Bay 12 Games Forum

I've been playing around with differentiating animal people in my Furry Fortress mod.  Mine are designed to replace dwarves instead of integrate them, since that's how it works for now, but here's what I got: 

Vulps (Foxes) - Trancing, alcohol dependent, average stats, bites and scratches are primary, punches and kicks are secondary, natural biting skill of 1, dog teeth
Lagomers (Rabbits) - alcohol dependent, grazers, very agile, very fast gait, rodent teeth, should have larger than average legs, but I haven't gotten around to that
Komodos (Varanids) - carnivores, natural ambusher skill, dwarf-like strength and toughness, tail slap attack (which I never got to work), claws instead of nails
Anatos (Ducks) - amphibious (which doesn't work), high endurance (bird lungs)
Equids (Horse/Centaur) - centauroid body, hooves, large body size, penalty to mining skill
Leokin (Lion) - carnivore, claws, large body size, large eye teeth, males are larger than females and less common, males are natural fighters, females are natural hunters, penalty to mining skill
Ratuls (Honey Badgers) - a joke race, prone to rage, bone carn, maxed out toughness and disease resistance, fart reflex breath attack (like skunks), all ethics and values set to zero because they don't care

One of the things on my to-do list is to change their personality dispositions.  So far, I've only done this with Ratuls to make them not care harder, and with Leokin males to make sure they can reproduce.  I've noticed that changing the ethics and values for civilizations can have interesting impacts on how they behave.  Komodos don't care about craftsmanship, so they don't get made if you melt down a masterwork.  Lagomers like nature, so they don't mind being outdoors. 

My experience so far has been that the interactions in Dwarf Fortress are vague enough that you can reuse a lot of features for different races, Komodos, Leokin and Ratuls all share a lot of traits, and small changes can make a big difference, for example Vulps are surprising good at fighting allegedly because of their preference for biting, but this is true of their legendary swordsvulps too, and the carnivore races promote a very different lifestyle and fortress design.  I made a list of mod tokens I would have liked to have that might turn into some useful differentiation ideas. 

I've been playing a mod game with 4 or 5 other civs within range.  I've been trying to start wars with them by seizing their goods and slaying their merchants, but after several years of this practice, they don't seem to care.  The goblins sent some lackluster offensives, but I'm trying to start World War D over here.  Any advice on starting wars with non-goblins? 

Yes, if we were looking at this biologically, a better bed would improve the quality of sleep, but not the quantity.  The reasons for needing a certain quantity of sleep are still unknown to science. 

Anyway, we have leather, which is basically a treated version of a pelt.  (Just without any actual treatment, what with not having bodily waste in the game, yet...)

But leather is (in dwarf fortress) always kind of a junk material, while real life fur coats or fur rugs are very valuable, at least depending on the creature.  Same with things like gator-hide or snake-skin.  If you skin something like a tiger or a polar bear, you should be rewarded with a high value piece of fur, not another rag for your bag makers. 

Modifiers should change the bed value too.  A gold bed frame should be worth more than a lay pewter bed frame, and dyed pigtail fiber bedding with a sewn image should be worth more than rat leather bedding. 

Also, it seems like anything you can make in Dwarf Fortress out of metal or wood can also be made out of glass, so even though that's kind of weird, I say if dwarves can make beds of wood, stone and metal, they should also be able to make them out of glass.  Ceramic beds could also be feasible, a pile of bricks with bedding on it should work as well as a stone frame. 

And since we're kind of talking about this, maybe dwarves can make chitin bedding as well.  Bug shell chitin would be uncomfortable, but mushroom chitin would be cool.  So you've got Cloth, Leather, Feather or Chitin(mushroom) bedding. 

AND THAT REMINDS ME, Dwarf Fortress should have pelts/furs!  It would be trivial to mod in the reactions for pelts/furs, but tedious to put a PELTABLE token on every furry animal (if that's necessary).  Pelts could be turned into clothing, rugs or bedding.  Decorate your barracks with beak dog rugs while your military sleeps in troll-fur bedding on bed frames of melted down goblinite. 

So bedding can be Cloth, Leather, Feather, Chitin(mushroom) or Pelt.  Probably a few other soft things out there...

Trees are already dangerous enough as it is, with branch caveins and fps drops and falling logs.

That would be interesting.  In the Ent's dying breath, it crumbles into a pile of wood logs and slams into any nearby dwarves.  Given that an Ent would be essentially a wood colossus, it's just a matter of multi-tile creatures, which I think toady is making anyways. 

Wagons are also technically a creature...

Ever think to yourself, why can't I make X out of Y?  Let's make a list. 

Metal Beds  http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=89407.30 
Cloth Beds
Stone Beds
Glass Ammo
Cloth Armor
Stone Hammers
Wood Statue/Sculpture
Cloth Quiver
Cloth Backpack
Soap Crafts
Metal Slabs
Clay Slabs

And I've thought that Tapestries could work like Cloth Statues.  Maybe created at a Dyer's Workshop, or made at a Clothier's shop but requires dyed thread. 

In the Metal Beds discussion, there was the idea that beds are constructed either as a multi-input item, (like traction benches or lavish meals) where a wood/metal/stone/etc. frame is combined with a cloth/etc. mattress to create a bed, or as a multi-part construction (like a well or screw pump) where the user selects a bedframe and mattress when making the bed as a construction.  Other objects could be created the same way, for example, users could create wooden or metal staffs and then combine them with metal bars to create spears and polearms. 

EDIT: We could also get into new substances like coffee or tea. 

My longest fort lasted maybe a decade I don't remember exactly.  I was breeding cave crocodiles when a fire breathing hadrosaur attacked.  My military should have been able to deal with it, but they couldn't find it because of the smoke.  I eventually lured it to the surface, hoping it would get bored and leave, but apparently it learned to fly and appeared inside an unfinished mushroom tower while I wasn't looking.  Before an epic battle between the firebreathing hadrosaur and our legions of legendary warriors and cave crocodiles could really begin, the FPS turned down to zero and the game crashed. 

Since then, I've been doing a lot of modding and frequent new worldgens, so nothing has come close.