Spawning New Enemies

[Elder Days]

The idea of new monsters spawning on the map has been kicked around in a few other threads. I thought it would be a good idea if players had a dedicated place to discuss their thoughts.

There are a few major trains of thought out there already.
1) Static monster lairs
2) Large invasions/waves of enemies
3) Monsters spawning in dark areas of the map
4) Random monsters spawning on map. (Being teleported my mages)
5) Dynamically spawning monster lairs.


I myself have been a big supporter of the dark spawning. However after reading some ideas from others I've come up with a variation on the idea.
Instead of the spawning monster or lairs based on light they could spawn based on the traffic in an area. If an area goes too long without a dwarf visiting it there is a chance a monster/lair would spawn. As someone else suggested a visual queue for a neglected area could be the appearance of cobwebs or rubble.

A somewhat related idea is for monster lairs to grow in size and produce tougher monsters the longer they survive. So a monster lair that has only been around for 10 minutes will spawn low level goblins while one that has been around for a half hour will be pumping out orcs and other nastier monsters. This idea would work pretty well on the surface with wolf dens and bandit camps. I would also suggest that the lairs have a few guards that spawn with them. The guards would stay close to the lair rather than go out hunting for dwarves.

These two ideas combined would mean that an event room left undiscovered from a long time would be a dangerous thing to tackle.

So what do you guys think? Please share your ideas and criticisms.

 

[Xerkis]

First off – yes, these ideas have been posted in several different threads and having it on place with an opening summarizing it is a very good idea for both players and Devs.

This is basically what I have been saying all alone. It should be based on frequency (traffic) of Dwarves to an area (monster den, abandoned tunnel, etc.) These locations and conditions seem to me the most logical of areas and possibilities that a creature would appear.
I think back to my Dungeon & Dragon days of old and how an unvisited location would over time bring the chance of a new encounter in a familiar place.

When you give the reason on how it is possible for number 4, I am suddenly more open minded about it – but not totally convinced yet. I am listening though.

I’m not sure I know what number 5 is and would like to hear an explanation of how that would work – the name of it sound interesting.

 

[Elder Days]

Number five is basicly what I described in my post.

 

[ImpalerWrG]

I should clarify that it's not necessary to actually track 'last time a dwarf passed' time on each tile, that would be memory heavy. Instead the cobweb/rubble stuff can simply spawn randomly (perhaps faster on deeper levels), and military dwarfs (not just any dwarf) simply destroy them when they are on patrol to reset the process. Also the cobwebs take several steps to fully evolve to a 'lair', at first it's defenseless, then it has weak defenders, then it starts sending out attackers. Their might also be different monster-type based precursors or successions of monsters, webs lead to spiders, earthworms leads to moles, small goblins lead to orks etc etc.

And finally their could be issues other then hostiles that your other types of dwarves get to do. Maybe miners can prevent cave-ins that appear first as rubble. Crafters do some kind of preventive maintence on basically everything they make etc etc. Maybe even their can be something to keep researchers working on, maybe preventing plauges

 

[Xerkis]

With the appearing and clearing of cobwebs / rubble there would need to be a change in the way Military see them. Right now a cobweb can be in on extreme corner of the map and a Military Dwarf at the other extreme corner and he will see it (assuming there is a path to it) and go and destroy it. So these appearance of the beginning stages of spawning creatures would have to have a range that they can be seen from.
Not that this shouldn’t be an issue to do – just pointing it out that these cobwebs are something different than what are now in the game.

And as far as number 5 goes – yeah that would be good to throw that in there too

 

[LittleMikey]

I like the idea of having darkness matter. Currently there really is no point to building torches apart from a happiness bonus, and the wall mounted ones don't even have once.