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Messages - falcc

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106
DF Suggestions / Re: Unusual animal behavior before fb invasion
« on: February 01, 2015, 05:15:59 pm »
I'd love to see a rush of wildlife moving across the math the month before an FB shows up. So animals can't necessarily sense them from whatever travel map distance but things flee in their wake so when they move towards your fortress you get a wave of panicked animals on the map suddenly. Maybe some of them choke up your cage traps, or maybe your hunters all rush out to get while the getting is good, but if you take advantage of the bounty for too long suddenly whatever spooked all those animals is on the map edge and everything else flees your map the same way they did to get there.

107
DF Suggestions / Re: Angry children should be mischevious
« on: January 25, 2015, 08:27:53 pm »
Toady has talked about how he wants to make it harder to learn skills afresh. He's obviously got the framework for that started with knowing how to write particular kinds of poems, now too. It's only a matter of time until kids studying chairdwarfship is the only way you can expand your dining hall after the tragic magma-lever-pulling accident of the previous carpenter. And once they've got a use in the fortress that is powerful enough to keep them alive, they should be mischievous if they aren't taken care of.

There's going to be plenty going on with nobles eventually, and maybe guilds and religious leaders. Children historically have been more of a shaper of social policy than a thing to kill with as much expediency as possible.

For that matter, if kids start getting violent and your civilizations ethics aren't explicitly "destroying the next generation of the civ is a personal matter" this would be a really good way for forts to repopulate bandit historical figures and cursed creatures as the world goes on. They get banished from your fort via Dwarven Justice, aren't accepted in your immediate hill dwarf linked areas, and goes off and joins a bandit entity and grows up there. A fortress could just go bad and lead to tons of fun until the fort is destroyed, and all the kids run off and by the time your next fort loads up there's a local bandit problem.

108
DF Suggestions / Re: Quality taverns attract local Night Trolls
« on: January 25, 2015, 05:29:12 pm »
I imagine farms are eventually going to be raided by a starving populace once that kind of thing is tracked. But there are a lot of other kinds of forts going in with starting scenarios, so it would be good to have a lot more variation.

I'd imagine just generalizing an invading bandit army as a raid for supplies if they go after a fort planned as a tavern, and a prison break if they attack or prison fort, something like that, would be cool even if invaders didn't necessarily understand that as what they were doing yet. Then a group of animal people attacking a place could have some context even if they didn't have a complicated diplomatic relationship between entities right away. Or exact knowledge of your site's numbers even, they'd just know taverns have food.


109
DF Suggestions / Quality taverns attract local Night Trolls
« on: January 24, 2015, 04:28:33 pm »
Night creatures are obviously on the backburner right now, but the existing framework for megabeast invasions should be used to let better taverns more likely to attract local Night Trolls. It would be kind of a Beowulf thing, a tavern becomes well known enough to bring the ire of cave monsters. For a typical fort with a prepared military this will just be a little extra fun until abductions during play work. It wouldn't be quite like having to slay a dragon but it'll still test small armies or ones that aren't in all iron or steel. Or depending on how low the reputation needs to be set, or how many night trolls are present it can be a regular threat to keep things interesting.

For people building exclusively tavern forts, before or after the starting scenarios are in, this will offer occasional supernatural challenges that encourage hiring mercenaries, without making you deal with serious forgotten beast monsters all the time.

This could get expanded when night creatures are the focus again, but in the mean time they'd offer a smoother difficulty curve for locations that wouldn't realistically be seeing armies even if they were successful by tavern standards.

110
DF Suggestions / Re: More varied material TYPE preferences.
« on: January 24, 2015, 12:13:02 am »
I love this.

Maybe when a Dwarf interacts with a particular material it adds a counter somewhere. There's proportional weight to normal material modifiers, because really fancy things like the only Tiger they've ever seen when the Elves bring a caravan, but if they constantly work with dogs that counts enough times over to keep forts from all wanting adamantine tiger statues. When they hit some arbitrary number (or maybe have it settable so you could go really random with favorites or be careful and play it safe with regular interactions) you get a "Urist McRockTosser has grown attached to all stone" announcement, with additional refinements gradually.

That also leads to more specification as they get high numbers on a few particular materials. At first they're just interested in wood but they get a particular interest in oak and chairs. Once they've mastered a craft they're going to know what a good example of those objects is better than most Dwarves. Of course, that means if you ever find enough adamantine to have it pass through a bunch of hands, or a lot of early gold mining, you'll have to find a way to ration it somewhere away from people, or use more of it for greedy nobles. It could even have implications when the economy comes in.

111
DF Suggestions / Angry children should be mischevious
« on: January 23, 2015, 11:07:45 pm »
Simple: Dwarven children should cause trouble if they aren't happy.

When Dwarven children are upset but not enough so to start punching things at random, they should go around pulling levers and starting odd hauling jobs of their own initiative. They can't pass locked doors, so there are still ways to prevent total fortress melt down, but there should be a risk that kids occasionally cause that sort of thing so they're attended to. When temples are more clearly defined really rowdy children should be at risk for defiling one of them and being cursed somehow. There should be a risk of children lashing out at nobility in some non-lethal way or hiding/forbidding random supplies with no announcement, but also the chance of a mist zombie or wereskunk to suddenly be standing inside all of your defenses by a busted altar.

Aside from the regular mood changes from being near nice things, making some toys for the fortress should have slightly increased priority. Children should also benefit from good moods listening to songs and stories from their elders, possibly encouraging players to leave a couple of Dwarves idle as they'll naturally entertain children with their conversations and stories.

This creates some opportunities for Dwarven culture to become more central to the game. Once families are defined maybe children whose parents work in a different burrow get bad moods from not seeing them often. At the same time they benefit from contact with their family and with storytellers that are theoretically teaching them the kind of Dwarven values that make one question whether pulling the lever in the adamantine mine is really the right thing to do. If apprenticeship and other labors for children get implemented they could enjoy working with a parent at a workshop and learning the trade, or might dislike it based on their personality so they don't end up doubling the available hauling labor for the fort without any drawbacks.

112
DF Suggestions / Re: Rich people, rulers, nobles have libraries
« on: December 09, 2014, 11:10:48 pm »
Quote from: SixOfSpades on December 09, 2014, 04:24:16 pm
Paper, writing, books, and libraries are suggested about once a month.

EVERY month.

They are already planned for inclusion in the game (see here and here), and have been planned for years.

People keep suggesting them. Over & over & over again.


How exciting to know. I certainly hope that since no work has actually been done on them so far that Toady considers my suggestions as to how they could be designed.


Quote from: SixOfSpades on December 09, 2014, 04:24:16 pm
Personally, I think it should be mandatory to lurk in every forum (especially this one) for at least a month before being allowed to start a new thread.

Can't tell you how happy I am that your opinion doesn't matter one iota more than one of the hundreds of people obliviously suggesting libraries.

113
DF Suggestions / Rich people, rulers, nobles have libraries
« on: December 09, 2014, 02:10:04 pm »
Like the description says. There aught to be some way to designate chests or some kind of shelving item as a library room for nobles. Nobles might not necessarily need to be able to read, but books are essentially artifacts and people should be seeking them out for the status, or possibly magic they involve. Libraries should be designated from an item, and nobles should recognize a quality of their library. Unlike other rooms, library quality should be at least partially tied to book values, since they're the main component of a library and also probably the most expensive given how rare written materials are in DF. And you can assign books to a room with an appropriate container, sort of like hospitals, so different nobles can be given books on, let's say spheres they have preferences for.

So in Fortress mode nobles should sometimes demand books be acquired. Requests can be made of traders to bring books and the noble will have a longer period of waiting they'll find acceptable than for production orders since it's like acquiring an artifact and they should recognize an increased difficulty. But higher level nobles might make more demanding requests for more or more expensive books (and they should end up doing this for other artifacts once there are a lot in the world and dwarves can be sent out in raiding armies) which need to be traded for or stolen from necromancer towers or enemy civs if the ruler favors a sphere no one else in your civ is writing for. Adventurers would also get requests for books as fetch quests, so sometimes you're told to go to the necromancer's tower but not necessarily to rid the world of the necromancer. Or a necromancer might send you to steal a book from a ruler that took it from them in world gen if you're a night creature that they'd talk to. And thieves will be coming for your books in fortress mode, so it's just a big expansion to things going on in the world.

Further down the line when magic is implemented and/or into the economy when there are ranges of housing with different levels of wealth, other people should be pursuing books for magical reasons. Or depending on what gets developed first people should seek to have books because they reveal information about sites, treasure locations, maybe night creatures true names, something that would be valuable and lead to people seeking out specific texts. And those people's houses/keeps/towers/lairs can have recognizable library rooms in the same way inns will be recognizable as inns outside of fortress mode with their set ups. Necromancer towers can even have this so their books aren't strewn everywhere and adventurers need to make a serious assault up to near the top even if they aren't going for a slab, or so apprentice necromancers can build towers without slabs, because they all learned from books, but still have a clear target for a siege. 

So this is a framework suggestion potentially for a lot of things, and it can tie together early with inns since there'll be new building recognition stuff, and world gen artifacts, and especially if law ends up being written on slabs or in books which could lead to more book proliferation once customs are established.

114
DF Suggestions / Enhanced pet and mount abilities from animal training
« on: December 08, 2014, 02:23:32 am »
So I'm rewatching the entire LoTR trilogy, like you do, and I had a thought: cavalry charges historically don't work, but are really really cool looking, maybe a Legendary trained horse could do it. What if animal training skill offered additional benefits to animals your civilization has already fully domesticated, such as greatly improved animal performance? This would essentially offer additional ranks beyond fully domesticated to make it worthwhile to continue using the animal training skill even if you've killed or domesticated all the animals that appear on a given map. Training should increase the attributes and skills of animals  in some way so that novice animal trainers that can barely keep an animal tame also make subpar hunting and war dogs, and subpar mounts whenever they're working in game.

The power goals have stuff like tripping over stones and dogs that are specially bread to track and kill werewolves. Both of those sound like the kind of stuff that could be incorporated into animal training to some extent. Higher skills make more powerful war animals, sneakier hunters, and mounts that are more capable of keeping their footing with a rider or in battle. Animal training skill could determine whether a horse refuses to rides towards armed attackers and tosses its rider in difficult terrain, or whether horses are capable of amazingly charging down a horde of armed goblins and without tripping over them or being immediately stabbed to death.  Dogs trained by legendary trainers could have increased speed to keep pace with their dwarves, or do more damage. War animals should also become somewhat larger when trained and fed by skilled trainers, so several generations of dogs trained by a legendary trainer are of exceptional size and strength for their species and potentially becoming a distinct breed.

Eventually advancements in animal training should impact a civilization, so it's easier to generalize for world generation. Elves train mounts capable of fighting simultaneously with them, or Goblins become so good with giant bats they develop flying mounts (which they have now of course, but in theory dwarves would also be able to gradually have these kinds of things without anyone having them by default). This means somewhere along the line a civilization will develop horses that can shove over a bunch of armored fighters and overrun them without tripping, but with any less than legendary +10 horses they'll probably end up realistically skewered.

115
DF Suggestions / Re: It's not a bug, it's a feature! Night Creature & Demon Infiltrators
« on: November 19, 2014, 08:26:01 pm »
Eventually when they have more complicated mechanisms for detecting night creatures this would be a pretty cool mechanic. I think right now they could just do something like they do with vampires and have them be mentioned in quests and detected when called a night creature. Provided they can figure out why it happened, of course.

116
DF Suggestions / Re: Communism
« on: November 19, 2014, 09:51:52 am »
Well this kind of went off the rails. Let me clarify: my suggestion is for the economy should be designed with multiple possible systems that could be implemented in some way for modded civs (like setting their value systems in the raws). And I am suggesting it now rather than once the economy is reimplemented because it's easier to build something triangular from the start than build a circle and cut it into a triangle. Toady has announced that the economy is finally coming back, I'd like him to have this to consider while writing the foundational code for it.

No pedantry necessary.

117
DF Suggestions / Communism
« on: November 15, 2014, 12:53:26 pm »
While laws and customs and property are getting worked out, I just want to throw in a suggestion for multiple possible systems of legal ownership. It makes sense that a race should potentially be communal, or communal within individual large entities, and similarly that some should be really reluctant to trade ever. Maybe not the existing races right now, but there could be some option in the raws for an economic emphasis.

Example: Elves in one world may value autonomy really strongly so they won't engage in trading, but offer something akin to tribute to other Elves when they have a surplus so their whole civilization is just existing on what it produces itself.

Or Goblins might be the exact opposite, with property being really contentious. So Goblins go out stealing from other people all the time, but if theft isn't frowned upon in the entity maybe the more cunning Goblins are eating out of other goblin's food stores, or warehouses in another goblin town kind of thing, and as long as they aren't caught in the act it's respected as their having earned that food.

Dwarves live kind of communal lives right now since the economy is out, but obviously still make exchanges with the mountainhomes. Autonomy you can kind of simulate if you live somewhere caravans will never be able to reach, but if you start to run out of food and you're some kind of frontier or religious settlement your homeland will never think "those Dwarves are doing something important, let's give them some free food when it gets hard" if they have a lot of extra production elsewhere. So you can't make the civilization value anything like that right now.

Sort of the logical extension is humans living in towns having to pay other humans for food even though they share an entity because of whatever. There ought to be different civilizations that have different values, guarantee food for their peasant class and all of the merchandise produced is just sold by the civilization instead of individuals and the numbers they get back in trade kind of get spread out evenly. Which is kind of how Dwarves basically live now without their being any kind of codified reason why these are distinct.

This would also let people play a race that is kind of opted out of the major economic overhauls, so when people love taverns and want to heavily tax hill Dwarves they can, but they could also make it so those people are considered to be guests of the civilization and so they owe them some amount of free rooms, or the hill Dwarves are thought of like family so they get free trade goods on occasion and the game reciprocates that when your main fortress runs low on stuff the hill Dwarves have.

118
DF Suggestions / Motivational Speeches
« on: November 15, 2014, 12:38:16 pm »
I was just reading through old Dwarf Talk transcripts (like ya do) and I had a suggestion for the adventuring party autonomy question that was being kicked around a while ago. It seems like if you're just coming to a town to rest or restock or what-have-you it shouldn't be a concern if your party wanders off or stays with you according to their personality, but there should be a system in place if you're going to that town for a reason and don't want people running off.

There should be an option to shout to everyone around you a motivational speech referencing a specific plan of action, and basically put your social skills and language skills up against the personalities of your companions that determine morale failures or abandonment. So you go into conversation, shout to everyone, and go "motivate the troops" or something, and then say "we're going to kill Urist VampireBoots" and then the party around you sort of weighs that against their allegiances and their personality. Or it could be "we're going to go drinking" or "we can start a village here" And then instead of making it really complicated maybe just have a list of a few things you could promise people in regards to that. So you say a thing and your continuing dialogue options are "promise people riches". "promise people power", "promise people freedom" or security, or honor, or revenge or things like that. And if somebody is allied to Urist VampireBoots but is really greedy maybe the promise of treasure wins them over, but if you're trying to get people to kill a bunch of monks that took a vow of poverty and you promise them treasure they become more skeptical and might leave, so you can't just do all the options in a row and win everyone over. Maybe you do a speech, and promise everyone treasure, and one of your party still doesn't care but you go in individually and say "We're going to kill Urist, and I promise you freedom" and maybe that resonates with a person if their town is run by Urist or something. 

And this would weigh against morale failures, so you finally get to the top of the necromancer tower or whatever and you've lost a couple of companions, everybody is weary and treasure doesn't sound that great weighed against lives. So you can motivate people only so far based on their personalities, and really skittish people won't stay in terrifying situations unless they're even more scared of you. Then you've got things like "we're going to kill Urist" and "I promise I'll punish you if you don't" or "We have an obligation to dead comrade #2, he was the bravest of all" kind of thing or even "returning alone is dangerous" so if only one person is threatening to flee they're considering if maybe it'd be safer staying with the other people with swords than risking a missed zombie or a guard patrol change on their way out. Or you just get to town and you're like "We're killing Urist for honor" and you just retreated from a battle somewhere else, the morale failure is just everyone abandons you to go to the tavern and you can't win that party back until they've drunk off the negative emotional cache from the last battle.

Of course, with the new personality rewrite this should be a lot easier. If you're getting some kind of recognizable negative emotions tromping through an evil swamp, you know you need to get your troops rallied at the end, but if it's just a trip across town from the tavern nobody has enough built-up negatives to have to worry about it unless the destination in town is really scary.

119
DF Suggestions / Companion weapon use and fighting levels
« on: September 13, 2014, 12:39:08 pm »
You should be able to specifically request a companion in Adventure Mode to use a weapon in their inventory other than the one they'd otherwise prefer. For example getting a swordsdwarf with a steel longsword to use a silver dagger to kill a werewolf, or back you up with archery as you fight creatures in the water instead of trying to path in. When companions have training weapons in hand their combat approach should be training, allowing you to hit them with training weapons and both of you to begin skill training. These could require various levels of trust, as convincing someone to attack an elephant with a carps corpse when they have a warhammer shouldn't be something everyone can do.

Additionally, there needs to be a 'C' combat setting option for the level of combat you want to engage in when move-attacking a creature. You should be able to set non-lethal and your adventurer will try to stick to punching limbs or bashing extremities. Setting it to training should make all attacks the light touches from Arena Mode, but should still be seen as escalating after the first few hits if the creature you're attacking isn't a companion. Wild animals would have no reason to respond to your pokes with gentle taps, and random civilians should be annoyed by getting slapped in the side by a sword, even if it's soft.

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