Bay 12 Games Forum

Forgive me if this has come up before (I ran a search, but didn't see anything come up) but now that shell armor is working correctly, it seems like a good time to ask - is there any point to using it?

My forts seem to often end up with huge stockpiles of shells (and they'll be even larger now that shell-moods are getting more rare) and if I could turn those into effective armor, it could defiantely help my dwarves.

I'm curious if anyone has run any tests to see which of the non-metal armors are best.

Ok, there may well be game balance reasons that I'm currently not seeing, but in a hyper-conservative climate, shouldn't my liberals holding MP5s in security guard uniforms pretty much blend in? I mean, I got both the gun and the uniform from the same guy.

Same thing with Deathsqaud uniforms and M16s. After I managed to subdue a squad of them, I was really looking forward to being able to sneak up on conservatives, then blow them away with heavy weaponry. However, I find that the only thing that I can safely use while maintaining stealth is pistols or nothing.

Wouldn't a deathsquad officer that's NOT armed to the teeth draw more attention then one with a M16? I certainly haven't run into any lightly armed ones.

Unless there's something I'm missing, is there any reason why we can't loot the corpse(s) of the police officer(s) that show up after a failed carjacking?

It seems like it would be a good way to stock up on police body armor and weapons without (too) much risk.

I'd mention the cops and mercs from car chases too, but it seems reasonable that their equipment would be ruined in the car crash.

I just finished playing a fort for 10 years and was compiling some lists on various things and noticed something interesting that might be a bug.

Although during the life of my fortress I killed 28 kobold thieves, the units screen only credits my for a measly 5 goblin thief kills. That doesn't seem nearly right, since I'd occasionally catch my dwarves picking up narrow clothing from triggered weapons traps outside my fort. Heck, I even had goblin chunks raining down on my fortress once when a goblin hit a trap that was on a cliff 4 z-levels above my main gate.

Anyway, it seems to me that the unit list only shows me the goblins that died after I had discovered them. It should, preferably, be showing all of them.

edit: Looking at my stocks screen, I've got 28 copper daggers and 45 steel daggers, so I'd guess that I killed 40 additional goblin thieves that don't show up on my units screen.

[ December 15, 2007: Message edited by: AlStar ]

When winter came around to my fortress, I noticed that my river froze solid. Because I could, I mined out a section of river, then smoothed and engraved the ice walls that were revealed.

Then I also noticed a bunch of rock-like things called 'water'. Fooling around, I decided to see what I could do with them, so I made a kennel out of water, then a bunch of walls and a ramp.

Sometime around late winter/early spring, the river started flowing again, and the engraved ice walls were destroyed (as expected.) Somewhat later (somewere in early spring) my ice-kennel melted. However, it's now mid-spring, and my ice walls and ice ramp still stand tall and proud... surrounded by green grass.

I've got temprature on, but weather off, if it makes any difference.

edit: Actually, just to be precise, they're called "Rough water block wall", "Rough water block piller" and "Rough water block upward slope."

[ October 30, 2007: Message edited by: AlStar ]

Pretty much as per the subject, I've mined to the adamantine, and am now starting to process it.

My ore stockpile has adamantine in its settings, but my Cloth Stockpile doesn't have a setting for adamantine strands (even though this is where they are placed.)

Currently, all mountains contain the same 4 features - an underground river, a chasm, a lava lake and the abyss/daemon area. There's variation in how far each of these is from one another in each mountain, and of course the rock and minerals are different every time, but it's still all the same.

An idea I was thinking of would be to add in some other mountain features that could be randomly inserted into the mountain, spicing things up.

Some ideas I've had:

A cavern - just a natural cavern, that could be anywhere from very small to very large.

An anciant hall - I'm thinking "Halls of Moria" kinda thing - a big hall, with pillars down the sides.

A crypt - A room filled with coffins and/or sarcophagi ... and maybe skeletons/zombies, who are pissed that you've disturbed their slumber.

An old treasure chamber - filled with gold/gems/etc. And possibly a defender (golems? undead? dragon?)

Lair - A small settlement of ... something. Maybe frogmen in a pond, or a hive of antmen. Anyway, they're unhappy that you've come.

Anyway, that's just me thinking for half an hour or so, I'm sure there are tons of little things people could come up with.

Each mountain could contain a number of any element, or none. So maybe one game I run into a bunch of caverns while I'm tunneling, but never see any crypts or lairs. The next I hit a bunch of antmen hives, and have to deal with that.

You'd have to tweak the numbers and probabilites, I'm sure, but even just a few of these things would help make each mountain a more 'alive' and individual place.

As per the title, any chance you could insert a link to the recent developments page (preferably right under the FAQ link)?

I know, I know, I could just bookmark it, but I've got too many bookmarks as-is, so I'd rather just keep the one I've got that goes here (to the forums) and be able to click directly to the recent dev. page (currently I click FAQ, then dev., then recent dev.)