Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

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

[CT]

This thread has gotten a bit deep. huh and all i wanted to do was make a poll.

[G-Flex]

Another reason why an exploit matters to those who consider it an exploit and wouldn't want to use them: Ignoring the exploit removes any (subjectively) legitimate use of the features connected to the exploit.

Allow me to explain a little bit better, by using this case as an example: It makes perfect sense to supplement the training of dwarves by having them dodge traps or otherwise interact with mechanical dangers for training purposes. That's a clever set-up, and there's nothing inherently illogical about that.

But what if you try that, and notice that it grants a bonus to training that is illogical, and is "overpowered" enough that it spoils it for you? At that point, either you ditch what was originally a good idea to begin with because the implementation is screwy, or you stick with it even though it gives results you didn't expect and don't want.

Again, this isn't an "exploit" of the type that is always easily ignored; it's the type you can run into while trying to engage in legitimate behavior. If I want skill gain (in particular, from things like trap-dodging) to be more reasonable and don't like how it currently works in danger rooms, it doesn't mean that I have a simple choice between using an exploit and not using one; it means I have the choice between using what I think is an exploit/unbalanced and unintended behavior, and not using a "danger room" at all. There are, after all, probably some of us who would like to use those designs but also get less drastic skill-gain results from it.

[krenshala]

Look, in a multiplayer game, "exploit" has actual meaning.  It means that you gained an unfair advantage-- that the people you played with can discount what you did, that the game's managers can enact some sort of retribution.

In a single-player game?  No meaning.  It's vaguely a cry for something to be fixed, but so vaguely it's almost not even a suggestion.  As I said before, the solution to people who find danger rooms to be exploitative is totally simple: stop using them.  It's not that hard.  So what exactly is the significance of whether danger rooms are exploits or not?  If they are, and you make them stop working-- it has no effect for people who find them offensive, because those people don't use danger rooms, because they consider them to be exploits.

"exploit" always has the same meaning, regardless of the type of game.  If you can manipulate how the game behaves to your advantage in a way not intended by the developer, it is always an exploit, regardless of whether it is single or multi-player.  How it affects a game the does vary by game type, however, I will grant you that.  You are also 100% correct that for those that view danger rooms in DF as an exploit have a simple solution to them (not using them).  Please note -- I don't find danger rooms to be offensive ... just an exploit.

The reason I feel it is an exploit are two-fold: you get results far more rapidly than any other method of training the involved skills; you get results with almost no danger whatsoever to those involved.  For teh X-Men example: I agree -- they use a danger room to train faster ... but they are also using Menacing Spikes in their danger room.  They have a chance to be badly injured.  If you are using a danger room with training spears, I consider it taking advantage of an exploit.  If you are using a danger room with Menacing Spikes, however, I consider it taking advantage of a feature. 

I won't even get into the fact that normal training is of sufficient speed that a danger room is only needed if you just want legendary soldiers before the second year of the fort. (I get legendary fighters before 24 months have passed, and a weapon-Lord or three before 36 months, as is ... definitely faster than I was expecting). 

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Do you assign an arbitrary xp penalty to trap avoidance?  It doesn't make any sense that goblins would develop dodging any less from a trap than from a swing; either relies on quick reflexes.  Do you build a knowledge system so that dwarves become quickly immune to/gain no xp from on-site traps?  Such a system would be best designed taking into account all sorts of other knowledge; anything designed now would be premature.

These are pretty bad solutions, honestly. And yes, it does make sense that you'd develop skills less from dodging traps, since traps are highly repetitive and, er, mechanical, and don't very much reflect what fighting a person is like. It also doesn't make sense to gain so much skill from walking over a handful of traps that you'd gain significant skill, nor does it make sense to gain more than some amount of skill over a certain amount of time. There are solutions to the problem.

Cool, then let's talk good solutions.  What are yours?  What priority are they to you?

Or maybe we could just not care all that much about it, since there are countless other more exciting things we'd rather Toady code anyways, and the solution to the problem (for people that see it as a problem) is absolutely, utterly trivial?

How is it "trivial"? How quickly creatures gain skill, and how they do it, is an important part of the game and isn't something easily solved.

The trivial solution to finding danger rooms overpowered is to not build a danger room.  No goblins are going to sneak into your fort and build one for you against your will.  That's not in yet.

But who knows what's intended, besides Toady?  The bug tracker is full of "bugs" that dwarves don't dig or construct or deconstruct safely.  Is that intended or not?  (The game would be much less interesting if the dwarves were smarter; I'd probably never cause a cave-in again.)

We can't know, but we can guess, and my guess is that Toady doesn't intend, ideally, for creatures to gain vast amounts of skill by engaging in repetitive trap-dodging, or other similarly silly things.

I'm not sure how that squares with your later post:

Allow me to explain a little bit better, by using this case as an example: It makes perfect sense to supplement the training of dwarves by having them dodge traps or otherwise interact with mechanical dangers for training purposes. That's a clever set-up, and there's nothing inherently illogical about that.

Now, is the difference just in that word "vast"?  Okay, I agree.  Realistically, no single source of training should take you to legendary status.  The framework for that isn't in place yet, and it will be a long time until it is.

To answer your second point, there's a trivial solution to "want to train dwarves by training traps but a) want it to go slower b) want it to be more dangerous." a) Use fewer spears, give them more spaces without spears.  b) Use deadlier spears (which krenshala mentions).

In a single-player game?  No meaning.

No, it still has meaning. The meaning is that you're using a bug or other unintended behavior to your advantage. This is still meaningful even in the context of a single-player game, even though you aren't competing with anyone.

Bugs?  Some things are clearly bugs.  BSD is a bug.  Training via traps?  I'd call that more unintended behavior.  This game is all about using unintended behaviors to our advantage.  That's why the DF model is so much cooler than games with less complexity.  Toady doesn't forsee me using caged FBs to milk extract to defend my fort.  Toady doesn't forsee me using temperature to make my FBs milkable.  To answer Krenshala's argument (if you can't tell I'm editing post-preview), I would rebut rather that any game that doesn't involve manipulation unforseen by the game designer is an insufficiently complex game.

Let me disclaim myself a little bit, because I do think that in the final version of DF, training spears should not give XP faster than training does.  (I think there are a lot of other things that should be changed too, and those things are much higher priority, and it seems strange to me that the forum seems focused on training spears given that.  Hello, ice traps?  Walling off?)  If that's all anybody means by "exploit," then I'm in full agreement.  But I don't think that's all they mean.  At least to me, "exploit" means a lot more than that.  It means something akin to cheating.

So what exactly is the significance of whether danger rooms are exploits or not?

Easy. If they're an exploit, and the behavior is unintended, that means that there is something wrong with the features involved. "Making them stop working", in a case like this, is a natural result of fixing those features.

Okay.  So calling it an exploit is a super vague suggestion that Toady change the behavior?  Any time, or soon?  Because if it's anytime, I'm down with it (although I want him to have the framework to do it right before he bothers to do it).  Won't call it an exploit though.

Seriously, if all that is intended is a suggestion for a change, then fine.  It's just that the tone (forum used, language used) of the discussions around danger rooms in particular doesn't lead me to believe that that's all it means to call danger rooms exploits.  It sounds like unnecessary judgment of people that use them.

[G-Flex]

Cool, then let's talk good solutions.  What are yours?  What priority are they to you?

Well, for one, general skill gain rates can probably be tweaked, but that's an issue of abstraction of time. Realistically, dwarves should take years to get really really good at something, but in-game that would be a pain. However, I think it would be less of a pain if some other things were changed, such as the game getting less FPS-trampled over time (and other changes that allow longer-term fortresses to be desirable or successful), being able to start with higher skills, immigrant skill levels being more sensible (or at least following some kind of logic instead of being insane-super-high at random)... so really, that's an aspect that ties into many other aspects of the game that also would have to be looked at.

Also, realistically speaking, a person can only learn so much in a day/week/month. If I'm trying to learn, say, chemistry, I can read the entire textbook in one week, but that would cause me to learn much less (and less well) than reading it over the course of a month. Same with combat: Practicing for eight hours per day won't give four times the benefit of practicing two hours per day. It'll give some amount more benefit, but not that much. I think that it would be possible, feasible, and both realistic and good for gameplay if skill gain were somehow attenuated by time in such a manner; training a skill should be worth a bit less if you've already done a whole bunch of training recently. This might seem pedantic or overanalytical, but in my opinion it's actually an extremely important part of balancing skill gain, because if you have skill gain very linearly with how many times you "train" without regard for how often you're doing it, then you're always going to have weird cases like this, on some level or another. It would prevent things like an invading goblin mysteriously gaining three levels of skill over the course of a few steps just because he happened to get hit with enough weak blows from a weapon trap.

You did mention lowering the training from something like a trap, and lowering the amount you'd get from one kind of repetitive training. I think those are actually both good ideas; a mechanical trap shouldn't be as valuable training as fighting another, live person, and the more repetitive your training is, the less of a benefit it should have (tying into my above idea). This would encourage players to mix up their training more, between things like drills, sparring, demonstration, active combat training, wacky things the players themselves come up with (like danger rooms), and so forth.

Bugs?  Some things are clearly bugs.  BSD is a bug.  Training via traps?  I'd call that more unintended behavior.  This game is all about using unintended behaviors to our advantage.  That's why the DF model is so much cooler than games with less complexity.  Toady doesn't forsee me using caged FBs to milk extract to defend my fort.  Toady doesn't forsee me using temperature to make my FBs milkable.  To answer Krenshala's argument (if you can't tell I'm editing post-preview), I would rebut rather that any game that doesn't involve manipulation unforseen by the game designer is an insufficiently complex game.

There's a difference between emergent gameplay and unintended behavior. Yes, emergent gameplay is a good thing, but sometimes an element of emergent gameplay comes about that not only isn't something the developer intended, but is contrary to what the developer intends, or is only possible because of systems that are flawed in the first place. If it makes sense for forgotten beasts to be able to be trapped and for their extracts to be handled safely, then yeah, using them in the way you mentioned is a good example of emergent gameplay. However, taking advantage of, say, being able to trap a dragon in a wooden cage is a bit different, because the only reason that's possible is because of highly flawed or incomplete systems. Interesting game mechanics leading to interesting behavior isn't the same as bizarre or nonsensical game mechanics leading to bizarre or nonsensical behavior.

Also: "BSD"?

Okay.  So calling it an exploit is a super vague suggestion that Toady change the behavior?  Any time, or soon?  Because if it's anytime, I'm down with it (although I want him to have the framework to do it right before he bothers to do it).  Won't call it an exploit though.

No, calling it an exploit is a way of noting that not only should the behavior be changed, but that the current behavior is unfairly, well, exploitable. It's not just nonideal, but it's nonideal in a way that the player can use to very great advantage. See what I said above about emergent gameplay.

Seriously, if all that is intended is a suggestion for a change, then fine.  It's just that the tone (forum used, language used) of the discussions around danger rooms in particular doesn't lead me to believe that that's all it means to call danger rooms exploits.  It sounds like unnecessary judgment of people that use them.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not trying to make any judgment calls on people like that.

[mrbaggins]

It's an exploit, plain and simple.

The proponents for it usually come back with "Training the military is too slow." But the thing is, it's not slow, if you do it correctly. It's kind of like whining that it takes too long to cook food when you have a plant stockpile at the surface, a kitchen in the caverns and meat down near hell.

Or more accurately, whining that weapons are pointless when your weaponsmith is "Dabbling".

Take a military leader dwarf on embark. You're taking miners and tailors so you can dig quick and make nice clothes. You're taking chefs and farmers so you can grow lots of veg and turn it into delicious (and valuable) roasts. Why the hell would you whinge about a lack of dwarf skill or speeds when you didn't do anything at embark to help them?

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Cool, then let's talk good solutions.  What are yours?  What priority are they to you?

Well, for one, general skill gain rates can probably be tweaked, but that's an issue of abstraction of time. Realistically, dwarves should take years to get really really good at something, but in-game that would be a pain. However, I think it would be less of a pain if some other things were changed, such as the game getting less FPS-trampled over time (and other changes that allow longer-term fortresses to be desirable or successful), being able to start with higher skills, immigrant skill levels being more sensible (or at least following some kind of logic instead of being insane-super-high at random)... so really, that's an aspect that ties into many other aspects of the game that also would have to be looked at.

Also, realistically speaking, a person can only learn so much in a day/week/month. If I'm trying to learn, say, chemistry, I can read the entire textbook in one week, but that would cause me to learn much less (and less well) than reading it over the course of a month. Same with combat: Practicing for eight hours per day won't give four times the benefit of practicing two hours per day. It'll give some amount more benefit, but not that much. I think that it would be possible, feasible, and both realistic and good for gameplay if skill gain were somehow attenuated by time in such a manner; training a skill should be worth a bit less if you've already done a whole bunch of training recently. This might seem pedantic or overanalytical, but in my opinion it's actually an extremely important part of balancing skill gain, because if you have skill gain very linearly with how many times you "train" without regard for how often you're doing it, then you're always going to have weird cases like this, on some level or another. It would prevent things like an invading goblin mysteriously gaining three levels of skill over the course of a few steps just because he happened to get hit with enough weak blows from a weapon trap.

You did mention lowering the training from something like a trap, and lowering the amount you'd get from one kind of repetitive training. I think those are actually both good ideas; a mechanical trap shouldn't be as valuable training as fighting another, live person, and the more repetitive your training is, the less of a benefit it should have (tying into my above idea). This would encourage players to mix up their training more, between things like drills, sparring, demonstration, active combat training, wacky things the players themselves come up with (like danger rooms), and so forth.

Hmm.  It would be interesting if multiple avenues of training led to faster development over any single avenue.  Still, I think that a framework needs to be developed for this.  For instance, how far will you get training with Bob for four hours every day, vs training with lots of different people for shorter periods of time?  It's not just sparring vs trap room work; it's sparring with who, using what.

It does bother me, btw, that I can train legendaries (fighters, masons, whatever) in a matter of seasons while the mountainhomes keep sending me -cow leather waterskin-s accompanied by competent macedwarves.  It breaks immersion, a little bit.  Still, DF is first and foremost a game, not a simulator.  We need good fighters to beat the goblins, and the game would be boring if we got ten years to train before having to fight.  (Again, this is a place where future frameworks will allow some changes-- military changes to be found in the military arc will change the military difficulty/time ratio; changes involved in most arcs will affect happiness, altering the happiness difficulty/time ratio.)

Bugs?  Some things are clearly bugs.  BSD is a bug.  Training via traps?  I'd call that more unintended behavior.  This game is all about using unintended behaviors to our advantage.  That's why the DF model is so much cooler than games with less complexity.  Toady doesn't forsee me using caged FBs to milk extract to defend my fort.  Toady doesn't forsee me using temperature to make my FBs milkable.  To answer Krenshala's argument (if you can't tell I'm editing post-preview), I would rebut rather that any game that doesn't involve manipulation unforseen by the game designer is an insufficiently complex game.

There's a difference between emergent gameplay and unintended behavior. Yes, emergent gameplay is a good thing, but sometimes an element of emergent gameplay comes about that not only isn't something the developer intended, but is contrary to what the developer intends, or is only possible because of systems that are flawed in the first place. If it makes sense for forgotten beasts to be able to be trapped and for their extracts to be handled safely, then yeah, using them in the way you mentioned is a good example of emergent gameplay. However, taking advantage of, say, being able to trap a dragon in a wooden cage is a bit different, because the only reason that's possible is because of highly flawed or incomplete systems. Interesting game mechanics leading to interesting behavior isn't the same as bizarre or nonsensical game mechanics leading to bizarre or nonsensical behavior.

Also: "BSD"?

Blue screen of death.  I guess computers don't really do that anymore though....

Emergent behavior is a kind of unintended behavior.

It's just semantics (although I think the semantics are important.)

There's a reason danger rooms are irritating, and it's not about bugs, it's not about unintended behavior.  It's because it makes certain gameplay elements irrelevant.  If you have a danger room, why train?  Really, it wouldn't matter any less if Toady intended it.  It's still strange to have irrelevant mechanics.

It's true, wooden cages shouldn't hold dragons.  See, to me, that makes me wonder why we're having the discussion about danger rooms, rather than wooden cages.  At least it's simple to avoid danger rooms-- the elves keep bringing me wooden cages, and then they die, and it's all I can do to keep the wooden cages dumped before they make it into my cage traps.

Because nobody ever says, "Yeah, wooden cages are safe for dragons, but it's kind of an exploit."

Okay.  So calling it an exploit is a super vague suggestion that Toady change the behavior?  Any time, or soon?  Because if it's anytime, I'm down with it (although I want him to have the framework to do it right before he bothers to do it).  Won't call it an exploit though.

No, calling it an exploit is a way of noting that not only should the behavior be changed, but that the current behavior is unfairly, well, exploitable. It's not just nonideal, but it's nonideal in a way that the player can use to very great advantage. See what I said above about emergent gameplay.

Unfairly exploitable?  Unfair to whom?

It's not unfair to you, because you don't use danger rooms, because you think they're cheap (right?)  It's not unfair because the invasions aren't balanced with the expectation of danger rooms, because this is unintended behavior, right?

It's like, INVADERS:YES is unfairly exploitable too, right?  Yet it's no harder to remove danger rooms from your world than it is to remove invaders....  Is the invaders option in the init a big problem?  Do we need a poll?  Does Toady need to take out that option?

It makes me think that the only thing unfair about it is when you compare your world to theirs.  Of course that's not comparable.

Seriously, if all that is intended is a suggestion for a change, then fine.  It's just that the tone (forum used, language used) of the discussions around danger rooms in particular doesn't lead me to believe that that's all it means to call danger rooms exploits.  It sounds like unnecessary judgment of people that use them.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not trying to make any judgment calls on people like that.
[/quote]

It's probably inflammatory of me to say stuff like that.  It's sort of how a lot of the talk around it strikes me though.  Hope I'm not sounding like too big a dick.

[Carnes]

I don't think it's an exploit.  It's equal to dodge-traps and drowning chambers.  The amount of engineering and the end effect is about the same.  You kill lots of invaders with less effort.

There's no need to give byzantine reasons on why it is acceptable or not acceptable to use danger rooms.  If they are possible, then by all means make them.  If toady removes them or things change that prevent them from functioning.. then he made made a decision for you.  Otherwise, it is entirely up to the player to decide how his/her DF story plays out.  If the game were to be multiplayer and a server rule was made that you could not use them.. then yes, to do so would be exploiting.  However, in singleplayer DF there is no outside authority to hand down rules to you.  Unless you count someone on the forum as an authority?

[Starver]

You know what, I've yet to make myself a working Danger Room.  Not because I don't think I should.  Not because I don't know how to.  Not because I can't.  But because in my typical 5x5 rack/stand-centred training area (fully smoothed, all doorways controlled with identical quality doors of the same stone as the walls) I get so far as starting to gather the 24 no-quality wooden training spears, of the same coloured wood, and the 48 mechanisms of identical rock and identical quality level which I shall connect the final array of identical (by sight and inspection) repeatable spikes to the one truly random element of the whole mechanism (the controlling lever, or repeater mechanism, though if that, or the various bits of it, can be a Masterwork version of the same stone's mechanism it would be nice... ).

And, to be honest, it's so difficult to get them together.  Elves, pleased with my purchase of the initial no quality wooden training spears come back with higher quality ones.  Even when I make them, virgin woodworkers always churn out -slightly better- items than I want (and given I'm embarking on frozen and absolutely freezing biomes, these days, with high traffic underground raw logs are at a premium) assuming I remember to restrain them to just one variety of tree-remains, and my demands for a suitably large monoculture of mechanisms to use in various other aspects of my fort (the external gates, the internal trap uncoverers, etc, etc) demands more immediate assignment of the *Foo-stone mechanisms* I've managed to accumulate.  And then all the +Bar-stone- mechanisms-.  And then something else requires that I tap into the small stock of =Baz-stone mechanisms= that were my third option...

Basically, my OCD gets in the way, and I've got much more important things still to organise...!  e.g. all my military must be kitted out so that all leather items are made of reindeer hide!  Or whatever creature I randomly chose as my fortress theme!!  Do you know how much organising that takes!?!  While I'm busy digging out a 100+*100+*100+ cube of strict corridor systems!!!!  These days I don't even take notice of intruding veins and clusters of non-baserock, because there are far more important things to do!!!!!

Obsessed...<twitch>... I'm not obsessed....<twitch>... Nononono.... not me...<twitch-twitch>

[G-Flex]

Still, DF is first and foremost a game, not a simulator.  We need good fighters to beat the goblins, and the game would be boring if we got ten years to train before having to fight.

I think proper simulation takes care of this as long as it's symmetrical, though. If you get years to train before a fight, but so do the goblins, and the training is roughly equivalent, then there's still a challenge. Also bear in mind that once we can send armies out, or otherwise make other military choices, the military game will become more than "stop the sieges from killing you" anyway, not to mention that other sources of difficulty may come to the game in time, such as more internal challenges.

Obviously, none of these features can really exist in a vacuum, and a lot of them depend on what the state of the game is otherwise like.

Emergent behavior is a kind of unintended behavior.

It's just semantics (although I think the semantics are important.)

I know emergent gameplay is "unintended" in the sense that the specifics are unintended. That's why I was trying to distinguish between different kinds of emergent behavior.

It's true, wooden cages shouldn't hold dragons.  See, to me, that makes me wonder why we're having the discussion about danger rooms, rather than wooden cages.  At least it's simple to avoid danger rooms-- the elves keep bringing me wooden cages, and then they die, and it's all I can do to keep the wooden cages dumped before they make it into my cage traps.

Because nobody ever says, "Yeah, wooden cages are safe for dragons, but it's kind of an exploit."

I think one reason people don't complain as much about the cages is 1) they're more used to them, and 2) it's also the result of abstraction, in the sense that even though basic cages shouldn't trap dragons very well, we have no other options for doing so. I definitely agree that some things are higher-priority than further work on skill systems, though.



Also: I guess I shouldn't have used the term "unfair", because that's a pretty loaded word. What makes it an "exploit" is that it's exploitable for a great advantage that is neither foreseen by the developer nor makes sense in the world that is attempted to be built by the developer. Again, there's a difference between a feature leading to interesting consequences (emergent gameplay) and a feature that doesn't work very well  leading to consequences that are nonsensical, severely mess with gameplay balance, and are contrary to what is intended. That's part of the nature of any sort of simulation: You make rules and, through some level of emergence, they cause things to happen that, while you don't necessarily anticipate them, still result in whatever type of world you're trying to simulate. If I program a vehicle traffic simulator, I might not anticipate all the results from the rules I input, but I can still judge whether or not those results seem reasonable or realistic; some emergent behavior is contrary to the design goal and some isn't. That's how I see danger rooms: They're an emergent feature that is unrealistic and nonsensical as a result of basic rules that are unrealistic themselves, setting them apart from emergent gameplay that results in good or believable behavior, like drowning traps (although those have issues of their own, largely related to AI).

[Mushroo]

Maybe we've been misreading the phrase "training spears" all along... we've been assuming that they are nothing more than blunt, crappy spears that are inferior weapons to the metal versions. But maybe, just maybe, "training spears" are actually an ingenious Dwarf invention designed specifically for quickly improving fighting skills. Like the little hovering sphere that zaps Luke to train his lightsaber skills.

Seriously, though, I think I have a legitimate and easy solution to the training "problem." Modify the default starting seven dwarves (play now) to include one military leader/teacher. This would help show new players that, by embarking with a teacher and setting up a good training schedule, they can train their military at a reasonable rate.

Currently there is a misconception that "training is too slow" and I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that the default embark has no military dwarves.

[Vattic]

I don't think the poll options are mutually exclusive. I agree with all three.

They are an exploit because it's not how the game was intended to be played but it is in the game and nobody has to use it and I certainly don't care if other people do.

[malimbar04]

Danger rooms are very effective... but there's nothing in this game that's balanced. There are reasons (lots of reasons) why nobles, merchants, and migrants are routinely slaughtered. There are even more that cause us to butcher kittens or build cage traps or cook lavish quarry bush meals, among the huge number of possibilities raised in the game.

The only things I'd consider exploits in this game are... hell I can't actually think of any. The entire game is just exploit on top of exploit. If you don't use at least a few exploits, the fort will likely die in it's first year.

[franti]

Danger rooms are "exploitED" but they are not an "exploit"
IRL: Virutal reality training sims are used to train piolts, engineers, and soliders.
IDF: A dwarf dodges, blocks, or gets nailed by a training spear the same way he does by a real spear. The only thing I can think of is that, and this depends ENTIRELY on how you think the danger rooms are set up, the dwarf would remember when/where the spears are and how they're comming at him.

Also, I use copper spikes. Only the strong survive.

[G-Flex]

IRL: Virutal reality training sims are used to train piolts, engineers, and soliders.
IDF: A dwarf dodges, blocks, or gets nailed by a training spear the same way he does by a real spear. The only thing I can think of is that, and this depends ENTIRELY on how you think the danger rooms are set up, the dwarf would remember when/where the spears are and how they're comming at him.

A flight simulator is very, very, very different from an upright spear trap. They're actually incredibly close to the real deal.

Also: Yes, artificial training implements are used in real life. That doesn't mean that they're just as good training as the real thing. Dodging a spear repeatedly coming out of the same hole in a straight line in the same way and not attached to a person at all might be good training, but it's not a substitute for actually sparring or engaging in combat. It's predictable and doesn't really represent how actual combat works.