Toady's imagination is better than mine, but here are some ideas:
Roaming bandits
Evil human wanderers
More thief type units
Goblin/kobold siege parties, after a couple failed siege/raids, should start to bring with them units designed to break trap heavy defenses. I can see this happening in a couple ways that wouldn't be difficult to code.
1. Units that ignore traps, thieves already do this right?
2. Small fodder units that get stuck in traps, sent ahead of main party.
3. Large, "dumb" units with massive HP, that absorb trap damage but have very poor attacking power.
Units with special skills (such as the goblin baby snatchers)
More creatures dwelling within the ground/rock that spawn when their homes are broken into (similar to what is seen in chasms and magma in 33a, but closer to ground level and easier to defeat, for some challenge in the early-mid game)
-> A couple suggestions related to above
1. Unit gear shouldn't be too high in value, for example, kobold and goblin infiltrators drop items that have 600-700 in value, making future trading too easy.
2. Option in the game to make items dropped after death, by enemy units AUTOMATICALLY FORBIDDEN so that our dwarves don't die in an attempt to take them to storage, and can be reclaimed an a later convenient time.
Thanks for listening. It's a great game already!
quote:
Originally posted by dhoonlee:
<STRONG>2. Option in the game to make items dropped after death, by enemy units AUTOMATICALLY FORBIDDEN so that our dwarves don't die in an attempt to take them to storage, and can be reclaimed an a later convenient time.</STRONG>
YES YES YES YES YES
[ November 06, 2007: Message edited by: Arnos ]
Drought - Little to no rain. Ponds dry out, serious droughts have brooks and streams dry out, worst case is entire river dries out. Many plants die off and some trees may die as well if prolonged. Biome would have an effect on this... a dry plain in the hot zone of the world may experience frequent droughts, while a temperate forest next to a raging river will never see one. Additionally, farming should become harder. May lead to a famine. If the latter part is made possible, this would be a threat to any fortress. Would encourage mass-stockpiling, maybe even storing water :P
Crop Disaster - Number of things that may decimate a crop. First is a crop disease. Affects that type of crop, may affect other types to a limited degree.
Second is vermin attack. Vermin, like locusts, rats, or rhesus macaques, raid the farm crop and destroy some crops until either their hunger is filled, or they're sufficiently gotten rid of. Third is a tantruming dwarf running around stomping on plants. :P
Should not be impossible to avoid, but should make the player react in some way to it.
Flooding - Persistant rainfall. May trigger a mudslide. Water sources overflow and spill into surrounding area. Rivers are exceptionally vulnerable to this and will greatly flood.
Avalanche/Rock Slide - May be triggered at random, or by disturbance of unstable snow or rocks. Would be quite devastating to anything in the path. Boulders bounce around and splatter anything in their path, while snow buries anything in its path. Avalanche may be survivable but the dwarf has to be dug out.
Blizzard - Heavy snowfall and greatly reduced temperature. Temperature is cold enough to cause damage to dwarves, fatal if they stay out too long. Should even create an extra z-level of snow that melts into puddles of stagnant water everywhere. Pretty rare in temperate-cold biomes, more frequent in the colder and freezing biomes.
Fog - Not detrimental to the actual fortress in any way except that your visibility is restricted to the short distance your dwarves and animals can see, and to internal areas. Could be used as a cover for goblin attacks though. Any arriving attacker should not trigger an announcement until they are actually seen by a dwarf. Additionally, any untamed creatures outside will vanish off the list unless they are visible.
Maybe dwarves should generate an unhappy thought if they're outside in the fog too long, and might walk slower since they need to take more time to recollect their bearings. Should only happen in areas that can have fog. Dry areas probably won't have this. Maybe severities of fog. Light fog should be pretty much unrestrictive, just casts a neat white haze everywhere outside. Heaviest fog sets it so your dwarves can barely see two feet in front of them. Datan Datandatan has been unhappy lately. He has gotten lost in fog recently. He stumbled over a rock while bumbling around in fog recently. He got startled by a tree in the fog recently.
Fog should be common in evil biomes, with additional unhappy thoughts: "x was scared by an eerie noise in the fog recently. x was startled by a moving shadow in the fog recently." With an accompanying moving shape just off in the distance in the fog. Then it just turns out to be some wandering vermin if it gets close enough. Or a zombie hoary marmot.
Personality could have an effect on this. Well, as soon as personalities for how paranoid or easily-startled the dwarf is.
Tornado - Strikes plains and grasslands. Ravages the outside world but doesn't do much as long as the dwarves live underground. Would be interesting if a tornado goes right through a goblin siege.
If anything I just want to see goblins and cows flying fifty tiles away every which way.
Hurricane - Coastal area threat. Massive flooding of the coastal area and ocean. Winds and rains to such a degree that trees may even fall over, and poorly built surface structures collapse.
Earthquake - This one is kind of 'meh' since it would have such a devastating effect on the fortress. Definitely should only be optional, or not very severe... like a tremor or something that might cause a cave in or two and knocks some dwarves over.
Volcanic Eruption - Typically happens at a magma vent. Should definitely be implemented in some form... why have harmless volcanic vents? :P
Volcanic eruption could vary depending on the type of the volcano. One might not have very viscous lava and it just dribbles out of the vent and toasts the surrounding area, flowing off of the map. At the other end of the spectrum, the lava just blows out and sends flying chunks of debris and ash out, and coats the surrounding area in a thick layer of ash and boulders. Also blots out the sun. Lava creatures might come out and play on the entire map... in addition to some of the poor bastards getting blown a mile in the sky and splattering all over the ground nearby. Dwarves have to stay inside because they'd die horribly.
Maybe a really rare event (so rare that having it happen to your fortress is a laughable chance, having it happen anywhere in the world is still a terribly small chance) is a new volcano being created... rather violently. Fortress might survive if the vent misses the fortress, and the eruption doesn't blow out the chunk of the mountain containing it.
If anything I want to see fog. After writing that up it sounds like it'd fit dwarf fortress perfectly. Skeletal elephants in the fog... bwahaha.
The latest release has gotten a little dry. I've played about 5 fortresses and have yet to see an invasion or any kind of combat that would REALLY threaten my fortress.
This goes for adventurer mode as well. There's hardly anything to find while roaming the wilderness.
The DF world should be peppered with all kinds of nasty critters. The mountains should be full of pockets with spiders, goblins, demons and everything in between.
After a few hours in my fortress, i have all my workshops, all the food, and all the items i'll never need, but nothing to fight! It gets a little boring after a while. Sure there are "perfect seeds" that I can get from others, but I shouldn't have to download someone else's seed to have fun fighting meanies.
quote:
Originally posted by Lightning4:
<STRONG>[Lots of awesome ideas]</STRONG>
YESZS!! YEESSZSS!!!
[ November 07, 2007: Message edited by: hactar1 ]