Bay 12 Games Forum

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Give you nice baths?

How could you improve the quality of a soap bar to make baths more enjoyable? Maybe I'm just ignorant, but to me soap is soap; I don't see how you could give it quality levels.

Imagine the difference between grainy soap and nice, soft soap which leaves you nice-smelling. And that's assuming that there's no magic involved with legendary dwarves.
Okay, first point was made once or twice, but the second bears note.

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First off, you're talking about the game NOW. We're in the suggestion forum. Second off, I'd rather buy a steak with a nice edge and not too much fat on the edge than a cut with a ragged, fatty edge.

I answered your question. I don't see how I "talked about the game", or why that would even be a bad thing seeing as this is the forum for Dwarf Fortress.

You referenced the fact that meat lacks quality levels, which is something that could very well change to, say, make legendary butchers useful.

And unless I'm mistaken, the masterwork quality multiplies an item's value by 3. Would you really pay three times as much for the nice steak than the one with a ragged edge?

First off, it's 12. Second off, if I had money to blow, I just might. Especially since masterworks made by legendary dwarves would be perfect in every way.
[qupte]But like I said before, bad quality levels should be implemented, and I can see meat being cut in such a way as to become unappetizing, or if it's bad enough, unusable when trying to cook something. But this one of those hit-or-miss things, the steak can either be cut right or wrong, there shouldn't be finely cut venison", superior vension, masterfully cut venison, etc.[/quote]
Why not? After all, there's superiorly and masterfully cut large gems and cloth.

Not a bad idea. See, when people who argue disuss things like this, the ideas get better!

Lol, I think that's the first time you've quoted a sentence of mine without arguing about it and trying to invalidate my point.[/quote]
That's because we usually disagree. Of course I try to invalidate points I see as wrong! You do the same to me, don't you?

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The description of dwarves says that they're stout creatures fond of drink and industry, but says nothing about if they're short or bearded. We kinda assume from such things as the fact that shortness tends to be associated with stoutness and that dwarves have beards, both of which happen o be supported in the raws. Similarly, we assume that "statues" =/= "mechanical automations" and that bronze is usually more or less pure bronze, both of which are also associated with the raws. There's something wrong with your logic if it also opens the possibility that dwarves are tall and beardless...

Not really. The in-game descriptions clearly describe the dwarves' facial hair and the fact that they wear smaller armor than humans does imply their shortness. I'm not so much of a heretic as to think that any decent could possibly be sober, tall, or beardless!

"A stout creature fond of drink and industry." And yes, I know what you mean, but A. using the same two resources you tried to discredit, I showed that dwarves could be tall and beardless, and B. it varies by dwarf, with few dwarves I've seen being short.

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Alright, seeing as dropping adamantine in magma doesn't phase adamantine, I doubt that normal melting processes would mix bronze and adamantine.

Adamantine is so ridiculous in so many different ways that its somewhat pointless to theorize what would happen in real-life situations with it.

That's what happens in DF. Dump an adamantine wafer into your volcano or magma pit, and see what happens. You're all for experimentation, with the only canon being what actually happens in-game, so try it! Also drop in a bron ze colossus to see if it leaves behind an adamantine armature.

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Dangit, I was going to post something like that, noting that high heat (like magma or charcoal) might soften the strands somewhat. Or that current adamantine-smithing could be a placeholder for when smithies get more complex.

If heat alone makes adamantine become moveable and partially molten, then wouldn't the pressure from all the stone above result in adamantine spires expanding sideways into the magma and getting squished like a pancake? But I'm no physicist, that's just what i picture happening to a semi-molten pillar surrounded by magma that's being forced to bear the weight of layers and layers of stone.

Now who's hypothising about what would happen IRL? And no, since raw adamantine is A. not purely adamantine strands and B. not under that much pressure, as a dwarf can dig a hole right next to one in the magma sea and not et flooded with pressurised magma.

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Again, if BCs require adamantine, they're either overpowered or not worth considering.

A single colossus probably won't be able to take on an entire siege by itself like a couple legendary soldiers armed in adamantine could. However, it would be able to buy you some time or keep the siege busy while your marksdwarves pick off the goblins. It could still be worth making, as a sort of super-powerful cannon-fodder.

What's your point? If I had to choose between a bunch of legendary dwarves armed with adamantine, plus all of the other things I could make with dozens of bronze bars and stuff, and a bronze colossus, the choice would be easy. I'm not sure if it would fall towards "An invincible super-soldier!" or "An army of nigh-invincible soldiers!", but it would be one or the other. Not "Hm, I wonder, if I make a BC I'll have to do X to make sure it doesn't turn, but the results may be worth it..." or something.

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And if you can't think of ways to use hostile creatures as assets to the fortress (hint: cage traps), you aren't thinking dwarfily enough,

I find it easier and more amusing to put nobles in a drowning trap or "accidentally" drop them down a spike pit, rather than put them in a room filled with captured goblins.

No, no, no! Catch a BC, release it onto the goblins, use cats to bait it back onto a cage trap! Do I have to think of EVERYTHING for you?

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you think every type of magic should be entirely benificial to the user, and not require any kind of thought to use properly.

That's true to an extent. Don't get me wrong; I think reckless use of magic should be very dangerous, but I think it should be like breaching an aquifer. There's a challenge to overcome, but it isn't impossible and if you know what you're doing then you should be fine. Building a defense system that's guaranteed to harm your fortress and screw you over in a year is stupid and not very fun, in my opinion.

Danger =/= use lots of resources. And, like I mentioned, handling a potentially-ready-to-snap BC (whether by "tricking" it to only be near things you want it to kill when it's out, or by placating it somehow) would be a challenge, and certainly not "impossible to overcome." On the other hand, with getting adamantine, the only challenge is not mining out the one stone that...spoilers. If you can get enough adamantine without spoilering, you make a siege-busting bronze man of doom; if not, you break your fortress. It's like Minesweeper, except you lose more than a couple minutes of game if you choose the wrong square. But if you succeed, you have a nigh-undefeatable soldier! What Fun...risk your entire fortress for a way to protect it forever! What any system that hands you a "Defeat Siege" button like that, you need more of a challenge than "Don't spoiler the adamantine until you get enough, then you're golden. Maybe you should try building a big middle finger to pass the time until the next release."

FYI, an average kobold is between cat-size and dog-size. Also, silver is really heavy, so the bolt being fired has a few percent of the kobold's weight at least. That's significant, as the bolt is also probably flying at a high speed.

Yes. Turn stone to blocks; a single stone will provide something like 7 tiles of raised bridge at least. I dunno how many blocks a 10x1 bridge uses, let's say 5 (likely that's a high number). That means that four bridges require 20 blocks, or five stones, plus four for the mechanisms, which is a total of 9 stones for 40 squares. Compare to one stone per door and the fact that doors need to be next to walls? No contest, even if you don't reuse the lever (which consumes 5 more stone)
Of course, bridges are less efficient than turning the stone into blocks and the blocks into walls, unless you de- and re-construct a bunch of levers to raise the bridges. I'd go with walls.

Not fond of godly intervention on such a small scale, whether its a blessing or a curse.  I prefer, the entire embark region, not just to a specific fella become afflicted.  Touched by a god transforms an entity into a demigod.  Not a vampire or werewolf.

Seems a bit harsh. "Someone desecrated my temple? The town will be BESIEGED BY LIVING CORPSES!" I'd imagine godly vengeance to be, at best, "You dare desecrate my temple? I will kill you outright!" and to be, at worst, "You dare desecrate my temple? I will curse you with a fate WORSE than death!" Aside from gods of vengeance or suffering, divine wrath should be localised. It's what classical deities did; even the Abrahamic god only showed his wrath to whole cities or nations when most everyone in them pissed Him off.

I think Toady handcuffed his Gods when he reduced their skill set to a minuscule spell, a curse.  That's the skill set of cauldron swirling, witches and last breath exhaling, revenge, seekers.  Not the omnipotent.  He hurt his game, going about it the way he did.  Hope he someday realizes it, and in hindsight repairs it.  Gods don't curse lifeforms, they smite lifeforms.

Mostly, he just hasn't programmed them to do anything else. Kinda like how haulers can't wear a backpack to haul stuff--they technically COULD, if they were directly controlled by the player, but they don't know to.

A god wouldn't waste a moment of time on a nonbeliever, much less curse him. He'd just simply raze everything remotely related to what annoyed him, into nothingness.  He'd press the proverbial DELETE KEY.  By the Gods!, aren't their a ton of them however.  I upped my civs and pops in worldgen, and now have a bazillion gods in legends play.  Knutor

Erm...what does that last part have to do with anything? And why would gods invoke the wrath of each other by razing the WHOLE WORLD for a single desecration? And how would playing in a world more or less destroyed by a god due to someone dropping non-(insert generic version of kosher here) offerings in the temple during worldgen be fun? And how do you understand the mind of an omnipotent being so well?

I designated every body below the surface for dumping into the magma sea as they kept coming back to life around Autumn, some have walls around them but if you can't find a body that'll be why, also can I sign up for a second turn, I'm guessing it'll take a good couple of months to come around so I might as well do that now.

And I was hoping that the first cavern would be filled with the animate corpses of my dwarves...

There are zombies because we are in an evil area. Evil areas aren't nice.

@King Mur, are you for the inclusion of morale failure?  Fighting quiters?  This isn't a loaded answer.  I am not.  Just trying to get an idea.  I certainly don't wanna have the highlight of my 2hr period paused engagement end in a pile of broken gear, and some blood splotches..  Where the goblins/kobolds I was fighting turned tail and fled the region.  Nope, that isn't something I could enjoy.  I want their corpse to do sick and twisted things to after its over, or a way to chase down the fleeing entity, and hack off a leg or two.

What do you want? How can you chase down fleeers if no one flees? Also, do you REALLY want the goblins to spirefully deal every little cut they can, against all common sense? Mod goblins to have [NOFEAR].

Quiters don't appeal to me, they don't in those other games, and they won't here.  Especially since, in an engagement, I am limited to tampering with the thoughts of the soldiers I control.  If I cannot both have direct control, and instantaneous order following, I don't want to continously pause the game, look back, and see just where the heck that fleeing coward is running off to next.  F, is a nice tracking feature, but it only goes so far, as far as I am concerned.  Atleast until we can put that fight in a mini panel window, and continue giving orders to the populus as a whole.

Why should you need to look so carefully every second? If your dwarves are fleeing en masse, or if your most hardened militia is being spooked, you may have already lost. And it's not like dwarves don't scurry off to the hospital when they get injured...(Not always, but I've had merely BRUISED dwarves hurrying off to rest mid-battle.)

Sort of like watching the money train, in TTD, Transportation Tycoon.  Ya wanna keep an eye on your bread and butter.  Having my adamant armored soldiers chasing fleeing entities into lava, would certainly not be a pleasant experience for the DF gamer, much like a wrongly placed switch, on a complex train rail, causing the money train to wreck itself as a result, losing hours of work, simply because of a slightly intoxicated miscalc on the part of the gamer.  Knutor

Why would a goblin flee into lava, and why would a dwarf follow? This is modeling self-PRESERVATION, not suicide retreats!

@Putnam, a rework is good, I agree, but not solely because its realistic.  I used Flight or Fight; Toady is talking Willpower.  To me the critter tables need a consideration stat a basis, to grow on, before an entity can perform analysis.  This is where the equation, I had hoped he would share someday, comes into play.  It benefits the player, from a command and control point of view, to know where his dwarf stands in a danger scale and how his squad army strategy, like flanking, will benefit him versus say a multiheaded area of attack foe, capable of swollowing hole, things from any direction, but lacking flight and belly armor.  The player is in very desperate need of 'consideration' details, just as well as the AI, if not more so.

@bombzero, I'll take a double dosage of chill pills, tonight.  Your right.
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I think that the mandate should be from the militia commander, possibly approved by the expedition leader/mayor. Most nobles (except, of course, the dutyous ones) would care more about themselves than the people in the militia.