Bay 12 Games Forum

Had you run a previous fort in this world?

It sounds like it might be old age to me.  It won't realize that someone is dead of old age until they step onto the scene, at the moment.

Quote from: Dakkan on July 05, 2010, 10:34:07 am

I've been hoping for some sort of doorway to alternate planes. The moons could be one of them.

*groan*

(That was the groan of knowing how much I would hate myself for still playing Dwarf Fortress if such a feature was implemented.

Actually, alternate dimensions were planned as a feature for Dwarf Fortress from way back...  I recall one of the devpages mentioning it.  Or maybe it was something Toady said in one of the really early threads...  I have no idea if it's still going to be done, but it's something that's actually comparatively easy to do (compared to, say, time travel, at least) and which can have really awesome-looking effects, not to mention strange emergent applications.  If you've played Master of Magic you'll have a sense of what I'm talking about.  I also recall Banishment to the Abyss as one of the coolest features of Dungeon Crawl the first time you encounter it -- there's just sort of a 'ZOMG' factor to discovering that there's an entire other dimension that you can just access at any time with the right stuff.


With that said, the game's metaphysics are not always clear.  We don't know what the moon(s) in DF are, how large they are, etc.  They might just be a big flower or a fruit or a wolf or something that someone put in the sky.

I agree with more votes needed though, maybe 10?

No, I think that any method with limited votes would be a bad idea.  People should be able to, in some fashion, weigh in on every single thing on the list.  If you add more votes, you'll just extend it a bit further down, but you'll still end up with the same effect, where people will go for the biggest most impressive stuff first.

I'l prolly catch flak for this, but can the votes be cleared and the script modified to display the list of suggestions in  random order? Because right now it seems to have a big case of "i vote for the first 3 suggestions"-itis.

It's not just a matter of people blindly choosing the first few and not bothering to read the rest.  The current system encourages people to only vote on things with high vote totals, because you only get three votes, and voting for something with 0 votes (or anything nowhere near the top 10, really) is pretty much throwing your vote away -- nobody will notice the extra vote, so it's not going to raise the item at all; and you only get three, so people naturally want to spend them where they will matter (mainly, trying to make a distinction between the stuff that actually has high totals.)

Which is problematic, because it tends to lead towards people using their few limited votes on the biggest, most sweeping suggestions they can.  If you have a suggestion for, say, some very small specific relatively easy change, very few people are going to spend a vote on it when they could instead spend that vote on "TOTALLY OVERHAUL HAULING" or "ADD THIS MASSIVE PLOT-ARC" or "IMPROVE EVERYTHING IN ALL WAYS."

The real problem is the limited number of votes.

The other common workaround for the Bronze Colossus is to give it some sort of Soul Shard or something that acts as a brain. When that dies, it's reduced to just a statue.

I suppose a Shadow-of-the-Colossus dealy where they have a weak point or magic runes on them or whatever that make them die if they're damaged would be one option, but that'd require stuff like called shots (or even the ability to climb up on a monster and run around, or whatever epic madness you can imagine.)

Honestly, the current situation -- where you can pretty much only kill a Bronze Colossus by immersing it in magma or something similar -- isn't that bad.  They can't climb, they can't dig, and they'll probably never get either of those abilities.  This makes them relatively manageable for players who have the chance to exploit it, even if it can be a bit frustrating to people who want to be able to meet everything in battle.

It might also be neat if there were more ways to order your dwarves to use fire as a weapon.  That seems to be one of the few Bronze Colossus weaknesses, although I'm not sure if it'd get hot enough to cause melting.

But in terms of material damage...  it's hard to imagine hitting a giant solid bronze statue with an axe until it breaks.  If it's hollow, maybe.  But just because steel is harder than bronze doesn't mean your axe is going to keep its edge if you try to hack through a huge solid piece of the stuff...

Does denting impair function at the moment?  Could a leg get so badly bent out of shape by hammerdwarves hitting it with giant hammers that the Colossus can't walk anymore?  Realistically, hammers seem like the logical way to deal with a Bronze Colossus to me -- they won't get damaged themselves the way a metal weapon would, you can knock the enemy over, and eventually the beating will make something break or bend out of shape.

The only problem with this is that the depot currently has unlimited storage.  If you could have things brought there constantly and automatically, why not use it as a magical bag of holding for all the furniture you produce (or whatever?)

Truthfully, it would probably be best to eventually replace the depot with some kind of room or zone, or something that allows dwarves to sell straight out of / buy into nearby stockpiles rather than storing stuff itself.

It's not precisely a bug.  Vet-care just isn't in yet.  I believe it is planned eventually.