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Topics - Sorenson

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Who is it that keeps the fortress running?

Is it the miners that hew through the rock and unearth the valuable resources by which we make our livlihoods? NO.
Is it the farmers who work the mud and soil that we might have food and drink for revelry and the drowning of sorrows? NO.
Is it the craftsdwarfs, forgeworkers and other artisens who shape the weapons and tools se wield? NO.

It is only by the good grace of the mayor, EL INTENDENTE, that we can enjoy the lives we have. It is EL INTENDENTE who designates the labors to be done; it is EL INTENDENTE who determines which wares we are in most dire need of and who trades for them with outsiders; it is EL INTENDENTE that organizes our defense and is just as much the one cutting down our foes as the soldiers themselves. El Intendente is our life, El Intendente is our god, El Intendente is our EXISTANCE.

But El Intendente struggles sometimes. El Intendente must deal with the good-intending-but-naive people who insist on others being mayor of the fortress despite El Intendente being the supreme and only rational choice. El Intendente must go to great lengths to remove the troublemakers who would unbalance and destroy the society that El Intendente has labored so greatly to make a reality. El Intendente is, in short, held back by a lack of proper procedures and by certain "liberties" which prove to be more troublesome than they're worth, and thus El Intendente gives these great words of wisdom in the hopes they may be considered and implimented for the good of the fortress and the glory of El Intendente and, through him, the whole of Dwarfkind.

Option to ban the unmonitored election of civic officials: Why do you struggle against El Intendente? We all know, deep down in our hearts and beyond the filthy corrupting doubt planted by the enemies of El Intendente and Dwarfkind, that El Intendente is the supreme choice for the office of mayor. Why would you wish to burden another poor soul with the burden of being lavished with opulant and royal furnishings, burden our workers, burden yourselves, with the creation of such extravagence. No, the burden of the office of mayor belongs to El Intendente and El Intendente only, and such things as "free elections" are the the things of detestable Elven hippies. Are YOU an Elven hippie?

Ability to deport dwarfs: Sometimes there are individuals in the fortress who El Intendente simply cannot find suitable work for, or troublemakers who have worn out their welcome yet who El Intendente is too generous and merciful to invoke the most ultimate of punishments for. Allow El Intendente to expel these individuals from the fort without bloodshed and the fortress shall only become stronger - besides which, simply kicking the troublemakers out of the fortress should cause far less distress and unhappiness to others than if El Intendente were to order a more grisly fate for them.

Ability to execute dwarfs: Sometimes, however, El Intendente must make the hardest of decisions. Perhaps a worker languishes in perpetual torment as his body refuses to heal from some grave injury, or a dwarf possessed by forces unknown is left as an empty husk of his former self. Though the killing of a dwarf is a terrible thing, is it any better than permitting the unending agony of these afflicted souls? NO. There are some cases in which life is indeed more cruel than death, and as great a burden on El Intendente's soul it is to call for such, allowing these dwarves to be executed is a less cruel fate overall.

Ability to bribe dwarfs: A miserible dwarf is a dangerous dwarf, as El Intendente has seen countless times how a single weak link can lead to the destruction of an entire robust chain. Though no dwarf deserves the burden of opulance and extravagance as El Intendente must bear, the right form of motivation can quickly change a dwarf's demeanor, and anything that can spare El Intendente the travesty of a tantrum/suicide spiral should be considered vital.

Ability to brainwash dwarfs: Life is but a matter of perspective, and though El Intendente is blessed with knowledge unfathomable of this world and others, with nerves of steel and spirit unquenchable, the average dwars is but a being of flesh and blood, vice and virtue, only as strong as his greatest weakness. If El Intendente could give to his fellow dwarfs but the tiniest sliver of his great willpower, however, the fortress would be rendered as solid as the stone from which it was carved. A dwarf versed in the ways of psychology could counsel his fellow dwarves, easing their miseries and teaching them the errors of their ways such that they might shrug off dire travesties and revel in even the most simple of joys. Perhaps they could even be directed as to mold the populace into a dictated mindset outlined by El Intendente himself, removing such liabilities as anxiety, anger and depression while encouraging altruism and self-discipline, such that they may best serve El Intendente and, through him, the whole of dwarfkind. Perhaps particularly skilled psychologists could rescue dwarfs from the pits of melanchology or madness, preventing their talents from being lost and their families from suffering the agony of their protracted deaths.

Though El Intendente understands that his requests are but a drop in an ocean of similar proclamations, El Intendente nevertheless asks "make it so".

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DF Suggestions / Buildable totems and psychological warfare?
« on: April 03, 2009, 05:23:19 pm »
Inspired by a quote I read on another forum, what about the ability to set down totems as furniture, and the ability of said totems to actually affect the behavior of units that see it (IE, causing combat skill penalties, increased liklihoods to flee combat, etc)?

Basically, it works like this: when you set the totem down, DF looks to certain tags on the creature whose skull formed the totem - size, genpower, number and severity of potential attacks, that sort of stuff - and creates a series of effects for units who're in or are about to enter combat (hidden goblin ambushers, for example) who enter the visible areas around the totem.  Depending on the total "power", for lack of a better term, of the totem and the number of totems you have out, the units will receive various bonuses or penalties to their abilities - if, for example, the main road leading into your fort is lined on both sides with goblin totems, smaller goblin squads who see enough of them would have a good chance of outright fleeing, while sieges would continued onward but be given a good case of the willies, reducing their effective combat ability.  Replace the goblin totems with, say, hydra totems, and anything but the biggest, baddest siege armies that exist for no other reason than to wipe your fort off the face of the earth would be sent running.

On the flip side, friendly units and military dwarves who see the totems would receive bonuses to their combat abilities much in the same way as enemies receive penalties - confidence boosts, you might say.

The effects, naturally, would only extend over to creatures with the intelligent token in their files, so megabeasts and wild critters wouldn't be affected (though I think some of the semimegabeasts and a few other animals have the right token)

And even if the psychology stuff is out of the question, you can't deny that having the piked heads of your enemies lining your main road is just awesome.

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While admitably I discovered this only after making uncoverable changes to the DF raw data files, I think that the fact that there be things going on where you'd think things ought not be going on was worth the submission.

So I was reading up on various item and material values and the relationships between them on the wiki, and after topping that off with a look at the magma-safe materials page I decided I was going to add some extra tags to metagloss_metals to open up the possabilities - one of those "why not?" sort of things.  Nothing major, just making stuff like Platinum and Nickel/Nickel Silver and Electrum forgeable into anvils and armor and stuff for the pricier metals, and when I finished I went and generated a new world to see how things had turned out.

When I selected my standard loadout, though, I got some nasty messages - "you cannot afford this, you cannot afford that" - and it was all stuff I'd used multiple times before without a problem.  After doing some detective work, restarting the PC and rolling back to vanilla raw data (admitably I've got several files I've tweaked), I finally traced it down to metagloss_metals, specifically the (ANVIL) tags I'd put on some of the entries.  Wierd thing, though?  Only nickel/nickel silver caused that point interference - not platinum, not electrum, not the numerous entries I'd added to them for other things.  And it wasn't even just changing them, either - in tests I did the (ANY_USE) token didn't do a thing for either metals in terms of embark points.

Long story short, there's something at work regarding the nickel/nickel silver entries that makes DF flips its lid that bit more and start hacking away embark points whenever you make 'em anvil capable - from the 2060 available points I've goten in vanilla tests it goes down to 1260 for nickel and 1360 for nickel silver - and I figured that between Toady's reported shifting of more things to raw datafiles from hardcoded stuff and people doing their own modding and tinkering it was worth bringing this out.

EDIT: So DF determines your embarking points after calculating the value of the default load-out instead of using a set value from which the default values are subtracted?  Interesting, if not a bit puzzling/convoluted - time to snoop around and see if there's any reasoning behind this.

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