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For !

Against !

[shoowop]

Well I hear ya but you can't have everything.  DF is all about having to maintain a fortress in a realistic and unforgiving environment; you're gonna have to take the risks and lose a little somewhere along the line.

Take it as an opportunity to try some new fortress designs.  Maybe focusing all your aesthetically pleasing areas in the "center" of your fortress, while the "shell" is more defense/reinforcement based.

[Ephemeriis]

I'm for...  But I'd like to see some way to discourage critters from tunneling into various places.  Maybe the ability to fortify the walls of my fortress.

Could be designated/executed similarly to smoothing & engraving walls...  Maybe make them mutually exclusive, so you can't have a wall that is both engraved and fortified, which would make you choose between security and happy thoughts.  Maybe require metal bars or additional stone to fortify a tile.

[Sfon]

I voted against. I'm not for certain against there ever being tunneling, but before you leap on me let me explain. No-one is going to care about this poll in ten years. Most people will have changed their mind somehow, and the game will be rather different. Voting 'yes' because you'll like to see them in ten years or so, IF they are done the way you want, seems to me to be misleading and at least no less conditional than my 'no' vote.

As the game is now, or seemingly will be in the near enough future for this poll to mean anything, I do not want tunneling. When the game is further in development with all this stuff people say will be in there, then I will re-evaluate based on that future game. I'm not going to guess on whether I might like it or not with a future DF with features I have no experience with currently. At the bare minimum I'd want to see how an unbuggy system for enemies breaking down doors, building bridges, etc (which I definitely want to see) effects the game first.

[shoowop]

I'm for...  But I'd like to see some way to discourage critters from tunneling into various places.  Maybe the ability to fortify the walls of my fortress.

Could be designated/executed similarly to smoothing & engraving walls...  Maybe make them mutually exclusive, so you can't have a wall that is both engraved and fortified, which would make you choose between security and happy thoughts.  Maybe require metal bars or additional stone to fortify a tile.

Yea, walls made of metal bars makes sense.  Can't engrave em, can't break through em.

[PTTG??]

How about if tunnelers have a maximum distance they want to tunnel? So they could easilly dig through a one-tile wall, but not thousands of tiles over and down through an entire mountain, especially if there's an easier, albeit trapped, passage. For one thing, this would encourage real dwarfhomes dug down into the roots of the mountains, not your airy elven palaces dug into the soil levels.
 
Archetecture is all about compromising form for function in interesting ways. If you really don't want invaders digging into your base, well, turn off invaders.

[ManaUser]

I think, for the time being I would like to see enemies with some way to get through constructions, possibly soil layers, and oh yeah, doors but not natural rock. This seems like a good compromise between allowing some part of your fortress to be truly safe (and free from architectural defilement), and making it hard to completely hole up. The only ways to seal your fortress in natural stone are cave-ins and magma casting. Both fairly drastic measures. We could even let invaders slowly smash through obsidian (which is after all, a type of glass), leaving cave-ins as the only option. Perhaps after the siege framework, including countermeasures, is well developed it would be time to take a second look giving enemies a way to bypass solid rock.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well I hear ya but you can't have everything.  DF is all about having to maintain a fortress in a realistic and unforgiving environment; you're gonna have to take the risks and lose a little somewhere along the line.

Actually, I would disagree with this.

I tend to think of there being two different appeals in Fortress mode - there are the people who want to play a Dwarf Fortress, and there are people who want to play Dwarf Erector Set.  People probably fall somewhere in the spectrum between the two (although I tend much more towards the Erector Set side of things, myself), but there are people who are all about the combat, and want ever-rising existential threats to their dwarves to the point where they don't even consider using traps or crossbows or any defense but doors and their meticulously trained champions, and then there are the people who spend all their time making dwarfputers from waterwheels and pressure plates, and don't even look up when a seige comes along.

(In fact, it is in reference to that divide that I try and make some suggestions regarding things like making dwarven society more complex, as it would give a third dimension/draw for players to enjoy.)

Then, of course, there are the Adventure Mode players...

It is a credit to DF and Toady that there actually is enough depth to the game that such a seperate set of players can enjoy the same game, and that seperation shouldn't be so easily dismissed.

[Mckee]

I have not read the whole post, so if this has been said, I apologise, but I had a brain wave.

If tunnelling went ahead - a few points really.

Firstly, the AI would not realistically start the tunnel two miles away, they would get as close as they could safely and then begin digging. This allows the dwarves to 'sally out' and quickly attack the sappers, before retreating inside. This promotes a more active defence, which I think would make a much more interesting experience. Furthermore, there are a million suggestions for counter tunnels or prepared defences, which seem another valid way to tackle tunnellers. This presumes a working Military, which goes without saying, but that relates to all sieges. The siege would not all be clustered around the tunnel, especially if camps are formed, since attackers would have to eat and sleep, and would not want to draw attention or crowd the sappers. The timing aspect of this adds a tactical element to sallying out.

My main Idea relates to how to deal with the tunnels left behind by tunnellers. Make them collapsible with some kind of mechanism, IE, using the engineer type skills and some basic engineering items - mechanisms and levers. The player 'builds' two spots (at the beginning and end of the tunnel) and then links them to a lever. This level is pulled, the tunnel is collapsed, either all of it, OR just the two ends, but the intervening tunnel is hidden. Thats a minor point, I wouldn't care either way.

This means those who want to completely remove the tunnels afterwards can do so promptly, those who want to keep them, can. It also allows you to perhaps prepare a trap for the next siege, by collapsing the tunnel when it is reoccupied by goblins. Make it usable only on none player constructed tunnels (if thats code-able) to prevent supper easy traps and all other possible uses of the 'collapse' designation or build, and voila.

[Untelligent]

Idea: Keep diggers turned on, and use their vandalism as a PART of your fort's aesthetics. What's better than a giant-ass castle? A giant-ass castle with the wear and tear of a decade-long war! Give it that historical, "lived-in" flavor! You, too, can someday own an authentic 30-story relic of the War of Warring! Goblins tear down the south-by-southwest tower? Turn it into a tourist attraction! "Look, little Urist Jr., you can still see the blood-stains on the remains of those fortifications!"

[Lord Shonus]

Combine it with asthetics mods (display cases an the like) and you'll be able to have a whole museum about the battle, with goblin helmets, weapons from both sides, etc.

[RAM]

My main Idea relates to how to deal with the tunnels left behind by tunnellers. Make them collapsible with some kind of mechanism, IE, using the engineer type skills and some basic engineering items - mechanisms and levers. The player 'builds' two spots (at the beginning and end of the tunnel) and then links them to a lever. This level is pulled, the tunnel is collapsed, either all of it, OR just the two ends, but the intervening tunnel is hidden. Thats a minor point, I wouldn't care either way.

This could apply to any tunnels and may warrant a separate thread.

It seems to me that there are people who specifically want the aesthetic of having tunnels into a fortress, maybe an option to restore the fortress to its presiege state would satisfy some people, but it seems like a lot of trouble for a relatively minor point, turning tunnelling on and off lets people pick their preferred option, it won't suit everyone perfectly, but I would hope that it would be satisfactory...

Second, I think the most important reason that digging would seem necessary is because of the deadliness of individual traps, and also the option for setting traps en masse. Digging will not defeat soldiers, they can move to where they are needed. Digging is there to defeat traps and only traps! Currently a repeating weapon trap is far too effective. All traps should be one offs. Goblins need tools to defeat masses of traps. Perhaps they can bring an army of kidnap victims to jam up the minefields. Think of ways other than digging for a goblin siege to defeat a snaky line of a hundred traps.

Even without buildable traps though, there are other things like drowning rooms and magma rooms that goblins need to recognize as impassable, even though it's pathable, after a certain number of casualties. Obviously we don't want goblins simply avoid these things right off the bat, but they should learn after receiving mass casualties in an area. This is where they may need to dig. If they must dig, it should be slow enough that a prepared defense force can sally out and beat them without alot of damage caused.

I like my defences to consist of an entirely underground passage terminating in a battlement with catapults and crossbowdwarves in battlements, all of which is about 5 storeys tall. I typically have one or two lines of single whip traps to damage morale and catch retreating goblins, I usually try to set up some sort of water flood for emergencies too. The thing is, that all of these require the enemy to come in through the only tunnel ever dug into the fortress. The thing is, that the ONLY defence that tunnelling will not defeat is melee soldiers, and they can almost as easily walk out the front door and kill the tunnellers in the back, rendering the whole issue moot...

[Kanddak]

I'm appalled at the number of pro-digging-enemies players who temper their favor for the idea with suggestions that invaders' digging should be very slow, weak, and vulnerable.
I want (the option) to go to war with a rival dwarven civilization who bring teams of legendary miners, masons and mechanics with their armies and can do everything I can do, and if I survive I want to survive because I outwitted the game, not because it's rigged to let me win.

[RCIX]

That's because people like playing Dwarf Erector Set

[Zafmg]

Fact of the matter is that if Toadbro is intent on creating a realistic and coherent world, he's going to eventually allow the A.I. controlled entities to do everything you can do. Bro.

It'll be an init.txt option anyway.

Would also make sense that certain walls would be impossible to dig through by standard means. Can't much make headway through solid steel with a copper pick.

[RAM]

The problem is that realistic mining would be sufficiently slow to start to suck some fun out of the game. But if you applied the same principals to invaders then they could go from the edge of the map to your lever room before you can say "But if you pull both of those at once it will flood my barracks with magma!". Not that a few dozen legendary miners turning up from different directions all with orders to 'seek and pull levers' wouldn't introduce a certain amount of Fun into the game...