Bay 12 Games Forum

It would take more than one spider to make a viable amount of silk.   

Depends on what a viable amount is and how long you wait. Besides, social spiders aren't in DF so putting more than one spider in the same enclosure would result in one spider eating the other.

Yeah variable reload rates would be nice, might make bows and crossbows actually noticeably different. Perhaps when using the bow, the idle time spent loading the weapon could be before the arrow is loosed, since one of the main advantages to using a crossbow over a bow is that the crossbow can be pre-loaded.

And on the subject of reload buttons, how about this? If you're holding a pre-loadable but unloaded weapon, the '.' button changes from the long wait button to the reload button, similarly to how it becomes the performance button under the appropriate context. No need to add a new button, but you can still reload outside of combat.

Speaking as someone who spends a lot of time around braziers myself, I imagine it would be quite annoying to have soot mixed in with your preferred syndrome-inducing gas. I don't smoke myself but even when I share a fire with those who do, nobody likes the smoke from the fire to be blowing into their face. Thinking about it, I've shared a fire with a pipe-smoking blacksmith and even he would complain when downwind.

Wait, can tame giant cave spiders still web things? I'd heard somewhere that they won't...

I ran some tests back in 44.05, on the wiki it says (or said, haven't checked in a while) that they don't, but that's not strictly true. I tested a few things out and put the results on that thread, but didn't test everything I should've, cause I really wanted to update to 44.06, and also it didn't even occur to me to test on a megabeast because I was very very new.

Fair point scourge, we have kinda gone off the specific topic of leather-eating, so I'll stop.

You are talking about modding here or not?

No, I'm talking about players being able to alter quality-based modifiers to vandalism crime severity through the same method that they can alter base crime severity.

They will dig through whichever walls are most convenient for them to dig through.  If vandalism is a crime, then they will avoid digging through engravings even if it is more convenient to do so.  I guess we need to factor in convenience as well as the other factors. 

I'm not sure you actually properly read the question there. I was bringing this statement into question:

In my idea, digging walls is indeed one crime, digging engraved walls is considered vandalism and is treated just like all other acts of vandalism.

My point was that if vandalism has a separate crime severity value to unsanctioned digging, and unsanctioned digging of engraved walls is considered vandalism rather than unsanctioned digging, this could potentially make dwarves prefer to dig engraved walls over unengraved walls if unsanctioned digging is considered a more severe crime than vandalism.

Underestimating the AI is a good idea from a memory standpoint I think. 

Not really. Failing to realise the full potential of your assets can hamper development.

Not quite, because we cannot see the severities derived from the personal ethics of our dwarves since we cannot see ethics in general.  We can see the relative severity of the laws, but not the non-legal factors influencing the individuals decision.  That helps us to control the majority but particular individuals will end up not doing what everyone else does, which is a rare thing in present DF. 

I'd rather not give the player the ability to mind-read criminals' pathfinding decisions just so that they can better manipulate said criminals.

Yes but those are secondary calculations adjusting the single factor of how much they fear the punishments. 

Still worth mentioning

Creatures already pathfind to get food items.  As long as there is a time-lag between when they fail to find food items normally and when they take emergency measures, there shouldn't be any extra lag. 

Providing extra movement options with high pathing costs is the thing that adds lag. Essentially, where a normal path would stop at a wall, miners would continue to calculate the full beeline path to their goal, realise that the distance to their goal and the pathing cost to get to their goal are two separate numbers, then check radiating paths until they either find a less costly path, or calculate and exhaust every other pathing option only to find that all other paths are equal to or greater than the cost of the beeline, at which point they go for the beeline.

The option to generate worlds where nobody dies will soon be in.  Worlds where nobody needs to eat are also along those lines. 

You can already make dwarves not need to eat by giving them the [NO_EAT] tag, as I've already mentioned. That isn't what is being discussed.

It isn't so clear when we consider all the factors.  Strictly you are right from a necessity standpoint, but it is still a limiting mechanic. 

Not really. If the player is given control over the modifiers alongside the laws, there is no limitation to this method that isn't also a limitation to your own.

In my idea, digging walls is indeed one crime, digging engraved walls is considered vandalism and is treated just like all other acts of vandalism.  Digging the walls on it's own does not count as vandalism, but digging engraved walls does.  This means dwarves will favour digging unengraved walls all else being equal unless they are totally okay will vandalism and it is unpunished. 

So, in your idea, if vandalism is a personal matter, but unsanctioned digging is a capital offence, won't dwarves specifically seek engraved walls to dig since digging those out counts as vandalism rather than unsanctioned digging?

Also, again, you're underestimating AI. If unsanctioned digging is considered a form of vandalism, and is a more severe crime when the wall is engraved, and said severity is modified by the quality of the engraving, then not only will the AI be able to get dwarves to favour digging unengraved walls over engraved walls, but also it can get them to favour digging lower quality engraved walls over higher quality engraved walls.

AI has it's flaws, but if there's one thing that it's really really good at, it's maths, and pathfinding is maths.

The AI acts upon the total number.  We need to know what the seperate elements that contribute to that number are because our ability to set laws alters those numbers and therefore allows us to in effect control what AI criminals do. 

If we can edit the severity of laws, we can probably see the severities that we're editing. I'd rather not give the player the ability to mind-read criminals' pathfinding decisions just so that they can better manipulate said criminals.

Except that people's respect for law should not be the only reason people don't break it.  People should have ethics are well, so the inhibitory factors should be threefold.

• How much do I respect the law?
• How much is doing this against my ethics?
• How much do I fear punishment.  That is Punishment severity / Percieved odds of getting caught.

Goblin-raised people who have neither respect for either the law or have any ethics against what we are doing will only regard the punishment angle.  The exception is that they will not dig a tunnel to give invaders access to your fortress, because that counts as [TREASON] which goblins have strong ethics against.  If there are invaders outside your fortress and goblins are hungry, the goblin-raised will be disinclined to dig a tunnel to get at food on the surface even if they would normally steal food happily. 

On the other hand, we have two factors.  We have the desirability of food, stuff like leather has a negative value here and we also have how hungry we are.

If point 3 is specifically how much they fear punishment, it might be an idea to also add in some calculations based on personality facets like anxiety propensity or bravery too.