Bay 12 Games Forum

Hello, all. I've been completely sucked into this game for the last few weeks, and figured I'd finally played enough to warrant posting my opinions.

I realize that much of what I'm going to say has probably been suggested before, so just count those as me adding my vote to them.  

Soldiers
 Practice weapons - It's well known that letting your dwarves spar with iron/steel/etc weapons is asking for trouble before they are well trained in armor and shields. However, it's a real pain forcing them to switch between the wood swords you bought from the elves for practice and the steel ones when the goblins show up. I'd like to request that melee dwarves use the least damaging version of their chosen weapon automatically during sparring, much like the crossbow dwarves already choose bone and wood bolts for practice.

 Equipment upgrades - Dwarves should periodically check to see if better equipment is available for use. Perhaps every time the go from being off duty to on duty they'd check to see if they can upgrade some equipment. It's frustrating to see a bunch of your soldiers using lame wooden shields when you just got some superior quality steel shields off of the latest goblin ambush.

 New orders: Fall back! - I've had a number of military defeats because my soldiers insisted on running out to engage the goblins one by one. I really need an order that tells them to fall back to the fortress, even if they are engaged with the goblins already. I can sort of manage this with the Dwarves stay inside order, but that's sometimes too general. I'd like to be able to control the soldiers at a squad level, so my dwarves guarding the north side of the fort don't abandon their posts just because the ones in the west are being idiots.

Healing
 Add in a healing skill to go along with the health care. It'd be nice to be able to have a dedicated doctor at later points in the game who can quickly get injured soldiers back up and running.

 Add in medicine that can be created in the Alchemist's lab to aid in the process.

New material:
 Mithril: Rare metal that is as strong as Steel, but much lighter. Basically, same stats as steel but doesn't weight the dwarves down, so that a Dwarf in Mithril Chain would essentially be unencumbered.

That's probably more then enough for now.

Well, I browsed through the dev page and didn't see any of this. Of course, there are hundreds of items, so I may have just missed them.

And I started after the game went to 3D. Were nobles even more useless?

Isn't that what backpacks and waterskins are for?

I think the only thing that needs to be fixed there is filling the waterskins with booze instead of water so you don't end up with soldiers who can't remember the last time they had alcohol.

In the meantime, I just put all squads that are on duty with orders to carry water, and all squads off duty to not. That way they at least drink booze when they're off duty so the effect isn't as bad. I also tend to have a dining hall next to the barracks so the soldiers don't have to interrupt their training for too long just to go eat or drink.

I've been having issues lately with marksmen standing around at their posts doing nothing because they are out of bolts. Currently, they only seem to go get more bolts if they can't see any enemies. Which means that my wonderful kill zone, with a walled in area and archers up in a high tower, ends up with a bunch of frozen marksmen staring down at a courtyard full of targets with no way to get to them and no bolts to shoot them with. There is a stockpile of bolts nearby, but they don't go reload. Even putting them off duty doesn't seem to help. Really frustrating. The only thing that seems to break them of it is the need to go sleep. Then they pick up bolts on their way back and get back to shooting.

So, my suggestion is that marksmen who cannot physically reach or be reached by an enemy who run out of bolts should immediately go find more before returning to their post. I think that's a better default behavior then having them stay on duty doing nothing.

Yeah. In order to tell my normal dwarves from the new comers, I end up nick naming everyone. Which is ok, but I really like the idea of a job designation screen. It'd be even better if you could give dwarves priorities on it. Like, tell a dwarf to do carpentry unless there are no jobs/wood, then go cut wood, then gather plants, etc. basically just a work importance system per dwarf.

So, I have a question for Toady.

What if one of the forum members who talks about giving you millions to develop the game as you see fit did it? I mean, they won $100 million in the lotto and could actually afford to throw a few million your way, and said something like "Ok, you get $2 million to develop the game. Do as you please, only requirement is that you have to actually complete it."

What would you do? Would you even want to hire some additional programmers, get some artists, any of that? Or would you turn it down? Maybe just take what you'd need to live on for next few years and keep going as you have been, but secure in the fact that you don't have to worry about money?

I know this is a silly pie-in-the-sky type question. It's really not likely to ever happen, but every time someone mentions it I have to wonder how it'd really play out.

And, for the record, if I ever do get super rich, I'll give you that offer.  

I've always been fond of the name Zas. Although that's probably influenced by the fact that I had an awesome NPC in a D&D game by that name...