Bay 12 Games Forum

Currently dwarven justice is somewhat... arbitrary, with sentences apparently assigned randomly and the fortress guard immediately striking down a dwarf even if all he's done thus far is break some furniture. I'd like to propose an alternative system.

* Tantruming/berserk dwarves generate an 'Arrest Miscreant' task for the Fortress and Royal Guard, which involves either a Persuasion or Intimidation skill-check; this could be selectable in their entry in entity_default. They only fight if it fails, and the guard stops attacking once the suspect is stunned or unconscious and conveys them to the cells. A medically-skilled dwarf can attend them there if necessary. If the guards get to them before they actually do any damage and pass the skill-check, the dwarf calms down immediately. Arrests should also be tracked in the same way as kills.

* Three new noble responsibilities for judge, defence and prosecution, and raw entries for minimum and maximum punishments. The exact punishment imposed should depend on the judge's personality and on persuasion rolls by the criminal themselves, the defence and the prosecution, made during a trial. If "violation of production order" is going to remain something dwarves can go to jail for, stockpile records should also affect it; if the necessary materials are absent, the dwarf should be acquitted.

* All the above could also apply to thieves, kidnappers or even ambushers and "Uninvited Guests" with the creature tag for intelligence, depending on the entity settings for ethics. Caravan guards should also be subject to arrest and trial if they use what the local community considers excessive force, with an effect on diplomacy if things go bad.

Couple of ideas:
* Treadmills or something similar that would put out about 20 units of power, enough to run a pump on the z-level below or turn a millstone. Could be either dwarf-powered or use large animals. The idea would be a simpler alternative to multi-level vertical axles just to power a pump you only use once a season.

* An option for custom workshops that require power, and a reaction that can generate it, for the section of the community that's still holding out for a Dwarven Industrial Revolution. Doesn't have to be used in the vanilla game, but it'd be an extremely versatile tool for modding.

Couple of things I could use a bit of help with:

* The list of swords is a bit homogenous at the moment. I want to diversify them a bit, adding variants specialised for stabbing- or slashing-only attacks as well as the existing all-rounder. I've started by changing the EDGE tag in the slashing attack of the shortsword to BLUNT, and modding in an 'arming sword' that lacks a piercing attack but has the same EDGE attack as the vanilla shortsword. The trouble is, I'd also quite like to keep the general-purpose shortsword, but my stumbling-block has been proper terminology; calling the reworked shortsword a gladius seems too region-specific. I'd also like to do something with the scimitar to distinguish it a bit from the arming sword besides the name; suggestions?

* Dwarves currently have very few two-handed weapons, but I'm curious about the slightly cryptic comment in the raws about creatures below a certain size needing 'variants'. Does that mean that if I add pikes and great axes to the available weapons for my dwarves, the game will automatically produce scaled-down variants, or do I have to add them to item_weapon manually?

* Has anyone tested whether a civilisation's digging implement has to use the mining labour? I want to try and add combination hatchets and pickaxes, but I can't get through worldgen until I upgrade my RAM so I can't rally test this yet.

I don't know if this has been suggested before, but how about changing coffin settings so you can permit/forbid dwarves and pets individually, and also the option to assign tombs to named animals? Dwarves could then be buried with their pets when they die, and a particularly heroic war dog could be commemorated with hits own fine burial chamber.

A third option I'd like to see is an option for graves to be made available for invaders, with an effect on diplomacy; treating slain enemies honourably might encourage an early peace offer, whilst tossing them into the refuse heap to rot and carving their bones into trade goods and crossbow bolts would increase the intensity of sieges. Eating them would of course piss everyone off still more.
For maximum flexibility I'd suggest an options screen to set whether or not merchants and guards, invasion forces and thieves and snatchers from each race are buried or dumped if they die. Possibly with some sort of game benefit like a reduced instance of ambushes and break-in attempts and more amenable merchants if you bury them decently?

There are four new weapons, and I've tweaked the base damage and damage class on a few more to balance out the new ones. Some of you might recognise the 'spearbow' from a much earlier thread on the same topic, a workaround to make marksdwarves a bit less vulnerable until the game code can handle troops carrying weapons of more than one type.
One-handed swords have been divided into shortswords and arming swords, which do piercing and slashing damage respectively. The scimitar's still around, but it's heavier and has a better crit-boost, and spears have had a minor damage buff over the revised shortsword.
Notice a few extra things with the [CAN_STONE] tag. The effect on game balance should be fairly minimal, since you'll have no trouble forging anything you need anyway if you're embarking on a site with magma.
War hammers have received a minor damage buff over maces, in exchange for an equally small weight penalty, just because I thought having two weapons completely identical in all but which skill they trained seemed a bit silly.
There are two more new weapons. The glaive is meant to bridge the gap between the battle-axe and the 'Great Axe', which will now appear as a 'large glaive', and add a two-handed weapon to the dwarven/goblin arsenals. The 'dwarfpike' is an experiment, and will probably only work properly in adventure mode at this point.
Lastly, note the change made to daggers; thieves are a lot more dangerous now.

So, moving on...
I don't know how well-known this is, but it seems you can have up to three types of ammunition per class; I found out about this by accident whilst trying to add a ludicrously overpowered weapon based on the Piecemaker from the Discworld novels. (It seems the bolt/arrow/blowdart trinity is hard-coded to be all you get as of .40d, but I digress.) Blunt-tipped bolts or arrows would probably sort of work in real life -apologies for that atrocious pun by the way- but I'm not convinced giant throwing stars are equally feasible; I got the idea from Perdido Street Station of all places. Still, they're pretty cool.
Notice also that blowdarts are now considerably more dangerous, enough to do an unprotected dwarf some harm.

And finally:
Well, I could hardly turn the shortsword into a gladius without adding the shield to go with it, could I?

Unless this has already been done, why not have item quality effect the accuracy of an arrow or a crossbow bolt? It'd nerf ranged weapons a bit -on both sides, since I've yet to see a goblin weapon achieve any quality above standard- and provide a disincentive to grind a dwarf's weaponsmithing or bonecrafting skill by making endless stacks of bolts.

Here's a few I've thought up that will greatly reduce the amount of keystrokes per job and/or enhance one's ability to leave DF running in confidence whilst they pop out to use the bathroom or get a coffee.

• The addition of auto-mill and auto-process plants options, but with the addition of a system of quotas, so that you have control over what percentage of each multi-use crop goes to which workshop.
• An alarm bell structure, which when activated by lever or pressure plate automatically activates the squads you selected and sends them to their assigned posts.
• The ability to partially control the Fortress and Royal Guard in the same way as a military squad, possibly without the option to carry backpacks and waterskins so that training a proper military still requires some effort on the player's part.
• The ability to designate a bedroom, office etc as the Mayor's official residence, which changes hands automatically upon the election of a new mayor.

Feel free to add your own.

The more I think about it, the more melting it down seems like a bit of a waste of fuel and effort if you're on an iron ore-bearing map; the same amount of coke takes the same amount of time to produce three times as much metal from one lump of any sort of ironstone, which seems to be rather a feast-or-famine affair in DF.
So, what do you folks suggest? Sell it to the merchants, try and tweak the raws so I can chuck it straight in the crucible to make pig iron, or just pile it up in great menacing heaps on either side of the main gate as a warning to those who might assail my fortress?