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Dwarf Fortress => DF Modding => Topic started by: FFLaguna on July 14, 2008, 11:48:14 pm

Title: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in adv?
Post by: FFLaguna on July 14, 2008, 11:48:14 pm
How do I mod in dragons that usually last more than 2000 years of history, but are still killable in adventure? Since dragons horde treasure now, I want to find dragon nests like I imagined from Silmarillion and The Hobbit.
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in adv?
Post by: God of Toast on July 14, 2008, 11:52:06 pm
Well, currently I think dragons can only grab one dinky little item, instead of giant handfuls. And they don't loot towns all the time.

Anyhow, if you do manage to make a dragon that lives that long the treasure it horded probably wouldn't be very large.

Although I do want to see huge piles of looted things from dragons in the future, that'd be awesome.
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in
Post by: umiman on July 15, 2008, 01:23:31 am
It seems worldgen seemingly ignores some creature stats. You can make your creatures invincible and chances are they'll still die to a random peasant occasionally.
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in
Post by: FFLaguna on July 15, 2008, 01:34:54 am
Quote from: umiman on July 15, 2008, 01:23:31 am
It seems worldgen seemingly ignores some creature stats. You can make your creatures invincible and chances are they'll still die to a random peasant occasionally.

Hmm, which creature stats doesn't it ignore?
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in
Post by: umiman on July 15, 2008, 03:34:51 am
Creatures still do whatever attack you gave them in the raws (burn, fire, etc.) but other than that, it seems they're still all average entities. As in, everything, be it dragon or gnome, has the exact same strength.
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in adv?
Post by: FFLaguna on July 15, 2008, 06:10:30 am
Is there any way to increase the number of megabeasts, either through raws or memhacking? Reading some of the other posts today, it seems like there isn't an easy way to do so.
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in
Post by: Neoskel on July 15, 2008, 06:23:47 am
Quote from: umiman on July 15, 2008, 03:34:51 am
Creatures still do whatever attack you gave them in the raws (burn, fire, etc.) but other than that, it seems they're still all average entities. As in, everything, be it dragon or gnome, has the exact same strength.

I don't know about that. Dragons seem to do a lot better in the surviving department, all the titans, hydras and bronze colossi tend to get themselves killed while rampaging. I always get more dragons surviving til play time than any other megabeast, though questing adventurers in worldgen are pretty good at dragon slaying. Pretty appropriate if you ask me.
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in adv?
Post by: FFLaguna on July 15, 2008, 07:45:04 am
I increased the each of the three different cave params in the world gen settings to 500, and I had *13* dragons and three demons, along with a few other creatures, survive in a standard world until 2050. That's less demons than some of my other worlds, but I've never had a dragon survive this long, let alone thirteen of the fell beings! Now it's time to brush up on history and start slaying some things!

Edit: I also changed the Dragon's info in creature_standard.txt to [SIZE:40] and [FREQUENCY:30]. Who knows if this did anything.

Edit2: One of the creature_standard.txt changes that I made must have severely increased the Dragon's survivability, which was a great success. There were no dragons killed before the year 300, while nearly all other megabeasts were dying in droves. Here's the entry I used, although the FLIER body part doesn't work:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in
Post by: Nazush Ebsas on July 15, 2008, 08:21:45 am
could also increase it's birthrate and give it a cluster size ;) and [equips] so it carries around treasure for you =)

I suppose one way to give it a hoard would be to give it similar death status as the bronze collosus, but more, and littler things, though then i suppose you'd know exactly what you were getting from killing it. Or, if it's possible to add additional entity's, to get it to :force non combat eq on it.

As damblock:-1 seems to be killing off elves in droves, increasing it's damblock slightly might be a better approach to survivability in worldgen than the adv mode presumable invincibility of a size 40 mob.

 I would add that ive not modded anything but flies in DF, so the above is littlle but longwinded guesswork
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in adv?
Post by: FFLaguna on July 15, 2008, 08:30:47 am
Is a Size 40 dragon too much?
Title: Re: How do I make a dragon last 2000+ years of history but still be killable in
Post by: Nazush Ebsas on July 15, 2008, 09:07:59 am
well, idk, mod somethingn common so they have the same stats as your dragon, give em size 40, and go find one. So far as i can gather size acts as a strength and hitpoint multiplier, amongst other thigns, so a dragon at size 40, well, i'd imagine the only way it would feasibly die is to have a moon drop on it's head. *Although I did read somewhere that size gives damblock, bronze collosi have damblock added, and the same size as dragons, i guess it depends how much like armor you suppose a dragons scales to be worth, smaug's were  basically impenetrable, so should certainly get more damblock than a measly giant, i'd say ;).

Or maybe not - by default the dragon, looking at it's entry, has no damage blocking - so you wouldn't even need to get particularly lucky with that arrow, or hope it's scales got stuck to the gold it was lying on, to kill it. Think i'll change that for mah game... So DF's dragons look to be about damage output, rather than survivability, and ofc in abstract the dragonfirebreath is probably going to be being measured the same as anyother attack, rather than as an area of effect weapon, so you could try beefing it's corporeal attacks, adding a tail attack for instance, which would probably be more 'realistic' if you also gave it a higher than average default speed so it cycles through attacks (presumably) quicker. Though I guess one attack per tick would be more than dragons in stories who, after pinning their victim to the floor, tend to prance around for a while, but hey, you could always add a zero damage feint to simulate that ;)