Bay 12 Games Forum

Well they also have perfect 5k disease resistance. That doesn't mean they couldn't spread diseases, though...

Nope.
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:AGILITY:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]               +
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:RECUPERATION:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]          +
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:DISEASE_RESISTANCE:1250:1500:1750:2000:2500:3000:5000]  +++
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:INTUITION:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]             +
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:PATIENCE:150:600:800:900:1000:1100:1500]                -
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:MEMORY:5000:5000:5000:5000:5000:5000:5000]              max
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:LINGUISTIC_ABILITY:1250:1500:1750:2000:2500:3000:5000]  +++
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:SPATIAL_SENSE:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]         +
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:MUSICALITY:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]            +
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:KINESTHETIC_SENSE:700:1200:1400:1500:1600:1800:2500]    ++
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:EMPATHY:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]               +
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:SOCIAL_AWARENESS:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]      +


Elves have better than average mental attributes and disease resistance. In particular, all elves have 5000 (maxed-out) memory. Their mental health is probably ok. They just have a different worldview.

.25 they weren't.  I doubt this has changed.  Apparently tantrum destruction causes a sort of very special removal mechanism.  When a dwarf topples a workshop, they're mostly just flipping the single microcline boulder on its side, but when they destroy a workshop or construction, they seem to scream at it so loud that they invoke a black hole - otherwise referred to as a rage hole, wherein the material is ripped apart and plucked into the hole one fleck of dust at a time.

Did it list as a dead creature? I'm imagining that you could put several justice cages in the meeting hall, and then cause a tantrum spiral, leading to several imprisoned dwarves being disappeared.

I've had tantruming dwarves destroy a ≡Gold Cage≡ with a titan in it.  When the cage was destroyed (not toppled) the titan disappeared.
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What? Is there some kind of cage hyperspace or something? Creatures aren't released on cage destruction?

...
So with a Legendary engraver will engrave history roughly 75% of the time.
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Yes, my own testing sort of verifies the 75% number. It seems that if your fort/region doesn't have enough history, then by legendary they will be engraving even the rather insignificant events such as "x gave up being a cheesemaker to become a mason" or "human merchants visited the fort in the year x".



Statues:
sample size 1000 via reaction, range of quality/creator skill levels

26% expedition leader (selection, likes/dislikes, etc.)
25% region history (hunters vs a single giant dingo)
17% founding of the fort
15% fort history (i.e. deaths of wagon, goblins, kobold. Rise of a ghost, dwarves settling, artifact creation, etc.)
12% deity (just the statue maker's deity)
5% engraver's preferences or random

Statues seem to produce better history since civilization symbols, local symbols, plants, trees, and shapes are all excluded from use. History appears to improve with quality, so at the noob end of statues you get a lot of random creatures, deitys, and the expedition leader.

Potential uses: a zoo with placeholder statues if you don't have a live creature. A temple of a god or the gods. A long hall with all the leaders and mayors of the fort that have ever held the position, sorted by year.

For people who want a hall of their fort's history, statues have the benefit of being placeable and disposable, unlike engravings.

You can have the camera follow a unit or item, either as a one time thing or as one of the function hotkeys you set up for it. It'll keep following it until you enter another mode, recenter to an announcement, manually scroll, etc. If the followed item is held by a container or by a unit, the camera will center on that.

I wanted to split this from the minecart thread because it has its own potential.

This would be a handy feature for simply observing dwarves go around, monitoring strange mood dwarves, tracking invaders, etc. Potentially, you could even leave a valuable item outside and set the camera on it to get a "Kobold Cam".

It seems that this feature was implemented so that you could watch minecarts fly in parabolic paths through the air.

It seems to me that the subject of an engraving is entirely dependent on the quality. Low and no quaility engravings ALWAYS (In my experience) produce a generic engraving of a shape, symbol or entity. High quality produce more complex situations (An engraving of a dwarf surrounded by dwarves. The dwarves are laughing.) or portray historical events.

Tested that idea. Embarked with one engraver and 6 miners (no engraving skill). Mined out 2 rooms, and then walled in the engraver with some food and booze into one of the rooms. Had one room smoothed and engraved by the single skilled guy, whereas the other room was smoothed and engraved by a team of 6 noobs. At the end, the engraver was "talented" whereas the miners were only "dabbling" engravers.

Single Talented Engraver:
12% Civilization symbol
10% Local symbol
44% History
27% Engraver's preferences or random shapes/items/creatures/plants/etc.
2% Local historical figure (the expedition leader) surrounded by things he likes or hates
5% Artifacts (necromancer books!)

Team of dabbling engravers:
17% Civilization symbol
18% Local symbol
65% Engraver's preferences or random shapes/items/creatures/plants/etc.

Hmm... Looks like truth. If you want a higher chance of history records, use the most skilled engraver. I don't have access to a legendary engraver to see what that produces.

Its interesting that you don't get "founding of the fort" engravings in the first season of the fort. Perhaps it has to become last year's news before it gets engravable?

Release notes for 0.34.07 (March 30, 2012):

Major bug fixes
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   (*) Slab to missing allowed, once missing status has been announced (unless from reclaim, then you can always do it)

I built a drawbridge in atom-smasher configuration and linked it to a lever in the meeting hall. I then gave the order to deconstruct a wall so that a child ran out under the smasher. Pull the lever! Since there was no body to be found, the child remained at "missing". After a week, I got the announcement "Uvash Ritholobok, Dwarven Child has been missing for a week". I had a slab engraved and installed for the child, before any ghosts could appear.

The point? Throughout the whole process, I was monitoring the thoughts of the child's friends and family. Nobody noticed that anything was wrong. IMO this is a bug, but it could be used to rid the fort of any undesirables without causing bad thoughts in the remaining dwarves. Don't like dwarves with cheesemaking skill or red hair? Erase them! The only cost is a slab and some floor space.