Bay 12 Games Forum

How much do elixirs increase an attribute by? It would be useful to know how many I need in order to see significant results. Also, two questions about religious buildings: does the arena only create one blood fiend, or change all creatures on it, and what do sacrificing bones and inhaling spores do?

How do you update your savegame? I tried moving my saves from the old version to the folder in the new version, but nothing changed, so I tried the "Update Savegames" option. Now, when I attempt to load the file an error window saying "FATAL ERROR" at the top pops up, displaying "Missing Plant Gloss: jungle moss." This crashes the game. Did I do something incorrectly?

Edit: To be clear, I am talking about moving save files from version 5.33b to version 5.34

I was messing around with the different secrets (pyromancer, wizard, etc) in arena mode, and I noticed something. I'm not sure if it's because it's an arena mode creature that I'm controlling, but spells can be cast anywhere that you can see, regardless of their intended range, excepting burning hands and dragon fire, which can be targeted anywhere you can see but dissipate at their normal ranges, and spray ice and freezing blast, which fail to cast correctly, dissipating one square away. Fireball appears to travel a bit farther than its range, but becomes inaccurate. Also, spells that do not have a target limit specified in the way that spells like chain lightning and shock do (select victim, X of Y) can be cast on all creatures in sight, if they are all selected. These spells are harm, slow, raise pyre zombie, and cast madness, which might explain the large amounts of crazed dwarves some people have reported, since it would allow the demoniac to cast it on everyone in sight, rather than one adjacent dwarf, once per month. Bone spear also does not appear to have any effect, and, as you mentioned earlier in this thread, frost spells also have an effect on the caster, with spray ice sometimes causing minor injury and freezing blast making death likely, if not assured, though I'm not sure that it is possible for that to be changed without giving the spellcaster an immunity to ice, which might not make sense for a druid and general wizard. Spells that have you select victims also cannot be cast on the same creature twice, with corpse-targeting spells being an exception, though it may be considered a different corpse after rising and being re-killed. I do enjoy the spells though, and they definitely add a lot and make sense. In regards to the secrets though, is it possible to be more than one type of caster? For example, if an adventurer were to read the tablet/book of secrets for both a pyromancer and a stormbringer, would they be able to cast all of the spells from each? After all, while that would make that adventurer very powerful, successfully finding and killing two different mages and reading their secrets is difficult enough that I feel it may not be overpowered.

Quote from: Deon on June 23, 2013, 02:36:42 am

I must check the dark altar, there's a 1% chance for a dwarf to turn into a demon or something, I surely hope it's not 100% due to autosyndrome plugin or something like that.

Well, it is confirmed, autosyndrome plugin does not check for % chance and turns the creature in the first entry immediately. I will have to turn it back to boiling rock to stop it from happening.

Deon, while you're doing that, can you check the other religion buildings? If one is bugged, the others may be as well. That might explain why the "turn a dwarf into a cultist/druid" has no observable effect other than looking flashy.

So it's normal? The odd thing is though, this ISN'T a short history. I intentionally ran it until year 1050, so perhaps there are some more variables we don't know about in event selection when it comes to artifact generation. There certainly seems to be a trend of events relating to your civilization being chosen, and perhaps recent events have a better chance as well. I suppose the most likely explanation is that what's on the artifact is dependent upon the dwarf that made it. That would explain the trend of events relating to your civilization and even your fort, and since making an artifact is extremely significant, especially for the creator, it would probably value higher than other events.

Right, the tests should start soon hopefully, I've been having some issues with school, but the setup for the actual test chambers has begun, the infrastructure for the isolated portion of my fortress where the test subjects will live is nearly complete, and the ocean is half-empty.

Quote from: Matthmatt1213 on October 08, 2012, 09:03:39 pm

So I've been looking around the forums, and while I found a thread with plenty of speculation as to how a railgun would work, I have been unable to find a thread made after the introduction of mine carts that has truly applied dwarven science to the Dwarven Railgun.
...

A quick forum search for "Minecart" leads to:
SCIENCE: Quantifying minecart physics
Perpetual Motion Minecart Grinder & Other Weird Physics
Minecarts are for what? No, really
The "How Does Minecart" Thread

60 pages of minecart science and testing, some of which is applicable specifically to railguns.

There is quite a bit of research that has been done, but by no stretch of the imagination is it complete. I'm thinking of something along the lines of the Weapon Research and the Science of Fall Damage threads. Personally, I'm probably going to conduct some tests on dwarves (mainly immigrants) once I have a self-sufficent fortress specifically designed for the task (with invasions off, of course). Stuff like the average damage taken from different types of minecarts, and testing EXACTLY how effective rollers are by themselves, and seeing the effects of different heights, as well as combinations with different types. For instance, is there a scenario where a light wooden (or even adamantium) minecart would be more effective than one made of silver? Obviously, these minecarts would have a much lower impact, but perhaps a speedier delivery might help with long-range accuracy, and if your plan is to douse a goblin siege with magma, speed might be more important than the actual impact, and it might have quicker reload (though wooden minecarts would be useless in the above example). After all, you're going to be able to retrieve the adamantium minecarts (assuming you don't somehow atom-smash it), so a variety might be useful. Also, tests on skipping need to be done. We should try to discover the skipping distance over water and magma with different minecarts. Are they different based on minecart density, and if so, how much? Is it possible to manipulate this so you can make a minecart skip over, say, a magma pool as many times as possible, over as long of a distance as possible? We should remember that, as tempting as it may be to simply pound goblins, elves, or even HFS with steel slugs, railguns have much more potential than just direct attacks. Also, it might be fun (or potentially Fun) to load in some caged sperm whales and see how that affects things. Also, can we manipulate minecart derailing to, say, launch a dwarf OVER dangerous terrain and onto another track? Then you could have a dwarf-only entrance/exit to your fort that could be weaponized simply by changing the designation from ride to push, and adding some weight. Goblins, without minecarts, or even the knowledge of how to use them would stupidly stand on the track, giving you an easy killzone. This might also be a good use of minecart variety, even though heavier minecarts might have quicker acceleration, a lighter one, should, in theory, be launched farther. We should also check to see if fall damage can be dampened by minecarts if they land on another track. This could lead to more one-way transportation. Even if some of this stuff doesn't result in practical information, imagine the potential for what you could do in adventure mode! A pulled lever activates a series of latches which work as a timer. Meanwhile, the adventurer climbs into the minecart, and is soon launched over a chasm filled with magma, all the while shooting at flying enemies. And don't forget the megaproject potential. I for one would love my dwarves to be comforted by cooling mist that, instead of coming from one of those all-too-common waterfalls, comes from an automated minecart-railgun which launches a minecart across a pool of water, then turns it around and sends it back across the water. The best part of this design is, not only is it efficient, but with a few floodgates and pumps, you could easily drain the water and replace it with magma to weaponize it during a siege, making it not only an awesome, dwarf-calming construction, but an amazing front-line defense if you've called your dwarves farther in, effective against any mortal creature!

TL;DR summary: Minecart science is a novel, and we're still in the first chapter.

Because they feel the need to rescue the children from Dwarven Child Care

Why does my brewer go on break the very moment we begin to run out of booze?