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[Baughn]

Even a mountain can be destroyed by removing pebbles, it just takes a really, really long time.

You're right that scratching a bronze colossus is probably useless. Still, the system that handles cumulative damage should be able to give that result as well, if the scratches really are that shallow; there probably is no need for a lower threshold.

That way, skill can factor into it too. Imagine fifty dwarves all carefully scratching the exact same location.. over... and over again...

[Mephansteras]

The other common workaround for the Bronze Colossus is to give it some sort of Soul Shard or something that acts as a brain. When that dies, it's reduced to just a statue.

[Mel_Vixen]

You could manipulate the shear and impact values after a sufficient amount of cumulative wounds. Making Stone more brittle for example can be a substitute for a real cracking behaviour. Metal things can get lower shear values which lead the metal to rip after a certain amount of dents. Could work for fleshy beings too.


edit: Does skin and other tissues rip from over-stretching? Like a animal bitting and ripping out flesh or ripped skin from a hard punch like you see in boxing matches?

[Footkerchief]

I still need to mess with cumulative wounds being able to break things, which may be today.  I'm not convinced that is a good way to a lot of the time though.  If you are only scratching a bronze colossus, those are scratches on a giant hunk of metal and there wouldn't be an appreciable tree chopping or cracking/structural instability effect there.  I should probably just fill it with something and make sure it can be punctured at this point, until there are more ways to kill things that can't be killed by a regular squad.

If you're seeking input, there were a couple good threads on the topic:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=55131.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=52120.0

My pet idea is 1) using total wound volume as a measure of "HP," and 2) implementing some abstract fracture propagation by giving fracture/shatter wounds a chance to expand far beyond their basic size (depending on the squareness of the blow, etc.).  Impacts to a tissue could also expand preexisting fractures in that tissue.

[G-Flex]

I still need to mess with cumulative wounds being able to break things, which may be today.  I'm not convinced that is a good way to a lot of the time though.  If you are only scratching a bronze colossus, those are scratches on a giant hunk of metal and there wouldn't be an appreciable tree chopping or cracking/structural instability effect there.  I should probably just fill it with something and make sure it can be punctured at this point, until there are more ways to kill things that can't be killed by a regular squad.

A couple problems with not implementing this would be that it affects things aside from just those types of creatures (one of many examples: in DF you can punch a dude's arm all day and never really get beyond light bruising even though you should be tenderizing the hell out of him eventually, which actually does cause problems for unarmed combat), plus it applies even if you're actually fracturing/shattering parts of the creature instead of scratching/denting it (obviously scratching a bronze colossus repeatedly shouldn't add up to much, but constantly "shattering" the head probably should). Also, there's the fact that damaging tissue layers should, in some cases, make it easier to damage ones underneath.

I go into this more in the thread Footerchief linked me to (I mention the word "cumulative" enough times that it should probably be easy enough to find the most notable posts about it), but the gist of it is as follows: People mention it with regards to the Bronze Colossus and other material-based beasts, but it's actually a pretty systemic issue. People only focus on those creatures because "I can't kill this at all" is a much more obvious problem than "my arm's skin just got torn 13,000 times in a row but nothing has penetrated to the fat/muscle yet" or "I just got punched 800 times in the head with minor bruising as a result". After all, a lot of real-world injury relies on repetitive blows, especially unarmed, so this stuff is bound to come up.


I still need to add a new post there about suggestions to raw values for tissue materials (I think I mentioned some stuff about fat already); I'll probably do that within the week. I hope.

[Toady One]

A couple problems with not implementing this would be that it affects things aside from just those types of creatures (one of many examples: in DF you can punch a dude's arm all day and never really get beyond light bruising even though you should be tenderizing the hell out of him eventually, which actually does cause problems for unarmed combat), plus it applies even if you're actually fracturing/shattering parts of the creature instead of scratching/denting it (obviously scratching a bronze colossus repeatedly shouldn't add up to much, but constantly "shattering" the head probably should). Also, there's the fact that damaging tissue layers should, in some cases, make it easier to damage ones underneath.

Cumulative breaks are in now (universally), though I'm compiling it up for the tests right now so I'm not sure how good my stuff is yet.  The "shatters" are likely little chips being broken off.  That one is a problem with the announcement text, which I should handle tonight as well.  The wound has an effective area and the quality of the fracture within that area, and the area is not respected in the message text if I'm correct.  There are tissue holes that develop that allow passing to the tissues underneath, but it's not really satisfying since the attacking weapon has to go in without touching the edges like that Operation game.  If it touches the edges, it has to pass through the entire tissue as usual.

I haven't handled cumulative bruising/denting yet.  It'll probably have to operate at that level, with the bruise number, but you'd really want organs to burst and so on.  The complicated reality of actual wet tissues and organ shapes isn't reflected at all.  It might have to be a property of a body part that lets it burst like a spleen or collapse like a lung, but cumulative bruising will be enough to cause function loss and death, anyway.  That part should be easier.

What else was there...  weapon swing velocity.  That should all be in depending on weight and attacker strength/size as of the initial 2010 release, but yeah, I'm going to go back and run numbers to see what happened to the balance.  Hopefully tonight again or tomorrow or whatever depending on how sleep falls out.

[Aquillion]

The other common workaround for the Bronze Colossus is to give it some sort of Soul Shard or something that acts as a brain. When that dies, it's reduced to just a statue.

I suppose a Shadow-of-the-Colossus dealy where they have a weak point or magic runes on them or whatever that make them die if they're damaged would be one option, but that'd require stuff like called shots (or even the ability to climb up on a monster and run around, or whatever epic madness you can imagine.)

Honestly, the current situation -- where you can pretty much only kill a Bronze Colossus by immersing it in magma or something similar -- isn't that bad.  They can't climb, they can't dig, and they'll probably never get either of those abilities.  This makes them relatively manageable for players who have the chance to exploit it, even if it can be a bit frustrating to people who want to be able to meet everything in battle.

It might also be neat if there were more ways to order your dwarves to use fire as a weapon.  That seems to be one of the few Bronze Colossus weaknesses, although I'm not sure if it'd get hot enough to cause melting.

But in terms of material damage...  it's hard to imagine hitting a giant solid bronze statue with an axe until it breaks.  If it's hollow, maybe.  But just because steel is harder than bronze doesn't mean your axe is going to keep its edge if you try to hack through a huge solid piece of the stuff...

Does denting impair function at the moment?  Could a leg get so badly bent out of shape by hammerdwarves hitting it with giant hammers that the Colossus can't walk anymore?  Realistically, hammers seem like the logical way to deal with a Bronze Colossus to me -- they won't get damaged themselves the way a metal weapon would, you can knock the enemy over, and eventually the beating will make something break or bend out of shape.

[Toady One]

Adamantine battle axes were causing around 3% fractures to the BC upper bodies (a 25% quality fracture through 1/9th of the available area), so the cumulative system has bumped them up into contention.  It took three highly skilled naked dwarves with adamantine battle axes sent in one at a time to finish one colossus off.  "Shatter" now says "chip" when it means that.  I should try steel now to see how they do.  The colossus itself still needs to be hacked in half or have its head chopped off (because it has a head/lower body, the new central part function loss doesn't trigger blob-like death), so it's still like a giant bronze tree that needs to be chopped down, but it's possible to do with stronger edged weapons now.

Dents can theoretically impair function, but I'm not sure how that works for the colossus.  I still need to make them cumulative as with bruises, which is a tomorrow thing now.  It could still probably push you to death even if you tie it up like a ribbon, and you'd never get the death condition to trigger as it stands.  Maybe central part function loss death should apply to everything.

Weapon degradation will definitely change all of this colossus fighting, at least with non-adamantine weapons.  You might have to constantly run for spare steel axes and make a seasonal ritual of it until the colossus is killed.

[Footkerchief]

Adamantine battle axes were causing around 3% fractures to the BC upper bodies (a 25% quality fracture through 1/9th of the available area), so the cumulative system has bumped them up into contention.  It took three highly skilled naked dwarves with adamantine battle axes sent in one at a time to finish one colossus off.  "Shatter" now says "chip" when it means that.  I should try steel now to see how they do.  The colossus itself still needs to be hacked in half or have its head chopped off (because it has a head/lower body, the new central part function loss doesn't trigger blob-like death), so it's still like a giant bronze tree that needs to be chopped down, but it's possible to do with stronger edged weapons now.

This sounds like a gigantic improvement.  Can't wait to try it!

[Baughn]

Lovely, just lovely.

One useful heuristic for killing non-living units would be to look at their abilities. If they can't move, and they can't attack, they might as well be dead and can be treated as such; that could happen through simple extreme damage all over, without needing to actually pull it apart.

[cephalo]

Lovely, just lovely.

One useful heuristic for killing non-living units would be to look at their abilities. If they can't move, and they can't attack, they might as well be dead and can be treated as such; that could happen through simple extreme damage all over, without needing to actually pull it apart.

That's the thing, the only really bad thing about unkillable creatures, is that your dwarves continue to be afraid of them. They just need to be recognized as harmless really. At that point you can just integrate them into the fort and put them into a corner somewhere.

"So bronze colossus in the corner, shall I throw a party today?"

"I hate you all"

"Hahaha, never change that fiesty attitude my friend! Have some dwarven ale. *slosh*."

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Weapon degradation will definitely change all of this colossus fighting, at least with non-adamantine weapons.  You might have to constantly run for spare steel axes and make a seasonal ritual of it until the colossus is killed.

Please tell me that artifact weapons won't degrade, at least >_<
(

[Orkel]

If there's degradation coming in the future, there needs to be a sharpener's workshop to fix em up for some time :3

[Baughn]

Probably not. They're supposed to be magic in a sense, and incorruptibility is certainly an obvious choice for that.

[Mephansteras]

Probably not. They're supposed to be magic in a sense, and incorruptibility is certainly an obvious choice for that.

Even more, a lot of 'artifact' swords in legend were special specifically because they never dulled. Doesn't even have to be that special of a sword, if you never have to sharpen it you're much more effective during a long battle.