Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Adzyman on October 03, 2009, 04:41:45 am

Could someone at least tell me how do I add rock beds to my game then? Please?

That is not possible yet ...

Not quite true.

You can make a custom reaction at the smelter. For instance:

[REACTION:BED_GLASS_GREEN]
[NAME:make green glass bed]
[SMELTER]
[REAGENT:3:ROUGH:NO_SUBTYPE:GLASS_GREEN:NO_MATGLOSS]
[PRODUCT:100:1:BED:NO_SUBTYPE:GLASS_GREEN:NO_MATGLOSS]
[FUEL]
This is from the "glass fortress" mod, slightly modified by me(the original form used blocks). The reaction takes three units of raw glass, at a smelter, either using fuel or powered by magma, and produces a green glass bed which is then used as normal.

However, you can't just drop this into an existing fortress. Making a new reaction in the raw/objects/reaction_standard.txt file requires a new world gen.

You could cannibalize an existing reaction, if you were sure you didn't want to use it. Let us take, for example, the reaction to make billon bars, using a bar of silver and a bar of copper. I rarely use this; silver is more valuable on its own, but the reaction DOES allow you to make the most of tetrahedrite and galena, which otherwise have less than 100% returns for silver. (With tetrahedrite, a single rock can spit out two bars, so that's almost a cheat, but I think it's the same reason making pig iron and steel at a regular smelter doesn't need any refined coal beyond the fuel; the same ingredient satisfies both slots. So there's no way to bring that in line without nerfing the use of other ores.)

Within reaction_standard.txt there is:

[REACTION:BILLON_MAKING2]

[NAME:make billon bars (use bars)]

[SMELTER]

[REAGENT:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:SILVER]

[REAGENT:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:COPPER]

[PRODUCT:100:2:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:BILLON]

[FUEL]
Now, so long as you leave the first tag alone, you can gut the rest:

[REACTION:BILLON_MAKING2]

[NAME:make rock bed]

[SMELTER]

[REAGENT:5:STONE:NO_SUBTYPE:STONE:ORTHOCLASE]


[PRODUCT:100:1:BED:NO_SUBTYPE:STONE:ORTHOCLASE]

Here I have changed the name shown in game, dropped one reagent entirely, and changed the other to use five units of orthoclase and turn it into a single orthoclase bed, which functions normally(but is, of course, heavier to move and install); this reaction needs no fuel. Replace orthoclase with whatever rock is horribly common on your map - check the matgloss_stone_layer and matgloss_stone_mineral files to make sure the name is correct(the bit in ALLCAPS needs to match exactly, or you get an extremely heavy, worthless, nondisplaying "generic rock").

If you have thousands of that rock, you could even up the number used to 10 or more, but if you do, make sure the smelter doing it is near your stone dump.

Also, note well - this reaction takes place at a smelter, not a mason's shop as you might think. Until custom workshops are in, that's the best we can do; all custom and/or editable reactions are at the smelter. If you're using the manager to issue smelt orders, this could cause problems if you make a (non-magma) smelter specifically to churn out custom reactions; the smelt orders will pop up there as well. If your others are all normal smelters, this means your furnace operators and metal haulers will be running to a different place than normal, which might be bad enough; if you are using magma buildings, this will either use up refined coal on those smelt jobs, or generate job cancel spam due to your lack of coal(or use all your coal and then spam).

Speaking seriously - Beds are indeed difficult to manage right now on maps without a lot of wood(and/or if you're trying to avoid annoying the elves). Just making them out of rock, though, would be too much the other way.

I suggested this in another thread, but: Say you can make a rock platform or a metal bed frame, at mason's workshops and forges respectively. Say you can also make a mattress at a clothier's, possibly with multiple units of cloth. Build a mattress bed, and select both a base and a matress to make it out of; dwarves will haul both parts to the spot and put it together. You now have an alternate way to make a bed - using one component that's essentially unlimited, and another that is, in fact, renewable. It's more work to put together, to compensate for this, but it's still an option - one that gives the dwarves a chance to be that much closer to independent of trees.

(Metal axles, hubs, paddles, and metal+cloth vanes for making axles, water wheels, and windmills would further that. It still leaves the lye industry as requiring wood, but you CAN get by, for the most part, without much clear/crystal glass, fertilizer, or soap.)

I can't speak for everyone else, but I know my suggestions were an attempt to further reduce the micromanagement. Your initial idea, while sound, still needed a lot of careful fiddling.

Assigned/owned weapons - perhaps only for heroes, and/or perhaps heroes would try to claim one - would be another really neat idea.

I, too, look forward to the big release. Even if it does mean my lovely 3x3 site will disappear.

I think it adds good flavour to the game that the plants AREN'T all just plugged in from real life; carrying on in that vein would be a very good idea.

I should note that extracting from an animal kills it, so... not terribly unlike boiling a coccoon. The problem becomes one of timing - but if control of small animals is improved, perhaps they could be bred, and extracted from at the proper time, perhaps by auto-order. Setting up a sensible sericulture would be nice.

Definitely, though, the application of cloth neds to be improved first, and I look forward to seeing what's forthcoming.

An ability to make beds using some rigid material for the base and cloth to pad it would be interesting. Sort of like how ballista arrows are now; make a rock or metal platform at a mason's or metalsmith's shop, make a mattress at a clothier's, and combine the two at either a clothier's or a craftsdwarf's or perhaps just by building the thing(like how screw pumps and other complicated constructions have the different materials selected when they're placed). The mattress could take multiple units of cloth; more difficulty, but since it's a renewable resource, this wouldn't be insurmountable.

I think I've seen mentioned that somewhat safer sparring - not 100%, but lacking its current lethality - is already in the works. It makes sense; the two are quite different activities.

Now, it would ALSO make sense if, beyond a certain skill, dwarves DID need to fight in earnest. And once they reach another level of skill, only all-out mortal combat will do. Not a pass at arms against a comrade in arms, but honest, lethal combat against a mortal enemy. Say, once dwarves become heroes, restrained sparring will not do, and dwarves must fall back to sparring as it is now; and once they are champions or a degree or two under, no training will suffice but actual battlefield experience against enemies trying to kill them.

But all of this is tangential. Leave aside the possible changes to sparring if you wish - we can agree to disagree, and at any rate that's not what this thread is about, so I'm stopping before I hijack it any further.

I do think that extending the existing military UI, and having separate options for good/bad weapons vs good/bad armor, and having a single option to re-check gear rather than manually forbidding it, would all be good things. (You COULD still manually forbid it if you only wanted them to exchange one bit of armor, of course...)

i dod not read it all, but i assume ...

Right there, that spells disaster. Or, specifically, "why bother?"

To address the OP...

I do like your notion. It might even be made simpler, but what you have is a good starting point for the mechanism.

The Weapons screen - both in the labor -> soldiering prefs and the weapons system in the <m>ilitary screen - could be enhanced to have two separate toggles added: best/worst weapons, best/worst armor. There could be an option to then re-check their gear; if it's within tolerance of the best/worst available(same multipliers, within one stage of quality, say), they'll keep what they have, otherwise they'll stow their old gear and get new. Ideally, they would, if the new gear is in a stockpile, bring their old gear right there and swap it; but it'd be simpler to just drop their old gear and get the new. As a compromise, maybe they'd only drop the old gear when about to pick up the new, so it'd likely have less distance to be hauled; but with the customizable options on stockpiles this is not a certainty.

These options might also be handleable at the squad level. <m>ilitary -> <v>iew squad, or possibly through the <x> squad interface; use best/worst toggles for weapons and armor, and an instruction for the entire squad to recheck their gear.

It might also be nice if there were a way to restrict materials to certain dwarves. As it stands, artifacts will only be used by... I think heroes(Great or higher weapon skill) and champions. If your stocks of iron and steel are limited, you may want to restrict them similarly.

All that said, I believe one of the planned changes with the army arc is to make sparring MUCH less deadly. As it is, it's basically dwarves trying to attack each other and stopping when one gets hurt; perhaps not as aggressive as normal combat, but still very undisciplined, thus the importance of good armor and poor weapons. With improved sparring, these might not be as important; recruits could spar in leather armor and wielding leather shields, leaving the good stuff for the more skilled dwarves, but could be left properly armed at all times. Or - if your resources are REALLY limited - not.

tl; dr version: What you have is a good start, but I think the UI could be pushed farther and better. Improved sparring will change the dynamic, but this would still be a useful tool.

Given elves' other tendencies and preferences, this is... scarily possible. Who knows what the druids are actually capable of?

...or rather, a [DRINK_AGES] tag to the source's definitions, but it amounts to the same thing. And maybe [DRINK_AGES_BADLY] for things that get WORSE with time...

Coins already have a mint year. Giving booze a vintage year would be a nice touch even if the dwarves otherwise don't care.

Have the dwarves know what drinks get better with age, what get worse, and which don't really care, might be enough. They might still prefer wine, but they'll drink beer when the wine is young, and wait for the wine to get older. Beyond that, it becomes a numbers game - the short-term alcohols are straightforward, but wine would lend itself well to large batches so that, though the wine-lovers whittle away at it, some could still get older.

Changes to hauling so that SPECIFIC goods can be moved around would make setting up a locked wine-cellar easier. Or you can just forbid the barrels in question.

(Tangent: There should so be an option to make glass demijohns, which act as barrels but only for liquids. Glass might not impart flavour to its contents the same way a wooden barrel does. Metal... I have no idea; some metal does react, especially with anything acidic. Have the brewers be smart enough to prefer the most suitable containers; wood for things it'd help, inert substances for things that you don't really want acquiring flavours beyond their own.)