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[JT]

Existing squad settings:

[f]: Food carried - None, 1 Ration, 2 Rations

[w]: Water is carried/Water is not carried

: Sleep - Sleep in barracks/Sleep in room

[c]: Squad stays close to station/Squad chases opponents
[a]: Squad harasses dangerous wild animals/Squad ignores wild animals if possible

[t]: Squad is on duty/Squad is standing down

New proposals:

[l]: Always follow leader/Subordinates remain on station
If a leader goes off to sleep or have a drink, all of his subordinates follow him.  However, if this setting was toggled, the subordinates would remain on site.  This would serve to make soldiers much more likely to remain on station.

[e]: Dwarves eat as needed/Dwarves remain on duty until starving
[d]: Dwarves drink as needed/Dwarves remain on duty until dehydrated
[r]: Dwarves sleep as needed/Dwarves remain on duty until exhausted
A dwarf in the middle of a charge against a cloister of enemy troops will suddenly abandon the attack to go get a drink.  In advance of most attacks, players would want to disable these features to make the soldiers remain on duty even if a little thirsty, to make sure the job gets done.

These two features combined, I figure, would serve to make military units more cohesive.  As it is, carrying rations and water into battle requires a very expensive clothing industry to be set up (1 piece of leather per waterskin, 1 piece of leather per backpack), which limits or outright eliminates its usefulness for creating cohesive squads.

I propose all of this because instead of rushing headlong at a group of wolves that had killed one of my patrolling wrestlers, the dwarves in my reinforcements all attacked one by one, with leaders abandoning the battle to go get drinks and leaving their fellow (lesser-skilled) soldiers to fend for themselves, just like the really irritating group members you get in MMORPGs.

What should have been a relatively easy search-and-destroy operation turned out to cause five dwarven casualties at the loss of only two wolves... because the wolves actually stuck together and the dwarves didn't.

(Then the game crashed.  I had no idea what caused it, and my most recent save is about three weeks of game time back so it'd be tough to reproduce...)

[ November 02, 2007: Message edited by: JT ]

[Tormy]

I like these suggestions.  

[Surma]

I'll second this.

One thing, couldn't backpacks be made out of cloth? And as far as I know, water skins are still bugged.

[Keiseth]

I'm all for those additions. Although I hardly use military dwarves mostly due to luck; by the time I'm (typically) attacked, I have a defense tight enough to say "Yeah, you know what? You just sit by the doors there until you starve, I really don't care. Don't mind the lava, though."

Just thinking wildly here, not actually making suggestions: I wonder if it is plausible to have a supply soldier in a group... like one dwarf that carries a backpack and water. When the soldiers get hungry, they get food and water from this dwarf. Think; you could make one backpack and keep your squad fed as they move wherever.

Of course this is only useful once they stop going to sleep mid-battle, eh? =) As I said, just thoughts floating around, not suggestions.

[JT]

Ah, sleep!  Have to add that one too (sleep when required/remain on duty until exhausted).  We'll call that one [r].

[Anticheese]

Great idea! Just last night I lost two dwarves to Skeletal Giant Leopards because my marksdwarves decided they needed a beer.