Now, I know this has been mentioned a few times before, but I would rather make a new thread for it than drag up some months old thread just to add a post onto the end or something.
Anyway, the suggestion:
Basically, I think that we need a way to solve the problem of your army all going to get some food when the goblins are at the gates. I think the best solution would be an option to "alert the fortress" or something. This would be some sort of toggleable on/off mode that would make big changes to the way dwarves act when you turn the mode on.
The effects that this mode could have when it is activated are:
1). All military Dwarves (who are On Duty) will cease eating/drinking/sleeping and being On Break. They will instantly follow all commands, even if it results in them starving to death or something. I know it sounds unrealistic, but this will be a complete end to the problem we have now where your entire army goes on strike in the middle of a battle.
2). All civilians will retreat, and also not eat/drink/sleep/On Break. The Fortress Militia are activated (see below)
The civilians would retreat to the nearest Safe Zone (Safe Zones would be created in the same way as Meeting Area's and Garbage Dumps etc). If there are no safe zones on the map, they will retreat to the nearest Meeting Hall/Statue Garden/Similar rooms. If none of those are available, they will go to the nearest 'meeting zone' (as in the designated meeting area from the garbage/etc menu). This means that if you designate nothing at all they will gather at the carts old location...which isn't good but meh, there we go. It means that they at least go 'somewhere', even if it is disastrous.
You could also set retreat orders to individual dwarves, so if you wanted all civilians to go to the Meeting Hall except for the Mayor, who would go to his bedroom, you could set a personal Safe Zone for him (possibly in the 'Preferences' area on that dwarves profile).
This means that the priority of where dwarves retreat to would be like this:
'Personal Retreat zone'
'Safe Zone' (the designated zones)
'Social Room' (meeting halls etc)
'Designated Meeting Area's'
'The cart location'
Activating the Mode
There are two ways that this mode could be activated in-game. Either from its own screen somewhere in the interface (possible in the z-menu) or from a building, possibly "Alarm Bell" or "Alarm Horn" or something similar. If it is from the building, then it should only need one piece of building material and it could be anything. That means that it is pretty much just a basic thing for your fort to have.
Militia
Loosely connected with this suggestion is the idea of having a 'Fortress Militia'. When dwarves are put into the militia, it means that during 'Alarm Mode' they become a military squad. However, when the fortress is not in 'Alarm Mode' (I know its a bad name, but I can't think of any other) they go about their jobs normally. The advantage to having dwarves in the militia is that when they are On Break they will occasionally spar with each other, but only if they have access to whatever weapon the militia have been set to use (all militia members would use the same equipment).
This militia sparring would be different in that there is no chance of injury, but also a skill cap at "Skilled" or maybe even just "Competent".
When the 'Alarm Mode' is activated, the militia would all be activated into a single squad, and would immediately go and grab their weapons/armour.
Fortress Guards/Royal Guards would automatically be in the militia.
[ May 26, 2008: Message edited by: Bricktop ]
