Bay 12 Games Forum

So, my typical fort is a vertical fort built around central staircases.

Typically I have:

Z+1: Trade goods storage
Z: Entrance & Defences
Z-1: Barracks
Z-2: Workshops
Z-3: Farms & Food processing
Z-4: Kitchens & Stills & main food/booze storage
Z-5: Dining room & bedrooms
Z-6: Metal ore/bars storage
Z-7: Forges & Smithing
Z-8: Coin Vault
Z-9: Tombs
Z-10: Drainage


Now, there might be gaps between those levels, like I traditionally like to have the very bottom layer of the map be my drainage and the layer right above it be tombs, so there could be 20+ more layers in there, but the condensed view works. I like it because based on the z-level, I know exactly what to expect. Plus, I can rig up waterfalls at the top of the staircases that cascade down and EVERY dwarf sees it. If my map has chasm/bottomless pit I'll drain into that, otherwise I just mine out a huge section of floor and have floodgates set up so that I can dump specified amounts of water at a time that will evaporate before flooding.

Dwarves are quick to move from zone to zone. For example, getting from my mason workshop to food is only like 13 steps, while going from mason to furniture storage is 10, and mason to ore storage is 16....everything except for specific rooms are 20 steps away from anywhere else.

However, there are some known problems with that. Namely because of how "close" everything is, maisma that enters the central corridor goes EVERYWHERE. It's usually sealed off with lots of doors to prevent just that, but in the early game before I have all the doors set up one rotten plant causes all my workshops to breath fumes.

I was recently reading the "Pathing" on the wiki and it seems like material pathing works on a 3D cube, which would explain why it's so hard to get my dwarves to work with materials on their own section. My masons are always travelling up and down stairs despite their huge stone stockpile right in front of them. I usually have to lock them in their workshops so they stay in place...

Finally, defenses is a bit weak. IF something were to get into the central stair cases, there's no chokepoints, they could get anywhere. That's a pretty big IF because I only have a single entrance to the fort which is heavily defended with traps, moats, drawbridges, and I usually have a squad of troops stationed there at all times, as well as chained wardogs etc. etc.

But IF something gets in, it'd be impossible to isolate them. I'm thinking this would be a serious problem if I accidentally broke into HFS or in future versions where burrowing.

Anyway, do you typically build horizontally or vertically?

You should check out the show Solitary. People are put into isolation and forced to abuse themselves for the promise of treats and prize money at the end.

Could be a useful source for LCS interrogation improvements. It's also an interesting quasi-look at stockholm syndrome. They end up wanting to "win" so bad even though "winning" involves even more pain and discomfort.

http://www.hulu.com/solitary

Basically with the naming of drinks.

The first step would be to include more varities of drink names. So beers instead of always being "dwarven beer" could be:

dwarven beer
dwarven ale
dwarven lager
dwarven stout


wines could be
dwarven wine
dwarven sangria
dwarven sparkling wine

whisky could be
dwarven whiskey
dwarven bourbon
dwarven scotch


rum could be
dwarven rum
dwarven spiced rum
dwarven dark rum

So first you'd reclassify the products of plants as a basic type: beer, wine, whisky, rum, custom

So Beers would be: Pig Tails, Cave Wheat, Longland Grass, Bloated Tubers.
Wine: Plump Helmets, Whip Vine, Fisher Berry, Wild Strawberry, Prickle Berry
Rum: Sweet Pod, Sunberry?
Whiskey: Muck Root, Sliver Barb, Rat Weed
Other: This would be just a custom name without variation. So potatoes might just be CUSTOM:Vodka, If you decide that Sunshine or River Spirits are their own item then you can include their custom names as well.

Then using logic akin to cooking, each production would randomly produce a name.

So instead of pig tail always producing ales and cave wheat always producing beers, you might produce a Pig Tail Lager or Cave Wheat Stout.



Second step: Custom Cocktails:

When an exceptional drink is produced, it will be given a custom name using a random name generator. It could use the existing random name generator but one might be special tuned for drinks if desired. Basically instead of just being an exceptional Cave Wheat Lager it would be The Lager of Blank (Champions, Blades, Bridges).

If a masterwork drink is produced, it will be given an even cooler name. So it would be The [Adjective] Lager of [Adjective] [Noun], The Brilliant Lager of Shining Champions.  (and of course it would be given a cool dwarfy name as well).

From that point on, any new exceptional or masterwork items have either a chance to repeat an existing name or add a new one to the list. So initially, the chances of a new name would be huge, but once you've gotten a dozen or so custom brews, the chances of a new brew being discovered would be slim to none. Quality wouldn't be tied to the name, so an exception drink name might be repeated with masterwork quality item (this would represent a particularly good batch) or on the flipside a masterwork name might end up used for only an exceptional level brew (it's not as good as the original, but it's still pretty good...).


 

Just browsing through the lists and saw this. I think this could be an easy thing to code in, but the question is WHAT to code in. Here are three ideas:

1. Questions - similar to Liberal Crime Squad, the game will ask a set of quesetions about the journey and your responses will have a known impact. For example:

"Your crew is wandering through mountains when you are attacked by bandits. Do you..."

• Kill the Bandits (every dwarf gains novice wrestling skill)
• Flee (every dwarf gains +1 agility)
• Bribe the Bandits (every dwarf gains novie social skills).

2. Known & Random Effects - again, questions would be asked but the outcome of the answers are variable within a known degree. Taking the same example quesetion about bandits attacking...

• Kill the Bandits (random dwarves pick up injuries but also gain various military skills (armor use, shield use, wrestling, weapons etc.). Gain a random amount of iron gear off of the dead bandits.
• Flee (lower chances of injuries then fighting, but a chance that some items fall off the wagon. Note this would only be stuff like food, extra ammo etc. and not equipment carried like axes & picks. Anvil can never be lost.
• Bribe Bandits: 100% chance that X wealth worth of items are removed, but no injuries and dwarves gain a variable amount of social skills.

3. More Random & More Skill Based: Basically the game would generate random scenarios (probably not unique, but from a list of 100 scenarios, the game randomly picks 10). Then you get your set of options and based upon random chance and the dwarf skills involved, various outcomes could happen. Again, bandit attack.

• Fight back! If you have a lot of military dwarves and/or weapons you can fight it out. Heck, the game might even simulate an actual combat. Your dwarves could win and secure extra XP and loot the bandits for various extra items. Your dwarves could be heavily beaten and thus lose a bunch of items and have severe injuries.
• Flee: If you travel light (i.e. with low weight items and/or more pack animals) then a better chance of fleeing. You can flee successfully (no negatives), get caught (forced to fight, see above), or flee but lose some items in the process.
• Bribe: If you have high negotiations and valuable items you can bribe the bandits easily. Otherwise, you'll lose some items AND be forced to flee or fight depending.

Now obviously, bandits attacking would be a bad thing so the results should be mostly negative. There would also be things like "you find a dead adventurer" and have the option of looting the body or burying it (looting gets you items but lowers morale, possibly even cursing the dwarves), or you could meet a stranger and have the chance of getting an 8th dwarf right off the bat, things like that.

Help, I can't use any of my sleeper lawyers!?

I've got a quick question about heat. Is it linear or does it grow and fade away?

I.e. commit murder = +3 heat that never goes away unless you get acquitted/serve jail time?

So if I kill someone and disappear for 10 years, will I still have that kind of heat or will I be "neutral" again?

I just loaded up a new map and my FPS is being killed because of the huge open air, 30-something z-level chasm.

As I'm watching dozens of cave swallowmen slowly fly around, I can't help but wonder how much of a toll that's taking on my framerate. So my thought would be that flying animals (and animals in general) would have to rest, perhaps rest often.

So at some point the animal would land and go to sleep. If this is staggered hopefully it would result in some decent FPS gains as instead of 3 dozen flying creatures flapping around, perhaps only 2-dozen are active at any one time.


On a side note this would make flyers a little easier to combat as you could wait until they were resting before launching an attack.

Obviously, undead and legendary creatures would be immune to resting.

So, we have sex slaves. And soon genders will be added in. I'm not saying that this is an OMGMUSTHAVE! idea, but just bringing it up for discussion?

Should LCS members have babies?

Some initial thoughts would be that it would slowly decrease the stats for the pregnant LCS member (except maybe heart, which could be argued would raise up). Then you have a baby that just sits in equipment section as non-sellable for 6 years, and then turns into a child worker -> teenager -> political activist.

Nothing big or gamebreaking, but it would be another "investment" as maybe you can have them learning when LCS members are teaching, so you can train up the next generation of workers.