Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm sorry. Any time someone uses the words "I will come back to this at some point" in a post, I reflexively scroll down to see how long it is. This is still one for the record books.

You want to revise this essay a bit more before you release it for mass consumption. Try to avoid restating existing points, and remove math heavy examples from any post over a screen long, as few will take the time to follow them with sufficient care to get the actual point.

Aquillion. Some of us want the local economics and city-building to actually constitute a game, and not an annoying prerequisite activity that must be completed before we get to play the real game. That said, regardless of how much material he uses up, a dwarf assigned a task should keep at it until he completes the assigned task, as this loads the extra micro-management into the early game where the player can best afford it, and makes sense in context of the current interface.

Dwarves and wizardy just don't mix like that. --not in my head, anyway.

If you think people are whining about how easy it is to get legends from artifacts, just give them wizards instead. The forum would explode.

I can see a human town with enough wizards to put them to work like that, but I expect humans to respect the potential power someone like that represents. Maybe such a wizard would be put to use hauling to train his skills, but not as a real profession.

I can accept an artifact so well crafted that it's perfection gives it abilities as strong as magic, or even subtly channels magic to some mysterious function that even the builder doesn't quite understand, but for a dwarf to design and build a thing with clearly magical powers, and yet have no understanding of how he did it...

That just doesn't sit right with me. His inspiration has given him such insight into axes that he can make masterworks half the time, but he doesn't know enough about his flaming axe to make replicas that are even warm?

Maybe the really flashy magics should be reserved for possession. Then it would be understandable that he doesn't know how the thing really works well enough to duplicate even a fraction of his success. The mystical knowledge came from beyond the veil.

What I want to know is, where the magic in a magical artifact comes from.

I can accept magical balls of floating metal, orbiting an artifact for no clear reason. They are dwarven artifacts after all, and some weirdness comes with that territory. However, how did said dwarf figure out how to make them fly like that? There's inspired craftsmanship, and then there's plot holes.

Perhaps crafting magical artifacts makes you into a novice wizard, instead of a master weaponsmith. However, you'd have to make magic artifacts really, really rare, and make the majority of the wizards you got out of it mostly useless. There are only so many practical uses for levitation.

Imagine players using levitation wizards as haulers, because the weight doesn't bother them. That is clearly insane. There's no logic to a world where wizards work the most scorned and poorly paid positions.

I dunno... they are dwarves. Maybe they really don't trust magic.

Where does that leave the ultra-rare wizard(even for a wizard)who makes the flaming axe? Does he become an interesting new spice for your military stew, or simply a cheap alternative to coal fuel?

Ooh. I do like being able to make ash from woodchips, to reduce waste, however it ends up getting handled.

Truenames are very potent as a literary device, since giving yours away represents a tremendous act of trust and intimacy. I can't see any way to put that in a procedural game like DF without trivializing that aspect of it.

I assumed that the words would shape as much mana as they could, such that mana gets used until it either runs out, or the command is completely fulfilled, at which time no more mana can flow down that path. The words suck up mana, instead of the inherent pressure of the mana pushing it through the words.

This is the root of the "make a way to limit your spells, so they eat up less mana" concept. If the whole pool of mana is going to get sucked up/ disturbed anyway, there's no reason to cast anything, except the biggest flashiest magic you can manage.

Open ended words like "Many" would be extremely dangerous, particularly if the resulting could  spell channel so much mana through/past you that you burst into flames from magical friction.

However, you make some interesting points about making even minor magics dangerous, in the presence of an intense mana field. The raw energy isn't just necessary for casting large spells, it alters the nature of spells cast in it's vicinity.

Perhaps, large masses of mana do create a pressure of their own, that seeks to burst out through even minor spells, greatly increasing their side effects, or even spawning secondary, sphere effects.

I feel like people are putting words in my mouth.

The majority of civilians, living in safe areas of the fortress and performing labors that never force them to go into danger, shouldn't carry weapons larger than a dagger, if at all. To suggest that I want weavers and dyers to carry mauls is a lie.

However, with the promise of underground features that spawn enemies, and the numerous unaccountable ways a fortress could be built around them, which civilians live dangerous enough lives to travel more seriously armed should rest in the hands of the player. Not every fortress is going to be a cozy little neighborhood where the only dangers come from above the ground.

To suggest that civilian weapons should be hard limited to daggers only is shortsighted. The drawbacks to carrying a weapon would and should be significant, but it should be allowed if justified.

Consider the variable levels of safety involved in fishing. Most fortresses have no reason for any fisherman to be armed, but in other fortresses it is necessary to station crossbowmen near your fishing holes, because fisherdwarves cannot protect themselves from the periodic carp migrations.

As the game grows more complex, more situations like this are going to arise organically, and such a had limit is going to feel more and more like fake difficulty.

So basically, you guys want elven buildings and constructions to build themselves, but slowly, and out of wood that is produced magically by the building site. Do I got it so far?

If killer gardens could be handled with farm plots, but require elven laborers, that would be neat.

A lot of balancing would be needed, to keep the elves from being unstoppable, or too weak, but the principle seems sound.

It's not viable to decide that one race is the natives and the other is the new immigrants, as the shoe can be on either foot, with the way worldgen works.

Never make a fantasy race genetically incapable of understand the idea of personal property. Maybe his culture doesn't teach it, or maybe he just doesn't believe in it, but he should be able to figure out how it works, if he's consistently exposed to the concept. Kobolds might not believe the dwarves have the right to keep the hoard locked up inside their fortress, but they should understand that the dwarves want it there, and how the dwarves will react to their trying to take it. Even cultures with no concept of "mine" generally understand "ours," if only in the context of other peoples telling them to stay off their turf.

I like thge idea of mana concentrations passed on a tile by tile basis, so we can build runic systems to route and cencentrate mana. however, I fearwhat that would mean for memory and cpu costs, especially if thereis more than one type of mana, such  as sphere specific mana.

Having sphere base"side effects" like bursting into flames from poorly cast spells is cool. It makes tampering with magic moredangerous,and makes cautious exploration wiser. You could have any fire spell raise the caster's temperature, based on how poorly he cast. Spells that would barely warm a real wizard could reduce lesser men to ashes. Gives peasants a reason to fear magical  knowledge.

It might be better to just make global mana levels that regenerate over time, for the entiresite. It wouldn't be as cool, but it would be way easier to implement.

Asfor the parser issues. This is a subtley differnt issue from  the traditional parser problem, and there are some triedand tested methods that Toady could use to make this word.

The finite word pool is a wonderful asset, that gives us a number of advantages. If we further limit the number of possible was players can arrange the, the system becomes relatively easy.

These limitations can even be made to seem natural. Deciding that a spell casts itself the first time you speak a verb, both makes a sort of logical sense, and keeps sentences from growing out of hand. Targets, sub-targets, modifiers before you give a verb, or face the concequences.

In this example Orc Neck Slice is fine, but attempt to cast Slice Orc Neck, and you're going to get cut in a random place, before you can specify the target.