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Topics - Derakon

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DF Suggestions / Lost and Found Zone

« on: December 12, 2009, 02:03:04 pm »

I mentioned this in passing in this thread, and it seemed popular enough to get its own topic. Basically this is yet another possible fix for the "dwarves are leaving their crap all over the place" problem. Basically the Lost and Found zone works just like a Garbage Dump zone, with three exceptions:

* Items dumped in a Lost and Found zone always go on the floor, not over the edge of a pit
* Only owned items can be dumped into a Lost and Found zone
* Items dumped in the Lost and Found zone are not forbidden on dumping

This would allow you to clean up your fortress without destroying the owned items; the owner could then drop by and pick them up at his leisure. Or, if you really feel it necessary, I suppose you could attach the zone to a magma trap...but that's not really the point.

DF Bug Reports / [40d16] Raised bridges can get melted by magma

« on: December 08, 2009, 03:04:25 pm »

I did a quick search of the bugreport forum threads and didn't see anything

Currently raised drawbridges are fluid-tight, so water and magma can't enter the squares of the bridge while it is raised. Basically it acts like a wall. However, if the bridge was installed with non-magmasafe mechanisms and the fluid in question is magma, then when the magma enters the squares that the bridge would occupy when lowered, the mechanisms melt and the bridge deconstructs.

From a coding standpoint, this makes sense, as the bridge "building" is still in those tiles and thus can get heated by the magma. However, intuitively it doesn't make sense, as the bridge isn't physically in those tiles when raised.

DF Bug Reports / [40d16 + Legendary Lands] Pearlash doesn't burn/melt

« on: November 11, 2009, 05:00:38 pm »

I got some pearlash stuck in magma, and it's completely unaffected:

I can't find any settings for pearlash in the raws, but according to Wikipedia, it should melt at 891°C, which if I read the scale right is below the temperature of magma in-game.

DF Bug Reports / [40d16] Massive lag when soldiers head to the barracks to spar

« on: November 11, 2009, 12:25:15 pm »

My fortress is on a 3x3 embark zone, and I've walled off the entire perimeter as close as I can get to the edge. Every once in a while I send out patrols around the outside to flush out any ambushes (well, I say patrols, but basically I'm just stationing the dwarves on the opposite side of the map from my front gate). Once they're done, I release them by taking them off active duty, at which point typically they decide to either go hang out or spar in the barracks. If they do choose to spar in the barracks, I get massive lag -- going from 40FPS to 14! I can easily verify that it's the sparring that does it, by putting the soldiers who wanted to spar back on duty and stationing them in the barracks. My FPS shoots right up.

In the situations I've noticed this lag, the soldiers wanting to spar were right next to each other on the patrol. I don't know if that's relevant though.

DF Suggestions / Differentiate between refuse and items marked for dumping

« on: November 04, 2009, 12:59:56 pm »

I did a quick search and didn't see anything relevant.

Currently, items that are outdoors that you mark for dumping will not be touched by your dwarves unless you turn on collection of outdoor refuse. But that can have numerous unintended side-effects, like dwarves running off into the far corner of the map to pick up a lizard corpse and put it on your refuse stockpile. There's a huge difference between "I want you to pick up all the corpses and rotted crap on the surface" and "i want you to throw away this discarded bolt that's blocking construction of the wall".

I propose that items marked for dumping be treated separately from refuse. Dumping should use the relevant hauling labor (e.g. stone hauling for stones, weapon hauling for bolts, refuse hauling for corpses), and should trigger whenever you mark items for dumping regardless of where they are, so long as they're actually accessible.

DF Bug Reports / [40d16 + Legendary Lands] Stealthed webs aren't destroyed by rain

« on: October 26, 2009, 12:00:21 am »

I'm playing the Legendary Lands mod, the only relevant change of which is the common inclusion of "large cave spiders" in chasm areas. These basically behave just like giant cave spiders, but are a bit less dangerous. For example, I watched six of them (out of the eight discovered thus far) swarm a bison for quite some time before finally managing to kill it. It was raining at the time, so the webs they threw continually got destroyed.

Later one of my stray animals stumbled into the webs left by these spiders. I know it was them, because no spider was revealed along with the webs (i.e. the count of known spiders remained at 8), whereas it's been my experience in the past that revealing a stealthed web also reveals the spider with it. These webs were outside and should have been destroyed in the rain earlier. Unfortunately, it wasn't raining when they were discovered, or else I suspect I would have seen them vanish as soon as they aappeared.

For your amusement:

DF Gameplay Questions / No artifacts

« on: October 18, 2009, 02:45:25 pm »

I'm well into my third year with this fortress and I've yet to get a strange mood. Here's the rundown:

* I have well over 20 dwarves with moodable professions (4x miner, 2x woodworker, 2x mason, 5x furnace operator, 3x jeweler, 2x bonecarver, 1x leatherworker, 2x clothier, 1x weaver, 1x mechanic)
* My fortress has dug out way more than 1 embark tile
* I've created way more than 200 items. Hell, I have 60 sets of bone bolts made from orcs, alone.
* Artifacts are set to YES in init.txt

Normally I get my first artifact very shortly after my 20th eligible dwarf arrives on the map. So what's going on here? I've made my save available (requires Dig Deeper mod) if you want to take a look.

DF Suggestions / Hostile takeover (non-destructive invaders)

« on: October 18, 2009, 12:39:11 pm »

Right now, you can either repel invaders, possibly at some loss of life, or completely lose your fortress. There's no middle ground. I suggest that some of the less bloodthirsty races (humans and elves, at this point) should be satisfied will killing your military and then installing their own government. Notably, your civilians are not killed. Basically the way this works is, they leave a squad of soldiers behind, and send for a governor. The governor acts like a noble who makes many demands and will send soldiers to beat up your civilians if the demands aren't met quickly. The governor and the soldiers all have high requirements, again, causing beatings if they aren't met. Additionally, the governor would:

* Forbid the enlisting of new dwarfish soldiers (and require the disarmament of any existing ones, forcibly civilianizing them)
* Forbid the creation of weapons, armor, or traps, including levers and pressure plates (if he can't understand how it works, then it can't be made), and require the dismantling of existing ones
* Require production of certain trade goods in large quantities
* Seize control of the trader interface from the player

Of course, the dwarfish caravan would not visit while your fortress is occupied, though depending on your size you might get a "sieging" dwarfish army to oust the invaders.

Now, it should be possible, if difficult, to run a resistance campaign against the invaders. In particular, I suggest that the "no soldiers" and "no weapons/armor" requirements require the governor or an invader soldier to see the violation take place before any punishment is applied. Thus it should be possible to run a secret forge and a secret barracks to train up a force to oust the enemy squad. It'd be difficult, though, since the soldiers are already on the inside of your fortress. Of course, you could also try to arrange "accidents" (e.g. deadly cave-ins), though if you miss some of the enemy, you can expect them to kill several of your dwarves.

The thing I find most amusing about this is that the governor behaves very similarly to our existing nobles...

DF Suggestions / Always show accessible civs from the 'c' screen

« on: October 18, 2009, 01:13:25 am »

This is just a minor usability fix. A common mistake is for people to assume that the only civs that can reach a given site are the ones on the 'c' civ screen. In fact, that screen only lists civs that you have had contact with since the fort was founded, with no indication of which other civs might show up in the future. By always listing all the civs shown on the embark screen on this page, we'd alleviate a lot of user confusion.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / More trap design: Dwarven Murderholes

« on: October 17, 2009, 09:45:15 pm »

A traditional murder hole is simply a small hole in the wall or ceiling that allows defenders to attack the opposing force while they're forced to move through a narrow passageway. The dwarven version simply makes certain that the attackers have to stay put and can't effectively fire back, while allowing for subsets of the opposing enemy to be looted while other groups are still being killed.

This is the secondary entrance to my fortress. Of course, attackers must go through my barracks and any resident traders before they can get to the rest of the fort. More importantly, they have to go over a series of drawbridges that are hooked up to that lever southwest of the depot. Note: the 'X's west of my soldiers are archery targets, not stairs.

Here's the lower level in civilian mode. Enemies get dropped into the southernmost chambers. The drawbridges are connected to the levers on the right; both bridges for each set are connected to the same lever. This ensures that if I want to train a marksdwarf, he'll keep his distance from the enemy. The lower set of "walls" consists of wall gratings, while the upper set is fortifications; thus, even if I do drop down enemy archers, they'll have to shoot through the fortifications, while receiving no such defense themselves (fortifications are harder to shoot through the further away they are from you).

And here's the murder holes in action. It's really rather absurd; I trained a marksdwarf up to Talented (from no skill) on the rightmost set, and the axelord there is still uninjured.

A couple more things to consider in the design:
* You should forbid the doors when enemies are in the killzone. Otherwise, haulers walking by may try to dodge through the doors to get around other haulers, at which point they'll see an enemy and drop what they're carrying, jamming the door open. You can of course mitigate this by widening your corridors, too.
* Have a refuse pile nearby, or make the bridges in the first image be outdoors. Making your still-living enemies choke on the miasma of the ones that have died is nice and all, but your dwarves will have to smell that too once the lockdown ends.
* Yes, this is very cheap. Why do you ask? I plan to mine the orcs for enough steel to kit out my own soldiers (the only ore on this map is a little copper, and the HFS, which I'm not about to mine), and then start taking them out in melee.
* Edit: just discovered that the archery targets are impassable by wagons. So much for that, then. It's not like I need them to train marksdwarves anyway...

DF Bug Reports / Caravan charges orcs instead of fleeing to nearby map edge

« on: October 17, 2009, 06:54:22 pm »

The orcs attacked while my first caravan was at the depot. Since I clearly couldn't let them run out my main fort entrance, I dug an emergency exit that emerges five squares from the edge of the map. When trading completed, the merchants ran down the emergency exit, as planned. Of course, the orcs also said "Ah hah! Another way into the fortress! To the emergency exit, brothers!" The merchants had a bit of a head start, so they should have made it clean away. And in fact, the two wagons and the liaison came out of the tunnel and then went straight for the edge, as expected. The two pack animals and their merchants, though, emerged from the tunnel and then decided to run towards the orcs instead. This involved them moving away from the closest map edge. I can only assume that they'd picked a different place to exit the map, but why?

The most annoying bit of this is that the two pack animals also had all of the trade goods I'd given the merchants, which means their profits are basically -20k this year. I'm not getting much next year...

DF Bug Reports / [40d16] Ludicrously thin river (bug?)

« on: October 13, 2009, 09:28:28 pm »

I don't know if this is so much a bug as just an edge case that probably shouldn't be allowed. Check out this underground river:

I'm right up against the edge of the map here. Aren't rivers supposed to be at least three-four tiles wide?

Made with the Cat Fortress mod 1.03.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Gameplay idea: service-based economy

« on: October 11, 2009, 04:04:42 pm »

This is an idea I had for a way to play Dwarf Fortress. In a nutshell, it is this: the only items you may use are ones that you buy from caravans, or ones that you made from things you bought from caravans.

So for example, you may not use mined rock for anything. You may buy rock, and turn it into mechanisms, furniture, crafts, and so on. But you may not use mined rock.

You may not farm, nor gather plants. You may buy food from the caravans, and brew it, and you may cook the seeds generated when you do, but you may not farm.

You may smith your own goods, but your only source of metal is the caravans, either directly from metal bars, or by melting metal goods they sell you. You may not melt down invaders' goods, nor use them yourself, but you may sell them to the caravans. No fair selling goods to the caravans, then buying them back and using them as normal, either.

I'm not certain how animals should work; my inclination, though, is that any animals you buy must be slaughtered before they breed.

No encrusting ammo. That's just lame. Cooking is fair game since food is so limited anyway.

Items you bring with you when you embark are fair game, obviously; you need a basis for your economy. But past that point, the only goods you can work with are from the caravans.

I haven't actually tried this playstyle, but here's my thoughts on how you might want to play things out:

* You'll need a basis for trade to start out. Probably your best option is mechanisms; a cost-3 rock can be turned into a cost-120 mechanism if you get lucky with a skilled mechanic. Cooking would ordinarily be good, but since you can't farm, the food you bring with you will need to last you to the first caravan (and likely beyond). Still, bring a skilled cook, if for no other reason than to keep your dwarves happy.
* Obviously you need to bring lots of food with you. Booze would be nice to bring, but water is cheaper, and at least for the first few seasons, your dwarves' working speeds won't be a huge issue.
* Trade agreements should emphasize bringing more food first, and then the best weight-to-value you can manage. Small gems are great for decorations, if you can afford them, since you can stack multiple decorations onto a single base item.
* Your population capacity is going to be strictly limited by your food supply. Remember, if you run out of food, then everyone starves, unless a caravan shows up. Feel free to kill migrants and then sell their clothing (and anything you make from their pets).
* Rewalling is going to be expensive, since every wall you make costs a minimum of 300 weight from the caravans (that being the weight of a wood log; stone always weighs more). You might well want to dedicate your entire starting loadout to food and stone, so that you have the materials you need to build any walls you'll ever want.
* Be careful with forbidding/dumping generated stone. Wouldn't want to break the challenge, now would we?

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Mapgen parameters that create sand layers?

« on: October 06, 2009, 10:03:38 pm »

I'm trying to make mapgen create worlds with lots of sand, in addition to all my other requirements. Deserts are easy, but they tend to preclude many of the more interesting environments (particularly the creatures you get in forests and swamps). I know it's possible to get sand in most locations, but what are the required mapgen parameters? Just low drainage doesn't cut it. And yes, I've looked at the wiki; none of the relevant nodes seem to have anything on how mapgen parameters relate to soil layers.

DF Suggestions / Don't clean molten rock

« on: October 05, 2009, 10:15:39 pm »

Simple lesson: if it's hot enough to melt rock, it's hot enough to melt dwarves. So don't try to clean the globs of molten rock!

Posted after losing a dwarf to trying to clean up my rapidly-filling magma supply tunnel.

More generally, it'd be nice to be able to turn cleaning behaviors on and off globally, instead of going to each dwarf's labors and toggling it there. This would be useful for e.g. keeping dwarves from running out to clean traps while those traps are still assaulting your enemies. Regardless, though, molten rock should not be eligible for cleaning.