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[Footkerchief]

Yeah, I know you're not trying to make mining a headache. I just noticed the push for a more realistic mining experience, and cautioned against taking that line of thought too far.

Yes, there'll always be a balancing act there.  I'm poking through a tome of modern mining techniques on Google Books and yeah, nobody in their right mind would want it as complicated as it could possibly be.  Partly because it would be ungodly hard to program (more realistic cave-ins could get there pretty fast), and partly because it won't give players an experience they can understand or relate to, even as a challenge.

Kind of hard to trim this down for my point but if your sword skill adds to your mace skill (*I'm not sure if the above just substitutes sword/3 if it's higher than mace or adds them together,) then that first question of why we'd need to train up skills we weren't using kind of falls in on itself as being really obvious.

I guess I'm missing the obvious, as I don't see how skill synergies would negate any of what Neonivek and I brought up about unarmed combat skills.  Anyway, that skill synergy calculation was a simplified hypothetical example -- it's not coming in the next release, and it'll be more complicated when it does.

[Shoku]

I guess I'm missing the obvious, as I don't see how skill synergies would negate any of what Neonivek and I brought up about unarmed combat skills.  Anyway, that skill synergy calculation was a simplified hypothetical example -- it's not coming in the next release, and it'll be more complicated when it does.

Why train skills you're not going to use? Having skills that come into play when you're not using them would be one painful reason.

The needing them only rarely reason is better though.

[Footkerchief]

Why train skills you're not going to use? Having skills that come into play when you're not using them would be one painful reason.

The needing them only rarely reason is better though.

I might be misunderstanding what you're getting at, but the point of skill synergies is that your effective skill level gets bonuses from related skills, not penalties.  Hence "synergy."

[Lancensis]

Why train skills you're not going to use? Having skills that come into play when you're not using them would be one painful reason.

Mm. No matter how many times I've never needed swimming in Adventure mode, all it takes is one champion skillfully dodging into a river to make sure I never neglect to take it.

Is this the release where immigrants come from existing world populations, or is that some way off, still?

[Footkerchief]

Is this the release where immigrants come from existing world populations, or is that some way off, still?

Don't know about way off, but it's not this release.  I'd be very surprised if it's left undone by the time Toady gets to this dev_next item:

#  III.A.1: Replacement of generated caravans in dwarf mode with actual caravans (part of Core3) 

[Lancensis]

Ah well. The reason I brought it up is because it occurred to me that immigrants never have incidental skills like these, or even any variety in their skill levels. It'd be nice to have immigrants turn up with a couple of levels in conversationalist, or swimming. Would give them a bit of history.

[Greiger]

Mm. No matter how many times I've never needed swimming in Adventure mode, all it takes is one champion skillfully dodging into a river to make sure I never neglect to take it.

From my experience even with swimming skill, dodge into a pool and you'll drown.  By dodging in you fall 1 z level.  Any fall causes a temporary stun effect. Being stunned while in 7 deep water means your drowning regardless of swimming skill.  And once you start drowning you can't stop, or climb out without the aid of a ramp (which don't exist anywhere but oceans naturally.)

Maybe just a quick 2% per level of swimming skill chance to stop drowning per turn when not stunned paralyzed or unconscious with open space in the z level above.  How often do Olympic divers drown because they forgot how to stay above water after their fall?

Would make swim skill actually mean something in adventure mode, and might reduce the dreadfulness of carp if your specially "trained in a wading pool fisherdwarves" had a chance of recovering from diving in to wrestle one to death.  Even if they still had to wait for a miner to come dig them a ramp due to pathing.

But that is wandering a bit into suggestions territory.

So anyway, YAY! More reason to actually pay attention to personalities gameplay wise!  If you pick a lazy slacker for your military they'll be too lazy to bother training when the commander is away!

And I can just imagine how that crossbow lesson went.

"So I shot the bolt but it went down a little bit before it hit the target so there must be a downdraft in the practice room.  We need to tell the miners to fix that.  Anyway I couldn't really get the string to go all the way back on the second shot, so I just hooked it on some sliver near the front, and when I fired it the bolt just fell off the crossbow and pierced my third toe left foot.  The wind musta really been blowing down really hard.  I don't see why it didn't hit the target otherwise.  Anyway I think I'm a pro at this now, so I'm gunna go hunting hippo, don't worry about this week's plump helmet harvest, just throw parties and let it rot, I'll be back with oodles of food in a jiffy."

[Footkerchief]

From my experience even with swimming skill, dodge into a pool and you'll drown.  By dodging in you fall 1 z level.  Any fall causes a temporary stun effect. Being stunned while in 7 deep water means your drowning regardless of swimming skill.  And once you start drowning you can't stop, or climb out without the aid of a ramp (which don't exist anywhere but oceans naturally.)

I think you do recover from drowning at higher skill levels, but I could be wrong.  Drowning IS awfully harsh though, no question about it.  I'm going to go test it.

e: yeah, my Expert Swimmer adventurer dodged into 7/7 water and got stunned as expected, but never even started drowning.

[Koji]

I don't know if anyone suggested this yet, and I'm too lazy to look, but you could have training blunt weapons made of padded cloth and wood. Maybe like 1x log and a bolt of cloth at the clothier's or carpenter's workshop could make a training hammer or mace.

[zwei]

I don't know if anyone suggested this yet, and I'm too lazy to look, but you could have training blunt weapons made of padded cloth and wood. Maybe like 1x log and a bolt of cloth at the clothier's or carpenter's workshop could make a training hammer or mace.

Like ... nerf bats?

Anyhow:

Back in squad training, one new recruit did 25 bolts worth of individual archery practice and then ran back to the barracks to give an archery lecture to everybody that was unfortunate enough not to have ammunition -- a dabbler teaching the completely unskilled. I guess he was just talking about how cool it was or something. A few dabblers rose out of that lesson. They must think crossbows are cool now too.

Cool!

[TKTom]

I don't know if anyone suggested this yet, and I'm too lazy to look, but you could have training blunt weapons made of padded cloth and wood. Maybe like 1x log and a bolt of cloth at the clothier's or carpenter's workshop could make a training hammer or mace.

Like ... nerf bats?

 Well, next best thing.

 Google says they did practise using wood. I presume you break up your training into combat tactics and being able to accurately whack something hard.

 http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/warhammer.htm

Warhammer Training
Skill in the use of Medieval weapons and understanding the strategy of Medieval Warfare was necessary and a played a vital part in Medieval life. The training required by a Foot Soldier to use the Warhammer :

    *

      Training method - The training method practised in the use of the Warhammer was based on strength and accuracy in hitting, or 'bashing' the target
    *

      A "hit" was scored in Medieval weapons training by making light contact with a defined target area. A blunted or wooden weapon was used when practising with an opponent

 I like the way that it puts "bashing" in speech marks. As though its a technical term and people might misunderstand.

[Shoku]

Why train skills you're not going to use? Having skills that come into play when you're not using them would be one painful reason.

Mm. No matter how many times I've never needed swimming in Adventure mode, all it takes is one champion skillfully dodging into a river to make sure I never neglect to take it.

Is this the release where immigrants come from existing world populations, or is that some way off, still?

Oh right, I had nearly forgotten to give my latest fort a swim training hallway.

[Lancensis]

No tag, (or Adequate as they're apparantly going to be called now) Swimmers can jump into a pool and survive. They get stunned (unless you move carefully to the river instead of the open space above it, but even if they start drowning, they usually recover before any damage is done.

Novice Swimmers can walk down into water and swim alright, but if they jump in, they panic and start to drown. I'm not sure if they recover rapidly enough to survive, but you can survive even if you start drowning. There are a lot of conditions and quirks that I don't fully understand, though. Once you get to Adequate, you're usually alright to leap into a river and become a Legendary carp wrestler

[Chthonic]

Having different types and severities of cave-ins would help, yes. In fact, it's not a bad idea at all.

I wonder how cave-ins will work with the new natural caverns.  I imagine a nightmare scenario where your dwarves break into the underground and the whole map collapses.

[Shoku]

Having different types and severities of cave-ins would help, yes. In fact, it's not a bad idea at all.

I wonder how cave-ins will work with the new natural caverns.  I imagine a nightmare scenario where your dwarves break into the underground and the whole map collapses.

Even if the layer is mostly open space it wouldn't be too terribly difficult to populate it with enough columns to keep it up even with the old 6x6 collapse rule. That's probably not ever coming back though and can probably expect larger sections of rock that open up into those areas (after all, there's got to be something for you to mine down into to get to those spaces in the first place.)