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[Hyndis]

Military.

I don't mind getting roflpwned by forgotten beasts made out of some nearly indestructible material. Its actually quite awesome. And I should know better for not creating multiple failsafe systems to protect my fortress in such an event.


But the current military is horrendous. So incredibly frustrating to get them to do anything. And what I want out of the military is very simple.

I want to have a group of soldiers on station at the entrance to my fort, with the entrance area having access to both the surface and underground caverns, so they are the gatekeepers.

I want to have a group of soldiers on defend burrow orders, with the burrow being defined as the entire map. These are my search and destroy guys.

I also want them to actually train up rather than stand around aimlessly, and to have them equip themselves with weapons and armor.



Basically, I want the very simple and clearcut controls over active/inactive, onduty/offduty, and what weapons and armor dwarves use that existed in 40D, while also being able to have them defend burrows or assign them to patrols or stations.

I cannot for the life of my figure out how to use the military at all.

So I just embark with a whole lot of dogs and hope for the best. 

[blinking icons]

Personally I -like- the fact you can't just make a vertical shaft through a hundred z-levels. Make fortress design much more fun!

Hear hear!
Look, folks...does anyone remember the intro movie? Now it's often claimed this shows HFS, but generally, breaking a wall (bad) is one of those things that happen to dwarves and make this game *fun*

[Shadowlord]

My biggest frustration is that my FORMER mayor got upset that he lost his rooms when the new mayor was given them, that his slade mandates weren't met, that I didn't punish anyone for not making his slade items, that he couldn't find anyone to bitch at when he was "attending meetings" with himself for a year, that he finally went melancholy and started running around babbling, and that when he did he removed the MAYOR position and disabled noble-reassignment entirely despite the fact that I still had a mayor! And then the dwarven liason left unhappy because he couldn't see the mayor, and that the mayor now still makes mandates (which I can't see on the nobles screen) despite not doing his job anymore.

[Mozleron]

For me, the military is the biggest frustration.

I'd like to think i have a good handle on the new military stuff.  I can see dwarves changing from civilian to military tasks as their schedules dictate.  I can see that i have appropriate weapons in my stockpiles.

Unfortunately, the little buggers like to go after enemies with training swords (when they have them), and will not pick up non-training weapons reliably.  Plus, they don't seem to be able to switch weapons at all, which could be the root of the whole using the wrong weapons in combat issue.

I noticed that the ammo section lets you specify which kind of bolts to use for either training or combat.  Why not have that same sort of thing for weapons in general too?  Sure, they should be smart enough to switch away from a training weapon, but what if you've got them in plate and want them to use lead or some other incredibly dense weapons for training, and steel for battle?

I imagine this behavioral stuff is being worked on and we'll see improvements over the next few weeks, so i'll just content myself with getting some good initial forts designed and set up before the first wave of goblins come running in and rapes everyone with their vastly superior metal weapons and training.  It certainly helps me highlight ways in which my constructed defenses can be improved.

Besides, when you reclaim a site, you get all the previous infrastructure already in place, though i did notice that the farms all had to be removed, re-irrigated and then rebuilt again, so that may be by design, or a bug. (Do they ever dry up on their own?)

[Hyndis]

Besides, when you reclaim a site, you get all the previous infrastructure already in place, though i did notice that the farms all had to be removed, re-irrigated and then rebuilt again, so that may be by design, or a bug. (Do they ever dry up on their own?)

That farm thing also happens with 40D, so if its a bug its not a new one.

[Laiska]

For me, the military is the biggest frustration.

I'd like to think i have a good handle on the new military stuff.  I can see dwarves changing from civilian to military tasks as their schedules dictate.  I can see that i have appropriate weapons in my stockpiles.

Unfortunately, the little buggers like to go after enemies with training swords (when they have them), and will not pick up non-training weapons reliably.  Plus, they don't seem to be able to switch weapons at all, which could be the root of the whole using the wrong weapons in combat issue.

i noticed the non-ability to change weapons as well, therefore i declined to make any training weapons, they just train by stabbing at air anyway atm so it shouldnt be a problem. i'm currently trying to make enough iron/steel weapons for every civilian (every dwarf should carry a weapon thats the dwarven way of life, and im piss'd at random walking things biting my guys toes until they die).

[Lord Shonus]

My biggest headache at the moment is stockpile settings. If, for example, I want to make a tallow-only stockpile, I have to individually enable the tallow of every single creature that I might butcher.

I also wish whole stacks of fat could be processed at once, since you get so much of the stuff.

[Urist McDepravity]

Military keeps pissing me off.

I've managed to make them train properly up to legendaries (cage traps + sieges = many practice targets). But they keep dropping their armour/weapons. I cant understand wtf they are doing. One season they are equipped properly. Next season they just dump everything for no particular reason and engage in wresting.
And their pathing is even worse. They will refuse to go to some places without any reason and silently return to barracks even with pending kill order. If i use 'm'ove to path them manually, they will go there.
But worst is chasing these annoying cave dwellers. It makes me think i'm watching some low-budged comedy tv-show. 3 full squads run around in circles after some poor drathla, kind of intentionally missing opportunities to corner it. It seems their pathing is updated too seldom to be able to catch fast-changing target.

[Lytha]

Mine is that I can't escape out of the embarking screen anymore (or can't figure out how to escape out of the embarking screen except by embarking for real or by stopping the dwarfort.exe process).

I loved to generate new worlds in 40d, and to look at these worlds then on the embarking screen. Now, I can still do that, but I either have to kill&restart the process or to embark somewhere.

Even more annoying: abandoning a backup copy of my fortress, because I just want to have a look at the legends of this world, and then I accidentally press "fortress mode" and I am stuck there on the embark screen and have to restart the game yet again.


If there is a key for escaping the embark screen, I would be glad to hear of it. I've remapped the "leave screen" key from Esc to Space, if that matters.

[carebear]

all the crashes. after several at world gen i finally get a fort going, play for a couple hours, go 'oh, i'd better save'

saving

saving

saving

IT CRASHED ON THE DAMN SAVING SCREEN

fort gone.

I've never had this happen to me but yeah, saving takes awfully long.

[BigD145]

all the crashes. after several at world gen i finally get a fort going, play for a couple hours, go 'oh, i'd better save'

saving

saving

saving

IT CRASHED ON THE DAMN SAVING SCREEN

fort gone.

I've never had this happen to me but yeah, saving takes awfully long.

I've had the crash, but only when I alt-tab to do other things. I do NOT lose the save. It saves just fine and then crashes. Restart, continue, and off I go.

[zagibu]

Biggest frustration is combat, especially unkillable beasts. I had to dig another entrance because in front of the original entrance, there are two caravan-guards fighting with an unkillable swamp-thing. They have been fighting it for a year now. It's not even dangerous, they have both not one scratch, but neither can they kill it.

[slink]

Bed assignments that aren't respected is my biggest frustration at the moment.  I go to a lot of trouble to make a nice 3x3 area with a smoothed floor, a bed, a cabinet, and a cloth sack, for each and every Dwarf including newborns.  They are organized by my concept of clans, and the doors to all the sections are within a dozen steps of each other.  Yet everyone tries to sleep in the first vacant bed they come to.  This doesn't even count the three beds in the hospital which are always filled with perfectly healthy Dwarves.  Granted that they are storing their possessions in their own cabinets, it irritates me no end to have gone to all that trouble and they all just sleep anywhere.

A close second is the many mayors the fortress acquires as it progresses.

[Flying Carcass]

Military and losing the nobles screen once my expedition leader dies. Makes a fort very vulnerable to kobold attack.

[Bryan Derksen]

Military and the unkillable beasts. I've taken to just plain old savescumming any time an unkillable beast shows up, since the next time the game sends a beast it's randomly selected and might not be one of the immortal ones. Hopefully a fix will come out before my world runs out of killable ones.

Meanwhile, my military's incompetence is making it hard to even deal with routine goblin ambushes - I've suffered a total loss of my military twice now and have decided to rely only on traps for now. I'm hoping I can get a big drowning trap ready for the next ambush season.

The dwarves refuse to pick up weapons most of the time; my combat logs are filled with nothing but shield-bash attempts. I just finished a fight with a forgotten beast that had twenty dwarves dogpiled on it and frantically hammering away with their shields to no effect for half a month, until the captain of the guard finally showed up with a pick (thanks to being a miner in his civilian life) and dispatched it almost effortlessly. A couple of the other dwarves had weapons... crossbows. I didn't tell them to pick up ranged weapons, so they just hammer uselessly with those as well. I've also taken to de-designating my barracks whenever I need my military to actually go someplace, otherwise they just keep hanging out there.

And, on a related note, injury equals death in my forts because of the broken hospitals. So even when my military manages to be successful in their mission I lose a lot of them.