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[Egon]

I stuck with 40d because I prefer the Military, pure and simple. Every new version that's come out has had that clusterfuck of a military screen, and I just can't be bothered to figure it out. Also Miners are frequently my main defence against marauding animals, and I need some easy way to get them to stand their ground and kill the damn fox.

Things I wish 40d had from the new versions are the caverns, the healthcare and the vaguely useful migrants.

ya know, i'd take a mix of 40d's military and 31.xx's. 31.xx for equipment and organization, 40d for everything else.

and that's honestly the *only* thing i'd like to see. otherwise 31.xx is great.

[strongrudder]

^ I agree. I like the depth to which you can go into specifics (assigning an exact weapons or piece of armor, setting out specific training schedules, allowing soldiers to revert to civilian duties while on break from training). But! There's a difference between a genuine difficulty increase* vs. just making something more tedious and convoluted to set up**.

What would be ideal for me: have a default setup that functions immediately as soon as you meet a few easy requirements (assign squads, designate a barracks/archery range, assign squad to barracks) the way 40d did. But to get the most out of it, you could then customize the training schedule (give them their needed patrol/training breaks), customize their weapons (no, go for the *sword*, not the -sword-! Or maybe a +mace+ instead!), restrict them to a specific burrow, put out kill/station orders, whatever. You're probably going to do about the same amount of managing in the end! But the difference could be important to someone new. They get a chance to see a functioning military, then they can tweak the details they don't like. Better than doing it by process of elimination or just giving up on military altogether.

Aagh, change is hard. I'll quit whining and work on military in my next fort, heh. 2010 is still great stuff, especially since adventure mode got its overhaul.

Spoiler: * (click to show/hide)

* such as: dwarves not increasing attributes to infinity anymore. That's realistic and acceptable... even if one-dwarf armies were fun X)

Spoiler: ** (click to show/hide)

** such as: the interface. What can and can't I change? The training minimum of 10 dwarves per squad, for instance. Changeable! But buried in a submenu where you don't expect it. And assigning armor? Even if I'm telling the dwarf to choose on his own, I still have to tell him it's his choice for each individual type of armor. Might as well micromanage for real then - it'll only take another two button presses.[/size]

[Hiiri]

It never ceases to amaze me how people, who learned to play dwarf fortress in the first place, get scared away by the new military screen. Or the hate that the patches/updates/upgrades always generate in the old members of whatever game.

Now that most of the major bugs have been fixed (or have workarounds), I can't think of any reason not to play .31. And DF just keeps getting better

Edit: The military screen is NOT too hard, complex or unnecessary. Or the healthcare system. These are the details that really separate DF from any other fantasy game.

[Dorf3000]

** such as: the interface. What can and can't I change? The training minimum of 10 dwarves per squad, for instance. Changeable! But buried in a submenu where you don't expect it. And assigning armor? Even if I'm telling the dwarf to choose on his own, I still have to tell him it's his choice for each individual type of armor. Might as well micromanage for real then - it'll only take another two button presses.

The defaults are bad and the UI is anti-intuitive, but that's what you should expect from DF.  For instance, you construct walls, ramps, etc from the constructions submenu in the build screen <b-c>, yet all the other terrain-changing actions are in the <d> designate menu, including removing the constructions you just placed.  The key to select which type of stairs you want changes depending on whether you want to dig it or build it.  Farms are built with the same awkward method as floors and bridges, even though they use no materials - I can't count the number of times I've built a 1-tile farm because I was expecting to be able to size it by marking two corners.  The default is to ignore 'refuse' outside, which is hidden in the <o> orders menu, which totally screws you every time you embark and you wonder why the dwarves aren't collecting bones from outside to put next to your craft shop.  Or they're not dumping the stone you just made from digging out that hill.

When you consider all the other problems DF throws at you, the military screen is not so bad.  If you restart and embark a lot it does become a pain to fix all the dumb defaults each time, but it's not unbearable.  The default uniforms aren't bad and it's better than nothing, and stops you having to assign every squad member their gloves and greaves and everything each time.  They do upgrade by themselves so if you start out with -copper mail shirts- they'll not stay in them when you have masterwork steel.  Compared to the 40d shenanigans required just to get dwarves to swap weapons (because they'd "train" with the sharpest swords they had, and chop each other to pieces), the equipment assignment screen is like manna from heaven.  It's not all good, I agree - the patrol point defining procedure is pretty poor and it's the only thing from 40d I really miss, now it involves fiddling with the notes screen which I could write an entire thesis on how unintuitive it is.  But overall, once you get used to it, it's an improvement.

tl;dr: Complaining about the interface in DF is like complaining about how wet the sea is.

[strongrudder]

DF is certainly complex, but most of it makes sense without too much thought. I play with ASCII and think that nearly every symbol is fantastically chosen for what it represents. Sure you have to keep track of a bunch of hotkeys, but the letter choices again make sense - (w)orkshops, stock(p)iles, (o)rders, got it! There are only a few - (l)artifacts? -  that you just have to memorize.

The new military interface is the first thing in the game to give me any *real* trouble getting my head around it. I don't think what it does is bad, I just think it could be arranged to be more sensical. Just like it's frustrating digging through broken code for a misplaced parenthesis, it's not fun with I have to make sure the stars flags are aligned in order to allow my soldiers to train. And I still can't get marksdwarves to do it. Deploying them is easy at least, though if they haven't been training properly it's rather futile. :d

I don't think my opinion is unreasonable here. I'll learn it, don't y'all worry. I may even look back at these posts I'm making and laugh once I'm used to it! But I don't have to think it's optimal, just as I agree that it is indeed dumb for construction-removal orders to be filed with the designations.

[assimilateur]

2) Much easier (and basically ridiculously overpowered) military.

I don't see how the military was more op in 40d than it is now. In 40d, there was at least the threat sparring injuries and lucky arrows or bolts, whereas in .31 my legendary, steel-clad warriors are basically invincible versus anything short of an fb with deadly dust (and perhaps some clowns, though I have yet to tackle them).

3) PERFORMANCE.

This seems to differ between one person and another, because for me the performance post-update has been similar (as in, similarly bad) to what I had pre-update.

-The military was very, very basic to the point where assigning the proper equipment was was not a serious pain.

Was this a typo?

-Economy (...) worked correctly.

I'm going to repeat what someone already said: the economy was fucking ridiculous, and by what standards you could seriously say that it worked correctly I can't, for the life of me, understand.

[Ivan Issaccs]

The thing I miss most about 40d is hammers.
It was just so entertaining to watch a goblin go flying 15 spaces and gib himself against a tree.

[Sutremaine]

What I'd like from .31's military:

:   A 'copy to whole year' option for the schedules, or some sort of 'override schedule' option that has priority over schedules the way active orders do. I tend to have the military do stuff as necessary, and 'guard this temporary burrow while the mechanic reloads the cage traps' is something I'd like to be active until I switch it off manually. Otherwise I'd have to set an alert for 'guard temporary burrow....' and leave it taking up room on the alerts screen. Not too bad for one or two of these things, but since you can't reorder alerts (I think) they'll get really annoying at some point.

:   A way to instantly militarise a dwarf, as you could in 40d. Useless for serious combat, but good for killing groundhogs or forcing a dwarf to go somewhere. Upon activation, the dwarf would have a squad created and be highly visible to the player (flashing dark grey and white, Conscripted status on the Unit screen, something like that). Upon deactivation, the squad would be disbanded and the dwarf returned to full civilian status. This would not be an option for dwarves already in a squad.

:   A 'best available' option for uniform, which would be the default for manually created squads and cause the military to go and grab whatever they could find. Might not actually be the best due to dwarves picking the most expensive stuff and not the actually best stuff, but ehh, close enough.

[krenshala]

What I'd like from .31's military:

:   A 'copy to whole year' option for the schedules, or some sort of 'override schedule' option that has priority over schedules the way active orders do. I tend to have the military do stuff as necessary, and 'guard this temporary burrow while the mechanic reloads the cage traps' is something I'd like to be active until I switch it off manually. Otherwise I'd have to set an alert for 'guard temporary burrow....' and leave it taking up room on the alerts screen. Not too bad for one or two of these things, but since you can't reorder alerts (I think) they'll get really annoying at some point.

I'm far from the expert some other DF players are ( ), and hadn't even thought of using an alert for that (thank you, i'm gonna steal the idea ), but you appear to have overlooked the fact that you can unassign portions of the burrow.  So, create your burrow, make the alert for guarding it.  Then when you know you want to use it designate the correct area to guard, activate it, and when the work (or whatever) is complete, deactivate the alert and remove the burrow designation from the map.  KEEP the burrow, just 'erase' what you had designated.

:   A way to instantly militarise a dwarf, as you could in 40d. Useless for serious combat, but good for killing groundhogs or forcing a dwarf to go somewhere. Upon activation, the dwarf would have a squad created and be highly visible to the player (flashing dark grey and white, Conscripted status on the Unit screen, something like that). Upon deactivation, the squad would be disbanded and the dwarf returned to full civilian status. This would not be an option for dwarves already in a squad.

:   A 'best available' option for uniform, which would be the default for manually created squads and cause the military to go and grab whatever they could find. Might not actually be the best due to dwarves picking the most expensive stuff and not the actually best stuff, but ehh, close enough.

From my experience the dwarves in 31.18 already go for (what they consider) the best stuff, and will usually upgrade if something better is available in a stockpile (and not owned, if I'm understanding the posts correctly ... i usually have only just enough, if that, for my militia so far).

[GL12]

Eh, I'm getting frustrated with how useless training seems to be in 2010. In 40d I could have 2 squads of dorfs train for a year or two and they would be able to handle basically anything short of clowns. In 2010 they get slaughtered at the drop of a hat. I realize I should probably make one of those new fangled danger rooms but placing traps takes AGES. The new kill button is the shiniest thing ever though.

Honestly, other the that the main thing I miss is crossbows being essentially railguns. Same for ballistae. I understand why it was changed though.

[Nyxalinth]

I think the only thing two things that were better for me in 40d was the military system (Since marksdwarves actually trained!) and the site finder having things like chasms and what not. The healthcare system has annoying bugs but keep in mind dwarf fortress is set in medieval times, medical science is not going to be very advanced, heck I'm actually suprised some things like surgery and what not made it in. Then again you could say that dwarfs don't have anything to say that you're injured because gods punishing you, so for all we know every one in a hundred dwarves is House.

In medieval times, there were knowledgeable doctors, but they weren't in Europe. You had to go to the Moors in Arabia or in India to find proper healers.  Mind, things still weren't up to modern standards, but they were far, far ahead of anyone else.  I might be wrong; I read that a long time ago.

[Marshall Burns]

Funny thing is, in Medieval folklore, dwarves had excellent medicine. They were sought out by other mythical beings for treatment. After all, when you're a Germanic giant and your liver is in your right foot, a human doctor just isn't going to cut it.

[Malibu Stacey]

I think the only thing two things that were better for me in 40d was the military system (Since marksdwarves actually trained!) and the site finder having things like chasms and what not. The healthcare system has annoying bugs but keep in mind dwarf fortress is set in medieval times, medical science is not going to be very advanced, heck I'm actually suprised some things like surgery and what not made it in. Then again you could say that dwarfs don't have anything to say that you're injured because gods punishing you, so for all we know every one in a hundred dwarves is House.

In medieval times, there were knowledgeable doctors, but they weren't in Europe. You had to go to the Moors in Arabia or in India to find proper healers.  Mind, things still weren't up to modern standards, but they were far, far ahead of anyone else.  I might be wrong; I read that a long time ago.

Even before "medieval times" there were plenty of very good medical practitioners in Europe. Hell the Hippocratic Oath was created by a Greek who lived around 400 BC & created the basis of most modern western medicine along with his peers. The Romans then built upon that to the extent that they even did what would be considered "cosmetic surgery" by modern standards. That's a fair few centuries before "medieval times". Unfortunately most of Europe generally regressed with regards to scientific learning during the "medieval" period until the Renaissance kickstarted the modern age (can't fault major religion when it comes to supressing & controlling people).

[Anathema]

More importantly, there's a difference between "primitive" and "buggy" when it comes to medicine. If DF 31.xx's medicine was primitive, i.e. doctors using leeches and experimenting with mercury (which really happened!) and other crazy stuff without really understanding how any of it works, and hurting dwarves as often as they help, I could understand that. Doesn't sound like it would make for a fun game, but it would be believable - that's not the problem, though.

DF 31.xx's medicine is not primitive, it's buggy. I've got Doctors refusing to even diagnose patients until you deliberately give them a new injury to trigger treatment, dwarves completely ignoring any finger/toe injury until it gets infected and causes death (I don't care how primitive your medicine is, it should be common sense to bandage a wound or clean it or try something), nerve damage which happens too easily and never heals leading to frequent permanent paralysis, dwarves with moderate injuries (broken limbs, "torn open" tissue, etc) sleeping for years even after the injuries have been treated and healed, etc etc.

I mean, I love 31.xx (for the vast underground/caverns especially) and I don't think I could go back to 40d, but how I hate the medical system. No matter how well I set up my hospital, I have to write off a dwarf that gets any injury - many of them will refuse to go to the hospital for potentially infection+death-causing injuries, or won't get treated despite living permanently in the hospital, or won't ever recover despite getting treated and healing, or.. I see recovery as a miracle, great when it happens but never to be expected.

[lowbart]

Yeah, I hate the stupidly complicated military system in 31, but I can't go back to 40d because of truetype.