Bay 12 Games Forum

Pardon if this has been suggested, but I looked and cannot find it.

I would like to see the invention of a new building, or perhaps furniture: the gate.

It must be wide enough to allow a wagon to pass.  It might need a metal bar and three building materials to be built, and should not block wagons unless forbidden.

A gate could also function as a task for the useless Fortress Guards.  They could guard gates much like Royal Guards guard nobles.  This would have two game effects:

1) Fortress design is much easier, because one may easily create an entry point for wagons that can be controlled.
2) Fortress guards are not so useless, but cannot be commanded like military and thus will not replace the military.

NOTE: While I do use most of the Dig Deeper mod for this game, I'm not nearly so hard core as to use it as-is.  I've modded that mod, so you'll see lots of stuff from there, but not everything.

Journal of Dakost Temptrooms, Farmer and Expedition Leader
Early Spring, Year 51


We made it.  After a long haul, we're finally here in the middle of Otthat-forsaken nowhere.  But it's a rare jewel of a place where limestone meets lava, and you can see that beautiful red glow from the surface.  Oh, I hope we'll be able to find some nickel silver, and maybe we can get some turtles out of these little ponds!  We've got a few dogs, and the miners are working on a home for us in this place.

From all the stories, I'd expected it to be a terrible, gaping sore oozing puss of pure evil upon the face of the earth, but it's really not so bad.  Sure, there's an aquifer, but I think we'll be able to get down to the stone if we stick close to the lava.

Urist says he saw some horses today, and I guess that's nice.  But he's always talking about whining about how the limestone here isn't dolomite.  Honestly, we should be grateful to have any kind of flux this close to the magma!

I'll be back later, I have to plant a few plump helmets and start work on those cave beehives so we can have something to drink this summer and fall.  Don't know when I'll be able to write again.

Is it just me, or does that sound like the name of a band?  A decent band.  Not a really ultra-good one, but one that's pretty creative and original.  What do you think?

Does anyone else think it's pretty awesome that your starting civilization can make large serrated circular blades... out of wood?  It's true.  They can also make giant axe blades out of the stuff.

I've taken to bringing at least one with me when I embark on a journey, just as a joke.

I'm trying to make adamantine into a minable resource, though uncommon.  I keep the [DEEP] tag in both the metal AND the stone, but... I keep starting out with adamantine battle axes!  I don't want the game to be easier, I just want to have small clusters of adamantine here and there, without having it become the metal ALL dwarven civilizations use exclusively for their weapons and armor.

Is it possible to do what I'm trying to do, or am I wasting my time?

I'm doing the 'underground forest' challenge for the first time, and I'm considering mining out two levels, and then collapsing one on top of the other.  Does this destroy all stone?  In order to be a proper forest, the stone has to be gone, so this is of great importance to me.  I'd REALLY rather not dump each stone out.

Also: how in the world do I go about doing this?  I mean, I know that I have to mine out both levels (I'm still working on the first one), and then I have to set up supports on the bottom level and collapse them with a lever.

If I set up the supports, does that imply that the level above now rests on those supports?  Or will collapsing those do nothing?  Do I have to channel out the sides, too?

As an aside, this fortress is easily giving me the best artifacts I've ever had, and I wonder if that's random, or related to the fact that I've dug more here than anywhere else?  Out of five artifacts, I only had one possession, and the five moods struck:

1) My Gem Cutter (Lousy artifact, great large gems.)
2) My Armorer (I wish I'd had some steel for that artifact armor.)
3) My Weaponsmith (Thank goodness I had some steel!)
4) My Gem Setter (Too bad it was a possession.)
5) A Miner (A recent immigrant, he'd only gotten up to Skilled.  Now he's Legendary.  w00t!

Notice, in each of the first four cases I have singularized these dwarves.  I didn't have more than one of each.  Usually, my first five artifacts produce two or three legendary craftsdwarves, and maybe a carpenter.  Then again, I have ~21,400 stone, so I've probably dug out about 22,000 spots or more, compared to my usual 2k or 3k.  Could this be the secret to good artifacts?  I know it increases their frequency, but this... this is awesome.

My hunters got stuck hunting.

They're just standing around (I think it's where the animals they were hunting got killed), but other hunters got to those animals first, and they can't cancel the hunting job until they kill something.  Or get thirsty.  Evidently, dwarves think hunting should only be a solitary activity, never undertaken in groups, and are disappointed that they, personally, never got to deliver a killing strike.

I did a search for the bug, and while I know hunting is going to get revamped in the future, I wanted to make sure this bug gets pointed out.  It's not a crippling bug, nor is it likely to come up in many forts.  But it definitely is a bug, and when you look at hunting, see if you can fix this bug.

This should be easily repeatable.  Set a whole bunch of dwarves on 'hunt', and get a limited supply of animals.  Pretty soon, they'll kill off the last few animals, and you may easily get the same result.  Multiple dwarves hunting the last creature on the map.

I've heavily modded the civs of my game, and while I would be *extremely* surprised if that caused this bug, I unfortunately cannot upload my save without also uploading a freakton of .txt files, too.

I know it's kind of a nitpick, but I'd like to see the weights of some items changed.  Namely, weapons and armor.

In real life, a melee weapon of any sort rarely exceeds 5 pounds in weight.  That's for humans, and including large, two-handed weapons like pikes, doppelhanders, and halberds, although some of those will get up to 6 pounds, and still be usable.

Most one-handed weapons, like those the dwarves use, are between 2-4 pounds in weight.

If you believe otherwise, I would like you to find a five pound sledge and a ten-pound sledge.  Heft them.  Which one makes you feel - "I could really hurt someone with this."  Most likely, you'll feel much more deadly with the 5-pounder, and really ungainly and slow with the 10-pounder.  Or lift a ten-pound bar of iron.  Note how big it is, how slowly it moves, and how silly you look.  A sword, it is not.  If you can find a twenty or forty-pound bar of metal, you'll quickly see that the forty-pound warhammer is IMPOSSIBLE simply based on the physics alone.  You just couldn't swing anything that big, and the length would give it a huge moment of inertia... you're better off fighting with your hands.  Or tying them behind your back and head-butting your opponent.

Armor weighed around 30-65 pounds for a whole suit, and the 65-pound mark is for extra-heavy tournament suits.  And it's for humans, so even though there were some suits even heavier, they were on REALLY big fellows, who needed a lot more metal to cover them than any dwarf would.  I can believe somebody wearing full chain and partial plate MIGHT wear up to 70 or even 80 pounds of armor for a short period of time, but any more than that?  You might as well get a palisade wall and carry it like a shield.

I understand that perhaps the extra weight is needed to make armored people slower.  Although I disagree with this as a student of history (armor makes you tired a lot faster, but doesn't impede running, cartwheels, climbing, jumping, or anything of the sort, once you figure out how to use it), I realize that the game must keep balance.

Still, I must also speak against it, as I feel it is a crime against medieval weapons and armor (a misdemeanor) to talk about them as being so heavy.