Bay 12 Games Forum

There are other ways to smooth stone that don't require tools. The egyptians smoothed out stone blocks by hitting them with cubs made of this special stone. On impact the stone pulverizes a small amount of rock into dust, eventually smoothing the surface. Also, define "poor". An anvil is just a flat surface that you can beat on without it breaking. Iron and steel anvils have a bit of "bounce" to them which makes them better. Most rocks are good enough for this use, at least for a couple projects after which they break. This is acceptable for emergency use. If the rock alone wasn't durable enough you could simply cover the top with a thick sheet of metal to strengthen it.

If using rock to cast stuff wouldn't work then why not sand?

The whole system is currently abstracted. There are tons of metalworking techniques. Even though multiple techniques can make the same object we don't get to choose which one. Its just assumed that the worker used to tools he had to complete the project.

Ideally in the future the quality of the work produces would depend on the quality of the tools and the process the worker uses.

Natural hot springs would be a valuable commodity. You could even use it to heat your fortress by piping the hot water through the walls.

Even a cold spring would essentially be a pure aquifer you can tap for drinking water.

I dunno, was that changed? Usually dwarves will flail around in panic then drown if they get into 7/7.

Again, Wesnoth is not for everyone. It might follow the KISS rules but sometimes that is what people want. When you play it you can almost hear the dice rolling in the background.

An example of a hex based that doesn't on luck and more tactics and stats is People's General from HOTU. Its the same genre as Wesnoth but has tanks and jets and stuff.

For good ways to spend time there are a lot of free options. Wesnoth was one, Soldat is worth a shot, Savage 2 has a free trial, and they do free events every now and then. Uh... go sift through Home of the Underdogs for some golden oldies. Master of magic, Master of orion, XCOM 1 and 2, and 3 but that one is hard to configure. Most of the HOTU stuff needs dosbox though.

Lots of stuff.

Hmm yeah on second though it would be better as an engineered terrain construction rather than a prefab-placeable one. All of the spout/drain things are implemented already with the exception of the nozzle.

The ONLY thing missing is how to dig out a space that isn't too deep. So we should have a designate tool called "dig shallow channel". This works exactly like a channel except the channel can only fill up to about level 3 water. This would have multiple uses, you could use it to dig out a pool for bathing or other uses. You could also dig shallows into the side of rivers to make the edges less dangerous because its harder to fall into the deep water.

Essentially this would be digging brooks on demand. Its full of water but you can still walk in it. The only difference being that you can also swim.

Hows this as an idea for a simple bathhouse/bathing system.

For cleaning up, the only thing dwarves need is access to water and or sand. Sand can be used to take a bath by abrading the dirt off your skin. This works a lot better than it sounds. Dry sand is good for removing gunky liquids or encrusted solids. A good tip for the beach which should also work in DF is that you can remove wet sand stuck to your body by rubbing it with dry sand.

If you have water then dwarves can use it to wash up. Having sand as well helps in removing tough gunk. The quality of the water has an effect. Murky stagnant water will not clean as much and will give dwarves an unhappy though. Hot water will make them happy, especially if the climate is very cold.

Because washing at a river can be very dangerous what with all the hippos around, to say nothing of the carp. It would be good if we could give dwarves bathhouses. A simple version:

Requirements:
1. A source of water, the cleaner the better. This must be pressurized so a pump is needed if the source of water is lower than the bath itself. Otherwise tapping a river or using a gravity feed is good enough.
2. At least 2 Floodgates, 1 lever, 2 sets of metal bars or grates.
3. Enough generic building material to construct a big enough bath. (stone, metal, glass, wood etc)

This is how it works:
- You pick a locations and place down a blueprint for a bath. This is just like building a bridge or trade depot. The architect comes along, the workers haul and build and so on. The size and shape of the bath can be designated instead of being sized by X and Y.
- Next you must configure the bath. To do this you designate tiles within to bath to do different jobs. Drains can be put in the floor or walls of the bath. This is where the dirty water is drained from the bath. The tile you choose is replaced by a grate or set of vertical bars with a floodgate behind them. The "spout" is the tile where water comes into the bath. This works just like the drain except the bars are places outside of the floodgate, after it is installed you connect a source of water to that tile. Multiple drains and spouts can be included, you are not limited to one of each. This aids filling and draining very large baths.
- The last part is installing a pair of levers somewhere convenient and linking them to the bath.

Now how it works is very simple. When you connect the water source to the "spout" end, you flip the lever and the bath fills up with water. This water is limited to a level where dwarves can move around freely and also swim. When the water gets dirty the dwarves will automatically que up a "refresh water" job on the two levers. First the drain is opened to empty the bath, then the drain is closed and the bath is filled again.

Some added useful stuff:
- Baths are constructed so that the floor slopes sightly towards the drain. This ensures that all of the water will drain out and not pool on the floor.
- "Nozzles" Are constructions that limit the flow of water that passes through them. If you dammed a river with nozzles for example, the water downriver would never rise above a set level such as 3/7.  You can configure nozzles to different levels of water, allowing you to make a bath with flowing water, or to render a river safe for swimming. Nozzles would also pressurize water that passes through them. This could have very interesting uses. However the liquid pressure issue is a whole other kettle of fish.
- Soap pollutes the bath water faster but speeds up cleaning and makes dwarves happy.
- The grate attached to the spout goes on the outside because it would prevent fish and other undesirables from coming into the bath. If you route magma to the tile under the grate you can heat up the water that comes into the bath. Instant hot tub! Since the bars are sealed away from the bath by the floodgate the water would never overheat.

Thoughts?

Constructed walls are not like natural stone. Its like building a solid cube out of bricks. So if you build a tile of wall beside a natural stone wall that has been engraved, it shouldn't be destroyed or harmed.

There are a couple things that would do it however. Freezing magma or ice in that tile for example.

Battle for Wesnoth is a great game and its free! But only look it up if you like hex based strategy games, its not for everyone.

Nethack? What a great but terribly frustrating game.

You are starving!
You find a food ration on the ground!
You eat the ration, it was poisoned!
You die!
Game over.

I heard that evil genius was total crap but I didn't play anything other than the demo. Did they patch it up or something?