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DF Modding / Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« on: August 02, 2009, 07:22:56 pm »
Lessim Mogaim - Less Sim, Mo' Game.
The inspiration for this mod is the realization that at some point adding more realism to a game makes it less fun. While I love the work Toady has put into the underlying geology of the DF world gen, somewhere around the fifteenth variety of opal a line was crossed. In the spirit of making DF more fun to play for me personally, some frustrating elements have been smoothed over, one or two overpowered maneuvers disallowed, and one trivially easy but essential aspect of the game has been made more challenging (farming). DF has crashed once or twice with this running, however, I'm still trying to figure out why... so while I'm bug chasing, I wanted to get thoughts and suggestions on the direction for this mod. I don't have it put up for download, though I suppose I can if anyone wants to give it a try. I'm more interested in hearing if the community is receptive to a mod that guts all Toady's nice geology.
Major changes overview:
Minimizes the headache of noble demands and site selection by pruning the matgloss_stone files of anything nonessential, and put everything left in the blender so that it all has an equal chance of showing up everywhere. Every site is guaranteed to have roughly the same mix of metals and gems. Flux requirements have been removed completely. Iron + coke or charcoal + fuel or magma = steel.
Most of the aboveground crops have been left unchanged. Underground farming has been massively curtailed though. Survival without aboveground farming is not hard, but your dwarves will not be very happy about the lack of variety in their diet.
Minor changes:
Reduces training mishaps and micromanagement by introducing 'training' versions of the five major dwarven melee weapons, far less likely to bench an able-bodied dwarf even before their first battle.
Crossbow bludgeoning has been changed to use the 'whip' skill rather than 'hammer' to fix that little trick of crosstraining hammerdwarves to crossbow. Crossbow bludgeoning damage is also reduced.
Obsidian shortswords have been disabled. Dwarves may by short hairy drunkards who live in caves, but they're not cavemen! You're guaranteed steel, use it. Obsidian shortswords don't bother anything really, no reason code them out. If you don't like them don't use them. 
Major changes details:
Matgloss Stone changes:
It's almost easier to list what I've kept than what was removed. All stone layer types have been combined into one extremely generic gray "Stone" stone layer. The following metals have been kept: tin, copper, bronze, iron, steel, silver, gold, platinum, and adamantine. All except adamantine occur as veins, everywhere, though I'm debating pruning platinum or making it CLUSTER_SMALL. Tin, copper, iron, silver, gold, and platinum all occur in minerals. Other minerals include coal (renamed from bituminous coal) and obsidian(only occurs bordering lava now), both also appearing as veins. Finally, fifteen new types of stone were added that do not naturally occur, creatively named things like 'red stone' and 'blue stone' and 'dark red stone'. One for each of the fourteen possible foreground colors. This part is currently incomplete, but the goal is that if you want to create colored projects, a smelter reaction that creates 10 colored stone from 10 raw stone can be done. The fifteenth new stone is 'cold stone', is similarly created from regular stone at a smelter, and has bauxite's temperature tolerances for magmaproof mechanisms. The gemstones have been cut from 127 to 21, and a few colors juggled so that brighter colors generally means more valuable.
Plant changes:
Only one aboveground crop was changed. Pig tail and rope reed have been combined into one aboveground plant, cotton (I always thought the lack of cotton was odd). If you want a cloth industry, it has to be farmed aboveground now. Of the six underground crops, only two survive. Dimple cups are unchanged, cave wheat is no longer brewable, and both are now plantable all year round.
Three new underground crops have been introduced. Taking the place of plump helmets in the 'I need food now' category is the mat lichen. It has a very short growth time, a value of 0, and can be eaten raw or cooked, and cannot be brewed, milled or threshed. Stalactite hops are inedible, have a long growing time, but are the only underground plant still brewable. The third new crop, the chroma blossom, is something I'm still working on. The goal is to have it involved in the colored/cold stone smelter reactions.
In short:
Mat lichen - Fast and very cheap food.
Stalactite hops - Slow but brewable.
Cave wheat - Requires milling to make it cookable, but is not worthless.
Chroma blossom - Smelter reactant.
Finally, the [OUTDOOR_FARMING] tag has been added to the dwarven civ entity. Your dwarves are going to be expressing tastes for sunshine and gutter cruor and whip wine and everything else. If you want to meet these new demands, outdoor farming is a requirement. Happily the plant biomes have been scrambled just like the stone environments, so you should have access to everything.
What hasn't changed:
Creatures and are untouched. That's a far more daunting rebalancing task than I care to tackle.
The inspiration for this mod is the realization that at some point adding more realism to a game makes it less fun. While I love the work Toady has put into the underlying geology of the DF world gen, somewhere around the fifteenth variety of opal a line was crossed. In the spirit of making DF more fun to play for me personally, some frustrating elements have been smoothed over, one or two overpowered maneuvers disallowed, and one trivially easy but essential aspect of the game has been made more challenging (farming). DF has crashed once or twice with this running, however, I'm still trying to figure out why... so while I'm bug chasing, I wanted to get thoughts and suggestions on the direction for this mod. I don't have it put up for download, though I suppose I can if anyone wants to give it a try. I'm more interested in hearing if the community is receptive to a mod that guts all Toady's nice geology.
Major changes overview:
Minimizes the headache of noble demands and site selection by pruning the matgloss_stone files of anything nonessential, and put everything left in the blender so that it all has an equal chance of showing up everywhere. Every site is guaranteed to have roughly the same mix of metals and gems. Flux requirements have been removed completely. Iron + coke or charcoal + fuel or magma = steel.
Most of the aboveground crops have been left unchanged. Underground farming has been massively curtailed though. Survival without aboveground farming is not hard, but your dwarves will not be very happy about the lack of variety in their diet.
Minor changes:
Reduces training mishaps and micromanagement by introducing 'training' versions of the five major dwarven melee weapons, far less likely to bench an able-bodied dwarf even before their first battle.
Crossbow bludgeoning has been changed to use the 'whip' skill rather than 'hammer' to fix that little trick of crosstraining hammerdwarves to crossbow. Crossbow bludgeoning damage is also reduced.
Major changes details:
Matgloss Stone changes:
It's almost easier to list what I've kept than what was removed. All stone layer types have been combined into one extremely generic gray "Stone" stone layer. The following metals have been kept: tin, copper, bronze, iron, steel, silver, gold, platinum, and adamantine. All except adamantine occur as veins, everywhere, though I'm debating pruning platinum or making it CLUSTER_SMALL. Tin, copper, iron, silver, gold, and platinum all occur in minerals. Other minerals include coal (renamed from bituminous coal) and obsidian(only occurs bordering lava now), both also appearing as veins. Finally, fifteen new types of stone were added that do not naturally occur, creatively named things like 'red stone' and 'blue stone' and 'dark red stone'. One for each of the fourteen possible foreground colors. This part is currently incomplete, but the goal is that if you want to create colored projects, a smelter reaction that creates 10 colored stone from 10 raw stone can be done. The fifteenth new stone is 'cold stone', is similarly created from regular stone at a smelter, and has bauxite's temperature tolerances for magmaproof mechanisms. The gemstones have been cut from 127 to 21, and a few colors juggled so that brighter colors generally means more valuable.
Plant changes:
Only one aboveground crop was changed. Pig tail and rope reed have been combined into one aboveground plant, cotton (I always thought the lack of cotton was odd). If you want a cloth industry, it has to be farmed aboveground now. Of the six underground crops, only two survive. Dimple cups are unchanged, cave wheat is no longer brewable, and both are now plantable all year round.
Three new underground crops have been introduced. Taking the place of plump helmets in the 'I need food now' category is the mat lichen. It has a very short growth time, a value of 0, and can be eaten raw or cooked, and cannot be brewed, milled or threshed. Stalactite hops are inedible, have a long growing time, but are the only underground plant still brewable. The third new crop, the chroma blossom, is something I'm still working on. The goal is to have it involved in the colored/cold stone smelter reactions.
In short:
Mat lichen - Fast and very cheap food.
Stalactite hops - Slow but brewable.
Cave wheat - Requires milling to make it cookable, but is not worthless.
Chroma blossom - Smelter reactant.
Finally, the [OUTDOOR_FARMING] tag has been added to the dwarven civ entity. Your dwarves are going to be expressing tastes for sunshine and gutter cruor and whip wine and everything else. If you want to meet these new demands, outdoor farming is a requirement. Happily the plant biomes have been scrambled just like the stone environments, so you should have access to everything.
What hasn't changed:
Creatures and are untouched. That's a far more daunting rebalancing task than I care to tackle.
Still working on that... water vanishes on reaching the edge of the map, right?
