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Messages - Melting Sky

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241
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Any way to artificially (via raws or whatever) create a siege?
« on: August 17, 2016, 07:23:15 am »
I'm not sure it works in the current version, but there used to be a DFHack script/command that spawned a siege. I have no idea if that is still around in a working version.

Also, for future fortresses try to build them in a decent sized world, aka not a pocket world, and run history for a few hundred years so the goblins can get properly established along with some necro towers. Make sure to embark close to some large goblin populations and necro towers. Also decrease the siege trigger population and wealth cap in the init.txt file before you get started.

242
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Any way to artificially (via raws or whatever) create a siege?
« on: August 17, 2016, 07:15:09 am »
Quote from: jimboob on August 16, 2016, 08:56:48 pm
I just want a challenge for my army.

Delve too deeply and greedily and you will find your challenge.

243
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Entity tokens that affect rate of invasion?
« on: August 17, 2016, 07:06:28 am »
If you want early sieges embark nest to a few necro towers.

244
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: World age and siege size
« on: August 16, 2016, 08:48:05 pm »
Quote from: Zeebie on August 16, 2016, 09:24:22 am
Do older worlds tend to produce larger sieges? I tend to generate young worlds for fps reasons, and I'm wondering if that is contributing to my anemic siege sizes.

Short answer, yes. Long answer, yes up to a point with a "but" and a "maybe" thrown in. Goblins do tend to become the dominant race in DF as time goes on so when you have longer lived worlds they naturally will have more goblins and goblin sites with which to attack you. Generally if your world is at least a few hundred years old it should have a pretty healthy balance of races in it and plenty of goblins.

As with anything in DF there will be exceptions to the rule. You may just get that one world where for whatever reason Goblins have been gang banged by nigh invincible titans, dwarves and humans etc. Also, location is everything. You could have a world absolutely filled with Goblins and never see a siege if you set up shop on some isolated island, mountain valley, etc.

245
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Help with FPS Death.
« on: August 12, 2016, 03:11:40 pm »
This is an interesting topic. I bet streamlining how often timers increment could do quite a bit to improve the performance of DF. I wonder if Toady has taken a look into this part of the code base recently.

246
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Good World Seed?
« on: August 12, 2016, 08:08:30 am »
Fleeting Frames has pretty much summed it up nicely already, but I should add that when you are in the embark finder view where you choose your starting location you can filter your search with various criteria. You want to look for at least shallow "metals." You want the plural of the word since this indicates more than one type and increases the odds that one will be an iron ore. If I remember correctly there is one iron ore (hematite maybe?) that you can find deep in igneous rock, but the others are shallow and in sedimentary, so finding both shallow and deep metals is a plus.

Another great trick is to embark where multiple biomes overlap since the underlying geology will also be different. This helps ensure a wiper variety of mineral resources to choose from. Some maps you can end up with multiple types of iron ore and others you can get none, but the more times your roll the dice the better your odds of finding some good stuff so look for biome border embarks.

Pretty much any world you spawn will have some very iron rich embarks if you know where to look for them. In a large world there should be literally dozens or even hundreds of embarks locations that have iron on them and meet your criteria. I should add you can just turn off aquifers when you load up the game in PeridexisErrant's DF Starter Pack or if you are running vanilla then you can change it in the init file.

247
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Fps drop researchers wanted
« on: August 09, 2016, 10:48:42 am »
You could collect all the saves and then run them on the same machine for comparison, but I think for the most telling results there should be a lot of controls. For instance running the same exact fortress where as little is changed as possible before and after a cat explosion or before and after generating 7,000 misc. items. Another good experiment would be to keep the fort population and item count roughly the same but increase it's size by 200% etc.

248
DF Modding / Re: Is there a world viewer that lets me see regions and their outlines ?
« on: August 08, 2016, 03:46:17 am »
I used to use IsoWorld to check out my worlds in a more visually detailed manner, but I'm not sure this is exactly what you are looking for?

249
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: How to handle trading/invasion bugs?
« on: August 08, 2016, 03:09:10 am »
Some of the workarounds I remember reading about included sending a military escorted wood cutter to chop down all the trees that are right on the map edge.

250
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: DF2014 (v0.40.24) Worldgen Cookbook Thread!
« on: August 07, 2016, 06:25:08 am »
Hmmm, I had an old embark that actually fit this description, but that was on a version that is now several years out of date. I'm guessing world generation isn't going to be consistent across two+ years worth of new versions?

Edit: I should also add that is not easy to get running water on the same embark as a volcano. World gen does not like placing these two features in close proximity. If I remember right whenever I have gotten an embark with running surface water and a volcano it has been at least 4 tiles in one direction. I usually would run like a 4x3 or some other odd shape to keep the total area down to a workable level. Rivers, volcanoes and large embarks are all things that will slow your game down considerably. When you combine all three of these features you it can make a serious difference in late game FPS. Try to keep your embark size down to a minimum if you can and preferably don't pick a crazy heavily wooded area. Dense forests also tax FPS.

251
DF General Discussion / Re: Who Can Sketch Forgotten Beasts?
« on: August 05, 2016, 09:20:05 pm »
Gotta love the protuding tongue and Urist McDoomed's dubious expression.

252
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: any actual uses for lead?
« on: August 05, 2016, 09:14:09 pm »
Quote from: LMeire on August 05, 2016, 09:09:05 pm
Quote from: Killgoth on August 05, 2016, 02:58:14 pm
I have to agree with the mine cart ammunition or lead goblets sold to elves idea.  Lead is thought to by some to be the main reason the Roman empire fell, because they used it for building aqueducts and many other things because it was so malleable.  I realize lead poisoning isn't implemented in DF, but I like to think it is the thought that counts in situations like these.

It's worth noting that the Romans were aware that lead was the cause of the rampant poisonings and just didn't care. They figured the benefits of easy production and the sweet taste the metal gave to contained drinks outweighed the risks of dying horribly.

Truly the Romans were the first Americans.

253
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Fall Traps
« on: August 05, 2016, 01:40:01 pm »
Quote from: DwarfComic on July 31, 2016, 09:48:36 am
So Marcus was able to get fall trap w/ spikes set-up and it appears to be similar, but he did get ONE goblin to twist their foot. But 17'ish z-levels on spikes, and no damage for majority of the goblins WITH armour. Anything without armour blew-up. Has to be a bug I would assume.

What did he make the spikes out of and how many were there per tile? When the goblins fell into the spike traps there should have been logs detailing the goblin either dodging or getting hit by the spikes. The spikes should be made of a better material than the armor they are intended to pierce.

Edit: Ok, so I decided to actually go watch the video to see what was up. (It was 30 minutes long, ouch!) Apparently they were glass and iron spikes which should have been pretty effective, but thing the guy who made this video forgot to do is put those spikes on a repeater. Upright iron spike traps on repeat will kill just about anything with enough time, even Colossi, Forgotten Beasts and Clowns. The way armor can prevent all injury from a 17 story drop onto a stone floor definitely falls into the category of what I would describe as a bug and is likely the result of Toady recently reworking blunt trauma and how it interacts with armor, but the spikes not working was likely due to him failing to power and activate the spike traps.

I'm going to miss my old entrance design. The nice thing about the old drop traps is you could scale how lethal they were just by digging the hole a bit deeper. I always made mine shallow enough that they weren't lethal so I could either choose to use the enemies in the pit as target practice or send in green recruits for some "safe" live combat training. If something particularly fun fell into the pit I would let out the various beasts and monsters I had collected for an extra brutal finisher.

254
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Re: Newbie questions about combat speed
« on: August 02, 2016, 07:09:00 pm »
Quote from: Murphy on August 02, 2016, 04:16:09 pm
I did some research on this in arena mode, using a dwarf with grand master observer skill and a dog to fight.
It turns out manual dodging works totally different from parrying/blocking AND from automatic dodging.

To be clear, attack descriptions are as follows:
IMMINENT = will hit next tick
Incoming = will hit in 2 ticks
Starting = will hit in 3 ticks
Distant = will hit in 4 ticks
Remote = will hit in 5 or more ticks

You will only notice attacks that are in progress. I.e. a normal 3/3 attack you may notice as early as "incoming". A 4/4 attack can be noticed at "starting", and a quick 2/2 attack only when "IMMINENT".

Now, if you manual parry or block, then you essentially wait for the attack to come through, and then use one tick to defend. E.g. if they were using a normal attack and you parried it, you will always see them recovered from their swing in 2 more ticks after you parry. I verified it by fighting two opponents and using a whip-wielding opponent as a time gauge (whip attacks are slower than other weapons).

This means if two attacks are coming, one starting and one imminent, you can manually parry both of them, as long as you parry the imminent one first.

However, dodging works entirely differently. It does not wait for enemy attacks to come through and you are not dodging a specific attack. You can in fact "dodge" even if you're not being attacked, as long as a creature is nearby. Choosing to dodge manually gives you 2 ticks of time during which you have significantly greater chance to avoid being hit, then it moves you to the next square, and then skips 4 more ticks during which you don't get any defensive bonus.

The implication here is that dodging to a square still adjacent to the enemy will only work if their hit is 1-2 ticks away. If their attack is "starting" or further, then you should either wait a couple ticks, or dodge to a square away from them (the latter will make their attack fail entirely as you move out of range before they even have a chance to strike). Also, if you land next to another enemy, they will usually have enough time to strike you with impunity.

Auto-dodging happens, obviously, at the moment of enemy hit, and indeed only takes 3 ticks. Took me a while to verify, using the enemy attack recovery time as gauge.

Lastly, standing up from prone takes 2 ticks.
There does not seem to be any variation in combat speed between creatures -- they are all using the same timeline.

I would like to find out how many ticks jumping takes, but I can't think of a good way to measure longer actions.

Very useful information for somebody like myself who is quite new to adventuring.  :)

255
DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Re: Best Big Boy Toys (Weapons for Super Sized Adventurers)
« on: August 02, 2016, 07:04:40 pm »
Quote from: Vorox on August 01, 2016, 04:48:02 am
Platinum coffin filled with corpses

Now that conjures some fun imagery. Feel the wrath of Mother Teresa in her gilded coffin. Some elephant man terrorizing the countryside with the exhumed coffin of a dead holy men as his weapon of choice would make for some awesome campfire legends and bard's tales.

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