Bay 12 Games Forum

What was point of material changes in .34.08? I'm rather disappointed with some of them. There are even some outright wrong changes, for example cedar is based on a tree which is not cedar at all, not even a conifer - and it still grows in coniferous forests in DF. It's like basing a wolf on Tasmanian wolf.

I suppose the only change which matters in game terms is solid density of materials. Unfortunately, DF simulation is rather weak in this area - real life Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris, one of the most important pines of the Old World) for instance, as timber, have density usually in range 400-550 kg/cubic metre, but can be less or more. Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) can weight 590 kg/m³, just as the larch in raws, sure, but it also can weight 450 kg/m³, and freshly after cutting it is 850 kg/m³. Back to cedars: Canadian Western Red Cedar weighs even 550 kg/m³ as fresh logs, but its timber is only 330-460 kg/m³. So some logs weight more like fresh ones, and some more like heavily dried or seasoned.

Similarly stones have different densities, but since they are more resistant to water penetrations the changes are proportionally smaller. Gabbro can weight 2700-3300 kg/m³ for example, the DF version weights 2920, close to average values.

Since there are such many natural variations, I don't see a point in changing values to some arbitrary ones, when DF cannot emulate such variations. I suppose it may be added in future, like there are variations in size of dwarves, but for now such changes are premature. At least when it comes to such variable materials as timber. I admit I don't like the changes for two reasons: one is hauling update, which makes it matter, but the other is... less than scientific reliability.

How often do vampires need to drink? That must be less often than normal dwarves drink booze, which is once per 3 weeks or so. My vamp-king was one of the most productive members of society, simply because he wasn't taking breaks. After two months I've decided to confine him to his throne room. Now he is getting happier any moment, staring at his riches, and my fields are getting untended, not to mention my dwindling booze supply (he is a brewer who doesn't waste time on drink, a rare occurrence). I want to make him work again, but it would be helpful if I could plan how often I need to "feed" him. Also, I believe he stops being productive after booze deprivation kicks in, so is there a way to help it?

The real reason I want the guy to work is that I don't like that idle counter to be above zero though, it's getting on my nerves.

Liaison was coming every year, together with caravan, to make a trade agreement.

One year, a merchant horse was killed and merchants refused to trade and left the outpost. The liaison was hanging out in my fort for another six months, then left without conducting the meeting (my mayor was available, this was a lazy liaison case). The diplomat "left unhappy" and diplomacy got "stymied".

Next year the liaison came with caravan as usual, conducted meeting, but proposed only to make a barony. I declined, the guy left. Since then the meeting is repeated every year, with the same outcome.

Is there a way to make trade agreement now or I'm doomed to these unproductive meetings forever?  I want to be independent, because my king is a vampire, and I don't want that scum. Besides, I'm happy with minimal level of nobles.

Also, in v.31 I needed roads for establishing capitals (my listed requirements were 15k architecture, 5k roads, 5k offerings). Here, in v.34.07, I have only 10k in architecture and 7.5k in offerings listed as requirements. The wiki gives the previous requirements, but this is untrue in my case. Probably it was copied from the previous version. Are these requirements randomised somehow, or they've been simply changed?

The wiki says that children migrating to the fortress can be 2 to 12 years old. But I just got a child which is 15 years old, I had younger dwarves marrying in my previous fortress (last year release of DF). He's no vampire, he has parents who came with him. Does this mean that there is a bug with generating children in worldgen or the transition to adulthood occurs later than in previous versions? DF unmodded in version .34.07.

Slightly related: It's been 2 years since the newborn (one month old actually) daughter of my militia commander and his miner wife has been kidnapped, but her parents never realised the fact. The child is still listed as a member of my civ, and is still ecstatic to be free. Is there any chance my commander (who got another child later, and I don't know what happened to his previous adult son, maybe he hasn't come yet) realises the loss and falls into despair, possibly interrupting any military operation, or I'm safe?

Actually, I have two questions related to my first experience with v0.34.07, but don't want to spam topics.

1st. All my migrants (50 or so), except one, have military training. This is a serious difference to v0.31, where most of my migrants were military untrained and I had to teach them from scratch. Is this a coincidence, or a planned change, perhaps to make up for supposedly increased difficulty? If so, why one dwarf is untrained? He's a thrill seeker, has sense of duty and is organised, a perfect future soldier. Or maybe this is a quirk of this particular civilisation, they have a nation wide conscription or something. That would be quite a nice touch if true. But I don't know how to check actual differences between dwarven civs.

2nd. This is the first fortress I have both magma pipe and natural connections/passages between all caverns. And magma pipe is connected to the top cavern, which means everything is connected to everything, and makes exploration more dangerous. Were magma pipes always open to the cavern, or again it's a coincidence, and there may be fully enclosed ones in some different location?

Inspired by topic about traps against trapavoids, who also happen to avoid pressure plates, I did some experiment on supports. Basic idea is to use magma to trigger the plate, which makes support tumble. Other idea is not to use plates, when not necessary. And in my layouts they are usually not necessary, because supports tend to be located next to the plates anyway. Supports are buildings, and as buildings they are as resistant to magma as much as they components are. So I checked time it takes to bring supports down and make a cavein. My setup was as this:
These are basically "landmines", which are built in my obsidian caster. Whitish tiles next to the ramps are recreated marble floors, remnants of walls used for building traps. Floors to be caved are made of dolomite. Supports are made from nether-cap, diorite, wood (acacia), zinc, dolomite, copper, nickel and tin.  Bolded ones are supposed to survive magma, all others - not so much.

I dropped magma and measured time needed to collapse the support, and to collapse the cave-in which usually happens shortly afterward - one to two frames usually. But tha game doesn't pause for a moment, so we usually see a state of matters a few ticks after the cavein was triggered. I was curious which materials can be used as reasonable timers.

After first couple of runs I changed setup to involve more supports of the same material, and to involve other materials, potentially better materials, namely pewters and lead. Due to some light randomness the exact time of survival differed amongst runs, but it was always very close, and the sequence of materials was generally . So for zinc it could be 182 frames or 187 frames, but not 195, for example, and lead was always before pewters.

Measured times, from magma contact to collapse, were as follows:
lead    45
tin     47
pewter  48
zinc    185
wood    335 (wood starts smoking around 100 ticks from contact, it really hinders observations…)
copper  approx. 1300-1400
diorite approx. 1700-1800

Due to expected errors it is possible that all first metals there would melt somewhere between 40 and 50 ticks, though most likely around 45, the same error is for zinc, and for wood it is around 10. Other values are approximate, due to way they were calculated (from video), though the ranges shouldn't be off for more than 10%. Yes, melting diorite or even copper takes more than one in-game day.

As seen the sequence of melting follows two properties: melting temperature and specific heat capacity (called "specific heat" in RAWs). The lower the melting point, the faster the object melts. The lower the specific heat capacity, the faster it gets hotter and eventually melts. The best short fuses are apparently lead, tin and fine pewter. I like zinc too. The sequence follows a sequence of destroying cages in magma - goblins in wooden cages tend to outlive even copper ones (though it isn't a comfortable life) while zinc cages almost explode shortly after submerging. These supports are "dumb" because there's no logic nor sensors, only basic material properties involved.

How good they are in practice? For my traps they are lethally good, not least because I use shaped cave-ins, which kills everything that happens to be in area. Building destroyers usually stand one tile from a door or floodgate, often directly under the support (supports are passable). When using tin or lead, they have around 45 ticks to run, which, with Agility=2000 would mean about 6-8 tiles, and for the average troll it would be around 4-5 tiles. The most agile denizen of Underworld on my map has agility=2000, though even maximum agility doesn't give much more headroom, plus they like to crowd much, which makes them slower. For comparison, time taken from triggering upright spike trap to make it move is 40, and time from triggering a bridge/floodgate to open it is 100. Supports aren't, but are fast enough for many uses. In fact it may be wiser to use zinc, or maybe some alloy or wood, and give enemies more time to fill the corridors-to-be-they-tomb.

Magma tumbled supports have one disadvantage, which is need for magma to stay at they location. With short time "fuses" that's not an issue, but longer time (like stones) would probably need additional measures. Like setting them in a 3x3 trough with ramps, to collect magma, and making them two levels high (or three levels in shaped caveins). To install one support atop another it is required to make a floor on the first one. Or simply putting a constant source of magma, maybe through a diagonal depressurizer, then it tends to stay for a long time. I use them mainly because my mechanics are really busy in other parts of the fortress, but also because they are means of disposal of unwanted metal...

I have a militia captain, who didn't react nicely to melting one of the bolts she constructed. Happiness dropped from happy (~130) to miserable (0), which I think is a bit of overreacting - it's bigger drop than deaths of two friends for example. And the captain is closed in a cycle of self-spiraling tantrums. When she was reaching very unhappy (25) then she was tantruming, then usually calming down quickly, but happiness always was dropping to zero again. But after couple of cycles she seems to not gain happiness anymore - probably a cooldown of sorts. I let her kill some gobblins, trolls, hungry heads, domestic animals (while tantruming) and even a jabberer.  But she is still miserable. Mist didn't changed anything, despite appearing for the first time (so there SHOULDN'T be any cooldown). Also when defending a burrow on schedule, her order is displayed as "Attend Meeting" instead of the proper one, which is probably a bug, unless I don't know what the meeting is. I wonder if there is any hope of recovery? I'm lazy and don't want to disband this squad and reform it again, and send her on a suicide mission, but keeping such unstable soldier, who among other is also a high master marksman and legendary hammerman, is quite dangerous.

She looks like this:
http://i.imgur.com/7uIvg.png

I remember problems with keeping her happy 10-15 year earlier, after migration, but that eventually subsided. And now this. A bolt.