Bay 12 Games Forum

On embark, I was attacked by a giant skeletal eagle. I fought back with:

1 axedwarf
1 xbow dwarf
3 dogs
5 civilians recruited as wrestlers.

The dogs got pretty beat up, but none of my dwarves got anything worse than a bruise. For the first season. The giant skeleton had every single body part in the red, including all the toes and ribs, but refused to die.

My dwarves continued to fight, despite taking wounds very occasionally... forever. All of the civilians reached Elite Wrestler. At least till they all died of thirst.

Exciting this combat was not. Surely this must not be intentional.

Okay, I've got a really good save of this one, so hopfully it'll be easy to figure out. I have a marksdwarf, carrying an xbow and a shield, and set to use xbow (never set to use hammer in his life) that won't stop trying to pick up an iron warhammer I just looted from the goblins. Like he walks over to it with the "pickup equipment" task active, sits there a second, then goes to walk away, now with just "soldier" shown as task. He makes it all of 2 squares, then immediately gets "pickup equipment" back and tries to pick up the hammer again. Guh?

If you forbid the hammer, the dwarf walks away happily, and resumes normal behavior. But if you ever unforbid the hammer, he just goes right back it and tries to pick it up repeatedly again. Like I said, I have the save. This is a fairly heavily modded worlds, but mostly just entity ethics and plant modifications - no changes to weapons at all.

I felt this needed to be recorded:

In 52, the fortress Dreamdikes collapsed under constant attack from the goblins of The Malice of Carnages. In the final attack the already weakened defenders attempted to hold off six goblin brigades, and although they were accompanied by the local goblin leader, an accomplished speargoblin, it was the famed crossbow goblin Lirgesith Zottholatzul Zalis that lead the attacks. His name means Climaxincest the Unthinkable Glade of Wards.

After the goblin shattered the feeble defenses at the main gate and stormed the exterior courtyard, Climaxincest faced off across a long open space of farmland with the lone remaining defender, the skilled but moody crossbow dwarf Feb Tongschaste the Lonesome Dwelling of Bolting. Unfortunately, Feb wasted his first two shots killing some of Climaxincests squad. The goblin was not so distracted, and shot Feb through the heart. The civilians of Dreamdikes released the dogs (and cows and mules) into the corridors of the fortress, and grabbing weapons from previous battles, put up a valiant defense of the wounded, fighting from door to door through the residential blocks. They even managed to kill enough of Climaxincest's squad that, always cautious, he fled from battle, no doubt going on to become a plague of a new fortress somewhere. The remaining five squads proved to be more than enough to destroy what remained of Dreamdikes, unfortunately.

Of special note during the last battle were the actions of the dwarves Kivish Tradecradles, the stonecrafter, and Tulon Tradetold, the broker. Rakust Mechaniccloisters was the last dwarf to die - he was actually a mechanic, and was the only dwarf left as a civilian to care for the wounded when the rest of the civilians gathered for the final defense.

1 Thresher
3 Armorsmiths (wat? o.o)
1 Weaponsmith
1 Engraver
2 Haulers Peasants
1 Mason
1 Bone Carver
1 Bowyer
1 Recruit Milker
1 Recruit Glassmaker
1 Recruit Fish Disector

I'm not being sarcastic - that has to be the highest percentage of useful dwarves I've ever seen in a single wave. I actually _needed_ a thresher! And 3 armorsmiths?? That might actually be too many! Never had that problem before!

Is there a tool around that will take my init file and raws, and merge my changes into the new files? I'd like to preserve everything I've customized without losing out on any changes that Toady's made since the last version, and doing it by hand adds a lot of overhead before I can play every time we get a new version.

From the wiki:

[CLUSTERSIZE:] How many plants of this type you can grow from one seed. Also how many plants will be in a stack if you bring them when embarking.

The latter is true, but the former seems to not work - I am trying to make a mod with more difficult agriculture, and part of this is nerfing mushrooms. Problem is, even if I set the CLUSTERSIZE to 1, I am still getting dwarves picking groups of 3 and 4 mushrooms.

What I see,

Crop
Clustersize
Embark Stack Size   
Observed Grown Stack Size

Mushroom
1
1
1-4

Carrot
3
3
2-3

Wheat
10
10
3-5

Anyone have a clue?

I'm just going to premptively spoiler warning this whole thread.

I got to thinking - I'd like to try to play an outpost as if I'm managing 7 dwaves sent through a portal in Hidden Fun Stuff to confront the demon world head-on. Basically, dwarven hell fort! My thoughts so far,

Civs:

Goblins replaced by Frog Demons,
-- replace Trolls with some terrifying large demon thing
Humans replaced by Tentacle Demons, made hostile,
Elves removed
Dwaven traders function as normal
Wild predators replaced in all biomes by Spirits of Fire

(obviously there is a place here to add tons of custom demons, but I want the "canon" DF demons to be the most common/prominent)

Wildlife:

Initially, probably just removed to save effort/time.
Carp left in, and buffed, and allowed in all biomes. Obviously.

Flora:

Most crops are removed
Plump helmets grow, but much more slowly and with lower yeild
Native plants are mostly useless / poisonous, but maybe leave a surface plant that can be brewed. Maybe just leave in the current EVIL area surface plants?
Trees are removed, except for tower caps and that one evil tree.

Megabeasts:

Current megabeasts are all too... neutral. Will need at least one custom demon mega beast. Maybe super versions (Elder?) Frog, Tentacle, and Fire varieties.

Obviously, this mod will have the greatest effect if you start a fort in a hot, terrifying sand desert or rocky waste. The challenge, I think, would be to survive long enough to kill an Elder demon, thus accomplishing your mission on the infernal plain.

Just a wild idea, that I think is mostly implementable. I thought I would open it up to the community to see what delicious embellishments the community would come up with.

-Erom

I was thinking of making a mod to simplify clothing a bit, both so that a dead enemy doesn't drop a million items that need picking up and categorizing so you can sell it to the trader, and to simplify what you have to produce to provide a certain amount of armor for your dwarves.

My goals are:
1) Entities get one "clothes" slot (so goblins still occasionally drop a giant cave silk item), and one "armor" slot above that. No separate hats, gloves, shoes, ect. EDIT: Seems clothes and armor both use the ARMOR slot, but can stack. Anybody know the details?
2) Wearing the single-item versions of armor should provide about the same amount of protection as the multiple items used too. For example, wearing a "iron mail armor" should be the same as wearing an iron helm, iron low boots, iron leggings, iron mail, and.. what's the mail hands slot? gauntlets?
2a) I'd also like the simplified version to provide the same protection from heat/cold ect.
3) The full suit should take ~ the same amount of material to produce as the constituent parts used too.
4) I don't want to mess with the current shield/weapon usage - that can stay as is.

I see that entity_default.txt is where I want to go to change what the civs wear, and I'm pretty sure I can accomplish some of what I want to do by simply removing all HELM, GLOVES, SHOES, and PANTS entries from the civ races, but where do I go to change the amount of material required and protection afforded by different items?

[ March 31, 2008: Message edited by: Erom ]