Dwarf Fortress > DF Dwarf Mode Discussion

Fed up with Military

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Vastin:
I'm pretty much done with the military interface at this point.

I've finally gotten my dwarves to the point where they'll equip properly, train, and usually manage to execute basic kill orders. I thought I had some vague hang of things.

Then this time a pair of goblin ambushes show up in sequence. For the first one I assign everyone to my main burrow (the entire underground), and command my squad to march out and kill the goblins.

Fine. They do so. Yay. I unassign everyone from main burrow and send them to go out and get stuff.

A minute later ambush 2 shows up. No great surprise, so I send everyone back to the burrow and once again send out the armored clowns to clean up. Pretty much the exact same drill as wave 1.

Nope - not this time. My civilians blissfully ignore the burrow assignment - but not my military! They run around like hopeless fools, running into and out of the burrow, or back and forth to their barracks, I can't quite tell which - while the goblins merrily slaughter my civs.

In desperation I unassign everyone from the burrow (its not doing any good at this point). My military keeps running back and forth uselessly. Civs still dying.

I cancel the military kill orders and just put them on station above ground in an attempt to get them to just plain move. Now JUST the squad leader runs up and heads off to some far sector of the map that has no relationship to either my station command or the prior kill order. The two other squaddies remain stubbornly inside the burrow that they aren't even assigned to.

I'm getting really tired of this. DF2010 may - in theory - allow for more military flexibility, but most of these functions either flat out don't work, or are hidden behind what may be the world's most obtuse and schizophrenic interface. After playing for weeks I wouldn't even hazard a GUESS at how the alert system really works, even after reading these boards extensively for some clue. This one bug wasn't a game-breaker for me, but it was the last straw after painstakingly attempting to grok all this for weeks.

Hats off to Toady for making it this far and creating so many wonderful ideas - but after years of play I think I'm going to wait for the version where he addresses the interface design in some rational way. Like, not having at least 8 arbitrarily different ways to designate a rectangle... <sigh>

Bummed. I really, really enjoy DF, but DF2010 has proven to be just plain unplayable unless you pretty much turn off the military and rely solely on traps.

Eric Blank:
I've noticed a complete lack of discipline and general incompetence throughout my population aswell
Not that it's anything new, though, the military was just as likely to slack off in previous versions, and civilians still have the same love of ignoring every order you give.

This IS supposed to be fixed soon, maybe even in the next update. Hold your britches, Toady is working on it. The game is still technically in beta, isn't it? beta testers never get the attractive end of the horse.

DarkDragon:
I just want there to be the quick and dirty options available again for simple stuff like "I want this squad to use axes". I could do this in like, 2 or 3 button presses in 40d, now it takes MANY more than that.

Plus, I want the ability to draft dwarfs from the "v" menu back. It's always nice to be able to insta-draft your carpenter that gets attacked by a gorilla while chopping down trees rather than have him run across the countryside in no particular direction, just as long as it isn't back to safety.


Little things like that are what annoy me most about the military interface now. More options and power is GREAT. But keep the quick and dirty options available for those times where you just don't want to muck about with 5 different windows.

alexwazer:

--- Quote from: Vastin on April 30, 2010, 09:13:01 pm ---Bummed. I really, really enjoy DF, but DF2010 has proven to be just plain unplayable unless you pretty much turn off the military and rely solely on traps.

--- End quote ---

Meh, that's what I did. To be specific, I've turn invaders off until the military bugs are fixed. I reinstalled 40d in case I feel the need to smash/crush/splatter/cut some goblins, but so far I'm happy playing with 0.31 without invasions. I still need some basic defenses for the underground nasties (the non-spoiler kind), but nothing my brain-dead dwarves can't handle. Considering the multiple bugs were to be expected AND that you can turn off/ignore/avoid most of the new features, DF 2010 isn't much worse than 40d.

Personnally, I just take advantage of the huge, unlimited and quickly refilling supply of magma to create a new doomsday device... which I'll have to test on elves due to the lack of invasions.


I understand very well how you feel, but the 0.31 version should be considered more as a testing release rather than a stable one. If the unstability and bugs annoy you (as the military bugs annoy me), stick with 40d for a while and treat 0.31 as a mere teaser (or even a taser  :P)



--- Quote from: DarkDragon on April 30, 2010, 09:31:06 pm ---I just want there to be the quick and dirty options available again for simple stuff like "I want this squad to use axes". I could do this in like, 2 or 3 button presses in 40d, now it takes MANY more than that.

Plus, I want the ability to draft dwarfs from the "v" menu back. It's always nice to be able to insta-draft your carpenter that gets attacked by a gorilla while chopping down trees rather than have him run across the countryside in no particular direction, just as long as it isn't back to safety.


Little things like that are what annoy me most about the military interface now. More options and power is GREAT. But keep the quick and dirty options available for those times where you just don't want to muck about with 5 different windows.

--- End quote ---

Agreed, I think the militia should use the old system and only the army (after the arrival of the king or maybe once you have a barony) should use schedules and such.

se5a:
I think what is happening, is that when you issue a move/kill order, it can sometimes trigger a "omgwftbbq, there's better kit assigned to me! I'll drop everything I've got and go get it!" event.

even worse, this tends to end up with dwarfs who show up for battle half dressed, since they then discover that half the kit they want to go get can't be pathed to or is for some other reason not available.

note that I've not properly tested this hypothesis, just seems to be what's going on to me.

the alerts/schedule thing is not that hard to understand. try experimenting with it instead of just reading about it, or even better, read about it WHILE experimenting with it.

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