> > Concrete
> I'd considered 1.5 out per boulder instead of 1.25, but part of my rebelled against breaking away from the nice multiples of 5.
My proposal was 30 concrete per 4 rock and 1 flux, but it would mean 7.5 furniture per reaction. In any case, even the four blocks per rock that we have now isn't bad, considering it is a batch job, but the concrete output should be bumped. If for no other reason than to compensate that we are using Flux for it.
> > > Expedition output based on skill level
> > You'd need a custom script
> Mind pointing me to any documentation there is?
I don't really know of any. Ask Putman.
If itemsyndrome is possible, this script would be too. What you'd have to do is periodically check the skill levels of all ponies / dwarves and give them syndromes based on those levels. For simplicity it's best to use only the best syndrome, combine skills (one syndrome progression for all weapon skills) and stick to four levels: none (no syndrome), Proficient, Accomplished, Legendary.
Once those syndromes are present on ponies / dwarves, expedition (and other) interactions can check for them, but that's more work on Lycaenon's part. Considering how big the expedition files are already, I'm not surprised by his lack of enthusiasm. As for surviving ponies, his current todo list has checking for power armour, battle saddle or maybe just SHEILD_ADEPT / SHIELD_APPRENTICE and decreasing lethality for them.
If you manage to complete this script, it and it's variants will be useful for other things, for example Meph would probably be happy to make his guilds only accept dwarves of certain skill level.
> Expedition map reuse rate.
Too low in my opinion, but it is an uninformed opinion of someone who never got the resources to get the interrogations and expeditions to work.
> > Clear Diamond hologems
> Ministry of Awesome high energy workbench with a reaction [...] to make a synthetic diamond? Already done IRL using methane gas as a carbon feedstock and microwave emitters to turn the feedstock into carbon plasma.
IRL only a thin layer of diamond can be made and diamond gems are not on the table. Like Lycaeon said, I don't think the ponies would be this good at making artificial gems.
> Seeded rock farming? Seed gem + boulders = 1 seed gem + possible more of the same type.
Now you might be onto something. Although the rock grinding kinda simulates rock farming already, a separate chain of labour-intensive reactions (like the MLP mod research) to get diamonds would be preferable to just finding them in random rocks.
> We're already putting noted on data hologems, why not just take the 4 design note hologems, add one more blank one and some wiring, and call it good?
Not really. Let's just say that to hold a pattern for making magical microprocessors, you need a really good quality gem. T4 gems are pretty much the only thing that will do in-fluff.
> flux carnisters
I'm pretty sure you can make flux blocks and use them in reactions. Introducing flux carnisters would introduce the same problems as plywood did. Maybe we should just use wooden blocks instead of plywood too.
> If yes, what's the ETA on the next edition? If not, what would you like your gravestone to say?
Lol, now that's kind of a mean thing to say, don't you think? I actually prefer bigger releases, more spaced apart and with a few minor bug fix releases in-between. This gives us the time to run forts and report bugs. Just look at the game itself: whenever it comes out, people abandon their old forts and jump at the new version. Then there are some bug-fixing releases, tools have to update and dust has to settle. After that there are community games and tool updates for months. It actually works out that major releases of DF are no more often than once a year and Toady keeps us hyped by his blog in the meantime.
> Nice work on the shotguns; they'll work well as light battle saddle armament. The only question is their source; the wastelanders can sell them, but should Stables have them from the outset?
Actually this gives us more than just shotguns. We can have dual miniguns: fire two or more bullets at once.
We can also have burst weapons. Put a syndrome on the assault rifle (all kinds) with itemsyndrome. Then have a reaction that consumes a stack of medium ammo and gives the pony 5 "burst 5" interactions that expire in 10(0?) years, have wait period of 10(0?) years (or maybe there is a better way to do one-shot interactions), need the syndrome from the assault rifle to work, use a cooldown syndrome, like the time spells and spray the enemy with 5 medium calibre bullets. Hail of metal! Great for defence if this would trigger only on short distance, like 3-6 tiles.
As for shotguns themselves, I have many more questions than that.
1) How many pellets should there be? Wikipedia says "The most commonly produced buckshot shell is a 12 gauge, 00 buck shell that holds 9 pellets." and "For instances, loads of 12 gauge, 00 buck are commonly available in 8 to 18 pellets", so I guess 8, 9 or 10 pellets work.
2) How do we get rid of all those pellets on the map? With shotguns the problem is multiplied over just robots and turrets.
3) How lethal should the pellets be? I think they should at least have a chance of piercing the skin, but that would make small calibre ammo less attractive.
4) How to obtain them and whether we need schematics for production. Well, some crates should have them of course and we could buy them, but if we need schematics for rifles and can't even make hunting rifles, then it depends on what kind of shotguns we want to have: If double-barrel, then no schematics should be required, as we can already make pistols. If the ones with 5 or so shells in a magazine, then a schematics should be needed. In any case, they shouldn't be available at embark.
5) How much resources per battle saddle? Minigun uses 3 steel for the minigun itself and 14 steel, gunpowder and brass for the bullets (that's assuming the ranged squads won't claim them first, but the work-around is to only assign them bronze and iron bullets). In my opinion a shotgun battle saddle (or turret) should use about 1/3 to 1/2 of that to make, otherwise shotguns won't be an attractive option. Furthermore replace steel with bronze and possibly brass with plastics for ammo.
This brings us to 4 steel for shotguns (let's say the saddle uses two shotguns and not 4), 5-10 bronze, 4-8 gunpowder and 4-8 plastics for ammo. This (especially bronze instead of steel) makes it an attractive option for mass production, but the gunpowder requirements are still there to not make it overshadow pistols and rifles.
I want to be able to afford 10-20 shotgun saddles for my entire military, but the lower damage and range on pellets will still keep me using rifles and AMRs.
6) Should there be "shotgun shell crates"? Probably.
7) How many shotguns per battle saddle, how much shots before reload and how long the reload? I copied much of this stuff from other battle saddles, but it probably needs more thought. 4 5-shooters for 20 shoots in rapid succession every 600 TUs would still make sense in-fluff, but otherwise be a total overkill. I'm not so sure if spacing the bursts every 200 TUs was such a good idea either. Shotguns should probably be about firing all at once, then going melee to finish off the enemy. Or maybe I'm wrong.
> > Well, an alternative would be to target all friendlies with healing spells that boost their recuperation, doing this often, indiscriminately and without any ill effects, like in Regen mod.
> That sounds a bit too powerful for my tastes.
Which is why I'm not strongly objected to the current system, even though I grumble at the inconvenience.
> > Ministry crates (plus ironshod/clad, robronco, and stable-tec) should have a chance of dropping notes that can be combined into a ministry specific expedition map.
> I was thinking memory orbs more, though notes can work.
Both can work.
> > ShowUnitSyndromes.rb now works for me.
> Interesting, though I'll have to weigh the advantages of knowing which spells your unicorns know against the clutter of various other interactions.
Hm, I should test it for Callgrow and see for myself. What is prints now is pretty cluttered, especially the repeating interactions from autosyndrome:
http://pastebin.com/Bi4ZwA77 However, once he got the basic functionality, it is not so difficult to filter the output to just what we want or eliminate the repetitions by default and keep an option to print everything for debugging interactions. I do not volunteer, because I never programmed in Ruby and the script doesn't even fully work for me.
> The interrogation reaction won't work if you bring a still-caged prisoner within a tile of the Pinkamena. The Pinkamena will interrogate him inside the cage, but that freezes the process and prevents the creation of a memory orb (You'll need to kill the interrogated creature yourself).
Easy enough: keep pinkamenas in the stockpile for prisoners, dump their weapons using dfhack, then pit them in a room adjacent to chickens against ponies with full armour, but training weapons. Best of all worlds.
> Are those sorts of checks made all at the same time, or is there sort of a... cascade?
Probably it waits out a number of frames, then checks all the creatures.
> I've hit a bug, I'm not sure what triggered it or how to remedy it, but my mechanic went to upgrade a security turret into a minigun turret, but cancelled it because apparently we don't have a medium calibre ammo box, but the weird bit is, is that a few seconds later a turret upgrades anyway without any resources being used up.
Are you certain, the resources weren't consumed? Do you know how to uhm... replicate this bug for my turrets?
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Topic: Fallout: Equestria (v0.30c) Pinkie Pie is Watching (Read 481400 times)