Bay 12 Games Forum

Guns, if implemented, should be powerful but inaccurate, but but should be easier to train than crossbows. They should also have less range.
Crossbows should be less powerful and less inaccurate, but but should be easier to train than bows. They should also have less range.
Blowguns should have little power, little range (<guns) if you want accuracy but up to somewhere between csossbow and bow ranges if you don't mind accuracy, hard to train up, faster than bows at high skill levels but between guns and crossbows at low levels and about on-par with guns for speed at early levels, but creating and poisoning large amounts of ammo should be easy, and enemies might not react to blowdarts as fast as they would bolts or bullets.

Dwarves should be ahead of humans in tech, humans should be ahead of goblins, goblins ahead of kobolds, and elves should be at early Stone Age tech except for bows and such, but be powerful at magic. Kobolds should also be good at magic but have chaotic (if any) formations and hierarchy, humans and goblins should have average magic, and dwarves should have little magic except for enhancing magic and a little "household magic."

[/$0.02]

This makes sense, and would be helpful.

Dwarves tend to grab the highest-quality of whatever gear they've been assigned.  If a dwarf has a steel breastplate, and a dwarf somewhere else wearing a +steel breastplate+ suddenly dies, the first dwarf will run over to his dead companion and grab the higher-quality equipment off his dead former squadmate's body.  Your squad leader probably had the highest-quality gear, so when he died it triggered a mad scramble as everyone ran out to grab his stuff.

Also, if the captain saw that some nifty bit o' gear on a gobbo was better than what he was currently wearing, he'd likely run down to it the moment said gobbo was dead. Forbid-on-death is VITAL.

Did you Forbid used ammunition? If not, your marksdwarf probably decided some intact shot bolt was to be shot again.

...Or this...


Also, put some warning kilns in any caves you embark on--they'll give you warning if a voracious cave crawler decides to path up into your fort, pausing to smash said kilns and destroy your not-yet-deconstructed wagon, kill half your dwarves and some livestock, and turn your expedition leader into a sometimes-tantruming wreck who kills a duck and destroys a few trade depots before your remaining four try to survive and make the fort work again.
No, I don't have experience with this. I was using Kobold Camp at the time, which made it everything harder.

This is a two-part suggestion, but both are part of the same general idea.
1.) Allow the player to give specific items to dwarves. This would boost happiness. The side effects of this would include a use for trader crap that isn't trading and a use, period, for artifact mugs and bracelets. It would also allow Toady One to add in some fairly common unhappiness-generating events without severely threatening all forts with tantrum spirals. I believe I have made this suggestion elsewhere, so I won't go into it in much detail--not that it needs much more.
2.) Immigrants (and probably the Starting Seven) would come with some items--a container, a knife (used for protection, eating, and a few other things in the medieval world), mugs, toys (if children), and so forth. They would also probably have coins; this may suggest that clothes would need to gain "pockets," but that is not necessary. A family (or dwarf, if s/he does not migrate in with any family members) would have a semi-random "wealth level" that determines how much stuff the dwarves in the family have. The wealth level would probably also affect pets that the migrants migrate in with.

These suggestions, or one of them, would add a bit of verisimilitude to DF, and would help pre-find a few bugs involving the economy that involve items. They would also encourage bedrooms that are more than a bed, and might add a bit of wealth to struggling forts. One can imagine a group of dwarves taking everything migrants bring, or one that allows migrants to have all of their possessions buried with them. New management might cause items to be removed from the grave, causing unhappy thoughts and likely releasing a burst of miasma that was trapped in the coffin. It would probably be a good idea to let the player choose if his/her fort took all non-clothes from migrants, let them keep their possessions until death, or have said possessions buried with the dwarf and/or passed down to the dwarf's family members. Dwarves might give each other gifts on their birthdays or on procedurally-generated holidays, although these should probably be represented solely by an exchange of ownership. It would probably help the whole "Dwarves only own one set of clothes and never change" "problem."

That's about all I can think of right now. I'd like to hear your thoughts, as long as they aren't "Please organize your ideas better."

I discovered in my newes world a long war between a race of humans lead by a shrew monster and a group of dwarves. It lasted...at least 20 years, I haven't gotten to the end. The dwarves quickly began to lose--they started the war with several dwarves and some cave crocs per battle, but now there's "One dwarf, all lost," if that. The humans are sending 47 humans, 5 giant badgers, 5 leopards, 5 polar bears, and the shrew monster into every battle (and still take heavy casualties  ). I don't know what the weirdest part is--the war itself, how badly the dwarves are losing, how long the war is lasting, the large number of casualties, the even larger number of troops, or the term 'shrew monster." EDIT: Actually, it lasted 40 years and the last battle was one dwarf and 5 voracious cave crawlers (5 losses) against 14 humans (3 losses).

What are some other weird and wacky worldgen wars you've witnessed?

We have calcium derived bones, I assure you. Iron phosphate, for example, is derived from iron - phosphor iron is famously an extremely durable form of iron - and there's enough iron in our blood for it to be potentially affected (messily) by high power magnetic fields. So yes, not only do we have metal bones, we infact have metal blood. Our bodies contain a whole host of metals, and many metals, including calcium, iron, phosphorous, zinc, etc. are absolutely essential for our health.

Yes, but not solid metal bones or blood.

In terms of food, yeah. Bonemeal is already in the game, but I am unaware as to how to actually make it.

Be a night creature, basically.

Quote from: Halconnen on May 14, 2011, 03:36:34 am

Shouldn't metals bonded into compounds like the iron oxide in our blood be completely nonmagnetic, though? Why, then, are powerful magnetic fields hazardous to our health?

That is not solely because of the iron in our blood. Ionic bonds are polar, always, there is a negative and positive area of the molecule. If our blood was based on say cobalt instead of iron the same thing would happen.

This is in stark contrast to something like oil which more or less distributes its electrons evenly throughout the molecule which means there is no clear negative or positive area of the molecule. This also is why we use an atom like iron in our blood because oxygen would not so easily bond with oil or a similar molecule.

Plus, iron oxide isn't magnetic.

Toady says that herding goblins don't seem scary enough.

Tell that to medieval Europeans whose settlements were raided by vikings. They thought of themselves as herders--so much that they kept cattle and pigs in Greenland despite their advese effects on wildlife. (Although ignorance may have helped that last part). Plus...trolls, giant cave crocs, and all the other wonderful cave beasties that are found in caverns that gobbos ride to siege your fort.

Quote from: SirHoneyBadger on May 15, 2011, 03:57:38 am

Actually, I see them being on the Golden Horde/Dothraki diet: They drink the milk and blood of their mounts, as well as the occasional bit of mystery jerky.

This is pretty much what I was thinking.

Mmmm, Jabberer milk.... *droolgargle*

Although, I have to admit, this sounds scarier.

If only there was some way to mod this in...