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[TotalPigeon]

Couple of points: we already have recover wounded jobs for single dwarfs. Having two dwarfs and a stretcher would just make things a lot more complicated, so I'm inclined to say no to that.

Issues with the doctor noble idea - DF is all about doing what you want, how you want and to the extent you want. Putting a retriction on the number of doctors you can have breaks that rule. I could perhaps see it working in a manner similar to the fortress guard, where a number of doctors are requested, but you can have many more if you want.

As far as poor doctors causing damage to patients is concerned, imo doctors of a low skill level shouldn't attempt more difficult procedures which they aren't likely to succeed. For instance, if a dwarf comes back from battle with serious stab wounds in the stomach, an experienced doctor would know how to stop the bleeding and would attempt to close the major wounds internally. A poor doctor would just plug the wounds and hope for the best. If the experienced doctor succeeds, the dwarf would heal faster and be more likely to make a full recovery. An injured dwarf should only be seen to once by a doctor (every month? season?), which would give you incentive to train a few doctors well.

Experience would be easy to give out, both from regular checkups on injured dwarves and perhaps making some of the dwarves hypochondriacs. It'd be in their profile. Every half a year or so they'll go to a doctor, who'll check them out. The doc gets exp, the dwarf gets a happy thought. On the other hand, these dwarfs would get a negative thought from not being able to see a doctor every now and then, which balances these free exp guys out.

[ May 29, 2007: Message edited by: TotalPigeon ]

[slMagnvox]

quote:As far as poor doctors causing damage to patients is concerned, imo doctors of a low skill level shouldn't attempt more difficult procedures

Not to mention no other skill involves a failure check, I don't see why treating injuries would be the first.  Pigeon's ideas are alot more along the line of what I would imagine the Doctor job would be.  Visiting injured dwarves with a new Treat Patient job.

Tosid Mafolcog, Physician cancels Treat Patient: needs bandages

Oh right, maybe we could make some of those at the clothier's shop too?  One visit won't cure a dwarf, but the more visits a wounded dwarf receives will speed his recovery.  And we could train our Doctor just as effectively as any other unique skill, making sure only one or two dwarves are available to do the work.  Given time, anyone will make legendary.

Some of the more complex ideas would be fun, I would particularily like to see something like the Alchemist shop making prescriptions from things like plants and extracts.  A pain killer would be so excellent, especially since I have an eyeless dwarf passing out from pain and spamming drink/eat job cancellations.

[Tamren]

k lets see...

Originally posted by TotalPigeon:
"Couple of points: we already have recover wounded jobs for single dwarfs. Having two dwarfs and a stretcher would just make things a lot more complicated, so I'm inclined to say no to that. "

** More complicated? The problem is if a dwarf is bleeding out in a hurry you want to get that dwarf to the hospital LIKE RIGHT NOW. That is the whole reason why we have ambulances available in modern hospitals. Civilians shie away from combat and animals interrupt such jobs. A stretcher team on the other hand would make a beeline for the wounded and get them out or die trying. If the danger aspect is what worries you, you can train and arm the team with weapons or assign a guard to them.

Stretcher bearers are FAR from overcomplicating the system. In addition dwarves in armour weigh a crapton, especially for some random peasant with base attributes, a stretcher allows 2 people to carry the same person without the major possibility of inflicting further damage if you dragged them.

"Issues with the doctor noble idea - DF is all about doing what you want, how you want and to the extent you want. Putting a retriction on the number of doctors you can have breaks that rule."

** Okay then how about this: No hard cap, instead you get your first doctor when your population hits 40. That doctor demands an assistant. Once your fortress reaches 40 dwarves that assistant graduates and becomes a doctor with all the related perks. Both then take new assistants.

Now this happens automatically, it ensures that you will have at least 2 competent healers per 40 dwarves. If you want MORE doctors than that, fine! go ahead  , but just remember:
1. A doctor is a noble and thus, higher maintenance. But he is not a king with insane demands so this is not much of a problem in a developed fortress.
2. The doctors assistant MUST be trained to a high enough skill level before he can be promoted. So even if you want more doctors you need them to finish school first.
3. A newly promoted doctor will demand an assistant or will be quite unhappy. You must make sure one is available.

So how does that sound? Seems to fit the bill perfectly.

"As far as poor doctors causing damage to patients is concerned, imo doctors of a low skill level shouldn't attempt more difficult procedures which they aren't likely to succeed."

**Aye, makes perfect sense. Okay lets say a "trained doctor" knows what to do for all types of injuries, meaning he knows how to treat everything but his sucess is not guaranteed untill he reaches legendary skill. Regardless his abilities are quite good.

The problem is, said doctor can not be everywhere at once. Thats why he has an assistant, the assistant(do these have a proper name? intern maybe?) can handle most jobs and frees up the doctor's time for more critical injuries.

But even then, both the doctor and the assistant are WAAAAAY too valuable to risk in live combat. That is why we need medics and stretcher teams. A medic at the front line will perform "patchup" jobs and prevent injured dwarves from getting any worse. A medic will NOT attempt to fully treat injuries unless for some reason your fortress lacks a proper doctor or there is no combat happening.

So a healer would not attempt to treat an injury that is beyond him unless he is the last hope. If he could, he would simply ensure that the wounded reaches someone who can treat them and does not die on the way.

" Experience would be easy to give out, both from regular checkups on injured dwarves and perhaps making some of the dwarves hypochondriacs. It'd be in their profile. Every half a year or so they'll go to a doctor, who'll check them out. The doc gets exp, the dwarf gets a happy thought. On the other hand, these dwarfs would get a negative thought from not being able to see a doctor every now and then, which balances these free exp guys out."

**This would work out great. Lets say each dwarf in the fortress requires a regular checkup once in a while, perhaps yearly? That is a lot of work, but it keeps the doctor in practice and also trains his assistant up so that he can become a doctor as well.

The hypocondriacs would work, but the visits must not be super frequent or else they will get no work done. But as the dwarves become more skilled and tougher they would get sick much less often just because they have better vitality.

[slMagnvox]

Heh, Tamren I think you have neglected playing DF while making elaborate suggestions for DF.

Imagine a Recover Wounded job that took two soldiers and a stretcher. ... ... Words cannot begin to describe how failure prone that job would be.  Do they get the stretcher first?  Together or seperately?  What if one Medic is at the gate and the other is at the Magma.  The first to arrive on the scene just stands there while his friend hikes 3+ days to meet him.  The first on the scene is gonna get pelted by arrows, mauled by Trolls himself and the job would cancel.  The further dwarf would stop for a drink and the job would cancel. Now they have two dwarves to rescue.  And nobody has picked up the stretcher yet.

Secondly, soldiers are hard enough to organize as it is, when there is a siege or an emergency, their job is to fight.  Just fight.  No one, no one is getting rescued until the threat is dealt with.  If a dwarf has a seriously bleeding wound he would die before any civilian, team of sluggish armored medics, Physician Noble, whoever could recover him.  I'll have my mason make his coffin from his favorite stone.  If he survives till the fight is over he can hold out until my next available Civ assumes the Recover Wounded job.

Sometimes wonder we are playing the same game.

[ May 29, 2007: Message edited by: slMagnvox ]

[Tamren]

What you are basically doing is pointing out the current flaws of the game. i KNOW what they are, thats why i suggested these things in the first place. The reason im not playing now is i ran into said problem and got frustrated, so here i am suggesting how to fix it using a solution that makes sense. in answer to your concerns:

A stretcher is very simple, rectangle of cloth, 2 wooden poles. That its, not in use? roll it up. If you for some reason lacked cloth you could just use a plank, comfort is not an issue, only speed.

If you roll the stretcher up it becomes a bit shorter than a spear. Since this is meant for dwarves it would be even smaller than normal. You could carry this with you or hang them on a wall like you would a fire extinguisher. You should have at the very least, 2 per screens worth of map.

Notice how i said the computer gives the job to the nearest stretcher, and the nearest people with the right job? If the response is slow that was due to your poor planning. If the only other stretcher bearer was 3 hours away on the other side of the fortress, chances are you only have 2 of them. In any case, all dwarves start with the job enabled.

You do not need to use trained soldiers for this most of the time because evacuation will not take place unless the wounded dwarf has been removed some distance away from the fight.

If you DO use soldiers it is because the bearers have a good chance of getting shot, in which case armour is needed. But even then they will not take the dwarf all the way to the hospital, just until they can switch off to some civilans who will then take the wounded the rest of the way.

If given such an important task a dwarf would never drop the stretcher to go off and get a drink... i mean would YOU? Plus a soldier is disciplined enough to suck it up and he should be carrying water in any case.

In the future, combat will be a lot more organized. Toady talks about army level battles. If we cant micromanage all the way down to squad level combat then either it will end up a gigantic mess. OR the computer will explode from trying to decide everything on its own.

One thing we are sorely lacking, is dwarves temporarily halting tasks in order to accomplish shorter but far more important tasks. If you tell the dwarves to hit a lever, the job should be done by the nearest dwarf, period. If he has a job, well too bad! that half done crossbow can wait. The job gets suspended, the dwarf runs to the lever and pulls it as fast as he can. The same thing would apply to stretcher bearing, the nearest dwarves would simply stop or drop what they are doing to come help.

What instead happens now is the game picks the nearest dwarf without a job and gives him the task. If this dwarf is halfway across your fortress at the time, your gate might close too late to shut the enemy out.

So back to your doom scenario:
1. Troll appears in the middle of your dining room for no reason. And starts wacking patrons.
2. The first person responding *should* be a member of your fortress guard, you do have them right? So lets say he bursts in and sees the troll, blowing his horn (or shouting, whatever) for help.
3. The noise reaches axedwarf squad #1 who happens to be around the corner. The squad includes a medic.
4. The guardsman attacks the troll, meanwhile the rest of the patrons run the hell away, leaving 2 wounded bleeding on the floor.
5. The soldiers arrive and pile onto the troll. Since his help is not needed the medic drags the wounded outside.
6. While the medic is patching up the wounded, he calls for stretchers.
7. the two nearest stretchers happen to be down the hallway. There happen to be 3 dwarves standing around for no reason. They are joined by the fortress guard mentioned earlier because the soldiers can more than handle the dangerous troll and they have better armour.
8. 2 of the dwarves start dragging the wounded in the direction of the hospital. The point is to get them there asap. Meanwhile the other dwarf and the guard run to retrieve the stretchers. Once they meet up, they load the wounded into the stretcher and off they go.
9. Meanwhile the medic joins the soldiers again and treats a few broken bones. The troll lies dead.

Now, this would seem like a lot of extra effort. but keep in mind that injuries in the future will be far more deadly. You can easily bleed out at a rather scary rate from relatively minor wounds. Most wounds taken from a sword will not simply stop bleeding in a minute or so, it will keep gushing until you or someone else has the time to apply pressure to the area.

As combat evolves in DF it can only get even more deadly, we need ways to deal with that. Thus the point of this whole thread.

[Entropy]

I like the doctor noble with assistant idea (who eventually can become a doctor).  Automatically having a doctor take an assistant will eventually lead to a fortress of nothing but doctors.

Enlisting a dwarf into the medical profession much like fortress guards sounds a much better idea.

The problem with the medic/stretcher idea is two fold.  First off the 2 dwarfs to a stretcher is loony - one dwarf with a wheelbarrow perhaps.  The coordination of having 2 to go pick up one is not efficient.  A better use for them would be to fight off the invaders.

Perhaps a medic skill (just an extra skill any military dwarf can have - like shield or armor) can be implemented such that a military dwarf not engaged in combat, and with a wounded comrade nearby, will go stabilize them, but only if there are no nearby enemies to attack.

Secondly... imagine a dwarf going berserker and charging out into a herd of elephants.  stretcher team and medic races out to stabilize and retrieve said dwarf.  Now you suddenly have more stretcher bearers racing out for 4 dwarfs (minus those who died instantly).  Eventually, while you are screaming all sorts of inventive curses at the screen, all your dwarfs take turns in progressively larger batches to run out to get killed by the herd.

[Veroule]

First a simple comment to what Tamren said:

quote:One thing we are sorely lacking, is dwarves temporarily halting tasks in order to accomplish shorter but far more important tasks. If you tell the dwarves to hit a lever, the job should be done by the nearest dwarf, period. If he has a job, well too bad! that half done crossbow can wait. The job gets suspended, the dwarf runs to the lever and pulls it as fast as he can. The same thing would apply to stretcher bearing, the nearest dwarves would simply stop or drop what they are doing to come help.

Yes!  We do need dwarves to be a little more organized about jobs and such.  Put the 98% assembled crossbow down, get your drink, come back and doo the last 2% instead of starting entirely over.  That is another whole thing.

I like some of how the health care currently works.  There needs to be some pain killers.  There also needs to be a bring booze.  There needs to be bandages.  Basic simple stuff that we all learn by falling down and scraping our knees as kids should be covered by health care.  Creating a splint for broken limbs, not too hard, doesn't need a doctor.

Nasty compound fracture that is close to mangled limb and you start to NEED a doctor.  An untrained person could probably patch you up though, and just having anyone help is likely to triple your chances of survival if you make it through the first night.  Fever from bone marrow infection requires more care.

I think what we really need the most right now is for a greater distinction of wound severity.  Health care to actually generate some exp; and you would believe it is worth some if you ever tried moving an epileptic around so they don't hurt themself, or tried to get some sugar into a diabetic in insulin shock, or just helped a friend with an injure ankle back through the woods to camp.  Not just dumping them in a bed and then maybe even beating them because they were resting and that production demand didn't quite get met.

I too love my dwarves, and want to seem live long and happy lives.  I am a benevolent god, and also a bit of a Timelord.  It is generally enough, but quite draining to frequently move time back and whisper to them to take a different path.

I can see at some point adding a doctor noble, but I would propose that he does quite a bit less then Tamren suggests.  He enables the creation of a new building, turning on a new job, and new items.  The doctor would arrive with surgery turned on, and unable to be turned off; he would become available at 20 dwarves.

The building is a hospital and would do jobs like operate, train surgery.  The manager options would apply.  The existence of the building would allow beds to be assigned as hospital beds, and that would be the preferred place to bring a wounded dwarf.  The train surgery would use a live animal, and a dwarf with surgery turned on.  The end result being a dead animal, possibly not even anything butcherable, and a small gain in surgery for the trained dwarf.  The operate job should never fail just like everything else dwarves do.  However the improvement made could be so minute as to not show up on the current scale.  That is why we need a finer gradient to injury status.

The new items would be surgical equipment and would be makeable at a metalsmiths.  They would be required for the operate, or train surgery job.  Operate might actually occasionally use up the equipment, but the training wouldn't.  Also the still would gain brew sterilizer.  1 unit of this item would be used up for each job at the hospital.

Anyhow blend it all in with everything above and said before and somewhere along the line you might just guess what Toady will actually decide is right.

[Angela Christine]

The chance of making things worse should exist, but it should be small.  Instead, I think doctors of different skill might have different treatment options available to them.

A heroic dwarf comes in with a mangled arm.

• A dabbling or novice healer can't do much more than help treat the pain.  Even for that he may need medicines, once medicines exist.  (Golden salve and whatnot).  He knows he can't do surgery, so he doesn't even try.  Even though all he does is relieve pain, he is helping, because without the pain the dwarf is able to sleep and therefore has a much better chance of recovering without going crazy.

•  A competent healer looks at the injury, and sees that even with medicine and the best care he can provide, the dwarf is looking at years of pain and slow recovery, all to have a limb that is going to be mostly useless anyway.  He amputates the arm.  In a way this could be seen as making the injury worse, since he will now be without that arm for the rest of his life, but a missing arm will heal faster than a mangled arm.

•  A master healer is able to do surgery to save the arm.  The result will be the same as if the mangled arm healed naturally, but in a dramatically shorter time period.

•  A legendary healer is not only able to save the mangled arm, if he gets to the "chunks" before they rot he can sew them back on, restoring function to the hand and fingers.  His recovery will be both faster and more complete than if he had not received treatment.  

This way you don't get dabblers attempting to perform open-heart surgery.  They have to start with simple treatments and work their way up.

[slMagnvox]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>Now, this would seem like a lot of extra effort.</STRONG>

Yes.  We have the Recover Wounded job and it really is quite effective.

In a past fort, my original miner was in the squad of Markdwarves that defeated the demons.  He took a fireball to the torso and was badly injured.  Once things had calmed down (pre-fire version), I scan the job list and discover another day one dwarf, Geshud our brewer, was coming to Recover Wounded and carried his old friend the miner (Tun?) half-way across the map to a bed in the old barracks by the river.  It was a powerful, daresay moving, scene to observe after the chaos of the battle.

[Tamren]

uh huh....

So say your house caugh fire and you dragged yourself free of the burning debrit to lie on your driveway in a smouldering heap. You lay there until the house burns down to the ground, none of the pedestrians you pass you lift a finger or call the fire department.

A couple hours later your friend walks by and says "OH HEY! you survived!" and drags you 2 kilometers down the street to his house and puts you on a bed.

You call that effective? Because it is an EXACT parallel to what happens now.

This is NOT a good system.

Injuries might not be so critical right now. If and when combat was updated, wound mechanics would change and injuries would have to be made more deadly to balance out the increased effectiveness of your fighting force.

If Toady suddenly decided to upgrade armour to be twice as effective tommorow, he would also make possible injuries much more dangerous. Why? If he did not, then the armour would make dwarves twice as resistant to damage and BAM you have a broken system.

So lets say he also made it possible for someone to sever an artery. Your nifty platemail stops everythin until a lucky bolt wizzes by your neck and cuts the jungular.

Would the bleeding simply stop a couple rounds later? LOL no. So you will no doubt be unhappy when said lucky bolt happens to kill one of your legendary swordsman that took 8 years to get to his current level of skill and oh by the way happens to be your avatar's son.

I know, this situation would not happen in the current game, but if you read the dev page you will see that it becomes more and more likely as planned changes are implemented. I dont know about arteries and critical hits but raising a family of "your" own is definitly on the list if you dig around.

A firemans carry is an effective way of moving a body around the same size as you. But if someone is bleeding out of a leg wound the last thing you want to do is make the blood rush to that area, thus why we use stretchers and move the injured in a prone position if possible. Most likely the future system would include a situation like this.

The point im trying to make is that if you can prepare yourself for a problem, you SHOULD. That is the whole reason why we have this forum. See a problem? get it fixed.

If this game was open source, i could learn to program and fix the problem myself. But since it is notm Toady has the last word. If i want something changed i can ask him. He says no? i can deal with that.

If you are happy with the system you have that is just fine. But if you want to argue against the ideas of others consider that they are trying to improve the game for everyone, including you.

[ May 31, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[slMagnvox]

Don't misunderstand me, your suggestions are well thought out, but lets try and get on the same version before speculating on future behaviors and future solutions of future scenarios.  You surely agree a two dwarf + stretcher job would be pretty brutal under current DF mechanics?  Your justifications assume some very fundamental changes to dwarven behavior and job selection.

Furthermore, calling the way DF operates flawed is not fair.  Ideal?  Maybe not ideal, but it isn't flawed.  A dwarf won't pull a lever if he is doing something else.  Its only a flaw if you are counting on him to pull it.  Its not a flaw if you realize he won't and use the job screen to try and cancel his current task and micro him so he will pull it.  Then lock his ass in there until all pulling duties are resolved.

Ideal?  Dunno.  Consistent?  Yes, and consistent is very good.

[Tamren]

Well the use of stretchers could easily be done with current game mechanics. You have probably imagined some sort of complicated system and i guess i should have been more clear earlier, my bad.

1. We know the game engine keeps track of what each entity is carrying and his maximum and current speed. A dwarf would be able to carry another dwarf with all of his posessions. But the problem is without high stats he would not be able to maintain his best speed, especially if the dwarf he is carrying has armour on.

An unbelievably strong and perfectly agile dwarf could carry another dwarf in full plate one handed while running a marathon. Unfortunatly said dwarf is probably not in the area or is still busy fighting.

2. When you tell a dwarf to lead an animal to the slaughtering block the animal follows one square behind. This means the game engine can make 2 entities move in lockstep. It would be a simple extention to get more than 2 entities to move using the same path.

So in practice what a stretcher would do is allow 2 dwarves to move as one and split the load of one specific item, in this case the wounded dwarf. Since the weigh is now divided, the speed reduction on both dwarves would be much less or even nil, ensuring the wounded gets to a safe spot as quick as possible.

1. So say dwarf 1 is dragging dwarf 2 down the corridor. This looks exactly like your butcher leading an animal to the workshop, with one dwarf in front and the wounded dwarf following right behind. Perhaps leaving a large blood trail.
2. Dwarf 3 shows up carrying a stretcher. Dwarf 1 stops for a moment and Dwarf 3 stands on the other side of the dwarf being dragged.
3. Both of the dwarves momentarily get a job called "load stretcher". Once this is completed, both dwarves move off at top speed with Dwarf 1 leading the way. Just behind him is the Dwarf 2, "lying" on a stretcher. Dwarf 3 is just behind holding up the other end of the "stretcher"
4. The way the dwarves move is simple, Dwarf 1 handles pathfinding, the other 2 entities simply move in his footsteps like a 3 part caterpillar. Though a little suspension of disbelief would be required whenever the trio moves around a corner.

Even if you do not have 2 dwarves on hand a dwarf could still use a stretcher by himself. What he would do is pull on one end and let the other end rest on the ground. This would still be faster because most of the weight is grounded, like a dolley. So if either dwarf had to stop carrying his end of the stretcher, the remaining dwarf could still carry on uninterrupted until another dwarf could be called in.

Most of this is handled by a computer code. As far as i can tell, this is not super complicated. The only thing you would need add to the game is a unique symbol to represent a stretcher simply lying on the ground, in storage or otherwise.

[Mephisto]

Just a quick question: How would two dwarves and a stretcher work? I'll give some examples to help me.

Your dwarves need to turn around a corner. They warp from this:

code:

XXXXXX
..@=@X
XXXX.X
XXXX.X

To this?:

code:

XXXXXX
....@X
XXXX=X
XXXX@X

I guess what I'm trying to get at is, how do they turn? If you think about it, the above situation is impossible without some warping. As we all (hopefully) know, that is not possible.

[ June 09, 2007: Message edited by: Mephisto ]

[ June 09, 2007: Message edited by: Mephisto ]

[JT]

Code tags!  Use code tags!

Anyway, the solution is fairly obvious:

code:

#######
....@=#
#####@#
#####.#

It doesn't have to be perfect.  It just has to work.

[Tamren]

yeah that works

we could also make it so that stretchers can only turn in corridors 2 tiles wide but that might overcomplicate the situation.