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[Cheese]

Have you thought about adding a race consisting of Megabeasts and titans? Sieges include say 30 randomly genned titans and 20 various megabeasts. It would make for legendary battles

[darkflagrance]

Can't add titans/forgotten beasts because we don't have raws access to them yet to put in civs.

However, I have been considering the implementation of a draconic/hydraic civ...

[ioi101]

I've been greatly enjoying the mod (basic, not challenge) over the base game so I thought I'd give some feedback.

When I embarked I think I counted 9 new hostile civlizations, not including goblins, elves, and humans. I think the hellfire imps were missing. The world was created over 600 years, and only one dwarf civ was available at embark (one that hadn't figured out high boots as it turned out).

I'm in the summer of my third year, 66 dwarves. I haven't used danger rooms or traps, beyond one line of outside cage traps meant to catch wildlife (i.e. elephants) relatively far away from my fortress, and a set of cagetraps in at the entrance which haven't been used yet. My main military force is 3 axedwarves, all in steel, who have ended up repelling  all invasions up to now. I also have 4 marksdwarves who still use wooden bolts and are mostly there for the experience, and 7 hammerdwarves strictly training for now.

Until this summer there was no real threat - I'd get goblin ambushes, frogmen, dark stranglers, furies (who are completely unarmed and unarmored - I think this is a bug).

This summer however I got one squad of blendecs - took a bit longer to slaughter but still no threat, and a squad of nagas - the bowmen were a threat, the swordsmen were not although again significantly tougher then previous enemies (I ended up having to restart the game a couple of times so I got to see both bow and sword nagas). And also 2 (or maybe 3) goblin ambushes - not a problem except for a lasher that injured one of my axedwarves. Along with probably 2x squads of fury "bowmen" (again no armor/weapons), 3x squads of frogmen and another 3x dark stranglers who pretty much all ran when I got into contact with one of their squads and slaughtered them. All these enemies came together probably within a month of each other, and they were all driven off/killed.

Along with them however, I got the real problem which was a squad of nightwing swordsmen (about 10 probably) using steel/iron weapons and armor. I think the main problem here is actually that my axedwarves can't put on their gloves properly so any long fight eventually ends with them being hand-less. Which wasn't a problem before since the enemies get slaughtered quickly but the nightwings do not die easily, at all. My marksdwarves with copper bolts also can't seem to do much damage to them. They hit, they "chip the bone" but they don't bring them down, even if they are all firing on just one enemy.

The good thing is that the nightwings are apparently not interested in attacking me. They sit a fair distance away from my fortress, and wait. I've tried a couple things - drawing them out in small groups with the marksdwarves - doesn't work too well since the marksdwarves have really bad defensive skills, so I need to intercept them with my 2 healthy axedwarves, who usually draw out 6-7 nightwings, and kill 2-3 of them before loosing their hands. I also tried to use my 7 unarmored but well armed and decently skilled hammerdwarves, to charge in after the axedwarves but they got slaughtered. I think I'll try to somehow get around the gauntlet bug and give it another shot at some point.

So some questions/issues I've had:

1) No elves came, ever. And I'm pretty sure they were there on embark. The humans came the second year, but it's now autumn of third and they didn't show up this summer. I don't know why - we traded fine before and there have been no casualties for traders.

2) I've had no ambushes from all the new races, only sieges. The goblins are the only ones who ambush. Don't know if that's intended

3) As mentioned furies are unarmed/unarmored

4) Dark stranglers are butcherable. Is this intended?

5) This is probably something that you cannot change easily (or at all), but probably my biggest gripe with the combat system in this game is how much armor/weapon material matters. I had 3 steel armored/armed dwarves before the first invasion hit and nothing that isn't steel armed/armored is a threat to me, at all, even though those dwarves started with terrible skills (and they are even now barely close to legendary in their weapon and with mediocre defense skills).

I'd much rather the combat was somewhat more dominated by skills, and perhaps weapon/armor quality (masterwork vs normal), rather then material. I know that's not "realistic" but really I don't give a damn about realism personally, compared to gameplay.

[darkflagrance]

Thanks for your feedback. I'm happy you enjoyed the mod! I'll definitely consider it when I put together the next version of this mod.

1) It is probable that no elves came because of the constant sieges. In a spring with a siege, you will likely see no elves. Since constant sieges are an intended feature of this mod, I can't conceivably change this without also editing entity_default.

2) I've found that ambushes murder fps, especially when every civ is sending them and they all build up. Flight and ambushing are also extremely buggy when combined. I might nonetheless make more civs ambushers in the future.

3) I will look at this.

4) If I could, I would make all races butcherable.

As for difficulty, Dark Stranglers are intended to be wussies. In general, I planned for the early civs to be quite easy, but for the later civs to be quite destructive up until the sheer brokenness of the ones in the Challenge version. The mod is also balanced with a very short world  gen in mind; it's unfortunate that the hardest civs (wolves, elephants, and imps) don't seem to have appeared in your world - early world gens help preventing them from dying out.

5) I would need to institute a materials mod to do that. Actually, I've been thinking of creating a more comprehensive "military mod" that rebalances enemies, materials, weapons/armor, and other things for a more comprehensive overhaul of the military experience. However, what I like about the Fortress Defense Mod is that it can be easily exported to any version of DF that uses the vanilla files.

In changing this for the Fortress Defense Mod, I am limited not only by the stiff hierarchy of materials but also by the inability for enemy troops to come with more than a very limited fighting ability (with the exception of leaders). The new version of Dwarf Fortress is also more procedural with regards to the animals that come with a civ and the types of materials they use, making those harder to manipulate through just the entity file.

[FleshForge]

Yeah stealthed units in general seem to make your FPS go to the shitter.  I don't really know why that should be but it seems pretty obvious, even kobold thieves running around picking up trash loot outside your perimeter really hurt FPS.

[kilakan]

I think it has to do with the computer continually rolling to see if they are spotted.

[darkflagrance]

I think it has to do with the computer continually rolling to see if they are spotted.

And the worst part about it is that you know when ambushers are there because your fps goes into the crapper, but you can't deal with the problem quickly because they are hidden and you must search for them first, and searching for them is slow because your fps sucks.

[FleshForge]

You're probably right, but if so that really needs some design attention - typically I build my forts so that my dwarves are pretty much always out of line of sight to wherever ambushers could be, yet I still get that large FPS hit.  I guess since dwarves are constantly moving around Toady has every dwarf constantly checking, thinking about the problem makes me suspect it's probably a very hard one, much harder than most pathfinding applications.

[darkflagrance]

Uploaded new versions with the Fury bug fixed.

You can try to save the new raws over the old raws to fix the bug. I had a similar bug with Tigermen while testing, and I suspect that I fixed it in the current game I was playing.

[FleshForge]

A tiny bug, war elephant corpses don't appear to weigh very much/anything, unlike regular elephant corpses.

[ioi101]

Hmm, that's interesting about the caravans. I'm not sure I understand however - do caravans get scared of alot of sieges even if you dispatch them quickly? Or is it that a caravan decides whether to come or not at a specific semi-random time, and if you happen to have a siege at the time they don't come? Or, do they only not come if you have a siege for almost the whole season?

I don't think I had many sieges in the spring, certainly not long ones - maybe the elves are just dead and I didn't notice. For the summer and the humans it makes sense though, since I did have a siege throughout the last month (or two) of summer, and they came the year before.

Is there a fairly easy way to make more caravans arrive, or perhaps to make the ones that show up carry alot more stuff? I actually like the trading side of the game as well, and I've ended up with far too much crap that I want to trade away in this game.

For ambush - I wasn't exactly asking for ambushes heh. I'm not much of a fan of them anyways, although it wouldn't hurt to make 1-2 races capable of ambushing I guess.

By the way, I finally killed off the nightwing squad, once my 3rd axedwarf got his broken arm fixed. Am I correct to think that they can not bleed to death? It seemed like the only way to kill them is to remove their head or upper/lower body. I've had them survive a very long time being knocked out with almost all of their legs/arms/paws chopped off until my axedwarf finally got a solid hit on the central parts which are protected by good armor. It's particularly annoying when two axedwarves decide to take days trying to finish off one disabled nightwing while the third guy is battling the whole squad by himself a few tiles away .

[darkflagrance]

Or is it that a caravan decides whether to come or not at a specific semi-random time, and if you happen to have a siege at the time they don't come?

It's something like this. In 40d, I know there was a window within which sieges/caravans could come at a certain time each season, and if a siege lasted for that entire time, nothing else, neither sieges nor caravans, would come. Though the window has shifted in 31 to the middle of a season, I think a similar mechanic still applies.

Is there a fairly easy way to make more caravans arrive, or perhaps to make the ones that show up carry alot more stuff? I actually like the trading side of the game as well, and I've ended up with far too much crap that I want to trade away in this game.

You can increase the carrying capacity of animals in creature_domestic that pull caravans.

For ambush - I wasn't exactly asking for ambushes heh. I'm not much of a fan of them anyways, although it wouldn't hurt to make 1-2 races capable of ambushing I guess.

I think hellfire imps might already ambush. But your world doesn't appear to have them, so...

By the way, I finally killed off the nightwing squad, once my 3rd axedwarf got his broken arm fixed. Am I correct to think that they can not bleed to death? It seemed like the only way to kill them is to remove their head or upper/lower body. I've had them survive a very long time being knocked out with almost all of their legs/arms/paws chopped off until my axedwarf finally got a solid hit on the central parts which are protected by good armor. It's particularly annoying when two axedwarves decide to take days trying to finish off one disabled nightwing while the third guy is battling the whole squad by himself a few tiles away .

They don't feel pain, can't suffocate, and never get tired, but I don't see a tag that prevents them from bleeding. In any case, they are meant to be difficult. That is why you have more than three axedwarves.

[FleshForge]

Yes hellfire imps ambush.

[schussel]

hellfire imps are the only ones i took out of the package .. they are strange .. those fireattacks are devastating if they are in a group .. and they cant be drowned... being fire i suppose it should extinguish em being fire beings (bug?)

but their tendency to constantly pop up and burn the world ..literally is quite nice but extremely anoying had mapwide bushfires 2 years in a row hammering my fps

[apatters]

Has anyone else experienced DF crashes while running this mod? I don't know if they're related to the mod (I don't know why) but after installing the mod, I've gotten two fortresses up to ~50 pop and while playing both the game started randomly crashing. One was under 0.31.12 and the other under 0.31.16, in both cases I was using the Lazy Newb pack plus FD.