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[G-Flex]

I feel that special geographical features, landmarks, and so forth should arise as naturally as possible from the simulation as opposed to being predefined, although obviously the latter is going to be the case much of the time for quite a while, if not always.

[Kogan Loloklam]

I feel that special geographical features, landmarks, and so forth should arise as naturally as possible from the simulation as opposed to being predefined, although obviously the latter is going to be the case much of the time for quite a while, if not always.

Why would that be the case?
Simple rules with different seeds can create quite different terrain. You can see this now, just play adventure mode and never use fast travel. Even temples can be varied if the rules are made for them in such a manner. Goblin temples are all the same because the rules that are there for them require it. This is because it's not complete, but if it were to get up there in suggestions, I am sure it'd be a priority for Toady to make village diversity.
Who knows, maybe hamlets will cause that without any further feedback.

Either way, if you want it, vote for it. "Building Diversity" (#236 when I looked last) fits it (because I just made it). This may or may not directly link to it.

[monkeyfetus]

Is weapon length taken into account in combat, and if not, will it ever be? It is my understanding that the spear is by far the most popular weapon in the history of warfare. Now, the spear has a lot of things going for it. It's cheaper, easier to make, and easier to use when compared to something like a sword, but I think a HUGE part of the spear, and pole-arms in general, is the ability to stab the other person with your pointy bit of metal while keeping your soft and squishy body as far away from their pointy bits as possible. But in my experience, when I move into a tile adjacent to a goblin thief, he will be able to take off my ear with his nine inch dagger before I get a chance to stab him with my twelve-foot pike.

Does the weight of a weapon affect the velocity of the strike or recovery time/frequency of attacks? Will a weak dwarf swing an artifact platinum mace with the same velocity as one of adamantine?

How is the mass of obsidian swords handled for combat, what with them being composed of two significantly different materials?

[Footkerchief]

How is the mass of obsidian swords handled for combat, what with them being composed of two significantly different materials?

Right now the obsidian swords (or macuahuitls or whatever you want to call them) don't work at all.

[Cruxador]

My understanding regarding length is that it is figured in when determining how deeply a blow my go - you may not stab a weapon deeper into a fellow than the length of its blade. To my knowledge, it is not possible to exceed this by additionally plunging one's arm into the target's body, but if it is, this nonetheless happens after the entirety of the weapon has been dealt with.

Toady has not, to the best of my knowledge (which knowledge I beleive to be complete save for the contents of the most recent podcast) publicly mentioned any other use of length, and therefore I'd say it's safe to assume that there as of yet is none.

[NW_Kohaku]

Is weapon length taken into account in combat, and if not, will it ever be? It is my understanding that the spear is by far the most popular weapon in the history of warfare. Now, the spear has a lot of things going for it. It's cheaper, easier to make, and easier to use when compared to something like a sword, but I think a HUGE part of the spear, and pole-arms in general, is the ability to stab the other person with your pointy bit of metal while keeping your soft and squishy body as far away from their pointy bits as possible. But in my experience, when I move into a tile adjacent to a goblin thief, he will be able to take off my ear with his nine inch dagger before I get a chance to stab him with my twelve-foot pike.

The problem is that spears are typically one-handed spears in this game.  Those would really be used more for stabbing around a large shield from the same sort of range you'd be using a sword, anyway.  (Which is, incidentally, exactly how they are used in this game.) Spears were incredibly common throughout history, but spears and lances and polearms are all different weapons that don't have interchangable lengths.

The sort of polearms, like pikes, that really were for holding enemies off at a range of 12 feet or more were often so heavy and bulky that they would be essentially impossible to use in non-formation combat, where the enemy could just sidestep your pole and attack from the side faster than you could turn.  In fact, most soldiers who carried polearms of the sort that keep enemies at bay beyond normal sword reach actually carried shortswords at their sides and simply dropped their pikes as useless when it came to actual melee.

Beyond that, there's also the whole fact that the game still does not have hard definitions on the size of its tiles (although I do believe 10 feet is a reasonable guess), and 20-ton whales fill the same space in this game as do butterflies.  Technically, even reaching into the next tile, though, should take a nearly 10-foot reach, even assuming 10 foot tiles, since you have to reach out of your own tile and into theirs.

My understanding regarding length is that it is figured in when determining how deeply a blow my go - you may not stab a weapon deeper into a fellow than the length of its blade. To my knowledge, it is not possible to exceed this by additionally plunging one's arm into the target's body, but if it is, this nonetheless happens after the entirety of the weapon has been dealt with.

I actually see this as a bit of a weakness of the system Toady has set up, as it appears as though the game only calculates the weight and length of the weapon when dealing damage.  This causes problems like, if I was punching someone, and dealing serious damage to them, but then stop and pick up a tooth, and then punch someone with a tooth in my hand, then my punch suddenly becomes based upon the stats of the tooth, and becomes completely harmless as an attack.  The weight of the rest of the arm behind that attack is completely meaningless.

Being able to put the momentum of your body into a thrust, as well as being able to just plain punch through tissue if you really are that strong, should be incorporated into the way that combat mechanics works.  (Although granted, this was from experimentation back in 31.01 and 31.03, so it may have changed by now, even though I don't recall seeing anything to that effect.)

[Greiger]

There does seem to be some kind of a weight behind the strike thing.  At least for melee weapons.  A swordsman with an adamantine sword can still do damage very effectively, consistantly cutting to the bone with almost every strike in my experience.  Despite having an extremely light weapon. 

I would figure if there wasn't some kind of additional force behind the strike it would only be about as strong as an adamantine bolt.

[Neonivek]

Well then Kohaku maybe there should be Guard damage from a weapon's guard when stabbing if it has one. If not I guess it would be your hand.

[dree12]

Does the weight of a weapon affect the velocity of the strike or recovery time/frequency of attacks? Will a weak dwarf swing an artifact platinum mace with the same velocity as one of adamantine?

The reason so many people think this is bugged is the bugged strength formulae. It's evident that you can't swing a mace quicker than your hands can move, and right now preety much all creatures can swing a platinum mace that quickly. Think of how often you have been encumbered in adventurer mode, you can preety much swing a dragon corpse around without much speed penalty. So a truly weak dwarf wouldn't, but a "very weak" dwarf (who can carry "platinum table" without [much] encumberence) would.

[NW_Kohaku]

The reason so many people think this is bugged is the bugged strength formulae. It's evident that you can't swing a mace quicker than your hands can move, and right now preety much all creatures can swing a platinum mace that quickly. Think of how often you have been encumbered in adventurer mode, you can preety much swing a dragon corpse around without much speed penalty. So a truly weak dwarf wouldn't, but a "very weak" dwarf (who can carry "platinum table" without [much] encumberence) would.

That's only one problem with strength...

Does it at all make sense that a bulked-up muscledwarf that weighs 500 lbs is going to be able to sprint like a scrawny 150lb one? No, he's always going to move slower. We've moved out of the 40d system, there are tradeoffs for things like strength. It's just another example of DF (accidentally?) imitating real life.

Not at the rate it is implimented, it doesn't. 

Consider a football player like a Halfback or Running Back.  Yes, some players are less strong but faster, and some are stronger and slower, but the way that DF is currently set up strength all but completely counteracts every point of agility you gain.  That would make someone with a balanced ratio of strength and agility who was super-fit essentially the same as a couch potato whose strength and agility had dwindled to almost nothing.  Even if they are large, burly men, Halfbacks can easily outrun most untrained humans. It is, after all, exactly what they are paid to do.

(Specifically, 1Str, 1Agi will actually wind up having displayed speed 900.  1000Str, 1000Agi will have displayed speed 1000. 5000 Str, 5000 Agi will have displayed speed 1150.  1 Str, 5000 Agi will have displayed speed 2200.  5000 Str, 1 Agi or even 1000 Agi for some odd reason actually bugs out, and produces a displayed speed of 1290.  I think this may be because the unbalanced strength will actually plunge your speed below a minimum threshold value, and a sanity check default value gets used instead.)

5000 Strength, 5000 Agility is just the most extreme example, it literally goes down the line - a 1 Strength, 1 Agility character who probably has trouble standing up under their own power is almost as fast as a 2000 Strength, 2000 Agility character or a 1000 Strength, 1000 Agility character.

The problem is that strength nearly nullifies agility.

That is not to say that a large degree of muscle mass should not have some effect on agility, but that it shouldn't have such an effect that it actually means that agility gains are almost entirely nullified by your strength.

If someone trains in track and only trains to be able to move faster, not to be stronger, that's fine if they are faster than someone who trains to do both equally, but someone who trains to do both equally should not be tied in a footrace with someone who can hardly carry the weight of their own body.  Even walking, a physically fit person with well-rounded training should have a better pace than a person who can hardly walk.

[dree12]

Which reminds me...
Are there plans to destroy the physical attributes Strength, Toughness, and Endurence completely? The first two of those have body equivilants (muscle=strength, fat=toughness), and the other is a combination of the calorie system and Willpower. Agility, DR, and Recupration do not have equivalents that are easily programmable without the body shape rewrite, so I'm not worried by those.
If that change were made, the only negative effect strength would have is added weight. Granted, you wouldn't be able to see Supieor Strength that easily anymore, but it would allow different strength in different parts.

[NW_Kohaku]

I would somewhat prefer that...

Reminding me of many talks about D&D and why attack rolls and swimming were determined by strength, even though those were "speed" related.

After all, the "speed" of a human is derived from his leg (and rump) muscles.  The speed with which a human can swing his arm (or a weapon in it) is determined by his arm (and chest/shoulder/back, depending on the motion) muscles.  Force, after all, is mass times acceleration, and if the mass doesn't go up, then more force means more acceleration.

Although it might mean making things more complex, it might actually be nice to have a "Dexterity" score for how long it takes to do things requiring nimble handwork, like most craftswork, and then make movement a matter of lower body strength or fitness.

edit: Oh, and speaking of adding weight... It turns out that weight slowing down creatures is not at all relative to their own size and strength - playing around with oversized (by two factors of magnitude) dwarves has shown me that they start wearing 4 ton pigtail dresses that slow them down to glacial paces, even though it is the exact same equipment, just scaled up to fit the giant dwarf.

[Beardless]

Oh, and speaking of adding weight... It turns out that weight slowing down creatures is not at all relative to their own size and strength - playing around with oversized (by two factors of magnitude) dwarves has shown me that they start wearing 4 ton pigtail dresses that slow them down to glacial paces, even though it is the exact same equipment, just scaled up to fit the giant dwarf.

I suspect the Square-Cube Law might be coming into play here. If I'm reading this right, it works against your giant dwarf in two ways: Your dwarf's strength should actually decrease proportionately while the mass of the dress increases. (Unless the raws just allow you to type in the values for strength and mass yourself, in which case I guess it's just luck that it suggests a real-life phenomenon. Like when a bathtub swirls in the "proper" direction while draining.)

[MrWiggles]

Toady with contextual end games or end career I suppose (EG, if you travel from town to town, you're a trader because of your actions.), will be be seeing this with Fortress End goals? As in if we produce a lot of arms and armor, we get to be known for this or produce a lot of brew we become a known brewery? Something other then the generally forced  New Capital thing that currently happens.

[NW_Kohaku]

I suspect the Square-Cube Law might be coming into play here. If I'm reading this right, it works against your giant dwarf in two ways: Your dwarf's strength should actually decrease proportionately while the mass of the dress increases. (Unless the raws just allow you to type in the values for strength and mass yourself, in which case I guess it's just luck that it suggests a real-life phenomenon. Like when a bathtub swirls in the "proper" direction while draining.)

If it's Square-Cube Law, it should be having an effect even when characters are naked...  which would mean any creature beyond a certain size would be collapsing under their own weight.  The giants (and the massive HFS creatures and dragons and the like) aren't weighed down by their own mass nearly as much as they are weighed down by just wearing clothes. 

Their bodies weigh something like 200 metric tons, the dress is just 4 tons.  The difference between wearing it and not wearing it is essentially ten to twenty times speed.  Carrying just one piece of steel armor, weighing around 5-20 tons, is enough to drop speed to some kind of minimum possible value, which I assume correlates to something like SPEED:1,000,000 or 10,000 or something.

edit: amusing sidenote: Making huge dwarves means their weapons have VASTLY inflated prices, even if the amount of metal used to make them has not increased.  7-ton steel axes (100 times normal size) are worth almost 4 million dbs.  The 17-ton steel breastplates, however, took the same number of metal bars and is worth the same amount, as are all the giant clothing items.  Apparently, a single 15 kg steel bar will make a 4-ton steel helm.