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[kembial]

Based on this starter info:

-> Arena

    * Arenas are now in the game, accessed via a special mode that has to be turned on it in the init file
    * You can make as many creatures of any type a you want, equip them with any items you want, etc.
          o Items can be made out of any of the current logical materials
    * You can also assign them to teams or have them go at it solo
    * The arena itself contains a flat fighting place as well as a pool of magma and water

My brain jerked a gear and started churning out past arena-and-stadium-type experiences. So, I'm spewing out some of the things that would compel me to USE an arena (I might dabble in the system, the way it's stated, but I like to have goals...).

RANDOM TEAM GENERATION!
Set or randomize:

• # of creatures (support more than two teams and allow random # of teams and team assignation)
• individual creature exp. (entirely random, or everything on generally equal footing while naked)
• individual creature equipment (same as above, chaos or even-footed)

I'd love to hit a "LET'S RUMBLE!" button and watch a no-stress, no-fuss brawl. Or get a little deeper and set up some semi-random battles. Let others set up specific combatants as they like.

TEAM RETENTION!
The dead deserved their fate, but what of the victors?
Save the survivors of the winning teams (unhealed/chosen resting time/fully healed) to be pitted against new and other winning teams.
Retain survivor's in-arena exp gains for future fights.

ARENA LAYOUT!
Once sand is figured out, how would your cannon-fodder enjoy fighting on it?
Elevation changes can be built.
Building structures to fight around.
Traps layed out in the arena?
Magma/water flooding with z-levels for high ground. Be victorious BEFORE you burn!

And... the ultimate tool that would seriously sink the hook?

ARENA MANAGER!
A mildly wealthy entrepreneur commissions an arena and must manage it's success to accumulate further wealth and fame. Left with a small starting budget you can:

• purchase any manner of combatant you can currently afford (discounts on sloppily trapped, wounded items)
• purchase equipment to be used during combats
• hire staff to provide the amenities required by your blood-thirsty crowds (resource and space intensive growers/cooks/brewers for fairly cheap, or expensive but efficient catering-merchants)
• advertise to draw in crowds (your income is based on the amount of admissions you can sell)

You might be stuck with a handful of losers and a few wooden swords, and only able to sell to a few locals, to start. Eventually you'll be purchasing megabeasts to throw against feeble unarmed goblin squads in an exhibition match, then a showdown between established teams of favorite gladiators, finishing the night off with a paid world-renowned adventurer to slay the goblin-crushing "menace". Fliers and word-of-mouth are spread throughout the lands to pack the seats. Meals, drinks, souvenirs, and embroidered silk socks with images of the event are available for those who can still afford them. All to your profit!
Which of course you'll turn around and use to buy the next extravagant BIGGER showing.

The final step/idea?
Injecting arenas into a worldgen. Arena guild and periodic caravans to purchase interesting things you've captured, or to take law-breakers off your hands. Send off nobles, or unwanted migrants... or children. Earn a reputation as slavetraders and fall out with some factions that look down on your actions?
Adventure mode for some profit (or get stolen into the arena trade, and fight for survival and possibly freedom!)

And the ideas are starting to get too tangent, so I'll just leave it here.

[Neonivek]

The Arena currently in the game is more of a tool for modders then it is an actual mode of play. It will likely never be expanded into a mode of play.

[lucusLoC]

right, and i don't think it should be a game mode, but we will need to be able to build things there, to test things other than creatures, or test creature balance vs things like fortifications. when wall demolition is put in we will need to be able to test that in arena mode as well.

other than that i am going to have to -1 this suggestion, sorry :-(

i believe all this has been discussed before. a link to there would be good.

[kembial]

A link would be helpful, I suppose. I did the standard searches and a little more.

[Felblood]

It certainly isn't as important as expanding and polishing the existing game modes, but there's no reason not to add features to the arena mode.

People are going to play with it, so it might as well be treated as a game, in those respects that don't detract from it's usefulness as a tool. There's obviously at least some demand, if as you say there has already been another thread on this.

Some of the more continuity based ideas(saving XP for survivors and healing times) might be better handled by a fortress mode arena system, but this would be a good place to spot some of the problems that might come up in that.

The best features to suggest are ones that are useful to both modders and people who are just goofing with it.

[kembial]

So, assuming I understand this is a "probably won't see this unless I did it myself" suggestion and not a "stop everything and implement this for me now" demand, I still haven't found the discussions in regards to being against the arena developing past a mod tool.

While I'm not against the arena AS IT STANDS, I do find myself passing over it in a lack of interest.

To get into my mindset, when you state it as only ever needing to be a tool, I think of a worldgen where you can play with all the params and gen worlds to your heart's content. You can even dig down into the legends.
But you shouldn't ever need to embark or play on any of your maps, because it's just a tool, and the base map works just fine.

If the base has been built, why not make a suggestion to allow it to appeal as a gaming tool, without removing the functionality of the mod's tool?

That's my suggestion. I can happily retract it if the dev says it's not gonna happen.

[orbcontrolled]

The arena layout things would be good to include for testing purposes, in fact you should probably be able to include most any element in the game.

Actually making a tycoon-style game out of the arena (this sounds like what you're suggesting) sounds like something better suited to memory-hackers. I can imagine someone making a little spinoff of DF that has it's own arena managment interface, then uses the arena as it's combat engine.

So while I don't see much chance of Toady fulfilling this suggestion himself, don't lose hope.

[Darkond2100]

I don't need an arena, I need a COLOSSEUM!

[kembial]

Really I'd be happy to have an insta-rumble randomized feature.
After that, I'd like to be able to retain the winners, and continue matching up "tiered" fights.

That's the level of hands-off management, as a non-modder, I'd actually use the tool for.

Outside of that, it's just dreams for awesomeness.

[Duke 2.0]

 All I ask for the arena is the ability to place solid walls and floors on various z-levels. This is all I ask. Then we can test things like firing lines, shooting through fortifications, fireballs and stuff through fortifications, how quickly a person can run through a flooding tunnel of water, etc.

[nenjin]

Thinking it over, I'd prefer to see less Dwarf Mode mechanics at play in an Arena+ mode.

You could do it that way, surely, but the more overlap you have between modes, the less sense there is in having them be separate.

So things like:

resource and space intensive growers/cooks/brewers for fairly cheap,

Not so much a fan of that. Abstract that micro stuff from Dwarf Mode out.

ARENA MANAGER!

Yes plox.
I'd like gameplay to be about 25% managing funds, 50% arena design and strategy, and 25% team/gladiator managment.

I see it having two phases. In the first phase, you build. You spend your starting money, hire some combatants, ect... but don't have a lot of drains on your funds happening yet. When you're ready, you open the doors to the arena, and the fights you've set up take place. After the season is over, the arena shuts down, you make improvements and restock on supplies and fighters and the cycle repeats.

Managing Funds and Resources
Dwarf bucks (or whatever) would be used to buy new combatants, food for your combatants, gear and additional resources (Food, drink, trinkets and mementos to sell the crowd.)

Money is drawn from every dwarf that visits the arena. Dwarves that see a good fight (or an interesting/exotic fight) have good seats, eat good food and drink and have good mementos to buy leave the arena happy and eager to come back. Dwarves that don't get any or all of these things are less happy and less likely to come back. Personality of arena goers might come into play too. 

You can set the ticket price yourself, or you can have the game automatically calculate what it thinks your ticket prices should be based on the size of your arena and other factors. A rough supply/demand model would be needed so you can make adjustments (like reducing ticket prices to drive up business) and tactical choices.

Employees would get paid and would drain funds, and combatants would drain food. Professional gladiators that you've hired would drain both, since they practically live there. I think employee hiring should also be automated, like employees just appear to fill vacant jobs, so again you don't get bogged down in the micro. They should still gain skill and make your arena better....but tracking every dwarf to the degree that Fortress mode does is overkill to me.

Food and drink would be purchasable off a menu, and you would be able to automate the process so you don't have to constantly check back. Food quality would impact both the health of your combatants and the happiness of the crowds.

Additional funds could be spent on things like better furnishings for the arena, advertisers and cryers to drum up business, or "celebrity" heroes drawn from the world file, that increase business when they make a "surprise" visit.

Arena Design and Strategy
First the basics. Expanding your arena, like in Fortress mode, should be relatively easy and shouldn't cost you a lot of resources. The full array of traps, mechanics and such should also be there so we can make interesting/varied arenas. The amount of detail in the arena would affect "fight quality" which is how interesting/cool the spectators found the match.

You should be able to have more than one arena too. You could use the area designator to define a room as an arena, then set other variables for it like "main attraction" "specialty fight" "Do not clean this arena" "First-blood combat" (the match is over when someone draws blood) fight modes (Free-for-all, team bout, animal fight, mega-beast fight, ect...) and more.

Other area designations might be "vendor area" "bathrooms" "Petting zoo" (for the children) ect....

The placement of seating is critically important. You want spectators to be close, because getting a good view makes them happy. But you don't want them to get hurt by stray arrows, acid sprays, ect... Keeping traffic flowing through the stands and towards your vendors would also be important.

Improper arena design should consequences too. If you leave your arena open to the crowds, they might get involved. Or your prison combatants might try to escape, or the fight might spill out into the stands and result in a lot of spectators leaving wounded and very unhappy. Clogged thoroughfares should mean that spectators don't get to see the fight, buy things or even use the bathroom before they leave the arena, which in the end results in less profit and return customers for you.

Team/Gladiator Management

Combatants are either professionals, animals or unfortunates. Animals are bought from caravans, unfortunates from slave traders and professionals are contracted.
Initially, you should only be able to afford criminals, slaves, prisoners of war and common (but dangerous) animals like wolves, boars, ect.... The unfortunates would be low quality to average skilled combatants that don't make for a really exciting match. They would need to eat (as would the beasts), although not a lot, and you could feed them low quality food to keep cost down. They won't be particularly healthy or eager to fight though, and will give a poorer show because of it though.

The amount of enjoyment spectators get out of a fight is based on:
The quality/skill/rarity/numbers of the fighters involved.
The disparity between combatants (10 peasants versus 5 legendary champions is not an interesting fight.)
The size, detail and complexity of the arena.
The deadliness of the fights (First blood vs. to the death, wooden weapons vs. steel weapons)
The body/injury count at the end of the fight.
The mode of the fight (Animal fights being the least interesting, then free-for-alls, then team bouts, then mega-beast fights.)

Better equipment can keep your combatants alive longer, but they can also increase lethality. And while weaker weapons keep your combatants alive longer, the crowds aren't stupid. They know those are wooden swords. So they don't get as much out of the fight. And while your veteran gladiators draw more crowds, they kill more people too, unless you put them in non-lethal/first-blood fights...but then you might be under using your resources.

Arena Surgeon
As an addendum to gladiator management, you could hire a surgeon. Since the Hospital is part of the next Fortress update, the framework is pretty much done. Again, I'd suggest abstracting some of it to keep the scope of Arena mode focused. A surgeon would be an off-screen menu where you could view the injuries/status of wounded combatants. A surgeon could improve (or worsen!) a fighter's chance of recovery, stave off infection, reduce recovery times, and on.

An animal trainer/caretaker that does the same thing for beasts might also be appropriate.

Mega-beasts

Mega-beasts would represent the ultimate Arena fight. They''d be prohibitively expensive to acquire, and unlike other fighters, would require you actually build a pen to hold them and get them into the arena. Doing this improperly would result in a mega-beast rampaging through your arena on or off-season, and is the one thing other than economic decline that could utterly ruin your arena.

But the pay off would be huge. People would come from all over the world to see your mega-beast fight groups of combatants, a crack squad of legendary gladiators or even another mega-beast, and guarantee you at least one season of strong return business.

[Darkond2100]

Setting a time for people to come see your show would be good, too. Maybe a a bed rep. from foreign nobles VISITING, who only get to see a half-finished Colosseum (cus U already assigned it, but don't have everything ready yet). Wait, was there anything in there about foreign Nobles visiting your fortress to see a few shows? Are there ANY suggestions about foreign Nobles visiting your fortress anywhere in the forum? I'm going to do a search now, and possibly make a new thread.

[PsyberianHusky]

@nenjin
I like your idea, but I wanna expand on it and say the Arena should be loosely tied to a world you have gen'd.
The creatures fighting in it and the creatures watching it should be from existing nations.

[RedWarrior0]

From what I've skimmed over, what it seems to be suggested is arena in fortress mode rather than the current mode. I agree with Duke on the request. But add traps.

[nenjin]

I like your idea, but I wanna expand on it and say the Arena should be loosely tied to a world you have gen'd.

Surely. The influx of slaves/mega-beast and the caravans could be directly tied to the world. Caravans at least will go that direction eventually. Toady wants to see items made in Fortress mode show up in adventure mode. It's not a long stretch to have characters from fortress or adventure mode show up in Arena mode either.