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Topics - schnobs

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DF Gameplay Questions / will nobles be replaced?

« on: March 22, 2007, 12:15:00 pm »

So I have this manager who pisses me off to no end. Demanding this, forbidding that, and generally just getting in the way.

I'd love to despose of her, but I don't want to be left without a manager for ever and ever. Will I receive a replacement?

Also, what about the less critical nobles, like House <Something> Representatives. As far as I can tell, they don't perform any function, so in that case I'd despose of them right away just to save me the bother; but if that will lead to immigration waves cosisting solely of nobles...

DF Gameplay Questions / windows and cave adaptation

« on: March 21, 2007, 11:11:00 am »

Well, when I built my very first window oh so long a go, it was soon covered with vomit.

In my current fortress, I'm placing several windows at key points: entry to the dining room, a few corridors, et cetera. Now I could just wait and see what happens a few years from now, but I'm not that patient: does anyone happen to know wether will this will prevent cave adaptation?

DF Gameplay Questions / How do I store armor?

« on: March 20, 2007, 01:29:00 pm »

I have barracks. I put armor stands in there. I allowed the armor stands to carry all items of bone, leather or bronze (that's all my dwarves made themselves).

I unassigned the baracks from the bed, re-assigned the barracks from one armor stand.

Permit all materials. Permit all items.

Still, the armor is cluttering the forges and doesn't get moved. No entry in the (short) jobs list, either.

What am I doing wrong? I know I once had armor stored properly. But try as I might, it won't work this time.

DF Gameplay Questions / Bludgeon, pierce, slash and critical

« on: March 17, 2007, 08:01:00 pm »

Well, may I got lucky, maybe I abandoned my fortresses way too early. Either way, I'm lacking first-hand experience.

What's the difference? From what I hear, piercing is likely to do "critical damage". Slashing is likely to cut off limbs and bludgeoning, well, there doesn't seem to be anything special about it.

Well, first off, what is critical damage? It's obvious that an opponent who just lost his arms will have a hard time wielding a weapon; and once his eyes have been poked out, he won't look at me ever again.

But both seems to be inherent to the slashing and piercing damage type, respectively. Are these critical damages? And if so, does the "Crit.Boost" of most piercing weapons only mean they're more likely of scoring such hits? Or is a critical hit something entirely different?

Are there any special effects of coupled to bludgeoning damage?

DF Gameplay Questions / How do fortifications work?

« on: March 17, 2007, 06:37:00 pm »

I believe I once read that shooting through fortifications worked like this:

- someone standing right next to a fortification can just lose his bolts (arrows, ...)

- someone standing further away would have to pass an additional skill check

But try as I might, I cannot find it again. Is this still true? Was it ever true? Or are fortifications directional? If so, how do I know which is the good side?

DF Gameplay Questions / the cathedral and the bazaar

« on: March 13, 2007, 12:33:00 pm »

Well, I think I'll just go ahead and ask.

There's been plenty of screenshots of beautiful fortresses recently. I have to admit that mine absolutely cannot compete. I tried to come up with a good layout... mind-warping work.

Then I wondered... why bother with an actual layout at all? Why not knock out all walls (which are mere obstacles) and doors (which are chokepoints at best). The main part of my fortresses, therefore, would become one huge hall filled with workshops and stockpiles.

Are there any known side effects to that approach? It certainly won't be especially beautiful, that's for sure.

DF Gameplay Questions / how do I skin a cave crocodile?

« on: March 10, 2007, 04:46:00 pm »

How do I skin a cave crocodile? Or batmen or any other nonbutcherable animals for that matter? The meat may be inedible, but I'd still like to make boots of their skin.

DF Bug Reports / DF reads the wrong init.txt

« on: March 17, 2007, 09:56:00 pm »

Now, I wanted to restrict immigration a bit. No avail, at first. I haven't investigated this too closely, but it appears that the game preferred the backup copy "init.txt~" (mind the ~) to the actual "init.txt" file.

DF Suggestions / bags and barrels

« on: April 03, 2007, 04:39:00 pm »

Could it be made that empty barrels may be stacked, and empty bags folded up?

I'm mostly concerned about bags, atm: when in use, you don't see them. Dozens of spice or seed bags go into a single barrel. But god forbid you empty them all, suddenly you've got bags clogging all furniture piles.

I'd suggest that they may be stacked; if this requires a container, it might be yet another bag. While a "bag bag" may sound silly, it would still sit in plain view on your stockpile, giving you at least an approximate figure.

I'd also like if something similar was possible with empty barrels as well. And maybe if barrels had more capacity to begin with. Right now, the food stockpile for a 200-Dwarf fortress has to be rather large to begin with; that you may possibly need twice that space for storage of empty containers is a bit excessive.

DF Suggestions / doors & floodgates

« on: April 03, 2007, 09:49:00 am »

I'm aware that channels and floodgates will be different come the next version, so this may be superfluous.

But it bugs me to no end that you cannot replace floodgates right now. It would be nice if floodgates could also be built in already-existing channels.

It would also be nice if doors could act as floodgates, that is, a corridor with doors at either end should act similar to a channel with floodgates.

DF Suggestions / carts as hauler equipment

« on: March 29, 2007, 08:25:00 am »

I think I thought of one that's actually new:

There's no dedicated hauler task so far, and who knows when it will come. But here's a quick fix:

Hauling works as it does now. There's an additional entry in the dwarves' labor list that will make them fetch a cart when available; they'll run around with the cart just like miners never let go of their picks at all times.

Dwarves with carts may still carry only one item at a time, but due to the cart no load will ever encumber them. They may move stone and even full bins at normal speed.

Variations (which may or may not be easy to do):
- smooth floors may affect their speed
- dwarves-with-carts will look for heavy loads first before considering cargoes that others could move just as well

DF Suggestions / superfluous materials

« on: March 26, 2007, 03:40:00 pm »

I regularly suffer the problem of overproduction in some areas. Like, I need plenty of bones for bowyer training. Meat, fat and so on are necessary byproducts, but making use of them poses sort of a problem. Chasming is often the only way, but I don't like it.

I wonder, what about some materials that aren't stricly necessary but get used when available?

Fat/Tallow might not only be a full worthy ingredient; having fat available would allow the cook to work faster (as meat and stuff doesn't stick to the pots so much). The one unit of fat doesn't appear in the final meal, it got used up. Fat might also be of some use as grease for all sorts of mechanisms.

Or you could cook bones and leather into glue. Glue might come in handy in all sorts of craftsworking. Old clothes might be torn up for rags, it's not a proper workshop if it hasn't a constant demand for rags.

The idea is that neither of these is absolutely necessary, but work is done faster or with higher quality results when the add-ons are available. It shouldn't even be a vast difference. Just enough to warrant conservation of the material instead of summary chasming.

DF Suggestions / smoothing / detailing veins

« on: March 21, 2007, 10:29:00 am »

I tried to make that point in one of the numerous rewalling threads, but somehow it appears to have drowned in the noise. Or maybe it's not even new. Either way:

If a bit of smoothed rock is precious, a carefully worked out vein ought to be even more impressing. Dwarves really should be capable of making something worthwhile of a rock crystal where it is; why mine it and put a dull wall in it's place?

I'm so tempted to quote Gimli's glittering caves rant all over again.

(Of course, there would be quite a few instances where I'd rather have a dull wall instead. But that's not what this post is about.)

[ March 21, 2007: Message edited by: schnobs ]

DF Suggestions / I need magma really bad

« on: March 20, 2007, 10:06:00 am »

Well, watching the development of my most recent fortress and the trouble of obtaining enough timber even on a woodland map, I really start to wonder how one is supposed to get a proper smithery operation underway without magma.

Sure, if there is no other choice I will wing it... somehow... but I don't like the prospect, not at all.

There has already been talk about giving players prior knowledge. As an alternative, I submit that the materiél requirements might be recast: one tree might well yield two units of charcoal; or it might be possible to melt several lumps of ore with one unit of coal.

This wouldn't need to be the same for all ores, though. It could be possible to make quite a lot of copper and bronze early on, but dealing in iron would require much more fuel (and hence also a much larger workforce and infrastructure to drive it).

DF Suggestions / the future distribution of ore

« on: March 17, 2007, 08:38:00 am »

Toady:

quote:
The veins [...] aren't arranged in any meaningful way. They could either be arranged by depth vs value, or just made more rare based on value.

Local Map

Putting more valuable ores deeper into the mountain would perhaps be the best approach, gameplay-wise. However, I can foresee some difficulties. Looking at the map, I guess "deep inside" would be towards the right edge -- but I can envision sites where it wouldn't be easy to figure out where the mountain is deepest, or where no part is deep enough to qualify for precious ores.

A rarity vs. value approach might be easier to implement approach. Of that, there's two sub-variations:
a) smaller veins: you'd have a reasonable chance of finding some platinum even very early on. However, each individual vein would yield only small amounts, eventually forcing you to dig far and wide on your search for more of it.

a) fewer veins. You might need to dig forever until you discover the deposit; There might be only one or two on the whole map. However, once found, your fortress would be awash with the stuff. By and large, I like this one more; the only problem I foresee is that you may lose many many artisans to fey moods until you eventually discover the vein.

[ March 17, 2007: Message edited by: schnobs ]

[ March 18, 2007: Message edited by: schnobs ]