Bay 12 Games Forum

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What is TribalFortress?
TribalFortress is an ambitious mod for Dwarf Fortress that attempts to set back the clock to a time before civilisations were united and broken under thrall of autocratic rulers. Metalwork has yet to be discovered, civilisation lays on the mantles of scattered chieftains, and combat is ever more harsh and devastating. It is left up for the player to decide whether the future of their tribe is carved into the winding depths of a muddied cave or built up from the surface into what may become a sprawling townscape.

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Notable Features
Fortress Mode:
- Play as humans
- Metalwork removed; utilise stone and bone weaponry
- Dense stone rendered undiggable
- Kingdoms abolished; tribal chieftains reign supreme
- Revamped nobles; new administrative titles and positions
- Many new items with new workshops and processes to create them

Adventure Mode includes all main races playable and the ability to craft many pieces of equipment from scratch.

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Updates:
v1.3:
- All weapon-grade stones and gems now have individual production reactions; bars now stack properly in stockpiles.
- Weapons and ammunitions have had their reactions changed to respect the new reactions; ammunition now stocks properly in stockpiles.
- Moved the "collect water" reaction to the new Welled Spring; can currently be built anywhere.
- Processing drinking water at Kitchens now also requires a wooden log.
- Material value of dwarven alcohols increased to reflect their exclusivity.
- Material value of leather increased to reflect danger of acquisition.
- Production of weapons and armours now requires additional components; applied to Adventure mode reactions. (see the readme)
- Arm and leg guards can now only be made from leather at a Leatherworks. (a bug in DF screws with custom glove/shoe reactions, evidently)
- Granted dwarves a superior war hammer; removed hunting spear from their arsenal.
- Granted humans a superior war spear; removed hammer from their arsenal.
- Granted goblins a superior war axe; removed long spear from their arsenal.
- Elves now only use clubs for melee weapons.
- Changes to entity ethics. (to be expanded on further)
- Replaced "executioner" position with "champion" with combined responsibilities; upgrades to "hero" by chieftain. (leads demonstrations while decapitating criminals--what could go wrong?)

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[Preamble]

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A couple of years ago I became rather obsessed with understanding the Dwarf Fortress combat system. I was often annoyed by how armour didn't have as much of an impact in battle as it should. Swords and axes were prone to severing limbs straight through and spears easily pierced the entirety of legs, even when made of the same material as the armour they were seemingly ignoring. I was further bothered by ranged being the end-all of combat more often than not.

This led me to many a night of searches and inspections of raws from several different mods, trying to figure out how they attempted to solved this perennial problem of mine. I ultimately stumbled across Lucelle's mod. After playing around with Lucelle's mod, I was inspired to try and fix the problem myself.

This small project is the result of almost 2 years of tweaking and too many hours spent testing in the Arena. I think it's finally come to a point where it is as balanced and sensical as it's going to be with only myself to scrutinise (One of my primary goals was to have weapons behave as they would in real life, but this is Dwarf Fortress and there will be anomalies). Of course, my idea of balance is only my own, and this is what has brought me to release this project to the public. I invite you to either help me improve this mod with critique and suggestions or simply enjoy it any other way you see fit.

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[Notes]

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[Armour and Clothing Layers]
Currently, most armour and clothing layers on pieces are tailoured to only allow one article of equipment in each slot. For the most part, you can no longer wear multiple chain layers and a hundred cloaks. On the bright side, you won't need to.

Then what all can I wear?
My packs can make Dwarf Fortress rather picky as to what you can put on. You may have to juggle your equipment around when changing outfits in Adventure mode. However, this problem should be minimal in Fortress mode.

To simplify the process I recommend you view it like stacking cups; armour is the largest cup, and underclothes such as hand/leg wraps and shirts/tunics are the smallest cup.

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[Packs]

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[Armoury Pack]
This pack includes about 85 weapons and about 65 articles of armour and clothing. Below is the list of them in their entirety.


[Adventure Mode]
Adventure mode changes have been suspended/removed until I know what I'm doing again.

[Updates]
v1.9:
- Updated to 43.05
- STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL in various files changed to STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_METAL where appropriate (oversight)
item_weapon.txt
- Added 'medium' bow weapon
- MINIMUM_SIZE value adjustments for several weapons
- Weapon name localisation adjustments
- Removed daggers
item_ammo.txt
- Minour adjustments to some ammunition types
- Sling bullets changed from EDGED to BLUNT
item_armor.txt
- Aketon coverage increased to 150% from 100%
item_body.txt
- 'Dress' renamed to 'kaftan' (gender-neutral garment name)
item_gloves.txt
- Redundant MATERIAL_SIZE for mittens removed
item_helm.txt
- MATERIAL_SIZE for bascinet increased to 6 from 3
- Both metal and cloth coifs improved; padded coif renamed to 'arming coif'
- Civilian coif added, replacing arming cap
- Hood renamed to cowl
item_shoes.txt
- Leather military boot coverage increased to 250% from 200%
- Clogs added
item_tool.txt
- Added daggers as civilian weapons; only affects adventure mode


[Download]
Download Link
The zip file contains an optional pre-configured entity_default with the weapons divided among the creatures in a loose theme. Otherwise I have compiled the relevant tokens in the readme file for custom modification.
The zip file also contains an optional custom creature_standard with bite and scratch attacks removed from dwarves, humans and elves.

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[Bugs]
I am by no means a master at modding Dwarf Fortress. There may be oddities, there may be bugs. You may express your displeasure with them in this thread.