Bay 12 Games Forum

You'll end up contaminating any upright spikes you use, at the very least.  Not sure if that'll contaminate creatures spiked later.

Any item you use to draw blood should become contaminated with the FB's blood.  After that, you can move the item to a location you want the blood, dump a bucket of water over it, and voila, you have made a square of deadly blood.  You can put the square in a prisoner's chamber, if you want, just be careful not to let your dwarves clean it (or walk on it, I guess, although maybe that'd be good, could give you a few boots to disperse the blood further....)

Can I trade prepared meals? If so, where do they appear in the "carry goods to trading post" menu?

Yes, you can; I don't believe they appear on the default menu.  You need to hit 's' to select by string filter, and type in something descriptive (I type in 'roast').

"Stƒkud ‹ngizsemor, mayor's mandate has ended."

That means that a mayor has been replaced.

Not be confused with, "ThŒkut Logemuzol, mayor has ended a mandate."

I don't believe there's an option for it in announcements.

So I was noticing that dwarven water logic is pretty complete.  Still, I noticed one missing function: the random number generator.

Why do you need a RNG?  Let's consider that you're integrating water logic with a creature based timing system.  You have a goblin with agility 1050.  Half of the time, he will cover 10 steps in 100 ticks; half of the time, he will cover 11.  You can build a path that is 10 or 11 steps long, but not 10.5 steps long.  You can't build a system that makes the path 11 steps long every 100 ticks and 10 steps long every 100 ticks, because that's begging the question; if you had a 100 tick timer, you wouldn't need the goblin based timer in the first place.  The answer?  A path that is 10 steps long 50% of the time and 11 steps long 50% of the time.  Over 100 ticks, it won't be accurate, but over 10000, it will be good.

Now, the big problem with the dwarven RNG is testing.  It's easy to assume that the 3/4 bridge/floodgate repeater provides a 50/50 of 3 or 4 water level.  But does it?  Maybe it's 3 deep 75% of the time?  66% of the time?  The ultimate test of an RNG would be a cumulative test: a read-out displaying the ratio of on to off that approaches 50% as the fort ages.

I don't know the answer.  I'm just throwing this out there as a potentially solvable logic challenge for players much more skilled than I.

Retracting bridges are perfectly safe, unless you have something standing on the area where the retracting bridge will go.  This is a little counter-intuitive, both because it isn't relevant very often, and because sliding a floor under a creature isn't the same thing as trying to crush them.

The only time retracting bridges are going to get destroyed is when you're dealing with huge flying creatures, or when you build retracting bridges over existing ground.  Given that, I'm sure they're safe enough for your purposes.

What is necessary for migrants to be attracted to the fortress?

I think I've read that the dwarf diplomat needs to come and leave the map. Is that so?

That's so.  In addition, you need to have created wealth over the last visit, and you need to have not suffered too much death.  And you need available population cap, as set in your init.

If I set a military uniform to use metal objects, will my dwarfs automatically chose the best metal available?

e.g. If I set a uniform to have metal helms, will steel helms be used before iron helms?

In my experience, yes.  Not sure how it interacts with quality or close calls like bronze vs. iron.

Lots of ideas!

I've got 100-200 hours of Magma on my back now. I believe I'm burned behind the ears. Yes I hate elves, cats and babies. Also I hate dwarves. Silencio!

My suggestions are as following:

- Add another hostile CIV that survives world generation on par with Goblins but that arrives in smaller, more elite groups with better abilities aimed towards penetrating traps, loot that cannot be aquired other than killing or capturing them.

Hmm, some sort of trapavoid, elite force?  Maybe accompanied by some sort of super-powerful material?  Dig deeper, my friend!

There are also a lot of mods that do this.  I've heard good things about Fortress Defense mod, if you want to have a look.

- Elves should not trade wood with you. Why would they give wood to the woodchopping woodburning dwarves?

Maybe they're hoping that if they provide it, we won't need to kill the trees?

Elves didn't used to trade wood (nobody did, actually).  Without wood, there was very little reason to try to remain on peaceful terms with the elves.  I think a return of elven diplomat functionality would do well for this, and I expect it to return, because it was fun.  The elves would institute woodcutting limits on you, and if you refused or failed, they'd go to war with you.  Not that they're necessarily so hot at war, but they stop trading you wood when they're at war.

- Elven wood equipment should be tiered, have the grunts use the current stuff, but add a wood type that equals to iron and one to a something between steel and candy that their leaders carry and use.

Between steel and candy?!?  So you have dug deeper!

I wouldn't be surprised to see Toady implement some stronger wood in the future.  It's a feature of a lot of mods, and everybody agrees that elves are a bit of a pushover.  Do you really think it needs to be that powerful though?

- Add in trade requests for elves and human caravans if your fort is of a certain size or have offered a certain amount of wealth.

I think this is a good idea, and wouldn't require too much fiddling.  The only reason not to is to maintain significant differences between the caravans.

- Redo the training weapons. Right now they are just skipper or abused for woodcutting. They should make your guys train better or have another unique, purposeful quality.

The original idea with training weapons is they had less chance of leading to sparring injuries.  But it doesn't look like dwarves ever suffer sparring injuries anymore.  I think they're just on hiatus, not gone.  I once saw my best speardwarf strike down his second who had picked up the spear I had designed especially to my best's tastes...  Maybe it was just coincidence.

- Ballistas and catapults. Make them check for targets within their range at the same 1 z level and above and under. Make a calcuation as to whether or not the shot got aimed, if it did at least make it shoot or angle in a somewhat useful direction.

That's a good start.  I doubt that Toady considers siege engines to be finished.  They strike me as placeholders more than anything.  Siege in surface-to-air, I don't think so, but certainly, catapult targeting could use some work.

- Add "rental" or captured craftsmen. A human one that allows you to build a exotic weapon forge. A elf that allows you to build bows and arrows. A goblin that allows you to build a torture pit which you then can assign dwarves to. Over time watching the torture of another sentient creature gives them the "doesn't care about anything" hardening.

That's actually a really interesting idea, at least for the extra workshops.  One thing is that according to the raws, dwarves are supposed to have very low tolerance for slavery or torture.  They're not completely evil, you know.

You can kind of already built a torture pit.  The polite thing to call it is an "arena."  Just nod and pretend that the "combatants" (prisoners) have a reasonable chance of winning.

Thank you for reading, happy Dorfing. I hope Toady will take the time to read this and at least consider one or more of the proposals.
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