Bay 12 Games Forum

I am very loathe to get into discussions like this. But I genuinely feel the need to chime in at this point. The assumptions being made here, by a lot of people in this thread, are outright absurd. For example, here's one of the things I dislike immensely, among more than one in this thread.

Several, in this thread, apparently assume that if you're from the US, or the "anglosphere", or anything else you want to call this place where some of us live, that the following premise I'm about to point out is true. If I'm incorrect in this, or I've misinterpreted some of your rather specific posts (or so they seem to me), then I apologize in advance. Before I state this example, here's a reminder of my situation, should you choose to believe it (and it is 100% true, though you have only my word for it). I frequent the internet, and gaming sites especially, quite a bit.

Now, I'm sure some will want to refute this as not being truthful, but it may shock you to know that, until this very moment, I've never even HEARD of this pepe the frog thing. Not once.

This is just an example of how dangerous (and frankly, potentially offensive), some of your assumptions are about others. I see some of you (not all of course) just throwing these assumptions around willy-nilly. You think you know others whom you've never even met. You think you can pigeon-hole them into certain categories. I suggest that perhaps you should examine your own house first, before lobbing holier-than-thou accusations at folks you don't know.

Some might even say that thats the very thing I'm doing by posting this. I want to say that, in my estimation for whatever that's worth, the difference is, I'm making no assumptions about who you are as an individual, or what you believe, or where you come down on some arbitrary political spectrum, or anything else. I am simply speaking about the very specific posting behavior being made here, in posts in this thread, and that alone. It's that very specific behavior, in and of itself, that I am calling out as itself being extremely narrow-minded, and quite potentially rising to the level of antagonistic, hostile, and offensive.

Again, we don't know each other. I'm willing to bet that, in real life, we all have a great many dreams and fears in common, and all love gaming especially. Maybe that common ground alone is enough for us to respect each other, be kind, and not just throw around what amounts to nasty stereotypes.

Is it possible to mod an existing reaction (or create a new one, in the case of generating a new world), to output the divine metals/materials?

I know how they're named, I've seen them in the uncompressed saves; usually INORGANIC and DIVINE_1, DIVINE_2, etc.

But, since they're not in the raws (instead defined in the world .dat area), is it even possible to force them to be the output of a reaction, without using something like DFHack? The error log just always returns an unknown token when I try this, and in game it just produces magma (standard broken reaction I think, right?).

So as an example, I was simply altering an existing reaction. In this case, I tried hijacking brass making. Note the product is METAL:DIVINE_1. I also tried using INORGANIC:DIVINE_1. I have also, of course, tried additional numbers on the DIVINE part. But, as mentioned, I end up with magma as the output, and an error in the error log about an unrecognized token. So, something like this is what I tried:

[REACTION:BRASS_MAKING]
[NAME:make brass bars (use ore)]
[BUILDING:SMELTER:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:METAL_ORE:ZINC]
[REAGENT:B:1:METAL_ORE:COPPER]
[PRODUCT:100:8:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:DIVINE_1][PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[FUEL]
[SKILL:SMELT]
Am I missing something I should be doing? Is there a way this works that I don't understand, or is it just not possible, because of the way the divine metals are generated? I understand that I could just create them in the raw files, and define them by hand as a work around, but I was hoping to just utilize what is generated for the world itself.

Absolutely beautiful FantasticDorf, that info literally provides every detail I was interested in for making this work completely, in terms of my original thought of adding a similar non-megabeast version of things like hydras, dragons, etc. I really can't thank you, and Mobbstar as well of course, enough!

On a side note that might be of interest, your example code snippet line of [CREATURE_TOKEN:PRISONER_OF_WAR], should actually be [ANIMAL_TOKEN:PRISONER_OF_WAR]. At least, in my case, where I'm adding this non-megabeast hydra example. Perhaps there's a use for CREATURE_TOKEN rather than ANIMAL_TOKEN, but I assume that was just a small mistake. Please correct me if I'm incorrect on this. Anyways, ANIMAL_TOKEN worked perfectly for me, making only the specified animal available.

I mention this for two reasons:

1) Anyone interested in this thread's info for their own use of course, and

2) Because initially I hadn't noticed it, and used CREATURE_TOKEN. This actually had a bizarre, but possibly desirable (depending on a person's goals) effect. It made every creature available to the test civilization when I tested it out, and this includes...well everything from procedural forgotten beasts to megabeasts, to night creatures. In this test scenario I had added it to the dwarves, just to see if my test hydra appeared in embark as a choosable (but far too expensive) animal, and what I saw instead was, as I mentioned, every creature (sapient or otherwise) in the world, including procedurals!

The use of [PET_EXOTIC] for a creature in a animal arguement allows them to be imported when combined with [ANIMAL_ALWAYS_PRESENT] if you need accessibility or a gurantee, otherwise it'll just whitelist it when in applicable biomes. However all examples of these will be nonhistoric compared to the animals/peopleanimals you start with, which may have historical relevance (depending on whether they're intelligent or pets)

Etc.

Code: [Select]

[ENTITY:FOREST] // obviously fill in the rest of the details, this example is in abstract.
[ANIMAL]                        //[ANIMAL] has to be re-entered when you start a new arguement rather than stringing them all in.
[CREATURE_TOKEN:PRISONER_OF_WAR] //example intellgent animal
[ANIMAL_ALWAYS_PRESENT]
[ANIMAL_NEVER_PET]
[ANIMAL_ALWAYS_SIEGE]
[ANIMAL_NEVER_MOUNT]
[ANIMAL_NEVER_WAGON_PULLER]
[ANIMAL_NEVER_PACK_ANIMAL]


Quote from: Mobbstar on January 10, 2022, 06:08:51 pm

Civilisations can explicitly receive livestock in their "Entity" definition, via the ANIMAL tokens.  Kobolds use this to acquire snakes and similar creatures, but you can also set a specific ANIMAL_TOKEN as clarified on the wiki.

Most changes to Entities require a newly generated world, but you probably expected that anyways.

Keep in mind that elves have no wagons.  A single pack animal will have to drag the entire cage and its heavy contents along.  That will slow them down significantly.

Keep in mind that civilisations can and will use war-trainable livestock in battles and warfare.  They likely won't have many specimen of the creature, since it doesn't appear in the wild, but it will still significantly skew history.

You can disable it by turning off the creature specifically, [ANIMAL] entity tokens are a override for the AI and not the player. But being attacked on site might be more as you say, but they won't be applied offensively. Once upon a time i rigged up the entire vanilla DF raw file through creature variations to mass disable the use of giant war-animals as well as a few other edge cases, its a handy tip when not using  ANIMAL_CASTE_TOKEN to try and induce the intended effect.

The capacities for animal-carrying can also be raised, better trade relations supply more animals if in-game you offer plenty & of course you can just give them guranteed elephants or something similar so they have more robust animals to work with.

Quote

I wonder if it is possible to mod a reaction that lets you "craft" a tame hydra using a captured wild one.  Somebody probably already knows how to do it if it is possible at all.

Id probably lean towards DFhack conversion/created creatures for this kind of thing, it'd be like speeding the training process up. Making the end result a [PET]  and carefully curating the entity [ANIMAL] would make them domesticated full trained if there was any training progress left over from the semi 'wild hydra' and not really usable by other civs (hopefully). Or manifest the not-megabeast fresh from a interaction.

The actual megabeast vs military issue is a AI bug that can't be really modded around though by the way, your civ always regards invaders as enemies and it never gets took off.

Impartially though id advise against 'wild wild Hydra' if that's jarring to you, and try using some other synonyms.

So, TL:DR. How do I make a custom creature available for trade via elven caravans, preferably without them appearing in the wild? If they have to appear as wild creatures, how can they be made very rare? What creature/entity tokens would be necessary?

The long version. If there are other ways to achieve my goals here, please feel free to suggest.

I'm tired of not being able to tame megabeasts properly in forts anymore. It occurred to me that I might be able to get around that by splitting the relevant megabeasts into two variants in the raw files; a "wild" variant, which would be the original megabeast with a different name, and a non-wild variant that is available via domestic animal lists, or preferably exotic animals (via elven caravan trade).

Take Hydras as an example. The normal Hydra megabeast would remain; I would just append "wild" to its name in the world. I would create a new Hydra variant, without the "wild", and this creature...well that's the question here.

It goes without saying that, if I make this creature available as a tamed creature that either the dwarves or the elves have access to, that its price would be absolutely enormous, in order to make its acquisition difficult. Thats easy enough. Now, I know that once you bought a breeding pair, it would be easy to trade them for entire caravans-worth of stuff, but I'm more than happy to impose rules on my own behavior as a player. Alternatively I can simply make it impossible for them to breed or have young.

So, in the case of making this example non-megabeast-token-Hydra available to elves as something that they would trade in a caravan, what tokens am I going to need on the creature, and even on elves as an entity (entity_default changes)?

I guess the rub here is that I'd like to accomplish that, but never see these guys in the wild (I know they'd appear in towns, but oh well), but I know that may not even be possible to do in the first place.

So, thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas? If there is some other way to get an analogue to megabeasts available for taming, without the bugs associated with megabeasts, I'd love to hear your idea on how to accomplish it.

Well, it doesn't seem to me like megabeasts in forts are fully fixed, either. Some circumstances must still remain a problem, because I just had an incident where a recently caged, tamed, pastured dragon (freshly trained to semi-wild, but not having reverted at all) was hostile on sight of my military dwarves. Maybe this is part of the whole, "once a megabeast kills a dwarf, it's got problems" thing that the Wiki mentions under the taming section. Seems like once a megabeast, basically, becomes historical with a kill it won't function properly as a tamed creature, according to what's stated there, and I'd say that appears to be true. Too bad I didn't get to test that with a creature who had no kills. Sigh, ah well. I'm sure we'll get there eventually. So much for that fort!

(EDIT: I'd like to note. There was no loyalty cascade when this mess started. The dragon ignored most of my fort, but my military dwarves came in sight of the dragon, and instead of ignoring each other, they immediately fought. No others ended up in a fight though. Just the unfortunate military dwarves, and the now tame dragon they apparently mistook for an enemy.)

I know the latest patch notes said that at least some instances of hostile, tamed (in fort mode) megabeasts have been fixed, but I'm wondering what's still broken here.

For example, I embarked with an adventurer party of around 15 guys (long story, trying things, lol), and two were outsiders, each with a pet War hydra. I altered the hydra pet value to 1, from 10000, in order to experiment with them in this, thus allowing me to purchase them as an outsider. Unfortunately, what I found was that the 2 war hydras were immediately hostile to everyone around them, including each other, and their masters.

Starting that way with the adventurer party (in a player made fort), then taking no actions, retiring the party, then un-retiring the fort they were in, had the same results. The two hydras, despite being shown as fort pets, fully domesticated, and as livestock, etc, immediately start being hostile to, as best I can tell, everyone.

Does anyone here know something I don't? Are megabeasts broken in adventurer mode, when starting as an outsider (because, given their default value of 10000, they were never meant to be embarked with)? Is it just because I embarked with 2? Some other issue not perceived of by me?

And with that in mind, can anyone relate experience in 47.05, while in fortress mode, with megabeasts like hydras or dragons? Are they stable in your fort, or causing fights and loyalty cascades still?

Thanks in advance all!

I will go ahead and update the tile set right now. Give me a few minutes, and I'll post an update in the Ironhand thread.

Updated to 47.04: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14804

As always, if there happens to be anything wrong or off, please let me know.