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[Markatta]

My imagination sprung and I started thinking about how cool it would be to have a maze between your entrance and your fort as a defense against outsiders. As it is now everyone finds the quickest way through any tunnel systems but I imagine that maybe in the future you can have the goblins entering the maze, in every intersection they pause for a while and blink '?', make up their mind and then continue strolling towards, perhaps, the huge hidden razor disc. The dwarves will know which way is the right way (they follow the designated traffic areas) so they don't stray away into the pit traps, spiked balls, and any other traps that lurk in the depths of the maze.

It could also be used in personal recreational purposes, put a cage with the goblin king deep, deep inside a huge maze and whatch him try to find his way out  while slowly starving to death.  :p

The pathfinding would probably require an overhaul, but I think it would be neat.

[DrMorbly]

I agree that this would be nice.  It would also mean that during sieges, the enemy won't just stop moving if there isn't an available path directly into your fortress.  Instead they will try to find an entrance even if all your doors are locked.  Perhaps they'll eventually break doors down.

[MindSnap]

I thought that they broke down doors currently? Or is that just them getting to your entrance and having trolls execute a "smash stuff" job?

[Sowelu]

Trolls are the most common building smashers you're likely to see.  Goblins don't smash anything.  Really, though, every intelligent monster should know how to break stuff.

[JT]

Maybe the game should add a military job: sapper.

Then intelligent enemies would show up with sappers as part of the existing code; sappers would be the only ones specifically capable of busting down doors unless the entire creature was a building destroyer.

Also, the skill for using a mining pick in combat could then be moved from Mining to Sapping.

[Turgid Bolk]

Everybody knows you need a battering ram to break down a door! But then, if you have a massive troll guy, you can just use him. I think it should take some kind of special equipment to bypass locked doors, not every intelligent monster can break stuff, even if they know how.

Mazes are cool, though, and they should work better. It would be nice if monsters had to explore the area just like an adventurer, without prior knowledge. Even cooler would be if they followed some basic heuristics. For instance, most forts have a nice big hallway to the middle, so goblins should tend to follow that, then split off to smaller and smaller intersections to hunt down the remaining dwarves. A well-designed maze would confound them, of course.

[ October 16, 2007: Message edited by: Turgid Bolk ]

[pushy]

quote:Originally posted by Turgid Bolk:
<STRONG>Everybody knows you need a battering ram to break down a door!</STRONG>

Even if the door's made out of wood? I'm pretty sure you could take any bog-standard sword/warhammer/axe/whatever and smash a wooden door down with it  :p

[Sowelu]

It would be nice to see a distinction between reinforced and wimpy doors.

Of course, that distinction is NORMALLY a matter of wood < metal < stone, and dwarves like using stone anyway.  But maybe doors should be hard to break down based on the quality of the door.

"Reinforce door with iron" might be neat.

Can you honestly imagine a squad of goblins that wouldn't try sapping things, even if none of them had the 'sapper' profession?  "Hey look--It's a door...And it's locked...I guess we'll just go away!"  No, goblins would be prying at it with hands and spears, throwing rocks at it, throwing each OTHER at it, trying to stab it, trying to set fire to it.  Even if it's made of stone.  Goblins are fun like that.  And eventually they'll probably get through, based on the quality of door at least.  Five goblins versus a base-quality granite door?  That door is going down.  (Just imagine an unruly teenager with a crowbar and some determination.)

Hey look...It's a mason's bench!  I guess we'll just leave everything sitting/hanging there instead of throwing these tools all over the place and tossing stones about.  They don't have to -destroy- the components, just the building, leaving the components where they are.  Hey look, it's a kitchen!  ..etc.  Goblins just couldn't resist.  They should take lightweight loot too.  Ooo, squads of thieves.

There's no point to only letting everyday goblins destroy doors, either.  Otherwise you could block them with floodgates (which they oughtta be smart about destroying if there's something behind them--maybe you could tell?).  Or even worse--just build some random jeweler's shop in front of a one-tile-wide gap in the corrodor so it's got an unwalkable tile in the way.  Of COURSE goblins are going to bust it up!

[Greiger]

I imagine a large, main gate style wooden door would take quite a long time to break down like that.  And once they make even a small hole arrows would be flying into their face from inside. (or at least rocks, -green glass shards-, and kittens.)  Our dwarves currently wouldn't be able to do that, at least not until the door is completely gone.

[JT]

My sapper suggestion in no way precludes the use of battering rams, and implied (although I should have been more specific) that the sappers would be using picks. =)

[ctrlfrk]

I like mazes too. Although my plan was to use them as a form of catacombs, just to add a little bit of spookyness to adventure mode.
Unfortunately doing this by hand would be horrible, so we really need toady to put in templates for mining. Once he does though, I know there are many maze generators out there. I've even made one which works in excel, with none of that scripting junk, just recursion.

[Markavian]

That maze's idea sounds cool, I liked your description of goblins wandering around trying to find their way through instead of automatically computing a path.

Only slightly relevant, here is a plan that I made for an entrance to a fortress in the shape of a spiral. The idea was to have raisable bridges that would create a shortcut through the middle, while forcing invaders around the long spiral.

[Turgid Bolk]

You actually built that in one of your fortresses, right Markavian? I had the idea to make a "Cretan labyrinth" type thing as an entrance, like so:

You would then dig your entrance down in the center. Or maybe put the whole thing underground and stick a tomb or vault in the middle. It's not really a maze, since there's only one path, to the center. But that's fine since creatures have flawless pathfinding anyway. It's just a cool lookin' way to make 'em zig-zag around. Maybe some kind of space filling curve instead, like the ol' Hilbert or Peano.

[Faces of Mu]

re: big doors.

Here's discussions regarding double doors, portcullises and grates.

I know Toady has discussed pathing issues for individual units elsewhere before. If he can eliminate the omnipresence of units, then these layouts would be great!

[Tenebrys]

Mazing is a popular tool used by players of the PC game Stronghold as well.

Due to how the siegers' AI in that game works, if there is a direct route to a castle's keep, then no matter how long, winding, or on fire it is, an attacking force will ditch their siege equipment and just charge en masse.  I've never endured a siege in Dwarf Fortress yet so I don't know how the exact mechanics in that game work, but my imagination is that mazebuilding would be an excellent way to increase archer and trap coverage as well as buy extra time to get troops positioned, new traps set, and civilians away from the action.

[ October 17, 2007: Message edited by: Tenebrys ]