Combat needs some drastic work

[VoiD]

The entire game is about combat, you start a fort, dig down, build crazy machines to power up your forges with magma so you can mass produce weapons, create barracks, create hospitals, train your dwarves for years, creating armies of over a hundred of them, and then combat doesn't start, because it's already over, and you missed everything.

Yeah... Combat is, by far, the worst aspect of this game, if something happens when you weren't looking you won't get anything but a very extensive log telling you about all the sotories of all the fantastic attacks you didn't get to see, play with, or interact with in any way.

When combat starts and you have your armies, and you're looking at the screen.... It's not much better, sprites get close for a couple of seconds, somebody dies, you have no idea why, you open a log and it tells you about all of the wonderful attacks, grapling, defenses, and all of the things that didn't really happen and only exist in text, hell most of the time you can't even tell if you're winning or losing, until people start dropping randomly everywhere. The fact that you get 200 random attack logs in 2seconds once sprites get close doesn't make this much better either.

Combat needs a massive overhaul, animations need to exist, they ported this game for steam, gave it an actual UI, some actual graphics, but without animations none of this matters, they don't have to be complex or even well made, they just need to be there, a player needs to know what's going on without ever touching text logs, ever.

Not to mention the actual combat mechanics, it wouldn't make sense for them to act like in Rimworld, with more modern combat and tactics, taking cover behind objects and such, but moving around like headless chickens can't even be called a system, there is no combat system here, if dwarves are fighting in classic or medieval style they should me moving in formations, holding front likes against enemy formations, or even using some exotic formations against giant mosnsters, like a surrounding spearwall or whatever else.

Combat really needs work, the climax of the game can't be it's worst aspect.

[Guided]

I'm really starting to think your just another troll :/

[HiSodiumContent]

Originally posted by Guided:

I'm really starting to think your just another troll :/

Feels that way. "Oh no, my game where you can literally spend hours in the same menu adjusting work orders doesn't have attack animations."

Meanwhile, in my game, I watch a Goblin climb a tree, post up in an upper level of my fort and begin raining arrows upon my livestock. Eventually one of my military dwarfs goes to handle the situation and even without some stupid little character tile animation, I could tell that my dwarf freaking kicked the goblin off the upper balcony to the floor, then jumped down himself and started beating the crap out of the goblin. I didn't need animations or even to open the combat logs to see it, it happened in game with sprites. Combat is also definitively NOT the primary focus of this game.

[Berserker]

Originally posted by ardiel:

Originally posted by VoiD:

I honestly do not understand replies like this, basically you're agreeing the system is horrible, so instead of fixing it the suggestion is to...Not use it/pretend it doesn't exist instead? What?

That doesn't mean that combat is bad. It means that combat is strategically unwise if you have ways of avoiding it.

Also it doesn't mean you shouldn't fight 100 dudes ever. It means be smart about it and use more than your dwarfs, use your fort design as well.

Its up to each person man, you can make an airtight fort that is completely invulnerable. You can choose not to do that. You can choose to have a military or not.

DF is a "story telling generator." not a Total War game. Accept that. Yes things can be improved. But withonly 1-2 devs, youre not gonna get what you want right tf now. Despite DF not being perfect its still amazingly fun - at least for me. So if its not fun for you, play something else. peace

[shoopy]

Originally posted by Sneed (formerly Chuck):

Originally posted by ardiel:

That doesn't mean that combat is bad. It means that combat is strategically unwise if you have ways of avoiding it.

Also it doesn't mean you shouldn't fight 100 dudes ever. It means be smart about it and use more than your dwarfs, use your fort design as well.

Its up to each person man, you can make an airtight fort that is completely invulnerable. You can choose not to do that. You can choose to have a military or not.

DF is a "story telling generator." not a Total War game. Accept that. Yes things can be improved. But withonly 1-2 devs, youre not gonna get what you want right tf now. Despite DF not being perfect its still amazingly fun - at least for me. So if its not fun for you, play something else. peace

Yeah, currently I have a wall fort that I leave open. Yesterday a bunch of keas got in and kept chasing the horses and sheep out of the fort and my dwarfs had to keep herding them back in. Then a siege came and I was trying to get everyone inside, I shut the outer bridge, but a dwarf I missed comes running from nowhere and gets chased all over the map by goblin bowmen, so I closed my inner bridge and open the outer one to try and get her inside (and hopefully get some goblins to walk over traps) but she ran in and then back out again for no reason and they started chasing her again. She was lasting quite a long time for a non-military dwarf. Instead of just turtling up and letting her die, I decided to call up my militia for a rescue mission. I stationed them up behind my outer bridge and opened it... then more dwarfs started running out to haul things because I forgot to set all the siege rules, oops. So I just had to yolo my militia out there to rescue everyone. The first dwarf I was trying to save died, plus a second one that got caught out. Several of my militia ended up with broken arms and stitches but nothing life threatening. I could have just shut the bridge and left the first dwarf to die, but it was more fun this way.

[The Incredible World of Dic]

I agree combat needs work, I disagree with OP's suggestions. Animations are completely unfeasable given the amount of potential attacks and amount of potential enemies. And giving too much micro control in fortress mode combat goes against the whole design of the mode.

What DF really needs to do:

1) Reduce survivability of everything for shorter combat logs. I like detail, but the amount of things that happen in a DF fight are genuinely too complex to be realistic. And as someone who's willing to read combat logs, there's a difference between willing to read a couple dozen lines and reading a couple hundred.

2) Persistent and clear logs, if I dismiss a combat notification, there should be a tab for me to find it again. Combat logs for some reason often use a dwarf's job not their name, which makes it very frustrating for instance to see who was infected in a werebeast fight, because it will just say something like "monster extract injected into axe dwarf" which is useless because I have like 10 axe dwarves involved in that fight

3) Civilian alerts. Currently burrows do not cancel tasks outside of burrows, so without locking all the doors it's not really possible to protect your dwarves in a raid because they will just wonder outside. Even when I manually cancel all tasks, disable all labor, and enable my burrows, there are always a few dwarves who run outside towards the invaders to pick up a sock. There needs to be a way to force your dwarves into an area.

4) Siege weapons. If you just lock your doors invaders will just sorta give up and wander around to kill the next wave of migrants or traders. It would be much more tense if they approached your walls with battering rams and siege towers. The game is especially lacking in the explosion department, you know that Helm's deep scene where the orc runs into the wall and explodes it? We need more stuff like that.

5) Aggression. Right now military missions are just sending your dwarves into an abyss to do whatever and come back. I would MUCH prefer a system where you actually go to the place you are attacking, and firstly have a bit of control, and secondly see how everything plays out. For a simulation game, it's kinda lame that attacking a fortress isn't fully simulated. There would have to be some limits for performance, but tbh the biggest thing this game is missing is going on the offense and conquering nearby fortresses. It might be a bit awkward to pause time on your main fortress to focus on your attack, but it would be worth the awkward time jumps.

I also just want to apologize for the community, a lot of the fans have become like a cult where any critique of the game is met with a response like "This game isn't for you play something else." Like jeez, it's possible to have an issue with a game but still enjoy the overall experience. Chill DF fans.

[Mindmaker]

Originally posted by Skoomar:

I agree combat needs work, I disagree with OP's suggestions. Animations are completely unfeasable given the amount of potential attacks and amount of potential enemies. And giving too much micro control in fortress mode combat goes against the whole design of the mode.

What DF really needs to do:

1) Reduce survivability of everything for shorter combat logs. I like detail, but the amount of things that happen in a DF fight are genuinely too complex to be realistic. And as someone who's willing to read combat logs, there's a difference between willing to read a couple dozen lines and reading a couple hundred.

2) Persistent and clear logs, if I dismiss a combat notification, there should be a tab for me to find it again. Combat logs for some reason often use a dwarf's job not their name, which makes it very frustrating for instance to see who was infected in a werebeast fight, because it will just say something like "monster extract injected into axe dwarf" which is useless because I have like 10 axe dwarves involved in that fight

3) Civilian alerts. Currently burrows do not cancel tasks outside of burrows, so without locking all the doors it's not really possible to protect your dwarves in a raid because they will just wonder outside. Even when I manually cancel all tasks, disable all labor, and enable my burrows, there are always a few dwarves who run outside towards the invaders to pick up a sock. There needs to be a way to force your dwarves into an area.

4) Siege weapons. If you just lock your doors invaders will just sorta give up and wander around to kill the next wave of migrants or traders. It would be much more tense if they approached your walls with battering rams and siege towers. The game is especially lacking in the explosion department, you know that Helm's deep scene where the orc runs into the wall and explodes it? We need more stuff like that.

5) Aggression. Right now military missions are just sending your dwarves into an abyss to do whatever and come back. I would MUCH prefer a system where you actually go to the place you are attacking, and firstly have a bit of control, and secondly see how everything plays out. For a simulation game, it's kinda lame that attacking a fortress isn't fully simulated. There would have to be some limits for performance, but tbh the biggest thing this game is missing is going on the offense and conquering nearby fortresses. It might be a bit awkward to pause time on your main fortress to focus on your attack, but it would be worth the awkward time jumps.

I also just want to apologize for the community, a lot of the fans have become like a cult where any critique of the game is met with a response like "This game isn't for you play something else." Like jeez, it's possible to have an issue with a game but still enjoy the overall experience. Chill DF fans.

You've got Rimworld for 4) and 5).

[CramerGamer]

Originally posted by dth:

good luck making all the combat animations for all the creatures, dwarfs and equipment types. Remember to include striking with hammer, slashing with axe, cutting head off, cutting little finger from right hand, strangling, breaking neck, twisting arm, throwing down, biting, biting things off, biting and shaking etc. With 1 dev and 1 artist it would most likely take around 100 years to produce animations for all that. And imagine that you finally finished working on that and you decide to add new combat mechanics... The entire reason for this game to look like a complete garbage since its inception was to allow for greater depth. You do all that in text to save time producing hundreds of graphics.

People are so used to big studios with hundreds of people working on single game, that they can't even grasp the idea that some things are not available for single/duo dev projects.

To better visualise the concept of making animations for such things, let's imagine you want to animate 20 combat moves that are related to axes. You have to create an animation for the naked dwarf, then for every piece of equipment they wear, because they can for example wear a breast plate with a tunic or cloak, so every single piece (including all visible adornments, shield, weapon), assuming that material for them doesn't matter because there's some smart mechanism(and I don't think there is one) that changes colours of stuff depending on material used, that already gives you probably around 100 items that need animations. Animations probably should be directional right? So multiply this by 8. Now add animations for elves, goblins, humans and every other race that wears armour. Now add animations for every other creature that can fight with an axe. Now multiply by 20 combat moves. Now that you have axe combat ready, make sure to make graphics for every possible combat action that is currently implemented and make it for every creature that is currently implemented (there's a lot of different creatures out there). Once you have all the animations for combat, it would look rather silly if other actions wouldn't have their own animations, so proceed to implement all the dancing, reciting poems, drinking, smithing, smelting, hunting, brawling, playing, sleeping, eating, walking, running etc. After you count how many animations you have to make you can finally stop thinking about it and decide that text based system is not that bad.

Also, as people already mentioned. Combat is not the main focus of this game. If you want advanced combat then play Total War. This is colony builder. And main focus is put on building and managing. That's what you do all the time. Combat is just a problem that has to be dealt quickly so that you can go back to managing fort. That's to say, I would be happy to see proper formations so that my dwarfs don't just run alone into the whole goblin army, or at least hold ground when ordered to do so, not sleep, eat or get food from stockpile in the middle of battle. Yes, combat needs some more love, or more specifically: military stuff needs work. But not animations. They are minor details that would just eat resources that could be spent on implementing actual mechanics that would make game more interesting/fun. Instead of animations we could have tooltip like stuff that on hover around dwarf displays what he's currently doing.

As controversial as it is, this is exactly the perfect use case for AI art/animation in game development. Everything else in this game is procedurally driven, why not leverage the power of AI for some animations or still images of the possible actions (which can run from the prompts the game itself provides, literally using the combat log description to generate the image/animation- alongside the stored character information for prompting descriptions of the characters)?

AI can even be used to give Dwarves natural sounding (or dwarfy sounding) conversations with each other. If the ethical minefield of AI can be navigated in any way, Dwarf Fortress is the perfect use case for how it can be implemented in a natural way that improves the game and experience.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Mindmaker:

You've got Rimworld for 4) and 5).

This isn't a thread about DF's inferiority complex, even though the fans keep bringing it up.

[Widdershins]

Originally posted by VoiD:

The entire game is about combat, you start a fort, dig down, build crazy machines to power up your forges with magma so you can mass produce weapons, create barracks, create hospitals, train your dwarves for years, creating armies of over a hundred of them, and then combat doesn't start, because it's already over, and you missed everything.

Yeah... Combat is, by far, the worst aspect of this game, if something happens when you weren't looking you won't get anything but a very extensive log telling you about all the sotories of all the fantastic attacks you didn't get to see, play with, or interact with in any way.

When combat starts and you have your armies, and you're looking at the screen.... It's not much better, sprites get close for a couple of seconds, somebody dies, you have no idea why, you open a log and it tells you about all of the wonderful attacks, grapling, defenses, and all of the things that didn't really happen and only exist in text, hell most of the time you can't even tell if you're winning or losing, until people start dropping randomly everywhere. The fact that you get 200 random attack logs in 2seconds once sprites get close doesn't make this much better either.

Combat needs a massive overhaul, animations need to exist, they ported this game for steam, gave it an actual UI, some actual graphics, but without animations none of this matters, they don't have to be complex or even well made, they just need to be there, a player needs to know what's going on without ever touching text logs, ever.

Not to mention the actual combat mechanics, it wouldn't make sense for them to act like in Rimworld, with more modern combat and tactics, taking cover behind objects and such, but moving around like headless chickens can't even be called a system, there is no combat system here, if dwarves are fighting in classic or medieval style they should me moving in formations, holding front likes against enemy formations, or even using some exotic formations against giant mosnsters, like a surrounding spearwall or whatever else.

Combat really needs work, the climax of the game can't be it's worst aspect.

Good criticism needs to be with respect to what the media is ATTEMPTING to be. I wouldn't judge a romance novel for lacking a good murder mystery arc.

I just think that ultimately, what is being offered and what you desire are not the same here. For myself, I greatly enjoy the combat, and think it fits its niche in the game rather nicely. I HOPE my dwarves win and try to balance the odds, but its a gamble in the end.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by DJShrimp AKA Widdershins:

Originally posted by VoiD:

The entire game is about combat, you start a fort, dig down, build crazy machines to power up your forges with magma so you can mass produce weapons, create barracks, create hospitals, train your dwarves for years, creating armies of over a hundred of them, and then combat doesn't start, because it's already over, and you missed everything.

Yeah... Combat is, by far, the worst aspect of this game, if something happens when you weren't looking you won't get anything but a very extensive log telling you about all the sotories of all the fantastic attacks you didn't get to see, play with, or interact with in any way.

When combat starts and you have your armies, and you're looking at the screen.... It's not much better, sprites get close for a couple of seconds, somebody dies, you have no idea why, you open a log and it tells you about all of the wonderful attacks, grapling, defenses, and all of the things that didn't really happen and only exist in text, hell most of the time you can't even tell if you're winning or losing, until people start dropping randomly everywhere. The fact that you get 200 random attack logs in 2seconds once sprites get close doesn't make this much better either.

Combat needs a massive overhaul, animations need to exist, they ported this game for steam, gave it an actual UI, some actual graphics, but without animations none of this matters, they don't have to be complex or even well made, they just need to be there, a player needs to know what's going on without ever touching text logs, ever.

Not to mention the actual combat mechanics, it wouldn't make sense for them to act like in Rimworld, with more modern combat and tactics, taking cover behind objects and such, but moving around like headless chickens can't even be called a system, there is no combat system here, if dwarves are fighting in classic or medieval style they should me moving in formations, holding front likes against enemy formations, or even using some exotic formations against giant mosnsters, like a surrounding spearwall or whatever else.

Combat really needs work, the climax of the game can't be it's worst aspect.

Good criticism needs to be with respect to what the media is ATTEMPTING to be. I wouldn't judge a romance novel for lacking a good murder mystery arc.

I just think that ultimately, what is being offered and what you desire are not the same here. For myself, I greatly enjoy the combat, and think it fits its niche in the game rather nicely. I HOPE my dwarves win and try to balance the odds, but its a gamble in the end.

You can still hope while being informed by the game about what's going on, there is no reason to keep this design flaw, though I'm starting to think it's not a design flaw, because it's not part of design at all, it's just a missing group of features the devs have failed to implement like many others.

Edit: you can also hope while watching them fight like a proper medieval army, and not just spinning around like dizzy roaches without any proper systems implemented, this isn't a combat model, it's the lack of one.

[Erkin]

A quote that I like from a Project Zomboid dev :

“The way I always like to put it – there’s a scale between attainable depth and graphic visual fidelity. You have games that go straight for the highest visual fidelity, but then the cost of adding features is so much higher in terms of time and effort, that it’s hard to attain that type of depth. Then on the other side, you’ve got roguelikes and stuff like that, that have practically no visual element apart from ASCII art, but can achieve massive depth.

Source : https://www.nme.com/features/gaming-features/project-zomboids-chris-simpson-talks-about-a-decade-of-zomboid-and-build-41-3129604

DF sits in the "massive depth" category. As I said, animations would be irrelevant, but moreover the combats couldn't offer the same level of details.

What is missing is the health screen (https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Health_screen)
but we know that the developers are already working on it.

[Bourbon]

DF needs more features for the squad system, such as dwarves and invaders standing in formation rather than running into a mob battle. It is really tricky to get a guy to stand at his post. It would also be great to grab a dwarf or even a squad leader and adventure-mode fight your way through the battle. But... animations for combat? Lets be honest. Rimworld's combat consists of two floaty sprite objects holding their floaty weapon objects at a slight angle and bouncing toward one another with a little graphical glitter for blood or sparks or bullets. So give me squads in shield walls but spare me any effort to graphically animate this nonsense. Blood trails on the floor and the occasional explosion of teeth and eyeballs is sufficient for me.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by Bourbon:

DF needs more features for the squad system, such as dwarves and invaders standing in formation rather than running into a mob battle. It is really tricky to get a guy to stand at his post. It would also be great to grab a dwarf or even a squad leader and adventure-mode fight your way through the battle. But... animations for combat? Lets be honest. Rimworld's combat consists of two floaty sprite objects holding their floaty weapon objects at a slight angle and bouncing toward one another with a little graphical glitter for blood or sparks or bullets. So give me squads in shield walls but spare me any effort to graphically animate this nonsense. Blood trails on the floor and the occasional explosion of teeth and eyeballs is sufficient for me.

How do we make this guy king of the DF discussions forum?

[shoopy]

Formations would be cool but kind of OP and entirely in favor of the player. Retracting bridge over magma anyone?

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by ardiel:

Formations would be cool but kind of OP and entirely in favor of the player. Retracting bridge over magma anyone?

Depends on how well the formations work with the existing individual and siege AI systems.