Orcs strike me as rather powerful. An example:
I attempted a challenge fortress in a desert biome. Due to a lack of created wealth and goods to trade, by spring of the second year my population had grown by approximately zero. I hadn't built any defenses full stop (who does at that point?).
"A vile force of darkness has arrived!"
I'm outnumbered at least 3:1 by orc raiders. They rush in and kill everything.
Reload backup. Now, I'm not normally one for that sort of thing, but the situation struck me as so out-of-the-blue that I decided I probably deserved another try.
I build floodgates and connect them to a lever.
"A vile force of darkness has arrived!"
Close gates. Build a few rows of stone-fall traps (I'm not normally one for trap abuse either, but I still feel that the situation demanded it because, let's face it, I hadn't a hope in hell). Open gates. Orcs run straight across the traps without activating any of them, rush in, and kill everything.
Open raws. Remove [trAPAVOID] tag from creature_orc.txt. Delete data/objects. Reload backup. Build and link gates. Close gates. Build traps. Open gates.
"A vile force of darkness has arrived!"
Orcs run straight into the traps, get hit, keep running, and kill everything.
Reload backup. Build and link gates. Close gates. Build about twelve rows of traps. Open gates.
"A vile force of darkness has arrived!"
Orcs run into traps, and after a while, bleed to death. Victoly!
(literally) Ten minutes later...
"A vile force of darkness has arrived!"
SIXTY-odd orcs, all riding beak dogs, and lead by at least two master warriors.
Now, while the situation I'm talking about here is very much in the extreme, there's something in particular that bugs me about this: it's not that the orcs attacked me almost immediately (that could easily have been due to me embarking too close to one of their fortresses), nor the orcs being really bloody strong (that's how they should be). It's the [trAPAVOID] you gave them. As far as I see it, giving a race that is not remotely canny/tech-savvy/stealthy, let alone one that almost entirely ignores fear and pain, trapavoid strikes me as a bit silly. It's almost as if the orcs have been designed on the basis that they should be incredibly strong as opposed to actually acting like orcs.
The flip side of the argument is, of course, that [trAPAVOID] stops players from abusing the trap system, and puts the focus on military. Well, what about those players who use it legitimately? I'm of the school of thought that traps have a place in fortress defense, alongside militant dwarfs.
Alright, I'll put it to you like this: there's no logical reason why the orcs should have the trapavoid tag other than to stop players from overly relying on traps. But in a sandbox-esque game like dwarf fortress, user choice is paramount - and fortress defense is one of those choices. Stopping players from using features isn't going to win anything, because it stops players who use traps legitimately from using them (and therefore makes the mod unnecessarily difficult, and shallower), and stops the players who abuse the traps system from playing altogether.
I'm aware that this post is pretty negative, and I have to say that I really like all of the additions in the mod... other than trapdodging orcs, of course.
