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Messages - Jurph

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511
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: a helpful mnemonic!
« on: December 21, 2008, 08:36:13 pm »

Quote
Dabbling Novice Regular Competent Skilled Proficient
Talented Adept Expert Professional Accomplished
Great Master High-Master Grand-Master Legendary

In these blocks of five, it seems like it would be simple to learn them as "bad / good / great", as follows:

(1) Do Not Re-Claim Stones, Peasants as in, "keep your high-value gems {F}orbidden until you meet a worthy craftsman"

(2) Trade An Exceptional Product Away as in "well, at least I can sell it for a profit"

(3) Glorious Merchandise Helps Grow Legends as in "stuff worth keeping! FINALLY!"

512
DF Modding / Editing Dwarfs' Starting Prefs?
« on: December 21, 2008, 06:46:14 pm »
I would like to start a fortress with a Dream Team of workers -- the Kryptonian Baby-Capsule of my Dwarvish civ.  To this end, I'd love to start with
  • A pair of miners with side talents - one loves ballista parts and happens to be a gifted siege engineer; the other loves chain mail and is an armorsmith on the side.
  • A carpenter who loves pine (or oak, or maple) and beds.
  • A brewer who loves barrels and pig tails
  • A cook with a penchant for longland flour, or dwarven syrup
  • A mason who happens to love statues and marble, and maybe also likes platinum or gold nuggets
...and so on.  The idea is artificially cobble together a custom team of dwarves who love their jobs, and exploit the high rate of high-quality goods generated by a dwarf working on items he prefers.  Any idea how I can do this other than rolling dozens of batches of new dwarves?

513
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: a helpful mnemonic!
« on: December 19, 2008, 05:57:51 pm »
If you think you can do better, go ahead and try. Good luck!  ;D

Mine is a short story about the Trade Depot:

Dwarven Nobles Require Calming, So Peasants Trade.  Angry Elves Propose Arbitrary 'Green' Minimums... Ha! Get Lost.

514
DF Suggestions / Re: Interspecies breeding
« on: December 15, 2008, 10:05:06 am »
Some pairings with existing creatures would be possible.  Imagine that you have only a single dog, and the elves bring you a wolf in a cage, for example - you ought to be able to breed the two out of desperation and have (e.g.)

Wolf + Dog = Wolf (66%) or Dog (33%)
Elk + Deer = Elk (50%) or Deer (50%)
All the different hybrids from the Panthera genus should be possible, including crosses with the "giant" versions of same.  For simplicity, you could just call them all "big cat"... but then you don't get the bizarre stuff like ligers being huge (essentially a "giant lion" created naturally).

There's a whole host of "giant" things which could mate with their ordinary subspecies...  in that case you would want to roll the size somewhere between the two, I guess.

Goblins and Kobolds would be infertile across species... half-elves and half-dwarves are possible, but are they sterile?  Fertile?  Can a half-elf breed with a half-dwarf?

515
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Joyous wilds
« on: December 12, 2008, 06:27:30 am »
Slugmen and snailmen make me wish Rock Salt was an economic stone... Go get my cooks to grab three twenty-pound bags from the kitchen!   Maybe carve some short swords out of it, load my catapults with baseball-sized salt rocks, and definitely build a nice flagstone courtyard out of it.  Now let's see those slugmen get anywhere near me!

516
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Stoned
« on: December 10, 2008, 01:31:15 pm »
Anyway, like others said, the atom-smashing bridge, lava, blocks and bins, or just grinding out masonry are all good options. The real Dwarf's only answer, however, is to build something for the glory of almighty Armok. Something big, something impressive, and more than likely, completely useless actively dangerous to your dwarves is the best dwarfiest choice.

Fix'd. ;D

517
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Stoned
« on: December 09, 2008, 08:29:55 am »
The stone management problem has several solutions that have become standards:

1) Quantum stone piles.  When you tunnel out a room or a long shaft, designate all of the stone for dumping (d-b-d) in a 1x1 tile near a mason's shop.  Every game month or so, go back and unforbid the stone that gets placed there.  Pro: stone stacks infinitely high in a single tile.  Con: HUNDREDS of hauling jobs, and dwarves can't move stones that are tasked for hauling to place new furniture or constructions.

2) Atom-smashing.  Drawbridges vaporize piles of stone when they come down.  Use the technique from (1) or designated stone piles to stack stones under the bridge.  Lower the bridge.  Repeat.  Pro: stone is gone.  Cons: you can't use the stone later if you need it.

3) Use the stone!  Stone blocks are a great way to train up masons from the peasantry, and you can fit ten of them per bin in a Bar/Block pile.  This reduces the floor space of your stone storage by 90%.  Build a mason's workshop, designate it for low-level masons only (everything up to "Skilled" for example), and fill the job queue with Build Block-Repeat.  This keeps the shop from accepting task orders from the manager, so only your high-end masons fulfill your fortress needs.  If you want to generate trade goods, slip a single "Make crafts" or "Make mugs" order in the queue (on repeat) and 10% of the production will be used to make craft goods.  I like to do 8 blocks, 1 door, and 1 miscellaneous item (coffin, statue, coffer, or cabinet - depending on my needs).  Pros: levels up masonry, provides value to fortress, reduces floor space, increases value of constructions.  Cons: wastes large volumes of material on bins, takes lots of time.

Note that you can combine (1) and (3) so that your block factory sits next to a nearly-infinite pile of stone.  You can also mod the INIT files to forbid certain stones from being used as blocks - for example, in my latest fortress I'm using primarily obsidian for the blocks to triple the value of exterior constructions. 

518
DF Suggestions / Re: Final soultion to the Noble Problem
« on: December 06, 2008, 01:36:08 pm »
Nah, leave them in. You should have to choose between hammerings and potentially pissing off the Mountainhome.

This is not too far from realistic already.  Imagine you're Urist McMason, happily cranking out stone blocks in the quarry every day.  One day, you head to the dining hall for some beer and some guy in expensive cave spider silk clothes walks in looking like a short hirsute Hefner, and hollers "Hear ye all present!  I have been sent by the Mountainhome to direct your work, and I hereby decree that we shall begin producing billon mugs."  Everyone waits until he's gone and begins muttering -- doesn't he know there's no billon sitting around?  The outpost doesn't even have a smelter yet, and our metalsmiths are busy training up a platoon for fortress defense. 

The next day in the quarry, Nils turns to you and says "Oi, remember that warm stone we found when we were digging out a bedroom for him?"

You get a wicked look in your eye and say "Too right.  It's a menace to safety.  That wall could fail unexpectedly at any moment..."

519
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: -Sigh- I need help...
« on: December 06, 2008, 01:08:59 pm »
Look at all that loose soil!  No dwarf would carve the main entrance to a mountain in dirt when there's perfectly serviceable rock commanding a view of the magma pipe and surrounding fields.  I'd dig a ramp over by the magma for your trade wagon, then dig out a 3-wide channel that the stone bunker can overlook.  Then either fortify the walls of the channel (and have archer hallways behind them) or build 3-thick walls on the surface overlooking the channel down its length with fortifications staring down on anyone dumb enough to venture in.  Make the channel long, and terminate it with a left or right turn around a fortified battery of 3 ballistae.  Deep in the mountain, set up an obsidian farm and a craftsdwarf's workshop and crank out obsidian swords.  Build them into traps and line the channel with Obsidian-bladed Cuisinarts.

You can build walled-in surface pockets for farming if you like, or stick to good dwarfy cave-farming.

520
DF Suggestions / Re: Interface Improvements
« on: December 03, 2008, 01:23:55 pm »
2. Labor Assignment: It should be easier to get a sense of how many dwarves are assigned to what.  When you build a workshop, you can see a count of how many of each shop you've already built.  Low hanging fruit: There should be a similar count on each dwarf's labor menu.  "Oh, I don't need to assign this dwarf to fish cleaning--there are already 6 of them!"  Wishlist: There should also be a better interface for querying labor settings and skill settings.  For example, a screen where you can find all dwarves that are above a certain skill level for, say, Farming, and bulk assign their labor.

I love being able to use the arrow keys to look at dwarves' status, but I think there's room in the interface for a few other options.  While in (U)nits, (C)lose-up view, (P)references, (L)abors, I'd like to be able to jump focus to

  • Next dwarf with this profession name
  • Next dwarf with the highlighted labor enabled
  • Next dwarf on the population list
  • Dwarf with the highest skill in the highlighted labor

The same interface could be extended to (U)nits (C)lose-up (W)ounds:
  • Next slightly wounded dwarf
  • Next grievously wounded dwarf
  • Next unconscious/thirsty/hungry/flaming dwarf
(only active when looking at a dwarf with that specific problem, perhaps?)
[/list]

521
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Magma Pipe Question
« on: December 02, 2008, 09:22:51 pm »
If you're going to be doing casting, you'll need to pour the magma in from the top using a magma-safe pumping setup.  You can start pumping without magma-safe pumping materials, but it may be difficult to stop.  Of course, if you're doing casting you've got a water source, so maybe your plan is just to quench the whole thing.

Stupid question: when doing cast-in-place magma sculptures, should you add the magma first, or the water first?

Second stupid question: at what point does it make more sense* to cast an obsidian structure than to just build it out of obsidian blocks?  I think the answer is any structure thicker than two tiles and sufficiently large to justify the pumping... but it also makes sense when the structure is something like (e.g.) a giant obsidian statue of an ASCII Dwarf.  The Dwarf is laboring.



* Note that "making more sense" is not Dwarfy.

522
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Getting Rid of Excessive Water
« on: November 27, 2008, 09:53:13 pm »
Quote
The question is: what happens to the water when you use this water smashing method. It's kinda weird that it disappears.

It leaks into the imperfections of the stone hinges, and trickles into cracks in the nearby rock... it splashes over the sides but to a depth of just-slightly-less-than-1... the sloshing makes it evaporate faster... or something.  I think what you're missing is that all Dwarvish constructions include a small amount of the Handwavium (elemental: Hw) which, like Unobtanium (Ub), helps the Mountainhomes defy physics.

523
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Reducing attrition vs. ambushes?
« on: November 24, 2008, 09:16:24 pm »
Aha, got it - I went in to reclaim, and now I'm doing a site survey.  My site is a 3x3 site on the west bank of the brook "The Outrageous Dent", with the south edge of my settlement at the same latitude as the brook's short eastward wobble.  Latitude is 18 squares north, 28 squares east of the extreme southwest corner of the Region map.  If you scroll along the bottom edge of the Region map until you reach Fidalebovo (elven settlement) and move due north, you'll be one square too far east.  Similarly, the source of the stream Scarreigns enters the mountains one (regional) square west of my site; that stream is a tributary of the stream Flier of Rancor which empties into The Last Swamp, an estuarial marsh of the Blueness of Clearing - my world's southwestern-most ocean.

Hopefully you can find the site.  I encourage you to grab a slightly-wider starting site to take advantage of that river... now that I know how to world-gen it from scratch, I may do the same. 

524
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Reducing attrition vs. ambushes?
« on: November 24, 2008, 08:59:32 pm »
For completeness, the entire seed follows:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Does anyone know how I can guide someone to the particular site (lat/long) I used?  Otherwise you'll have to look for 3x3 sites with HFS, magma pipes, no river or aquifer... and hope for the best.  It's a great region, and I'm sure the elves will be happy to ambush you anywhere you settle, but I'd hate for you to be disappointed by insufficiently hostile (frolicking?  WHY ARE YOU FROLICKING?) elves.

525
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Reducing attrition vs. ambushes?
« on: November 24, 2008, 07:06:40 pm »
SEED!!!  Please!!!
I've been looking for a world where Elves send ambushes for a long while now!  I was told they didn't exist.   So I'd like to grab that seed for a Future fun Fortress.   If it's not too much trouble.

If you can show me a link that explains how to extract and share the seed of my current world/location, I'll be happy to paste it here.  The starting location is fantastic, and lacks only running water.  I have reason to believe that there are "additional features" -- aka HFS -- because I used the built-in site selector to find this starting loc.  I'll look for the link on my own as well.

Hadn't even considered guard animals, but I do have a curtain wall around most of my nearby surface area already.  Guess I ought to close it off and finish adding traps.

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