Bay 12 Games Forum

Or make sure your only enemies are cavies.

I like putting together compatable mods, fiddling with them, and enjoying FrankenDF.

Some play could even result in useful skills when the child matures. I know a few people who were inspired by childhood play (i.e. Lego blocks) to become architects or mechanical engineers.

Perhaps dwarven children could slowly gain forging skills while playing with a mini-forge, capped at novice level. Or instead of actually having the skills when they mature, the game could take advantage of the skill rusting system to treat play skills as "pre-rusted," so that the rate of real skill gain will be faster once maturity is reached. The same could be true for crafting and music skills once they're introduced.

That's a good idea. I think toy axes could train axe skill, toy crossbows (requiring toy bolts made out of, I donno, cloth probably) to train marksdwarf, archer, and (in absence of toy bolts) hammer skills, block sets to train masonry/carpentry/meatlworking (depending on material) and/or architecture...


I also suggest another stage of development: Toddler. Maybe babies would start to acquire child traits in the first third or so of the child stage, wandering away from their parent (causing the parent to come after if the toddler is far enough away or in danger), playing with other children/babies/idlers/parents/siblings/etc, giving random items as "gifts" to friends and family (I can personally confirm that toddlers do this), trying to pet tame (or not) animals but maybe accidently hurting them (also confirm, young children don't always have the self-control to not hurt animals they pet...although certainly not likely to punch the doggie in the head, jamming the skull through the brain, maybe dwarven chil.dren do), and of course getting into all kinds of trouble--falling down wells, getting lost in mines, trying to pet the big, furry tick with leathery wings and firey breath, giving a chunk of granite to a nice-looking green-skinned person with a big, sharp, fun-looking toy, etc--when not supervised.

Haha, I wish I was that lucky. Kinda.

Try starting with animal quests, or night creatures, or anything that doesn't have an army of warriors hoping for the personal glory of killing you.

Decorations don't affect weight.

Still, most any artifact weapon is awesome. Even if made from subpar metal, artifacts tend to be better due to their artifact bonuses, the exceptions being things like bone spears or silver swords. And even these LOOK awesome in most cases.

Also be warned, this kind of reaction will use a whole STACK of bones.

Geez, am I the only one here who doensn't hate elves that haven't been a jerk to you?

I might be slightly biased because one of my best D&D characters, whom I referenced in Armorsouls, was an elf. And an awesome obne, too!

That is brilliant!
Thank you very much indeed.
I will strip out the components that I need in the order that I want so that I can make better sense of it as I go along.

You are welcome, and if you still need help, you can ask people who know a lot more than me. I just know the kinds of things that can't be done.

I was planning on having very greate differences between the castes, so great as to almost be sub-species.

A bit cliche, but a good and interesting one. Makje sure to give each caste its own description tag so you can tell the difference between castes by looking at their descriptions.

Caste: Queen
A slender, somewhat humanoid creature centered on four legs in a radial fashion.
She is the only female in the hive with a 10% birth chance. They DO NOT pair off at all, rather they lay between 10 and 60 fast hatching, fast growing eggs on a few yearly basis.
Exceptionally fast and strong, good at pretty much every skill that is available with all attributes averaging at around 4000.

Good, but you need a male to fertilize the eggs, and the male needs to be married to the queen if they're civ creatures. You need a "drone" caste that is friendly and useful for only the most basic tasks.
Also, somehow it seems they should have wings or mental abilities or something, but just making them delicate wallflowers that are good at crafting will be more realistic and make them more likely to be specially protected.

Caste: Mind
These are large tick-like beings set on six legs with a massive brain and single body piece/head. Their delicate innards are protected only by a thin layer of very fragile chitin that is no real use in combat.
These creatures are the organizers and inventors of the race, with no real ability to perform menial tasks such as mining or building or, for that matter, hauling.
Mental attributes sit at around 3500 with physical attributes as low as 250. Agility is relatively high at 2500.

Interesting idea. Maybe, to fit more with the insect theme, these could spit acid (ask around; someone figured out a set of syndrome stuff that closely mimics real-world acid) or poison or something. They would probably also be good craftsmen. Craftsbugs?

Caste: Hand
These are dumb, reasonably robust, humanoid insects that are capable of all menial and manual tasks but cannot perform much in the way intellectual work.
Physical attributes averaging at around 3000, with agility down to 2000. Mental attributes sit in the 500 range.

Maybe these could be the drones?

Caste: Blade
These are the soldier caste, with highly thick shells on a crab-like body. They are armed with a pair of versatile grabbing pincers made of three strong prongs.
Physical attributes are high at an average of 3500. Mental attributes are moderate at 2250 and agility is a reasonable 3000.

Excellent idea. Once again, consider poison/acid/etc, but if you give both minds and blades assorted attacks like that make the blades' more powerful.

Would I have to create the CASTEs and then define their bodies and tissues separately?

Yes, yes, and only if there were differences between castes.

And is it possible to only allow certain job types per caste or would that bugger it up?
I would like to set it so that MINDs physically cannot perform hauling tasks or gain combat skills. Equally I would like to limit the mental abilities of the HANDs and set BLADEs to pure combat/hunting/fishing abilities.

You can't make it impossible, but you can make it so that blades start with natural fighting ability, hands don't learn crafty skills as fast, minds learn crafty skills fast and mining/combat skills almost not at all, etc. Making minds weak also slows them down a lot when hauling, meaning that the stronger blades and hands are prefered for stone/statue/etc hauling.
Also, if you do this, don't make hands too prevelant...they seem like they should be the most common caste, but the jobs they do seem like the ones that need to be done the least. Maybe only jobs that require skill to do well (masonry, carpentry, stonecrafting, most smithing, etc) would be hard to learn by hands, and ones that don't require so much skill (wood cutting/burning, furnace operating, maybe plantering. maybe plant gathering, maybe mining) would be learned at a not-abysmal pace.

It is the format of the bodies and tissues bit that I don't get as well.
All this stuff unfortunately:
*snip*

EDIT:
and I just noticed this - SWIMS_INNATE The creature naturally knows how to swim, as opposed to [SWIMS_LEARNED] below. Currently, an AI bug prevents this from being useful on PC races in fortress mode.

Could I use the Swim_Learned tag and designate that it can never drop below Legendary using the NATURAL_SKILL tag?

Yes, but that wouldn't cause them to path through water. PC races are hydrophobic, as well as lagophobic (rabbits, for the non-taxonomist), anecrophobic (the prefix a- means "not"--I'm saying they're not as afraid of death and undead as they should be), and salsusaphobic ("salsus" being Latin for "smart" in the intelligent sense).

I have yet another question for you folks.

Glad to help.

Is it possible to create an egg that my race will not consider cooking and that does not need to be in a nest box to hatch?

Yes (if you make the yolk and white out of, say, lead or some other nonedible material) and no (all eggs, to my knowledge, need to be in nest boxes). It might be easier to just have the queen give birth to live young. I think some bugs do, know some snakes and several sharks and some other unexpected critters do, and anyways normal bugs couldn't be 1/1,000 the size of most of those bugs that were suggested in the one suggestion.

And does the Litter size tag also apply to the number of eggs that are 'produced'?

No, for some reason there is a completely separate tag for that.

Since the QUEEN caste will be much the same regardless of wether the others are possible or not I have started tinkering with her.
This is what I have but I am just guessing at most of it and have no clue how to start on the rest of her.
This caste is the one to rule them all!!!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

   
   [CASTE:QUEEN]
      [FEMALE]
      [ALL_ACTIVE]
      [SWIM_SPEED:5000]
      [MAXAGE:2250:2775]
      
      This bit makes her inexaustable.
      [NONAUSEA]
      [NO_FEVERS]
      [NO_SLEEP]
      [NOEXERT]
      [NOPAIN]
      [NOSTUN]
      [PARALYZEIMMUNE]
      [WEBBER:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SILK]
      [THICKWEB]
      [ITEMCORPSE:STATUE:INORGANIC:SAPPHIRE_STAR]
      
      This is the breeding bit.
      [LAYS_EGGS]
      [LITTERSIZE:15:45]

looks pretty good, just remember to define the silk. Maybe make it very valuable. Also change "LITTERSIZE" to the clutch size token and make the queen a wimp. And please explain why she turns into a star sapphire statue upon death.