Bay 12 Games Forum

That seems like something a "Champion" would do.  You could set up an arena and have them fight the champion.  If somebody can kill the champion, then they don't die. And, it's a way of practicing for experienced people without killing other soldiers.

When I read the suggestion about different orientations for buildings, it got me thinking about how buildings might be better handled, as it seems they are destined to remain hard-coded at the moment.

Multi-tile units like the wagon are very rarely used right now.  But, later on when things like boats and wagons become more common in the game, like after the caravan arc, there will need to be a good system for handling them.  Once this is implemented pretty much every building could be implemented like an immobile creature, and reactions would become extremely useful, as everything would be accessible.

This would allow a lot more simplification of code, and would pave the way towards much more complicated reactions between dwarves and their surroundings.

Not only would this allow different orientations for buildings, but it would also allow

• a dwarf could reorganize furniture if he didn't like how a room is laid out
• large furniture hauling could be more realistic, like dragging a bed behind you instead of carrying it over your head
• catapults could be rolled up to your fortress instead of constructed on the spot
• knocked over or damaged buildings, imagine a crazy dwarf knocking off the head of a statue or dragging every chair in the fortress into his room
• wagons could be more easily used in actual gameplay, as dwarves could build them, and they could hold items just like a creature
• boats could be made more easily, and use much of the same code as a wagon
• massive modding opportunities would be created - because everything could use the same system, building a workshop would work the same way as using it (this would allow things like reactions which make creatures)
  
  • reproduction that doesn't happen by radio waves
  • magic like creating a fire elemental
  • necromancers unleashing a horde of undead
  • countless others that I don't feel like listing because I have other things to do
• creatures that can't pass through narrow corridors
• and many more!

Right now it looks as if buildings and creatures have been hard-coded to act like they do now and while this might make coding easier right now, it also means more work later on.

However, I'm not sure how much work redesigning this portion of DF would be.  All I can say is the benefits would be worth it.

Anything that is endolithic should be quite slow, not very common, or very weak.

Vermin or other nuisances should be more common, like bugs or worms.
However, if digging through the dirt, they might cause sections of a fortress to collapse by loosening the hardened earth.

Very rarely should anything that might hurt your dwarves appear, and walled areas should be completely immune to them unless they can destroy buildings. Rocky areas should be safe, for the most part, with an exception every once and a while.  Plus, what the hell would want to mess with a legendary miner?

Yeah, I agree with having wasted material or flawed items at low level, but not knowing at all would be silly.
I have never used a forge or even seen one but I doubt I would be completely clueless on how to make a weapon.  Sure it might take awhile, but it would get done.  A lot of this stuff consists of things that anybody who sits and thinks for a second could figure out.

Noob.  As soon as you see or hear someone use that word you know that they play too many online games, and more often than not it comes from a complete imbecile.
Imbecile is a pretty cool word though.

Someday I hope to sneak up to the top of a goblin fortress, assassinate the leader, and then build another fortress on top of it.  Without killing any other goblins.

Oh, I didn't mean your idea was bad, I just don't like the idea of having what is and isn't too complex to make defined for the user.  Wear and tear is something that will take place no matter what machine you make, and since we are trying to make a system that will make everything fit together, I just thought that it would be better not to classify things into different categories based on information we don't know.  I just didn't want to decide as much for the user.

It's kind of like how beds can only be made of wood right now.  I consider that silly as wood isn't any more comfortable than rock, unless the beds are supposed to be rotting away underneath them.  Making stuff too specific only causes silly stuff like that.

I don't like the idea of splitting up things based on how complex they are, however, because that is based on how the machine is designed.

However, I admit I may just be afraid of having the dreaded "tech levels" in dwarf fortress.