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Topics - mickel

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 8
1
DF General Discussion / Show your real life artifacts
« on: July 09, 2010, 05:21:16 pm »
I confess, I am starting this topic just to show off. But that doesn't mean you can't show off too! I get to start though.



This is Robekeser Orabôfid Stòkïd, or Barbsparkle the Leaky Cup of Impaling. I won't even pretend that the craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is made of iron wire and iron thread. It is encircled with bands of copper thread. It doesn't menace with spikes of iron wire anymore but it sure did during the making of it... and how!

I made this for a fellow DF fan who was totally unimpressed by it, upon which I had a tantrum, tore loose his apartment door, and trashed the furniture. >:(

Well, okay, I didn't.

2
DF Suggestions / Stoves
« on: December 11, 2009, 08:28:25 pm »
Stoves struck me as an essential piece of furniture for dwarfs. They provide light and warmth, you can cook on them, dry clothes on them, and incinerate waste in them. But that's not all.

Stoves have become works of art in many cultures. From simple things like sculpted legs for the stove to stand on, to dressing the stove in detailed stone mosaics. Elaborately sculpted works of art in metal and stone... doesn't that sound like a dwarfish thing to make?

It's a statue that produces light and heat!

3
DF Suggestions / Dwarves can fail
« on: February 01, 2009, 05:22:14 pm »
At the moment dwarves can take more or less time to do something and they can do it more or less well, but they never seem to actually fail. No matter how inept a dwarf is he always manages to successfully build a bridge, carve gems, craft armor or tunnel through sand. All of these things and many more that the dwarves do routinely without any skill at all are things that are very complicated to do in real life. I think dwarves should be able to fail.

Depending on the skill of the dwarf, failure is more or less frequent and can be more or less severe. A complete beginner failing at cutting a gem will probably ruin it, but perhaps an expert might be able to salvage the situation and do something else with it, such as producing an inferior quality gem?

What failure means to a miner should be rather obvious. Cavein, outburst or something equally bad. All the more reason to reserve the sand tunneling and coal mining for the experts.

4
DF Suggestions / Enchanced door orders
« on: January 25, 2009, 07:33:13 am »
Most other tasks have to be carried out by dwarfs, but locking and unlocking doors is magically done automatically when you order it. While practical it feels like it goes against the spirit of the game. While fixing that, further enhancements could be done to the doors as well, namely:

Defining the "inside" of the door. A simple choice of west over east, or north over south depending on the orientation of the door. The inside of the door becomes important for later features.

Defining who may or may not pass, and who may or may not open the door. Two selections here: {everyone may pass, military may pass, none may pass} and {everyone may open, military may open, none may open}.

That way you could set it up so that, for example, anyone may pass the door, but only the military may open it.
If a civilian wants to come through, they will generate an "open door" job for the nearest available military unit to pick up. The military unit will come open the door and the civilian goes through.

Also, if anyone may come through and anyone may open it, a civilian coming from the outside (see below) would need to signal someone on the inside, generating an "open door" job for the nearest available dwarf to pick up.

More locking options. Instead of just "lock" vs. "unlock" there would be options like "bolt" (a simple deadbolt applied from the outside that would make the door resist picking attempts) and "bar" (a heavy bar which takes some time to apply and remove, and which makes the door resist being knocked down).

Obviously a deadbolt or a bar would only be operable from one side, this side being the "inside" defined earlier.

5
DF Suggestions / New trap categories
« on: January 24, 2009, 07:27:32 pm »
As mentioned in another thread, we've only got one category of traps. For a full range of defensive options we need more types. Let's start with four:
  • Floor traps
  • Wall traps
  • Ceiling traps
  • Furniture traps

Floor traps are your typical trapdoors, spikes that shoot up from the floor, explosives etc.
Wall traps are traps mounted in walls and that shoot out spikes, swing out blades, fire darts etc.
Ceiling traps are traps mounted in ceilings and that drop boulders, balls on chains, lava showers etc.

These are the traps we're used to, and are probably activated by pressure plates, tripwires, door triggers or something of the sort.

Furniture traps are smaller traps that are hidden inside furniture. Poison darts that shoot out when you open a chest, guillotine blades in door openings that fall down when you step through, spikes that shoot up through the seat when you sit on a throne, beds that fold in half and crush you... stuff like that.

Naturally we'll need more triggers. No longer will things be activated by pressure plates only, but by things such as a tripwire being touched, a door being opened the wrong way, a chair being sat on (which is really a form of pressure plate, but with a chair on it).

I think you can all think of a lot more and better ideas.

6
DF Suggestions / Traps on constructions
« on: January 24, 2009, 07:17:54 pm »
Putting traps on constructions feels to me to be necessary for a really effective defense.

We can trap floors, and that's about it. What about the obvious cases of doors and levers? Not to mention chests and other storage units. No goblin is to be able to take more than three steps in my fortress without being subjected to at least one trap.

7
DF Suggestions / Eroding
« on: January 24, 2009, 06:34:54 pm »
Two other threads saw the mention of two concepts, that of tunnels collapsing through natural causes (instability, erosion etc.) and that of various materials having differing hardness.

This led me to think of structures, whether constructed walls or dug out ones wearing down over time, causing them to need service in order not to break completely. I was mostly thinking about walls, floors and ceilings.

The strain on a structure could be compared to the "toughness" of the material and the integrity of the structure goes down a bit. Once it's down below a certain point, the structure breaks.

Tougher materials take the strain better, and it's possible a strong enough construction (e.g. granite wall with adamantium shoring) might be able to stand virtually indefinitely, while softer constructions like an unshored earth tunnel wouldn't make it through winter.

To simplify things, "servicing" might just imply traffic, so that tunnels that are used often are kept in shape. I would imagine passing dwarves wouldn't pass by any sign of imperfections without doing something about it! This would lead to the collapse of only unused parts of the fortress.

8
DF Suggestions / Magical anomalies
« on: January 21, 2009, 06:57:02 pm »
Someone suggested (in the thread about floating rocks) that in areas with a high background magic level, strange and supernatural things might randomly occur, such as exploding pigs.

I immediately thought of the book "Roadside Picnic", where some sort of contamination by aliens have caused large areas to be, well, full of random supernatural happenings. An example is the "mosquito mange" which is an invisible area with a catastrophically high gravity, causing anything that enters it to be instantly squashed flat against the ground.

I don't think anyone can make a functioning fortress in an area like the ones described in the book (that's a challenge!) but it would be interesting to explore in adventure mode.

9
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Prince of Persia!
« on: November 16, 2007, 07:01:00 am »
We finally have spikes to put in the bottom of pits, in addition to the pressure plates we already have. Once running, jumping and climbing gets into adventure mode, we can make a Prince of Persia fortress to explore!

10
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Money hauling
« on: August 16, 2007, 03:52:00 pm »
I noticed (as somebody already remarked) that money is virtually useless outside the community that minted it. There was a suggestion that when you travel, you convert it all to trinkets to carry with you.

I came up with an easier solution. When I sell stuff, I leave the money sitting on the bench.

Unlike when you drop your backpack or something, it doesn't seem like the money goes somewhere else (I've lost many backpacks full of gear like that) but sits nicely on it's bench.

And since you never use money except in the shops, why the heck not? It would be even nicer if it'd count toward your credit as long as it's physically in the shop...


11
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Wagon death!
« on: August 16, 2007, 09:53:00 am »

R.I.P
""
767-1083
We'll never forget you.


12
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Wrestling tips, please
« on: August 15, 2007, 09:50:00 am »
Hello! Though I've been playing adventure mode a bit, I've never gotten the hang of wrestling.

I did manage to learn that if you grab the throat, you can choke your victim, and occasionally I've gotten to the point where I can do a takedown or throw, but I haven't figured how I got to that point.

I've tried all sorts of combinations but usually don't get that far. I'd love some tips on stuff to try.


13
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / I wish I was an author
« on: May 09, 2008, 05:30:00 pm »
I'd write a story based on the rioting in my latest fort. I wish I had taken notes so I knew who did what and when, but man, what a ride it was!

It started when a goblin ambush walked straight through my traps and started killing dwarves at the entrance. They didn't get many, perhaps four or five, before they retreated (and interestingly didn't manage to avoid the traps on the way out).

For some reason the entire fortress became instantly unhappy and over half of them started tantruming immediately. The tantrums came and went in waves, but it was usually between one and two thirds of the population. There was lots of fighting, insanity broke out in several places.

I drafted everyone who wasn't critical into the fortress guard to try to restore order, it worked a little. I especially remember one guard who for some reason took himself outside and locked himself up in chains outside the fortress (where I had my punishment chains). That proved to be a good move, because the people chained up there were largely spared from the rioting...

Eventually, as the population started to dwindle, my policy of sectioning the fortress started to pay off. I managed to get the tantrumers into pockets here and there where I let them starve to death. Some of them went berserk and destroyed the doors, getting out anyway, but for the most part it was successful.

Eventually the rioting died out with most of the population, and I was down to 25 (from 250), five of which were in chains and had been for most of the riots. (The guard who locked himself up was released by a colleague that had come to his senses, though I don't know if he survived. I hope he did.)

In the end the colony was reinforced by the baroness with consort, the hammerer, the tax collector, dungeon master, and three cheese makers. Interestingly they haven't made a single demand since they came, and I even think I saw them carrying bodies.

Another nice result was a short dress made of dwarven leather. I don't know whose skin it was made of, only that it was a peasant dead of other causes.


14
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Naked dwarven queen!
« on: May 05, 2008, 04:11:00 am »
I think we've come across them before? I happened upon one in adventure mode yesterday while playing regicide.

Naked dwarf lady!!!  :)


15
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / My first megabeast!
« on: May 19, 2008, 03:15:00 pm »
I just had my first megabeast, a bronze colossus.

The first line of defense were the gatekeepers: the seven legendary hammermen that had kept the fortress safe from every goblin and troll invasion to date. After walking unharmed through the first corridor of traps, the colossus swept them aside without breaking stride or taking any damage, and kept on going.

The second line of defense were the siege engines, who didn't fire because the operators were stupid.

The third line of defense was my second (and last) squad of seven elite and legendary wrestlers, who didn't damage it either before being killed. In fact, they hardly got into range before getting killed.

The colossus now moves into the main fortress and encounters the fortress- and royal guards, which are annihilated. Still no damage to the colossus.

As a last resort I draft the 150 civilians into one massive squad and they all jump the colossus in one glorious pile. Dwarves fly into the walls left and right, and the end result is they badly bruised it's fourth finger, right hand.

TAKE THAT!!! HAHA!!!

As of writing, it's running around and smacking the nobles, children, and babies into the walls...

So my question is, how do I stop one? I mean, next time. It's obviously not going to happen this time.

EDIT: And I was so proud of that fortress, too...   :(

[ May 19, 2008: Message edited by: mickel ]


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