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[madpathmoth]

So, I finally dug into one of the cavern layers-- and regretted it.  No, it's not because my fort was overrun or costly losses or anything like that.  It's because it opened up just a bunch of non-fun that I'd rather have never engaged with.  I retired after a few hours of stressful tedium, not wanting that to become the entire focus of my time spent playing.

For one, webs.  It's really painfully uninteresting for cave spiders to be more lethal, dangerous threats than nearly any beast, mortal, immortal, mega-beast, whatever.  It's unengaging, unrealistic, and just really lame!  It makes for a boring story and an even more boring game.  So, I'd like to ask if anyone knows how I could mod webs out of the game entirely.  They add nothing-- but theoretically a complete lack of Silk Cloth would cause irritating problems.  Does anyone know if there's a way to remove all sources of web-based attacks without stripping a basic material from the game at the same time?  They aren't fun, "FUN", interesting, realistic, cool, or...  Anything positive.

The other annoyance was the caverns themselves; dwarves would constantly go run into the caverns for whatever idea they had, and it was impossible to manage.  I couldn't see what dwarves were underground, visually scanning the cavern is difficult due to the fact that so much of it is uneven and in multiple Z-levels.  Locking/forbidding doors did nothing, they'd still pass right through?!  I set up burrows, turn them on, wait, and still there's dwarves just hanging out underground.  I couldn't manage to meaningfully restrict access to the caverns, so all I could do was kind of watch the area and either send my militia to recklessly kill every single potentially-aggressive critter in the cavern or wait until I got the alert telling me some civilians were in the middle of having their hands and feet crippled.  I know there's more steps I could take...  Perhaps something about traffic levels?  This is something I know is largely dependent on my ability to manage and design a fort, if anyone is willing to share their experiences with this I'd really appreciate it.  How do other people handle cavern delving while keeping civilians from acting on reckless, suicidal urges on the level of sprinting through a busy highway in the middle of the night IRL?

[brewer bob]

You can remove the web-spraying ability from giant cave spiders by removing the following lines from the creature (found in creature_subterranean.txt):

Code: [Select]

[CAN_DO_INTERACTION:MATERIAL_EMISSION]
[CDI:ADV_NAME:Spray web]
[CDI:USAGE_HINT:ATTACK]
[CDI:BP_REQUIRED:BY_TOKEN:LB]
[CDI:MATERIAL:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SILK:WEB_SPRAY]
[CDI:TARGET:C:LINE_OF_SIGHT]
[CDI:TARGET_RANGE:C:5]
[CDI:MAX_TARGET_NUMBER:C:1]
[CDI:WAIT_PERIOD:30]
Don't know if it's possible to remove web-spraying from proc-genned creatures, though.

[Maloy]

Burrows for your citizens

Also my strategy for both fire breathers and web shooters is corners

They fire upon making visual contact with your dwarves and so I have my militia wait around corners. By the time the beast sees them they're already adjacent to the nearest dwarf

Also cage traps lots of those too. I'd cage trap the different entrances to the map and just stop thinking about it.

[madpathmoth]

You can remove the web-spraying ability from giant cave spiders by removing the following lines from the creature (found in creature_subterranean.txt):

Don't know if it's possible to remove web-spraying from proc-genned creatures, though.

Oh yes, thank you.  I can endure the rare web-throwing forgotten beast, that shouldn't be common enough to be such an issue.  This change should be enough I hope, getting rid of the most common form of the attack at least.

They fire upon making visual contact with your dwarves and so I have my militia wait around corners. By the time the beast sees them they're already adjacent to the nearest dwarf

Also cage traps lots of those too. I'd cage trap the different entrances to the map and just stop thinking about it.

I'm not very good at just ordering my militia around so specifically; it's not really a difficult thing, but between monsters wandering and dwarves getting thirsty/tired it never works how I want it to.  Practice, I guess...

Cage traps...  That's something I'd forgotten about.  Would stop random threats from just running into the fort at least...  Maybe some scattered weapon traps in the cavern itself near spaces I think dwarves will be working, too?

Also, are you saying I should legitimately set up a burrow that encloses all areas I'd be fine with civilians in, and have that active by default?  It'd have to be different from the "under attack" burrow, because I'd have to include areas like farms and fishing spots, enough space for hunters above ground...  That sounds like a lot of work, but if I have that ready in the future before breaching the caverns it wouldn't be so bad maybe.

[RLS0812]

in the raw file creature_standard, add [WEBIMMUNE] under the dwarf category.

 Fixes a lot of problems with spiders wiping out entire squads.

[madpathmoth]

in the raw file creature_standard, add [WEBIMMUNE] under the dwarf category.

 Fixes a lot of problems with spiders wiping out entire squads.

Oh fantastic, that should work perfectly.  Thank you for the convenient answer.

[RLS0812]

I'm a big fan of using artificial bottlenecks with liberal use of weapons traps loaded with copper pickaxes. Generally my dorks do not have to deal with the critters that spawn down in the cavern layer that often thanks to them ending up impaled in a trap
 Also a great way to get a LOT of food.

[anewaname]

If your dwarfs ignored the burrows and stayed underground, it is likely they lost the ability to path back into the fort (a locked door or something) or that they were an "active-duty" military dwarf.

Because there are times I want all the dwarfs out of the caverns but not off the surface, I set up a burrow for each area... a huge cube that covers everything from the surface up and another huge cube that covers everything from the soil layer down to the magma sea.

If a siege arrives, I can get the civilians off the surface by setting burrows like this, without bothering the dwarfs who are working in the caverns:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ignore the Sally Room and tmpGetDump burrows for this example...

[Quarque]

First, try to find out why your dwarves are entering the caverns. Look at the jobs of dwarves inside the caverns. The most common reason is because auto-collect webs is turned on by default. Always turn it off before opening any caverns.
The second common reason is because there is some rotting crundle corpse they want to collect. You can prevent this by mass forbidding all items in the caverns.

Burrows are still a good idea as the posters above said. But I would also recommend to shut off access to the caverns entirely with a drawbridge and keep it closed unless / until you want your dwarves to do some work there. It not only prevents your dwarves (and trade caravans) from entering the caverns, but it also prevents forgotten beasts from entering your fortress.

[Garfunkel]

It's relatively easy to dig through the caverns to get to magma and other fun stuff, keeping the caverns completely separate from your fort. That also enabled mushroom to start growing on your soil layers, which is useful for safe grazing and extra stuff to harvest, eventually.

Then once you're getting ready to tackle the caverns, use drawbridges to create airlocks so that dwarves can't wander out to the caverns willy-nilly. Turn auto-web collection off, send your military in, then wall off the area of cavern you want to use. Rinse & repeat until you have the entire cavern layer secured.

And yeah, traps are great help. Even bunch of stone-fall traps kill some cavern threats and weapon & cage traps work well too. But the basic principle is that you don't allow free 24/7 access to the caverns until you've completely secured it.