ideal targets for archers. Just letting easily overcome all non-dwarf obstacles takes away any value in having them. a raised drawbridge should be a nightmare for all but the most well equipped of attacks.
and these could happen over subsequent seiges; eg goblins arrive and your fortress is impenetrable. perhaps they will attempt to break down wooden doors/bridges to get in. if they can't and eventually leave, the next seige comes prepared to cross channels and break down walls. if that fails, the next seige comes prepared to tunnel in.
Nice idea, but I worry a bit about excessive memory, if I can stop them taking detailed notes then they shouldn't be doing much more than making educated guesses, "there are traps in the main corridor" is a far cry from "Ten paces in, tripwire across door, causes blade to extend from ground. 14 paces in, pressure plate on ground, triggers caging mechanism. 15 paces in, spiderweb at head-hight broken, causes strange noises AAAAH MAGMA!!!!
i am also obsessed with aesthetics and dig the idea of temporary tunnels that would only admit the small/narrow creatures that dug them and close up after a time.
This seems quite common, and is a perfectly reasonable perspective, I think that there should be a 'pristine fortress' option that will cause everything except areas deliberately designated for mining to be left intact, so no enemy miners leaving tunnels, no multi-level cave-ins drilling a hole through your fortress, no glowing craters left by explosives, and no nasty obsidian filling up your lovely minimalist chamber...
Like I've said a while ago, tunneling should only happen IF the sieging force is decent enough...which is why I've suggested Siege Camps for example. 
I had an idea about camps independently, though I haven't read your thread yet I figure that they will get tired quickly, maybe after 3 or 4 tiles, and then go to a camp to rest if there is one, or if not then just go back home after doing their part...
Tunneling should be an absolute valid tactic, when the player's fortress is under blockade. I guess we agree?
Also [..but I've mentioned this already], some specific creatues must be able to dig tunnels. [Giant worms is a perfect example - think about the movie called "Dune".]
I don't really like the connection between tunnelling and blockading, I think that if they are able to dig tunnels, and can see advantage in doing so, that it should be considered...
Dune is a terrible example, I don't recall a single instance of a worm actually leaving a tunnel behind it, although some creatures that move through rock and may even consider open terrain to be an obstacle could be fun, though unrelated to this topic, not that that seems to be an issue...
Note: There should be more TAGs for individual creatures. Example:
[TUNNELING:SOFT] -> This creature Only digs tunnels through soft materials
[TUNNELING:HARD] -> This creature should be able to dig through rock even
A valuable suggestion that I would like to see implemented with any tunnelling, but it won't solve anything, if hard exists on anything some people will complain, and soft alone isn't going to be a challenge, many areas don't have ANY soft ground, and anyone can dig beneath the soft areas...
I like the idea of a "entrance tile" that represents a foriegn tunnel, without actually having antmen or seigers make swiss cheese out of your map.
*Sighs*, I don't, it seems to be exactly the sort of abstraction that Dwarf Fortress seems to be trying to avoid, and I feel that it would be better to disable enemy tunnelling completely rather than disrupt the 'feel' of the game. But I am not an expert on the 'feel' of Dwarf Fortress, so if I am wrong about that then... well, I am wrong about it...
Swiss cheese should only happen if your Antmen start building a nest... The problem should be getting them to attack from more than one tunnel, rather than having them having them use too many, they should all use the same algorithm for selecting a tunnel site, which should direct all of them to the same spot, and an existing tunnel should just make the site more appealing...
How about an event that causes a "bottomless pit" tile to appear at the bottom z-level and nasty things come out and attack you? You could use the pit to dump your rocks and shit or build a floor over it to keep the baddies from spawning in your fort. It'd be a bit like the chasm was back in the 2d version.
Interesting, not precisely on-topic, but certainly an idea, although any event that causes a spontaneous bottomless pit is likely to have more impact than the pit itself. The first thing that pops into my head is a nuclear meltdown...
As for units that actually mines and tunnels, I can see that slowing the game down to a crawl and making your typical OCD DF player foam at the mouth when goblins dig a shit ton of irregular tunnels into their farms. I don't dig that idea much.
If your worried about the "Typical OCD DF player", then having hostile tunnels default to off would fix that. Besides, most obvious methods of tunnelling should produce a very limited number of tunnels, to the point that there is less foaming at the mouth and more minor irritation, if you don't want minor irritation than you probably shouldn't have any opposition at all...
A wall in the tunnel will quickly shut off any excessive pathfinding, and without a reason to use it there shouldn't be any anyway. The tunnel planning only needs to be done once per squad, once it is planned they will just launch their miners at it, the problem will be all the miners charging your front-door to get at the far-end of the tunnel... Besides, more than a dozen miners should be pretty epic, the accompanying army should cause far more slowdown...
I just think there needs to be some threat to the fortress that is difficult to defend against. Goblins and Humans and everyone should beable to kick down your doors. You can do it in adventurer mode, seigers should beable to do it in Fortress Mode.
Well, yes, doors are mostly just to control dwarves and rooms. But it should be possible to jam doors closed to delay invaders and any actual defences should be worth the effort to build...
Trap avoid tags for more units. No group or civ will be caught in the same trap in the same location twice.
I couldn't agree less, from what I understand, trap avoid tags make things immune to traps, at which point you may as well just remove them from the game, complete immunity to anything detracts from people's freedom to build the way they want, make it trap resistance, and give people the ability to build better hidden, more difficult to avoid or disarm traps and I might agree with it.
The mechanic's guild will be up in arms at being forced to tear down all their traps and rebuild them in exactly the same spot again after every attack, and the idea of an entire civilisation automatically memorising a traps precise location and trigger just because one of their members triggers it seems a little excessive, possibly something more like surveyors who carefully examine and record discovered traps that they see and have time to record and relay that information if their notebook makes it off the map...
But honestly, who would go to all that effort, you are better off having your opponent use old traps with second-rate mechanisms and weak weapons than forcing them to constantly update...
Spies may come in handy though, particularly for finding good destinations for tunnels...
Any intelligent, agressive soldier should beable to topple structures like a building destroyer does now, but they should just be more selective about what they topple. They should avoid knocking down random floodgates. They should kick down your doors and pull down your statues and wreck your shit in general, just like invading soldiers do in real life.
Maybe, but within reason, there is no way a knight in armour with a sword and a shield is going to cut, tear, kick, or bludgeon their way into a bank vault, some things should require a certain level of strength, size, and/or equipment to deal with...
Some way to circumvent moats, or fill them in, deconstruct constructed walls like your aboveground walls. A dwarf child can knock down a wall, why not a goblin? How about seige engines that knock down walls from a distance? Goblins show up on scene, hang back and start assembling catapults to batter down your fortress, giving you a reason to get out of your comfort zone of your fortress and go do battle with them in the open, or give you incentive to build forward bunkers and fortifications out in the feild, at least.
These should, of course, be able to be turned off, some people don't want to ride out and meet their enemies outside of their comfort zone, some people want to see how their devious network of trapped mazes, or killing zones of ballistae, or complex flodding mechanism works...
Walls would act as a means to slow down the enemy, add incentive to make them thicker, but would never be an absolute barrier to aggressors, just like they were in warfare historically. No fortress, no fortification is inpenetratable.
2 goblin wrestlers with nothing but loincloths should find a granite wall pretty thoroughly impenetrable...
In history, a couple of guys can rob a farm, but assaulting a castle without engineers ranges from difficult to hopeless. Unless they have spoons, I have seen enough prison shows to know that a spoon can go through anything...
There are ways to make seiges challenging without having the AI burrow holes into your fortress. A scripted event that opens a "hole" in a wall or floor that seigers or antmen pour out of into a part of your fortress would be fine.
Fine? Possibly, but I suspect more likely to be confusing, random, and a serious breach of style...
Something easy to repair or fix that won't permanately ruin the asthetics of a player's fortress with permenant AI-dug rooms and tunnels everywhere. Imagine what the map would eventiually look like with seigers digging new tunnels every year?
It would look like a war-torn battlefield, what is it meant to look like after years of warfare?
Well there. Thats my opinion on it.
Hmmm, I probably AM being a touch hostile in places. This is exactly the place to be expressing opinions and I commend you for doing so!
Our homes we protect by the weapons we wield with the strength in our arms, the will of our minds, and the power of our unmovable conviction.
And in my case, a truly staggering amount of traps. 
Yep, some dwarves want to be an impenetrable wall, some want to build one, and still others like mechanisms and magma...
What if tunnels dug by tunneling creatures were unstable, and automagically refilled after some time? This would balance out the extra difficulty of tunneling creatures against the sheer aesthetic/logistic damage they can cause.
I think that consistency is valuable, it is nice if everyone is working under much the same rules...
This is why you need to read the rest of the thread before posting.
I figure that it is better to look like an idiot by posting something that has already been suggested than to BE an idiot by reading through a dozen pages of repetitive posts just because you thing you might have one useful suggestion. Putting up with irritation seems better than missing out on input...
On the topic of WW1, the British mines under the Messines Ridge during the battle of Passchendaele was a sapping act of almost dwarf proportions. Well, provided dwarfs had access to explosives...
When the dwarfs do get explosives more potent and stable than their booze, we'll see the world map rewritten several times over and over during wars.
Me, I want to see goblins use that against the dwarfs.
Urist McUseless cancels tantrum: Blown to Armok knows where.
Yeah, that is what I would like to see from explosives, guns and cannons just seem a little redundant and out-of-character to me.
I don't think that stable explosives are necessary. I think that unstable explosives fit the setting and attitude much better. Getting explosives to go off exactly when, where, and how you want is an ongoing pursuit of technology, and random explosions are more 'fun'.
Frequently-loves-animals the elf cancels hug tree: distracted by falling dwarf chunk.I imagine that AI digging would be very difficult to impliment... If they don't dig wet or hot stone, then you could simply just fill your moat with water. I can see them strictly into dirt, to encourage the player to build walls that extend down to the bedrock though.
I doubt it, first approach would be to just draw a line between a point on the surface and a target in the fortress.
Or have a single dig designation phase when a siege turns up, it uses the standard algorithm except that diggable material is considered to have a restricted movement value, maybe 20 tiles, if your entrance isn't a complete maze, and your fortress interior is a distance from open ground, then they won't path through any rock, if you really want to make it interesting, have dead creatures drop a hostile-only progressively restricted zone that will make enemies gradually less enthusiastic about pathing through an area where many past attackers have died. Of course, this may cause the game to stop for a few minutes while it paths through the entire map, but it would only happen once per siege...
Another approach would be to have them position themselves directly in line with their desired destination, if there are any obstacles, they try to dig under them, or build over them, or smash through them, they repeat this for the nearest of X or Y axes, then for the other, then they dig down if they are above it or build up if they are below it...
Maybe they just pick a spot at random and dig down...
I figure someone who actually knows what they are doing could come up with something much better...
DF already has crippling issues with pathfinding, I can't imagine how a digging AI unit could do anything besides grind your FPS to a halt.
Only path diggers once per squad, limit their pathfinding to a certain radius around a direct line between two points, there are ways it could be limited...
I think there are more simple and effective things that can be implimented to help seigers gain access to your fort besides making tunnels everywhere. Knocking down constructions and doors, and making traps more avoidable would be easy to impliment and would be difficult to defend against.
Not everywhere, they are pathfinding remember. The on/off nature of cage traps is a bit harsh, but otherwise, just use weaker traps, there is no reason you need to rely on traps if you don't want to, just as there is no reason you should be forced to rely exclusively on a military...
Fording rivers, bridging magma, leaping channels, smashing furniture, removing constructions, these all have one massive weakness, they all require that everyone go through your front door, enemies will always have to charge your multiple level archer towers, and will all have to fight at your bottleneck, and they will all need to go underneath your collapse trap. Tunnelling is unique in that it allows people to bypass any particularly ridiculous killing zones
Seigers constructing something to cross over a moat would be hard to code, I think, not to mention it'd be a pathfinding nightmare.... How about seigers go straight to your raised drawbridge, and interact with the bridge in a way that deconstructs it, and replaces it with their own bridge. A peice of seige equipment that crosses the moat and prevents the drawbridge from lowering, or something to that effect.
Shouldn't be, easy enough to have them continue to path through open space on the assumption that they can build their way across it, the trick is to stop them pathing over open space in the middle of nowhere, but it should be easy enough to pick channels from sky...
Well, yeah, but then they will go after any drawbridge, anywhere, regardless of whether or not it actually protects your fortress.
Seige equipment like mobile towers that allow them to go over walls or at least fill in moats have existed historically. A lot more common then the seigers attempting to dig under the walls. Digging tunnels IRL takes a very long time, its very loud and the defenders know you are digging and would wait for you to break through before they pour molten tar down your tunnel.
It is alot easier to carry several teams of diggers and tools then a siege engine, to the extent that many siege engine are actually built at the siege. Bracing for the tunnel evens it up somewhat, but it is still a desirable tactic to have a nice layer of earth between you and your enemy, and all they can really do to stop you collapsing their walls is to undermine your tunnel first. Siege towers are prone to catching on fire, and they generally have to be built at the site, from wood, and if someone manages to set it on fire then you become sad. Catapults, once again, are usually easier to build at the site than to take with you, and if they have wheels then they are probably less powerful. Battering rams probably couldn't turn in a hurry, Which would leave them vulnerable to any manner of traps, a simple ditch the size of your foot could probably cause it's wheels to get stuck, forcing someone to step out and get shot trying to fill it in...
Not to mention that a grand siege engine makes a much better story than an elaborate tunnel, I suspect that tunnels were used much more than you think. But subterranean fortresses, forest retreats, and dark towers would have to have a massive impact on siege practices...
What I would like to see:
A siege arrives, pulling wagons. They attack in force, but between your traps and archer towers they take heavy casualties and withdraw. They return to their wagons, which are dismantles to build a supply depot and some catapults. Soon your towers are broken, but you pulled your archers back and flooded the tunnels behind them, those paths will be blocked until crocodile-riding goblins with bags over their heads are implemented...
They send some engineers in with some escorts. Many traps are disarmed, but some go undiscovered, and some are triggered. after losing about a quarter of their engineers they pull back, walls are build around their camp while another assault is launched. The few remaining traps do good work, and you have underground battlements covering the approaches and a ballista bombarding them, soon they withdraw back to their camp, some desert, but most remain. Meanwhile you have not been idle, you have been digging a tunnel towards their camp. You undermine their depot, the building collapses with their food, much of which is destroyed, and the rest will start to rot if left unrecovered. Suddenly your tunnel is breached, you send your military in, but it is too late for your miner, who was waylaid from behind. A pitched battle erupts in the narrow tunnel. Your miners are sent to make a small room behind the battle when suddenly the tunnel widens, a goblin engineer loses an arm in the effort, but now your troops are fighting two to one. Your dwarves pull back to the room, where they fight three abreast, the goblins suffer massive casualties and withdraw. Injured and unprepared, you do not pursue. you seal up the tunnel behind your troops and wait, without food the goblins soon pack up and leave...
In time a team of goblin spies sneak into the fortress, some of them die, noisily, so the others try to run away. One is mauled by a dog, another runs into a guard, another is spotted by a hauler and is shot in the back from a battlement, but one escapes, and makes it back to their tower.
Soon another siege arrives, once again they attack, once again they are driven off and make camp. You see them start to tunnel, they seem to tire quickly, usually only digging two or three tiles before returning to their camp to rest. The tunnel is on a direct line to your troops forward supply depot. You assemble your troops there and wait...
The wall is breached in three places, goblins start trying to rush your troops through the narrow openings, Things seem to be going well, when you notice the rest of their force rushing through the entrance. Many have died on the traps, but many more are past them. It is too late to man the ballista, you rush your military to a choke-point. The few remaining at the breach are on almost equal terms, fighting bravely, while the bulk of your forces is nearby holding back the tide. You notice engineers in the main entrance, disarming traps and gleefully running off with the components. After a long and costly battle the goblins withdraw to their camp, while you set about sealing the breach, and tending to your wounded. With your army in no state to fight, and a now much reduced enemy force with full supplies, it will be a long time before you hear word from the outside world...
So... mostly I want them to only dig a few tiles before getting tired and taking a rest, either in a camp if they have one, or leaving the siege if they don't. And, obviously, I would love an easy way to have masons fill in an entire corridor without having to attend to each tile individually for fear of my masons getting trapped...
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Topic: [For or Against] Tunnelers units (Read 64500 times)