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[lastofthelight]

I'm slightly impatient, but not really that impatient. Most of my slighty impatience comes from a perception that the only real thing going into the next release is the new underground stuff. Honestly, I could care less about the tissue layer stuff, which is what it seems like 90% of the new stuff is. I mean, we have healthcare now too, but we could have had healthcare without the new tissue layers, and I doubt the various other improvements related to the new tissue layers, like combat changes etc, would have done so if not for the tissue layer stuff...which just seems sortof like a needless timekiller. And yes, I do read the devlog. Thats still my impression. Lots and lots of tissue stuff.

[Baughn]

I have a slightly different perspective on the "tissue-layer stuff". If you'll let me chime in..

What it looks like, to me, is a full-blown physical/anatomical simulation. The parameters in the new raws - elasticity, compressive/tensile strength, etc. - suggest as much, and while that was no doubt a bugger to implement, it should make development a lot faster in the future.

From now on, he won't have to walk through and edit all of DF to add a new kind of weapon or interaction. All he'll have to do is specify its physical characteristics, and the game will figure out the rest for itself.

[lastofthelight]

We can mod in new weapons on our own, right now though. Perhaps I'm just not understanding things because my coding experience is limited to basic, c, c++, html, and a few fringe development languages, but...I'm not sure why we need a full anatomy simulation.

If it makes some job easier though, then thats good, really. I just have a hard time imagining it really making things easier or being necessary.

[Baughn]

No, right now you can add new weapon names, and adjust their damage parameters slightly.

What you can't do is, for example, create a pitchfork and have it act correctly, with the possibility of piercing at three points, and the "crossbar" where they join, etc. To be honest, the raws probably won't have the detail to do that, either..

But Toady could. And all he'd have to do is provide a detailed description of the weapon; the game will do the rest.

It's altering the implementation cost from O(n), i.e. consider every possible interaction, to O(1), i.e. only describe its physical characteristics and let Armok sort them out.

[Footkerchief]

It's also intended to enrich the combat simulation and facilitate detailed physical descriptions of creatures.  If you aren't interested in those things, then yes, there isn't much for you in the tissue layers.  But it's nowhere near 90% of this release.

However, Baughn, I think you're slightly overstating the universality of the new system.  There's lots of obscure edge cases that don't appear to be getting handled yet (especially dealing with nonsolid tissues).  It's certainly a much better framework for future additions though, of which there will be many.

[Rowanas]

I'm looking forward to the new burrows and military stuff, but unfortunately the tissue layers aren't very exciting, and by the time they become truly useful, we'll have forgotten how much we put them down now. If it's gotta happen, it's gotta happen. When we're getting releases in 3 months, then we'll see what it was all for.

[Timst]

It also open the way for medical and anatomy improvement. Tags like [VASCULAR] are just the beginning.

[Footkerchief]

unfortunately the tissue layers aren't very exciting, and by the time they become truly useful,

They're already very useful, insofar as the awesome new wounding system entirely depends on them.

[gumball135]

What's with all of the nay-saying? The update will come when it's done, and it'll be epic (or it'll set the ground work for even greater features that'll come in the future). Just be patient, and ye'll be rewarded.

In the meantime, I think I'll keep myself busy by reading the many community games and failing spectacularly at the current version of DF.

[Rowanas]

Are we going to have to nerf all weapons? As combat becomes more and more deadly, the scale of DF will slowly mean that epic combats are harder and harder to come by. the average medieval full-scale battle saw thousands of troops marching on each other, with fights lasting hours or days at least. when you translate these numbers to DF, while accurate, they just fail to give you a long enough battle. It's almost over before it began. Will we be able to toughen everything by giving them skin as hard as rock?

[Aqizzar]

I think your idea of ancient warfare is a little skewed.  Sieges and battle arrangements could last days, where for the most part troops would just stand around shouting at each other, and occasionally lobbing a volley of arrows, but not very often so as to not waste them.  The actual swinging-chopping-stabbing portions of battles would typically last about as long as one charge, until one side or the other lost it's nerve and retreated.  This could cycle and repeat itself several times, but it's not like people were actually out there swinging a sword for hours on end.  No one has that kind of stamina.

[Footkerchief]

Will we be able to toughen everything by giving them skin as hard as rock?

Yes, there'll be a lot more ways to balance weapons and armor since effectiveness no longer depends on a single number.  It's not as if Toady is ignoring balance issues though -- he's been working on that recently, as indicated in the dev log.  There will still be balance problems though, just like in every game ever.

[Rowanas]

I think your idea of ancient warfare is a little skewed.  Sieges and battle arrangements could last days, where for the most part troops would just stand around shouting at each other, and occasionally lobbing a volley of arrows, but not very often so as to not waste them.  The actual swinging-chopping-stabbing portions of battles would typically last about as long as one charge, until one side or the other lost it's nerve and retreated.  This could cycle and repeat itself several times, but it's not like people were actually out there swinging a sword for hours on end.  No one has that kind of stamina.

I'm well acquainted with ancient warfare, actually

Skirmishing forces can fight for hours on end without tiring. I myself have partaken in small-scale classical warfare and a lightly armoured (maille or less) fighter can quite easily fight for three or fours hours without stopping or even getting too fatigued. this sounds a little longer than the "one charge" you put forward. I agree that whole battles didn't consist of people properly getting up close, but they could quite easily last longer than the "blink and you'll miss it" DF combat.

[LordNagash]

I think your idea of ancient warfare is a little skewed.  Sieges and battle arrangements could last days, where for the most part troops would just stand around shouting at each other, and occasionally lobbing a volley of arrows, but not very often so as to not waste them.  The actual swinging-chopping-stabbing portions of battles would typically last about as long as one charge, until one side or the other lost it's nerve and retreated.  This could cycle and repeat itself several times, but it's not like people were actually out there swinging a sword for hours on end.  No one has that kind of stamina.

I'm well acquainted with ancient warfare, actually

Skirmishing forces can fight for hours on end without tiring. I myself have partaken in small-scale classical warfare and a lightly armoured (maille or less) fighter can quite easily fight for three or fours hours without stopping or even getting too fatigued. this sounds a little longer than the "one charge" you put forward. I agree that whole battles didn't consist of people properly getting up close, but they could quite easily last longer than the "blink and you'll miss it" DF combat.

A situation where you're all playing fancy dress and swinging some swords around at each other with no intention of killing anyone is pretty different from going into an actual fight where people are trying to kill you.

For one thing, it's pretty hard to continue for three or four hours when someone has removed your head from your shoulders, or crushed your ribcage with a blow from a warhammer.

[Hyndis]

Any sort of combat where you're trying to kill another person is very fatiguing. No one can do this for extended periods of time.

Even in sport, same thing. Try fencing. You're trying to skewer the other person with a sword. Granted the swords are not sharp and you're wearing padded armor, but still, you're going to get really tired really fast.

Ranged weapons, like firearms, cause a lot less physical exertion though the mental fatigue is probably even greater.

Skirmishes where both sides spend more time running around than fighting are a different thing. But locking swords? You can't do that for more than a few minutes (of intense fighting at least) before both combatants are staggering around, seeing who will collapse first from exhaustion.

A lot of kills in medieval warfare were due to one side simply being too tired to fight on. Too tired to move or fight properly, they were cut down even while in plate armor. An exhausted knight in plate armor is no match for an archer with a dagger.