Bay 12 Games Forum

Unethical because it is making profit using someone else's ideas.

I'd be interested to see you list the original, truly unique ideas that you think Towns (or any other game) is taking from DF (or any other game).  I suspect the list may not contain quite so many unique entries as you're assuming.

As others have said: shoulders of giants, building on previous ideas, etc etc.  There's a reason that most creative works have slightly-similar races of dwarves, or elves, or fish-people or bird-people.  We're a species that loves tropes.  Hell, you might as well claim that Tolkein was simply making a profit using the ideas of the Icelandic sagas centuries before.  A cursed ring that brings doom to those around it?  SUCH A RIP OFF, SO UNETHICAL!

Hard(er)core FTL: repairing breaches, doors or equipment costs scrap.  The oxygen generator uses up fuel at a slow rate.

Edit: actually, no, that's simply harder FTL.

Hardcore FTL: each of your crewmembers have specific attributes and training, prior to you acquiring them, which dictates how good they initially are at doing certain tasks (piloting, shield operation, etc.)  These skills can be improved over time.  Crewmembers don't have hitpoints, instead they suffer bodypart-specific damage (semi DF-like).  Your engineer loses a hand?  Prepare for his/her engineering to be impacted accordingly.  Your medic loses a leg?  They're not going to crawl away from that airlock quick enough.  Also, atmospheric simulation is improved - breaches or suddenly-opened airlocks will cause air in accessible compartments to flood outwards, dragging objects and people with it.  Also, detailed diplomacy - you can negotiate your way past some encounters, but make an enemy in an early sector and let the ship/crew escape and, who knows, they might come after you later on.  Your ship has fuel tanks, which can be targeted and can explode (if containing fuel), damaging nearby other compartments.  Individual systems have individual wiring (to either your engine or a generator-type compartment), which can be damaged in combat and need to be fixed accordingly.  Crewmembers can electrocute themselves if unprepared/unskilled.  Asteroids can be mined for scrap (or other), but this takes time and needs to be done by crewmembers by hand (you're not flying a mining vessel, remember?), with all associated risks/rewards.  The time pressure from the oncoming rebel fleet isn't as immediate, and you can perform slightly wider/better scans of your local systems, but the difficulty curve moves upwards to accommodate (so you need to work on improving your ship/crew more, rather than purely being able to/having to trust to luck).

Ship customisation (beyond simple binary "does this compartment exist here yes/no") would also be an option.

Edit 2: also, why only the one ship?  If I cause another ship to surrender/kill all its crew, and I've got enough crewmembers to spare, why can't I captain one ship while having another following me in support?  Hell, if the rebels can have a fleet/armada then so can I!  Of course, maybe the crewmember I've given control of the other ship to might not like me as much as I think.  Crew personalities could come into play.  Perhaps they'll abandon me...or turn on me...at a critical moment.  Hmm.  Might be best to blast them out of the stars first.  Or make sure I'm in the stronger of my ships.  Just in case.

I read your original post more as a question about how you, personally, can deal with how people speak/act to you, rather than what (else) you can do to stop those things happening.  The below has been written from that perspective.   

A lot (not all) of the time, you can't change other people.  You can act in certain ways that make people less likely to be dicks to you (that would need a separate post) but, in the end, some people will still be dicks to you.  It's life, sadly.

What you can control is how you react to people being dicks to you.  You seem to be worried that your current way of reacting to it is not a healthy way (i.e. you let it get to you/take it personally/whatever).

I tend to focus on two things:

1) Most people, deep down, are good.  That's pretty much just a personal belief, but it works for me.  Nobody wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, "You know what?  Today, I'm going to be a complete bastard to everyone else."  That just doesn't happen.  Most people try to be good people.  What we perceive as other people being dicks is actually (to me) simply their confused efforts to be good.  Things get in the way of people being good.  Maybe they had a rough day.  Maybe their cat/dog/hamster died.  Maybe they had a bad childhood that's left them with a different idea of what behaviours result in 'goodness'.  It's very difficult for us, as individuals, to ever know what's truly going through someone else's head - we can only ever observe the resulting behaviours.  If you can bring yourself to believe that those behaviours don't reflect badly on you, or on the person displaying them, but simply illustrate a difference in how that person tries to 'be good', it becomes a lot easier to deal with.  They're not being a dick to you - they're trying to be good, but something's twisted them around so that they're making a hash of it.  You end up not feeling angry with them so much as sympathetic.  It's hard to be good in a way that other people understand.

2) If that doesn't work and you still get angry about it, I like to imagine that everybody is secretly being controlled by a little alien bastard who's managed to sneak inside their brain when they weren't looking - a little bit like a more douchebag-y version of Heinlein's Puppet Masters.  Inside, the person who's acting dickishly towards you is incredibly embarrassed at what they're doing, but the little alien bastard temporarily has control and they can't stop it.  Later on, when they get control back (which could be years from now), they'll be really upset at what it made them do...but, right now, they're dicks.  It's not their fault.

Those two philosophies have gotten me through quite a lot of moments where I otherwise would have been incredibly aggravated or depressed.  Use as you see fit. 

If the level above your magma channels is usable to any degree, there's an easy way to reduce the risk to the breaching miner even further (possibly to true zero): order the dividing wall tile removed via channelling from above. This can be done from an adjacent square, and if there's a solid wall above the spot as well, there's no way anyone can stand on the tile itself while it's being dug. It introduces another possible entryway, but you can simply wall it off once the miner has finished their job.

I use this method as well (see signature), and the risk is minimal - though non-zero...if your miner ends up with no job immediately after channelling, and simply stands still after breaching while he contemplates what to do next, it's possible for the magma to fill up your lower level so quickly that a small amount splashes up to where the miner is twiddling his thumbs, burning him.  This has only happened once to me, on a very VERY low FPS fort, though, so it's the safest and easiest method I've used to date.  No messing around with mechanics etc.

Man, I find managing my economy really tricky if I play as a pirate.  I need to get out of the mindset of 'see valuable resource --> build mine', since that doesn't seem to be as productive/viable as saving all my immediate cash for bulking up my fleet and raiding the hell out of any colonies I find/looting any rival pirate gangs.  I keep getting curbstomped by other pirate clans with fleets two or three times I size of mine, as I've been trying to build up what I'd normally consider my 'infrastructure'....except that I don't need any infrastructure, I'm a goddamn pirate fleet!  Stupid brain. 

Quote from: Max White on May 15, 2013, 06:00:34 pm

Morality is much the same. Primitive tribes where back stabbing was acceptable would have died out in favor of those that were more "moral", that is willing to support the collective.

Well, that is true in some animals, but there are others where they will literally fight to the death to advantage their own lineage. Depends on the importance of society to the animals.

If you think about it, that's not really the case.  The animals' level of 'caring' about their society, in the example Max White gave, is actually a result of the evolutionary trend, not a cause.  Some species 'care' about their society more than others do because there has been some sort of selection pressure that has promoted the survival of genes that support other species members (which will share the same genes).  A slight oversimplification, but it gives the gist.

Following Max's example: tardigrades 'care' about other tardigrades because by doing so, the genes that code for 'caring behaviour' are more likely to survive to the next generation.  Tardigrades that don't 'care' do not have genes the code for that behaviour...and neither do their close relatives (because they're close relatives), so they don't have that familial support, so they are more likely to die out in circumstances where that support is necessary.

Talking about genes coding for behaviours is very slippery ground, though, so treat all of the above as a thought experiment rather than a literal description. 

It may help to note the z-level indicator on the far right of your screen (it's reading '148' in your screenshot above).  That's what level you're currently looking at.  Higher numbers mean you're higher up.  Lower numbers mean you're lower down.

It's a strange idea to get your head around initially, but as others have said you'll soon find yourself skipping happily up and down z-levels without even thinking about it.