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[Kait]

Hey ! Sorry for my bad english, I'm french, but I suddenly have an idea, so here I am !

You know, Dwarf Fortress battle's are the deadliest in the world. When a side win, there is no survivor, no wounded in the other side. In the real life, the number of wounded is often more high than the number of deads. So I had an idea I think very easy to do.

When a creature, any creature, gives into pain, there's a probability, maybe depending of the Observer's Skill, that its opponent thinks it's dead, and potentially loot it or just go fight another enemy.  And the "dead" will appears as dead in the Dead Screen, and on the map, until it regains consciousness (lot of "dead" in this sentence)

That could bring a lot of fun, in every mod:
In Adventure: Imagine: you've been defeated by some goblin bandit. You get up in the middle of the night, with no weapon and an arm broken. Will you find a safehouse before being surrounded by incessant cackling ? Fun !

In Fortress Mod: Because of the dwarfs who have more chance to survive, a hospital with more than three bed could be eventually usefull. And imagine, you see your best warrior fall on the battlefield, you think he's dead, you begin to cry, a dwarf is going to burying him when suddenly, surprise, he regains consciousness, he's not dead ! Fun !

Or better ! You win a battle, there're a lot of goblin corpses. Your dwarfs begin to clean the mess and put the corpses on the refuse stockpile, inside the fortress, when a greenskin warrior wake up, take his weapon and begin to tear apart your haulers ! FUN !


So, sorry again for my bad english, but what do you think about it ?

[Urist Arrhenius]

Hey ! Sorry for my bad english, I'm french, but I suddenly have an idea, so here I am !

You know, Dwarf Fortress battle's are the deadliest in the world. When a side win, there is no survivor, no wounded in the other side. In the real life, the number of wounded is often more high than the number of deads. So I had an idea I think very easy to do.

When a creature, any creature, gives into pain, there's a probability, maybe depending of the Observer's Skill, that its opponent thinks it's dead, and potentially loot it or just go fight another enemy.  And the "dead" will appears as dead in the Dead Screen, and on the map, until it regains consciousness (lot of "dead" in this sentence)

That could bring a lot of fun, in every mod:
In Adventure: Imagine: you've been defeated by some goblin bandit. You get up in the middle of the night, with no weapon and an arm broken. Will you find a safehouse before being surrounded by incessant cackling ? Fun !

In Fortress Mod: Because of the dwarfs who have more chance to survive, a hospital with more than three bed could be eventually usefull. And imagine, you see your best warrior fall on the battlefield, you think he's dead, you begin to cry, a dwarf is going to burying him when suddenly, surprise, he regains consciousness, he's not dead ! Fun !

Or better ! You win a battle, there're a lot of goblin corpses. Your dwarfs begin to clean the mess and put the corpses on the refuse stockpile, inside the fortress, when a greenskin warrior wake up, take his weapon and begin to tear apart your haulers ! FUN !


So, sorry again for my bad english, but what do you think about it ?

Sounds like a good idea to me. It'd make observer skill more important, and it's an extra layer of realism. Better yet, if somebody is terribly injured and presumed dead they might die if somebody observant doesn't take a look at them and get them to the hospital.

[forsaken1111]

This is a great idea. It could be a good use of skills like observation, medical knowledge and acting, if there is a skill for that.

[Splint]

Of course that idea requires the AI to not go for a melee-based double tap. Everyone in DF seems to be of a mindset at present that is fairly healthy in my opinion: On his face doesn't mean dead, so poke an extra hole or two through in his head/give his skull an extra thump or two to be sure he won't get back up. Not to mention it greatly simplifies things all around. Sure, your soldier or worker is dead, but you also don't need to worry about knocked out goblins or what have you coming to in your garbage room coming to and going about strangling your dorfs (assuming said dorfs don't swarm the room and beat the poor sods to death instead.) Plus it'd be easy to tell something was amiss when those supposed corpses don't start rotting.

Not that I think it's a bad idea. It'd make me feel slightly less stupid for building hospitals with room for three times as many wounded as I usually do (one to three is the max I typically need to treat and I tend to build for as many as 20 in larger forts,) and make Adventure mode equally more forgiving (knockout wouldn't effectively equal game over for that adventurer,)  and punishing (You have to make it back to safety stripped of your weapons, pack, waterskin, and any other useful stuff besides maybe your nonmetal shirt and/or pants. Have fun fending off wolves with a literal sharp rock and nowhere to put supplies!)

Unrelated, "Playing/looking dead" might work better for a thread title, but your English is better than some I've read/heard from people stateside. Have a cookie for being good at writing in a different language.

[Deboche]

I think the reason there are more wounded in real life is because the attackers tire out or get wounded themselves and the combatants retreat.

Also, in the heat of battle, most likely you'll be too busy dodging incoming offense to worry about whether an enemy is properly dead. Once you've disabled an enemy, you move on to the next one.

[Kait]

Of course that idea requires the AI to not go for a melee-based double tap. Everyone in DF seems to be of a mindset at present that is fairly healthy in my opinion: On his face doesn't mean dead, so poke an extra hole or two through in his head/give his skull an extra thump or two to be sure he won't get back up. Not to mention it greatly simplifies things all around. Sure, your soldier or worker is dead, but you also don't need to worry about knocked out goblins or what have you coming to in your garbage room coming to and going about strangling your dorfs (assuming said dorfs don't swarm the room and beat the poor sods to death instead.) Plus it'd be easy to tell something was amiss when those supposed corpses don't start rotting.

I don't think I understood all, but I grasp the main idea.
Yes, maybe we could order to our militia to make sure, after the battle, that all the enemies are dead,  doing Walking Dead's Style !

But I saw sometimes some guys who, in the middle of the battlefield, surrended by enemy, struck again and again an unconscious dwarf. Not very realistic, when you disable your opponent, you move to face another one.

[Eldin00]

In the heat of battle there should be a hierarchy of threat categories along the lines of:

Standing enemy >fallen (but potentially able to get back up) enemy > disabled but concious/moving enemy > unconcious/unmoving/dead enemy

And in the absence of an overriding order, the AI should tend to engage with nearby enemies in the highest threat category before dealing with lower threat categories, and that some sort of skill check or taking the time to examine a body should be required to discern between unconcious, unmoving (as in intentionally playing dead), and dead (except maybe in the most obviously dead cases, like bisection or decapitation)

Once all immediate threats are dealt with, I have no problem with the AI doing something about the unconcios/unmoving/dead bodies, such as checking for life and taking appropriate action, or delivering a finishing blow to every enemy corpse, just to be sure.

[Kait]

Yeah !
But juste one blow. It will be ridiculous if the guy tear the corpse apart with no reason.
I think yeah, potentially one finishing blow in the head, but the victim can survive if she's (it's ?) very lucky.

[Vattic]

I like this idea. It will make the sites of battles even more gruesome with all the dead and dying. Question is what do we tell the player? For the moment we know in detail about each individual bone and organ being damaged. It's like you are a trained doctor and psychic even in adventure mode.

I wonder if goblin children like to prowl the battlefield finishing off any fatally injured enemies.

[Splint]

@ Deboche/Eldin00 - Unfortunately this is DF, where AI dictates actions, not how things go IRL. At present it's also largely due to how the AI handles targeting. Once they  pick a target something needs to physically separate them from that target or present an easier target to keep them from attacking the first one they had. In melee as long as a unit is adjacent they'll go for whatever is easiest to hit. So that (and this suggestion in general,) requires a major AI overhaul in regards to combat.

As an example, say swordsman A is on his face unconscious and Swordsman B is adjacent to A while attacking Swordsman C (also adjacent to A,) Swordsman C will attack A instead because he's within reach and easier to target than the conscious Swordsman B, despite B being the bigger threat. If B managed to knock down C or force him to dodge away from A, then he'd switch targets to B because he's within reach and thus the preferable target. Of course I'm sure you and anyone else who doesn't hide behind thier traps or played an adventurer who got knocked out first and was killed despite having a bunch of allies around who presented bigger threats at that point knows this.

This comes back to what I said: Everyone does this in the game at present (hell even players will try to kill a guy who's KO'd before anything else if they can help it/the chance presents itself from what I've observed.)

But then I also totally agree with some form of threat assessment determining who to target rather than "awake vs not awake and am I next to them." Most of this also largely pertains only to melee troops, since rangers tend to continually plink away at anything in thier vision regardless of if it's still standing or not and seem to have a preference for the closest guys.

Which means ranged combat (and combat in general,) would also have to be made much deadlier for something like this to even work. Otherwise they might keep shooting at a guy who's been dead for the last 8 bolts trying to make sure he's dead (wasting piles of bolts or what have you,) and will only stop when they run out of ammo, a guy who isn't on his face walks into thier field of view while being closer to them and thus drawing thier irrational hatred for all that is conscious and unpincushioned, or someone else checks the body and confirms it is in fact dead and has been for the last quiver or two's worth of bolts they emptied into it.

A bit tired so sorry if this seems a touch rambely.

[Eldin00]

@ Deboche/Eldin00 - Unfortunately this is DF, where AI dictates actions, not how things go IRL. At present it's also largely due to how the AI handles targeting. Once they  pick a target something needs to physically separate them from that target or present an easier target to keep them from attacking the first one they had. In melee as long as a unit is adjacent they'll go for whatever is easiest to hit. So that (and this suggestion in general,) requires a major AI overhaul in regards to combat.

As an example, say swordsman A is on his face unconscious and Swordsman B is adjacent to A while attacking Swordsman C (also adjacent to A,) Swordsman C will attack A instead because he's within reach and easier to target than the conscious Swordsman B, despite B being the bigger threat. If B managed to knock down C or force him to dodge away from A, then he'd switch targets to B because he's within reach and thus the preferable target. Of course I'm sure you and anyone else who doesn't hide behind thier traps or played an adventurer who got knocked out first and was killed despite having a bunch of allies around who presented bigger threats at that point knows this.

This comes back to what I said: Everyone does this in the game at present (hell even players will try to kill a guy who's KO'd before anything else if they can help it/the chance presents itself from what I've observed.)

But then I also totally agree with some form of threat assessment determining who to target rather than "awake vs not awake and am I next to them." Most of this also largely pertains only to melee troops, since rangers tend to continually plink away at anything in thier vision regardless of if it's still standing or not and seem to have a preference for the closest guys.

Which means ranged combat (and combat in general,) would also have to be made much deadlier for something like this to even work. Otherwise they might keep shooting at a guy who's been dead for the last 8 bolts trying to make sure he's dead (wasting piles of bolts or what have you,) and will only stop when they run out of ammo, a guy who isn't on his face walks into thier field of view while being closer to them and thus drawing thier irrational hatred for all that is conscious and unpincushioned, or someone else checks the body and confirms it is in fact dead and has been for the last quiver or two's worth of bolts they emptied into it.

A bit tired so sorry if this seems a touch rambely.

I'm aware of how the AI works now (at least the results, not the internal workings of it), but the discussion here is about possible changes to the AI to maybe be better, or more realistic. And I'm completely aware that what's being suggested isn't a trivial change to the combat AI. But I'm working under the assumption that a significant combat AI overhaul will happen eventually, and am interested in getting my ideas posted here before that happens.

As to the actual changes I'd like to see, upon more thought, the targeting probably needs to be at least a little more complicated than 'highest nearby threat class', and should probably take into account the difficulty of various attack options and probably other factors as well. But there really does need to be something beyond killing their target or being physically separated from their target that will get an attacker to consider switching to a new target. And ranged attackers should probably have a similar change to their AI. It's reasonable that someone shooting with a bow/crossbow would pick a new target once the one they are shooting at loses consciousness (if not sooner), because it is in fact quite difficult to tell a freshly deceased body from an unconscious and injured body at any real distance. And given the change as suggested, they shouldn't empty a whole quiver into a corpse, because a big part of the original suggestion here is that the AI should assume unconscious/unmoving foes are dead, until there evidence to the contrary (evidence being things like they wake up, a successful observer skill check, or taking the time to stop and check for vitals). And presumed dead foes should be ignored if there are any foes not presumed dead nearby. IF all nearby foes are presumed dead, I don't have an objection to the AI taking some action to verify that presumption, or deliver a coup-de-gras strike (and I mean a single strike, not hit the corpse until it's hamburger) to be sure.

[Splint]

I made those statements under the assumption the initial suggestion and comments were operating under current "rules" which are, well... nonsensical, but no less than being able to survive your kidneys being ripped apart and your guts dragging behind you for the rest of your life. When people don't make additional points known, I tend to assume things.

As it stands this suggestion is already sort of implemented with the current system, just poorly now that I think of it. The black outs get hit with a finisher, the main difference being the AI doesn't wait for post-battle, the AI wants that guy dead now.

Since dwarves went from running away from raccoons to punching them and anything else to death if it came too close to them without a sharp metal/wood thing within a couple releases for 40.xx, I suppose a short term change could be waiting until all able-bodied enemies have fled/been out of sight for x number of turns/ also been incapacitated would work out pretty well, assuming that can be done without a massive AI overwrite. Wouldn't be perfect, since it only takes whether the enemy is conscious and within LOS or not into account before going about doling out the kill shots, but still.

Spoiler: random thought (click to show/hide)

For some reason this got me to thinking of a creature based tag like [HOSTILE_SCAN:x] or something with a value of 1 being how it is now, 2 having them kill thier current enemy regardless of LOS if they're not within say 5 tiles of another able-bodied target, 3 has them divert attention to the next nearest able-bodied enemy after the current target blacks out (effectively ignoring them unless there's no other "better" targets available in thier LOS, leaving them for someone else to finish if there is,) and 4 having them disable any crrently engaging enemy and trying to get away afterwards rather than seek new targets if no able-bodied enemies are within 5 titles. Able-bodied in this case simply being still conscious and fleeing or not.

Civilized and surface predators/large herbivores like rhinos and elephants would be default to 2 while cavern predators and attack dogs would have 1, while 3 and 4 probably be the realm of most other things like horses or giraffes, and modded races.

[Ops Fox]

I think this is a great idea for when the toady one revamps the military.

It will make the after battle care more important, gotta collect wounded and finish off enemies.

I do think that checking for vitals and double tapping should be automated functions though, so as to minimize the micromanaging.

While I would like the default 'downed enemy' reaction to be smash every fallen combatants head to pulp, I think an option to check enemy bodies for vitals and if they are alive drag them to a cage would be nice. For evil biomes or embarks near necromancers I would like the option to go one step further than double tapping, that being to completely reduce any corpse they find to paste.

As for the issue of the omnipresent overseer, we could have a bodies that have not been checked labeled unknown until a dwarf makes the decision that yes the guy with his brains blown is dead but the guy starting to move is not. Until the dwarf is declared officially dead or unconscious we could still check their injuries or view them from the health page but everything would just report unknown.

[SMASH!]

Idea: untill the creature is considered dead (His head is missing - he is dead / He is not moving, maybe he is still alive) it is tagged "body" instead of "corpse".

[Kait]

Okay, I'm not a Legendary +5 Programmer, but if we stay simple, the idea is not really hard to do, I think.

In fact, it doesn't need a major AI overhaul.

When the creature gives into pain (so if it's beheaded, it's struck down, so sure it's dead, no Observer test), if its opponent fail an Observer Test, the creature will appears as dead (gain the "DEAD" Token, I think, I don't know very well how tokens work), and the AI does not attack corpse, does it ? So it will go fight another guy.

And the "dead" thing will stay dead until it's wake up (or until someone checks him). No AI overhaul !

And after the battle, the military (or maybe some military doctor) will (can ?) check corpse, in order to know if the things live, and if its live, kill it, if it's an enemy, or leave the haulers take care of it, if it's friendly. It's just a job done on a corpse when the military have no order, like sparring or training ! No major AI overhaul !

And here you want to say: "But how the invaders will do ? They have no job or thing like that !" I answer this:
Invaders do what they have to do: they invade. All of this is done after the battle, but there is no "after the battle" for the invader. They are killed, they flee or they kill everybody, no other choice. So they don't have to check corpse ! They will maybe do this after the battle, if they win, but after the battle all of our Dwarfs will be dead and nobody will see that.

So I think my idea is to make.