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Yes, they are an easy means of getting legendary dwarves.

91 (32.7%)

No, it's in the game and no one says you have to use it.

54 (19.4%)

Who cares play however you want.

133 (47.8%)

Total Members Voted: 274

Voting closed: August 13, 2011, 06:26:01 pm

[King DZA]

Have there ever been gladatorial matches that weren't forced...?

[Loud Whispers]

Have there ever been gladatorial matches that weren't forced...?

Yes, freedmen and politicians fighting for infamy and money.

[AzuredreamsXT]

And the horrifying hidden truth of Dwarf Fortress is made known!

It may be a horrifying truth for you, because you apparently are seeking a challenge.  It's pretty much fine with me, because I am looking to see one crazy drunk take a knife and gut seven trolls while his friends capture a few goblins for forced gladatorial matches later.

You make a good point, i think i misunderstood some concepts of this game. Now that i think about it, it seems most of the players have similar lines of thinking to your own regarding what they want out of the game. Definitely some new food for thought for me

[Necro910]

Have there ever been gladatorial matches that weren't forced...?

Some places let the prisoners fight to decrease/remove their sentence. It's their choice.

If I'm not mistaken, some places let you fight for cash like the UFC, only hardcore. THAT'S RIGHT, I JUST CALLED THE UFC A BUNCH O' PANSIES

[Iton Ibrukrithzam]

Have there ever been gladatorial matches that weren't forced...?

I'm pretty sure some are just staged, not forced.

You make a good point, i think i misunderstood some concepts of this game. Now that i think about it, it seems most of the players have similar lines of thinking to your own regarding what they want out of the game. Definitely some new food for thought for me

One of the big things you have to ask yourself when playing a sandbox game is "What do I want out of this?"  They're not like most games where you can just fire it up, try to win and have all the fun the devs intended.  If you do decide you want a challenge, the terms thereof are going to have to be decided by you to be meaningful.  "Don't lose" is laughably easy if you play it safe.  Try adding terms or goals. 

[Necro910]

You make a good point, i think i misunderstood some concepts of this game. Now that i think about it, it seems most of the players have similar lines of thinking to your own regarding what they want out of the game. Definitely some new food for thought for me

One of the big things you have to ask yourself when playing a sandbox game is "What do I want out of this?"  They're not like most games where you can just fire it up, try to win and have all the fun the devs intended.  If you do decide you want a challenge, the terms thereof are going to have to be decided by you to be meaningful.  "Don't lose" is laughably easy if you play it safe.  Try adding terms or goals.

"Don't use walls or traps" and "Only aboveground farms/buildings" are some you can use. Or you could try making a megaproject 

[Iton Ibrukrithzam]

I'm partial to "No stone or metal."

[Starver]

I'd say that challenges can be "Do something" or "Don't do something", or multiples of either/each.  Your choice.  Neither do you have to accept "Get to spoilermetal/a given population cap/a fully-working version of Tetris" as a challenge, nor are you discouraged from "Don't use danger-rooms/traps/any material with an 'r' in it" excluding challenges.

As well as "I need to achieve more than the game normally requires" and "I need to employ less mechanisms than the game normally allows", you also have the ability to add in custom reactions (e.g. to allow you to build your fortress entirely of frozen mercury blocks, if such is amongst your self-made challenges, or to generate steel more or less out of thin air, if your gameplay is unconcerned about this aspect) or set invasions/temperatures/whatever off, etc, etc.  Taming the game below the standard level.  None of this is wrong/right/required/verboten.

If you're currently generating a megaproject version of the Hoover Dam in a hostile biome, someone who is normally against Danger Rooms might well consider that to not be a relevant restriction in this instance (or change their mind about that when surface activity gets awkward!), and I wouldn't consider that a problem.  Because, hey...  Hoover Dam!

Someone who is playing with the idea of generating a SPAAARRRTTAAA!!!! colony might well make the Danger Room thing a key personal restriction, inviolable.  Until they decide that it's not, because they've got a better idea about what to do with this community.  (And not even necessarily after having re-colonised the site for the fiftieth time.)

Personally, I can't stand to not have walls made of blocks.  The same variety of block (for a given classification of wall, and even the floors/doors/furniture in that area, or a specific material block wall to replace mined-out intrusions in an otherwise mined-and-smoothed room of that natural material).  And I'll go to great lengths to achieve that (and to keep all the other 'less interesting, but important' bits of the fortress running).  The fact that I've not (completed) the building of a Danger Room is because whenever I've thought to do so, I've also insisted to myself that it be made within a 3x3, 5x5 or 11x11 room (to fit in with my normal room layouts), that the 8/15/120 squares that are not the rack/stand are all made with a single identical (wood and quality) type of weapon and (the easier part) set up with a single identical (stone and quality) type of mechanism...  I've never even gotten round to using the 16/30/240 similarly identical mechanisms to connect these to anything manually or automatically repeating...

(Yes, I know there are 1-tile (or "1 dangerous tile", at least) versions of the Danger Room.  I don't not use them because they're an 'exploit', but because they aren't... aesthetic enough.  By my own personal standards, and ones which I would not wish to force upon anyone else.)


So, do as you will.  And why not?  (And thus I effectively repeat several other posts, at far more length than strictly necessary.)

[Ashsaber]

I joined just for the sake of responding!

We could build a danger room for the goblins to use (as in, we force them to be legendary).

As far as benefits go, I personally use a Danger room to get new recruits out of recruit stage and then throw them in the regular army and train slowly. I do think they give more experience than necessary or warranted, but considering danger rooms don't really have a -For dwarves only- sign taped to the door...

[Broseph Stalin]

With training spears yes, I think it's an exploit. But, if you're willing to have your dwarves line up to be stabbed repeatedly you deserve to be rewarded for your dorfiness.

[daggaz]

Its an exploit.  If you want to use it, its your sandbox.  But given the depth of the entire simulation, especially body parts, damage, and the whole fighting scenario, being impervious to damage from wooden training weapons is certainly an oversight by the authors, or simply something they havent quite gotten to yet. 

I dont use it, but Im new here and I want to figure out how to train my dwarves up the hard way, first.

[Mushroo]

training weapon = a special weapon designed to provide training without the risk of injury

I don't see the problem.

[Iton Ibrukrithzam]

I joined just for the sake of responding!

We could build a danger room for the goblins to use (as in, we force them to be legendary).

As far as benefits go, I personally use a Danger room to get new recruits out of recruit stage and then throw them in the regular army and train slowly. I do think they give more experience than necessary or warranted, but considering danger rooms don't really have a -For dwarves only- sign taped to the door...

Sometimes I use it on fat dwarves as an exercise routine.  I have yet to see any real results, but I also haven't been keeping notes, so I keep thinking, "It worked that one time, right?"

[Ashsaber]

I think they would hurt fat dwarves even less.

What are training spears supposed to do, within the scope of the game?

Before sparring turned nonlethal they were substitutes for real weapons.

So what do they do now? What niche does a training spear fill that a regular spear can't? (Danger room is not a valid response. )

[Sutremaine]

It allows for greater XP from live training.