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My name? Erib. My associates call me Knifeweight. I emerged from the boiling primordial mud of the misasmatic farlands, half of me wanting to fly with black wings, the other half to walk on bare earth. I grew up alone in the wilderness until I arrived in this small region where I found work as a hunter of rare, wild animals.

No, no, I never kill for pleasure, only for sustenance, whether that be mine or those that I live with.



For pleasure, I destroy things of great value. A much needed humbling for their owners, I think, and a reminder that all before you arose from the forever-mud at the edge of our universe, and all before you will return to that mud, with time.



also i like to fight




With three bronze spears and a backpack full of alpaca sweetbread, I took flight.



==========================



I spotted a lair, guarded by a very overweight eagle. . no one was home.



Then, an ambush! Giant alligator starved, lost in the woods, could easily fly away, but I wanted to test my strength and turned to fight.



Apparently, this alligator had a name - Bigdroplet the Brutal Scales... oof

anyways, quickly onward now... WAIT I FORGOT MY SPEARS fuuuu

=========================

I continued to the monastery. I smelled parchment. Books. Ugh. The first house was full of fat humans. They were talking about dwarves and their cave adaptation. . disgusting topics for disgusting creatures!



I then flew down into a water-filled shrine and found five books just sitting there, useless, and smelly. I grabbed them all and quickly absconded.



Outside the monastery, I saw a corpse in the woods, shambling back the way he came. A quick fight saw the undead creature turned to mush, and I found on the body a crossbow with bolts. Amazing!



Over the next hill, the trees thinned, revealing a village full of corpses.... I was quick enough to fly over their heads and swoop down to the door, peering inside. . .



at least, I thought I was quick enough. A stupid miscalculation in timing allowed the corpses to get a single, lucky strike in, wounding my leg with a bronze carving knife... grounding me... and so ending me. My decaying corpse and the five stolen books now sit there at the edge of Satinymeadow, or Smenreethba.




How am I narrating this, if I'm already dead? Well. The real question is, listener, how are you hearing me talk, then, hmmmm? wooooooo spoooookyyyyyyyyy

====

Erib:

-killed one named alligator
-killed one undead
-stole five books but failed to return them, confident as I was
-was a bird man

save here: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16761

yet another failed adventurer lol

Quote from: brewer bob on June 25, 2023, 01:16:51 pm

Oh, another thing about this kind of fort. I'm not sure how easily dwarves pair in 0.50, but if it's anything like earlier, some "pre-honeymoon suites" might come handy in arranging marriages.

I looked at it, I may make it a goal for every player to get at least 1 baby born in the fortress during the succession.

"keep playing until someone has a baby" i like this rule..

let me play today!! I'm down for an adventure, though I usually die to dingos or other petty wildlife

The monastery was also a waste of time. It made Urist angry.

In his anger and frustration Urist kicked a rubicelle statue depicting Asën, the god of metals and minerals -- the chosen deity of the would-be book destroyer.

Oh my. In his rage he forgot that gods don't tend to like it when their places of worship are desecrated.

Now Urist was cursed and he felt a strange thirst grow in him.

haha brilliant. The monks will troll you with their sacred statues.

Good idea on the popcap. nothing hurts succession games more than when they become unplayably laggy!

====

Welcome to Locktorch. Thickly wooded lowlands, near a hillside. No doubt minerals underneath our boots.



Doren, the Miner, gets to work chopping the sod into makeshift stairs, leading down into the bedrock layers. Olon, the Woodworker, cuts down an ample swath of trees with surprising alacrity. All manner of small critters and birds are disturbed by the felling, but there is plenty of forest to go around. At least, for now.

Dumat, the Fisherdwarf, comments about the lack of flowing water. After some struggle he pulls a miniscule pond turtle out from one of the murky pools. He is disappointed his skills will not be of much use.



Iron ore is struck soon after the digging begins, making Asob our Metalcrafter very happy indeed. He begins burning charcoal in a topside furnace.

Etur the Planter is busy gathering edibles from the forest undergrowth. Avuz, our expedition leader, helps with this.



The stone is layered as follows: first Chert, then Siltstone, followed by lignite-rich Limestone and then Rock Salt below that. The dwarves have yet to dig any deeper.

Two migrants arrived that summer, an engraver named Tholtig and a stonecrafter named Lokum. Work continued on the moat, and muddy work it was.



Late summer was spent constructing the palisade, and harvesting wild berries. As autumn arrived we began thinking about the coming trade caravans. Luckily, the year had been spent making small wooden figurines whenever possible, and these might go for a fair amount with the mountainhome dwarves.





Caverns... almost ruined my plans. But we worked with stone blocks to plug the gaps in the new, grand dining hall.



The expedition leader Avuz caught a glimmer in his eye. He demanded silk, but we had none, and the caverns had no natural spiders present, and so no webs to harvest. He screamed all winter before going berserk in the spring, where he was cut down by one of the miners.



Udil the Gem Cutter gave birth to a girl, that spring, along with Monom the Blacksmith. Udil was married to Urist the Herbalist, while Monom was paired with Lor the Lye Maker (and baby maker, apparently. . .)








Then , a different Udil, a human, and an evil one, coming for our amulet, the first artifact, a very important object, the crossbow strikes the miner recruit in the lung, but quickly they retaliate with a swing of the pick... trading lung for lung the battle is on!!



Udil quickly died after the dwarves dogpiled him and choked him to death. A foul, jealous creature indeed. The first of many?



From that year onward, time passed quickly as work was completed. Hauling, smoothing, digging, organizing. Many many bars of iron were made and turned into steel, however I had little chance to direct the dwarves to turn this steel into useful goods - that will fall to my successor.

A little bat, doomed by the cat's claw:


In winter, the moat freezes over:


Autumn colors!


A road lined with cinnabar statues leads away from the moat and palisade:


A large amount of rather unremarkable artifacts were created, about eight total. Those that were small enough were place on a pedestal in a vault, whereas the furniture sized pieces (a pig iron sarcophagus, a copper hatch, and a wooden statue) were all placed in the center of the grand dining hall, for later use elsewhere if need be.

Three years have passed since I started. The population stands at 37 and the dwarves are generally content, though four of them are showing signs of depression. The fortress is steady in terms of food and supplies, and there is little violence to speak of as the caverns are closed off. We have reports of rat creatures lurking below and so would rather avoid that mess.

The elves, the humans, and of course the mountainhome have all sent caravans.

save here: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16759

a final overview of the lower fortress:

looking forward to these next turns. looking at the rules, does the 2x modifier for self-crushing still stand? how morbid and also competitive! haha

uhm, along the lines of your post Delphonso, is there a tell who is a 'historical figure' besides legendsbrowser research? which is fine but like you said, somewhat tedious.

once i get some spare hours, I'll play a turn, too! put me on the end of the (supposed) list. despite signing up so many months ago I never ended up playing.

It also means that under optimised conditions, a planet of 1 million, assuming it's a logarithmic scale, could feed over 1 trillion people. 6 base, +2 from bountiful farmland, +2 from mirrors, +1 from an AI core, +1 from industrial planning, +1 from improvements, +2 from soil nanites. Total of 1,000,000,000,000

Really puts in to context the sheer power of the Domain, and explains why the Luddics are who they are. That's a rate where you're going to be straight up hollowing out small planets within a few decades of mining it, that's enough to make anyone think "Maybe we should slow down"

this is a fun concept..

There are too many contradictions and odd things that work well enough as abstractions for making the early-game difficult and fun, but fall apart completely once the player has their first colony.

Starsector is amongst many modern indie concretions that will always bear the scars of early access and extended development. In what sense? This game grew to popularity when it was nothing more than a very beautifully done space battle simulator. Over time and as player support grew, the devs took the concept further into 4x territory. the earliest mention of campaign layer plans can be found on this post, copied here:

Campaign Layer
The next step is to get a basic campaign layer up and running. It won’t be quite like the final game – the idea is to create something that works well with what’s already done, and then be able to mold it into final shape.
A rough outline of the features for the initial implementation of the campaign layer, tentatively slated for 0.36a:

    Select a character (perhaps just one choice to begin with) which determines your starting fleet points and later possibly skills
    Use the starting fleet points to create your fleet. Pool of available ships possibly influenced by character.
    Travel around a single star system, engage hostile fleets
    Capture enemy ships and salvage weapons to upgrade your fleet

Subsequent versions will augment it with features like:

    A full character creation system and skills
    Officers & crew
    Establishing outposts on planets
    Blueprints and ship/weapon manufacture
    Trade & exploration
    Faction relations
    Raiding core worlds and outposts

 Starsector is IMO a great success overall but there is certainly something off about the balance of the game, and probably always will be.

if you're curious, here is the oldest blog entry... from 2010. honestly feels like yesterday when I started reading about this game. at that time it stood out from other indie projects because of these aforementioned prospects of a 4x campaign. ambitious back then I think.

Over time this style of design (core battle mechanics wrapped with a strategic layer) has become very fashionable and now Starsector kind of blends in with the rest, i guess with the unique exception of being very very well constructed.

also, for the shiny pixels - Starsector has very very shiny pixels.

our heroes need purpose!

 funny how the goblin underling felt no particular urge to attack the party, but when you finally met the warlord, the fight came about quickly.