Print

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

[Tamren]

Sup guys, with the army arc incoming I figured that we might as well get crackin! However before we can do stuff, we need to figure out what needs doing.

Agenda:
1. Assess the current systems and figure out whats missing.
- For example war dogs can be assigned, but not un-assigned to soldiers and other dwarves. At the same time its impossible to see how many dogs are assigned to any particular dwarf. Memorizing numbers works only until the dogs take casualties.

2. Think of ways existing features can be improved.
- Leashes for war dogs to prevent them from running off into melee. This is desirable in many situations. If you have a field of traps there is no point in running across your OWN traps in order to engage them. Of course handling strong and angry dogs requires at least two hands, such war animal handlers could be another type of soldier.

Once you have done that, list everything. Get all the ideas on the same table. This will help inspire new ones and link up compatible suggestions. Check before posting but go ahead and post duplicate ideas as long as both have a different flavour.

[Dwarmin]

1.Siege-Ability for invaders and thieves to build ladders and toss grappling hooks, mine through walls, make bridges, swim moats, disarm traps.
   
     2. Wagons-need to be fully implemented for use-they need to carry the spoils of war, supplies and the dead for burial. You should be able to use them as moving stockpiles in essence.

    3. Battle fields-you can send your army to counter an army away from your fort, if you feel bold enough. You could block an enemy from moving through a narrow pass. You would need to set camp first, and more civilized peoples may have certain rules of war.

   4. Raids-launch your own attacks. Steal the Goblins children! Strip the Gold plates from their walls! Cast their bodies into a massive bonfire-the smoke will be seen for miles!

  5. Formations-A tight formation should have an advantage over a disordered mob, and the experience of the fighters determines their cohesion. This a weakness as well-a formation is more dependant on one another, and they fight worse when alone.

 5. Morale-In the middle of battle, soldiers should fight better or worse depending on various factors. A captain’s death or wounding can break the back of a unit or inspire it to take bloody revenge upon the foes. A Dwarf that sees no easy lane of retreat knows he is surrounded, and might start to panic. I can imagine 20 Dwarves all getting simultaneously enraged at the site of a slain child and begin a viscous rampage, against all orders. Standard bearers and war musicians could be sent to help.

6. Allies-Politics should play a role. They can help you on the battlefield physically, and give your troops supply and rest. You of course will be required to do the same for them. On the flip side, you may see your enemies begin to form alliances against you.

7. Power-A number that determines how much force an entity can project against its foes. A small power may only be able to afford 3 or 4 small raids a year, moslty with untrained warriors. They would need a lull of several years to launch a major attack. A powerhouse may be able to assualt you with virtually unlimted numbers or soldiers, war animals, and siege equipment-only stopping if you can sack their strongholds and kill the leaders that enable the war machine to flourish. This can be determined by quality of the site claimed in mineral wealth, population, and general mood of the country in regard to war. Sometimes, you shouldnt really be able to win...

[Tamren]

Feel free to list as much detail as you want. If you have a lot of similar ideas that relate to one thing such as armour, go ahead and make a new thread. I am going to make a missile weapon thread tommorow myself.

8. Weapon racks should act as weapon bins. The advantage is that once they are filled they stay filled and are not shuffled around. A weapon taken from the rack is put back to the same rack when needed. This way you can assign guards to a wall and specify weapon racks they should use, they will go to the wall and take crossbows off the rack there instead of grabbing them from a random stockpile.

9. Flasks should be fillable with booze and not just water. At least until intoxication goes in.

10. We should be able to arm and armour civilians, these fortresses ARE frontier towns after all. The disadvantage of course is that such things would hinder work.

[Keilden]

Some kind of moral system would be needed. And that dwarfs can alarm eachother so military can asemble even if they are sleeping.

[PTTG??]

Sweet stink on a blink! You beat me to it! I was actual composing an identical thread right now, like JUST RIGHT NOW! Ok, well now that I have that out of my system, here's what I was going to say:

Armies Brainstorming!  ☺╥╤╥☺

12-See the Roads suggestion; Basically, the world needs roads to fill it out and add strategy to travel.

13-Flesh out Human City, Goblin Tower, Elf Retreat (Eeech...) modes. These should be a priority , if only because it is worth it to take on the dwarven empire you made great as the ravaging hordes themselves.

14-Consider working some on the families Cores, as populations rise and fall and the player is more likely to maintain the same world for a long time, it will be much more gratifying to see descendants of your first fortress on the Legends Screen.

15-Take on the old bugs: Clothes, impossible Demands, and all the other "Oh please T.O., fix this!" ones.

16-Finally, continue the great strides made so far in making DF moddable. The greater the variety and scope of mods made, the wider the audience DF can attract, and face it, the more donations come in. Speaking of which: Loved the Story!

I especially like 1,4,5a&b,6,9, and especialy the part of 11 about waking sleepers!
For 7, I agree with the basic idea, but I feel that it should not be so abstract; perhaps you mean as a rating of AI nations? that would work, I think.

[Dwarfaholic]

Squads should have three different "modes":
Standing down, on duty, and battle.
"Standing down" would be as is is now, they train and stuff.

"On duty" would only encompass patrols and guarding and other such stuff.
Also, if two squads are stationed near each other and "on duty", they would take turns and relieve each other.

"Battle", then. It would have a very high priority, so they wouldn't go eating or sleeping while they'd need to go fight. It's essentially a task to go where the station or patrol point is and kill stuff.

Comments please.

[Grek]

I say five army states:

Rank 1) Normal dwarf, behaves like they do now.
Rank 2) Does normal jobs while carrying a weapon and leather armour. Bad thoughts for this if they have not combat skills. They don't cancel jobs because of nearby enemies but attack in attacked.
Rank 3) Off duty soliders. Carry normal weapons and spar. Will attack enemies that wander next to them, but don't go looking for fights in other parts of the fort.
Rank 4) Guards and onduty soliders.
Rank 5) Fighting a battle. Very bad thoughts for this unless they are actualy fighting someone, in which case they get good thoughts.

[ December 18, 2007: Message edited by: Grek ]

[Dwarfaholic]

Yeah, well, I don't think mode #1 is necessary, as they would only be for squads on the military screen.
But otherwise, that's a pretty good idea.
It would be quite useful for siege operators, for instance.

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

Most important thing regarding armies as far as I'm concerned is code optimization and\or some form of acceptable abstraction. I say this cause although DF can technically have 1000 dwarves per fortress, 99.99etc.% of the machines running it cannot sustain a fortress nearing 200 with a double-digit fps. Even if we could, without being able to designate hubs\sectors (which I think are planned), we silly humans could not keep up with a huge dwarf pop.

So what this means (as I see it,) is that if we currently had armies, with my dwarf limit set to 100 (a high number by current standards, I think), 40 of which are military (high ratio, I think), and I send 3/4ths of them out to attack (again a high ratio), I'm attacking with my army of 3 squads.

Now don't get me wrong, being able to do that would still be REALLY cool, but that's not quite an army. I think it'll be worse for the AI, since with the arc the goblins will actually be sending over a portion of their population. Judging by wandering in adventure mode, goblins don't have legions of troops, thus makind stuff like:
 

quote:Originally posted by Dwarmin:
<STRONG>7. Power-A number that determines how much force an entity can project against its foes. A small power may only be able to afford 3 or 4 small raids a year, moslty with untrained warriors. They would need a lull of several years to launch a major attack. A powerhouse may be able to assualt you with virtually unlimted numbers or soldiers, war animals, and siege equipment-only stopping if you can sack their strongholds and kill the leaders that enable the war machine to flourish. This can be determined by quality of the site claimed in mineral wealth, population, and general mood of the country in regard to war. Sometimes, you shouldnt really be able to win...</STRONG>

impossible (love the idea though). 3 or 4 small raids (say 10-15 gobbies) in a year and that = a dark fortress with most of it's population dead. And I don't think they'd repopulate fast enough to really attack again for a decade. Of course a civ is more than just one fort\tower, but then again we now (again, 33f yippee!) regularly beat back sieges of 50 goblins yearly. The latter war machine would exhaust itself in 10 (or so) battles.

Now don't got me wrong, I don't mean to thread-crap, I like most of the suggestions I've read. I'm very excited about what's next for DF, but I think unless something is done to (further) relieve the stress DF puts on CPUs so we can support larger numbers, or some huge hardware breakthroughs are made imminently, I expect the armies will be more like patrols and battles will be more like skirmishes. Plus Toady will need to be careful that the worlds don't exhaust themselves in a matter of a few years.

Edit: Of course this doesn't affect suggestions relating to military cohesion, but I see those to be parallel but not directly pertaining to the arc itself.

[ December 18, 2007: Message edited by: Funkadelic Jive Turkey ]

[Sithlordz]

quote:Originally posted by Dwarmin:
<STRONG>
    3. Battle fields-you can send your army to counter an army away from your fort, if you feel bold enough.  You would need to set camp first, and more civilized peoples may have certain rules of war.

</STRONG>

You could block an enemy from moving through a narrow pass.

Hell yes.  Dwarfopylae, here we come.

Anyway, here are my suggestions:

Er.. 17?

Generals.  They should be hero/champion dwarves who're so skilled that they're deemed a tactically important entity.  They should give buffs to nearby allies, and if the general is feared due to many won battles, or merciless slaughter, a negative buff to the enemy.  Seems very warcrafty, I know, but it'd be cool to see several goblins running in fear from your heroic warrior in masterwork steel plate, cleaving a troll in two while shouting orders to nearby soldierdwarves.

18:
Mounted warriors.  These would just be awesome.  Small stuff like horses, and maybe other animals like big cats for Elves, should be easily mountable if tamed.  Of course, there's always bigger stuff like Hydras.. Dwarven Oiliphaunts, with catapults and ballistae mounted on their backs?
Yesplz.

19:
Balanced weaponry.  Don't make mauls all-powerful.  They should be incredibly slow, and a skilled short sword user might be able to beat a maul-user if they're agile enough.  Rinse, and repeat with all weapons, giving them strengths and weaknesses.  Maybe fix it up so crushing damage from warhammers, etc. damages plate users more, slashing damage, from swords, etc. hurts people in leather armour more, and piercing damage from spears, pikes, etc. hurts people in chain mail more?

20:
FIX THE FREAKING ARCHERS.  Self-explanatory.

Note: FJT, I agree with you about the strain on the CPU load, we're not going to get anywhere without being able to run the game, but by the time half of this stuff is actually implemented, we'll all be running 8 core processors at 9 GHZ.    

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

quote:Originally posted by Sithlordz:
<STRONG>Note: FJT, I agree with you about the strain on the CPU load, we're not going to get anywhere without being able to run the game, but by the time half of this stuff is actually implemented, we'll all be running 8 core processors at 9 GHZ.    
</STRONG>

The thing is I don't think it'll take that long. It's the next thing Toady wants to work on, and I figure the base foundation will have been laid in no longer than a years time. (Of course foundation and completion are 2 different things but honestly I think DF is one of those projects that'll be a work-in-progress as long as it lives.)

-And also from what I gather, 8 cores won't help DF very much. (And even if it was a multi-thread app. by then we'd also have Windows Soulsucker Pro to needlessly occupy 6 of the 8 cores needlessly.)

[DJ]

quote:impossible (love the idea though). 3 or 4 small raids (say 10-15 gobbies) in a year and that = a dark fortress with most of it's population dead. And I don't think they'd repopulate fast enough to really attack again for a decade. Of course a civ is more than just one fort\tower, but then again we now (again, 33f yippee!) regularly beat back sieges of 50 goblins yearly. The latter war machine would exhaust itself in 10 (or so) battles.

Don't forget that goblins breed like flies. I'd say that each female goblin should have a litter of about five baby goblins each year, and these grow up in 7-8 years, so depopulation shouldn't be much of a problem. In fact, if goblins don't die enough their fortresses should experience massive starvations due to unsupportably large population. This would also be a nice explanation for aggressiveness of goblins - invading other civilization both reduces the number of mouths to feed and provides much needed food.

[ December 18, 2007: Message edited by: DJ ]

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

Point well made DJ, maybe that's why some generated worlds are made in the goblin tongue? But in a way you reaffirm what I say, because:
1) Goblin tower population would be (much) larger than it presently is.
2) This would definitely need some delicate balancing because if, going by the 5 litter a year rule, 30 goblin females are left unchecked for a year, that's 150 gob-kiddies. Problem here isn't the horror they'd visit upon the world but the comp handling a visit to these towers. These kids will have to be at the tower while they grow up. And say these same females are left alone for 5 years...that'll make for a tower with (approximately) 780 creatures, not counting anything other than the 30 females and their legion of not-yet mature children.

P.S.- You could say that 30 goblin females is too much, but even with 10 (not a huge number I think) the kid explosion over 5 years = crazy.

[DJ]

Well, they may have the potential to grow that much, but the resources are always a limiting factor. This means that the goblin population can't explode unless they acquire large amounts of food, but it can recover rapidly. In peace conditions, maybe one out of five goblin kids would reach adulthood, the rest would starve to death. But peace should be a very rare thing for goblins, and death of old age almost unheard of.

Goblins should be abysmally poor farmers to ensure that their population doesn't reach CPU-slaying proportions. Maybe they shouldn't even farm at all, and rely solely on raiding villages of other civs.

[ December 18, 2007: Message edited by: DJ ]

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

Ok, true, that would be a solution, but that's a major step forward for DF. Right now, as I understand it, the only things that actually need sustenance is your dwarves. I doubt that the AI is currently capable of maintaining itself on the players level. I don't think the civs outside your direct control actually do anything right now, meaning they don't grow food\eat and they don't truly create the stuff they bring you for trade. It's a "let's not and say we did" sorta thing. I think the resources they offer you are derived from what would be present in their region but they don't actually go hunt giant scorpion to trade chitin with you.

Now of course Toady could just abstract the pop. in a similar way and thereby make it so that goblins breed when pop >=x and stop when pop >=y, but I was going under the presumption that he wanted to stop (or minimize) abstracting population so that armies, migrants, etc. actually have to be drawn from somewhere and detract from the population of said somewhere. Also how much of a toll will any such extra information take on our comps?

Also let me say this: I'm not complaining out of fear that my personal computer won't be able to handle it. If that were the case then it's time for me to upgrade and that's that. It's more of a general paranoia I get whenever Toady undertakes the big projects that'll add a lot more info. I was paranoid with the z-axis too, and that turned out alright. I've faith in Toady to work out the army arc and keep the game playable too. But at the same time if you maxed a map with the z-axis it also displayed DFs computer crippling abilities more than ever. Perhaps it's just me but it seems like people are envisioning huge battles and wars with the army arc and I don't know how our computers will handle it if the numbers do get large.

P.S.- Even small patrols and raiding parties would still be really cool to me, I was just saying that some of the suggestions made (which are also really cool,) seem impossible or impractical to me until there's a way for DF to work with larger numbers.