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[Crioca]

This is a palisade: (edit: not as big an image)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This has come up before a couple of times (or so the search function tells me) but not recently and it's never been discussed in detail.

Briefly, I'd embarked in a terrifying above ground area with a double aquifer layer in a grassland area with a moderate amount of trees, and lo I thought to myself: "There are monsters coming, I'd best build a quick defensive wall!" and decided to work building a quick wooden wall.
Except it wasn't that quick, I'd gotten about a third of the way there when undead horses killed me off. In fact it would have been quicker to pierce the aquifer layers and mine out some stone than to do it with lumber. Effectively meaning a stone wall is quicker and cheaper than a wooden wall.

So my proposal is this: Allow the construction of a structure similar to the way paved roads are built, that costs 1 log* per X squares, probably 3 or 4, to enable the player to make quick defensive structures when stone isn't available. *They'd be fast to build, (much faster than roads) maybe more like workshop speed and would be constructed and deconstructed the same way as a road (single entity in rectangle shape), built by carpenters and wouldn't need to be designed. Possibly there could be a similar metal version (fence?) that might be somewhat tougher and built with metal bars.

 The differences between this and a normal wooden wall is threefold:
1) It's destructible, in the same way a bridge or road is destructible.
2) It doesn't create a floor above it.
3) It lets liquids pass through.

This means while it's effective against most beasts and ambushers, it'll only delay sieges and larger creatures for a short while. Plus the lack of a floor and the inability to stop liquids means it doesn't shunt wooden walls into obsolescence.
I think the coolest thing about this would be that it'd mean you could set out and build a hasty defensive structure that provides limited protection on short notice.

Anyway, what do you think? I'd love to get some feedback.

*denotes edits to include feedback.

[peskyninja]

Allow the construction of a structure similar to the way paved roads are built...

But quicker, I suppose?

[Tevish Szat]

Yeah, paved roads are molassas in winter.  I would assume that the following would be true
1) Constructed with the carpentry labor
2) Not in need of architecture as a step
3) Constructed at a speed approximating what it takes to assemble workshops (nine squares of palisade would go up in the same time as one carpenter's workshop)
4) Take 1 log (NOT wooden block) for every three squares covered by the Palisade.
5) Palisade must be deconstructed as a single unit with q-x as a road not tile by tile with d-n as a wall.
6) As with any variable sized building (bridge, road), must be built in a rectangle.  You want a corner?  build two at right angles!
7) Building destroyer 1 creatures might or might not be able to wreck it.
Provides "adjacent wall" support for doors
9) Approximated by a similar metal fence, that takes bars, and is basically just used as an enclosure

right now, your best defense FAST is probably channeling a dry moat.

[Crioca]

But quicker, I suppose?

Yes, like Tevish Szat said about as quick as it takes to construct a workshop.

I would assume that the following would be true: 1-9

Yeah, these are all really good points and I'm going to update the original post to include this information.

[peskyninja]

7) Building destroyer 1 creatures might or might not be able to wreck it.

This should be influenced by the creature size.

[Jake]

Fences have been mentioned as a medium-term dev goal for whenever Toady has a few minutes between bugfixing and major new features like necromancy etc, and this sounds like a fine way to implement them. Stone equivalents on wood-poor maps would be nice as well. And I'm still holding out for hedgerows someday as well.

[sockless]

By all logical sensibility, palisades should take several logs per square. Looking at that image, there's about half a tree in each spike in the palisade. What really needs redoing is how trees and stuff work, so that this can happen.

Right now, even really dense forests aren't actually that dense, especially if you consider each square to be 3x3 metres.

Once again, for this to be done right, mass and volume needs to be implemented.

[Crioca]

By all logical sensibility, palisades should take several logs per square. Looking at that image, there's about half a tree in each spike in the palisade. What really needs redoing is how trees and stuff work, so that this can happen.

Right now, even really dense forests aren't actually that dense, especially if you consider each square to be 3x3 metres.

Once again, for this to be done right, mass and volume needs to be implemented.

Look at the length of the sections of palisade compared to the trees in the back ground, you could easily get a bunch of logs out of one decent sized tree. But even if your objection were sound, it's not particularly relevant; Dwarf Fortress already takes a "one size fits all" approach to the way lumber is used, because it understands that the way lumber is approached in the game is not realistic, trees don't tend to grow in a statistically even distribution in regards to density and species. This suggestion is about enhancing gameplay, not attempting to make DF's attitude to lumber more realistic. In terms of realism all you need to ask yourself is: Does it fit in with the level of realism that currently exists within the game?

Saying "for this to be done right, mass and volume needs to be implemented." sounds good at first, but once you think about it within the context of the game, the suggestion falls apart. For one, you've got the chronic lack of manpower that is part of the essence of DF, meaning implementing detail at this level would be a months long, major release unto itself. Hardly realistic. And then you've got to consider that it would mean that the level of detail to which the game treats lumber is suddenly on a whole different level to other materials within the game, so you'd need to implement mass and volume in basically every facet of the game. Which would likely be a years long task for a one man op. And we haven't even considered the extra system resources that making mass, volume would mean either. Hardly feasible.

A simple palisade setup on the other hand, would likely be a couple of hours work and would redress the fact that in DF a stonewall is faster and cheaper to create than a simple wooden wall.

Sorry for the overly detailed response, but I had a feeling this objection was going to come up at some point and wanted to thoroughly put it down.

[Khym Chanur]

"There are monsters coming, I'd best build a quick defensive wall!" and decided to work building a quick wooden wall.

Except it wasn't that quick, I'd gotten about a third of the way there when undead horses killed me off.
1) It's destructible, in the same way a bridge or road is destructible.

Undead can destroy wooden doors, so they'd be able to destroy wooden palisades, unless an exception was made for palisades.

[coolio678]

"There are monsters coming, I'd best build a quick defensive wall!" and decided to work building a quick wooden wall.

Except it wasn't that quick, I'd gotten about a third of the way there when undead horses killed me off.
1) It's destructible, in the same way a bridge or road is destructible.

Undead can destroy wooden doors, so they'd be able to destroy wooden palisades, unless an exception was made for palisades.

Maybe it can be made that it has some sort of "health" so it takes something like 50 swings to knock down on of the logs (that was just a random number) And it's name or description could be changed to the current health of it. like it could be a "sturdy palisade" "cracked palisade" "flimsy palisade" and then have it destroyed. Or the description could be "This is a wooden palisade. It's very sturdy" "... It is some what weak" "... It is extremely flimsy" Thats just my idea. Possible that could also be added onto doors and other buildings or something.

[Crioca]

"There are monsters coming, I'd best build a quick defensive wall!" and decided to work building a quick wooden wall.

Except it wasn't that quick, I'd gotten about a third of the way there when undead horses killed me off.
1) It's destructible, in the same way a bridge or road is destructible.

Undead can destroy wooden doors, so they'd be able to destroy wooden palisades, unless an exception was made for palisades.

Maybe it can be made that it has some sort of "health" so it takes something like 50 swings to knock down on of the logs (that was just a random number) And it's name or description could be changed to the current health of it. like it could be a "sturdy palisade" "cracked palisade" "flimsy palisade" and then have it destroyed. Or the description could be "This is a wooden palisade. It's very sturdy" "... It is some what weak" "... It is extremely flimsy" Thats just my idea. Possible that could also be added onto doors and other buildings or something.

I imagine it'd be the same as it is right now with things like doors and floodgates when they're being destroyed: This object is showing some wear, this object is heavily worn, this object is mangled etc.