Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Max White on December 04, 2010, 05:26:42 am

Quote from: cog disso on December 04, 2010, 05:06:10 am

Give me a vein of bituminous coal and a layer of sand and I'll die a happy Armok.

Ok, you have your coal, and your sand, HOWEVER! You will need to dig through TWENTY SEVEN LAYERS of aquifer to get to them, and you only have one level above that for cave ins, and the biome never freezes.

Have fun with your sand and coal... MUHAHAHAHAHA!

A man would see that as a difficult challenge.

An elf would see that and despair.

A dwarf would see that and say, "Bring it on."

Aquifiers provide for excellent water wheels, allowing the use of automated pumps.  From here, dig a large square hole in the aquifier, ring it with pumps, and pump water back into aquifier pits to dispose of it without flooding anything.  Once the central hole is drained or mostly drained, leave a 1-tile wide causeway around the outside rim, and pump water from the floor beneath into this rim.  Build a sealable tower penetrating the entire mess in one corer of the put.  Once you've penetrated the 27-layer aquifier, depower the pumps and allow water to once again fill the layers, resulting in a large lake that can be drained on command and an access tower rising from one side of it.

Best.  Embark.  Ever.

Yes, well...  normally having an untrained farmer give an "I AM A MAN!" punch is pretty badass, but without knowing anything about the race you created that's not saying much.  For all we know you could have modded your game into Dragon Fortress.

I had the Dwarven god of football once. I have the screenshot somewhere and may post it later, but his name was "The Competitive Sports" and he was the deity of conflict, music and violence if I remember correctly.

Knowing dwarves, 'Conflict' means soccer, 'Music' means vuvuzela, and 'Violence' means the riot after the game.

I'm having a lot of trouble relating what you quote to what you type, Shadowform... Generally when you add a quote from the same page you're posting on, it's to turn it into a more one-on-one conversation, where the posts are more heavily related to each other. And after you opt for that sort of conversation, you don't just suddenly ignore the person.

What exactly did I ignore?  You mentioned something about ladders, I pointed out ladders didn't exist.  You expressed confusion at why I pointed this out, but since you were apparently waiting for an answer...  I pointed it out because if it doesn't exist, there's no sense in worrying about it.

Second, forums like this are NEVER one-on-one conversations; I can quote someone whose quoted someone else whose quoted a third person, and a fourth person can quote me.  The intent of a forum is to hold public, group discussions - if you'd like to have a personal conversation though, feel free to PM me.  I like tossing ideas at other people to get feedback on them.

Aside from that, I find your exacting dissertation on what Toady may or may not do, and what he can or cannot do, to be worthy of  ; you can guess, but you can't know what will be a problem, you can't know how dwarves/players might weaponize a metal cooking pot larger than they are, and you can't know how random any given feature is as far as the code is concerned. As an example, it might seem to some people that Toady's work with farms, generating human towns, and economy has nothing to do with night creatures, adventurer-made buildings, sending your armies off your fort, or keeping items from being scrambled at fort's end, but they all have one issue in common; saving and relating sites in the world. He is working on this apparently random set of features because they do go together. Likewise, both main uses of pots might end up being easier to do at the same time when the "cast cauldron" job is added.
 Perhaps I'm not explaining it very well, but I hope you understand anyway.

 During that, I realized it would be a fine idea to ask about this in the Future of the Fortress thread. So...

I'd make two arguments here.

First, this forum is titled 'Suggestions'.  It's used to toss around ideas for things that could get added, removed, or changed in DF.  I had an idea for something I thought would be nice to have added.  So, I made a suggestion.  Naturally I don't expect instant gratification, or that the idea will necessarily get added, or that Toady will look upon my genius and declare "OF COURSE!  HOW COULD I MISS THAT?" But I to think that he reads the forum, and I do think that if I can make a strong argument that it serves a meaningful purpose, adds a utility not otherwise present (in this case, making use of poisonous materials), could realistically exist in the time period Dwarf Fortress is set in, and pique interest in the mechanic, then it stands a much better chance of being added than if I was to just say "Yeah this is cool add it plz."

I really don't mean to come off as rude, and I'm really not trying to be rude, but it kind of feels like you're calling me a fool for making a suggestion in the suggestion forum because I haven't provided a detailed analysis of how you would code it, how it would effect civ interactions, how it would impact hoary marmot breeding habits, as well as covering for every potential way in which a cauldron could conceivably be used in a real life scenario, such as storage, cooking, how re-using a dirty pot for cooking could effect fortress health or contaminate the food, etc.  This started as one idea for a simple structure ("Like a magma pump, but loaded with a specific amount of fluid instead of drawing from the world around it") and somehow spread from there into this.

Second, while it's true that I can't see into the future, but nobody can, and Toady is nothing if not willing to spend significant amounts of time making sure that something he wants to happen will happen.  The entire game is an example of that, but to be more specific, the recently overhauled combat system (read some of the bug reports from when he was coding this; murderous eldritch gophers do not strike me as intended behavior) is a good example.  Again, if it's an idea he sees and likes, it's much more likely to get added to the game, at some point, eventually, when he gets around to it, but added nonetheless.

They work - I have two squads of legendary fighters and shield users and a freshly impaled mechanic to prove it.

He stepped into the room and immediately got his head bashed in by a blood thorn training spear.

Go to the uniforms screen, and do the following:

[A] - add a body armor or cloak type (mail, breastplate, generic)
[L] - add leg armor (leggings, greaves)
[H] - helmet
[B] - boots
[G] - gauntlets/gloves
[S] - shield
[W] - weapon
To add a class of item to that uniform's equipment, scroll all the way to the right (the bright blue indicates your current selection) and press ENTER.  Doing this over an item in SELECTION column will add that to the current uniform (displayed with darker blue).  Doing this in the ITEM column will remove it from the uniform.

After you've selected the desired equipment, press [M] to choose materials.  Select a uniform, select an item within the uniform (again, indicated by the darker blue) and then choose what material you want: from here you can choose metal or leather, or get more specific and select a specific metal or specific type of leather (e.g. equipping the fortress guard with tiger leather hoods).

From here, you have to make sure that the military's equipment is up to date by going into the equipment assignment screen and re-assigning them the new uniform.



Assigning specific items is a bit more complicated, since it can only be done from the individual item equipment screen.  Press [e] to select the equipment option, scroll to the relevant squad and dwarf, and then press [W] [H] [A] and so on to choose which type of armor you want to select, as listed above.  From here you can choose a specific weapon or piece of armor, which is useful for ensuring that your artifacts go to your best soldiers.

What i found was, i had no real way of breaking into the side of the volcano to get some to flow under my forges without building some complicated flood gate system or sacrificing a dwarf.

1. Dig your magma tunnels beneath the forges as normal.  Leave 2 units of rock between your reservoir and the edge of the magma sea / volcano.
2. Smooth & carve fortifications into the inner rock.  This will not flood, as there is still the second unit of rock.
3. Channel from above to remove the outer rock.  This will allow magma to flow through the fortifications once they're complete, and the fortifications will also help prevent unwanted visitors.

For extra security from magma creatures, force the magma through multiple carved fortifications.

The Troglodyte jumped up into the air, and like the motherfucker all troglodytes are, blew his head open with her foot.

Not sure which is cooler, the image of a ninja troglodyte kicking a dwarf in the head so hard it explodes, or the guard captain that killed him...