Print

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

[Neonivek]

You guys do realise the Toadyone has stated that DF is a Moria Simulator? I.E. LOTR?

I don't remember him saying that. Especially with the lack of Orcs (Though I do remember that at one point Mithril was going to be in but something happened)

[darkflagrance]

Technically, goblins ARE orcs. Orc is from the elvish, while goblin is the human term. Doesn't help that each of his works sticks exclusively to one term.

[Lord Shonus]

More precisely, "Orc" is the common form of the Black Speech word uruk, which properly applies only to the soldier-orcs of Mordor. The lesser Orcs are technically called "snaga." Generally, except for in The Hobbit, (A work that began as a standalone but was retconned into the same universe as the Silmariilion, and one in which only the lesser snaga appear) Orc is used as a general term for all three Orcish races, snaga, uruk, and Saruman's uruk-hai that appeared near the end of the Third Age.

[TerminatorII]

DF I was called originally moria simulator I believe and he stated back in 2d that df was started as a moria simulator as well. I have no idea if those threads are still on the forum tho as it was years and years ago.

[CobaltKobold]

well, not in 2d, but before

He he, no, I never read the Dwarven Nations trilogy, though I read some of the earlier DL books.  I recognize the cover for Gates of Thorbardin, and I think I read that (that would be 1990 if wiki is right, which is around the time I stopped getting new ones).  I don't remember the details or how much that went into their dwarves, but if that book or earlier DL books had something in it that reminds you of the game, I'd say it's fair to say it colored my overall perspective of what it means to be a dwarf.  I draw more from Silm/LoTR/Hobbit on this overall, from the whole foundation and destruction of Khazad-dum/Moria, with the Balin expedition directly responsible for the reclaim mechanic.

Yeah, I'm spending most of my programming time on a Moria simulator, where you play the dwarves digging out, working in and defending a mountain fortress.  There's quite a bit more than that, but I'm not going to spoil it.  It's still unabashedly Tolkien ass, but it'll be hard to pigeon-hole when it's done.  I've been having fun anyway, which is the only reason I do this.  It's also helping me work out some of the conceptual problems I've been having with Armok by seeing some of it actually function on a smaller scale.

That was easy.

[TerminatorII]

wow you are good. Thanks those were the exact quotes I was remembering.

[CobaltKobold]

Here, it was cake because all I needed was 'moria' and author=Toady One.

[Rowanas]

I think 3x3 is the smallest class of immovable siege engines. When creating a siege engine, the player should designate the area of the engine much like they would a room.

Hell, maybe all siege engines should be separately placed components in a room, so you might place a loading bay close to the "Entrance", a firing mechanism looking through a porthole, an aiming mechanism looking out of a separate porthole, a re-arming mechanism nearby, all connected to their important parts by gears and axles and such, each offering a bonus to the aiming, loading, firing, whatever to make the final engine as good or as bad as you have the resources, time and space for.

This would mean that you could have a battery of sniping ballista (each hooked up to 3 or 4 observation posts that give boni to aiming), a sliding wall filled with catapults armed to the teeth with reloading mechanisms and so on.

Any thoughts?

[Dante]

Interesting. I'm still torn between this sort of sandbox approach and having pre-scripted siege engines, though. Because if the player could design every aspect, it'd be hard to prevent (a) way overpowered siege engines and (b) siege engines that would not work at all in real life.

Also I'm not sure if by

separately placed components in a room

you really mean putting it together on a fixed set of ground tiles, but if you do, I'm going to have to disagree with you - one of the important aspects will be mobility, not just in the case of battering rams and siege towers and so on but so ballistae and catapults and things can be moved about. That indicates that a siege engine will be more like a unit (though not one with its own AI) than a room.

With mobility, in the case of custom siege engines, it could be tricky. Some things are simply so large that they should/can not be moved without disassembly, such as trebuchets. Also, you'd need to store the weight and clumsiness and such of the movable ones, so as to know how many dwarves/oxen/horses/trolls/tame chickens are needed to pull it.

[Rowanas]

Hmm. you make a good point. Perhaps (as was my second thought) they should be built basically on the backs of wagons of various sizes, so you can build siege engines up to any size that you can wheel your wagon through. Too large and it gets stuck on anything. Too small and it's pathetic.

To counter your argument about the "not working in real life", I think that slightly scripted places that things would have to be to work would be the solution. Some things, like observation towers would be flexible, but others, like reloading mechanisms, would have to be i certain places nearby or even adjacent.

I won't counter (a) because I don't think it needs countering. There is no such thing as a siege engine with too much power. If you want to waste your time building a 15x15 anti-dragon uber-pult, go for it. The fact that it takes 20 minutes to load and provides so much power that to fire it at a mere goblin would be the very definition of overkill doesn't matter.

We are dwarves.

[Dante]

Yeah, I really meant "unbalanced" or maybe "exploitable" by overpowered.

The underlying problem may be the variety of what siege engines do. The put-it-on-a-wagon response would be fine for some simple projectile-flingers, but not for screw bores or small battering rams or various other things.

Maybe Toady will end up with certain classes of siege engine, each with its own special "scripted" base coding, and there could be player-generated variation on top of that. So there'd be base coding for the ram class, the linear-thrower class, the arc-thrower class, the siege tower class, the corkscrew motion class, the gunpowder class [?], and so on... but you could decide exactly how big you wanted to make it, and the materials to go into it, and maybe some of its layout, and so on.

[CobaltKobold]

tricky. Some things are simply so large that they should/can not be moved without disassembly, such as trebuchets.

I'd argue more that you don't move them because you want to build them anchored so your trebuchet doesn't just fling itself back.

[Rowanas]

Dante, your idea sounds perfect. If each class of siege engine is hard coded with certain traits then the player would have a sensible base to work on, which he/she could mess about with to their hearts content. I would be heavily in favour of player chosen siege engine content, by the way.

P.S. Everything is exploitable, and it's not a bad thing.

[LordDemon]

For actual fring of siege-engines, I'd like the siege engine to have a set "aimed at place". You could define a location, much like currently you can choose a patrol point, or squad location.
When chancing this, the engineers would try to estimate how best to hit there. They wold fire a projectile, and see where it lands, then adjust the aim untill they get a hit. Target areas could as well be a 5x5 square if you wan't inaccurate siege engines, or 1). Once aimed they would fire into that location(with a small deviation). If you moved the aim, they would calculate again, and adjust for new spot. Experienced engineers would adjust to new positions more accurately and with lesser shots then unexperienced.

This would allow firing in other them horizontal/vertical lines, which mostly makes siege-engines awkward now. Also, fitting small moving units would become harder, but you could easily aim stationary enemies, or with some adjustment, a moving group.

Other settings for siege engine could be fire mode (direct, ballistic, or ballistic with max n z-levels raise so you could better choose their use indoors), firing mode (adjust mode, where the previous round would land, and adjustments would be made before next was fired, or bombard where the dwarfs would fire as fast as they could, but the adjustment would no be calculated, and the shots would slowly drift away due to stress to parts and lack of adjustment) and the current fire/prepare/hold would be nice.

Would there be need for "fire at high angles" setting, if your siege engine is near your wall, so you could order it to fire more like a mortar in order to avoid hitting your wall?
Any comment on this or other ideas?

[PhilbertFlange]

Going for handheld, and inserting 2x2 into the mix (because 5x5 really seems too big, so reclass 3x3 as massive).

Size\Type	Chuck	Sling	Loose	Bash	Climb
Handheld (personal weapon)	Atlatl	Slingshot	(Cross)bow	Sledgehammer	Grappling hook
1x1 (two-dwarf portable)	Onager	?	Scorpio	Small ram	Ladder
2x2 (built in place/haulable, faster/multi-shot)	Mangonel	?	Polybolos	Battering ram	Siege Platform
3x3 (built in place, or with wheels for beast-haulage)	Catapult	Trebuchet	Ballista	Roofed ram	Siege Tower
Explosive (just for completeness)	Mortar	?Rocket?	Canon	Petard	!!RocketPack!!

I quite like this. As for your ?rocket? category, I have a good thought. No one has yet posted about the hwacha. In terms of size I would say 2x1, and would require 3 logs, a full barrel of booze (or oil, or gunpowder) and a stack of 100 bolts or arrows (might be a good use for leftover arrows from seigers).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It would require 1 dwarf to activate, would be easily turned, and would only damage troops. As for period accuracy, I know it was apparently used during the 1590s during the Japanese invasion of Korea by the Korean defenders.