Post by: Sver on April 28, 2018, 09:46:02 am
"Weapons of war are not designed to kill people, they're designed to win battles."
-- Sun Tzu, if he played Dwarf Fortress
-- Sun Tzu, if he played Dwarf Fortress
Bored of your legendary militia slaughtering the gobs one to forty (https://youtu.be/Tl9J8J4uE1s?t=2710)?
Feel like there's little else to military beyond cladding all your miners in steel?
Combat is just too fast and random to follow what's going on?
Then this mod is for you.
DF Combat Reworked focuses mainly on giving distinct strengths and weaknesses to each weapon, expanding upon the progression of equipment, better pacing and predictability of combat, as well as amplifying the difference between slight and serious wounds, but it also has some additional features here and there.
Note that the mod is designed to work around mostly vanilla material properties. As such, this mod is incompatible with major material reworks (such as Grimlocke's), but compatible with most other mods that use vanilla materials as a reference (such as ZM5's creatures).
Features:
* Full rework of vanilla melee weapons, giving them more realistic weights, attack variation and properties. A couple of new weapons added to provide more variety within each skill. Most two-handed weapons now use pikeman skill for properly shieldless npc spawns. All attacks are much slower to make skill, movement speed and bleeding more important factors in combat, as well as to achieve a greater disparity between long and short weapons. Weapons now feel more unique and each has their own niche. Body size requirements were altered to account for the Bug 5812 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5812).
* Full rework of vanilla ranged weapons and ammo. No more 1 kg bulletspeed projectiles tearing limbs off. Archers aren't as encumbered by their ammo now. Arrows can go in deeper than bolts, but bows loose their effectiveness with increased ammo weight, while crossbows benefit from it.
* Full rework of vanilla trap components and weaponizable tools. The former are still very good (just not as insanely good), and the latter are a bit more on par with the smallest weapons now.
* New types of ranged weapons: sling, spear-thrower, longbow, arbalest and hand ballista, making the deadliness of ranged units vary greatly. New types of ammo, including sling bullets and javelins. Bolts and arrows are split into different types for greater situational effectiveness.
* Ranged weapons now have 'weapon sets', giving archers the opportunity to carry an offhand melee weapon.
* More powerful and versatile weapons require more metal to make.
* Full rework of vanilla armor and clothing. Armor is generally lighter, mail only gives 95% coverage (so it's no longer a metal second skin) and new types of armor provide for more 'protection vs weight' choices for militias and adventurers alike. Clothing is lighter too and its coverage now makes more sense. Leather clothing now grants a bit more protection and wood items are slightly less fragile.
* Clothing as a whole has been thoroughly simplified. Now there are only 1-3 garments per each bodypart, with one set being intended for cold climates, another being the lightest and the last being the standard one. Most garments take the same layer, meaning dwarves no longer pile up rotting clothes on themselves.
* Legwear has been reworked to account for the Bug 10784 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=10784). All non-metal pants were removed from entity usage and replaced by belts to prevent soldiers from loosing their pants in combat (no joke): belts can be made from any armor/clothing-grade material, including metal, and their low blockchance prevents them from getting damaged too often. Some bodywear types now cover legs as a replacement for pants.
* Shields are split into 5 types: more protection means more weight, yet none provide the 100% block.
* Metal armors and shields now require significantly more metal, but the mod's changes to tissues and materials make them worth it.
* Bodies have been reworked to include shoulders and hips integral to the torso to allow for more balanced armor coverage. Facial features (except for eyes) are now integral to the head and, thus, are protected by helmets and cannot be targeted individually. Fingers and toes can no longer be severed, to reduce clutter.
* Pain and bleeding for many tissues are reworked. Damage to eyes and internal organs now matters a lot more and heals slower, damage to cartilage and teeth produces some pain, while pain from skin and bones was slightly reduced. Pain and bleeding were completely removed from fat, since all the tissues now suffer from fire on their own. Also includes DF Revised tissue enhancements, with some changes.
* Skulls and other head tissues are slightly thicker to make heads less fragile. Spines and joints have thicker bones. Throats have a layer of fat and cartilage to make them more resistant to slight cuts. Vertebrates' digits have no muscle (only sinew), as in real life.
* The strength of nerves is significantly increased to stop the upper spine from snapping after a single punch to the head. Muscles, sinews, fat and skin/scale are now more resistant to force pulling/bending. Cartilage and chitin are more durable, chitin can also be used as a shell for crafts and armor. Bone, hair and teeth are now edible/stealable by vermin, so they will gradually disappear from both the ground and the stockpiles, unless guarded or processed.
* The positioning of facial features and ribs is better defined, making wounds in those areas more sensible. No longer a maul will smack an individual lip, no longer a stab to the right lung will fracture the left ribs.
* Better temperature points for some organic materials. Skin suffers more damage in extreme climates. Hair, skin and cloth ignite faster. Fat ignites a bit slower. Burning wood lasts longer.
* A boost for elves: stronger, armor-piercing arrows and massed pike-and-shield infantry to offset the weakness of wood and make their numbers advantage really shine.
* Optional, but included by default: New reactions for ammo and weapons. Arrows and bolts can be made for cheap, 4x the amount per bar, by making arrowhead kits in the Metalsmith's forge and them combining them and a log of wood in the Bowyer's workshop. Also, separate reactions for daggers and hand ballistas for better game balance.
* Optional, but included by default: Equipment rebalance for npcs. Melee npc uniforms can include padded armors, and archer uniforms can include mail and plate.
* Optional, but included by default: Stone weapons for subterranean tribes. Flint, obsidian and malachite weapons have replaced the wood ones for subterranean animal peoples, so as to make them a bit more capable in combat.
* Optional, but included by default: Dwarves and humans bring dogs as siege minions. Every other war-trainable pet can be used as such, so why not the dogs?
* Optional: Metal rework. New types of iron, bronze and steel, balanced between each other to ensure a much more realistic balance of armor and metallurgy; also, anvils can now be made at the Smelter. New metals and reactions are included by default to make humans, goblins and kobolds more on par with dwarves, so there is good reason to progress your smithing industry beyond iron. The strictly optional part (aka Full metal rework) makes vanilla metals unusable for military purposes, renames them and the new metals for a cleaner interface, and rebalances the trade values for most metals. Details (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg8118699#msg8118699).
* Optional: Siege engines. A variety of onagers (https://i.imgur.com/llvqAJE.gif) and a flamethrower (https://i.imgur.com/klnDUBu.jpg) are available to add as siege minions to any civ of your liking. The normal, stone-hurling onager is given by default to humans and dwarves, as they lack a reliable pet for breaching doors otherwise. Details (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7957487#msg7957487).
* Optional: New weaponizable tools for those who prefer their Adventure Mode civilians to be more dangerous.
* Optional: Adrenaline interaction (with some tweaks) from the Grimlocke's History & Realism Mods (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146737.0) is included with the author's permission. It gives a substantial boost in willpower and endurance to all live creatures in combat, making fights longer and invaders less affected by the randomness of their physical stats.
* Optional: Tactical civilization presets. Several entity files for human and goblin civs have been composed to include specific combinations of weapons and armor, so as to amplify the strengths of certain weapons and give the invaders more functionality and character. Details (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7957488#msg7957488).
Spoiler: Changelog (click to show/hide)
Overview:
Tips, notes and full lists of weapons and armor! (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7771053#msg7771053)
Metallurgy flowchart for new metals (https://i.imgur.com/W7Wmj30.png)
Goals and limitations:
(what this mod aims to do and what it doesn't)
- This mod aims to create a more balanced and sensible combat experience. A one closer to reality, but without too much focus on the the scientifically accurate values behind the scenes - rather, a one that makes sense in action. That means: less powerful pulling; less absurdly powerful weapons, projectiles and trap components; less block-it-all shields; reasonably powerful armor.
- This mod aims to add meaningful variety to weapons and armor. I'm willing to add more types of items in the future, as long as they are functionally distinct and aren't just for flavor.
- This mod aims to make weapons more balanced and versatile for the AI use by expanding the variety of attacks. Some of these attacks are 'unlucky' to prevent certain weapons from becoming overpowered. This mod doesn't aim to balance them against the mind of a savvy adventurer - that I leave to your own conscience.
- This mod aims to make armor more important by both balancing it against weapons and making serious wounds much more, well, serious. A guy with a blade in his heart shouldn't be able to fight just as good for another hour and then suddenly drop dead.
- This mod aims to be as compatible with other mods as possible, but without sacrificing its important features.
- This mod doesn't deal with unarmed combat in any way, although there's room for it in the future. DF Revised deals with it to some extent and I highly recommend to install it first. When Revised is not up to date, my mod will come packaged with its unarmed rebalance for civilized creatures at least.
- This mod doesn't deal with candy much, so it is very possible there can be some exploits or weirdness involving it. There isn't much I can do about it without changing important parts of the mod - and candy is too rare for that.
- The mod aims to keep the vanilla spirit, while achieving all of the above. That means simple item names, less focus on adding new materials and not touching anything outside of items, materials and tissues (at least, not in the core part). Has been partially compromised by the body rework already, but we'll see.
Compatibility:
- This mod is incompatible with any mod that alters vanilla weapons, tools, trap components, armor or clothing. If installing above such mods, always overwrite the files.
- This mod is incompatible with any mod that alters the vanilla entries in body_default.txt. If a mod just adds new entries to the same file, I advice copying them over to a separate file and using my mod's body_default.txt.
- This mod is incompatible with any mod that alters the vanilla entries in tissue_template_default.txt. But, if you don't like my tissue changes, you can safely ignore the mod's file.
- This mod is partially incompatible with any mod that alters the vertebrate body detail plan or the material properties of vanilla cloth (plant fiber, hair, silk). If you have a mod that alters the b_detail_plan_default.txt or material_template_default.txt, below are the specific installation instructions on how to avoid problems.
- It is strongly unrecommended to use this mod with any mod that adds new weapons, new weaponizable tools, new trap components, new armors or new types of cloth, as those will most likely break the overall balance and may cause issues like undestructable padded armor. Mods that add more variety to leather or metals are ok, as long as you mention them when reporting an issue.
Any other mods should be fully compatible. If you experience trouble, let me know.
Note to modders: mod's items, aside from the padded armors, don't actually require changes to material_template_default.txt, b_detail_plan_default.txt or tissue_template_default.txt. If you want to use just them in your mod/comp, there should be no problems.
Downloads (DFFD):
- Standalone (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=13710) - just the raws for manual installation, the old way.
- Light Edition Pre-installed (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14989) - for those who want the core experience without too large of a difficulty spike.
- Full Edition Pre-installed (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14988) - with most of the optionals and all the suggested tweaks in place, this is the build I play personally.
- Vanilla+ (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14987) - just the raws for manual installation, but without any extra items, creatures, materials, tissues or reactions.
Manual Installation - Main:
0.
Ignore this point as Revised in not up to date with the latest DF yet. My mod currently includes Revised's relevant changes by default.
1. If you have no mods that alter either b_detail_plan_default.txt and/or material_template_default.txt, ignore this point and the spoilers below, and proceed to point 2.
Spoiler: 1.1. If you have mods that alter b_detail_plan_default.txt (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: 1.2. If you have mods that alter material_template_default.txt (click to show/hide)
2. Place the text files from the mod's main folder in .../%DF folder%/raw/objects. Overwrite when prompted (unless it's one of the conflicts above).
3. Open the mod's 'for civs' folder. Here you can either choose to use my personal equipment presets for entities or assemble your own using the full list. Or, if your entity_default.txt is unmodified, you can simply copy the one from the folder (Revised or vanilla).
3.1. If you choose to use my presets, just follow the instructions inside each file. They're simple, but may vary a little, depending on a civ.
3.2. If you choose to pick the items on your own, make sure you don't have any duplicate lines (with vanilla items) in your entity file once you're done.
Manual Installation - Suggested Tweaks:
-- Replace/add flavor profession names for civilized creatures, as pikemen now don't only use pikes, bowmen don't only use bows and lashers don't really use lashes. Open the creature_standard.txt and add the following:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
-- As it is very easy to train absurdly high level militias, I recommend buffing up potential enemies a little. Open the creature_standard.txt and add the following:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
-- Tweak the most common enemy entities (such as goblins) for more diversified combat situations. In entity_default.txt (or a custom entity file):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Manual Installation - Optional Features:
- Vanilla clothing. If you are using a mod which requires the vanilla clothing items or just not a fan of the simplification, place the item_old_clothing_sver.txt from 'optional old clothing' folder in .../%DF folder%/raw/objects. Old civ presets and the full list of removed clothing items are also contained in the same folder, so you can use them to edit the entity files to your liking.
- Full metal rework. Place all the files from 'optional full metal rework' folder in .../%DF folder%/raw/objects and overwrite when prompted. See "Features" section above for more info.
- Siege engines. Add siege engines to civilizations:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
- Powerful weapon-tools for Adventure Mode. Place the file from 'optional tools' folder in .../%DF folder%/raw/objects and add their entries (from the bottom of the full list of items.txt) to any entities you wish. These only affect Adventure Mode, making villagers carry more formidable weapons.
- Adrenaline. Place the file from 'optional battle interactions' folder in .../%DF folder%/raw/objects and do the following:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
- Tactical civilizations. Add the "tactical" human/goblin civilizations:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
- Crude armors. Give "crude" armors to non-player civs to reduce looting metal yields. If you don't like the increased metal requirements of the mod's armor, you can use these for player civs too, without breaking the mod's balance too much, as these armors are also of reduced effectiveness.
Place the file from 'optional crude armors' folder in .../%DF folder%/raw/objects and add their entries (tagged in the full list of items.txt by =SVER_CRUDE_ARMOR=) to any entities you wish.
- Removing Default Optionals.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Thanks and credits:
DF Revised (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=161832.0) by Taffer and the others - bug fixes, tweaks and a good base
Coherent Weapons and armor Mod (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=160026.0) by Jazzpirat! - ideas for attacks and weapons
DF Material Helper (https://putnam3145.github.io/helper) by Putnam - material helping
Burneddi - add-recipe script for DFhack (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=164123.0)
History & Realism Mods (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146737.0) by Grimlocke - adrenaline tweak, joint size, material strengths and lots of ideas
OldGenesis (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156059.0) by Deon, TomiTapio and the others - lessening the clutter
thefriendlyhacker - temperature tweaks for materials
DF Vanilla-Spice Revised (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173907.0) by Warlord255 - bog iron idea
Urist DaVinci, peasant cretin, Robsoie and Orkel - attentiveness and research on combat and the related mechanics of the game
Lindybeige (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pgQfOXRsp4UKrI8q0zjXQ), Shadiversity (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkmMACUKpQeIxN9D9ARli1Q), Metatron (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIjGKyrdT4Gja0VLO40RlOw), Skallagrim (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3WIohkLkH4GFoMrrWVZZFA), scholagladiatoria (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt14YOvYhd5FCGCwcjhrOdA), KnightErrant (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1T4KJG1L_kTrP9RcdU5Csw), SnapJelly (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHTZ3HbTYTeGY8rii6KfMHw), Tod's Workshop (https://www.youtube.com/user/todsstuff1), Brandon F. (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9NNB_Hd4zPR-QDfnNOChwg), Fandabi Dozi (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnniUmgeeFG6Bcir8ootwRQ), Roland Warzecha (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXjzhYu7VgA-R3XVpT2XTQ), JoergSprave (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVZlxkKqlvVqzRJXhAGq42Q), ThegnThrand (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNz5BlP5XafcfOWGbxCAgxQ) and everyone who made thoughtful comments on their videos - inspiration and many of the ideas behind the mod.
Any contents of this mod are free to be used, changed or included in other mods or compilations. Just make sure to specify your personal changes when reporting a problem.
Post by: Sver on April 28, 2018, 09:46:36 am
Exactly what it is, no additional info this time.
Previous poll:
Spoiler: Increased coal consumption (click to show/hide)
Post by: Warlord255 on April 28, 2018, 06:02:57 pm
Post by: Sver on April 28, 2018, 06:46:27 pm
However, Revised weapons are mostly very close to vanilla, especially in terms of weight and velocity, both of which play a large role in the quite unbalanced mechanics for force pulling and armor wear; and armor is too heavy to layer it for extra durability. Also, the pain from tissues in Revised is significantly reduced overall - and I don't exactly agree with it, hence, a different approach in my mod.
Post by: Taffer on May 04, 2018, 12:14:16 am
I'm very interested in your work, and impressed with the effort that went into it. Thank you! I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing how much I can integrate into Revised, and seeing what changes you made to Revised's tissues file.
Post by: Sver on May 05, 2018, 09:31:32 am
Major changes:
* Added new weapons: headhunting axe, hawk axe, mallet, polehammer, bladed spear, executioner sword.
* Added a new weapon set: stakesman arms (longbow + mallet).
* Added new armor parts: skullcap, arm plates and shin guards. The first one is a 'secret helm' to be worn under a larger helm. The latter are cheaper, lighter, somewhat less protective variants of arm defenses and high boots.
* Added bones to neck. Thickened the bones for spine.
* Readjusted the weights and attack properties of axes, hammers and maces, including the two-handed "pike" variants. They were a bit off and velocities were still too high.
* Significantly increased the material strength of nerves (NERVE_TEMPLATE; only used in spine) to stop the necks from snapping after a single punch to the head.
Minor changes:
** Lowered the velocities and readjusted the contact areas of all stabbing attacks.
** Slightly increased the velocities of all two-handed weapons.
** Slightly increased the contact area of short spear.
** Limited the penetration depth of spear and long spear.
** Gambeson now covers upper legs instead of upper arms and neck.
** Decreased the layer size of gauntlets and bracers. Bracers are no longer [SHAPED].
** Slightly increased the blockchance of cap (helm).
** Readjusted the layer permits for all helmets and decreased the layer size of padded coif to account for the new addition.
** Gave proper armor levels to shields.
** Increased the pain from nervous tissue damage (only used in spine).
** Removed pain from 'spine tissue' (as it turned out to be the kind of 'spine' that grows on a hedgehog's back).
Post by: Sver on May 06, 2018, 03:50:39 pm
Full list of armor is here.
Spoiler: Armor Types, Roles and info (click to show/hide)
Post by: Taffer on May 24, 2018, 10:19:14 pm
The new values for nerves seem a little high. They're sturdier than stone with the new values.
Post by: Sver on May 25, 2018, 06:38:22 am
Out of curiosity, why the VASCULAR and PAIN_RECEPTORS changes? Is it to make combat faster and deadlier? This likely makes combat much harsher on anything without armor, which may or may not be desirable.
Yes, it's more of a balancing-fun-realism change to make body armor and internal organs (other than heart and lungs) more important. Personally, I never really liked it how living creatures in DF fight on with all their viscera masterfully minced - and live happily ever after, unless they've got both of their lungs pierced. It's a matter of taste, obviously. I just think it was ruining the entire premise of body armor.
Also, multiple heavy blunt strikes to the body can be incapacitating thanks to the increased organ pain, which is, imao, more realistic and makes blunt weapons not as overspecialized. There is also an interesting thing that a couple of good punches (even with my beloved halved velocity) can disable a foe without killing them - or drawing any blood whatsoever.
The new values for nerves seem a little high. They're sturdier than stone with the new values.
I admit, the values are a bit of a placeholder for now. However,
Post by: Sver on May 25, 2018, 07:20:13 am
Major changes:
* Optional: Added new weaponizable tools for those who prefer their Adventure Mode civilians to be more dangerous. They are included in the full list of items (on the very bottom), but you'll need to add them to the entities yourself.
* Added new weapons: hewing axe, greatsword (old one was renamed), broad spear, war knife.
* Added new weapon sets: highwayman arms (crossbow + morningstar), mountaineer arms (arbalest + hewing axe), nomad arms (bow + scimitar), adventurer arms (bow + longsword), mercenary arms (longbow + estoc).
* Crossbowman arms now use war knife instead of war cleaver.
* Reworked all blunt weapons to have slower attacks, but higher velocities (1.5x modifier). Maces are now faster than hammers. War hammer and morningstar now have 'loose bashes' again, to compensate for their sheer power.
* Reworked the attack properties of scourge and flail to be more on par with other blunt weapons. In general, now they are well-suited for perepetual, quick, not too powerful strikes, while also being able to land very heavy and slow ones, sometimes.
* Reworked the 'cut' attacks for swords to be more like a quick slash of opportunity: more velocity and penetration, larger contact areas.
* Increased the contact area for all 'thrust' attacks (to match the blade width; very pointy weapons suffer less). Those which don't give extra penetration no longer have bad multi-attack.
* Increased the material requirements for most metal armors.
* Increased the material requirements for all shields.
* Increased the blockchance of medium, large and tower shields.
* Increased the tensile, torsion and bending strength of muscle (MUSCLE_TEMPLATE) and gave more realistic values to sinew (SINEW_TEMPLATE). Force pulling/bending/twisting is now weaker and biting off limbs is harder. Severing ligaments/tendons is harder.
* Decreased all strengths of nerves (NERVE_TEMPLATE), except for tensile, torsion and bending, to that of the new sinew. Spines can be severed again.
* Removed the previously added bones from the neck, as it appears the upper spine does have it's own bones.
Minor changes:
** Renamed 'greatsword' (old one) back to 'two-handed sword'. 'Greatsword' is a really big weapon now.
** Renamed 'sledgehammer' back to 'maul'. 'Sledgehammer' is a tool now.
** Lowered the material requirements for all longbow weapon sets.
** Increased the material requirements for hawk axe.
** Fixed some inconsistensies with attack prepare and recover times (mostly for two-handed).
** Fixed some inconsistensies with 'cleave' attack penetrations.
** Fixed some inconsistensies with weapon material requirements (halberd, poleaxe, polehammer, glaive, war cleaver).
** Fixed some inconsistensies with shaft bash attacks and lowered their velocity.
** Readjusted the contact areas for some ammo types.
** Decreased the penetration of pike.
** Made two-handed sword a bit larger. 'Slash' and 'slap' attacks now receive no multi-attack penalty to simulate the anti-pike zweihander technique.
** Added a blunt 'hook' (with wing) attack to spear and long spear.
** Decreased the contact area of bladed spear 'stab'.
** Added 'thrust' attack to short sword.
** Gave more realistic weights to arming sword and longsword.
** Made estoc lighter and stiffer (velocity). Moved it to sword skill.
** Made war cleaver heavier and more powerfull overall.
** Slightly increased the velocities for longsword.
** Increased the velocity for headhunting axe 'snatch' attack. Fixed the damage type to EDGED.
** Slightly lowered the two-handed limit for bearded axe.
** Readjusted the attack properties of scimitar.
** Mail hauberk now also covers facial features.
** Plackart no longer covers upper legs, but provides a higher blockchance.
** 'Legplates' were renamed to 'tasset' and no longer cover lower legs, but provide a higher blockchance. They were added to my entity lists.
** Mail skirt now also covers upper legs.
** Increased the weight of brigandine.
** Fixed the weight of plate helmets as they were a bit heavier than intended.
** Lowered the layer permits for helm and enclosed helm.
** Some clothing coverage fixes.
** Reworked the 'cut' attack for large serrated disc: more velocity, less penetration.
Post by: Sver on May 25, 2018, 07:22:49 am
Post by: Sver on May 25, 2018, 08:23:09 am
The new values for nerves seem a little high. They're sturdier than stone with the new values.
To be more clear: the values for tensile, torsion and bending strengths (all affecting the force pulling/twisting/bending) are that high because, in DF's material and tissue mechanics, there is no middle ground between a broken spinal nerve and a completely undamaged one. Bruising is the lowest damage threshold, yet a nerve reaching it becomes completely disabled already, causing the loss of stance, weapon/shield holding and the inevitable suffocation; and, as it appears, this cannot be prevented by any sort of armor or individual attributes. With my changes (as in v1.2.1), necks can be severed or smashed by a direct strike, but they can never be snapped by a strike to the head. This solution seems the most balanced one to me, given the circumstances.
Post by: Sver on May 26, 2018, 01:50:23 pm
Here be tips and notes on playing with this mod and on the combat in DF in general, as well as the full list of items in the mod, with some useful info.
Spoiler: Tips and notes (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Melee Weapon Tiers and info (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Trap Components and info (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Ranged Weapons, Weapon Sets and info (click to show/hide)
Post by: flyteofheart on May 26, 2018, 11:40:45 pm
im just curious if theres something that can tell me exact covering of each new bit of armor? if im layering i dont want to accidentally leave shins exposed for example due to not knowing what is left uncovered
as far as attacks, more documentation on which attack is ideal for each weapon would be great. theres a lot of options now and i used to just target body parts and lop them off or just target crushing skulls with heavy weapons. im not sure thats the best strategy anymore
Post by: Sver on May 27, 2018, 04:20:23 am
Exact coverage and blockchances for each armor piece are explained under the 'Full list of armor' in the top post. In general, if an armor piece covers multiple bodyparts, that means it also covers everything in between: if footwear covers upper legs, it covers the whole leg; if handwear covers upper arms, it covers the entire arm etc.
'Shin guards' are named this way just to make sense, but otherwise they're just a cheaper and less protective version of high boots. Although, unlike the latter, they can also be put over the greaves or high boots for additional defense (which may or may not be important, depending on what metals you have available and what kind of enemies you are fighting).
I have this planned, but am busy working on the other aspects right now. The thing is, attack properties still get major rewamps sometimes, and updating the table with each new release would take quite a bit of time.
But as a rule of thumb:
1) 'hack' (axes, halberd) - a slow, powerful, focused edged attack that usually doesn't go in very deep (but deep enough for humans and below). Good against weak armor and humanoids.
2) 'slash' (swords and the like) - a slow, but less powerful edged attack with a larger contact area and pen. depth. Good against unarmored enemies.
3) 'cleave' (axes, some swords) - a slow, powerful edged attack with average area and good penetration. Compared to hacking, it's not as good vs armor, but is a bit better against large creatures.
4) 'cleanly slash' (swords) - a quick, low-mometum edged attack that leaves long, shallow cuts and rarely gets stuck (if ever). Good against unarmored enemies. Compared to slashing, it won't cut the limbs off, but is faster and tends to open arteries anyway.
5) 'cut' (swords, spears) - a fast, weak edged attack. Mostly useless for an adventurer, but one can occassionally benefit from it's speed to charge/chase more effectively.
6) 'stab' (swords, spears, polearms, some blunt weapons) - a quick, low-momentum edged attack with small area and deep penetration. Can pierce through weak armor and is a go-to for tearing internal organs.
7) 'thrust' (swords, spears, polearms) - like a stab, but with larger area and even deeper penetration (usually). Situationally good when going after internal organs, especially against larger creatures.
8) 'bash' (hammers, maces, some polearms, longsword) - usually the ideal attack for maces. Very high momentum, doesn't draw much blood, but doesn't get stuck either. Good against mail/chain armor, necromancers and inorganic enemies.
9) 'strike/fluke' (war hammer, polehammer) - the ideal attack for war hammer and situationally good for polehammer. Very high momentum, very focused edged attack. Doesn't go in deep, but can pierce most armors, at least, when the opponent is prone. In theory, it's generally better than bashing, but I haven't tested it extensively yet.
The rest are usually not very useful for an adventurer.
Going after the limbs and head is still a viable strategy, especially since most enemies in Adventure mode are very poorly armored. In my mod, though, attacking the upper/lower body is much more bountiful than in vanilla and is likely to temporarily disable a foe, which can be important in large fights. Perepetually cutting into the internal organs will kill most living creatures pretty quick.
Post by: flyteofheart on May 29, 2018, 04:38:10 am
Do you know how compatible this would be with other mods? Like if I install this, and then careful not to overwrite anything, install a mod that adds new civs/creatures, will they use the new combat system? Or would I have to go back and mod those creatures too?
Thanks for your work. Combat has long annoyed me in DF for being too easy or too weird.
Post by: Sver on May 29, 2018, 05:17:18 am
Do you know how compatible this would be with other mods? Like if I install this, and then careful not to overwrite anything, install a mod that adds new civs/creatures, will they use the new combat system? Or would I have to go back and mod those creatures too?
The exact incompatibilities are explained in the top post.
Overall, my mod doesn't touch the creature files themselves, but makes changes to organic body detail plan, tissues and some materials. Thus, unless the mod in question uses very specific, custom defined body layers, tissues or materials, it will integrate with mine seamlessly. EDIT: and if it does, it's probably for a reason, so there is no need to worry.
If you're adding new civs, I suggest giving them some of my mod's new weapons and armor - but it's not mandatory and there should be no conflicts regardless.
Post by: Burneddi on June 03, 2018, 11:09:02 am
PS: motivated by this mod and my civ not knowing how to make any of the cloth armor like gambesons, I wrote a small DFHack script to teach dwarves how to make items unknown to them without messing with entity_default.txt or re-embarking. It should be included with DFHack in a release or two, but in the mean time you can get it here (https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/8o6l44/dfhack_script_to_enable_crafting_of_unknown_items/).
Post by: Sver on June 03, 2018, 12:00:43 pm
Could you consider adding some more sword options for dwarven civs? Currently short swords and war knives seem to be the only ones they can use. It'd be nice if they got scimitars as an extra one-handed option and longswords as a two-handed sword, or something.
My presets are designed to stay closer to vanilla/generic fantasy, hence, I decided not to give the dwarves those weapons that Toady deemed "undwarfy", such as swords longer than a short sword. Also, the current variety covers all the common swordly specializations, as my dwarven preset includes: 'short sword' for general swordsdwarfship, 'war knife' for swift cutting/slicing and 'war cleaver' for chopping (all use SWORD skill); additionally, there's the 'falx' (PIKE skill) to fill the role of a two-handed slashing weapon.
However, my presets are simply there for convenience and I'm not forcing them on anyone. If you prefer your dwarves to have different (or simply more) weapons, you are free to add them - that's what the full list of items.txt is for. Only the 'greatsword', 'executioner sword' and 'longbow' (plus it's sets) are completely too big for dwarven usage.
PS: motivated by this mod and my civ not knowing how to make any of the cloth armor like gambesons, I wrote a small DFHack script to teach dwarves how to make items unknown to them without messing with entity_default.txt or re-embarking. It should be included with DFHack in a release or two, but in the mean time you can get it here (https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/8o6l44/dfhack_script_to_enable_crafting_of_unknown_items/).
Yeah, I saw it on reddit, very useful and neat, good work! I thought about posting a link here, but then figured you'll probably post it yourself sooner or later. Thanks for linking my mod, btw ;)
Post by: Burneddi on June 06, 2018, 05:24:29 pm
Post by: Sver on June 06, 2018, 06:16:54 pm
So, yeah. Once I'm done with some major stuff that I'm currently working on, at least, the descriptions will be added on this page. But to make them appear in-game I'd need someone who has any clue how that stuff works.
Post by: Burneddi on June 06, 2018, 11:47:48 pm
Well, I certainly will write some descriptions, eventually, but I'm way too unfamiliar with DFhack to implement them in there myself.That particular part of DFHack is very simple; the only thing you'll have to concern yourself with is a file that contains a single Lua table. You can take look at the default item-descriptions.lua (https://github.com/DFHack/scripts/blob/master/item-descriptions.lua) file in DFHack which contains descriptions for items in the base game. It's not too dissimilar to raws, being a similar kind of text-based markup. Basically, what would need to be created would look like this (excuse the crappy example descriptions paraphrased off of Wikipedia):
So, yeah. Once I'm done with some major stuff that I'm currently working on, at least, the descriptions will be added on this page. But to make them appear in-game I'd need someone who has any clue how that stuff works.
Code: [Select]
descriptions = {
ITEM_ARMOR_GAMBESON_SVER = {
"The gambeson, also known as the aketon,",
"the padded jack, or the arming doublet,",
"is a padded defensive jacket, that can be",
"worn both separately and underneath mail or",
"plate armour. It is a thick, quilted jacket,",
"and can also double as a winter coat."
},
ITEM_ARMOR_BRIGANDINE_SVER = {
"Brigandine is a form of armour made of heavy",
"cloth or leather lined with metal plates.",
"It was commonly worn over a gambeson and",
"a mail shirt, though even then it did not",
"offer protection as good as plate armour.",
"It is, however, lighter and offers greater",
"mobility than plate, making it favoured by",
"soldiers who prefer to fight unencumbered."
}
}Saving that file as more-item-descriptions.lua and putting it under DFHack's scripts folder will cause DFHack to display descriptions for gambesons and brigandine:
(https://i.imgur.com/iqumlul.png)
Anyway, if you end up writing descriptions and can't figure out how to put them in yourself, hit me up and I can help you out. You can either PM me on Reddit or on IRC (I'm on eg. Freenode with this nickname)—I might miss it if you message me on the forums. Just keep in mind these descriptions limit you to 9 lines that are a maximum of 50 characters long.
Post by: Sver on June 07, 2018, 05:30:41 am
Just one more question: considering the character and line limit, would you prefer the descriptions to be be more flavorful (like your example wiki ones), more technical (like the vanilla DFhack ones) or something else?
Post by: Burneddi on June 07, 2018, 10:16:20 am
Doesn't look too difficult. Thank you!Technical with a hint of flavour would probably be the best. It'd be ideal if players could get by without reading external descriptions or figuring out the different size, coverage and permit values, but that can be difficult to achieve. Here's what I would consider the essential information I'd be looking for myself:
Just one more question: considering the character and line limit, would you prefer the descriptions to be be more flavorful (like your example wiki ones), more technical (like the vanilla DFhack ones) or something else?
- A short, concise description of what the item is and looks like (flavour, if any, would be mostly here)
- A description of what body part the item covers
- A couple of example items that would make good pairings for this item, such as how the gambeson is good for wearing under sturdier metal armour
- If it's a weapon, a short description of its attack properties (eg. if it's good against armour or good against chopping parts off)
Oh, also, apparently only the lines near the bottom are limited to 50 characters. Not sure what the exact character limits for the lines near the top are; some of the vanilla descriptions have lines over 70 characters long.
Post by: Sver on June 07, 2018, 10:33:55 am
I don't think there will be too much problem packing it into ~450 characters.
Edit: also, PM'd a question.
Post by: Sver on June 10, 2018, 07:04:41 pm
Post by: Xilian on June 14, 2018, 06:54:05 am
So I was wondering, what is the major differences between this and Grimlocke's combat mod? in regards to the combat itself and the properties of the armour and weapons.
Post by: Sver on June 14, 2018, 12:44:45 pm
I've never really played or arena-tested with the Grimlocke's mod, so I can only compare it by the raws and the feature list. So, please, take note, that these are mostly my musings and/or personal opinion. Grimlocke's mod does some thing that my mod doesn't, such as reworked material properties of metals, lowered bone density and interactions that make creatures more resistant to fatigue and pain. All of these probably affect how armor and weapons really perform in combat. All tests for my mod are done with vanilla metals, densities and creature attributes in mind, so I can only judge the raws from this perspective.
* Melee weapons. In Grimlocke's mod they seem much more powerful: even sword slashes have small contact areas, very deep penetration and very high velocity. As a result, Grimlocke's weapons are not as functionally different between each other as the weapons in my mod. In my mod, each weapon type has a distict combat purpose (heavy armor breaking, light armor breaking, quick bloodletting, limb chopping, organ damage) in which it excels, then certain subtypes excel in two things at once, but to a lesser degree, and so on; in Grimlocke's mod, most axes and swords would probably perform very similar. As the weapons in my mod are weaker, successful hits aren't always as deadly (thus, a bit less luck based combat) and it's harder to fight off large beasts, especially inorganic ones; in Grimlocke's mod, the weapons seem to be very deadly against everything. Regarding attack speed, in Grimlocke's mod short weapons are easier to parry with, while long weapons are harder to defend against; my mod uses a more simplistic system, where weapons have a gradually growing advantage the longer they are.
* Ranged weapons and ammo. My mod has more variety and functional distinction for ranged weapons: there is a steady progression of power and material cost (and/or min body size limit). My ammo is a lot lighter and shoot velocities are lower, thus, archers in my mod are not as slow, but not as deadly either. Also, in my mod it is possible to have archers with offhand weapons (so called "weapon sets"), so it's entirely possible to train squads that both fight and shoot just as good, and out-of-ammo invaders retain some level of danger.
* Unarmed attacks. My mod doesn't touch creature files at all. Compared to Revised (which I recommend to use together with my mod), Grimlocke's unarmed attacks are significantly weaker, although, even in Revised they are quite non-deadly. Due to tissue changes in my mod (see below), bruising multiple internal organs may render the opponent temporarily disabled, so unarmed combat may serve as a viable non-lethal way of fighting, while in Grimlocke's mod it's plainly nerfed.
* Armor. My mod has a bit more functional differences between armor pieces and more possible combinations. Also, my mod has a broader variety of plate armors, allowing for cheap, lightweight additions to put over existing uniforms, including other plate. These additions partially protect the main armor piece from damage, which might be quite useful when the armor is made from a low-grade material. Armor in my mod is generally lighter, thus, armored soldiers don't get tired as quickly. Some body armors in my mod protect facial features to a varying degree (helms are unable to do this within the game's mechanics), up to metal plate, making actually full plate armor achievable.
* Tissues. My mod does some tissue rebalancing that Grimlocke's mod doesn't. Force transitioning mechanic is significantly nerfed in my mod, which means no more neck snapping from a punch to the head and no more open joint fractures from a strike to the limb; without these fixes even the very best armor would be pretty lame, because it offers zero protection from force transitioning. Additionally, organ wounds have much more severe effects, so torso protection is vitaly important. Together, these changes make the armor in my mod much more powerful and important, while in Grimlocke's it mostly functions the same as vanilla. In my mod, a good enough armor can finally compete with the all-blocking power of a shield, making two-handed weapon wielders viable; doing the same in Grimlocke's mod is not a very good idea, as almost any hit can still deliver debilitating damage. Also, broken fingers in my mod don't cause as much agony, limb damage causes a bit less agony and skulls are more durable (all of this makes combat less inane and luck based).
* Shields. In Grimlocke's mod they are a lot less protective (22% max blockchance, compared to 85% in my mod) and don't seem particularly balanced between each other. In my mod, there is a steady progression of blockchance and weight, thus, larger shields are encumbering, but quite useful. This makes fighting certain creatures (such as dragons) easier in my mod, at least, with due preparations.
Something like this.
EDIT: Grimlocke has posted an answer that addresses some of the wrongful assumptions I've made here, so I suggest to check it out (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7818074#msg7818074).
Post by: Xilian on June 15, 2018, 03:21:16 pm
* Ranged weapons and ammo. My mod has more variety and functional distinction for ranged weapons: there is a steady progression of power and material cost (and/or min body size limit). My ammo is a lot lighter and shoot velocities are lower, thus, archers in my mod are not as slow, but not as deadly either. Also, in my mod it is possible to have archers with offhand weapons (so called "weapon sets"), so it's entirely possible to train squads that both fight and shoot just as good, and out-of-ammo invaders retain some level of danger.
Regarding the ammo, doesn't the very small size basically make them unable to harm armoured targets, or does the power of the (cross)bows make up for that? Or does the coverage of armour make up for this by sometimes allowing projectiles to bypass armour (like hitting through gaps in the armour)?
* Unarmed attacks. My mod doesn't touch creature files at all. Compared to Revised (which I recommend to use together with my mod), Grimlocke's unarmed attacks are significantly weaker, although, even in Revised they are quite non-deadly. Due to tissue changes in my mod (see below), bruising multiple internal organs may render the opponent temporarily disabled, so unarmed combat may serve as a viable non-lethal way of fighting, while in Grimlocke's mod it's plainly nerfed.I heard halving velocity modifier of unarmed attacks already solves a lot of issues, do you recommend this with your mod too?
* Armor. My mod has a bit more functional differences between armor pieces and more possible combinations. Also, my mod has a broader variety of plate armors, allowing for cheap, lightweight additions to put over existing uniforms, including other plate. These additions partially protect the main armor piece from damage, which might be quite useful when the armor is made from a low-grade material. Armor in my mod is generally lighter, thus, armored soldiers don't get tired as quickly. Some body armors in my mod protect facial features to a varying degree (helms are unable to do this within the game's mechanics), up to metal plate, making actually full plate armor achievable.This seems a lot in line with battles often not having too many casualties until a rout broke out. I take it you lowered the weight of your armours by lowering the size, doesn't this also make the armours weaker and easier to broke by repeated hits?
* Tissues. My mod does some tissue rebalancing that Grimlocke's mod doesn't. Force transitioning mechanic is significantly nerfed in my mod, which means no more neck snapping from a punch to the head and no more open joint fractures from a strike to the limb; without these fixes even the very best armor would be pretty lame, because it offers zero protection from force transitioning. Additionally, organ wounds have much more severe effects, so torso protection is vitaly important. Together, these changes make the armor in my mod much more powerful and important, while in Grimlocke's it mostly functions the same as vanilla. In my mod, a good enough armor can finally compete with the all-blocking power of a shield, making two-handed weapon wielders viable; doing the same in Grimlocke's mod is not a very good idea, as almost any hit can still deliver debilitating damage. Also, broken fingers in my mod don't cause as much agony, limb damage causes a bit less agony and skulls are more durable (all of this makes combat less inane and luck based).
* Shields. In Grimlocke's mod they are a lot less protective (22% max blockchance, compared to 85% in my mod) and don't seem particularly balanced between each other. In my mod, there is a steady progression of blockchance and weight, thus, larger shields are encumbering, but quite useful. This makes fighting certain creatures (such as dragons) easier in my mod, at least, with due preparations.
Something like this.
I like the overall approach you did regarding making battles longer and less luck focused. So I wonder, how often do armours break in combat, and how much of a problem does exhaustion become in prolonged big fights?
Also to calculate weapon sizes and contact areas in attack do you use specific formulas, or do you kinda improvise per weapon so it feels right? Lastly, is it possible for me to use this mod and build upon it, for example I have made a custom human entity that takes inspiration from early Chinese imperial dynasties, thus I'd like it to have armour and weapons in line with this. For example armours were often not plate but coat of plates or lammelar and a lot thicker than european armours, their crossbows also tended to be a theoratically more powerful than their european counterparts. Hence, by your permission I'd like to use your mod and build upon by following the way you made armour and weapons and incorporate it into my new civilisations and mettalurgy.
Post by: Sver on June 15, 2018, 06:07:22 pm
Regarding the ammo, doesn't the very small size basically make them unable to harm armoured targets, or does the power of the (cross)bows make up for that? Or does the coverage of armour make up for this by sometimes allowing projectiles to bypass armour (like hitting through gaps in the armour)?
It's a bit of both. Regular bows and crossbows will not be able to do much against serious armor, but longbows and arbalests, especially with piercing ammo, perform pretty good. On the other hand, serious armor is expensive to make (and a full set is very rarely generated on invaders) - and cheaper, lower tier armors have gaps. Simultaneously, my mod still has heavy and powerful ranged options, such as atlatls (javelin throwers) and hand ballistas. Slings also perform well against armor, although they are more luck based than other ranged weapons.
I heard halving velocity modifier of unarmed attacks already solves a lot of issues, do you recommend this with your mod too?
This is what Revised does, yeah. Revised also removes biting and scratching from civilized creatures, because of how ridiculous those are within the game's mechanics. Both of these fixes work well with my mod.
This seems a lot in line with battles often not having too many casualties until a rout broke out.
Yep, one of the mod's main goals is to tone down the quick and random lethality of the vanilla DF combat and make the choice of armor less streamlined. Also, I feel like this has a positive effect on the storytelling aspect of the game, as there is now more room for mistakes in combat: having multiple viable armor choices gives the troops more character, and many militias who would have inevitably died in vanilla may end up wounded, yet saved by their comrades.
I take it you lowered the weight of your armours by lowering the size, doesn't this also make the armours weaker and easier to broke by repeated hits?
Short answer: no, lowering the layer size doesn't make the armor any weaker.
Long answer: due to how DF combat formulae handles armor thickness, there is no settling point of difference between the layer size values of 1 and 20 (20 being vanilla for plate), unless the armor in question is sized for a creature with a body size value of seven figures. Essentially, the layer size will only start to matter when worn by something the size of an ogre - and the armor sized for such a creature will be so thick that the difference in protection becomes irrelevant. Also, the weight will render the wearer immobile anyway.
So I wonder, how often do armours break in combat, and how much of a problem does exhaustion become in prolonged big fights?
There are too many variables for any combat situation to give a definitive answer here. In short, plate armors break less often than they do in vanilla, and exhaustion is much less of a problem even for the heaviest armor choices. Both still occur, but, in general, armor in my mod is more durable (due to weakened weapons) and less of a liability.
It should also be noted that exhaustion depends on many, many different factors and still plays one of the most decisive roles in combat - and will continue to do so until Toady teaches the AI to preserve stamina.
Also to calculate weapon sizes and contact areas in attack do you use specific formulas, or do you kinda improvise per weapon so it feels right?
Generally speaking, I use real life weapon examples, with the help of modern replica shops and extensive googling.
For the weapon sizes, I've calculated that for an iron weapon to weight somewhere close to 1 kg in the game, the size must be about 150. I set all sizes based on this ratio and the real life weight of the prototype weapon.
For the basic edged attacks, I use the prototype's edge length and, in case of axes, axe head lenght, converting them from inches to raw-units by a ratio. This ratio is based on a number that I've found (after some testing) to be a quite reasonable penetration depth for the short sword (2000), equated to a reasonable blade lenght for the short sword (20 inches). Thus, I multiply a real life value in inches by 100 to get a game-friendly value. It turned out to work surprisingly well in practice.
Things start to get a bit more complicated when it comes to stabbing and other special edged attacks, although the same ratio is used for the most part. As a general guideline, stabbing contact areas equal the prototype's blade width divided by 10; thrusting equals blade width; clean slashes have blade length multiplied by 10 and have limited penetration; cuts are equal or half of blade length and their penetration equals blade width. And then, some attacks have it more arbitrary.
For blunt and pseudo-blunt (fluke/spike strikes) attacks I mostly use arbitrary numbers that are given with the game mechanics in mind. Penetration depth of fluke/spike strikes is capped by the prototype's fluke length, although it is occasionally made lower, for balancing reasons.
The way I calculate velocities is all over the place, but the most important numbers here are the prototype's total length in inches and the total weight in kg. If you give me these two numbers and describe the weapon, I can calculate the velocities for you. Or you can just use the velocities from the closest analogue in my mod.
For attack prepare and recover times it's best to simply use analogues, as those are even more all over the place than the velocities.
I also used to have some genius formulae which I've used to calculate the proper shoot forces for ranged weapons, but I've lost it. So, again, analogues all the way.
As for armor, I got to say that DF item modding lacks the possibility to properly implement lamellar armor and the like, as the armor is either rigid (like plate) or elastic (like mail) - there is no achievable middle ground. My mod does it in a half-assed way: lamellar armor can deflect blunt force (so, essentially, it's rigid), but has a relatively high chance (33%) to let any attack path through; on the other hand, it is relatively light, while covering many bodyparts. I've yet to come up with any way to implement it better.
Layer sizes for my armor are generally made with weight in mind, but you can safely use them by analogy (10 for plate, 6 for mail and so on), as thickness doesn't really affect combat performance anyway. One way to simulate functional thickness, though, is to have the same armor pieces layered upon each other, so keep it in mind for layer permits and the [SHAPED] tag placement.
And yes, you do have my permission, as it is stated in the main post. Regarding making new items in the groove of the mod, I might also be able to give more precise answers to more precise questions =)
Post by: Xilian on June 27, 2018, 10:25:59 am
I have been modding in weapons of my own based on the formulas you described and it has been going well so far. However, if you don't mind I have some more questions regarding the ammo. I take it the contact area is a value of the blade width ratio of the used arrowhead. However the penetration depth is based on what, is it part of the shaft length? As for the javelins, are these calculations based on the ammo calculations or weapon calculations for spears?
Post by: Sver on June 27, 2018, 11:06:17 am
However, if you don't mind I have some more questions regarding the ammo. I take it the contact area is a value of the blade width ratio of the used arrowhead. However the penetration depth is based on what, is it part of the shaft length? As for the javelins, are these calculations based on the ammo calculations or weapon calculations for spears?
Contact area for the broadhead ones equals arrowhead blade width, yes. For other types of ammo, it's a bit more arbitrary: they are given with armor-breaking mechanics in mind and can be safely copied for any other ammo that you intend to be armor-piercing.
For penetration, arrows and bolts use part of the shaft length, yes. Piercing types get about one half of the length and broadhead types get about one third.
Javelins are a specific case. Let's just say that the contact area is taken from the sharpest spear in the mod, the penetration is based off the metal part of the pilum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilum) and the velocities are given with pilum's specifics in mind (e.g. the bending shank).
In the upcoming version, there'd be a new type of javelins based on the fletched javelins (http://mediaephile.com/images/a1249.jpg). For them, attacks will be like these:
Code: [Select]
[ATTACK:EDGE:125:1670:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:700] shank can bend on hit
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:125:3500:thrust:thrusts:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:800:125:cut:cuts:NO_SUB:50]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]with the shaft length in mind being about 60 inches, thus, penetration is either a bit more than one half of the shaft or is one half of the previous value - depending on the attack. Contact area is the roughly calculated head width (couldn't find a precise source) and velocity is applied on the same principle as for arrows.
Post by: Sver on June 28, 2018, 08:22:07 am
Major changes:
* Optional: Adrenaline interaction (with some tweaks) from the Grimlocke's History & Realism Mods (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146737.0) is included with the author's permission. It gives a substantial boost in willpower and endurance to all live creatures in combat, making fights longer and invaders less affected by the randomness of their physical stats.
* Thickened joints and ribs and gave a bit more reasonable thickness to spine, courtesy of DF Revised.
* Lots of small fixes to material templates, courtesy of DF Revised.
* Increased the strength of cartilage (to that of bone/sinew) for a bit more durable fingers, toes and such.
* Several tissue fixes: fat does not bleed; damage to bone causes more bleeding; removed pain from brain (as it's effects appear to be redundant).
* Added a new type of ammo: war darts. They are used by atlatls and are better suited agaist flesh than armor, very effective against large beasts.
* Added new weapon sets: shepherd arms (sling + mace), ravager arms (sling + headhunting axe), trapper arms (atlatl + hawk axe), beasthunter arms (atlatl + executioner sword), ambusher arms (atlatl + spear).
* Lowered the velocity for all 'thrust' attacks (to that of normal stabs) and gave them slower recover, as they were too good at cutting off limbs.
* Rearranged the multi-attack bonuses/penalties for all weapons. Changed some prepare and recover times accordingly.
* Readjusted the speed for all trap components and made them generally slower.
* The 'hook' attack for halberd was replaced with 'strike' (with spike). A new 'hook' attack is more in line with other weapons.
* Expanded the attacks for falx. Now it can also 'snatch' and 'cleave'.
* Increased the velocity for hammerhead bolts (1.25x modifier).
* Added another "fake" attack to (sling) bullets to make slings more random.
* Renamed 'mail hauberk' to 'mail coat' and 'mail byrnie' to 'mail shirt' for simpler naming and changed the tags accordingly.
* Renamed 'tasset' to 'tassets' as that is more appropriate. Now it only gives 60% block, but requires less bars. Also, lowered its weight. Actually added it to the entity lists, as I forgot to do it the first time.
* Renamed 'plackart' to 'lower plate' for simpler naming and changed the tag accordingly. It now grants 100% block, but requires more bars. Also, lowered its weight.
* Changed the tag for greatsword to fit its name, for easier searching in the entity files.
Minor changes:
** Renamed 'giant club' to 'war club', in accordance with the new DF Revised.
** Renamed 'atlatl dart' to 'thorn dart', to emphasize the wood-only focus.
** Renamed 'hat' to 'warm hat', as that is a more precise description.
** Fixed the 'hook' attack for horned axe having too high velocity.
** Fixed the skill for javelinman arms to DAGGER.
** Lowered the material requirements for broad spear and bladed spear.
** Raised the two-handed size requirement for hatchet to 18000.
** Made glaive a bit slower on attack, but easier to parry with. Overall speed stays the same. Also, removed the 'hook' attack.
** Made hawk axe a bit less penetrating.
** Made war cleaver a bit better at damaging armor.
** Some attack renamings for scimitar and war cleaver.
** Made large arrows heavier and a bit less penetrating.
** Slightly lowered the weight for plate armor, breastplate and chestplate, to simulate their efficient weight distribution.
** Made lamellar armor a bit heavier.
** Lowered the weight of gambeson and padded armor to a more realistic value. Now even more layering possible!
** Slightly inceased the layer permit of pauldrons.
** Fixed the shin guards layer type to COVER and slightly increased their layer permit.
Post by: Sver on June 28, 2018, 08:35:26 am
Post by: Sver on June 28, 2018, 12:24:04 pm
v1.3.1 Released
Added war darts to entity lists. A very small fix, as I simply forgot to do this.
Post by: Sver on July 19, 2018, 08:11:34 am
My plan is to wait for the next Revised release with more detailed bodies, so I could include the required armor rework right away. Before that, it would be highly appreciated if more people would vote on the legwear question, so we could have a definitive winner.
Post by: fonzacus on July 27, 2018, 02:09:00 pm
the more sensible naming thing is nice with the update. i also took it a bit further by renaming chain mittens and chausse to mails, and gave leggings a padded prefix for a bit more 'sensibilty'.
id like to request some magic. is it possible to have an unholy baby of a quiver/flask/backpack? or probably a ranged weapon set + quiver? recently ive been seeing a few dwarves having missmatches from usually quivers, and sometimes flasks. it happens from time to time in vanilla. DT says the dwarf was missing specific quiver/flask. removing them/their equipment usually fixes this.
i played a lot long time ago and have always been careful around miners, woodcutters and hunters so it isnt that.
Post by: Sver on July 27, 2018, 02:26:22 pm
Yeah, I went with "chain", because mail is, in fact, a more vague term (it can simply mean "armor"), and vanilla has "chain leggings", so the naming convention stayed the same. I don't have anything against players renaming/modifying stuff to their liking, though.
Unfortunately, I can't do anything about that. Quivers, flasks and backpacks cannot be modded, at least, not through the raws alone.
I've never really run into this issue, but then again I almost never use the "Carry food/drink" options, because my militias are usually within the stockpiles' reach anyway.
Post by: wickys on July 27, 2018, 06:05:19 pm
Post by: Sver on July 27, 2018, 06:40:36 pm
Overall, the mod is mostly my personal musings and opinionated balancing, although, it does borrow from several other mods - where it's credited.
Post by: Grimlocke on July 28, 2018, 06:02:06 am
Mostly, you've got a more modest but still worthwhile take on the whole 'historic-ish combat rebalance', which really ought to help people integrate this with other mods. With mine that's kinda fallen in the toilet a lot of the time because the changes I made aren't all obvious, not that well documented but still instrumental to making the balance scheme work. (particularly the materials rebalance, which nobody ever extends to modded materials)
That said, I do take issue with some of the assumptions you made in this post:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I say assumptions, because a lot of this would have proven false with some basic arena testing. For instance, while 'my' weapons are significantly more powerful than in vanilla, so is the armor. Swords have a smaller contact area because the game processes the larger ones in... strange ways, making large-contact area weapons really weak against even basic protection. Swords and other light weapons are still pretty useless against anything above mail armor, facial features are fully protected by helmets since I've made facial features embedded, joints don't break without some very significant force (I did it through material and joint bodypart modification instead).
I guess this is a sign my documentation and raw commenting is kinda crappy. Ought to fix that one of these days.
Your shields might be a tad bit overpowered, since that block chance is a base value that increases with shield user skill. Even with my fairly modest shield stats, skilled shield users generally have an advantage over two-handed weapon users, both armored and especially unarmored. Two-handed weapons generally only have an advantage against poorly skilled shield users, or armored, low weapon skill combat where the one-handed weapons fail at breaking through armor.
Anyhow, keep up the good work. I might reverse-inspire some features when/if I get back into DF modding :)
Post by: Sver on July 28, 2018, 07:02:32 am
I mean, your mod was one of the initial inspirations for me, so it's really nice you've stopped by.
Regarding my post, those are, indeed, assumptions, as I've clarified in the beginning. I'll link your comment there to make it fair.
Your mod is obviously more vast and, thus, has a balance that is more "self-oriented", while my mod tries to keep the focus on vanilla. That's pretty much why I've kept the relatively larger contact areas: they offer the desired disparity between the weapons, so, say, an axe can hack through padded armor right away, while a sword needs at least 3 slashes for the same feat. Also, I've felt that average contact areas don't really need a boost, as, in vanilla, limbs go flying off way too often and it's getting especially ridiculous at higher skill levels. But that's obviously just my opinion again.
If you don't mind, I've got a couple of questions regarding how you've resolved the issues with joints and facial features:
1) Does making facial features internal has any side effects, aside from making them covered by helmets? Are they no longer available for being targeted (say, by an adventurer)? Do HFs still lose them more often than limbs in worldgen? Can they be wrestled (gouged etc.)?
2) How exactly did you strengthen the joints against the constant "force pulls limb, tearing the muscle" without altering the materials? Did you do something similar to prevent the necks from snapping?
While balancing the shields, I was refering to this study on shield blocking (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134779.0), plus my knowledge of the fact that blocking with a shield is an action and drains stamina. The study suggests that there is about 1.5x disparity between a buckler and a shield at high skill levels, while on low skill levels there is almost no difference, so I've reasoned that this disparity only grows larger with higher blockchances. In the end, however, my shields are mainly balanced around the stamina and encumbrance question: large shields can become a serious liability when the heavily armoured user is outnumbered, but are great otherwise. As in my mod a proud owner of good, full plate armor is pretty much invinsible (aside from wresting/biting), until xe falls to the ground from over-exertion, stamina is the primary concern for most humanoid-on-humanoid battles. It is possible I will cut the blockchances a bit for the future version, though, even if not by much.
Also, small weapons in my mod are much weaker than in vanilla, while two-handed ones are reasonably strong - essentially, "if you want to do a lot of damage, go with two-handed, if you want to play safe, go with weapon and shield". This should be further magnified by the future update with attack speed rebalance, which I'm currently working on. I do agree, though, that at Legendary skills there is almost no difference between anything really, but this is an inevitable part of game mechanics.
Thanks for your insights!
Post by: Grimlocke on July 28, 2018, 08:59:30 am
As for the questions: I made the facial features embedded rather than internal, though these are functionally quite similar. Eyes were already embedded, and can still be gouged. The other parts can still be damaged on head-hits, but can't be independently targeted or cut off any more. Its a tradeoff, but my soldiers gradually running out of ears and noses annoyed me more than the lack of ability to bite off someone's nose in adventurer mode (fun as that was). I tried other solutions for a while, among which trying to make ears and noses 'cover' the head the same way eyelids cover eyes, but that feature seems to be a bit broken. This solution seemed the least broken, even though it came at the cost of hilarious adventure mode shenanigans.
Joint damage is a bit different from other damage, in that its currently the only thing using the torsion, bending and tensile material properties (for twisting, bending and pulling respectively). My solution was to change those in the material templates for muscle and other tissues used by joints, and increase the joint bodyparts in size to have their relative strength make sense. This also takes effect on necks and creatures that don't have joints (which take joint-damage on bodypart one step towards the upper or lower body).
As for shields, first time I'm seeing that shield research topic! Thanks for the link, I'll have a read through this later today. Now that I think about it, with my current balancing scheme its fairly rare for fights to go on long enough to run soldiers out of stamina. I wonder if there are ways to make fights more tiring in a shorter amount of time without affecting running stamina? My armor is overall a little weaker, because the DF AI doesn't quite understand how to aim for weak spots in armor and fights would just go on forever. Being out of the game when poleaxed in the head is not entirely unrealistic either, and I just like the idea that a hard enough hit with an iron maul is going to be a bad day no matter the armor :)
Anyhow, I'll experiment with the shields some later and maybe release that along with some other stuff I havn't been bothered to finish up properly and release. Feel free to ask me stuff!
Post by: Sver on July 28, 2018, 10:04:20 am
My solution was to change those in the material templates for muscle and other tissues used by joints, and increase the joint bodyparts in size to have their relative strength make sense.
Huh, I didn't notice it the first time looking over your raws. I got pretty much the same solution, although, I've just plainly increased the sturdiness of muscle and sinew. The thing is, I went with much higher numbers. Is FRACTURE:22000 enough to prevent limbs from being disabled by force transfer all so often? Or do you intentionally keep it not too high, so that torn muscles will still occur from time to time? I'm having a hard time finding a sweet spot where light weapons cannot break armoured limbs, while heavy weapons can.
And it's pretty much the same with the nervous tissue: it got tiring to see almost any successful strike (including punches) to the head end up in inevitable death by suffocation, but increasing the material strength high enough made it so that not even a poleaxe can deal with it.
My armor is overall a little weaker, because the DF AI doesn't quite understand how to aim for weak spots in armor
I'm not sure if I've seen what I've seen, but throughout the armor-vs-shield testing I've been noticing that the AI have been consistently focusing on bodyparts not covered by armor. I've staged several 1x1 fights between a human who worn almost full plate armor with no shield and a lightly armored human with a large shield: the shield user very often attacked the facial features, which were uncovered. There was a similar pattern in the other test, where one side had no hand protection. I'm not 100% sure that wasn't just a coincidence, though: as in, there were many blocked strikes in those tests, and they could've been aimed at something else.
And, if any consideration, AI got pretty good with removing armor from unconscious opponents. That is another benefit of two-handed weapons, btw - units with a weapon and a shield cannot do this.
How exactly the armor in your mod is weaker?
In my mod, there are several weapons which can pierce right through plate of the same material, even if only when the target is prone. Seemed fair enough to me, taking into account that plate in my mod is very expensive to make, and any damage to it is a hole in the fort's smithing resources. Together with the armor-removal AI and more protective shields, this creates a system where fights are long, but will immediately speed up the moment one of the sides looses their ground. I personally love the fights this way. Not a fan of wall-to-wall combat, where, in the end, it's all about the relative skills/stats and some luck. In this system, both sides flail on each other with only occassional casualities, until either one side starts getting tired/panicked or the other gets some tactics up and outmaneuvers the foe.
Now that I think about it, with my current balancing scheme its fairly rare for fights to go on long enough to run soldiers out of stamina. I wonder if there are ways to make fights more tiring in a shorter amount of time without affecting running stamina?
I don't really think there is any way to separate those. It's either longer fights (with the help of stronger defenses and/or slower weapons) or lower stamina in general. As you see, I went with longer fights.
Post by: Grimlocke on July 28, 2018, 10:47:56 am
Is FRACTURE:22000 enough to prevent limbs from being disabled by force transfer all so often? Or do you intentionally keep it not too high, so that torn muscles will still occur from time to time? I'm having a hard time finding a sweet spot where light weapons cannot break armoured limbs, while heavy weapons can.
And it's pretty much the same with the nervous tissue: it got tiring to see almost any successful strike (including punches) to the head end up in inevitable death by suffocation, but increasing the material strength high enough made it so that not even a poleaxe can deal with it.
The values I have make for only very occasional damage by joint/tendon/nerve damage, mainly very heavy blunt weapons get it on good hits. I'd have it be a bit more common, but the joint damage scales only with amount of force applied in total, not force/area, so it was impossible to make it also happen on smaller contact area weapons and not be all sorts of broken.
I doubt my values will copy over to a vanilla kind of balancing scheme though. As I said, I also increased the size of the joint bodyparts, since the smaller the part is the easier it was to crush which made joints very weak compared to the neck, so that weighs in as well. Basically in your case, just increase the force until the ingame behaviour makes sense.
I'm not sure if I've seen what I've seen, but throughout the armor-vs-shield testing I've been noticing that the AI have been consistently focusing on bodyparts not covered by armor. I've staged several 1x1 fights between a human who worn almost full plate armor with no shield and a lightly armored human with a large shield: the shield user very often attacked the facial features, which were uncovered. There was a similar pattern in the other test, where one side had no hand protection. I'm not 100% sure that wasn't just a coincidence, though: as in, there were many blocked strikes in those tests, and they could've been aimed at something else.
And, if any consideration, AI got pretty good with removing armor from unconscious opponents. That is another benefit of two-handed weapons, btw - units with a weapon and a shield cannot do this.
Hm, the AI has a really strong and weird preference for attacking tiny bodyparts, usually with unarmed attacks or other secondary attacks. I'm fairly sure this is due to the 'critical attack chance' though, the thing that gives a randomly attack on a random bodypart greatly increased odds of hitting. The AI almost always seems to use those if they come up. That mechanic doesn't weigh likelihood by bodypart size, and there are a lot more small bodyparts (fingers, toes, face parts) than large ones, so the AI does a lot of biting enemies in the toe and such (with both standing and wearing a helmet...)
I haven't ever noticed the AI prefer unarmored bodyparts, but admittedly its been a while since I tested that. I'll give it another science later.
How exactly the armor in your mod is weaker?
In my mod, there are several weapons which can pierce right through plate of the same material, even if only when the target is prone. Seemed fair enough to me, taking into account that plate in my mod is very expensive to make, and any damage to it is a hole in the fort's smithing resources. Together with the armor-removal AI and more protective shields, this creates a system where fights are long, but will immediately speed up the moment one of the sides looses their ground. I personally love the fights this way. Not a fan of wall-to-wall combat, where, in the end, it's all about the relative skills/stats and some luck. In this system, both sides flail on each other with only occassional casualities, until either one side starts getting tired/panicked or the other gets some tactics up and outmaneuvers the foe.
With the setup I went for, most fights is an exchange of parried and blocked hits, hits glancing off armor until finally one gets a shot on a limb, either disarmed the opponent or dropping them on the floor. Its fairly similar, but shorter and a large skill disparity can make you almost unassailable in adventurer mode as long as you can keep from being outnumbered. Being outnumbered is probably bad news in both these mods though, since you just get spammed, knocked on the floor and turned into canned soup. This is historically accurate though, and how things should be :)
Post by: Sver on July 28, 2018, 11:57:04 am
Yeah, it's possible that the melee AI just goes after smaller bodyparts because they are easier to damage.
Thanks again for all you answers!
Post by: fonzacus on July 30, 2018, 01:39:58 pm
more 'hidden' (or removed) body parts would be a blessing IMHO, i hope you do make magic. thered be much fewer teeth, ears nose ETC to haul. having them hidden for all creatures would make my gameplay better, not too sure about others. im anti hunter, so i send out my noob squad to hunt game from time to time.
Post by: Sver on July 30, 2018, 04:02:40 pm
I will probably set up a poll regarding "internalizing" facial features, once I get to that, and see what the general consensus is.
Post by: peasant cretin on August 06, 2018, 05:14:03 pm
Thank you :)
* Ranged weapons and ammo. My mod has more variety and functional distinction for ranged weapons: there is a steady progression of power and material cost (and/or min body size limit). My ammo is a lot lighter and shoot velocities are lower, thus, archers in my mod are not as slow, but not as deadly either. Also, in my mod it is possible to have archers with offhand weapons (so called "weapon sets"), so it's entirely possible to train squads that both fight and shoot just as good, and out-of-ammo invaders retain some level of danger.
Curious about this. The tick counts for "reload"/delay after firing (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=163596.msg7453871#msg7453871) change if we manipulate SHOOT_FORCE and/or SHOOT_MAXVEL?
I've never seen anyone mention this before :o If this is so, that's quite a find!
Post by: Sver on August 06, 2018, 05:23:43 pm
There is no way to alter the reload speed/delay using the raws, as far as I am aware.
Post by: Sver on September 15, 2018, 01:07:33 pm
Notice: I've decided to post an update before the inevitable armor rework that is coming with the next release of DF Revised and its body changes. "Internalized" facial features (to reduce bodypart clutter) will also arive with it.
The most important change here is the weapon speed rebalance, and I would really like to get some feedback on it before progressing further. Testing this new system on both modded and purely vanilla set ups showed no problems in arena mode, but any actual gameplay reports and personal opinions will be appreciated.
Major changes:
* Weapon speed rebalance!
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
* New types of steel! Idea credit to Jazzpirat!.
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
* Stone weapons for subterranean tribes! Well, not really stone, but made with a workaround as "fake" metals. Flint, obsidian and malachite weapons have replaced the wood ones for subterranean animal peoples, so as to make them a bit more capable in combat. Their arsenal was also expanded to include some axes.
This is optional, but recommended and, thus, included by default. If you don't like this feature, you can simply delete all the =SVER_ROCKWEAPONS= marked lines from your entity_default.txt and add back the [WOOD_WEAPONS] tag.
* Legwear rework, to account for the Bug 10784 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=10784). "Belt" is now legwear instead of bodywear and can be made of cloth. All non-metal pants were removed from my entity lists; skirts were left as they were, but you can remove them, if you want. "Shirt" and "warm coat" have been replaced in my entity lists by the new "clothes" and "warm clothes" bodywear types. "Padded armor" now also covers legs. No items were deleted (aside from the bodywear belt), so you can still get artifact thongs sometimes.
* Added new weapons: dagger-axe and parrying dagger. The former is a pole weapon (pike) best used against weak armor and humanoid limbs. The latter is mostly for adventurers - an offhand weapon very well suited for multi-attacks.
* Added a new elven weapon: enchanted lance. It uses the pikeman skill and is essentially a pike on steroids.
* Added new types of ammo: ballista balls and sling boulders. Similar to each other, these are heavy projectiles, which mostly deliver blunt trauma or shallow abrasions.
* Removed the broad spear all together, as the stabbing attack changes made it obsolete. "Boar spear" optional tool now resembles short spear.
* Stakesman arms now use maul instead of mallet.
* Increased the material requirement for all weapon sets by exactly one bar (except for the dagger ones). It's a balancing measure to make the all-capable troops a bit more expensive to set up. From roleplaying perspective, it's for the weapon-holding equipment. You can still make them from one piece of wood, if needed.
* Readjusted the weight of all bolts, arrows and sling bullets for more realistic values. Arrows are now heavier than bolts, except for the hammerhead.
* Readjusted the area and penetration of most 'stab' and 'thrust' attacks to account for the new 'jab' attack. All areas are now capped at 17 to prevent limbs from being cut off by stabs; arming sword and bladed spear are exempted to make them more distinct, but are still capped at 20. 'Thrust' velocities are now equivalent to 'stab', but the penetration is still deeper; weapons with no extra penetration got this attack removed (except some specials). Stabs now also have lower velocity to make them less armor-piercing. Stabbing area cap credit to Grimlocke.
* Removed 'loosely bash' attacks from war hammer and morningstar, as these weapons turned out to be fairly balanced as is.
* Applied an additional 1.5x modifier to all 'club' attack (maces) velocities. Same for all of the maul and scourge attacks.
* Reworked the (elven) club and war club. They are now more similar in terms of weight and velocity, but the war club is better at destroying armor.
* Decreased the contact areas of maul, mallet, mace and flanged mace.
* Readjusted the contact areas of morningstar - a bit worse than war hammer now. Also, increased the main velocities, minimum size and two-handed limit.
* Seriously decreased the 'slash' penetration for scimitar and war cleaver. Now they are all about swift shallow cuts rather than just being weird variations of regular swords. They are also slightly better at cutting through weak armor now.
* Tassets are no longer [SHAPED] and the layer type has been changed to COVER. They can now be worn over a lower plate for additional protection.
* Removed shin guards from all entity lists. Due to a bug, AI has issues with wearing two pairs of footwear at once, which renders this item useless.
* Removed visors from all entity lists. Too often they were worn without a helmet.
* Renamed 'bullets' to 'sling bullets' and changed the tag accordingly.
* Renamed 'large arrows' to 'ballista bolts' and changed the tag accordingly.
* Renamed 'executioner sword' to 'great cleaver' and changed the tag accordingly.
* Changed the tag for war cleaver to fit its name.
Minor changes:
** Sane melting and heatdam points for fat by thefriendlyhacker. Less melting, more burning.
** Made teeth (TOOTH_TEMPLATE) edible/stealable by vermin, so they will gradually disappear from both the ground and the stockpiles now. Idea credit to OldGenesis (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156059.0).
** New type of clothing: surcoat. A COVER-layer, tunic-like bodywear, just for fun.
** Set all adjectives for elven melee weapons to 'enchanted' to justify why they are so overpowered if made into metal artifacts.
** More "gamey" material cost distribution. Increased cost: hand ballista - 12 bars (still can be made of wood though); arbalest - 5 bars; poleaxe, polehammer - 4 bars; hawk axe, headhunting axe, war hammer, flail, crossbow - 3 bars; bearded axe - 2 bars. Decreased cost: greatsword - 4 bars; two-handed sword, falx, longsword, estoc - 3 bars; arming sword, scimitar, great cleaver - 2 bars; maul, war cleaver - 1 bar.
** Decreased smelting returns for hatchet, mace, mallet, spear, bow and longbow.
** Increased the two-handed limits: glaive - 105000; headhunting axe, war hammer - 60000 (smaller dwarves will need both hands).
** Increased the layer permit of doublet to that of other padded armors.
** Simplified the goblin clothing (in entity_default.txt and my preset) to lower the amount of post-siege clutter. Idea credit to Essential DF (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=133456.0).
** Equivalents of vanilla items (which are using their tags; e.g. not my new stuff) were highlighted by =VANILLA= in their respective raws and in the full list of items.txt, for easier search by those players/modders who don't want to use new items.
Post by: Sver on September 15, 2018, 01:31:24 pm
Post by: Sver on October 02, 2018, 12:32:19 pm
How deadly do you find tanrums, tavern brawls and the like? Do you think they are less deadly than in vanilla or the opposite?
I would really like to know whether my material and tissue changes alleviate the deadliness of the new stress system or actually make it worse.
Post by: HumanScholar on October 14, 2018, 04:30:53 pm
1. My hunters have equipped various weapon sets, and they go out and hunt for a while, but eventually on one of their trips back to get ammo they seem to fall into a bugged loop. They stand on top of the ammo they want and switch between "No Job" and "Pickup Equipment" extremely quickly, never picking anything up. It's not in a bin, and it's definitely the appropriate ammo type. Does this sound familiar? I'm playing on top of Meph's tileset/launcher, which I think does some light modding in the background, but I was pretty careful about copying in this mod's changes.
2. I'm overwhelmed by the weapon options! Could you suggest a couple of weapon sets/melee weapons for general purposes?
Post by: Sver on October 14, 2018, 06:36:26 pm
1. My hunters have equipped various weapon sets, and they go out and hunt for a while, but eventually on one of their trips back to get ammo they seem to fall into a bugged loop. They stand on top of the ammo they want and switch between "No Job" and "Pickup Equipment" extremely quickly, never picking anything up. It's not in a bin, and it's definitely the appropriate ammo type. Does this sound familiar? I'm playing on top of Meph's tileset/launcher, which I think does some light modding in the background, but I was pretty careful about copying in this mod's changes.
Have not run into this problem personally, so I'll need some time to investigate. Could you provide a save via DFFD (http://dffd.bay12games.com)? It would also help if you give the "troublemakers" an indicative nickname in advance. I suspect it might have something to do with the type of weapon set they are using.
Also, is this a single case or did this happen several times already? Do they ever get out of this loop?
2. I'm overwhelmed by the weapon options! Could you suggest a couple of weapon sets/melee weapons for general purposes?
It really depends on your playstyle and the availability of iron/flux on your map. As a general guideline:
1) If you have enough steel, you can go straight for hawk axes (each costs 3 bars). Unless you go to war with humans or have to fight a lot of giant beasts, it is a very effective weapon. And it is one-handed. It would still be good to have some pikes (1 bar each) and/or falxes (3 bars each) to fight off giant beasts, but take note that those cannot be used with a shield; the main difference between the two is that the falx can chop off limbs, but the pike is way faster.
2) If you do go to war with humans, you better make some tempered steel polehammers and/or poleaxes (both are 4 bars each) and give it to your best-armored soldiers; poleaxes are more versatile, but a tempered steel polehammer leaves little chance to any average-sized creature, no matter the armor. Neither of the two can be used with a shield though. Tempered steel war hammers (3 bars each) might do as a one-handed alternative, but they will be noticeably weaker.
3) If you don't have an easy access to steel, then it's best to have mixed weapon squads:
For anti-armor weapons, morningstars (2 bars each), polehammers and war hammers perform well no matter what material is used. Pick one. The former two are two-handed, but pack a stronger punch.
For something more bloody, use short spears (1 bar each), short swords (2 bars each) or battle axes (1 bar each) - and that's where you better put your iron, if you have any. Pick one or two, depending on your personal preference - although, talking legendary weapon skills, swords definitely win out with their versatility.
Pikes and falxes are once again your trusty friends against huge beasts, but if you are really short on metal, consider using horned axes (2 bars each) - those are decent against beasts and humanoids alike, but are not as exhausting to use as pikes (super-fast weapon is a double-edged sword, metaphorically) and are cheaper than falxes.
4) If you have a very small military, I would advice to stick to weapon-and-shield combos. Having a shielded squad and a two-handed squad is viable, though, if you got good armor.
5) If you have a large, well-armored military, halberds (4 bars each) and pikes are a nice and lazy way to mass-equip it. Aside from the human war occassion above, these two types of weapons will take care of most situations. It would still be good to keep a shielded squad or two on hand for dragons and such; short spear is a good choice of weapon for those.
Post by: HumanScholar on October 15, 2018, 01:07:11 am
Let me look at uploading that save. Would you need the Meph launcher/packaging as part of one big zip, or do you think the save folder itself is enough? (I don't know how much data gets duplicated into the saves.)
The problem with picking up ammo seemed to happen eventually with most or all of my hunters. They didn't get out of the loop as far as I saw, but maybe I didn't give them long enough before removing their ambush labor and appointing a new hunter.
Edit: I've got one guy in a permanent loop: he goes to "Pickup equipment," stands on top of the ammo stack flickering back and forth to "No job," eventually gives up and wanders a dozen tiles away, and then starts all over again.
Post by: thefriendlyhacker on October 15, 2018, 02:15:47 am
...Just out of curiosity, what sort of weapon is he carrying (and what sort of ammo does it use)? Also, what sort(s) of ammo (if any) are already in his quiver?
Edit: I've got one guy in a permanent loop: he goes to "Pickup equipment," stands on top of the ammo stack flickering back and forth to "No job," eventually gives up and wanders a dozen tiles away, and then starts all over again.
Post by: reducer on October 15, 2018, 06:23:48 am
Post by: Sver on October 15, 2018, 06:54:13 am
Let me look at uploading that save. Would you need the Meph launcher/packaging as part of one big zip, or do you think the save folder itself is enough? (I don't know how much data gets duplicated into the saves.)
The save folder itself should be enough. One more thing I need to know: what version of the game you're using?
As a temporary measure, I would recommend you disable all your hunters and wait until they stockpile their equipment. Then make sure that only one type of ranged weapon and ammo is available to them (using the forbid): as in, only crossbow- and arbalest-based sets, plus any type of bolts (except for 'ballista bolts' - those won't do). Then enable hunting back again and see if it's gonna work. Just make sure to keep the rest of the stuff forbidden and don't forget to report the results, please =)
For weapons of a broad type (like 1H axes), does increasing expense indicate a series of better, higher-tier weapons that should always be preferred, or are there still subtleties in use cases? For example, should a Battle Axe or a Hatchet (both 1) always be ignored if a Hawk Axe or Headhunting Axe are within reach? ...Although as I write this, I realize I don't know the distinction between axes of the same expense anyway.
Yes, exactly so. If you have enough Hawk Axes and/or Headhunting Axes at hand, then you don't really need lower-grade axes. The difference between the two in question is that the Headhunting one is somewhat better (Hawk is more realiable vs armor though), but a dwarf needs to be of an average size (60000) or larger to be able to wield it one-handed. For comparision, strictly two-handed axes can easily compare to both, even though they are cheaper - as a counterbalance for the lack of shield.
Also, a Battle Axe is invariably better than a Hatchet. The purpose of the Hatchet is to be a very light and cheap weapon, doubling as a tool for woodcutters, that is easy to embark with; however, it gives diminished smelting returns.
All-in-all, while I tried to make each weapon as distinct as possible, they still share one thing in common: they kill, one way or another, but always better than the bare fists. So, just have fun and roleplay with different troops.
Post by: Sver on October 15, 2018, 07:03:04 am
My dwarf civ is unable to create greaves - is this intended? I believe it's due to this mod, but I'm not certain.
Yes, it is possible. Greaves are footwear in this mod, thus, some civs may pick high boots as their choice of plate footwear instead. If you worry about upper leg protection, use tassets or mail skirts for pants and/or mail coats for bodywear. Or open the entity_default.txt and set all the armors you want to FORCED, like [SHOES:ITEM_SHOES_GREAVES_SVER:FORCED] - this will guarantee they'll be available for crafting; but you'd need to regen the world for this change to take effect. Also, there's the add-recipe script in DFhack, which allows making any items you wish available for crafting even in an existing save.
Post by: reducer on October 15, 2018, 09:35:26 am
Post by: HumanScholar on October 15, 2018, 05:30:30 pm
When I have time a little later I'll try the recommendation to forbid all weapons and ammo except for a single type and let you know how that goes.
Post by: Sver on October 16, 2018, 08:45:44 am
So, trying out a couple of things, I've come to the conclusion that the problem is not caused by the mod in particular, but rather by the usual stupidity the game has with the hunting equipment. For whatever reason, the hunters are dead set on trying to pick up a wrong ammo type and failing - and not even removing this type of ammo from the hunters' ammunition tab (on the military screen) can fix the problem.
For your particular save, the only workable resolution is to disable the hunters, forbid all hand ballistas and all ballista bolts, enable hunters back on and stick to using/producing only the crossbow- and arbalest-based sets, with any of the fitting bolts (piercing, broadhead, hammerhead - all three should work OK alongside).
Alternatively, use ranged military instead of hunters. Just make sure to customly define the weapons instead of using the 'individual choice ranged' - I know it can be a pain in the butt to do, but dwarves are notoriously bad at managing themselves.
Post by: HumanScholar on October 16, 2018, 02:23:20 pm
Post by: Sver on October 16, 2018, 02:33:25 pm
You're correct, bone and wood are pretty useless in melee, however, there is no any other downside to making sets from these materials. They still take a single bone/log to make, just like the "pure" crossbow/arbalest would. For convenience, you can just produce Arbalester Arms and/or Crossbowman Arms, as they're pretty self-descriptive.
Post by: HumanScholar on October 21, 2018, 06:45:58 am
What's the status with clothing right now? The mod has a "clothes" item, but there's obviously still all the little individual pieces. Is some of that meant to be modded out?
Post by: Sver on October 21, 2018, 07:51:06 am
As you can see, I've set up a poll regarding whether or not to simplify the entirety of clothing in a similar manner. Simplification is winning so far. So, yeah, I will probably remove most of the stuff in the next release, leaving just about two-three types of clothing for each bodypart (a special, insulating one and one or two of the common type).
All the "deleted" stuff will be moved to a separate optional file for those who'd like to keep the old variety of clothing.
Post by: Sver on October 31, 2018, 07:30:22 am
A new poll is up.
Post by: Ziusudra on October 31, 2018, 11:50:37 am
What about making everything internal except noses? Would that give the nose armor coverage but still allow an uncovered one to be bitten off? Would the eyes then not be able to be gouged out?
Post by: Sver on October 31, 2018, 12:59:44 pm
I've described the difference between "internal" and "embedded" in detail in the second post of the thread. "Embedded" bodyparts can be targeted, but cannot be severed. "Internal" bodyparts cannot be severed or targeted and, thus, can only be damaged when their parent bodypart is hit (which, on the bright side, makes internal facial features correctly covered by helmets).
This means a non-internal, non-embedded nose can be individually targeted and severed, unless protected by body armor (with [UBSTEP:2] or higher); the helmet will never protect it due to the aforementioned issue. Internal eyes would not be individually targetable - and that includes wrestling, so, yes, they would not be able to be gouged out either.
Post by: Taffer on November 12, 2018, 02:44:51 pm
* Optional, but included by default: Stone weapons for subterranean tribes! Flint, obsidian and malachite weapons have replaced the wood ones for subterranean animal peoples, so as to make them a bit more capable in combat.
Would the flint, obsidian, and malachite weapons make sense for elves? I don't know how this would work out in practice though, and I'd rather not add even more testing to my (rushed) release schedule. I might need to give elves better (or possible) access to those materials, and I don't think that's a great plan.
Post by: Sver on November 12, 2018, 04:41:57 pm
Elven weapons still call for some better balancing, and I'm working on it, but it seems that they will be either weaker than their metal analogues or completely op (e.g. capable of piercing steel plate). I'm leaning towards the former, because: (1) the armor in my mod is expensive and will become even more so in the next version, and (2) the elves still have the best assortment of war beasts, which are pretty dangerous vs armor due to their latching bites. So, I will probably revamp their arsenal to include some kind of fast and choppy weapon instead of the current club, to ensure they can, at least, cause bleeding in poorly armored targets; the war club, which I've made spiked, will probably remain and receive a buff as their only meaningful anti-armor weapon.
Post by: Sver on November 22, 2018, 07:35:50 am
Post by: Truncatedurist on November 24, 2018, 02:39:56 am
Edit: found actually intact raws and realized I pasted it in the wrong folder I'm stupid. Edit2: Turns out I'm not stupid somehow the text folder got deleted.
Post by: Sver on November 24, 2018, 05:00:12 am
Post by: Burneddi on November 25, 2018, 04:02:54 pm
What gives?
Post by: Sver on November 25, 2018, 04:07:28 pm
The cause is that I've messed up and used a wrong item_tool file as a base for version 1.4 - a one using a tileset. This will be fixed in the next verion, but there shouldn't be any problems with it, aside from the misleading graphics.
Post by: Burneddi on November 25, 2018, 08:57:51 pm
Perhaps instead of removing the default pant lines entirely, prefix them with a tag similar to that (or some symbol such as { like Revised does) so the game interprets them as a comment?
Post by: Augur on November 25, 2018, 09:12:10 pm
Post by: Sver on November 26, 2018, 05:18:49 am
I must say, I find the omission of pants a bit strange! Personally I would prefer if pants just existed like they used to, as their absence bothers me much more than the fact that they're worn over armour (which I'd never noticed until now, and doubt I'll notice it even now that I know of it!). I went through some trouble changing it back myself in entity_default.txt and hopefully got it right, but it'd be nice if this process was made easier similar to the =SVER_STEELS= etc. tags.
Perhaps instead of removing the default pant lines entirely, prefix them with a tag similar to that (or some symbol such as { like Revised does) so the game interprets them as a comment?
Hm. The thing is, the clothing will get simplified altogether in the next verion, with all the unused stuff getting moved into an optional folder. In the same folder, I can make a preset file for each civ (containing the old clothing lines) and tag the new clothing in entity_default.txt as something like =SIMPLE_CLOTHING= to make it clear which lines should be overwriten if you want old clothing. Would that be alright?
Hello! So far I think I've gotten everything working correctly. However, how do I change pikeman/dwarf profession titles to greatarmsman/dwarf? The instructions didn't include where that's located and I couldn't find it
1) Open the creature_standard.txt
2) Search for PROFESSION_NAME
3) Delete all the dwarven lines with this tag and replace them with these:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
5) Right under it add the prof. lines:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
7) Search for CASTE_NAME:elf and repeat the point 5.
8) Search for CASTE_NAME:kobold and repeat the point 5.
I'm assuming here that you don't use any mods which already add some profession names to creatures other than dwarves. If you do, search for them (in the same file) and replace any conflicting lines.
These changes won't cover animalmen, but for them I think I'll add an optional in the next verion, which will add the profession names and some other tweaks using the variations file.
Btw, if you also want the higher difficulty (the NATURAL_SKILL tags), they can be added right next to the PROFESSION_NAME tags.
Post by: DWARFFRAWD on November 26, 2018, 08:30:34 am
Or incomptible?
Post by: Sver on November 26, 2018, 09:25:56 am
Post by: fonzacus on November 26, 2018, 10:01:43 am
currently on a break from playing DF due to a bit of rage quiting a while back (FPS death).
Post by: Burneddi on November 26, 2018, 01:06:14 pm
This mod can be compatible with taffer revision 2.0.0 too?I've made a quick and dirty merge for Revised 2.0 since I'm an impatient person: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14128
Or incomptible?
I merged all the new changes in using KDiff and adjusted the LBSTEP and UBSTEP values for Sver's armours to account for the new hips and shoulders where necessary (hopefully I did it correctly). This also has the adrenaline option merged in, and the entity_default.txt is the recommended one for Revised (though merged to account for any new changes to Revised)—if you want different options, you'll have to edit stuff yourself (and be wary of compatibility issues). The adrenaline interaction should be fairly easy to remove though, just do the installation steps for it but in reverse.
Post by: Broms on November 27, 2018, 10:07:58 am
Post by: Sver on November 27, 2018, 10:43:17 am
For now, it's better to refer to the full list of armor and measure the layers and bodypart coverage yourself, especially if you want your troops to really be safe. Other than that, you can just put together a full mail + helmet uniform using this:
mail coat (5 bars) or mail shirt (2 bars)
full helm (5 bars) or mail coif (1 bar) + any helmet
chain mittens (1 bar)
chain chausses (2 bars)
belt (1 bar)
padded armor x3 (3 cloth)
padded coif (1 cloth)
Post by: Broms on November 27, 2018, 11:31:23 am
Post by: Sver on November 27, 2018, 12:45:11 pm
Post by: Broms on November 27, 2018, 01:07:43 pm
Post by: Burneddi on November 27, 2018, 08:30:42 pm
Hm. The thing is, the clothing will get simplified altogether in the next verion, with all the unused stuff getting moved into an optional folder. In the same folder, I can make a preset file for each civ (containing the old clothing lines) and tag the new clothing in entity_default.txt as something like =SIMPLE_CLOTHING= to make it clear which lines should be overwriten if you want old clothing. Would that be alright?
I was thinking more along the lines of what Revised does in the new version, where everything that's removed from the files is actually just commented out. But as long as I can restore clothing to how it's in the vanilla game, I'll be happy. I quite like the flavour the clothing variety in the base game brings (eg. in my desert fort I had all my dwarves dress up in togas), and really don't care about the bug associated with legwear because my dwarves practically never wear armour on top of regular clothing anyway (do people even do this? I just find it confusing to layer clothes and armour pieces as the mechanics behind it are very opaque in fortress mode, so I avoid it as best I can).
Post by: Sver on November 27, 2018, 08:58:17 pm
I was thinking more along the lines of what Revised does in the new version, where everything that's removed from the files is actually just commented out. But as long as I can restore clothing to how it's in the vanilla game, I'll be happy. I quite like the flavour the clothing variety in the base game brings (eg. in my desert fort I had all my dwarves dress up in togas), and really don't care about the bug associated with legwear because my dwarves practically never wear armour on top of regular clothing anyway (do people even do this? I just find it confusing to layer clothes and armour pieces as the mechanics behind it are very opaque in fortress mode, so I avoid it as best I can).
The issue stemmed from the padded leggings, really. I figured that people who conserve metal (and thus, don't forge mail skirts or lower plates if the lower body is already covered by torso armor) would get annoyed by padded pants getting damaged through breastplates as much as I am. Also, invaders always mix clothing with armor - and I know a lot of people don't even read the combat logs, but I do and I hate it when their loincloth gets torn despite being supposedly covered by armor! :P
May try the comment thing, though. I'm a little hesistant because of how much clutter it will create in the entity files, but we'll see.
Post by: Burneddi on November 28, 2018, 10:20:45 am
The issue stemmed from the padded leggings, really. I figured that people who conserve metal (and thus, don't forge mail skirts or lower plates if the lower body is already covered by torso armor) would get annoyed by padded pants getting damaged through breastplates as much as I am.Oh, right. For some reason I did not even realise this applied to armour pants, too, even though I went through the raws to merge the new version of Revised.
I gotta say I just don't like the thought of my dwarves not wearing pants, and I think it makes the armour coverage/layering system even more confusing and unintuitive than it already was (what covers the legs now? I see some things are designated as "fake pants" in the raws, but not everything) ...but on the other hand I also don't like the thought of going through the trouble of adding pants into the mod myself. Guess I'll just have to get used to it.
Also, don't breastplates have LBSTEP:0? They shouldn't be protecting loincloths in the first place, right?
Post by: Sver on November 28, 2018, 11:11:45 am
I gotta say I just don't like the thought of my dwarves not wearing pants, and I think it makes the armour coverage/layering system even more confusing and unintuitive than it already was (what covers the legs now?
It is, indeed, confusing, but mostly because the initial solution (as in v1.4) is half-baked. With the simplified clothing it should get pretty straightforward. For now the 'clothes' item is what you want to make sure your dwarves have pants - it's set to FORCED by default, so it should always be available for crafting. The dwarven need to wear legwear is satisfied by the 'belt' item - which is also set to FORCED.
For armor, legs are to be covered with footwear usually: greaves, chain chausses and padded chausses; but only one type of garment, because the AI can't comprehend putting greaves over chausses, for some reason.
And then 'padded armor' also covers the legs fully. The reason why other padded bodywears (gambeson, doublet) do not is a complex one: padded garments are more vulnerable at limbs that at the torso, so I've gave them varied coverage to allow the player to create cleverly layered uniforms: say, a 'gambeson' over a 'padded armor' will not suffer any damage from strikes to the limbs, so the torso will still be somewhat protected even after the 'padded armor' breaks completely; and at the same time, 'gambeson' will take damage from strikes to the torso, delaying the disintegration of 'padded armor'.
Also, don't breastplates have LBSTEP:0? They shouldn't be protecting loincloths in the first place, right?
[LBSTEP:0] bodywear still covers the lower body. In the combat log, it will even say "the attack is deflected by breastplate", yet the loincloth will suffer damage. The same thing will happen no matter how high the LBSTEP value is. As I said, it's weird all around.
Post by: Burneddi on November 28, 2018, 01:16:43 pm
Post by: Sver on November 28, 2018, 01:59:51 pm
Post by: Augur on November 28, 2018, 02:13:47 pm
Then, I'm not sure if this is normal but I ended up defeating a necromancer tower using my horned axe mainly, and have like ~80 kills on it, though I don't seem to have increased my greatarms skill (1/3 gain from competent) or axeman skill (at all)? My crossbow and archery skills seem to be going up normally (as did my butcher skill a fair bit lol)
Also for the moment I've been using this as my general armor setup for my adventurers, I think Im doing everything correctly?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Sver on November 28, 2018, 02:42:15 pm
Hey I've been playing this for the last couple days and it's been good. A few questions though: some weapons like a horned axe I have, have multiple types of attacks that seem to be the same thing (eg hack, cleave, cleanly slash), is that the case or are there differences I don't know about?
Yes, there are some: 'hack' attacks are better at piercing armor, 'cleave' attacks go in deeper (good against huge creatures), 'slash' attacks have the highest combined contact and penetration (very good against huge creatures) and 'cleanly slash' attacks are shallow, but almost never get stuck in the opponent. In case of the horned axe, though, the 'slash' works more like the 'cleanly slash' does.
Then, I'm not sure if this is normal but I ended up defeating a necromancer tower using my horned axe mainly, and have like ~80 kills on it, though I don't seem to have increased my greatarms skill (1/3 gain from competent) or axeman skill (at all)?
The weapon skill for horned axe is set correctly in the raws, as I've checked, so the reason is most likely an in-game one. For instance, the skill rises with each successful hit - not the kills, if i recall correctly, so, if you've dealt each zombie in with a tiny amount of strikes, that might be the culprit of the small gain here.
Also for the moment I've been using this as my general armor setup for my adventurers, I think Im doing everything correctly?
Yep, quite a legit uniform, at least, for when you cannot find plate garment of good metal. If you happen across a decent 'plate armor' or 'breastplate', they are generally lighter and more protective than a lamellar armor over two mail coats; even more so for arm and leg protection (gauntlets, greaves and such), because those parts are more vulnerable to blunt trauma.
cave spider silk padded coif/armor
1 chain coif, helm (heaven found full helm to see if it layers)
A full helm wont layer over both the padded coif and mail coif - if you happen to find a full helm, then choose one.
For all of this I just generally go with the highest quality material I can use which I assume is tempered/dwarven steel though I've read that it's useful to have copper as an under layer to defend against striking blows?
Dwarven steel is absolute best for armor, tempered steel and (regular) steel closely follow. But yes, copper chainmail garments underneath the steel ones can strengthen this uniform against the heavier blunt strikes somewhat.
Post by: Augur on November 28, 2018, 05:32:00 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I know what I'd produce for trade atm if I made a fort rn
[EDIT] I just noticed a couple threads about enemies in adventure mode being really passive at times and to test it out I did a vampire mission and they just ran from me. That necromancer tower I dismantled, too, I noticed that the necromancers were more interested in raising chopped off bits of themselves and comrades than directly attacking me. Would that skill buff to enemies affect adventure mode behavior and, if so, I assume I'd have to make a new world right?
Post by: Sver on November 29, 2018, 06:38:44 am
Post by: Sver on November 29, 2018, 06:45:20 am
[EDIT] I just noticed a couple threads about enemies in adventure mode being really passive at times and to test it out I did a vampire mission and they just ran from me. That necromancer tower I dismantled, too, I noticed that the necromancers were more interested in raising chopped off bits of themselves and comrades than directly attacking me. Would that skill buff to enemies affect adventure mode behavior and, if so, I assume I'd have to make a new world right?
Yep, that should help, at least, until your adventurer reaches a really high weapon skill level. It appears that the creature hostility in Adventure Mode is seriously impacted by their relative skill level - if they are much weaker than you, the enemies would rather flee.
And yes, applying these changes would require generating a new world.
Post by: Augur on November 29, 2018, 10:02:12 pm
Post by: Sver on November 30, 2018, 05:57:37 am
Post by: Taffer on November 30, 2018, 06:01:54 pm
Sorry for all the posts but I also just noticed that Wren harpies' race is noted as "Nothing", not sure if that's something I should post here or in Revised.
Cheers!
Post by: Burneddi on December 04, 2018, 12:50:52 pm
4) Suggested: replace/add flavor profession names to civilized creatures, as pikemen now don't only use pikes, bowmen don't only use bows and lashers don't really use lashes.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Random feedback on this: I thought that "greatarmsdwarf" sounded a bit silly, so personally I've gone with "armsdwarf" (and "armsman") instead, and "Armsmaster" for the master title. I'm not sure if it's historically accurate (I don't think there's any real definition for armsman though), but in the context of the game I think it sounds a lot better than greatarmsdwarf or -man.
Also flailsman loses its plural for the master title, so personally I went with Flailsmaster instead.
Post by: Sver on December 04, 2018, 01:12:49 pm
Random feedback on this: I thought that "greatarmsdwarf" sounded a bit silly, so personally I've gone with "armsdwarf" (and "armsman") instead, and "Armsmaster" for the master title. I'm not sure if it's historically accurate (I don't think there's any real definition for armsman though), but in the context of the game I think it sounds a lot better than greatarmsdwarf or -man.
I don't mind people going their own way with these - I just suggested the ones I personally use. As for historical accuracy, neither "armsman" nor "greatarmsman" are an accurate way to describe some sort of "various two-handers user", because there were no generic terms for that. Though, "greatarmsman", as awkward as it is, at least makes it clear that "this guy uses big toys".
Also flailsman loses its plural for the master title, so personally I went with Flailsmaster instead.
I was going back and forth on that one, but, in the end, decided to follow the example of the swordsman/Swordmaster pair. I don't really know which is grammatically correct for flails in this context.
Post by: Augur on December 06, 2018, 02:13:24 pm
Had a question -- is this mod (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140713.0) compatible with Revised and your mod? If so, what order should I install them in? I would assume that mod, then revised, then finally your mod. Thanks!
Post by: Sver on December 06, 2018, 04:51:19 pm
I'm not sure about Revised, as I have no idea what changes All Races Playable makes to the creature files. They'll probably need manual merging, e.g. editing the conflicting files to include the features from both mods.
Alternatively, you can go on and overwrite everything from his mod by the Revised files, except his entity_default.txt. Then open both his and Revised entity_default.txt files and manually add the Revised changes (tagged with "Revision", iirc) into the ARP file. This way you'll loose the whatever creature changes ARP makes, though. My mod, as usual, will need to be installed after all of that.
Post by: Sver on February 17, 2019, 06:24:47 am
Post by: Burneddi on March 23, 2019, 02:18:41 pm
Post by: Sver on March 24, 2019, 05:51:55 am
Post by: Sver on April 07, 2019, 04:51:42 pm
Should get it done pretty soon.
Post by: Sver on April 13, 2019, 05:13:34 pm
Major changes:
* Full support for Revised v2.1.0!
* Body rework!
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
* Material cost for weapons has been thoroughly rebalanced. Weak melee weapons no longer give diminished smelting returns. All weapons have been categorized into six tiers, which equal the number of metal bars required to make them, on the basis of their qualities. Weapons capable of piercing good armor or severing limbs of huge creatures are particularly expensive.
* New reactions for cheaper ammo production! You can now forge arrowhead kits in the Metalsmith's Forge (4 per 1 bar of metal) and use them (and a log of wood) to create arrows and bolts in the Bowyer's Workshop. Yes, this means you can now make arrows as dwarves: restricting their availability has been meaningless at best.
* Changed an optional: war horses can no longer be encountered in the wild to prevent them being used by elves. You can add them to any civ you want, following the installation instructions.
* Humans and dwarves will bring dogs as siege minions now.
Spoiler: They're war trainable, so, why not? (click to show/hide)
* Added new weapons: spiked staff, heavy spear and recurve bow. The first is based off the flemish goedendag (https://i.imgur.com/wanovGD.jpg) and is a heavier, punchier variation of mace, which can also be used for thrusting; it's two-handed and uses the pike skill. The second is based off sarissa (https://i.imgur.com/lWCoBpB.jpg) and is a stronger variation of pike; it's two-handed, yet uses the spear skill, so invaders will use a shield with it. The third is nearly identical to the longbow, but has a lower size requirement, allowing its use to smaller races, such as elves.
* Added new training weapons: knobstick (hammer skill) and quarterstaff (pike skill).
* Removed the overpowered elven weapons. Elven weapon preset now consists of the heavy spear and the weapon set of recurve bow + estoc. Their arrows are still extra-good and they only use tower shields now. Essentially, they use pike-and-shot tactics, although, their melee is there just to tie the enemy in combat (for a fairly short time), while the archers and the beasts do the killing.
* Removed daggers from all civ presets, as they seem to increase the disarmed "Recruit" unit spawns (a unit receives Knife User as their weapon skill, which has no assigned military unit type). Added separate reactions to forge them in Fort Mode. To appear as loot in Adv Mode, you'd need to add them manually as tools ('hunting dagger' and 'swordbreaker' from my optional tools file).
* Removed the hand ballista from the dwarven preset; it is henceforth unrecommended to add as is to a player civ. Added separate reactions for it in the Metalsmith's Forge, which will require a ballista part, 6 units of thread, 6 bars of metal (bronze and above) and 4 mechanisms of the same metal.
* Enormous corksсrew attacks have been seriously nerfed, but now it only requires a single bar of metal to forge. Magma pumps in the mod are no longer needlessly expensive.
* Added a 'loosely hack' attack to all one-handed axes, to make them a bit weaker, but removed the 'slap' attack.
* Added a 'closely hack' attack to bearded axe, to make it a bit weaker. Also, increased the contact area of 'hack' attack.
* Reworked the attacks for headhunting axe and dagger-axe, to make them a bit weaker. Also, dagger-axe got a quick 'jab' attack.
* Added a 'slap' attack to pike: slow and blunt, but the velocity is capable of breaking joints. Also, increased the velocity of 'thrust' attack, but made it much slower.
* Added a 'hack' attack to great cleaver: slow, but good against weak armors.
* The earlier nerf to piercing ammo has been rolled back for now, as it turned out to be way too weak this way. Better balancing shall be done in the future.
* Significantly boosted the 'clean slash' and other similar attacks. Now they are quite good vs light armor and average creatures' limbs.
* Boosted the 'cut' attack for swords and the glaive. Now it's a bit better vs light armor.
* Readjusted the contact areas for all pommel strikes to make them a bit stronger.
* Increased the velocity of special anti-armor strikes (halberd, poleaxe, polehammer) to make them a bit more capable against tougher armors. However, their penetration depth has been lowered.
* Increased the 'slash' velocity for some of the swords.
* Removed the 'thrust' attack from hewing axe, but made it relatively cheap to forge. Now it's the cheapest weapon cabable of severing the limbs of large beasts, although, it is not as good vs armor anymore.
* Reverted the stabbing penetration nerf for two-handed sword, as the area difference was insignificant anyway.
* Reverted the stabbing area nerf for greatsword. Its stabs can occasionally cut off limbs again.
* Readjusted the speeds and lowered the penetration for hooked attacks of falx.
* Significantly increased the velocity for prong attacks of bladed spear and readjusted their speed a little.
* Scimitar and war knife can cut off limbs again. They are still better against light armor than other swords, but are weaker against huge creatures. Scimitar is better overall, but the knife is cheaper.
* Made the war cleaver attacks a bit weaker, so now it's more of a cheaper kind of sword.
* The strength of chitin (CHITIN_TEMPLATE) has been increased by large, as I've always found giant insects and insect-based FBs underwhelming. Now though, they really are bad news. Chitin armors (possible thanks to Revised) are tougher too now.
* Skin and scale (SKIN_TEMPLATE, SCALE_TEMPLATE) are less vulnerable to force transfer now and will usually get dented instead of tearing. Also, strengthened them against compressive force to prevent the throat bleeding from strangling.
* Hair (HAIR_TEMPLATE), natural or wool, provides more cushioning against blunt strikes.
* Bone and hair (BONE_TEMPLATE, HAIR_TEMPLATE) are now edible by vermin, so bodies left out in the open will eventually disappear completely.
* Better temperature points for some organic materials. Skin suffers more damage in extreme climates. Hair, skin and cloth ignite faster. Fat ignites a bit slower. Burning wood lasts longer.
* Teeth are now defined to be in front of the head, where the rest of the facial features are. Also, replaced TEETH with TOOTH in STANDARD_HEAD_POSITIONS (b_detail_plan.txt), as "TEETH" bp category does not exist in the game.
* Renamed 'atlatl' to 'spear-thrower', changed the tag accordingly and changed the ammo type token to THROWING_DART_SVER. As pretty much nothing is left from Jazzpirat's work, I've decided not to pull them into the mod's raws. They're still credited in the top post, though.
* Renamed 'headhunting axe' to 'hooked axe' and changed the tag accordingly. As badass as it is, the original name is way too long and specific.
* Renamed 'hewing axe' to 'broadaxe' and changed the tag accordingly. 'Hewing axe' is a tool now.
Minor changes:
** Added the [AMBUSHER] tag to human entity, so that they also engage in smaller skirmishes.
** Tempered steel reaction now takes 2 bars instead of 1 (iron is required now) and an additional bar of coal.
** Dwarven steel reaction now produces 2 bars (per 3 taken) instead of 1 and takes 2 additional bars of coal. Also, fixed the reagent IDs.
** Added descriptions for new steels' smelting reactions, like in Revised.
** Further lowered the contact areas for maul and mallet.
** Increased the contact area for flanged mace to prevent it from crushing strong armors too easily. Same for poleaxe 'bash' attack.
** Increased the velocity for mallet and the polehammer's 'bash' attack.
** Swinging-only weapons (such as axes) are now slower on attack, to simulate predictability. However, their special attacks received a commensurate speed bonus.
** Committed attacks (such as axe hacks) are now slower on recover.
** Slightly readjusted the speeds for two-handed sword, greatsword, poleaxe, polehammer, scourge, flail, whip and parrying dagger.
** Made trap components a bit slower.
** Multi-attack bonus for greatsword and two-handed sword swings is back on menu, to simulate them bashing off enemy weapons.
** Maul now has a multi-attack penalty.
** Increased the penetration for glaive stabbing attacks a bit.
** Fixed several two-handed weapons having an incorrect velocity bonus.
** Fixed the 'hook' attack for some two-handed weapons having incorrect velocity.
** Fixed the 'slap' attack for some weapons having incorrect contact area.
** Fixed the halberd 'strike' attack being faster than intended.
** Fixed the longsword multi-attack bonus on guard bashing to be a debuff instead, as was intended.
** Fixed the estoc 'cut' attack penetration being bigger than intended.
** Fixed the incorrect velocity for whip.
** Made the hand ballista strictly two-handed.
** Raised the two-handed limit for scimitar up to the average dwarf size.
** Lowered the minimum size for long spear, so it can now be used by kobolds.
** Impact elasticity of cartilage is now higher, because default elasticity caused weirdness when striking at fingers/toes.
** Readjusted the strengths of new steels a little bit.
** Some of my goblin presets now include whips again. Where there's a whip, there's a way.
Post by: Sver on April 13, 2019, 05:19:45 pm
Well, not really, but inorganic creatures functioning as the ones.
(separate post for linking purposes)
- Siege onager. Hurls very dense and heavy boulders at long distances (up to 4 targets at once) and spills limestone dust at close range. Can inflict serious damage to a group of troops with the dust, but is otherwise easily countered by shields and fortifications.
- Fire onager. Hurls fireballs at long distances (up to 4 targets at once). Extremely dangerous in grassy environments and if hits something, but is very slow to reload.
- Plague onager. Hurls chunks of infected flesh at long distances (up to 4 targets at once) and spills buckets of infected blood at close range. While incapable of direct damage, the substance it spills can cause a variety of bad effects and harm the morale. The spilled blood will continue to cause trouble until cleaned up.
- Siege flamethrower. Shoots firejet at very close targets, piercing its hull will cause a huge release of flame. Extremely dangerous, especially in grassy environments, and is fairly quick to reload, but has a very limited range.
All siege engines have the same cabability at destroying buildings as trolls, yet are very slow and incapable of climbing, jumping or swimming. Onagers are essentially wooden wagons reinforced with a thin layer of iron; when challenged in melee, they will retreat almost immediately. Siege flamethrower is a hollow iron wagon, but is much smaller than an onager and, thus, more fragile in general.
Siege engines are optional, however, the siege onager is given by default to humans and dwarves, as they lack building-destroyer minions otherwise. If you don't like this feature, you can simply delete its entries from your entity_default.txt, marked by =SVER_SIEGE=.
Post by: Sver on April 13, 2019, 05:21:43 pm
(separate post for linking purposes)
As there are no rarity tokens for a civ's weapons, such as the ones existing for armor, I've made a bunch of tactically sound item presets for humans and goblins. Other than their equipment and general strategy (and occassional lack of mounts for certain human presets), they are identical to default human/goblin civs.
- "Armored."
-- Goblins will field a decently armored force of various cut-and-slash two-handed polearm users, with large amount of strong missile troops.
-- Humans will field a well-armored force of top-class two-handed polearm users, also with large amount of strong missile troops, but won't bring mounts or dogs.
Spoiler: Tips for dealing with (click to show/hide)
- "Disablers."
-- Goblins will field a lightly armored force of fast polearms and anti-armor melee weapons, with decent amount of various missile troops. In Full Edition of the mod, they will never attack openly, ambushing in large numbers instead.
-- Humans will field a medium-armored force of various anti-armor melee troops and strong anti-personnel ranged troops.
Spoiler: Tips for dealing with (click to show/hide)
- "Pike."
-- Goblins will field a force of decently armored melee support troops, a few of cleaver-and-shield users, and a large amount of strong missile troops, and will also bring morale-decreasing plague onagers. They will always opt for sieging camps, instead of rushing.
-- Humans will field a decently armored force of versatile two-handed melee support troops and strong anti-armor missile troops, but won't bring dogs. They will always opt for sieging camps.
Spoiler: Tips for dealing with (click to show/hide)
- "Shielded."
-- Goblins will field a lightly armored force of shield-bearing swordsmen, with large amount of strong anti-armor missile units. In Full Edition of the mod, they will never attack openly, ambushing in large numbers instead.
-- Humans will field a poorly armored force of one-handed melee troops with big shields and few ranged troops. They will never attack openly, ambushing in large numbers instead.
- "Sidearms."
-- Goblins will field a lightly armored force of anti-personnel weapon-and-shield melee troops and a few two-handed polearm users, along with various missile troops. In Full Edition of the mod, they will never attack openly, ambushing in large numbers instead.
-- Humans will field an unevenly armored force of high-tier weapon-and-shield melee troops, along with a few strong missile troops, but won't bring dogs.
- "Turtle."
-- Goblins will field an overly armored melee force with shields and punchy oversized weapons, with a small amount of strong missile troops, and will also bring morale-decreasing plague onagers.
-- Humans will field a slow, medium-armored force of swordsmen with big shields, along with large amount of hard-hitting missile troops, but won't bring mounts. They will always opt for sieging camps.
- "Waves."
-- Goblins will field a combined force of fast polearms and swords with shields, as well as a decent amount of various missile troops, unevenly armored. They will always opt for sieging camps, instead of rushing.
-- Humans will field a combined force of fast polearms with shields, punchy two-handers and a decent amount of various missile troops, all lightly armored.
These are the ones I've came up with so far, taking into account the game's combat and AI mechanics. Any ideas for similar combos are welcome.
You can use these together with the default civs or use the cropped entity_default.txt to only have the tactical civs, in any combination to your liking.
IMPORTANT NOTE: DF puts civs from entity files into the world one by one - and each tactical entity type will take up its own slot. What that means is, if you use all of the tactical types at once, you'll have 7x more* human and goblin civs each than dwarven or elven civs - yet, only one human and one goblin civ would make the first contact with you on their own. Thus, if you gen a world with a low number of civs, I suggest to use only 1 or 2 types at a time. However, if you gen with a higher civ cap (30-35 is about right if you use the cropped entity_default.txt and all of the tactical types), you can simply edit the tactical civ's raws to have [MAX_STARTING_CIV_NUMBER:1] or any other low number.
* As of v1.7 human tactical civs have [MAX_STARTING_CIV_NUMBER:2] by default. Since goblins have a different spawn mechanic that is dependent on worldgen events, their number was kept at base limit.
Post by: Sver on April 13, 2019, 05:38:49 pm
The "Tips and notes" section is yet to be updated.
Post by: SalmonGod on April 13, 2019, 08:36:05 pm
Post by: Sver on April 14, 2019, 02:06:47 am
Post by: Taffer on April 14, 2019, 11:13:27 am
Post by: Warlord255 on April 19, 2019, 06:28:41 am
Post by: Sver on April 19, 2019, 01:26:20 pm
With what I gather, this sounds like duplicate raws - check if you have an item file from another mod containing any vanilla items.
Post by: Warlord255 on April 19, 2019, 10:01:53 pm
Post by: Sver on May 15, 2019, 04:29:00 am
Post by: DerMeister on May 15, 2019, 04:49:12 am
Post by: Sver on May 15, 2019, 05:39:47 am
Post by: DerMeister on May 15, 2019, 07:43:36 am
Yeah, I've been pondering an idea of an optional giant civ with equally giant weapons - to go along with the rest of the "tactical" civs. Not sure how giant exactly, though. Vanilla ogre size seems a bit overkill.Vanilla goblins have ogres and trolls.
Post by: Sver on May 15, 2019, 08:23:05 am
Post by: DerMeister on May 15, 2019, 09:10:51 am
Indeed, but the way they are treated by the game, they won't receive any weapons intended for them. Rather, there would be some goblins wielding oversized weapons.In goblin fortress mode equipment work normal. Goblins need trolls for use big weapons.
Post by: DerMeister on May 16, 2019, 11:51:29 am
Yeah, I've been pondering an idea of an optional giant civ with equally giant weapons - to go along with the rest of the "tactical" civs. Not sure how giant exactly, though. Vanilla ogre size seems a bit overkill.Make skulking aboveground civ of ogres. They use weapons from trap components, wear only loincloth or not wear any clothes, send thief to fortress with big pop, live on swamps in kobold-like aboveground sites.
Post by: Sver on May 16, 2019, 02:02:33 pm
In goblin fortress mode equipment work normal. Goblins need trolls for use big weapons.
Make skulking aboveground civ of ogres. They use weapons from trap components, wear only loincloth or not wear any clothes, send thief to fortress with big pop, live on swamps in kobold-like aboveground sites.
I ain't really keen on making stuff which will only ever be usable in other mods. So, yeah, something like you suggested most likely, although, I think I would pick trolls over ogres, because ogres are really damn huge for any weapon to make sense at that size. It is unfortunate DF doesn't allow for some sort of weaponizable spiked boots...
Post by: DerMeister on May 16, 2019, 02:21:35 pm
DF allows weapon pants :)In goblin fortress mode equipment work normal. Goblins need trolls for use big weapons.Make skulking aboveground civ of ogres. They use weapons from trap components, wear only loincloth or not wear any clothes, send thief to fortress with big pop, live on swamps in kobold-like aboveground sites.
I ain't really keen on making stuff which will only ever be usable in other mods. So, yeah, something like you suggested most likely, although, I think I would pick trolls over ogres, because ogres are really damn huge for any weapon to make sense at that size. It is unfortunate DF doesn't allow for some sort of weaponizable spiked boots...
Trolls civ will be underground. I prefer blizzard man civ. All as ogre civ, but for glacier and tundra. Blizzard man weapons also usable by trolls.
Ogres also good for giant bow, powerful as ballista.
Post by: Sver on May 17, 2019, 03:11:38 am
Trolls civ will be underground. I prefer blizzard man civ. All as ogre civ, but for glacier and tundra. Blizzard man weapons also usable by trolls.
Yes, but kobold-like civs live in caves anyway, so this isn't much of a stretch.
And there is a problem with Blizzard men civs in that they don't procreate without modification, leading to their civs quickly disappearing. A sasquatch/yeti civ, perhaps?
Post by: DerMeister on May 17, 2019, 03:23:45 am
Kobold live in caves, but "CAVE" site type can be aboveground. Good for small or even large tribes.Trolls civ will be underground. I prefer blizzard man civ. All as ogre civ, but for glacier and tundra. Blizzard man weapons also usable by trolls.
Yes, but kobold-like civs live in caves anyway, so this isn't much of a stretch.
And there is a problem with Blizzard men civs in that they don't procreate without modification, leading to their civs quickly disappearing. A sasquatch/yeti civ, perhaps?
Blizzard men can learn, sasquatch/yeti - cannot. Will not intelligent creatures use weapons? But idea is good, if they will use weapons.
I make civ of harpies, they can live even 10000 years. Not many creatures live in glacier.
Post by: Thuellai on May 21, 2019, 07:35:52 pm
Post by: Sver on May 22, 2019, 01:41:30 am
The reason I've made it into a poll is because this will impact the army compositions of "tactical civs" from the latest version.
Post by: Sver on May 22, 2019, 02:07:02 am
Post by: DerMeister on May 22, 2019, 03:54:13 pm
Code: [Select]
[OBJECT:ITEM]
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_AXE_GIANT]
[NAME:axe:axes]
[ADJECTIVE:giant]
[SIZE:2600]
[SKILL:AXE]
[TWO_HANDED:300500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:220500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:9]
[ATTACK:EDGE:100000:10000:hack:hacks:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:100000:10000:slap:slaps:flat:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:1000:10000:strike:strikes:pommel:750]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_FLAIL_GIANT]
[NAME:slungshot:slungshots]
[ADJECTIVE:giant]
[SIZE:1500]
[SKILL:MACE]
[TWO_HANDED:300500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:220500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:5]
[ATTACK:EDGE:10:200:strike:strikes:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_LUEBER]
[NAME:lueber:luebers]
[SIZE:2000]
[SKILL:WHIP]
[TWO_HANDED:300500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:220500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:5]
[ATTACK:EDGE:100000:10000:saw:saws:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_LOGBOW]
[NAME:log bow:log bows]
[SIZE:3000]
[SKILL:SWORD]
[RANGED:BOW:BALLISTIC]
[SHOOT_FORCE:3000]
[SHOOT_MAXVEL:200]
[TWO_HANDED:0]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:300500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:100000:40000:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:1250]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_WARLOG]
[NAME:war log:war logs]
[SIZE:5000]
[SKILL:MACE]
[TWO_HANDED:300500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:220500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:8]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:200:2000:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[TRAINING]
[ITEM_AMMO:ITEM_AMMO_GIANT_ARROWS]
[NAME:ballista arrow:ballista arrows]
[CLASS:BALLISTIC]
[SIZE:600]
[ATTACK:EDGE:5:1000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
Post by: Burneddi on June 04, 2019, 03:53:13 am
Post by: Andimar on September 10, 2019, 07:22:37 pm
I was wondering... Which armor parts should I take to be completely covered as if I was wearing full plate?
Breastplate, Greaves, Mail Skirt (for the hips), Full Arm Defenses and Full Helm?
For a total cost of 59 metal bars (if using simple iron)?
Post by: Sver on September 11, 2019, 07:45:00 am
That would be 45 bars (of any metal below Tempered Steel, which is more demanding).
You can also add Pauldrons for 2 bars to get a 20% blockchance when eyes are hit, with only a small additional weight; Mail Cape is similar, giving a 50% chance, but it cannot stop heavy strikes. Padded Armor, Doublet and Aketon also fully protect the eyes for little weight, but they fare poorly against sharp strikes. If encumbrance and metal are not a concern, Body Plates give 60% blockchance for 8 bars, but I'd say that's overkill for an otherwise full plate: eyes don't get hit that often, unless the wearer is already loosing in some way.
Padded Armor + Mail Cape is probably the best option here, although, you'll need to replace the damaged Padded Armor from time to time.
Post by: sum1won on October 08, 2019, 09:06:04 am
Edit: Im planning on using this mod, but would like to add scales or boiled leather as a non-metal substitute for some of the shaped armors. Can I get your feedback on a few questions?
1.)
I haven't modded df, but I figure I need to add a new material, a reaction to create that material, and a reaction to turn it into armor, and make sure those reactions are added to the entity file. Is there anything I am missing?
How do I avoid scales/boiled leather being usable for other leather goods, like bags or trousers? Can I do it by having the material-change reaction affect the prepared armor instead?
Any suggestions as to raw values and material quantities? Anything else I should be aware of?
Post by: sum1won on October 08, 2019, 04:42:11 pm
Current poll:
Currently, all ranged weapons and their sets in the mod are assigned a skill based on their vague mutual alikeness of whether they require to be loaded, then aimed and then shot (like crossbows) or loaded, aimed and shot at the same moment (like bows and throwing weapons). As I personally see it, this has two issues: (1) the Bowman (aka Skirmisher) skill is an unintuitive mess, and (2) the way worldgen hunters/adventurers work, they mainly train the Crossbowman skill, which, in the mod, contains 2/3rds battlefield ranged weapons, rather than those fit for hunting.
However, only these two skills, Bowman and Crossbowman, are properly recognized by ranged npc unifroms.
As such, I've came up with two alternative skill distributions for ranged weapons, based on their nature/purpose, rather than mechanics:
"Light" vs "Heavy".
In the other words, "hunting/skirmish" vs "battlefield". "Light" would include crossbows, bows, slings and javelins/darts; using the Crossbowman skill as a base (renamed to "Skirmisher"), to match the way worldgen treats it. "Heavy" would include arbalests, longbows and hand ballistas; using the Bowman skill as a base (renamed to "Marksman/Marksdwarf").
"Stringed" vs "Throwing".
Not as much in terms of realism mechanics, as in tune with the balance of the mod, where sling and spear-thrower weapon sets allow for shields. "Stringed" would include crossbows, arbalests, bows, longbows and hand ballistas; using the Crossbowman skill as a base (renamed to "Marksman/Marksdwarf"), as stringed weapons are probably more fit for hunting than the throwing ones. "Throwing" would include slings and javelins/darts; using the Bowman skill as a base (renamed to "Skirmisher").
The only downside in both cases is the displacement of bows/crossbows from their usual respective skills. As such, "no to both" remains an option :)
Also, feel free to comment and propose your own ideas.
I like both of these proposed changes. The only direct difference is where the bow and crossbow fall. String groups them with the big guns, light/heavy leaves the big guns alone.
I think the string distinction is more intuitive and lore-logical. The main advantage for light/heavy is a possible balance concern in connection with the weapon sets. It doesn't allow crossbowmen+bowmen to easily switch to heavier weapons, and hunting crosstraining will be more difficult If you want the split to be flexibility/better melee options (and sometimes shields) vs ranged power, it's probably the way to go. The most obvious thing is thing is when it comes to bow setd, which have some pretty potent 2h options. (Longbows, not being available to dwarves, are irrelevant to player choice in fortress mode).
Separately, can you add info on ranged weapons to post 13, similar to what you have for melee?
Post by: Sver on October 09, 2019, 07:52:10 am
Im planning on using this mod, but would like to add scales or boiled leather as a non-metal substitute for some of the shaped armors. Can I get your feedback on a few questions?
I haven't modded df, but I figure I need to add a new material, a reaction to create that material, and a reaction to turn it into armor, and make sure those reactions are added to the entity file. Is there anything I am missing?
...
Anything else I should be aware of?
If you want to have only the specific (normally metal) armors made of the new material then that's all correct. There is a couple things to consider, though:
1) There are two elements to every material: the template and the material itself. The material itself is defined either within a creature or within an "inorganic" file. Adding creature-variable materials is much more tedious, so I recommend the latter. You can use the [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:LEATHER_TEMPLATE] as a base to which you then add overrides, basically.
2) Unless you add the [SPECIAL] tag to the material, it will be used by the AI too, but only in the conventional way. To illustrate, if you make boiled leather that is otherwise just leather with extra durability, the AI will make "boiled leather lamellar armor" and "boiled leather bag", but never "boiled leather breastplate", even if you give them the reaction. If you don't want caravans bringing "boiled leather bags", add this tag.
3) In contrast to the previous point, if you add [ITEMS_ARMOR] (not normally present on leather) to the material, but won't add [SPECIAL], the AI will make all sorts of armor from boiled leather as long as they have the reaction to make the material - the specific armor-making reactions aren't necessary; and worldgen artifact armors will sometimes be made of boiled leather regardless of any reactions.
4) There are subtleties to how the uniform system treats a material which aren't always intuitive. For instance, there's a high chance that you'd have to specify a boiled leather breastplate as 'brown breastplate' for it to be equipped.
5) There are probably other things I haven't memorized, so you'd have to test that.
How do I avoid scales/boiled leather being usable for other leather goods, like bags or trousers? Can I do it by having the material-change reaction affect the prepared armor instead?
The simplest way is to have each reaction take normal leather (and whatever else you wish to be required) as a reagent, yet a boiled leather armorpiece as a product. Reactions are flexible like that, they don't require consistency between the reagent and the product.
Any suggestions as to raw values and material quantities?
My mod operates within the vanilla material properties, so my suggestion would be to look at normal leather and copper values and make something inbetween. As for the amount of leather required, that's up to your personal preference - just note that all textile (padded) armors only require a single piece of cloth.
If, however, you intend to make boiled leather stronger than copper, you can equate the number of leather pieces to the number of metal bars required to forge the same garment. For the sake of balance.
Quote from: sum1won
The main advantage for light/heavy is a possible balance concern in connection with the weapon sets. It doesn't allow crossbowmen+bowmen to easily switch to heavier weapons, and hunting crosstraining will be more difficult If you want the split to be flexibility/better melee options (and sometimes shields) vs ranged power, it's probably the way to go.
That is an interesting perspective I haven't even considered!
Hm-hm... so far, the poll results are quite divided and I was on the verge of just letting this idea go for the sake of keeping it vanilla and, thus, newbie-friendly. I'll have to ponder it for some time in the context of skill versatility. Especially since the ongoing two-handed vs one-handed rebalance will promt some changes to weapon sets.
Quote from: sum1won
Separately, can you add info on ranged weapons to post 13, similar to what you have for melee?
Not in the same way, no. Ranged weapons don't differ as much within their own group as the melee ones, and they also have ammo that is different yet sometimes similar across variations. The info is already there, it's just randomly spread around in the top post, and in Tips, and in the weapon list. I've yet to come up with a conscise way to put it all together under a single spoiler, but it needs to be done for sure.
Post by: sum1won on October 14, 2019, 08:03:41 pm
--boiled leather tips--Thanks! I got sidetracked by some other changes I wound up making, but I'll dig into this at some point.
Cool, looking forward to it!
That is an interesting perspective I haven't even considered!
Hm-hm... so far, the poll results are quite divided and I was on the verge of just letting this idea go for the sake of keeping it vanilla and, thus, newbie-friendly. I'll have to ponder it for some time in the context of skill versatility. Especially since the ongoing two-handed vs one-handed rebalance will prompt some changes to weapon sets.
I've been digging into the raws, and was wondering why slings appear to fire edged weapons?
Post by: Sver on October 15, 2019, 05:32:34 am
I've been digging into the raws, and was wondering why slings appear to fire edged weapons?
To simulate abrasions. Also, so that slings perform a bit better overall, particularly against clothing. The way damage types work in DF, blunt damage is extremely weak unless applied with great force, and is largely held back by the lack of bleeding wounds and damage to elastic equipment, such as clothing and mail. Thus, only a select few weapons and ammo types are blunt-only (those that generally strike with huge velocity).
Post by: Sver on October 23, 2019, 10:41:45 am
Post by: Sver on November 02, 2019, 11:25:51 am
Major changes:
* Full support for Revised v2.2.0!
* Weapon velocity and size limits rebalance!
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
* New type of ammo: crescent arrows. Leave wide, shallow wounds, good for causing bleeding in small to average creatures, but really weak against armor.
* Readjusted the costs of armor a bit. Garments with 100% protection now cost more, except for footwear and full helm. Handwear is generally cheaper, as well as most gear with a low blockchance. Full plate armor with no eye protection still takes 45 bars. Full mail armor with a skullcap and no eye protection is now 17 bars.
* Added 'loosely hack' attack to bearded axe, to make it a bit weaker, but removed the 'slap' attack.
* Removed 'thrust with spike' attack from flanged mace to make it more bashing-oriented.
* Replaced 'jab' attack with 'feint and jab' for scimitar.
* Spike strikes for halberd, poleaxe and polehammer were nerfed to minimize penetration depth.
* Reduced penetration for morningstar 'bash' attack.
* Increased area for maul. Was too good at damaging armor.
* Seriously reduced penetration and increased area for hatchet.
* Reduced area for hooked axe 'strike with spike' attack, now better at piercing armor.
* Cushioning properties for cloth (THREAD_PLANT_TEMPLATE), silk (SILK_TEMPLATE) and hair (HAIR_TEMPLATE) have been dialed down to standard 1x elasticity (compared to vanilla 2x elasticity). Lower elasticity was making them a tad too powerful.
* Made fat (FAT_TEMPLATE) as strong as skin against force transfer, for layer consistency.
* Chitin (CHITIN_TEMPLATE) can once again be used as a shell - for moods, certain items and armors. It no longer yields leather. This differs from its use in Revised as bone, but I felt like there aren't enough interesting materials for shell armor in the game, and chitinous creatures are rare and dangerous enough to justify it.
* Bone is back in place of cartilage for fingers/toes/fins, as "finger bone agony" has been fixed.
* Removed muscle from vertebrate's fingers/toes, but thickened the skin. In reality, fingers/toes only have sinew, not muscle.
* Renamed 'mallet' to 'war club' and changed the tag accordingly. Also, reduced its contact area. It really didn't feel like a tiny tool hammer belongs on a battlefield.
Minor changes:
** A bit more info in Melee Weapon Tiers (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7771053#msg7771053).
** Removed biting from war horses.
** Some adjustments to optional tactical civs.
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
** Replaced full helm with mail coif for elves, as it protects better for wood.
** Made training weapons heavier.
** Fixed some incorrect attack speeds.
** All 'closely hack' attacks are a bit quicker now.
** All 'shove' attacks now use the same speed as 'feint and jab'. Also, reduced its area for several weapons.
** Removed 'slap' attack from horned axe.
** Removed 'hook' attack from hooked axe, broadaxe and falx.
** Minor speed readjustments for hooked axe, poleaxe, polehammer and two-handed sword.
** Slightly reduced velocities for poleaxe.
** Increased minsize requirement for spear-thrower and all its sets. Also, slightly increased it for sling.
** Replaced 'bash' (with handle) attack for spiked staff with a pommel-like 'strike' attack.
Post by: Sver on November 02, 2019, 11:27:41 am
Post by: Sver on November 04, 2019, 05:03:44 pm
There are two values which control the amount of invaders in a token siege:
1) INVASION_SOLDIER_CAP controls the number of civilized soldiers, such as goblins. This also ties into the maximum possible number of mounts (equal to that).
2) INVASION_MONSTER_CAP controls the amount of minions, such as trolls. This does not impact mounts.
A good starting point is to set these values in such a way that they, combined, would equal your estimated population (say, 80, for a siege-eligible minimum), but if that's still too many corpses, making it double-tripple the estimated number of your own soldiers is a good pick too.
To counterbalance the reduction in numbers, I recommend applying a buff to invader skills and gains (unless you have already done so following my suggestion in the installation instructions). Open the creature_standard.txt and add the following:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
This will keep combat challenging and fun while reducing the tedium and stress of post-siege clean up.
Post by: OOTN on December 06, 2019, 02:59:08 am
Post by: Sver on December 06, 2019, 06:46:38 am
In general, I would recommend to try out your first run with my mod without the adrenaline, and only take it for the second run if you feel the combat is still too easy.
Post by: Oxidus on December 26, 2019, 02:22:08 pm
Post by: Sver on December 26, 2019, 02:35:21 pm
Quote
2. Place the text files from the mod's main folder in .../%DF folder%/raw/objects. Overwrite when prompted.
3. Open the mod's 'for civs' folder. Here you can either choose to use my personal equipment presets for entities or assemble your own using the full list. Or, if your entity_default.txt is unmodified, you can simply copy the entity_default.txt from the folder (Revised or vanilla).
The rest is various optionals, modules and the like, to be assembled with personal taste in mind - that's why there's no pre-installed version.
I can package you the comp I personally play with, if you don't mind it being quite punishing difficulty-wise.
Post by: Sver on December 31, 2019, 06:33:36 am
Post by: fest88 on January 18, 2020, 04:57:54 am
How to install your mod on a masterwork?
Post by: Sver on January 18, 2020, 02:26:16 pm
The modular race mods such as Meph's ☼Warlock Tower☼ should be compatible though - just install them first, then overwrite with my mod, except for the entity_default.txt (and other entity files) which will require manual editing for the items.
Post by: fest88 on January 19, 2020, 04:05:57 am
I hope in the future you will be able to agree with the authors of the masterwork or mepf mods on the integration of your projects.
Thank you very much for your work and greetings from the Russian DF community!
Post by: Sver on January 19, 2020, 05:24:51 am
I'll try to do a merge once I have time and see if the conflict is easily resolvable or not. Probably not, if the problem lies in the many new reactions in Masterwork, but it won't hurt to try at least.
Post by: Molay on January 19, 2020, 10:12:57 am
If you do make such a merge, I'd recommend to include the fix for beak dogs. They have the never pet tag, but require the always pet tag.
Post by: Sver on January 19, 2020, 12:30:55 pm
Post by: Molay on January 20, 2020, 02:10:10 pm
Would bone weapons behave as expected? I.e. is bone material for weapons balanced for your mod? Where would it rank; copper? Below copper?
Post by: Sver on January 20, 2020, 05:18:53 pm
Post by: fest88 on February 13, 2020, 01:25:55 pm
Post by: Sver on February 13, 2020, 02:41:32 pm
Post by: fest88 on February 14, 2020, 10:16:05 am
P.S. I hope that in the new version the spears will become a little better)
Post by: Sver on February 14, 2020, 12:39:50 pm
Post by: Sver on February 18, 2020, 05:37:40 pm
Anyway, it seems that DF v0.47 is going to receive more little fixes and additions for some while, so I'm not too hasty to package the update, and may well get other prompted things done in the mean time, such as stabbing buff, or better trap balance, or more cheap ammo reactions. We'll see.
Post by: scaredyneko on February 21, 2020, 06:12:44 pm
Post by: Taras on February 24, 2020, 03:39:38 am
Post by: Sver on February 24, 2020, 04:45:21 am
Thank you for your great work. The mod makes the experience of playing DF much more enjoyable.
Glad to hear!
For inspiration you could search videos 'Fantasy Re-Armed', this will give you ome ideas about weapon sets for every civ in game.
Watched those some time ago :)
Unfortunately, though, many of the realistic conventions Shad points out do not apply in DF, while some other things come into play. For instance, the whole elf question revolves around them only having random wood instead of metal, which pretty much downgrades their damage to zero - so I've turned them all into fast supporting units, while the heavy lifting is done by their pets. I did amplify their extra-skillfulness in the optional combat boost, but with wood weapons it's just not enough.
Another good example of such divergence is how the game handles armor and shields. Unless taken to the extreme, armor thickness does not matter in the game's combat, while weight scales rapidly with the size, which means smaller races get armor that is just as protective, but much lighter than that used by larger races. On the oppostite end, shields have a fixed volume and blockchance, meaning their protection scales with the user, while their weight does not, which is beneficial for larger races. The opposite of realism perspective.
Meanwhile, I've had to make sure that dwarves have access to a wide enough variety of equipment to allow the player to pick their own style. Same for kobolds, to give a feeling of mix-and-match stolen weapons they're supposed to use from lore perspective.
And then there's the problem of how non-player armies mix and randomize equipment, but that I was able to partially resolve through the "tactical civs" thing. And yeah, I'll likely make them even more thematic in the future, like giving more of an Isengard flavor to goblin pike-and-shot civ.
Post by: Taras on February 24, 2020, 05:26:57 am
This videos are good, because they about thinking. What effective weapon giant will use versus human army? Long stick/staff as blunt, scythe as edged weapon, bows and slings as ranged weapons, buckler and greaves for prodect lower body from enemy's spear. So, example, you could make tactical civ of ettins/ogres/cyclops with this equipment.Thank you for your great work. The mod makes the experience of playing DF much more enjoyable.
Glad to hear!For inspiration you could search videos 'Fantasy Re-Armed', this will give you ome ideas about weapon sets for every civ in game.
Watched those some time ago :)
Unfortunately, though, many of the realistic conventions Shad points out do not apply in DF, while some other things come into play. For instance, the whole elf question revolves around them only having random wood instead of metal, which pretty much downgrades their damage to zero - so I've turned them all into fast supporting units, while the heavy lifting is done by their pets. I did amplify their extra-skillfulness in the optional combat boost, but with wood weapons it's just not enough.
Another good example of such divergence is how the game handles armor and shields. Unless taken to the extreme, armor thickness does not matter in the game's combat, while weight scales rapidly with the size, which means smaller races get armor that is just as protective, but much lighter than that used by larger races. On the oppostite end, shields have a fixed volume and blockchance, meaning their protection scales with the user, while their weight does not, which is beneficial for larger races. The opposite of realism perspective.
Meanwhile, I've had to make sure that dwarves have access to a wide enough variety of equipment to allow the player to pick their own style. Same for kobolds, to give a feeling of mix-and-match stolen weapons they're supposed to use from lore perspective.
And then there's the problem of how non-player armies mix and randomize equipment, but that I was able to partially resolve through the "tactical civs" thing. And yeah, I'll likely make them even more thematic in the future, like giving more of an Isengard flavor to goblin pike-and-shot civ.
Post by: Sver on February 24, 2020, 06:21:28 am
Post by: Taras on February 24, 2020, 06:39:52 am
Expanding upon civilizations for more variety of combat situations is on my to-do list, but there's just a ton of balancing stuff to do beforehand. I don't wanna rush new features.If you will do expanding with logic, logic will make realistic balance for you.
Post by: Sver on February 24, 2020, 07:03:41 am
Post by: Taras on February 24, 2020, 08:19:48 am
Quite the opposite, because game mechanics. Taking giant races as example, there is no difference between giving them a scythe-like weapon or a big-ish axe, because in DF there are no AoE weapon strikes and no simulation of reach (outside of the attack speed crutch I use), and large attack contact area is a detriment when fighting human-sized creatures and below. So any such addition requires lots of brainstorming and testing for it to make sense, which isn't in priority since I still need to fine-tune already existing features of the mod.Difference will be for you, for logic and for further versions. Even if in current version scythe will work as axe. Probably, for imitation AoE you could make faster weapon using.
Post by: Sver on February 28, 2020, 05:01:03 pm
Anyway.
A new poll is up!
This time more informal.
Post by: Sver on March 23, 2020, 03:11:52 am
Hello!What percentage of ingots is obtained by remelting your weapons and armor?
Have to correct myself here a bit: according to wiki (https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Melt_item#Yield), the "default" percentage of ingots obtained by smelting weapons and armor is 90% (and unfortunately can only be raised straight to 120%, not 100%). Generally, this won't create any losses with remelting-reforging, as DF rounds up the numbers, but some expensive items (6 bars and above, presumably) might experience a 1-2 bar net loss. I'll make sure to verify this later.
Post by: DWARFFRAWD on March 23, 2020, 08:26:41 am
Post by: Sver on March 23, 2020, 08:44:58 am
Post by: vettlingr on March 26, 2020, 11:26:16 am
I was thinking about using you methods as a baseline for a mod.
Post by: Sver on March 26, 2020, 12:08:22 pm
Also, the mod's item_tool.txt and item_trapcomp.txt files can be just copied over, as they contain no new stuff, just the rebalance of vanilla items.
If you mean also in terms of which changes I'd consider "core" to the mod's overall balance, then copy these files:
* b_detail_plan_default.txt
* body_default.txt
* material_template_default.txt
* tissue_template_default.txt
With these you'd also get better force transfer balance, more sensible wounds, more realistic wood/leather/cloth strengths and fire damage values for organic mats.
The only non-vanilla stuff there are shoulders and hips for humanoid bodies, which tweak armor coverage (add 1 more step for bodywear/legwear before they proceed unto upper arms/legs) and amplify the importance of torso armor.
Either way, I'd suggest you wait until my next release, as it should be soon enough and with lots of improvements to weapon balance. Then I can also package a vanilla-ish build based on your answer.
Post by: Sver on April 01, 2020, 06:27:38 am
Post by: Uthimienure on April 01, 2020, 06:41:42 am
Just a heads up: since Toady went on to work on the Steam DF for now as it seems, I'm wrapping up the next mod release in a few days.I'm looking forward to it :)
And I'm interested in similar to what vettlingr said, a vanilla-only mod that I can drop in.
Post by: Sver on April 01, 2020, 07:16:30 am
Post by: Uthimienure on April 01, 2020, 08:07:01 am
All my life (and I'm not young anymore, lol) I've been very interested in "old-style" games that simulate personal combat pre-gunpowder. If you've heard of RuneQuest, GURPS, etc... I spent lots of my youth's free time making my own game, kind of a super-detailed medieval combat game based off of the best parts of about a half-dozen paper & pencil RPGs.
Your original post intrigues me greatly and I intend to play your full mod when released. But just in case it's too "over the top" for me, I would like to fall back on the vanilla-only thing.
I'm just beginning to explore DF's raws because I wanted to get answers to questions about how Fall From Grace's details work. And I've added the tiny code for "more leather mod" into most everything I play... that's all I've done with scratching the surface of DF.
Now that you know my life story, I'll answer your question with a question:
Does your body rework include all humanoid creatures, or just dwarfs?
Post by: Uthimienure on April 01, 2020, 08:25:58 am
Installation:
1. Recommended if you play vanilla-ish DF: DF Revised by Taffer, as a base over which to install this mod. Revised fixes a lot of bugs and inconsistencies, while staying true to the vanilla DF spirit. It is fully compatible! If you only use Revised, you can safely ignore the spoilers below and just overwrite everything with my mod's files.
But seriously, as I read through your OP, it sounds like you are doing for DF the same thing I was doing when I created the game described in my previous post, so I'm pretty sure your mod will be awesome.
Post by: Sver on April 01, 2020, 08:44:20 am
Quote
All my life (and I'm not young anymore, lol) I've been very interested in "old-style" games that simulate personal combat pre-gunpowder. If you've heard of RuneQuest, GURPS, etc... I spent lots of my youth's free time making my own game, kind of a super-detailed medieval combat game based off of the best parts of about a half-dozen paper & pencil RPGs.
Heheh, I could be writing that as well :D
Down to having my own little tabletop project with realistic 15th century combat being one of the primary focuses.
Although, I was and still remain more on the "experience" side of things than "numbers" - e.g. that it is generally more important that the gameplay conveys an intended feeling rather than sticks to scientifically accurate numbers. Why I am telling that, it's because my mod is quite full of this approach, which is most noticeable in the sheer amount of metal, coal and other stuff required to make anything better than a rusty pitchfork. Which may or may not be something you agree with.
Quote
Does your body rework include all humanoid creatures, or just dwarfs?
All humanoid creatures, including animal man variants. I strive to make the mod as adaptable as possible to whatever playable bird people someone might want to pick in Adventure Mode or mod in Fortress Mode. There are some little crunchy-fluff-type tweaks here and there, like beaks and (snail) stalks still sticking out of the helmets, or the eponymous bird people's joints being more fragile than those of land-dwelling races, because it makes them a tiny bit more interesting in my opinion.
Addressing the primary reasons why the body rework was added in the first place:
1) In vanilla DF, there's a bug with helmet coverage where it does not protect anything that's "on" the head - only the things which are "inside" the head. However, skulls and heads are kind of separate entities as far as the game is concerned, so it is possible to make facial features protected by helmets with putting them "inside" heads, but "outside" skulls. Hence, the "internal facial features".
2) One of the peeves I've had with the combat in DF is that limbs are much more critical to survival than torsoes, because torso wounds rarely really impact a creature's ability to fight as much as loosing a weapon, a shield or stance does. Adding "internal limbs" in the form of shoulders and hips to the torso allows torso wounds to sometimes impact the limbs too, making torso protection more important overall.
I hope this explanation makes it more clear.
Quote
One other thing, will your full mod include an updated (to 47.04) version of DF Revised, or is that not available yet?
Taffer hasn't updated his mod so far, so that installation point shall be obscured for now. However, my mod's next release will include a couple of relevant features from Revised, such as its quality-of-life reactions, improved morale and rebalanced unarmed combat for civilized creatures, updated for DF 47.04.
Post by: Uthimienure on April 01, 2020, 09:12:24 am
I can hardly wait to try your mod.
(https://i.ibb.co/T0PzqbF/Sver-kindred-spirit.png)
Post by: Sver on April 01, 2020, 09:33:58 am
Post by: Sver on April 03, 2020, 07:26:08 pm
Major changes:
* Full support for Dwarf Fortress v0.47.04!
* Mod's installation now includes Revised's unarmed combat and morale tweaks, as well as its quality-of-life reactions; as a temporary measure until Revised is updated. Also, copied over hair styling for humans, elves and goblins from Revised to my entity files, as it's a plain improvement.
* Removed redundant weapons: broadaxe, war club, flanged mace, long spear, arming sword.
* Removed redundant armor: aketon.
* Weapon set readjustment!
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
* New optional, included by default: Ammo from cheap materials!
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
* New optional: "crude" armors to reduce smelting yields from siege loot. Amount of metal bars returned from smelting crude armors is based on the garments weight (e.g. volume) in bars - rather than its combat effectiveness, as it is for normal armors. Also, crude plate armors are heavier than normal ones, but not less protective, while crude mail armors are 5% less protective, but weight the same.
* Optional War Horses are discontinued for now. There's a write up for their rework in the future.
* Optional Siege Engines now use wrought iron from the new metal rework for their armor. Also, removed NOEMOTION and NOFEAR from them, but added 1-lvl Discipline to simulate the hypothetical crew better.
* Optional Tactical Civilizations have been remade to be more "thematic" rather than balanced, thus, providing for more varied challenge and more unique feel to each of them. Some goblin tactical civs now also use plague onagers from Optional Siege Engines. Human tactical civs are now limited to spawn only 2 per type by default.
* New trap component: spike-covered cage. Inspired by the iron maiden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_maiden) and similar devices, it delivers a barrage of quick little stabs.
* Buffed all trap components, but also made them more expensive. See "Trap Components and info" (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7771053#msg7771053).
* Major buff for stabbing attacks!
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)
* Redesigned flail and scourge. Flail is now the one-handed "spiked ball chained to a short handle" thingie, a little less unlucky and with readjusted attack speeds and velocities. Scourge is now the two-handed "baton chained to a long pole" thingie, with reworked attacks to make it into a powerful anti-armor and anti-shield weapon.
* Redesigned large dagger. Gave it larger area, but much greater velocity too. Now it causes more bleeding, can break joints and damage some armors. Also, gave it a higher two-handed size limit and removed pommel strike.
* Rebalanced the short sword to be inbetween the removed arming sword and the old-version short sword in all matters.
* War hammer, polehammer and poleaxe bashes are much more powerful and can break joints now, but no longer have a multi-attack bonus.
* Removed the weak edged 'hook' attack from hawk axe and dagger-axe, their other attacks took on its speed and multi-attack bonus instead.
* The 'snatch' attack for hooked axe, dagger-axe and falx got better speed and a multi-attack bonus.
* Recurve bow is now slightly stronger than longbow, but costs much more metal to make.
* Higher weight for hammerhead bolt. The optimal material is now the new hardened bronze (density 8810), instead of silver.
* Partial plate (e.g. all rigid armor with below 100% blockchance) is now much lighter, to make it a more viable choice.
* More detailed and realistic coverage for ribcage.
* More detailed and realistic relative positions and coverage for facial features.
Minor changes:
** Updated the "Tips and notes" and "Melee Weapon Tiers and info" (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7771053#msg7771053) with more precise information.
** Replaced the old and uninformative "Full list of armor" with a new section: "Armor Types, Roles and info" (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7753842#msg7753842)!
** A bit more weapon options in my dwarven preset.
** Decreased melee velocity for ammunition to be in line with other one-handed weapons.
** Readjusted whether or not some weapons can be made out of stone (obsidian in vanilla, also chert and malachite with the new optional metal rework).
** Minor tweaks to some attack speeds.
** Reduced area for all 'slap with flat' attacks. Except for falx, where it was slightly increased.
** Buffed 'spike strikes' (hawk axe, halberd, poleaxe, polehammer, flail) a little bit.
** A bit lower speed and bad multi-attack modifier for maul.
** Buffed the poleaxe 'hack' attack to represent its sturdier blade.
** Made parrying dagger better at piercing weak armor.
** War knife is a little better vs limbs.
** A bit higher contact area and penetration for glaive to make it better against beasts.
** Slightly reduced contact areas for spiked staff to make it stronger.
** Buffed crossbow and arbalest very-very slightly.
** A bit lower penetration for barbed arrows.
** Slightly readjusted properties of crescent arrows.
** Increased penetration for blowdarts.
** Increased minimum and two-handed size limits for hatchet.
** Cuirass can now be made of bone/shell/chitin.
** Tassets can now be made of shell/chitin.
** Chestplate is now "under" layer, to be worn underneath mail, and can be combined with other plate armors. Recommended use for weak, but dense metals (copper, bronze), as they're good at repelling blunt force, while mail will protect it from cuts.
** Mail cape and quilted tunic are now "cover" layer, so they protect plate armor underneath from edged wear.
** Slight increase to layer permit for cap (helmet) to allow for an additional padded coif underneath.
** Lower layer permit for pauldrons to avoid excessive stacking.
** Fixed dwarves in my entity presets not having training weapons.
** Doublet will now be worn by invaders sometimes, as was aketon.
** Fixed incorrect colors for optional "rock" metals. Also, they are no longer made into inappropriate (metal) objects.
** Fixed arrowhead kits being possible to decorate.
Post by: Sver on April 03, 2020, 07:26:44 pm
Comes in two parts, one of which is included by default, and the other as an optional.
(separate post for linking purposes)
Default part:
- New metals: rusty iron, wrought iron and hardened bronze. Dwarven steel has been removed, and tempered steel has been adapted into the new metals' balance.
- All metals (except rusty iron) have their Shear (edged resistance) values set to that of tempered steel, but their Impact (blunt resistance), Sharpness (edged power) and other values vary. This sets a better balance for armor penetration, preventing "gamey" oddities such as steel cutting through work-hardened bronze plate. Also, none of them can be made into crafts or such, their only civilian uses being constructions and tools.
-- Rusty iron is light, brittle, with very poor edge; implying a work-hardened iron that has corroded overtime, thus, it's a bit tougher, although less sharp than vanilla iron. Very cheap, intended mainly for embark items. It cannot be made into ranged weapons or armor.
-- Wrought iron is still brittle and with poor edge compared to tempered steel, but is cheaper. Good for mail, hacking/stabbing weapons and piercing ammo. All-purpose.
-- Hardened bronze is dense, hard, with decent edge and durability, but dependent on trading for tin/copper. Good for high-impact weapons/ammo, and small armorpieces. All-purpose.
-- Tempered steel is durable, flexible, with good edge, but very costly to make. Good for everything. It cannot be made into mining picks.
- New metals have much more elaborate creation processes, requiring multiple industries be involved. Here's a crappy mspaint flowchart. (https://i.imgur.com/W7Wmj30.png)
-- Wrought iron and tempered steel take a lot more coal per bar than hardened bronze, as theire creation process requires higher temperature and multiple reheatings. They also both need "maintenance materials" (grease and wax as water-repellents and lubricants, vinegar and sand as rust remedies), with wrought iron being more needy in amount, although not being dependent on wax, unlike tempered steel.
-- Tempered steel takes additional coal to increase carbon content.
-- Hardened bronze needs molds to be cast into, taking 3 mold parts per bar, but does not require any maintenance.
- New ore: bog iron. Idea credit to Warlord255.
-- Can be found in veins in some aquifer-bearing topsoils. "Deep Soil", "Light Aquifer", "Shallow Metal(s)" and the absence of "Sand" is a good four-point indicator that a location has bog iron. Veins can sometimes surface out of the ground, but otherwise require prospecting through the aquifer. Open quarries with drains are recommended for easier mining.
-- Smelts into 4 rusty iron bars (at 100% chance) and 0-4 iron bars (at 88% chance).
-- Very heavy. Wheelbarrows/minecarts recommended for transportation. Caravans are unlikely to bring it.
- Anvils can now be made at the Smelter.
Optional part:
- All metals except rusty iron, wrought iron, hardened bronze, tempered steel and candy are no longer usable for military purposes.
- Wrought iron and rusty iron can now be made into crafts, furniture etc.
- Vanilla iron is no longer usable for anything but anvils.
- New metals (except rusty iron) have been renamed into their "unprefixed" counterparts for cleaner item/equipment interface.
-- "Wrought iron" to "iron".
-- "Hardened bronze" to "bronze".
-- "Tempered steel" to "steel".
- Vanilla iron, bronze and steel have been renamed for distinction.
-- "Iron" to "bloomery iron".
-- "Bronze" to "soft bronze".
-- "Steel" to "mild steel".
- All iron-bearing ores additionally yield rusty iron, essentially doubling all iron yields.
- Increased Sharpness for chert and malachite to make them usable for stone weapons, as is obsidian in vanilla.
- Mod's reactions that used to require vanilla metals (like copper for copper daggers) now require the full list of components for a new metal (for instance, you can forge hardened bronze daggers directly from tin and copper). This is mainly for backwards compatibility with entity files, but also allows to save up a bit of fuel and, sometimes, metal.
Post by: Sver on April 03, 2020, 07:31:33 pm
Post by: Chaosegg on April 04, 2020, 09:36:48 am
in this game...
in all games?
It would be great to have someone like Sver working on all my games!
Major/big thumbs-up, and I'll report back after I've given it a proper test run.
P.S.
I just installed clinodev's Vetlinger-packaged pack from the DFFD and began a fort to see how I liked his graphics compared with my usual Ironhand.
Definitely more stylish, pretty and "cool", though I've a few things I might change about some of the stone/gem icons if given the opportunity.
Overall, 97% awesome, and a realism mod to add-on to it would only triple the size of my inner-grin.
Post by: Taffer on April 04, 2020, 02:02:36 pm
Taffer hasn't updated his mod so far, so that installation point shall be obscured for now.
Working on it. I'm trying to take my time to really think about what features I want to focus on, and what I want to revert. Also trying to report things on the bug tracker; for all the community wants to fix things, not all of these raw fixes were ever reported to Toady.
Post by: Sver on April 04, 2020, 04:13:33 pm
Working on it.
Good to hear! Didn't mean to poke you about that though - I know these things take time and effort.
Also trying to report things on the bug tracker; for all the community wants to fix things, not all of these raw fixes were ever reported to Toady.
You mean, the sort of fixes Revised works around, like that "item-thieving creatures 'steal' their own clothes and turn around at the map border"?
Post by: Taffer on April 04, 2020, 04:16:36 pm
Good to hear! Didn't mean to poke you about that though - I know these things take time and effort.
You didn't, I was just reading your thread and noticed your comment.
You mean, the sort of things Revised works around, like that "item-thieving creatures 'steal' their own clothes and turn around at the map border"?
Just a few textual fixes so far. I've never actually seen that bug in action before; verifying it is on my to-do list for the next release, because I want to either revert the change or report it. Have you seen it? Thanks for the reminder!
Post by: Sver on April 04, 2020, 05:34:47 pm
Just a few textual fixes so far. I've never actually seen that bug in action before; verifying it is on my to-do list for the next release, because I want to either revert the change or report it. Have you seen it? Thanks for the reminder!
I haven't really seen it and I don't think anyone did, because the very nature of this bug is that the player never sees these creatures appear on the map unless they spawn without items - as they spawn in nature. One way to test it, I guess, is giving every civilized race but dwarves [CURIOUSBEAST_ITEM], set up a tavern zone at embark and see if any non-dwarf visitors come and how they behave.
I know for a fact that [CURIOUSBEAST_GUZZLER] causes issues on civilized creatures though, so adapted-into-society bear people and whatnot will behave weirdly: such as grab a barrel of booze and then idle with it aimlessly, not drinking and not doing anything.
Post by: Sver on April 05, 2020, 06:01:02 pm
Post by: Uthimienure on April 12, 2020, 09:07:00 pm
The 17 citizen fort ended when everyone died in a siege led by 2 bleak zombies (human lasher & goblin bowman) with about 8 undead corpses.
Our military:
4 dwarfs in steel mail with steel weapons at skill levels 2 to 3.
3 dwarfs with no armor, steel weapons at skills around 3, one went into a trance and did well before dying.
We destroyed all of the undead corpses, but the 2 bleak zombies were unstoppable and killed everyone.
The lasher bleak zombie was nothing but a pulp but kept on going and going and going...
Fun was had by all.
Post by: Sver on April 13, 2020, 06:01:06 am
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 18, 2020, 07:23:17 am
Post by: Sver on April 18, 2020, 08:19:18 am
1) Download the pre-installed mod edition of your choosing.
2) Unpack it somewhere, open the unpacked folder, then the "raw" folder inside.
3) There you'll find "graphics", "interaction examples" and "objects" folders. Copy only the "objects" folder.
4) Paste it into .../%your PeridexisErrant's Starter Pack folder%/raw/. It should prompt you to merge "objects" folders - agree, then agree to overwriting files.
Like that, it should work.
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 20, 2020, 11:47:37 am
But man, it probably has nothing to do with the mod, but the day the first summer comes I get the undead siege of 3 ghouls and 3 corpses. I didnt even dig enough room for a dining hall yet lol. Of course I had no chance stopping that with 2 picks and a rusty axe. Very tough luck I guess.
Post by: Sver on April 20, 2020, 01:19:52 pm
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 20, 2020, 02:24:40 pm
This situation led me to an idea of sorts though. How hard would it be to introduce to the game some very basic rudimentary weapons made out of wood at the carpenter workshop? Say, basic clubs and wooden spears with fire hardened tips. Low performance of course, but something better than fists and readily availible before you find any weapon grade metals. Would be quite natural in my opinion.
I personally don't like adding stuff on embarking, prefer the standard default preset. So it could be just me, but still. This elementary step has always been absent from DF warfare for some reason. Like you start in the forest but you can't make yourself a sharpened pole to defend against wildlife. Feels wrong.
Post by: Sver on April 20, 2020, 05:25:15 pm
Otherwise, if you want to get things bleeding without metal, your best bet are wooden ranged weapons with wood/bone ammo - or rock/clay ammo in case of slings.
Or you can use wooden weapon sets as effectively wooden melee weapons; some of them, like the large dagger sets (such as "marksman arms"), might even be decent. This is something I want to patch out in the future, but right now it is a possible use for them. You can also butcher some dogs and make the same out of bone - they'd be better than wood anyhow.
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 20, 2020, 07:29:58 pm
The problem with wooden weapons in DF is that they are basically worse than bare fists, because fists are considered to be made of bone, which is a superior material. Granted, you can't make melee weapons out of bone either - this is something I have planned as reactions for the future; might as well throw wooden reactions in too, I guess, maybe with a bit stronger "fake wood" as the end product's material.For better wooden weapons you may just set more speed, like whip has 5.0, bigger size of weapon and smaller contact area.
Otherwise, if you want to get things bleeding without metal, your best bet are wooden ranged weapons with wood/bone ammo - or rock/clay ammo in case of slings.
Or you can use wooden weapon sets as effectively wooden melee weapons; some of them, like the large dagger sets (such as "marksman arms"), might even be decent. This is something I want to patch out in the future, but right now it is a possible use for them. You can also butcher some dogs and make the same out of bone - they'd be better than wood anyhow.
Post by: Sver on April 20, 2020, 08:00:04 pm
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 21, 2020, 06:00:34 am
To be honest, for a single purpose, it's easier adding a new material than an array of specialized weapon-copies. Less maintenance and unintended consequences (such as artifacts) this way.You may just boost wood to real fire-hardened wood, but make training weapons with the worst weapon characteristics. This will be simpler than adding hardened counterpart for each wood type in game.
Post by: Sver on April 21, 2020, 01:24:16 pm
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 22, 2020, 08:07:18 am
There is a bit more in play here. To make wooden weapons worthwhile and sensible, the wood used would need to have a fixed density, much beyond that of vanilla wood. So reflecting the variety of natural woods in the new material(s) would be mostly meaningless, as their variety is almost entirely about their densities.Have vanilla wood realistic density or not? If have, there is no ways to make wood really better, but a way to make realistic - some types of wood was used for tools and weapons due to their big density.
Post by: Sver on April 22, 2020, 11:37:18 am
There is a bit more in play here. To make wooden weapons worthwhile and sensible, the wood used would need to have a fixed density, much beyond that of vanilla wood. So reflecting the variety of natural woods in the new material(s) would be mostly meaningless, as their variety is almost entirely about their densities.Have vanilla wood realistic density or not? If have, there is no ways to make wood really better, but a way to make realistic - some types of wood was used for tools and weapons due to their big density.
Vanilla wood density is fairly realistic. The problem arises because weapon volumes are balanced towards being made out of a solid hunk of material - so, the volume that results in a reasonable weight for an iron spear would also result in a way too light wooden spear, as DF does not support multi-material weapons. Thus, if I'd want to allow wooden weapons that (1) would not result in weird artifacts, such as 10+ kg iron spears, and (2) would not be as useless as simply making weapons out of vanilla wood, new "fake wood" with higher density and shear properties seems like the best solution.
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 22, 2020, 04:35:55 pm
Fake wood is bad solution, not best. Or you will add 71 new type of fake wood? You may just make shear properties of vanilla wood more realistic (maybe, from fire-hardened wood), but also downgrade training weapons as weapons. Also you may enlarge wood maximum sharpness.There is a bit more in play here. To make wooden weapons worthwhile and sensible, the wood used would need to have a fixed density, much beyond that of vanilla wood. So reflecting the variety of natural woods in the new material(s) would be mostly meaningless, as their variety is almost entirely about their densities.Have vanilla wood realistic density or not? If have, there is no ways to make wood really better, but a way to make realistic - some types of wood was used for tools and weapons due to their big density.
Vanilla wood density is fairly realistic. The problem arises because weapon volumes are balanced towards being made out of a solid hunk of material - so, the volume that results in a reasonable weight for an iron spear would also result in a way too light wooden spear, as DF does not support multi-material weapons. Thus, if I'd want to allow wooden weapons that (1) would not result in weird artifacts, such as 10+ kg iron spears, and (2) would not be as useless as simply making weapons out of vanilla wood, new "fake wood" with higher density and shear properties seems like the best solution.
Post by: Sver on April 22, 2020, 06:49:10 pm
How to go about vanilla wood properties is another topic that I'm going to tangle in the future. Right now, it's applicability causes an awful lot of balance problems - I can't make it stronger, as that would make wooden shields and weapon sets too good, and I can't keep it weak, as that keeps wooden ammo and elven weapons fairly useless. Contemporary plan is to remove military uses from basic wood entirely (to prevent AI usage and shield/weapon set exploit), add various wood processing reactions to give elves and subterraneans their own military grade "fake woods", and wood-to-item reactions for the player to create actually decent weapons, ammo, shields and maybe armor out of it. I may account for interesting uniques there, such as fake feather wood for super light wood armor, or fake nether-cap for magma-safe equipment (not sure about this one though, it's not of much use since the wearer still burns).
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 23, 2020, 08:27:25 am
As I said earlier, there's really no point in making the "fake wood" as variable, as that would be 1% flavor, 99% interface clutter. The only differences between wood types in DF is their density, color and temperature properties - the problem with the former I've already covered, and the latter two don't matter for equipment.What is wrong with wooden shields? In real life the most of shields was wooden or covered by wood. Density of wood solve the problem: why papaya wood is bad for weapons, when dense wood is better. If you make wood just sharper, you not boost nor shields, nor blunt weapons. So you really can upgrade basic wood, especially if you want remove vanilla wooden shields from civs (exclude elves and cavern animal people). This will be simpler for code and for play.
How to go about vanilla wood properties is another topic that I'm going to tangle in the future. Right now, it's applicability causes an awful lot of balance problems - I can't make it stronger, as that would make wooden shields and weapon sets too good, and I can't keep it weak, as that keeps wooden ammo and elven weapons fairly useless. Contemporary plan is to remove military uses from basic wood entirely (to prevent AI usage and shield/weapon set exploit), add various wood processing reactions to give elves and subterraneans their own military grade "fake woods", and wood-to-item reactions for the player to create actually decent weapons, ammo, shields and maybe armor out of it. I may account for interesting uniques there, such as fake feather wood for super light wood armor, or fake nether-cap for magma-safe equipment (not sure about this one though, it's not of much use since the wearer still burns).
Post by: Sver on April 23, 2020, 12:06:49 pm
What is wrong with wooden shields? In real life the most of shields was wooden or covered by wood.
They are too cheap for what they can do. In real life shields had to be leather-covered or otherwise reinforced to hold up in combat, and still got damaged fairly frequently. In DF as it stands, that's just 1 log of wood. They do wear out in combat due to shield-bashing, but they also come with the benefit of very low encumbrance compared to metal shields, which overall makes metal shields unattractive as an option. Also, there's literally no reason to make smaller wooden shields, because, again, even the tower shield is very light when made of wood. Shields also have hardcoded trade value attached to their volume, which basically allows the player to turn wood into gold. All of these need to be fixed, but the only way to go about it is to remove the relevant item tags from basic wood. Which would call for creating new "fake wood" to give the elves and cavern people something to make shields out of.
Density of wood solve the problem: why papaya wood is bad for weapons, when dense wood is better.
None of the vanilla woods are dense enough to make for a decent weapon, unless the weapon in question has its volume rebalanced towards being made of wood (e.g. much higher than for metal weapons). There are three reasons why I don't want to add new weapons for it:
1) Weapon tweaking is probably the most labor-intensive part of the mod's development and I really wouldn't want to bloat it more than it already is. To clarify: each time I make some broad tweak to, say, stabbing attacks, each weapon needs to be tweaked into it one by one; 1 additional weapon turns into a miriad of additional steps when updating.
2) Artifacts. Sure, the chance of those exact "wooden" weapons being picked for a metal artifact is pretty low, but I really don't want to have a 10+ kg metal spear, even as just a possibility. Can probably be prevented by marking the weapon as "training", but then onto the third point...
3) Player has little control over which types of wood they have on the map - and, without some serious reaction clutter, as well as strockpile microing, would have little control over which types of logs are actually used in production. This discourages me from going into too much nuance between the wood densities. After all, realistically speaking, materials that are too light for weapons would simply not be used, whilst heavier materials would be made into different shapes and sizes to account for their density. This isn't something that can be easily reflected in DF, which rather encourages streamlining all wood into single product "fake wood" with universally decent properties.
If you make wood just sharper, you not boost nor shields, nor blunt weapons.
This is correct, but the deal is I would like to have functional wooden blunt weapons - for the sake of common sense realism, if nothing else.
Also, this change will affect wooden weapon sets -> which I already plan to make non-available -> which is only possible through the removal of all wooden ranged weapons (hardcoded reactions) -> which promts creating custom "fake wood" for standalone wooden ranged weapons (because they're reasonable to have) -> which means I can use the same fake wood for other new wood-related reactions to reduce clutter and ensure universal balance -> which would allow me to remove/rebalance some elven-specific items, further reducing clutter. It's all tangled together.
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 23, 2020, 02:38:46 pm
You try to make mod with balance or with realism? Spear will not be 10 kg, if you boost only speed (why vanilla whip is so deadly).What is wrong with wooden shields? In real life the most of shields was wooden or covered by wood.
They are too cheap for what they can do. In real life shields had to be leather-covered or otherwise reinforced to hold up in combat, and still got damaged fairly frequently. In DF as it stands, that's just 1 log of wood. They do wear out in combat due to shield-bashing, but they also come with the benefit of very low encumbrance compared to metal shields, which overall makes metal shields unattractive as an option. Also, there's literally no reason to make smaller wooden shields, because, again, even the tower shield is very light when made of wood. Shields also have hardcoded trade value attached to their volume, which basically allows the player to turn wood into gold. All of these need to be fixed, but the only way to go about it is to remove the relevant item tags from basic wood. Which would call for creating new "fake wood" to give the elves and cavern people something to make shields out of.Density of wood solve the problem: why papaya wood is bad for weapons, when dense wood is better.
None of the vanilla woods are dense enough to make for a decent weapon, unless the weapon in question has its volume rebalanced towards being made of wood (e.g. much higher than for metal weapons). There are three reasons why I don't want to add new weapons for it:
1) Weapon tweaking is probably the most labor-intensive part of the mod's development and I really wouldn't want to bloat it more than it already is. To clarify: each time I make some broad tweak to, say, stabbing attacks, each weapon needs to be tweaked into it one by one; 1 additional weapon turns into a miriad of additional steps when updating.
2) Artifacts. Sure, the chance of those exact "wooden" weapons being picked for a metal artifact is pretty low, but I really don't want to have a 10+ kg metal spear, even as just a possibility. Can probably be prevented by marking the weapon as "training", but then onto the third point...
3) Player has little control over which types of wood they have on the map - and, without some serious reaction clutter, as well as strockpile microing, would have little control over which types of logs are actually used in production. This discourages me from going into too much nuance between the wood densities. After all, realistically speaking, materials that are too light for weapons would simply not be used, whilst heavier materials would be made into different shapes and sizes to account for their density. This isn't something that can be easily reflected in DF, which rather encourages streamlining all wood into single product "fake wood" with universally decent properties.If you make wood just sharper, you not boost nor shields, nor blunt weapons.
This is correct, but the deal is I would like to have functional wooden blunt weapons - for the sake of common sense realism, if nothing else.
Also, this change will affect wooden weapon sets -> which I already plan to make non-available -> which is only possible through the removal of all wooden ranged weapons (hardcoded reactions) -> which promts creating custom "fake wood" for standalone wooden ranged weapons (because they're reasonable to have) -> which means I can use the same fake wood for other new wood-related reactions to reduce clutter and ensure universal balance -> which would allow me to remove/rebalance some elven-specific items, further reducing clutter. It's all tangled together.
Post by: Sver on April 23, 2020, 03:20:43 pm
You try to make mod with balance or with realism?
Main focus is on the balance, some focus on sensibility - not realism per se, as that would be frankly unachievable and/or completely drag away from what vanilla DF setting is. The overall goal is to have things behave as sensible as possible in action, but try to ensure that as much of the equipment and materials has its use and doesn't just exist for the sake of existing.
Spear will not be 10 kg, if you boost only speed (why vanilla whip is so deadly).
I just explained why I wouldn't want to add more weapons, especially with a different formula for velocities that would require individual recalc each time. It's not as simple as applying a constant modifier.
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 24, 2020, 03:31:31 pm
If you not want drag away from vanilla setting, you may not boost elven weapons at all or boost wood only a little (to bone-like properties). Prior elven weapon is bow, prior elven melee are war animals.You try to make mod with balance or with realism?
Main focus is on the balance, some focus on sensibility - not realism per se, as that would be frankly unachievable and/or completely drag away from what vanilla DF setting is. The overall goal is to have things behave as sensible as possible in action, but try to ensure that as much of the equipment and materials has its use and doesn't just exist for the sake of existing.Spear will not be 10 kg, if you boost only speed (why vanilla whip is so deadly).
I just explained why I wouldn't want to add more weapons, especially with a different formula for velocities that would require individual recalc each time. It's not as simple as applying a constant modifier.
Post by: Sver on April 25, 2020, 07:42:02 am
Prior elven weapon is bow, prior elven melee are war animals.
That is the idea. Right now, though, elven arrows are poorly balanced, because of how contact area works - increasing wood sharpness will allow me to increase that too, ensuring better balance; maybe I could even remove the gimmicky unique elven arrows and give them normal ones instead, that would be great. Also, allow their melee spears to stab through skulls at least so they aren't completely helpless - right now they're better off using their bare fists, which is silly.
Post by: erwin on April 25, 2020, 09:37:08 am
I have hematite that yields bloomery iron. Then in the smelter I can do collect scrap metal that yields rusty iron bars. I have 6 rusted iron bars. I though that I can forge rusted metal helm. But I can't. It says "Needs 6 rusted metal bars".
Post by: Sver on April 25, 2020, 10:47:35 am
I'm afraid rusty iron cannot be used for armor - it's only purpose are crappy, yet relatively cheap weapons and ammunition. Also, civilian stuff, like furniture.
'forge rusted metal helm' and similar reactions require rusted metal - which is a type of divine metal (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Divine_metal) in vanilla DF.
If you want to make some cheap protection, make wooden tower shields and plant/wool cloth armors. Here's an example uniform:
1x one-handed weapon of your choosing
1x wood tower shield
1x padded armor
2x doublet
2x gambeson
1x padded chausses
1x belt (any material, although iron is preferable)
5x padded coif (can be replaced by 1x padded coif + 1x iron/bronze skullcap)
Post by: NordicNooob on April 25, 2020, 01:32:00 pm
Currently wax is sometimes unobtainable: even if you just do a simple glacier or mountainous embark your only source of wax would be traded bayberries, which isn't a reliable source: trade can be cut off pretty easily. You can't raise bees or grow aboveground crops there. You could argue that flux is sometimes the same way: it's not on every embark. However, flux can still spawn in every environment-it's entirely your choice if you want flux or not, since it's independent of biome. But with wax, you can't just say "hey, how about I go for a glacier, but take it easy and go for metal-rich so I can get a lot of steel."
Of course, it's still up to you, and I can't say it's a huge issue because of the rarity of glacier embarks and the impossibility of full-mountain embarks, as well as trade with something being almost ubiquitous. Also, you do allow steel goblinite, so.
Post by: Sver on April 25, 2020, 02:43:11 pm
However, the idea of adding some deep cavern shroom (or better yet, a reaction that utilizes an existing one; blood thorn seems like a good candidate, being present regardless of water) to motivate the player to go there for that sweet wax is enticing, so I'll consider this :)
Post by: NordicNooob on April 25, 2020, 05:29:27 pm
Post by: Sver on April 25, 2020, 05:57:05 pm
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 26, 2020, 12:44:44 pm
And I have to say, undead are broken.
This time it was 3 years into the game and near 100 fort population.
Large militia of 35 dwarves, all are reasonably experienced and well equipped - multiple layers of padded-leather-bone armor, 4 to 7 point skills, one hammerer veteran of skill 9, and most importantly - everyone is equipped with steel (hammers/maces were bronze) weapons of mostly exceptional/masterwork quality: half the men with spears, the other half - axes, maces, hammers and one swordsman. 5 marksdwarves.
Then one winter the undead siege comes. And look - it is only 2 enemies, a duo of elite human crossbowman doomed ghouls. Alright, I think, they are probably strong, but my boys are well trained and well armed, I can handle this.
Then the massacre ensues. Those doomed ghouls were disarmed pretty quickly, before any casualties on my side, but then they proceeded to slaughter my militia.. with foot kicks.. They were literally just jumping around kicking and jamming hearts through ribs, slowly but steadily. Absolutely no wound could stop them - broken legs, smashed arms, even fractured spines and neck cloven asunder - nope, they just went on and beat everyone 2 vs 35.
My guess is that it's a combination of vanilla buff to undead with the changes in your mod that strengthened them even further.
Now, I like the scarcity of metals you introduced, the variety of weapons, archer sidearms - great idea. I can't play vanilla after this, but the undead seem to be utterly unbeatable. No major mistakes were made on my part, I was well prepared, yet my steel armed militia was utterly deleted by 2 human sized entities that wouldn't go down no matter the damage done to them.
I don't know. Are these enemies unkillable and supposed to be cheesed out with traps and the like? If that's so then it's no fun at all.
Seriously, I enjoy hardcore challenge, I accept taking losses, I love the dramatic effect of it all, but being deleted in an unfair way is very disappointing.
Post by: Sver on April 26, 2020, 01:00:51 pm
I'd appreciate if you could provide a save file before (if you got backups) and/or after the attack so I could see what the source of the problem might be.
Edit: Also, a couple of clarifications:
- Which edition of the mod you're playing?
- Were the doomed ghouls armored? How well? Especially in regards to head protection.
- Were your guys carrying shields?
UPD: I've run a couple of manual-control tests one the arena. In some cases a steel battle axe can one-shot a unique undead by a single hack to the upper body. So they themselves are likely not that hardcore, rather, it is possible those two guys had very good armor, which would require specific heavy-armor-breaking weapons - halberd, scourge, poleaxe or polehammer, preferably polehammer. Lesser anti-armor weapons, such as maces, won't do, because undead don't bleed or breath - they don't care if you break their necks. Maul may also have enough punch to crush their upper body, as long as they aren't wearing a cuirass/breastplate.
UPD-2: A couple more tests, this time with AI. Unique undead seriously pick up in power if they outskill their living opponents. However, living beings who are just as skilled and have a bit of numbers advantage defeat them with minimal casualities. The general conclusion I could draw is that unique undead are boss-level enemies that are not to be taken lightly, but they got nothing on say, clowns, or similar high-level foes. Their main power comes from arriving way too early, which isn't something that can really be fixed, other than by avoiding tower embarks or turtling until you're ready to face them.
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 26, 2020, 01:55:26 pm
Identical result, everyone is dead.
Yes, these ghouls are wearing steel armor, half plates, boots and some sort of a helmet. My guys are carrying large shields except archers, which are carrying medium ones. But this last time I checked ghoul's wounds - they had fractured skulls, spines and even "fractured brain", yet they they didn't go down.
As for counters they require, come on, that's not dragons or some legendary beasts, it's just human sized undead, the ghouls, a sheer "volume of fire" coming their way and numerical superiority 35 vs 2, brain wounds, spine wounds, this stuff need to be able to take them down. Otherwise this strict rock-paper-scissors kind of thing is simply no fun for this pretty regular type of enemy.
I prepared 2 saves, before and after, how may I provide them?
UPD: Well, if they are supposed to be boss level enemies, yeah. But they just didnt look like that and indeed arrived early. In my first attempt to recreate the situation I set up an ambush in the halls of my fortress where I thought I could fall on them from all sides, lock them down in some corner and prevent them from "kiting" my dwarves in the open. But they just didnt come in lol. After slaughtering my livestock outside they left the map.
Guess I'll continue the game with this kind of conclusion to the encounter, as starting over after the end that unsatisfying is beyond me. Let's hope that furter into the game a veteran army with better anti-blunt armor and some anti armor 2 handers will be able to take such foes down.
P.S. As for the version of the mod I am using, it's your pre-installed version over LNP with no other mods besides my personal tweaks to human caravan arrival and loamy sand being treated as sand.
Post by: Sver on April 26, 2020, 02:17:22 pm
Yes, this ghouls are wearing steel armor, half plates, boots and some sort of a helmet. But this last time I checked their wounds - they had fractured skulls, spines and even "fractured brain", yet they they didn't go down.
The undead don't need a functioning brain either, they can only be disabled by crushing/cleaving asunder of their head or upper body.
Anyhow, they sound quite well armored, so anti-steel weapons are a must.
As for counters they require, come on, that's not dragons or some legendary beasts, it's just human sized undead, the ghouls, a sheer "volume of fire" coming their way and numerical superiority 35 vs 2, brain wounds, spine wounds, this stuff need to be able to take them down. Otherwise this strict rock-paper-scissors kind of thing is simply no fun for this pretty regular type of enemy.
Well, it's DF. The undead here don't need a working spinal cord or, again, even a brain - just their head and upper body needs to remain somewhat intact for them to carry on. This isn't my design decision, though - it's the same way in vanilla. When you get this kind of being in plate armor, you effectively get animated armor, immune to most normal vulnerabilities that could counter a living armor wearer, such as tiredness or stun. It might not be a dragon in terms of pure firepower, but it is sure several times stronger in durability - dragons being creatures of blood and flesh and not a moving hunk of hard steel. It's kind of like trying to take down that liquid bot from Terminator with medieval weapons - you gotta cut/smash the core hunk away to achieve that. And on top of that, Toady gave them magic spells.
I agree that they probably shouldn't be as common as they are, but this isn't the part I can change unfortunately.
I prepared 2 saves, before and after, how may I provide them?
Best way is as a DFFD (http://dffd.bay12games.com/index.php) upload. In the Miscellaneous category.
UPD: In general, I'd say there are a lot of situations in DF, with my mod in particular, where a large number of average troops is not enough to take down a supernatural threat. You'll need to have very well trained warriors with specific equipment fit for the job.
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 26, 2020, 02:35:04 pm
What you are saying does makes sense and I'll jsut treat this Doomed Ghouls as hardcore boss level foe and move on with that. The initial shock and frustration were just too strong. I also wouldn't want to avoid towers, I want all kind of threats and enemies to be present in my game. So anyways, not sure if the saves are needed anymore, now that we clarified the situation.
I'll keep playing your mod and then share some more of the experiences here if that's not too annoying.
Really liking many aspects of it so far, and can imagine all the hard work you've done and probably hundreds of hours investested in all the thinking over and balancing and all.
One very minor thing that doesn't go off my mind tho. I get it's a balancing feature, but still, how do pieces of body armor, such as pauldrons or doublets, protect your eyes? Do they come with a pair of armored glasses or something? :D
Post by: Sver on April 26, 2020, 03:02:15 pm
Yeah the last time I played Dward Fortress was like a 1.5 years ago, without any mods, and I remember fighting such undead, they were wearing copper armor so dwarves could eventually break through it and smash their skulls or cut off their heads and kill them.
See, those were regular undead you remember, the kind that nowadays gets knocked out by stone-bound books wielded by some warrior poets. Regular undead aren't as tough, they lack skills and are also very slow.
Latest DF (aka Villains Update) just added... these things, and I've noticed around the forum that a lot of players struggle with them even in vanilla. The mod's balance and "sensible degree realism" admittedly makes them even more hardcore.
So anyways, not sure if the saves are needed anymore, now that we clarified the situation.
Yeah, I guess we can skip the bother. Since you've mentioned their armor, I can fairly safely assume that they wore "steel half-armor", "steel high boots" and a "steel open helm" - which is pretty much the best armor a ranged invader can arrive with in the mod. Your dwarves just really got a 52-bars run of bad luck. On the positive note (or not), these unique undead are "historical figures", which means they will likely return in the future sieges to receive your vengeance.
I'll keep playing your mod and then share some more of the experiences here if that's not too annoying.
Sure, I'm all in favor of feedback, whatever it might be. I can get a little carried away when talking the mod's "philosophy" (and my vocabulary can be overly mechanical), but I didn't mean to sound aggressive, if anything :)
One very minor thing that doesn't go off my mind tho. I get it's a balancing feature, but still, how do pieces of body armor, such as pauldrons or doublet, protect your eyes? Do they come with a pair of armored glasses or something? :D
That is a gimmick of DF's armoring system - body armor/clothing with sleeves somehow covers facial features, while helmets do not. In the mod, all facial features other than eyes got tweaked to be integral to the head (rather than "growing" on it), which makes them properly covered by helmets instead; the eyes got a pass by popular vote, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to gouge them in Adventure Mode. I've decided to embrace it and made certain metal garments extend just enough to "cover" eyes by design - I personally picture it as a wearer covering their face from an attack by their arm, but depending on the rest of the armor kit this can be interpreted as a visor or, well, armored goggles :P
Post by: Sver on April 26, 2020, 03:45:45 pm
Post by: Uthimienure on April 26, 2020, 04:38:58 pm
My fort is approaching 2 years with no sieges yet, and my 25 military dwarfs will all have steel mail soon, with skills of 3-5. migrants showed up with mostly shortsword or spear skilled, there are a couple of maces & axes, and only one hammer (all high-quality steel weapons thanks to a legendary weaponsmith). There's no tower nearby, but Vulpes_Inculta's experience is still scaring me!
Post by: Sver on April 26, 2020, 04:48:35 pm
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 26, 2020, 10:29:38 pm
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 27, 2020, 04:59:38 am
So I decided to act as a dirty cheater this one time, making myself an excuse that I was not aware of the fact a small human sized opponent can be that deadly. So I reloaded an autosave and confronted the Ghouls once again. This time I decided to wall in inside my fortress and see if I can wait out this siege.
But before I managed to build a door at my main entrance, one of the CREATURES slipped inside while I wasnt looking.
I mobilized my troops in an instant and we jumped it from all sides, fighting for the very survival of the fortress in it's glorious halls.
I was lucky the other THING has fallen behind hunting some eagles and flies and never participated in the battle. But even this one Ghoul, dammit...
It started dancing around like it did before in the open, but this time it couldn't maneuver so freely and eventually we managed to corner it.
Before that happened though the monster slipped into the tavern and there my brave civilians joined the onslaught.
In the end, the monster fell by a mighty strike of the RUSTY PICK in the head, delievered by one of my brave miners who was all broken and wounded and struck down the creature focusing all the hatred and rage into that blow. A lucky strike at the gap in the helmet after we literally locked it down in the corner by the mass of dwarf bodies.
The end of the day painted me a pretty grim picture. 5 soldiers and 3 civilians are dead,including a valuable clothier and a legendary bone carver. Literally half the population is wounded, my hospital is overwflowing and Im suddenly running low on crutches and splints. My only doctor is down and the survivors, untrained in the art of medicine, are dressing wounds and setting bones en masse. And the monster killed several puppies and both of my cats! Thankfully we've managed to protect the dwarven children, none of which suffered that day.
Grim, but not hopeless. Many may yet die in the hospital, but the dwarves will endure. Thankfully, the other CREATURE never joined it's foul companion and eventually left the map. We will lick our wounds, bury our dead, strengthen our walls and next time we'll be ready for this monsters.
Now looking at the contents of what the creature carried, I see it was not only dressed in steel armor but that armor was all of superiour and exceptional quality. At least it's chestpiece appears to be heavily damaged so it wasn't virtually indestructible as I first thought. Also, that's a lot of steel equipment for us to melt.
But seriously, this things are like White Walker level of threat. Now at least I am fully aware. This was trully a boss fight.
Post by: Sver on April 27, 2020, 08:35:32 am
When will be update?
In quite a while, I think. I'll be taking a break, collect more ideas, see how what's already there is working.
In the end, the monster fell by a mighty strike of the RUSTY PICK in the head, delievered by one of my brave miners who was all broken and wounded and struck down the creature focusing all the hatred and rage into that blow. A lucky strike at the gap in the helmet after we literally locked it down in the corner by the mass of dwarf bodies.
Yeah, their helmets are open on the face, it's just really hard to score a hit in the opening.
Now looking at the contents of what the creature carried, I see it was not only dressed in steel armor but that armor was all of superiour and exceptional quality. At least it's chestpiece appears to be heavily damaged so it wasn't virtually indestructible as I first thought. Also, that's a lot of steel equipment for us to melt.
I think maces and war hammers apply damage to steel armor on a prone opponent, just nowhere near quick enough to gain the upper hand in fighting. Case in point, it's still intact after all that pounding.
That was one hell of an epic take down :D
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 27, 2020, 09:05:10 am
I am now using all the steel salvaged from the monster to forge some glorious polehammers and give my boys (and girls) an edge in the future encounters of such kind.
Which also brings up a question I wanna ask. Could you please clarify which two handed weapons do NOT use pikeman skill? Cause I see a rookie whom I gave a bearded axe is training an axedwarf skill and he's certainly not huge enouhg to use it one handed.
Post by: Sver on April 27, 2020, 09:16:43 am
Which also brings up a question I wanna ask. Could you please clarify which two handed weapons do NOT use pikeman skill? Cause I see a rookie whom I gave a bearded axe is training an axedwarf skill and he's certainly not huge enouhg to use it one handed.
Quote
Tier 1:
(p) hatchet - weak, chopping one-handed (high) axe: low pen, light, slow prep, fast rec, damages ie-armor, good vs humanoid limbs, inefficient
(a) flail - bashing one-handed (avg) lash: no pen bash, 1/4 unlucky, fast prep, slow rec, bad mult, damages and punches through ie-armor (prone), damages br-armor
(s) spear - average one-handed (high) spear: low pen, narrow, quick, pierces ie-armor, feint, inefficient
(o) pick - weak one-handed (high) mining tool: low pen, narrow, 1/3 unlucky, slow, worst mult, may pierce ie-armor, inefficient
(o) whip - cutting one-handed (avg) lash: very low pen, light, fast prep, slow rec, worst mult, damages ie-armor
Tier 2:
(a) spiked staff - average two-handed (high) mace-polearm: low pen, no pen bash, narrow, may pierce ie-armor, damages br-armor (prone), may break joints
(s/p) war knife - weak, cutting one-handed (avg) sword: low pen, quick, bad mult, may pierce ie-armor, decent vs humanoid limbs
(s) parrying dagger - defensive one-handed (low) dagger: low pen, narrow, light, zero rec, best mult, pierces ie-armor
(s) short spear - short one-handed (low) spear: average pen, narrow, pierces ie-armor
Tier 3:
(p) battle axe - chopping one-handed (avg) axe: low pen, pierces ie-armor (prone), great vs humanoid limbs
(a) morningstar - piercing two-handed (low) mace: low pen, narrow, slow, may pierce ie-armor, may pierce br-armor (prone), may break joints, efficient
(b/p) short sword - versatile one-handed (avg) sword: average pen, bad mult, may pierce ie-armor, decent vs humanoid limbs, decent vs beasts
(s/p) bladed spear - cutting two-handed (avg) spear: low pen, quick, pierces ie-armor, decent vs humanoid limbs, feint
Tier 4:
(p/a) hawk axe - piercing one-handed (low) axe: low pen, pierces ie-armor, damages br-armor (prone), great vs humanoid limbs
(p/b) horned axe - chopping two-handed (high) axe-polearm: average pen, may pierce ie-armor, great vs humanoid limbs, decent vs beasts
(p) dagger-axe - piercing two-handed (high) axe-polearm: low pen, good mult, pierces ie-armor, great vs humanoid limbs, feint
(p) scimitar - cutting two-handed (low) sword: low pen, fast rec, bad mult, may pierce ie-armor, good vs humanoid limbs, feint, efficient
(a/p/s) halberd - versatile two-handed (high) axe-polearm: low pen, heavy, quick, may pierce ie-armor, damages br-armor, damages sr-armor, decent vs humanoid limbs, feint
(a/s) scourge - bashing two-handed (high) lash: blunt-only, 1/3 unlucky, fast prep, slow rec, worst mult, punches through ie-armor, damages br-armor, damages sr-armor (prone), easily breaks joints
(a) war hammer - piercing one-handed (high) hammer: low pen, narrow, slow, pierces ie-armor, may pierce br-armor (prone), power-bash (33%), inefficient
(a) mace - bashing one-handed (low) mace: blunt-only, punches through ie-armor, damages br-armor armor, breaks joints
Tier 5:
(p/a) hooked axe - piercing two-handed (low) axe: low pen, slow prep, pierces ie-armor, may pierce br-armor (prone), great vs humanoid limbs, efficient
(p/s/b) glaive - long, versatile two-handed (high) sword-polearm: average pen, quick, zero rec, best mult, may pierce ie-armor, good vs humanoid limbs, decent vs beasts, feint
(p) bearded axe - chopping two-handed (high) axe: average pen, may pierce ie-armor, great vs humanoid limbs, broad
(b) war cleaver - chopping one-handed (avg) sword: average pen, bad mult, damages ie-armor, good vs humanoid limbs, decent vs beasts, broad
(b/p/s) falx - versatile two-handed (high) sword-polearm: high pen, may pierce ie-armor, good vs humanoid limbs, good vs beasts, feint
(b/p) two-handed sword - versatile two-handed (high) sword-polearm: high pen, fast rec, may pierce ie-armor, great vs humanoid limbs, good vs beasts
(s/a) heavy spear - very long two-handed (high) spear: average pen, narrow, very heavy, best speed, best mult, pierces ie-armor, damages br-armor (prone), feint
(s/b) pike - very long two-handed (high) spear-polearm: very high pen, narrow, pierces ie-armor, feint, pike-whip
Tier 6:
(a/p) large dagger - offensive one-handed (high) dagger: low pen, narrow, light, slow, pierces ie-armor, power-thrust (66%), inefficient
(a) maul - bashing two-handed (high) hammer: blunt-only, very heavy, slow rec, worst mult, punches through ie-armor, damages br-armor (prone), easily breaks joints
(a) polehammer - strong, piercing two-handed (high) hammer-polearm: low pen, narrow, slow prep, pierces ie-armor, may pierce br-armor (prone), damages sr-armor (prone), power-bash (25%), feint
(b/p/a) longsword - versatile two-handed (high) sword: high pen, bad mult, may pierce ie-armor, good vs humanoid limbs, good vs beasts, power-thrust (16%), feint, guard-bash
Tier 7:
(p/a) poleaxe - strong, versatile two-handed (high) axe-polearm: low pen, slow prep, pierces ie-armor, damages br-armor, damages sr-armor (prone), great vs humanoid limbs, power-bash (25%), feint
(a/p/b) estoc - stabbing two-handed (high) sword: high pen, narrow, bad mult, pierces ie-armor, may pierce br-armor (prone), power-thrust (33%), feint, guard-bash
(b/p) greatsword - strong, versatile two-handed (high) sword-polearm: very high pen, very heavy, fast rec, may pierce ie-armor, great vs humanoid limbs, great vs beasts
(b) great cleaver - strong, chopping two-handed (high) sword: high pen, bad mult, may pierce ie-armor (prone), good vs humanoid limbs, good vs beasts, broad
Two-handed weapons that do use pikeman skill are described as "%type%-polearm" in the list. All other two-handed weapons use their default skill. So non-pikeman 2handers include:
morningstar (mace; large dwarves can use 1h)
bladed spear (spear)
scimitar (sword; large dwarves can use 1h)
scourge (lash)
hooked axe (axe; large dwarves can use 1h)
bearded axe (axe)
heavy spear (spear)
maul (hammer)
longsword (sword)
estoc (sword)
great cleaver (sword)
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 28, 2020, 04:19:59 am
Gotta say though, it's kinda imbalanced that everyone and their mother is wearing steel now.
We just had a horde of 90 corpses coming to siege us. We went out and cut through them like chaff with only minor losses on our side. Each and every one of those corpses was "elite" something wearing multiple pieces of steel equipment for some reason.
So now we got all that salvage from them, that's probably like 2000+ bars of steel. Basically, an unlimited supply for the rest of the game and no more " steel scarcity" immersion.
We had a little adventurer incursion just a month earlier, mostly humans and again, everyone is dressed in superior to masterful steel.
Feels kinda weird how hard it is to manufacture for your dwarves but every human and their corpse is wearing and carrying it in abundance.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Sver on April 28, 2020, 07:41:02 am
So now we got all that salvage from them, that's probably like 2000+ bars of steel. Basically, an unlimited supply for the rest of the game and no more " steel scarcity" immersion.
Indeed, goblinite creates an imbalance in that regard, I'm still figuring ways to counteract that. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to go too much into the other direction either, as even steel equipment will break from time to time and need replacement. Also, there are multiple uses for huge amounts of metal designed for mid-to-late game, such as full plate armors, unbreakable shields, hand ballistas and various steel ammo (mainly war darts to counter forgotten beasts and the like).
Edit: as to why these zombies are all clad in steel, the reason is the necro who raised them apparently comes from some type of human civilization that only uses steel (there are 2 or 3 like that, I recall). The "lore" behind it is that they're on a Late Medieval tech level.
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 28, 2020, 12:35:44 pm
But this is only my personal humble opinion.
Guess I'll try adventurer mode now instead :)
Post by: Sver on April 28, 2020, 01:07:34 pm
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 28, 2020, 03:29:06 pm
I think, only dwarves are Late Medieval, when humans are not.So now we got all that salvage from them, that's probably like 2000+ bars of steel. Basically, an unlimited supply for the rest of the game and no more " steel scarcity" immersion.
Indeed, goblinite creates an imbalance in that regard, I'm still figuring ways to counteract that. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to go too much into the other direction either, as even steel equipment will break from time to time and need replacement. Also, there are multiple uses for huge amounts of metal designed for mid-to-late game, such as full plate armors, unbreakable shields, hand ballistas and various steel ammo (mainly war darts to counter forgotten beasts and the like).
Edit: as to why these zombies are all clad in steel, the reason is the necro who raised them apparently comes from some type of human civilization that only uses steel (there are 2 or 3 like that, I recall). The "lore" behind it is that they're on a Late Medieval tech level.
Post by: Sver on April 28, 2020, 03:58:05 pm
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on April 28, 2020, 04:22:39 pm
Vanilla DF is abstractly up to mid 14th century, as there's no full plate, but the metallurgy is all over the place. Either way, "tactical civs" in my mod got their own themes and accompanying tech levels.In vanilla DF dwarves caped to absctract 14th century, when humans has lower tech level than dwarves.
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 29, 2020, 02:42:24 am
What if I go to the new Human/Goblin entity files and delete:
[PERMITTED_REACTION:STEEL_MAKING]
[PERMITTED_REACTION:TEMPERED_STEEL_MAKING_SVER] =SVER_METALREWORK=
[PERMITTED_REACTION:TEMPERED_STEEL_MAKING_FLUX_SVER] =SVER_METALREWORK=
from each one of them that have it. Is it gonna make them use bronze/iron instead of steel but keep them as designed otherwise?
New world and new game of course.
Also, a bit of a feedback on metals. I think it could make sense to reduce grease requirements for Iron a bit. Cause right now, it's arguably MORE expensive to make than Steel, if you have flux on your map. it requires twice as much grease as steel (made with flux), and acquiring tallow for grease takes significantly more effort than just collecting bayberries or burning more charcoal from wood. Therefore I just skip Iron without even considering it. Wouldn't it be better to set it's grease requirement to 2 buckets per smelt, down from 4, same as steel?
Bronze is more balanced in this regards because it requires mostly different resources to make and can perfectly co-exist with iron/steel in your manufacture plan.
Post by: Sver on April 29, 2020, 05:31:58 am
What if I go to the new Human/Goblin entity files and delete:
[PERMITTED_REACTION:STEEL_MAKING]
[PERMITTED_REACTION:TEMPERED_STEEL_MAKING_SVER] =SVER_METALREWORK=
[PERMITTED_REACTION:TEMPERED_STEEL_MAKING_FLUX_SVER] =SVER_METALREWORK=
from each one of them that have it. Is it gonna make them use bronze/iron instead of steel but keep them as designed otherwise?
As long as you keep an eye on them having at least these also:
[PERMITTED_REACTION:VINEGAR_MAKING_PLANT_SVER] =SVER_METALREWORK=
[PERMITTED_REACTION:WROUGHT_IRON_MAKING_SVER] =SVER_METALREWORK=
Since raw metals in Full Edition cannot be used for stuff.
Also, they will become less dangerous than designed, but that's on you ;)
Also, a bit of a feedback on metals. I think it could make sense to reduce grease requirements for Iron a bit. Cause right now, it's arguably MORE expensive to make than Steel, if you have flux on your map. it requires twice as much grease as steel (made with flux), and acquiring tallow for grease takes significantly more effort than just collecting bayberries or burning more charcoal from wood. Therefore I just skip Iron without even considering it. Wouldn't it be better to set it's grease requirement to 2 buckets per smelt, down from 4, same as steel?
Originally I made it this way because, theoretically, you can run an iron industry entirely while turtling, but steel requires some sort of contact with the surface (trade, bees or collecting berries). However, I think you're right in that it probably should be cheaper than the cheapest way to make steel. On the other hand, even with flux steel requires 1 sack of coal per bar more, which is arguably a higher expense than grease.
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 29, 2020, 06:39:19 am
If by turtling you mean locking yourself away from the surface completely with invasions unable to reach you, IMO that's cheap. And shouldn't be a factor in balancing things like metal costs. Idk if it's considered a viable strategy in DF community but to me it's just an exploit. They will hopefully teach invaders how to dig, eventually :D
And on the grease matter. From my experience with the new metal industry you introduced, grease is the most valuable element of the whole system. Everything else you can get in larger amounts by just throwing more workforce at certain tasks. Coal is nothing but an amount of trees you can chop, collect and burn. Bags you need to put it in can be ordered and brought with the second dwarven caravan by the hundreds. While grease means tallow, and for tallow you need to kill animals, which you usually don't have an unlimited amount of on your map.
Edit: Ah wait, there is also oil. I don't farm often hence why my experience is as such. But still, farming for oil producing products strikes me as more effort than just chopping trees.
P.S. Steel with flux requires 0.5 sacks of coal more per bar if your "new metals.png" table doesn't lie :)
Post by: Sver on April 29, 2020, 07:16:15 am
Not to mention those enemy civs that didnt have steel to begin with, ain't that so?
Well, those are specifically designed to be weaker :D
But yeah, it's not that big of a deal probably, just lowers the importance of anti-steel weapons.
If by turtling you mean locking yourself away from the surface completely with invasions unable to reach you, IMO that's cheap. And shouldn't be a factor in balancing things like metal costs. Idk if it's considered a viable strategy in DF community but to me it's just an exploit.
There are some less exploity ways, such as using destructable blockades (doors, floodgates, grates), which I view as a fair game. But you're right in that I probably shouldn't focus much on it.
P.S. Steel with flux requires 0.5 sacks of coal more per bar if your "new metals.png" table doesn't lie
...Right. Should've said "per reaction".
Post by: Vulpes_Inculta on April 29, 2020, 07:28:30 am
If the answer is yes it can, but the details contain adventuring spoilers, please don't go into details :D :D
Post by: Sver on April 29, 2020, 07:46:55 am
Post by: Mim on May 14, 2020, 02:30:51 pm
So a long while ago I planned to make a The Lord of the Rings mod for Dwarf Fortress. However, I was way over my head and overly ambitious, as I was still relatively new to Dwarf Fortress. With summer coming up, I am going to resume work on the mod.
Anyway, in your mod scimitars are of a size that only large dwarves can wield them. In Tolkien's books (not the movies), orcs are small, certainly smaller than dwarves, for 2 chief reasons:
- Frodo and Sam, who are hobbits, were able to disguise themselves convincingly as orcs
- A an orc-chieftain who is described as huge for an orc is also described as being almost man-high, which means even the biggest orcs aren't as tall as men
So I am going to be using goblin-size creatures for orcs. Now in Tolkien's books orcs also wield scimitars and shields, but they certainly won't be able to do so because of the size of scimitars in this mod. Is it possible you could add a smaller scimitar to the mod, in addition to the current scimitar? This would make sense because historically one-handed scimitars did exist—the word "scimitar" encompasses a wide variety of swords.
Post by: Mim on May 14, 2020, 02:31:40 pm
Hello!Oh oops, I forgot to make this clear: I really love your mod and hope to integrate it with the The Lord of the Rings mod.
So a long while ago I planned to make a The Lord of the Rings mod for Dwarf Fortress. However, I was way over my head and overly ambitious, as I was still relatively new to Dwarf Fortress. With summer coming up, I am going to resume work on the mod.
Anyway, in your mod scimitars are of a size that only large dwarves can wield them. In Tolkien's books (not the movies), orcs are small, certainly smaller than dwarves, for 2 chief reasons:
- Frodo and Sam, who are hobbits, were able to disguise themselves convincingly as orcs
- A an orc-chieftain who is described as huge for an orc is also described as being almost man-high, which means even the biggest orcs aren't as tall as men
So I am going to be using goblin-size creatures for orcs. Now in Tolkien's books orcs also wield scimitars and shields, but they certainly won't be able to do so because of the size of scimitars in this mod. Is it possible you could add a smaller scimitar to the mod? This would make sense because historically one-handed scimitars did exist—the word "scimitar" encompasses a wide variety of swords.
Post by: Sver on May 14, 2020, 11:46:30 pm
In the mod, the war knife is essentially the smaller, one-handed version of the scimitar, both being swords designed for "swift, but shallow cuts". Whilst integrating, you can simply rename it. Alternatively, you can edit the scimitar's TWO_HANDED and MINIMUN_SIZE values to your liking - there are no side effects from it.
Post by: Mim on May 15, 2020, 08:45:10 am
Post by: Thuellai on May 16, 2020, 07:32:34 am
Also, while I get the logic behind reducing the value of old iron and steel in the full rework, it leads to some odd situations. Mild steel remains reasonably complex to produce, but is a worse material for crafts than a lot of other materials that are much easier to gather/have fewer practical uses than the components of mild steel, leaving pretty much no reason to produce it over any other available flavor of crafting material.
Post by: Sver on May 16, 2020, 09:30:37 am
For hunters, you can bring some wood (if none is on the map) and make ranged weapons out of that. Otherwise, bring and slaughter some cheap animals and make those out of bone. Both are cheaper options that stay within the mod's balance.
As for trade balance, I agree that enough spam can override it in practice, but I had to fair out the product values with the required amount of labor somehow. I wish I could edit item trade values directly, but that's just not an option, unfortunately. So right now it's simply balanced along the lines of "how much more metal bars the modded items take compared to vanilla counterparts?"
It also ties into the whole gamey abstraction thing going on in the mod. I'm not as set on the simulation aspect as Toady is, so the physically outrageous amounts of bars (compared to vanilla, and what a metal bar is supposed to represent in it) - and, by extention, their trade values - are not meant to be taken literally (e.g. "a wrought iron ingot is more valuable than a gold ingot"), but rather as an abstraction of the required labor, tools, measures and future maintenance for the end product(s) these bars are made into.
With mild steel specifically, its role in the Full Edition is a placeholder for now. I just arbitrarily made it cheaper, because it became kinda useless. I'll probably try to find some new and reasonable implementation for it in the future and rebalance the values and creation process along with that.
Post by: Thuellai on May 16, 2020, 12:42:31 pm
Post by: Dubya on May 26, 2020, 07:59:47 pm
Also, thanks for the mod, it's great
Post by: Sver on May 27, 2020, 02:54:18 am
Quote
my sling bullets were glancing off of unarmored goblin heads and getting stopped by their tattered clothes
What is the material of the bullets?
Also, sling bullets are a weaker ammo type overall, they have multiple "failure attacks", which are most likely what these glancing off hits are. That's to counterbalance the fact that slings are cheaper than crossbows, and sling ammo can be made from all sorts of throwaway materials.
Quote
Pretty much all the ammo is super small, too small to do any damage.
Ammo is designed to be only really good in large quantities shot, but the proper types of ammo do well against what they're intended to do well against.
If you want more damage, go for war darts or broadhead bolts. For more armor-piercing go for piercing/hammerhead bolts. Also, as usual, the better is the metal used, the better the performance.
Quote
Also, I don't think bayberries are the only way you should be able to craft tempered steel, as not every embark will have them.
Bayberries are an alternative to beekeeping here, which is the main focus and is the intended soft-lock on steel availability, similar to flux in vanilla (now that flux is not a hard requirement). However, I will probably make some deep cavern shroom into a waxable substance in the future.
Post by: DeedsOfFlesh on May 29, 2020, 11:37:49 am
Im using the Meph tileset and i think it has a couple mods that are conflicting or maybe i just am doing something wrong. The issue is my dwarves have no pants at spawn XD and there are no pants at all. anywhere. Combat takes forever, even longer.
What i did was drag the text files into dwarf fortress raw objects and then put the for civs/entity default/ entity default.txt into dwarf fortress raw objects entity default.txt.
I overwrote everything and the game works fine, just i have 0 ways of making pants and combat takes way way too long, even longer than before, so im just asking for any tips/help of maybe doing something wrong.
Post by: Mim on May 29, 2020, 12:40:01 pm
Hey there, i downloaded the standalone version of this modWell, the lack of pants is because Sver removed pants (due to a bug in vanilla). Pants have been replaced with belts.
Im using the Meph tileset and i think it has a couple mods that are conflicting or maybe i just am doing something wrong. The issue is my dwarves have no pants at spawn XD and there are no pants at all. anywhere. Combat takes forever, even longer.
What i did was drag the text files into dwarf fortress raw objects and then put the for civs/entity default/ entity default.txt into dwarf fortress raw objects entity default.txt.
I overwrote everything and the game works fine, just i have 0 ways of making pants and combat takes way way too long, even longer than before, so im just asking for any tips/help of maybe doing something wrong.
"* Legwear has been reworked to account for the Bug 10784. All non-metal pants were removed from entity usage and replaced by belts to prevent soldiers from loosing their pants in combat (no joke): belts can be made from any armor/clothing-grade material, including metal, and their low blockchance prevents them from getting damaged too often. Some bodywear types now cover legs as a replacement for pants."
As for combat taking longer, it's probably a feature of the mod. "Combat is just too fast and random to follow what's going on?"
All quotes taken from - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170474.msg7747513#msg7747513
Also, you have indeed installed the mod correctly.
On another note, I do have a complaint for Sver: the metallurgy flowchart posted on Imgur is too blurry for me to read, unless I'm doing something wrong. A higher-resolution flowchart would make me very happy :D
Post by: DeedsOfFlesh on May 30, 2020, 01:16:49 pm
Post by: Sver on June 02, 2020, 11:56:17 am
On another note, I do have a complaint for Sver: the metallurgy flowchart posted on Imgur is too blurry for me to read, unless I'm doing something wrong. A higher-resolution flowchart would make me very happy
Hey! Sorry for the late reply, and thanks for stepping up for me a bit there :D
As for your problem, imgur has that tendency to change direct image links into indirect ones. Try right click > open image in new tab; that should give you full resolution.
Post by: fest88 on June 07, 2020, 01:53:11 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Ziusudra on June 07, 2020, 04:37:40 am
Post by: Mim on September 22, 2020, 06:45:56 pm
Post by: Sver on September 23, 2020, 03:38:15 am
Hi Sver. I can't make any armor or weapons out of mild steel, as far as I can tell. Is this intended?
Hi!
Yes, in the Full edition, mild steel is basically "decorative" steel, for magma-proof blocks, crafts, furniture and such, that can be made with fairly undemanding reactions.
Here are the military-grade metals:
Quote
-- Rusty iron is light, brittle, with very poor edge; implying a work-hardened iron that has corroded overtime, thus, it's a bit tougher, although less sharp than vanilla iron. Very cheap, intended mainly for embark items. It cannot be made into ranged weapons or armor.
-- Wrought iron is still brittle and with poor edge compared to tempered steel, but is cheaper. Good for mail, hacking/stabbing weapons and piercing ammo. All-purpose.
-- Hardened bronze is dense, hard, with decent edge and durability, but dependent on trading for tin/copper. Good for high-impact weapons/ammo, and small armorpieces. All-purpose.
-- Tempered steel is durable, flexible, with good edge, but very costly to make. Good for everything. It cannot be made into mining picks.
Post by: Burneddi on October 15, 2020, 06:34:28 pm
I've probably asked this before and gotten an answer, but is there some reason the suggested tweaks stuff isn't just the default? It's a bit annoying to do by hand, and especially the profession names and enemy buffs seem pretty reasonable to me!
Post by: Sver on October 15, 2020, 07:41:33 pm
Here's my biennial post thanking you for this awesome mod :-)
Thank you!
It's been two years, huh... Two and a half even. A wild ride, when you frame it like this. I really gotta return to developing this mod, so much progress can be achieved in so little time :P
I've probably asked this before and gotten an answer, but is there some reason the suggested tweaks stuff isn't just the default? It's a bit annoying to do by hand, and especially the profession names and enemy buffs seem pretty reasonable to me!
It's just that I have always considered them somewhat controversial.
To talk about the profession names specifically, the modded names can obfuscate the default ones, making connecting skills to weapons less intuitive for those who try to get into the mod while using as little documentation as possible. It's a criss-cross reason with why/how the Features section refers to default profession names, when mentioned, and weapon list categorizing Lasher (aka Flailsman) weapons as "lash" type.
Another reason is the whole merging compatibility shtick I'm still trying to maintain. Having the tweak layed out like that allows the player to easily add it into whatever modded creature files they are using.
It would be reasonable, however, to at least add an optional folder with creature_standard.txt where the tweak is applied in the Standalone version; and include it in the Light Edition by default. Marked that on my to-do list!
As for enemy buffs and goblin ambushes, I really think that's just not many a player's cup of tea. There's a good reason Toady removed ambushing from the goblin civs. Meanwhile, skill buffs are not without their oddities, such as histfigs getting mismatched or incomplete equipment oftentimes due to accidentally majoring in multiple weapon skills, or a skill their civ doesn't actually make weapons for, which they acquire as an adventurer; there's also the whole exploitable dissonance between dwarves and other civilized races which is its own can of worms. More obviously, they can make the game much harsher, which is not the mod's core intent - that just being more fun and balanced combat. If I could, I would do away with the enemy skill buffs altogether in favor of handicaping player militia grinding, but with the current tools such as they are, that solution is unfortunately worse. The gist is that the mod's features are actually at their best in low skill on low skill fights, because DF's high skills throw all balance and laws of physics out of the window. But high skill on high skill is the next best thing, because it's symmetrical at least.
Post by: Burneddi on October 28, 2020, 05:26:32 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/NdG2fP9.png)
Post by: Sver on October 28, 2020, 05:43:49 pm
I can bring siege onagers as animals on embark
Intended behavior.
a migrant brought one as a pet
Not intended behavior!
I guess it does no harm though? They aren't particularly powerful if anything; at worst, stray siege onagers may arrive and be sold at a small fortune, but the same goes for visitor equipment and the goddamned shields.
I don't think it is possible to ban migrant pet "siege pieces" specifically. Banning them from being pets as a whole will probably remove them from the embark screen and might have other unintended consequences.
Post by: khripunoff on November 13, 2020, 06:37:19 pm
Code: [Select]
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_SCOUT_ARMS_SVER] anti-beast
[NAME:scout arms:scout arms]
[SIZE:240]
[SKILL:SWORD]
[RANGED:CROSSBOW:ARROW]
Is arrow use intentional here? This is the only occurrence of [RANGED:CROSSBOW:ARROW] , all other crossbows are [RANGED:CROSSBOW:BOLT]
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on November 13, 2020, 07:56:34 pm
You can make onagers that embarkable but aren't pets. Make them EVIL and SLOW_LEARNER, so you get them and also trolls.I can bring siege onagers as animals on embark
Intended behavior.a migrant brought one as a pet
Not intended behavior!
I guess it does no harm though? They aren't particularly powerful if anything; at worst, stray siege onagers may arrive and be sold at a small fortune, but the same goes for visitor equipment and the goddamned shields.
I don't think it is possible to ban migrant pet "siege pieces" specifically. Banning them from being pets as a whole will probably remove them from the embark screen and might have other unintended consequences.
Post by: Sver on November 14, 2020, 03:49:59 am
Is arrow use intentional here? This is the only occurrence of [RANGED:CROSSBOW:ARROW] , all other crossbows are [RANGED:CROSSBOW:BOLT]
Nope, that's an error. Thanks for reporting!
You can make onagers that embarkable but aren't pets. Make them EVIL and SLOW_LEARNER, so you get them and also trolls.
Sounds like a solution. I'll try it out, thank you :)
Post by: Burneddi on November 15, 2020, 04:14:25 am
I'm digging it, but I must say I ended up editing it a little to remove the parts that permanently consume bags/buckets/barrels so they just don't require a container. I'm assuming it's a technical limitation that they're consumed for the recipe, but nonetheless I didn't like it eating all my bags :-).
Post by: ANickel on January 18, 2021, 07:50:43 pm
I'd love to use this, I have fond memories of it from previous playthroughs but I want to make sure it will work well before I pull the trigger.
Post by: Sver on January 19, 2021, 02:44:29 pm
I'm digging it, but I must say I ended up editing it a little to remove the parts that permanently consume bags/buckets/barrels so they just don't require a container. I'm assuming it's a technical limitation that they're consumed for the recipe, but nonetheless I didn't like it eating all my bags :-).
Yeah, multi-reaction tracking of the reagent is impossible; and the way it works is inteded to simulate the containers being used in further maintenance of the equipment, rather than them being eaten by the smelter right away, which is a game's limitation. It is a form of "inventory management", however, so I understand some people may find it bothersome.
If I use this mod with a tileset like Vettlingers will it automatically assign backup-tiles to the items present in the mod or will they be represented by ASCII?
I'd love to use this, I have fond memories of it from previous playthroughs but I want to make sure it will work well before I pull the trigger.
I only ever tried an older version of Vettlingr's tileset, back when it had no weapon graphics yet, so I don't know for sure. His tileset is professionally made though, so I assume it will use some sort of default weapon tile for all non-vanilla weapons - and likewise for armor.
Post by: Sver on January 29, 2021, 11:59:08 pm
Post by: Wokko on April 18, 2021, 10:47:39 pm
edit: ok, I've read the installation section, it says they are fully compatible in crossed out text, but then that Revised mod is out of date. By "relevant changes included in the mod" do you mean scratches/bites are removed, velocities for humanoids are halved, etc?
Post by: Sver on April 19, 2021, 03:36:32 am
Post by: Wokko on April 19, 2021, 04:25:24 am
Quote
- This mod doesn't deal with unarmed combat in any way, although there's room for it in the future. DF Revised deals with it to some extent and I highly recommend to install it first. When Revised is not up to date, my mod will come packaged with its unarmed rebalance for civilized creatures at least.Could you always include these combat changes by default please? And not only when DF Revised is out of date. I liked those features from Revised (no bites, half velocity), but don't really like all the other features from there.
Your mod is great, thanks for your work.
Post by: Sver on April 19, 2021, 06:38:25 am
Post by: DeedsOfFlesh on April 23, 2021, 04:59:45 pm
Post by: Sver on April 25, 2021, 02:30:51 am
Post by: PFEnthusiast on June 07, 2021, 01:33:04 pm
I do have a question, which may or may not have already been answered - when multiple goblin factions siege at the same time they tend to fight each other. Is there a way to prevent that?
Post by: Sver on June 08, 2021, 03:02:08 am
I suspect it's the [ETHIC:KILL_NEUTRAL:REQUIRED] in their entity raws which is the culprit - if so, changing it to [ETHIC:KILL_NEUTRAL:ACCEPTABLE] might help (will not have any effect on an existing save though). Otherwise, this might be related to the goblin infighting bug - it's similar in nature to the loyalty cascade issues, iirc that's something Toady is looking into.
There's also a possibility that their nations are simply at war with each other, in which case that's the expected behavior.
Post by: DwarfStar on June 14, 2021, 03:17:32 pm
I also had a great time playing around with all the armor types. I've got all my units kitted out in masterwork steel: padded coif/full helm/circlet, padded armor/cuirass/mail cape/paudrons, belt/mail skirt/lower plate/tassets, full arm defense/arm plate, and greaves. I like to picture them like bipedal tanks.
But, I have had a couple of issues. The reward for making steel has been soured by the tremendous amount of steel being dumped on my battlefield by the local goblin tribes. I nearly always get two goblin invasions at the same time, who kill each other before they even bother to attack my fort. I saw someone else mention this issue in this thread. I checked, and they are not at war in my game. But the balance problem they present is that they leave massive piles of steel armor and weapons lying around every time.
I've played this fort for 17 years. Every bar of steel I made locally, I made with a manager job, so I can count them easily in my game log. 306. Meanwhile, I have 6117 bars of steel after making more armor and weapons than I'll ever need. Plus, I drastically slowed my melting in the last decade or so since the bar stockpile was overflowing. I have no idea how much steel I have in total, but I have over 100 of each kind of crude steel armor waiting to melt. I might have more then 10000 bars of steel, so I've managed to produce less than 3% of the steel that I own. So if there is a way to get the other civs to stop bringing so much steel to sieges, that would have made the few steel I managed to produce a lot more meaningful and precious.
Another problem is that the humans that joined my fort are a bit...odd. The strangest thing is that quite a few of them are extremely old, like over 110 years. I let a few of them join my fort but I get tired of them dying of old age shortly afterwards. But, all of them, even the centenarians, are ridiculously good fighters. With the bonuses they get to training military skills, they blow all my dwarf units out of the water. Plus, most of them started with legendary skill in various military skills when they emigrated. So, that's taken a bit of fun out of training my squads, because it feels like such a slog compared to training up a squad of humans. It seems like you were trying to give the humans a buff to add challenge, but now with the update where we can have human soldiers ourselves, it's having the opposite of its intended effect.
One last niggle is that it seems weird that it takes fuel to boil bayberries into wax. None of the other "cooking" reactions like making drinks at a still require fuel, so this seemed unintuitive.
Post by: Iliithid on September 25, 2021, 02:37:30 pm
Post by: Immortal-D on October 02, 2021, 02:58:13 pm
Edit: After further testing, the culprit is likely my hard drive.
Post by: Orkel on December 16, 2022, 08:24:20 am
Post by: Sver on December 18, 2022, 05:59:07 am
So if there is a way to get the other civs to stop bringing so much steel to sieges, that would have made the few steel I managed to produce a lot more meaningful and precious.
Yeah, it's a problem I did not figure out how to resolve yet. Even with reduced smelting yields from goblinite, there's just too many goblins to plunder from. I don't think I can really address this in vanilla-ish DF, other than making steel just as easily available to the player or removing well-equipped goblin/human civs entirely and leaving full steel plate as some sort of late game player privilege.
In the "Conceptually Better Mod" (working title) that I am working on at a snail's pace, everything will be much smaller in scale, which should probably make the disparity between the highly-detailed and demanding process of metallurgy and enemy loot much less egregious. There won't be hordes of goblins clad in free steel that they got from Armok knows where.
Another problem is that the humans that joined my fort are a bit...odd. The strangest thing is that quite a few of them are extremely old, like over 110 years. I let a few of them join my fort but I get tired of them dying of old age shortly afterwards.
This is just DF being DF as far as I'm aware, not really something the mod affects. Humans can live up to 120 years, and the game seems to have a bit of a bias towards making historical figures live as long as possible.
But, all of them, even the centenarians, are ridiculously good fighters. With the bonuses they get to training military skills, they blow all my dwarf units out of the water. Plus, most of them started with legendary skill in various military skills when they emigrated. So, that's taken a bit of fun out of training my squads, because it feels like such a slog compared to training up a squad of humans. It seems like you were trying to give the humans a buff to add challenge, but now with the update where we can have human soldiers ourselves, it's having the opposite of its intended effect.
No, this is very much intended, albeit, unsophisticated solution to the problem of player militia typically blowing the rest of the world out of the water with their grinded skills. Goblins received the same buff. As far as human residents go, the intention was very much to encourage accepting mercenary petitions; what's with humans requiring custom-made armor and other resident-type initial babysitting, I felt like the player had zero reason to bother with the mercenaries in vanilla, as they were otherwise but glorified migrants with a wait period. With the buff, they also play neatly into the obscure DF feature of highly-skilled soldiers training their squadmates a lot faster, so the intention was that the player puts each of their mercenaries into newbie squads to get legendary militias faster. As far as my old testing goes, it took ~4 to ~4.5 years to train a squad of 10 Dabbling Axedwarves into Legendary Axedwarves, but it only took 1 year to train a second squad of 9 Dabbling Axedwarves with a Legendary Axedwarf captain borrowed from the first squad.
Basically, what I was trying to achieve was making combat more fair to all non-player-citizens, be they invaders, mercenaries or caravan guards. Since player-citizens' combat skills inevitably gravitate towards Legendary everything, I've decided to make everyone gravitate towards Legendary everything, with player-citizens gravitating there even more rapidly to keep up with invaders' buffs.
In the "Conceptually Better Mod", I'm still messing around with alternate solutions to this problem. It is likely that I will keep the buffs roughly as they are (since skill increase is inevitable, and slowing the skill gain on a playable race specifically instead causes a lot of problems in worldgen), but all creatures indiscriminately will suffer a skill-reduction effect in combat. So, instead of "fair, as everyone is absurdly skilled" it shall be "fair, as everyone is somewhat skilled to a varying degree" - this has the added benefit of further making combat less randomly deadly with ridiculously precise and overpowered hits, as was in the goals of the mod to being with.
One last niggle is that it seems weird that it takes fuel to boil bayberries into wax. None of the other "cooking" reactions like making drinks at a still require fuel, so this seemed unintuitive.
Agreed. This was just some of the future concepts seeping into the original mod. The reasoning I was using was that DF dishes are not necessarily cooked over fire (most of them are just salads), so the question of fuel was left ambiguous - but, there is no such ambiguity when it comes to boiling bayberries, we are absolutely certain that would require heat. Either way, if I was making it today as part of the Combat Reworked, I wouldn't make it require fuel, but oh well.
In the "Conceptually Better Mod", it will most definitely require fuel, but with what I have planned for the rest of the production rework, it should not appear as unintuitive.
I'm all for more difficulty, but did the first contact I ever had with the goblins have to be an elite crossbowman killteam wearing full plate when I'm struggling to make a few bars of iron? Seems like it encourages turtling even more than vanilla would.
The way invaders work is something I've wrestled with a lot, but never truly resolved. I've tried to set it so well-equipped goblin civs only attack the player if they have 80+ pop and a lot of wealth, but I'm not sure if it's working properly, and either way it's not communicated well to the player. It's even worse with necromancers unfortunately - embarks with towers are borderline unplayable in some generated worlds.
Has anyone gotten this working on 47.05? I wouldn't think there would be a significant difference, but copying just the raws will crash on embark.
No, it would take manually editing at least (iirc) the entity raws (maybe some others too), because there were some stealth edits in them.
Are the gear reactions for normal iron & steel supposed to be available using the Lite version? I have the 'military metallurgy' menu for the new stuff, but also the normal iron-pig iron-steel.
Yes, it's available in Lite, as it includes the default part of the Metal Rework, e.g.:
Quote
- New metals: rusty iron, wrought iron and hardened bronze. Dwarven steel has been removed, and tempered steel has been adapted into the new metals' balance.
- All metals (except rusty iron) have their Shear (edged resistance) values set to that of tempered steel, but their Impact (blunt resistance), Sharpness (edged power) and other values vary. This sets a better balance for armor penetration, preventing "gamey" oddities such as steel cutting through work-hardened bronze plate. Also, none of them can be made into crafts or such, their only civilian uses being constructions and tools.
-- Rusty iron is light, brittle, with very poor edge; implying a work-hardened iron that has corroded overtime, thus, it's a bit tougher, although less sharp than vanilla iron. Very cheap, intended mainly for embark items. It cannot be made into ranged weapons or armor.
-- Wrought iron is still brittle and with poor edge compared to tempered steel, but is cheaper. Good for mail, hacking/stabbing weapons and piercing ammo. All-purpose.
-- Hardened bronze is dense, hard, with decent edge and durability, but dependent on trading for tin/copper. Good for high-impact weapons/ammo, and small armorpieces. All-purpose.
-- Tempered steel is durable, flexible, with good edge, but very costly to make. Good for everything. It cannot be made into mining picks.
- New metals have much more elaborate creation processes, requiring multiple industries be involved. Here's a crappy mspaint flowchart.
-- Wrought iron and tempered steel take a lot more coal per bar than hardened bronze, as theire creation process requires higher temperature and multiple reheatings. They also both need "maintenance materials" (grease and wax as water-repellents and lubricants, vinegar and sand as rust remedies), with wrought iron being more needy in amount, although not being dependent on wax, unlike tempered steel.
-- Tempered steel takes additional coal to increase carbon content.
-- Hardened bronze needs molds to be cast into, taking 3 mold parts per bar, but does not require any maintenance.
- New ore: bog iron. Idea credit to Warlord255.
-- Can be found in veins in some aquifer-bearing topsoils. "Deep Soil", "Light Aquifer", "Shallow Metal(s)" and the absence of "Sand" is a good four-point indicator that a location has bog iron. Veins can sometimes surface out of the ground, but otherwise require prospecting through the aquifer. Open quarries with drains are recommended for easier mining.
-- Smelts into 4 rusty iron bars (at 100% chance) and 0-4 iron bars (at 88% chance).
-- Very heavy. Wheelbarrows/minecarts recommended for transportation. Caravans are unlikely to bring it.
- Anvils can now be made at the Smelter.
Why not just make a normal steel weapon instead of tempered?
It's convoluted, but basically, all modded metals are better than vanilla metals. Even the mod's rusty iron is better than vanilla iron. Tempered steel is definitively better than steel.
Any plans to update this mod for Steam release (currently 50.03)? This was a great mod for combat balance and equipment variety.
It's bound to happen in some form eventually, as I am enjoying Steam DF immensely, but not for it's combat and military design, as usual; I miss Combat Reworked. The trouble is, modding is a lot more complicated now: the raws are still the same, but hell if I understand the new raw-loading system and the Steam Workshop and all that, and there's also graphics now, which ostensibly need to be set manually for every new object the mod adds in. It certainly feels like I'm better off starting from the ground up, following the concepts of what I have for the future mod, rather than trying to port the original Combat Reworked to Steam more or less as is. So, what I'm saying is, eventually my rebalance stuff will exist on Steam, not as lean and clean as it is now, but free to be extracted and reused by other modders if they so wish.
Post by: Stimraug on January 26, 2023, 04:06:57 am
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=181285.0