Bay 12 Games Forum

The only nobes I ever use are Cheif Medical Dwarf and Militia Commander/Captain.

You'll get a mayor whether you want to or not. It just happens. Also, no need to be afraid of the appointed nobles; they don't issue demands and are actually quite useful. Bookkeepers in particular are essential for management of your resources.

Mineral FB's? The trick is to swarm them with superior-metal weapons (iron and steel work) until they die. It is, in fact, possible to chip away at them until they are bisected. The only beasts that are essentially unkillable by military might are mineral blobs, since they lack an upper and lower body. And even then, cave-ins automatically kill anything that is trapped directly underneath a falling tile, no exceptions.

A link to any sort of utility, community-made or not, is a de facto endorsement of that utility. In other words, making it "official," even if that is not the intent. And Toady has stated time and time again that he will not be making any third-party utilities official. Ever.


Also, it's a disservice to new players to immediately refer them to tilesets. The CP437 isn't the problematic interface; it's just the graphical representation. The problem is the thoroughly intimidating hard-coded interface. Giving a newbie a copy of DF with a tileset will give them a game that is slightly prettier, but no less impenetrable.

Any labor can be activated and trained in any dwarf. If you forget to give a dwarf skill in a labor at embark, you can still activate it; they will be pretty slow at it until they gain some skill, but you can get those workshops built, at least.

TL;DR:

Side 1: Don't be a dick and warn newbies about the true nature of HFS; we want our lulz.

Side 2: Don't be a dick and encourage newbies to unleash the HFS; our lulz are not worth their fortress.

Side 3: Don't be a dick by doing either of those things; give ominous warnings about the sword being guarded and hints that they might want to back up their save.

Side 4 (me): Just don't freaking talk about the massive spoilers, kthnx.

Sorry about the lack of update-ness, guys. Expect my turn to get finished up this afternoon.

Also, I'm glad we've finally come to a consensus on using "in-game" only deathtraps.  And also remember: don't kill the fort on purpose, just make the next player's turn fun (as in "a living hell")!

Quote from: ImBocaire on July 26, 2011, 12:16:24 pm

Anyway, personally I would shy away from meta-traps, like raw editing. For one thing, there's many bits of raw editing that subsequently require a regen (for instance, any entity changes or new reactions), which means that many of the more creative raw-editing traps one could create wouldn't take effect. Also, you run the risk of either totally destroying the save or making the game crash if you edit them too extensively (although here I'm mostly thinking of deletion).

As for init options, well, we'll just have to hope that people keep cave-ins and invasions turned on.

  There is a world save utility that bypass some(reactions and buildings and entities more to I haven't check) of the worldgen issues.

utility

And there's the stumbling block with that idea.

Also, if you find the absolute perfect site, but the main stone layer you have to work with is something horrible and ugly like conglomerate or mudstone, it's easy enough to go into the raws of your world and change the color and tile representing said stone. For reference, the nice-looking smooth stone tiles are 176 (the one used for chalk and diorite), 177 (the one used for obsidian and gabbro), and 178 (the one used for limestone, marble, and granite).  Soil, of course, also uses those tiles. 176 is lightly textured, 177 is almost totally smooth and devoid of features, and 178 is more heavily textured, which basically translates to the unsmoothed rock looking a little darker than the normal color.