Print

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

[Iden]

What are the odds of losing a game of chess?

The odds should be very low if you defend against it properly, and very high if you don't. When tunnelers show up on the map, whether as part of a siege or just a random tunneling beast, they should behave in some suitable way, and if you kill the tunneler or redirect it away from your fortress, you don't get breached. Otherwise you do.

It seems one of the recurring fallacies of game design is that it's possible to balance out very game-upsetting events by giving them very low probabilities. (You see this in a lot of tabletop RPGs: "I rolled a natural 20! That's an automatic critical hit!") This is "balancing" in the statistical sense (the expected value of screwage due to the planet exploding for no reason equals the expected value of screwage due to your dwarves needing to eat), but certainly not in the perceived-fairness sense. Perceived-fairness balance consists of having good or bad stuff happen in response to making good or bad moves.

It also leads to a game where, most of the time, nothing very interesting comes out of these random rolls, because any dramatic result has to be infrequent.

(Negative thoughts? Um, legendary dining room. Try again.)

Well said, good sir, well said.

I don't disapprove of being able to disable tunneling through Tags/raws and other modding. It might not be a bad idea, infact. Specifically for those who truly hate the idea.

To try to add to what Irmo said, Epics aren't written as a win-win-win-epicwin-win stories. That gets boring. There's no surprise, there's no achievement through hard work, no pride & joy at overcoming overwhelming odds. There's a lack of excitement and suspense. Great stories include tragedy and loss. Achilles, practically a superhero amongst men, is taken down in one good (lucky?) blow. Sucks, really does, but that's life.

Sure I can't deny that some people like the win-win montyhaul uber games. Some of us don't.

If you really don't want tunneling to own you, defend it. Build an outer "debuffer" tunnel surrounding your fortress, so that your enemies that dig in break into this tunnel and get funneled into fake tunnels to be lead out at a chokepoint where you can dispose of them with relative ease. If you think this takes the challenge out of it, simple: don't build such debuffer walls.

[Musluk]

I wrote a long post, but then I decided not to post it. Instead I'll just say a few short words - I don't think widespread diggers are a good idea, due to the AI constraints and ramping the starting difficulty level too high than intended.

[Iden]

I wrote a long post, but then I decided not to post it. Instead I'll just say a few short words - I don't think widespread diggers are a good idea, due to the AI constraints and ramping the starting difficulty level too high than intended.

I should sometimes do the same, I fear. 

Widespread diggers? Eh, who said anything about 'widespread' diggers? Unless i'm taking what you said out of context here, and misunderstood your use of the word. All we would need is diggers to be programmed. The AI doesnt exist now, but it needs to be added for this to be in - this isn't something that should be just slapped into the game. "Due to AI constraints". Well you fix the AI to do what you want to. Like any other feature Toady adds, there is more than 1 piece to it going in. Better AI would be a part of that. Mobs would need to dig only a certain amount, and not go partying with a pick-axe across the entire map.

Starting difficulty? Starting difficulty varies. And last I checked: Losing is Fun! How does this affect starting difficulty much, if at all? You won't get sieged for a while unless you are close to a hostile civ. Presumably you wouldn't be getting tunneling 100% of the time, either.

Difficulty depends on where you start. "Starting difficulty higher than intended." How is that possible? If you don't want to be sieged early, don't start a fortress really close to hostile civilizations. You set your own difficulty by making the appropriate choices, and then counter-acting them with defenses and alternative plans. If you want to, then take the proper precautions. Just like you wouldn't build a fort really close to a demon-owned goblin fort and expect to not build a gate and fortifications somewhat early on. If you don't want a "higher starting difficulty", you build away from it, and take the proper precautions a little more liesurely.

This "causing" difficulty to be too high too early on is a misconception. Location affects difficulty far more than this. Location dictates how soon you might have sieges. Sieges would dictate a potential for tunneling. While this may increase difficulty for those seeking more difficult games, it does not affect difficulty in any other way early on. It cannot. Not unless you plan on having a safe location and pissing off some elves or humans really early for laughs. But then that's your own fault.

How intelligent are goblins? Sure, dwarves digging in would be a serious porblem, as they're master diggers. Goblins also dig -- what about them? Well, I guess it really depends on how smart Toady wants them, but my understanding of Gobos is that they are less intelligent. Goblin tunneling should be a little more basic and iffy than dwarfen tunneling. It should be more inefficient. But as i've said a few times, in no ways should tunneling be anything more than digging for a select purpose -- not digging randomly -- but digging a tunnel to a specific place and nothing more. No random swisscheese.

[Random832]

Dude, plate tectonics have been proven to be nonexistent for years.

uhhhhh what?

I think you may have misheard something. The discredited theory is continental drift, which is distinct from plate tectonics but close enough that people sometimes misuse it as a synonym. So probably in a typical instance of the telephone game, someone heard that continental drift was discredited, then passed this on to someone else who misunderstood it as plate tectonics being discredited.

[Hyndis]

(Negative thoughts? Um, legendary dining room. Try again.)

By negative thoughts, I don't mean the type where a dwarf is upset about noise while sleeping. I'm talking about negative thoughts on par with the death of a family member. And they should stack. With relatively frequent checks.

So if you have to bottle up the fortress for a short time, your fortress is merely a bit annoyed. Wait longer and its unhappy. Then it'll be very unhappy. Wait long enough and they go insane.

That solves the issue of sappers without turning the mountain into swiss cheese by year 2.

[Musluk]

Widespread diggers? Eh, who said anything about 'widespread' diggers?

I meant as every siege containing at least 1 digger unit, changed by race constraints. Goblin sappers, orcish marauders, heck, kobold engineers finding a way into your fortress is fine. Doing it every siege, every time, is not.

Unless i'm taking what you said out of context here, and misunderstood your use of the word. All we would need is diggers to be programmed. The AI doesnt exist now, but it needs to be added for this to be in - this isn't something that should be just slapped into the game. "Due to AI constraints". Well you fix the AI to do what you want to. Like any other feature Toady adds, there is more than 1 piece to it going in. Better AI would be a part of that. Mobs would need to dig only a certain amount, and not go partying with a pick-axe across the entire map.

Problem is Toady's approach to pathfinding, I'm afraid. The AI constraint phrase I mentioned is that there'll have to be a better way to pathfind for creatures - the basic sieger ai just calculates given DIRECT paths to your dwarves, and closed doors can prevent this. And with randomized worlds, forts and what have you, designing a working algorithm for pathfinding to also include digging may be too much. It is possible, but it won't be in a small time scale. There are other arcs coming in and whatnot. Then there's the possibility to exploit any given pathfinding algorithm. There should be upper limits (and lower limits) to digging, 0-6 diggers per siege, 12-48 tiles per tunneler, whatnot.

Starting difficulty? Starting difficulty varies. And last I checked: Losing is Fun! How does this affect starting difficulty much, if at all? You won't get sieged for a while unless you are close to a hostile civ. Presumably you wouldn't be getting tunneling 100% of the time, either.

Well, Losing is Fun, unless you're bound to lose without even having an option to change the outcome. I mean, you can isolate dwarves against tantrum spirals, you CAN always savescum and design some traps, you can change your plans, you can airdrown the carp etc etc. Things should remain random, but without any option to see your effort's outcome, losing becomes un-fun very fast.

Difficulty depends on where you start. "Starting difficulty higher than intended." How is that possible? If you don't want to be sieged early, don't start a fortress really close to hostile civilizations. You set your own difficulty by making the appropriate choices, and then counter-acting them with defenses and alternative plans. If you want to, then take the proper precautions. Just like you wouldn't build a fort really close to a demon-owned goblin fort and expect to not build a gate and fortifications somewhat early on. If you don't want a "higher starting difficulty", you build away from it, and take the proper precautions a little more liesurely.

This "causing" difficulty to be too high too early on is a misconception. Location affects difficulty far more than this. Location dictates how soon you might have sieges. Sieges would dictate a potential for tunneling. While this may increase difficulty for those seeking more difficult games, it does not affect difficulty in any other way early on. It cannot. Not unless you plan on having a safe location and pissing off some elves or humans really early for laughs. But then that's your own fault.

You can't 'build away' from tunneling siegers, though. That's the problem. There should be either raw-controllable tunneler options, or no tunnelers, because of the swiss-cheese problem and dwarves having no relatively 'natural' way to rebuild a scenery. There's also the fact that all of these things are a personal matter - I have given gobbos higher damblocks, for example. I like them a bit resiliant, and more aggressive. But I don't want orcs. You, for example, might be so sick from the lack of sieges, you installed orc mod and gave them absurd damblocks.

All I say is -so far- Dwarves are the diggers of this universe as default. And it'd be absurd for non-dwarves to dig as proficiently as dwarves (AI constraint) or fast as dwarves (Difficulty). They should not cause random cave-ins (AI and Swiss-cheese constraints), or they should be re-routable, preventable, somehow.

[ThtblovesDF]

As I said in the other thread, its Acceptable if;

Digging things do not dig into water/magma.
Diggers canīt penetrate smoothed/engraved stone/walls.

[praguepride]

As I said in the other thread, its Acceptable if;

Digging things do not dig into water/magma.
Diggers canīt penetrate smoothed/engraved stone/walls.

First of all, this really needs to be moved to the existing 18 page tunnel thread.

Second, if they can dig tunnels (and the tunnels are actually represented) then why can they magically not penetrate a smoothed/engraved wall? It makes no sense...

[irmo]

As I said in the other thread, its Acceptable if;

Digging things do not dig into water/magma.
Diggers canīt penetrate smoothed/engraved stone/walls.

Can we stop this "can't dig through smoothed/engraved walls" absurdity, please? Anything that can dig through natural rock isn't going to be stopped by the fact that the other side of the rock is smooth.

If you really want something they can't dig through, make some iron blocks and construct a wall.

[eerr]

rock is harder to dig through than dirt.

Okay, After considering several ideas, I've decided to start with dirt diggers.

if anyone can produce swiss cheese or dig at a faster rate, creatures that dig through sand and dirt will be most common.

goblins and other mole and ant like creatures will dig for various reasons.
short tunnels are reasonable in dirt, and long tunnels are not impossible for most creatures.(20 tiles for long, 6 for short)

rock will require several times more... time to dig through, and 20 tile long tunnels should take at least 6 months, minimum.
few creatures can dig through rock, including goblins.


dwarves need a defense against tunneling creatures, and it's reasonably impossible to fortify a natural rock wall against rock tunnelers using rock.

all three kinds of moats(lava,water,empty) are ideal for this, however, it's far too demanding for the average fortress to build them.

possible methods of dig-proofing include
making rock walls to block dirt diggers,
metal reinforced stone walls to block all diggers
(though it seems unlikely to be that much better if something can dig through solid rock)
booby-trapped walls.
booby-trapped hallways.

chemical discouragement(boozeahol alcove drives away diggers that reach the halway)

early detection (some sort of giant drum, to detect any decently-paced rock mining.)

that said, rock mining will be nowhere near the problem of enemy dirt-mining.
rock walls/floors should easily prevent that, assuming you don't have to proof an entire dirt-based fortress

[RAM]

I like the idea of antmen making a giant ant nest, it would add an interesting feature to the landscape, but it would need to have some limitations to stop them being some ridiculous plague upon all dwarf-kind, like carp...

I like the idea of bears digging holes and hibernating in them, then there would be all these cute little bear holes all over the place...

I like the idea of animals building holes and storing stuff in them, and building hatches over them to keep the thieving dwarves out...

I like the idea of sieges being able to tunnel to avoid that bottleneck of traps/marksdwarves/magma that has claimed entire towers of goblins with none of them getting more than three tiles in...

I do not like the idea of kittens adopting someone then picking a direction at random and digging as soon as they are born...

Of course, if you want to mod them in that is your business...