Bay 12 Games Forum

v1.3 Released

Major changes:
* Optional: Adrenaline interaction (with some tweaks) from the Grimlocke's History & Realism Mods is included with the author's permission. It gives a substantial boost in willpower and endurance to all live creatures in combat, making fights longer and invaders less affected by the randomness of their physical stats.
* Thickened joints and ribs and gave a bit more reasonable thickness to spine, courtesy of DF Revised.
* Lots of small fixes to material templates, courtesy of DF Revised.
* Increased the strength of cartilage (to that of bone/sinew) for a bit more durable fingers, toes and such.
* Several tissue fixes: fat does not bleed; damage to bone causes more bleeding; removed pain from brain (as it's effects appear to be redundant).
* Added a new type of ammo: war darts. They are used by atlatls and are better suited agaist flesh than armor, very effective against large beasts.
* Added new weapon sets: shepherd arms (sling + mace), ravager arms (sling + headhunting axe), trapper arms (atlatl + hawk axe), beasthunter arms (atlatl + executioner sword), ambusher arms (atlatl + spear).
* Lowered the velocity for all 'thrust' attacks (to that of normal stabs) and gave them slower recover, as they were too good at cutting off limbs.
* Rearranged the multi-attack bonuses/penalties for all weapons. Changed some prepare and recover times accordingly.
* Readjusted the speed for all trap components and made them generally slower.
* The 'hook' attack for halberd was replaced with 'strike' (with spike). A new 'hook' attack is more in line with other weapons.
* Expanded the attacks for falx. Now it can also 'snatch' and 'cleave'.
* Increased the velocity for hammerhead bolts (1.25x modifier).
* Added another "fake" attack to (sling) bullets to make slings more random.
* Renamed 'mail hauberk' to 'mail coat' and 'mail byrnie' to 'mail shirt' for simpler naming and changed the tags accordingly.
* Renamed 'tasset' to 'tassets' as that is more appropriate. Now it only gives 60% block, but requires less bars. Also, lowered its weight. Actually added it to the entity lists, as I forgot to do it the first time.
* Renamed 'plackart' to 'lower plate' for simpler naming and changed the tag accordingly. It now grants 100% block, but requires more bars. Also, lowered its weight.
* Changed the tag for greatsword to fit its name, for easier searching in the entity files. Goodbye, Grutte Pier reference

Minor changes:
** Renamed 'giant club' to 'war club', in accordance with the new DF Revised.
** Renamed 'atlatl dart' to 'thorn dart', to emphasize the wood-only focus.
** Renamed 'hat' to 'warm hat', as that is a more precise description.
** Fixed the 'hook' attack for horned axe having too high velocity.
** Fixed the skill for javelinman arms to DAGGER.
** Lowered the material requirements for broad spear and bladed spear.
** Raised the two-handed size requirement for hatchet to 18000.
** Made glaive a bit slower on attack, but easier to parry with. Overall speed stays the same. Also, removed the 'hook' attack.
** Made hawk axe a bit less penetrating.
** Made war cleaver a bit better at damaging armor.
** Some attack renamings for scimitar and war cleaver.
** Made large arrows heavier and a bit less penetrating.
** Slightly lowered the weight for plate armor, breastplate and chestplate, to simulate their efficient weight distribution.
** Made lamellar armor a bit heavier.
** Lowered the weight of gambeson and padded armor to a more realistic value. Now even more layering possible!
** Slightly inceased the layer permit of pauldrons.
** Fixed the shin guards layer type to COVER and slightly increased their layer permit.

Maybe adding the [CRAZED] token in the creature_standard.txt entry for the gobs specie can help?

In the earlier versions it did not affect worldgen in any way, unfortunately. Most probably still doesn't.

Goblins take away people as slaves when they successfully raid a site that get converted into citizens because they're dragged back to settlements to work, so turning their slavery off in raws can be a easy fix to that issue by giving a large or slighted negative (like MISGUIDED which is -1 below the justifying it under special reasoning) to the ethic raws.

The OP's problem, if I understand correctly, is not so much about the goblins having other races in their civs, but rather other races' civs having too much goblins in them, due to the modded goblin fertility. Tinkering with the slavery ethic probably won't make any difference on the aforementioned issue.

However, dashadowlord can try and remove all the LIKES_SITE and TOLERATES_SITE tags from the goblin entity and then add back the [LIKES_SITE:DARK_FORTRESS] and [TOLERATES_SITE:DARK_FORTRESS]. This should minimize the goblin drift to other creatures' sites, while encouraging them to go back to their native sites whenever possible. Increasing the MAX_SITE_POP_NUMBER helps too.
Do note, that any of these changes may cause a huge population boom for the gobs, and walking into their sites in Adventure Mode will produce unbearable lag. On the other hand, it seems that exremely large number of goblins is what dashadowlord is after to begin with.

The reagent is really off. It should be defined like this:

[REAGENT:tag:amount:TYPE:SUBTYPE:MATERIAL:SUBMATERIAL]
If any item is ok to use, all the uppercase ones should be set to NONE, like this:

[REAGENT:A:1:NONE:NONE:NONE:NONE]
although, I'm not entirely sure if the reaction will work with not even an item type defined.

REACTION_CLASS:JUNK is not a valid reaction class in vanilla and can only be added manually - to certain materials, in their respective raws. In case you do mod it in, the reagent should look like this:

[REAGENT:A:1:NONE:NONE:NONE:NONE]
[REACTION_CLASS:JUNK]

Regarding the ammo, doesn't the very small size basically make them unable to harm armoured targets, or does the power of the (cross)bows make up for that? Or does the coverage of armour make up for this by sometimes allowing projectiles to bypass armour (like hitting through gaps in the armour)?

It's a bit of both. Regular bows and crossbows will not be able to do much against serious armor, but longbows and arbalests, especially with piercing ammo, perform pretty good. On the other hand, serious armor is expensive to make (and a full set is very rarely generated on invaders) - and cheaper, lower tier armors have gaps. Simultaneously, my mod still has heavy and powerful ranged options, such as atlatls (javelin throwers) and hand ballistas. Slings also perform well against armor, although they are more luck based than other ranged weapons.

I heard halving velocity modifier of unarmed attacks already solves a lot of issues, do you recommend this with your mod too?

This is what Revised does, yeah. Revised also removes biting and scratching from civilized creatures, because of how ridiculous those are within the game's mechanics. Both of these fixes work well with my mod.

This seems a lot in line with battles often not having too many casualties until a rout broke out.

Yep, one of the mod's main goals is to tone down the quick and random lethality of the vanilla DF combat and make the choice of armor less streamlined. Also, I feel like this has a positive effect on the storytelling aspect of the game, as there is now more room for mistakes in combat: having multiple viable armor choices gives the troops more character, and many militias who would have inevitably died in vanilla may end up wounded, yet saved by their comrades.

I take it you lowered the weight of your armours by lowering the size, doesn't this also make the armours weaker and easier to broke by repeated hits?

Short answer: no, lowering the layer size doesn't make the armor any weaker.
Long answer: due to how DF combat formulae handles armor thickness, there is no settling point of difference between the layer size values of 1 and 20 (20 being vanilla for plate), unless the armor in question is sized for a creature with a body size value of seven figures. Essentially, the layer size will only start to matter when worn by something the size of an ogre - and the armor sized for such a creature will be so thick that the difference in protection becomes irrelevant. Also, the weight will render the wearer immobile anyway.

So I wonder, how often do armours break in combat, and how much of a problem does exhaustion become in prolonged big fights?

There are too many variables for any combat situation to give a definitive answer here. In short, plate armors break less often than they do in vanilla, and exhaustion is much less of a problem even for the heaviest armor choices. Both still occur, but, in general, armor in my mod is more durable (due to weakened weapons) and less of a liability.
It should also be noted that exhaustion depends on many, many different factors and still plays one of the most decisive roles in combat - and will continue to do so until Toady teaches the AI to preserve stamina.

Also to calculate weapon sizes and contact areas in attack do you use specific formulas, or do you kinda improvise per weapon so it feels right?

Generally speaking, I use real life weapon examples, with the help of modern replica shops and extensive googling.
For the weapon sizes, I've calculated that for an iron weapon to weight somewhere close to 1 kg in the game, the size must be about 150. I set all sizes based on this ratio and the real life weight of the prototype weapon.
For the basic edged attacks, I use the prototype's edge length and, in case of axes, axe head lenght, converting them from inches to raw-units by a ratio. This ratio is based on a number that I've found (after some testing) to be a quite reasonable penetration depth for the short sword (2000), equated to a reasonable blade lenght for the short sword (20 inches). Thus, I multiply a real life value in inches by 100 to get a game-friendly value. It turned out to work surprisingly well in practice.
Things start to get a bit more complicated when it comes to stabbing and other special edged attacks, although the same ratio is used for the most part. As a general guideline, stabbing contact areas equal the prototype's blade width divided by 10; thrusting equals blade width; clean slashes have blade length multiplied by 10 and have limited penetration; cuts are equal or half of blade length and their penetration equals blade width. And then, some attacks have it more arbitrary.
For blunt and pseudo-blunt (fluke/spike strikes) attacks I mostly use arbitrary numbers that are given with the game mechanics in mind. Penetration depth of fluke/spike strikes is capped by the prototype's fluke length, although it is occasionally made lower, for balancing reasons.
The way I calculate velocities is all over the place, but the most important numbers here are the prototype's total length in inches and the total weight in kg. If you give me these two numbers and describe the weapon, I can calculate the velocities for you. Or you can just use the velocities from the closest analogue in my mod.
For attack prepare and recover times it's best to simply use analogues, as those are even more all over the place than the velocities.
I also used to have some genius formulae which I've used to calculate the proper shoot forces for ranged weapons, but I've lost it. So, again, analogues all the way.

As for armor, I got to say that DF item modding lacks the possibility to properly implement lamellar armor and the like, as the armor is either rigid (like plate) or elastic (like mail) - there is no achievable middle ground. My mod does it in a half-assed way: lamellar armor can deflect blunt force (so, essentially, it's rigid), but has a relatively high chance (33%) to let any attack path through; on the other hand, it is relatively light, while covering many bodyparts. I've yet to come up with any way to implement it better.
Layer sizes for my armor are generally made with weight in mind, but you can safely use them by analogy (10 for plate, 6 for mail and so on), as thickness doesn't really affect combat performance anyway. One way to simulate functional thickness, though, is to have the same armor pieces layered upon each other, so keep it in mind for layer permits and the [SHAPED] tag placement.

And yes, you do have my permission, as it is stated in the main post. Regarding making new items in the groove of the mod, I might also be able to give more precise answers to more precise questions =)

A new poll is up.

Got it

I don't think there will be too much problem packing it into ~450 characters.

Edit: also, PM'd a question.

Well, I certainly will write some descriptions, eventually, but I'm way too unfamiliar with DFhack to implement them in there myself.

So, yeah. Once I'm done with some major stuff that I'm currently working on, at least, the descriptions will be added on this page. But to make them appear in-game I'd need someone who has any clue how that stuff works.