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Mod Releases / Re: [47.xx] Sver's DF Combat Reworked (update v1.7)
« on: December 18, 2022, 05:59:07 am »
Sorry for the late replies everyone, but I figure better late than never.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, it would take manually editing at least (iirc) the entity raws (maybe some others too), because there were some stealth edits in them.
Yes, it's available in Lite, as it includes the default part of the Metal Rework, e.g.:
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.
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.
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.