Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Felix False on June 18, 2012, 01:13:21 pm

What if the vampire only kills occasionally, but when it does the slain dwarf rises up and attacks the fort as a feral ghoul that's every bit as powerful as the vampire? That would up the threat level significantly, for those who think it's a good idea.

But that 'd do away with the threat level. Since we seem to have various conflicting visions here, why don't we ask Toady to add a few more things to syndromes(personality changing and such when those rewrites come in) and then we can each have our preferred vampires. Or even better procedurally generate them.

How would feral ghouls be LESS dangerous than corpses? And did someone suggest procedurally generated vamps?

...but I also think that there should be variety in their personality. One might be ashamed, and try to only drink a little from anyone, not trying to do anything but survive; another might kill indiscriminantly; a third might try to start some sort of cabal and overthrow the fortress's government; a fourth might eliminate key dwarves to destabilise the fortress; etc.

Granted, I focused on personality traits, but the general idea is there.

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First off, protecting an adamantine mechanism with bronze is a bit dumber than protecting an artifact steel axe with tissue paper.

Do you think a wall five feet thick made of a soft metal like gold would be harder to pierce than a plate of steel that's just an inch thick? I think so. Would you use a tiny nugget of adamantine (since it's so rare) or fifty bars of bronze?

Adamantine is nigh-indestrucible. Maybe giving Superman a Kevlar vest would be a more appropriate image?

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Second off, check the raws. No mention of adamantine, no mention of any kind of mechanisms, no mention of internal structure at all.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not saying they do have adamantine gears in them, I'm defending the idea that it would make sense if you needed adamantine to create them, more for balancing than natural explanation or whatever.

Requiring an ultra-rare material to make a nigh-indestructible super-soldier doesn't make the process balanced, it makes adamantine more powerful.

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Seeing as adamantine has a higher melting point than the surface of the sun? I doubt it.

If it really had a higher melting point that that of the sun there would be no way to just melt it in a magma smelter, but your dwarves can. This is one example of where the raws, which you so often point to as evidence, are just there to make something not broken-in this case I suspect adamantine has such a high melting point so that it can be dragonfire-safe and magma-safe. I think looking into the raws for canon information is incredibly stupid. There aren't hidden stories in the coding-If it isn't said in-game, it can be ignored.

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

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...Is there a facepalming smiley?
Since when does fantasy have robots? Pick a non-videogame, non-golem, non-insane example.

I can think of several video-game examples. I won't list them since for whatever reason you don't count videogames as fantasies for my example, even when we're talking about Dwarf Fortress, a videogame, which you're labeling as fantasy. And non-golem? We're talking about golems here.

I was saying non-videogame whilst thinking of Final Fantasy and the like, which are willing to include anything from quantum physicists to cyber-dragons if it makes a good enemy; I crafted that sentence in pieces. Ignore that. And I was more or less trying to deconstruct the idea of BC=Robot.

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"A gigantic statue made of bronze and bent on mayhem."
That is the only source of "canon lore" we have on bronze colossi--that and the raws. Both indicate that BCs are solid, homogeneous, magically-animate statues made of 100% pure bronze...okay, bronze is an alloy, but you get what I mean.
Besides, if BCs were bronze over an adamantine frame, we couldn't melt them, could we?

The description leads you to the assumption that its solid bronze, but it doesn't explicitly say it. Look above to see what I think about using raws to get canon information. And yeah, you could melt them if they had adamantine frames. You can forge and melt adamantine stuff with ease in Dwarf Fortress, despite the rawsgiving them that ludicrous melting point.

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...

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 18, 2012, 09:53:04 am

Why not just accept that bronze collossi are bronze statues brought to life by divine magic etc, and then instead of arguing about them we could theorize on the creation of golems or other new creations instead, which would be more fun imo as well ^^

Yup, there's a difference by golems and collosi. Golems are man made things, collosi not. Since implementing golems would allow for a broader scope of possibilities I like that more than going with the completly unsupported statement that they are adamantine robots. (Really, our statement is at least a bit supported by the game, while yours isn't, at all.)

The only colossus I can think of is (was?) in Rhodes, and it's slightly inanimate.

Also, all things in the raws hint that adamantine is some kind of thread, made into wafers. This explains why dwarves can pulk it loose from the ore, and how they can melt and process it. They aren't melting or smithing it, but more something akin to weaving, carefully placing the wafers in place and melting them with trace amounts of other metals to keep them in place.

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.

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Second off, check the raws. No mention of adamantine, no mention of any kind of mechanisms, no mention of internal structure at all.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not saying they do have adamantine gears in them, I'm defending the idea that it would make sense if you needed adamantine to create them, more for balancing than natural explanation or whatever.

And that case you're probably going for a tame BC, which considering the easyness which which adamantine is mined, would be completly overpowered. One does not balance something using a one time huge cost. This either makes something useless(to awesome to use) or overpowered. Adding a chance for the Collosus to go mad would give them an origin story and balance them. Meanwhile you could use golems for more mundane things, and you can give them adamantine gears if you want.

Again, this same point is brought up. HIGH COST =/= BALANCED! BALANCED==BALANCED! If making a perfectly tame BC is unbalanced, all you can do is make it not worth making.

...Is there a facepalming smiley?
Since when does fantasy have robots? Pick a non-videogame, non-golem, non-insane example.

I can think of several video-game examples. I won't list them since for whatever reason you don't count videogames as fantasies for my example, even when we're talking about Dwarf Fortress, a videogame, which you're labeling as fantasy. And non-golem? We're talking about golems here.[/quote]
No we 're not. That's the entire point. A golem is statue made from clay(often) designed to do help with things. Not to go on a murdrous rampage. There are no hints that a Bronze Collosus would be a golem, as the only similarity is that they are both statues. The point is that the player should be able to build golems, but not BC's ,which are something different.
Also dwarf fortress is mostly inspired on older folkore, stories, not videogames, which are notorious for throwing things toghether.
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Just to point out, Dungeons and Dragons (which inspired both much of modern fantasy and several DF monsters, for instance the hungry head) and many other fantasy works have golems made of everything from stone to iron to flesh to bronze (a D&D sourcebook). The original elves were more like malevolent fairies than tree-hugging wimps with warbears, but DF elves are tree-hugging wimps with warbears, so clearly we're not always going by the Ur examples* here. And, of course, few or no fantasy works have fantastic metals used in the construction of golems made from mundane metals.
*Another TV Tropes term.

Quote from: Monk321654 on June 18, 2012, 10:27:58 am

If NW_Kohako is to be believed, Bronze Colossuses are based off of Talos, an ancient automaton.
So technically, by that merit they ARE robots.
But they're still pure Bronze.

However, it could also refer to the Collosus of Rhodos, of the twelve metal collosi. Only this time animated. Above that I can't find any reference to Talos being a robot. The only description given is that he's a man made of bronze, with a single vein closed of by a nail. As far as I have found, he just seems to be a clearly magical animated bronzen statue.

As far as I know, Talos was more like an iron golem (and don't go all "'Golem' means 'Golem of Prague'" on me, please), but that may be partly from one of my first exposures to the name Talos being from D&D.

Animated statues going on a rampage are not uncommon anyway, and your traditional golem doesn't contain any mechanics.

I assume you mean in fantasy?

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Yup, there's a difference by golems and collosi. Golems are man made things, collosi not. Since implementing golems would allow for a broader scope of possibilities I like that more than going with the completly unsupported statement that they are adamantine robots. (Really, our statement is at least a bit supported by the game, while yours isn't, at all.)

I shall repeat once again that I'm not claiming bronze colossi to be robots, or to have adamantine in them. While we were still on topic, somebody suggested that to make a bronze colossus you should have to use adamantine gears and such, and then someone else said that wouldn't make any sense since bronze colossi are 100% bronze. I like the idea of being able to build bronze colossi with adamantine parts, and I'm just saying that it could make sense since there's no way to prove bronze colossi aren't robots with adamantine in them.

If you don't think BCs have asamantine/are robots, why are you arguing for those points? And I have given several points, including the sum total of all canon knowledge about bronze colossi, to disprove the "adamantine robots" theory.

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Also, all things in the raws hint that adamantine is some kind of thread, made into wafers. This explains why dwarves can pulk it loose from the ore, and how they can melt and process it. They aren't melting or smithing it, but more something akin to weaving, carefully placing the wafers in place and melting them with trace amounts of other metals to keep them in place.

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If adamantine truly is as solid and impossible to bend as you claimed in your post, you wouldn't be able to "weave" it into anything.

He and I have given different ways to deal with that (his "attatch with other metals," my aforementioned "soften with heat").

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And that case you're probably going for a tame BC, which considering the easyness which which adamantine is mined, would be completly overpowered. One does not balance something using a one time huge cost. This either makes something useless(to awesome to use) or overpowered. Adding a chance for the Collosus to go mad would give them an origin story and balance them. Meanwhile you could use golems for more mundane things, and you can give them adamantine gears if you want.

They wouldn't be overpowered. Actually, I'd say they're underpowered because the adamantine you use to make them could have gone towards equipping a few legendary soldiers with candy swords and weapons. As in for bronze colossi going mad, I for one would not use them at all if within a year they would just go on a rampage and kill my livestock and dwarves. They just wouldn't be worth the hassle.

Again, if BCs require adamantine, they're either overpowered or not worth considering. 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, AND you think every type of magic should be entirely benificial to the user, and not require any kind of thought to use properly.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on June 18, 2012, 05:53:52 am

If there are legendary brewers, why not legendary soapers? If food and drink, which exist only until eaten, can be legendary skills, why not butchery, which makes the food as well as bones for crafts that would last decades? If dwarves sing tales of masterful tables and chairs, might they not also enjoy a bath with masterful soap?

Not worth changing, even if there was a benifet. Which there really isn't.

I can imagine a legendary chef/brewer, whose foods and recipes are remembered for years to come. On the other hand, I cannot imagine a guy that's so good at making soap everybody in the fort knows and envies his skill, nor can I even comprehend, much less picture, how you could become a legendary butcher. If you have a deer, you can either cut it up the wrong way and make a bloody mess or create a bunch of nice little steaks. It's hit or miss. Masterfully cut meat would be ridiculous.

Why can there not be any kind of soap that is better than simply removing grime? Why must a chunk of meat be worth only a couple dwarfbucks and be better in no way than another, even when one has ragged edges and the other is perfectly cut? Above all, when one can provide examples of how quality can be provided for several skills, and when skill also affects speed, why should Toady waste his time on this? Maybe you can't imagine legends being told about the speed of buthcering, but is John Henry became a legend for his speed in building tracks or mining or whatever it was he did faster than the machine, why can't a dwarf's ability to clean fish or tan hides with lightning speed become so?
Perhaps the biggest issue is that these skils don't really have crowning achievements the player can see. Masons and such make masterwork furniture, mugs, arms, armor, and so forth, but what do butchers do? There probably nees to be something neat that master and expecially legendary dwarves can do for these skills, like fishers who can catch big fish like carp and sharks, or butchers and soapers and smelters and such who produce raw materials that add to the qualities of items that are made from them, or wood burners that make charcoal that can be used a bunch..

Glazing doesn't give XP?

Okay, go into your data/save folder in your df_34_etc folder, and locate the folder for the save you want to modify. Open the raw folder within and the reaction_other file in that. Find the GLAZE_X reactions and add some kind of product. Maybe ash? I dunno how glazing works IRL.

Quote from: 10ebbor10 on June 18, 2012, 06:28:49 am

Besides, Toady will have to do that timeskip thingy one day to allow for expeditions and retiring fortresses.

Well, I expect it would be much easier to have those timeskips take place outside of fortress play though, as in after you've retired it and are back at the world screen. Being able to do it inside fortress mode wouldn't really be necessary.

...I like the idea of building a fortress for a couple or three years, then skipping ahead a decade or two to see what happened. "Urist and Cog got married...a bunch of migrants came...ooh, artifacts..."

Try to address this. Besides, it'd help overcome later-game lethargy.

A dwarven day is about 1 second long. This night's phase would therefore be absolutely useless. Also, doubling the amount of game time in an in game year would completly throw off balance, as you'd effectively get twice as much done in one year.

Actually, I find dwarven days to be several seconds, maybe half a minute. I've never timed them, and obviously it depends on FPS, but still. The other point is valid.

The Fps time thing makes no sense. The problem isn't with how fast the game goes for the player, but for the dwarves inside. Changing FPS won't do anything about this. While this suggestion won't impact Fps( as you are just changing the ingame calender), it will make the game a lot easier.

I think he's saying that needing to do several times as much pathing from accelerating to several times current speed would affect FPS?

While I do agree that skips and slowdowns/fastforwards shouldn't be nessecary to play, this suggestion won't do any good. It would completly mess up the balance of the game. (What you're doing is doubling the time between caravans, doubling the time between sieges and before the first siege, and so on).

Indeed. Not much to add here. I suppose that if it's good or bad relies on who you ask, though...

If you want to stay with the current timesystem, you should do so, not making a silly hybrid systems. Day and nights should be implemented on the same scale, possible taking entire weeks/months, A full moon might hold for an entire season. While this would be a bit unrealistic, at least it'll be semi balanced and on the same line as the rest of the game.

Wait, lunar cycles =~= years? Maybe not THAT extreme...

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on June 18, 2012, 06:14:27 am

Any feature that makes time-skips necesary would be bad, but I like the idea of building a fortress for a couple or three years, then skipping ahead a decade or two to see what happened. "Urist and Cog got married...a bunch of migrants came...ooh, artifacts..."

Besides, Toady will have to do that timeskip thingy one day to allow for expeditions and retiring fortresses.

Yup.

Doesn't it defeat the purpose of commanding dwarves not to build something if they then go and build it after a while? A better solution would to get them to not suspend it unless there's a good reason not to (something in the way, a magma flood, etc).