Bay 12 Games Forum

Here's one I'd really like: something that checks a material for a contact syndrome of [SYN_CLASS:/EQUIP] and then - 1) applies it whenever an item of that material is equipped by a valid target - 2) removes it when the item is no longer equipped.

In case this isn't ever implemented.

A small request for AutoSyndrome:

As I understand it...


Is there any chance that priorities 3 and 4 could be switched, thereby giving immunities priority over affected creature/classes?  Maybe a silly request, but I can envision this getting muddled up somewhere down the line.

Before you start, two things...

1. Turning dwarves temporarily crazed with CE_ADD_TAG:CRAZED will cause loyality cascades, which might or might not be fixed by the new dfhack.

I know that, but OPPOSED_TO_LIFE doesn't.

2.

Quote from: expwnent on December 22, 2012, 12:36:15 am

Meph: I might have something similar to what you're talking about. I'm working on (and mostly done with) a plugin to make boiling rock syndromes apply instantaneously rather than relying on the game to sometimes make them breathe them in and sometimes not. I just tweaked it so that you can call dfhack commands using syndrome classes.

Here's the short version: you make a reaction that produces some rock. The rock has a syndrome. The syndrome has syndrome classes. When the reaction is triggered, the plugin scans for a reaction class called "command". If it finds one, it considers all remaining syndrome classes to be part of a dfhack command. The first subsequent one is a command, and each one after, if any, is an argument.

Early testing is promising. It should work both with scripts and by directly calling plugins.

This sounds most exciting.  Will it interfere with existing syndrome classes?  I guess what I'm asking is, will it skip over and leave alone any syndrome classes that aren't valid commands?  Also, will it respect the parameters of the syndrome itself (affected creature, etc) when applying it?

So, what's up now, Narhiril?

A lot of tweaking percentages for the new ritual unit reactions.  I want to strike some sort of balance between success and failure that keeps people from trying to convert everyone to paragons, while at the same time not making them nigh impossible to get.  It's been difficult to balance, as paragons are functionally immortal, so I can't have a lot of determined people with full squads of them running around like you can do with the earlier ritual units. 

One solution was to give them a "per-reaction" cost, but due to the way inhaled syndromes work somewhat unreliably, I disliked the idea of asking players to throw their resources into another sink that may or may not pay off - similar to how constructs work - because I know that can be frustrating to some and I want to give several different options to players when they reach the higher levels of the tech trees on how to spend their time and efforts.  Ideally, a flat cost seems to be the most balanced approach, but it remains tantalizingly out of reach without a way for me to place a syndrome on a dwarf from a reaction at a 100% success rate.

What I've come up with instead, at least until the more idealistic options become possible, is a system somewhat like this.  You create an "idol of Visthel" out of a variety of materials at the temple component foundry, which serves as the unlock trigger for the reaction, and can be re-used as many times as you like.  A dwarf then takes the idol to the temple and attempts to channel the ritual energies to become a paragon.  This reaction should be set on repeat (it doesn't use a skill, so it takes place almost instantly) until something happens to the dwarf, at which point you'll have one of a few possible outcomes...

1) The dwarf will be temporarily incapacitated.  This varies from a temporary debilitating syndrome effect to a benign transformation that lasts for a month of in-game time.
2) The dwarf will become a paragon.
3) The dwarf will become a temporary danger to nearby dwarves, attacking them at random for a short duration until slain, exorcised (by a radiant priest), or the duration expires.
4) The dwarf will be consumed by the ritual, allowing a malicious creature to take over their body until slain.  Dwarves in this state cannot be recovered.
5) The dwarf will contract a plague, which can be passed on to any nearby dwarves that have not been immunized.  As I haven't had time to thoroughly test and balance this effect, it probably won't make it into the first iteration of this reaction.

The threat of unleashing horrors on your fortress from a ritual gone wrong needs to be the discouraging factor.  I just need to get the relative percentages of these outcomes into place so that players will still be tempted to try the ritual to get a paragon every now and then, but such that it is impractical and unrealistic to attempt to assemble a large number of them.  What this means is a lot of trial and error on my part.  If the reaction is too generous, the substantial power of paragons will unbalance the game.  If it's too dangerous, no one will bother trying.  This development will set the precedent for the next series of ritual units, so once I get something I'm happy with, it won't take very long to copy the parameters while making lacerators, eyes of Pel, etc.


In the meantime, happy holidays to everyone.  I want to take this opportunity, in the season of giving, to give thanks for all of your continued support of LFR.  I know that the DF community is not very large, and the modding community is even smaller, but it's you guys and girls that I keep this project going for.  From the fine lines of balancing to the harsh realities of technical limitations, from my first forays into writing lore and pixel art to the universe that LFR has become, this project has been and continues to be a learning experience far beyond the scope of my original vision for it, and I look forward to continuing to grow with it in the coming year.

2. Dwarven Traders bring magma in bags, settings stuff on fire. This is a serious bug, I havent been able to narrow it down. I do believe it has to do with the alchemy reactions though, so I'll probably just delete this entire section and redo it. Otherwise, if anyone did find the source, please do tell

I'm guessing you have a reaction that produces a powder (since liquids shouldn't be bagged) that has a broken inorganic material component.  Give me an hour or so and I'll try to hunt this down.

EDIT: I think this might be your problem:


Everything looks fine except for that your (bolded) reagent line seems... unusual.  Shouldn't it be...

[REAGENT:A:1:BOULDER:NONE:NONE:NONE][REACTION_CLASS:MITHRIL]

...Or have I missed something completely?  If I had to guess, I'd say the GET_MATERIAL_FROM_REAGENT line is getting confused here and kicking out a generic material at a temperature you don't want it to be at.  Some of your other powder reactions seem to have the same unusual reagent pattern.

Quote from: narhiril on December 16, 2012, 05:11:34 pm

Quote from: ArchAIngel on December 16, 2012, 04:09:15 pm

Just got a lizardmen siege, what do lizardman mystics do? They all died to my 3 marksdwarfs before they did anything.

All they do at the moment is protect themselves from ritual unit hexes.

Thanks! Also, when paragons come out, my commander is SO getting made one. He has killed both of the amaroks that attacked, and got the title "the holy larks-counselors of healing." Although, are amaroks supposed to be this common? They appear to be the only megabeasts that I have ever seen.

They're semi-megabeasts that reproduce, so they're not terribly uncommon, but it's unusual to see more than one of them in a short span.  Just random, I guess.

Sup, Narhiril?

I personally dislike that artillery thing. Takes too long to set up. Much more interested in the expanding of the mechanical and ritual tech trees. And thrilled at the saboteurs appearing. I'd imagine they are quite vicious to have.

To be honest, it didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped, so it's back to the drawing board.  Progress on saboteurs has been a lot more steady, and I think I have them to a point where they will "activate" themselves only once they've reached adulthood.  This means that for the first few years of your fort, you probably won't see any saboteurs, but after that you'll have them start showing up.  They're still not going to be common, but they should actually pop up from time to time, and you'll want to deal with them quickly because their actions will grow more deadly the longer they are allowed to continue.

I'm also considering cutting down the length of childhood for dwarves from 12 years to 4, seeing as most forts don't last long enough for repopulating by breeding to be a particularly viable method of keeping your fort going.  Also, with this change, you might not be depressed every time a child is born, knowing that you'll actually be able to use them in a somewhat reasonable time frame.  Even with optimized FPS settings, DF inevitably slows down over a period of 12 years, and depending on the size and scope of your fortress, it might simply be too long to wait for reinforcements.  Thoughts?

So I had an idea today for a crazy reward at the end of the tech trees...  It would require max level construct research and one of the upcoming ritual tier 5 buildings, but it would involve all sorts of sacrifice to Armok to be able to create a construct called a "divine dwarven meteor artillery platform," which has the potential to devastate entire armies from long distances. 

I'm only still kind of tossing around the idea, as it's going to be difficult to make something that powerful balanced in any sort of way, but I've got some pretty fun ideas for how it will work.  Essentially, it would be a construct built from a slimer, and you'd build a chamber above your fort entrance to "house" it, probably chaining it down.  Then, you'd put a drawbridge in front of it to act as a firing mechanism, and some fortifications in front of that to act as its windows outward.  When an enemy army enters its firing range, you'd drop the drawbridge and it would launch a hellstorm of meteors at them, throwing them around like ragdolls and lighting everything on fire in the process.  All of this would work, in theory, but I'll need to figure out a way to make the cooldown timer on what will end up being a very complex and compound ability work properly.  I think it can be done, though.  I'm thinking one barrage every six months or so.  Not to mention the years of advancement and resource investment to even build one.

I can't wait to build up a dummy creature to test this out.

But since that's a long way off, and while we're on the subject of destruction, I'll be introducing a new form of minecart to the mechanical tech tree in the next update that is designed for use as a weapon.  It's called a "rail-guided ballistic ram," and it's extremely heavy.  !!SCIENCE!! FTW. 

I'll also be taking a second look at saboteurs and seeing if I can find a way to make them more common (i.e. actually happening from time to time instead of once in a million plays).  The core issue here is that if they're born into the fortress, the watchers will identify them immediately and you'll have dwarves murdering babies on account of treason, but I think I have a way to fix that potential issue.

Oh, and paragons and exorcisms are working perfectly.  Did I mention that already?  I may have.