Bay 12 Games Forum

While we're on the subject, is animal testing enough of a core liberal issue to justify two sites and all Lab Techs and Eminent Scientists as enemies? The message seems to be that Science in general is bad, which (what with evolution and global warming) is really more of a conservative attitude.

It would make more sense to have, say, an Investment Bank, or even a Televangelist Church.

The "heat generation" thread got me thinking about this:

Yes, but those are patriotic, conservative organized crime rings.  Nobody cares about them as much as they care about the leftist terrorists that the LCS represents.  When terrorists are concerned, all those pesky laws that hinder normal criminal investigations disappear. 

There's currently not much to criminal investigations. For one, the police are way too trigger happy. But when one of your dudes is captured, there's a die roll of some kind, and then the Liberal either cracks or doesn't, and then in court, the strength of the case against you is another die roll. We should be able to see the other side of the Interrogation screen.

Here's a stab at it. Internally, there's a list of charges which the police are trying to nail you for, same as now. In each day of interrogation, a police detective attacks with Wisdom and Psychology. You get several options:

Confess - end the interrogation; you'll be charged with everything and the prosecution's case will be very strong. Anyone else on your roster who was present for those crimes will also be charged and you'll lose Juice for them. If your Heart < Wisdom, you'll do this automatically.
Lie - defend with Persuasion. If you win, a charge is removed from your record. If you win big, you convince them they've got the wrong guy and they release you. If you lose, you accidentally confess to a charge.
Remain Silent - defend with Heart. If you win, you gain a point of Heart and some Juice. If you lose, you lose a point of Heart.
Demand a Lawyer - if Police Behavior is at L or better, this gives you a lawyer. At C, you defend with Law skill and get the lawyer if you win (the cops will try to talk you out of it). At C+, you don't get a lawyer, you scumbag terrorist. Once you have a lawyer, the police have a time limit (depends on the lawyer's Law skill?) to move you to the courthouse. At that point, they proceed with the case they have, which is probably weak unless you've been ratted out.
Testify! - counterattack with Persuasion and Charisma. If this succeeds, your interrogator loses a point of Wisdom and you gain some Juice. If it fails, you have a chance to gain a point of Wisdom (you are talking to an arch-conservative). If your interrogator's Wisdom drops below his Heart, he'll release you and he might become enlightened! With Free Speech at C+, this is a minor crime in itself ("Sedition") but you can still try.
Escape! - you get a Security roll to get free from your restraints. After that, you're outside the cell in the police station. Martial Arts is your friend.

If the laws are conservative enough, they'll also torture you, in which case your Heart (and health) will get depleted per the current interrogation system.

One minor side benefit: as you get interrogated, you learn Psychology skill from having it used on you.

Thoughts? I might try to code this if work isn't too crazy this week.

I would love an automated command in the site finder to "Delete this realm and generate a new one." Currently I have to crash game, find the realm folder, delete it, and reload DF every time. Automate dat shiz!

If you're going to delete and recreate realms until you get a site that has water, trees, sand, a chasm, iron, magma, adamantine, and a partridge in a pear tree, what's the point of a procedurally generated world? Maybe DF should just ship with a pocket "demonstration world" that has every feature in one site.

How about making it so that how noticeable your fortress is depends on how much above ground stuff you build?  If you want to be stealthy, keep the entrance a simple hole in the ground; otoh if you want to provoke the Elves, construct giant wooden towers several Z levels high.

How do you find an ant nest? The nest itself is underground; what you see is the pile of dirt and ants around it. Likewise, it's not the fortress itself that gets noticed; it's the giant swath of cleared forest, stone debris,[1] etc. around the entrance. Plus, if you have forges or charcoal furnaces running, you'll emit smoke.

That said, you could still go unnoticed if there wasn't anyone around for miles, or if nobody cared enough to come and investigate.

Come to think of it, building a tower of a certain height should allow you to see the nearby world map. Maybe designate the top as a watchtower, and a dwarf will go up there periodically and update your map so you can see approaching armies or caravans. Other things you could build up there: a beacon, which would let you call for help from friendly settlements; a flag, which would claim the surrounding territory for your civ and attract caravans; maybe an astronomical observatory?


[1] Yeah, I know, LOLQuantumStockpile. I'm assuming that will be fixed before it gets established as a "normal" part of playing the game.

"Raymond Buttman"? Seriously? That's this guy's code name?

No, that's his actual name. I don't know why so many people in LCS are named Buttman. However, you have options to randomly choose a different first or last name. However:

1. What should I talk about to convert people? 30 innocent people being executed sounds pretty decent to me, but dudes are all "Whatever" when I tell them that.

Whoa. You're running an ancient version of the game. Look at the "LCS 4.01.3 Download" thread to get a modern, much spiffier version which includes things like changing your founder's name...

2. How can I make art? It's not an option in the menu.

...and selling art.

3. I, er, tried to pick a lock in front of a gang and they attacked me and killed my best guy, so I restarted. What are the rules about this? When should I pick locks and when should I run for it?

Don't pick locks in front of anyone. When you're standing next to the locked door, and there's someone else there, step away from the door and back. They should go away. Now you can pick the lock.

I agree, both with the concern and the interest. Well, I'd also probably say the latte stand and park don't logically follow this pattern -- the way I see these is that people are always coming and going. You probably could spend all day at the latte stand and never see the same face twice.

While it would be slightly more realistic for the latte stand to have people coming and going, it's unrealistic to have far more people wandering the walkways at the apartments than could possibly live there, for example. We gain realism on one front and lose it on another, but we also gain (I would argue) a massive improvement in pacing.

The latte stand and park could be special-cased, but then either the game is exactly as grindy as before (since the latte stand and the park are also the places where you can meet people of every profession) or we need some other mechanic to represent the amount of time you're spending chatting with people.

Then again, do I really want to see the flame war that distinguishing between "minor" and "major" cities will generate?  Just put some kind of theme building in some cities, historically accurate please, and I'll be happy.  Even if it's not historically significant.

That, and rename the University District to some university in that city (or close by; Oakland, for example, could have UC Berkeley).

I think basing it on depth is a little too fake and game-y.  But to get at a similar effect, you could make architects 'learn' stone types-- the better they know a stone, the more accurate they are at evaluating that stone's stresses, and the more skilled they are, the faster they learn a stone. 

I don't like inaccuracy in the sense of the game sometimes saying "Sure, you can build that!" and then you build it and it collapses. If anything, the architect should always err on the side of caution.

Here's one way this could work: when you designate a tile for mining, the designation gets shown in green (safe to mine out) or red (not safe). This gives instant feedback on what the physics rules say you can build. However, it's limited by distance to the nearest open space, and the maximum distance depends on the skill of the best architect you have. Beyond that, anything you designate is shown in yellow for "unknown". A mediocre architect can say "Yes, you can dig out one tile here." But until you actually dig it out, he can't tell you whether you can safely dig beyond that. If you have a master architect, you can lay out all the rooms you want to dig out on this level and he'll point out any problems before you start building.

On the other hand, if you know the system very well, you can work it out in your head. On the other other hand, the master architect might know something you don't, like "there is a natural cave under the floor here".

(I have no thoughts on how the physics of stability should work; I'll leave that to the algorithm wizards. This is just about how that information is displayed to the player.)