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[Vattic]

It is still very unlikely that we'll ever see bronze colossus factories in the vanilla game and I'm glad of this.

Oh and you can already sacrifice a dwarf and spawn a friendly bronze colossus with a little modding.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Macabre moode making a automaton? No. Makes no sense even for dwarf fortress.

I was thinking something like Frankenstein's monster, actually.

Who minds if I pester one of my pet peeves?
In the original book, Frankenstein made the monster by more alchemal means, perhaps adding some bits obtained from slaughterhouses. That people refer to it as being made out of dead people just bugs me for some reason.

There's a difference between abandoned fragments of code left in an AAA game and the information in the raws from dwarf fortress. First off all the fact that most information in the raws is actually used, and that we're not talking about story but about the physics in the game.

How so? Just as Bethesda (the makers of Skyrim) didn't want Elisif to die but still left that in the game's coding, Toady probably wouldn't have set adamantine's melting point so outrageously high if he knew you'd have to use nuclear fusion to melt it.

The difference is that the raws are actually, as mentioned, used in-game. For everything. Also, if Toady wanted adamantine to be unmeltable, there's a setting for that: MELTING_POINT:NONE.

As said before. Adamantine is not a traditional metal. It's some sort of thread/wafer. The dwarves just unwire these from the rocks. (Explaining why they can get them out of the stone). Then they would bring them to the smelter, where they are further unwired and then rewired into whatever you want to make them. An individual wire would be tensible, while an item or rock made of it would be quite strong yet remarkably light. (Think carbon nanotubes/ graphene for a similair real world example)  At no point they are actually melted or broken. Just the same wires, reordened again and again.

You can't just sew or "wire" together something so completely immoveable. It's like trying to weave a piece of cloth out of a few hundred iron crowbars. And on top of that, if the dwarves somehow did just reshape it why would the metalsmith's workshop require fuel to work the adamantine?
The most logical explanation I have heard is that dwarves first chisel away the rock and non-adamantine parts of the ore, extracting the adamantine veins, or "strands". The adamantine is then "melted" at a smelter by simply dumping it into acid. The dwarves would then use that piece of fuel to boil the acid away, letting the dissolved adamantine crystallize. However, there are still issues with that, such as how one would make the adamantine crystallize in the shape you want it to, if dwarves could do that with the level of technology used in the 1350s, how they could get a strong enough acid, and why they would have a furnace operator guy do that at the smelter rather than some scientist in a laboratory. Besides, acid is for elves. They're always stoned upon being captured in my cage traps.  Stoned as in pelted to death with rocks...
Just accept it, the raws can't be true. It would be impossible to work something like adamantine. This is precisely why I don't think the raws are to trusted for canon information or lore.

Aside from acid being elfy and the idea that the raws are somehow untrustworthy, I agree with you. As to the second point (the first depends on one's definitions of "dwarfy" and "elfy" (FYI, I use "awesome" and "cheap, respectively)), the raws are as good and reliable a source of info for DF as a physics text is for RL. They don't say everything, but what they say is more or less true, except where bugs or underimplemented features come into play.

"Hidden Stories?" What do you think I'm saying? And "not part of the actual game?" The raws DEFINE the game. Without the raws, dwarves wouldn't be short, plump helmets wouldn't be brewable into wine, elves wouldn't care about wood, dragons wouldn't breathe fire, adamantine wouldn't be sharp, silver wouldn't be dense, platinum wouldn't be valuable, goblins wouldn't be evil, kobolds wouldn't be small, cats wouldn't hunt vermin...and so on. The raws ARE the game, the rules of physics, the things that make DF what it is. In short, the raws are as good a source of information about what makes a bronze colossus tick as the code of Skyrim is for figuring out the HP of, I dunno, iron golems or whatever golemmy critters Skyrim has.

Read the last part of the above for why the raws still aren't to be trusted, in my opinion.

Why, because a magical, unearthly metal has some unearthly characteristics that can only be explained by magic? Um...BCs are kinda magical in their description.

So, wait...by explaining your physics issue, and the issue you came up with for why that wouldn't work...let's keep this from devolving further. We both made good points. Let's focus on BCs. (See my post explaining such things as how raw and processed adamantine are different for what I was considering bringing back up.)

Yes, this has gone too much off topic. I'm not talking about adamantine again on this thread.

If no one else brings it up, or if they do so in a way that does not require a response from me for some stupid reason, I will do the same. (I prepare for future weaseling now!  )

I haven't had adamantine armor or goblin sieges (plenty of ambushes though, lucky me), but I have heard of such reports from reliable sources. And, as for the other point, if having nigh-invincibility can be at the cost of some adamantine and some well-trained dwarves or at the cost of some adamantine, dozens of other metal bars, a dwarf, labor of some other dwarves with legendary skills that are hard to train, and so forth, I'm definitely going with the first option. Thus, there is still an obvious choice; thus, there isn't any need to think "Is this situation one where I should make a bronze colossus or not?" Thus, the original issue is still present.

I've said the entire time that this would be underpowered. But anyways, when everybody was still saying that this would be too powerful, somebody suggested that bronze collossi require regular maintenance after being created. I actually think that's a really good idea. Sure, a squad of soldiers with adamantine gear would be able to kill faster, but one lucky headshot from a goblins and they're down. But if you had a bronze colossus, the worst case scenario would be that it would need some repairs. The ability to fix a defeated colossus and use it again in just a season would probably make it worth the time and effort. But now it would be overpowered. Somebody else suggested that no matter what, every few years you'd have to put another soul inside of it before the previous one goes crazy and makes the colossus start attacking you. That could work to balance it.

Indeed. Simple measures will never balance. Only actual costs, in dwarven lives (the HP of DF) and player time, will make the choice important.

Considering the fact that Dwarf Fortress is supposed to have the technology that was available in the 1350s, and we don't even have huge killer-robots today, there would obviously have to be some sort of magic involved. I don't dispute that. Rather than an AI it could have the soul of some dwarf or creature controlling it, and magic, rather than circuitry would control all the mechanisms inside.

Or even better, one dwarven soul tormented by the spirits of those whose blood fuels the colossus! That could be what transforms the dwarven mind into that of a murderous monster. The only ways to keep a bronze colossus under control are to sate its bloodlust and keep your dwarves away, or to drive off the invading spirits with more blood sacrifices. But the more spirits paid to the beast, the swifter the dwarven mind within deteriorates once the spirits tire of their new companion in eternity, so ever more sacrifices must be made to keep the original mind sane...
Wow, this stuff almost writes itself! Or maybe I read too much fantasy.

It is still very unlikely that we'll ever see bronze colossus factories in the vanilla game and I'm glad of this.
Oh and you can already sacrifice a dwarf and spawn a friendly bronze colossus with a little modding.

Maybe not a factory, but a secret, leading to potential BCs which require ever-increasing numbers of blood sacrifices to keep their dwarven spirits vaguely sane (and Armok knows what happens if you use elves or goblins or kobolds or something to satiate them) are, sadly, not possible to mod. Multiple blood sacrifices might be possible, though...

[Carp McDwarfEater]

Oh and you can already sacrifice a dwarf and spawn a friendly bronze colossus with a little modding.

The "No, you can mod it in yourself so it shouldn't be added to the vanilla game." response really bothers me. That's like saying Toady shouldn't make it easier to assign dwarves jobs because you can just download Dwarf Therapist.

It is still very unlikely that we'll ever see bronze colossus factories in the vanilla game and I'm glad of this.

Who gave you the impression that this thread was suggesting some sort of sweatshop that can produce 50 bronze colossi every season? While I'm not sure if you should have to kill a bronze colossus or find a special tablet to create a colossus, I do think that no matter what, creating a colossus should take plenty of time and resources. You shouldn't be able to mass-produce them, and if you somehow did manage to get several of them, you'd have a hard time with all the maintenance required.

The difference is that the raws are actually, as mentioned, used in-game. For everything. Also, if Toady wanted adamantine to be unmeltable, there's a setting for that: MELTING_POINT:NONE.

All raws are used in game. Technically, even that line of dialogue in Skyrim is used by the guards if you complete that quest, it's just that quest can't be started so the only way to complete it is with console commands. But aside from that, some raws, like the ones for adamantine and for the guards' dialogue in Skyrim, probably aren't supposed to be the way they are and should be ignored. And Toady essentially did make it unmeltable anyways.

Aside from acid being elfy and the idea that the raws are somehow untrustworthy, I agree with you. As to the second point (the first depends on one's definitions of "dwarfy" and "elfy" (FYI, I use "awesome" and "cheap, respectively)), the raws are as good and reliable a source of info for DF as a physics text is for RL. They don't say everything, but what they say is more or less true, except where bugs or underimplemented features come into play.

Exactly-they are reliable except for when bugs or underimplemented features come into play, or when there was a mistake. Unless Toady says a specific piece of coding is finished and there are no errors with it, then you can't really trust that piece of the raws.

Why, because a magical, unearthly metal has some unearthly characteristics that can only be explained by magic? Um...BCs are kinda magical in their description.

I'm not going to talk about adamantine, like I said before. But BCs aren't necessarily magical. To actually answer your question, once again, look at the what I said above.

Or even better, one dwarven soul tormented by the spirits of those whose blood fuels the colossus! That could be what transforms the dwarven mind into that of a murderous monster. The only ways to keep a bronze colossus under control are to sate its bloodlust and keep your dwarves away, or to drive off the invading spirits with more blood sacrifices. But the more spirits paid to the beast, the swifter the dwarven mind within deteriorates once the spirits tire of their new companion in eternity, so ever more sacrifices must be made to keep the original mind sane...
Wow, this stuff almost writes itself! Or maybe I read too much fantasy.

Using blood as fuel? The spirits of whatever the blood comes from tormented the soul controlling the colossus. Hmph. Dwarfy enough, but too environmentally friendly. The elves will approve, which is bad.

[10ebbor10]

BC's are magical, or science fiction. There's no way to create a being that can last a thousand of years and make arguably intelligent desciscions whitout saying it's magical somewhere, or an advanced android. I don't like to picture my BC's as C3PO.

Also, the points of the BC making is that it would be quite easy once you get the secret/artefact, but that they would be hard to master. Gives the player much more chance to have things go wrong.

What's more fun, something that is hard to get acces too, but is always reliable, or something that is "easy" to get, but can easily go wrong.

[Vattic]

Oh and you can already sacrifice a dwarf and spawn a friendly bronze colossus with a little modding.

The "No, you can mod it in yourself so it shouldn't be added to the vanilla game." response really bothers me. That's like saying Toady shouldn't make it easier to assign dwarves jobs because you can just download Dwarf Therapist.

That wasn't what I said or even meant. It was simply an aside made because I thought you'd like to know. Sorry .

It is still very unlikely that we'll ever see bronze colossus factories in the vanilla game and I'm glad of this.

Who gave you the impression that this thread was suggesting some sort of sweatshop that can produce 50 bronze colossi every season? While I'm not sure if you should have to kill a bronze colossus or find a special tablet to create a colossus, I do think that no matter what, creating a colossus should take plenty of time and resources. You shouldn't be able to mass-produce them, and if you somehow did manage to get several of them, you'd have a hard time with all the maintenance required.

Who gave you the impression I was suggesting a sweatshop that could produce 50 a season? Personally I don't think there should be a recipe that always leads to creating them. I support the idea of having them be a potential outcome of artifacts which Toady has said will one day get randomly generated magical properties. Besides this gods or demons might create them.

And the OP certainly sounds like a description of a factory to me:

i have the idea of makeing bronze colossus out of, of course, bronze statues, adamantite gears, and a lot of hard work at a mechanics work shop, and over 100 power to start it.

[10ebbor10]

Another thing might be that the soul/magic of the Bronze Collosus gets  stored inside the metal. So when one attacks you, you can destroy it and attempt to rebuild it, with build in dwarven soul safeties. The artifact method should apply too, to give them an ingame origin.

You should watch out with players shopping BC's to pieces to create more of them.

[Andeerz]

I would be for a recipe-based construction of a colossus if it was contingent upon extremely high quality components and extraordinarily skilled workers that would take pretty much the DF equivalent of what it took to organize the building of the pyramids of Giza.

Like, I could envision a bronze colossus necessitating such high precision in machining of whatever parts that (within the tech constraints of DF), it would take legendary dwarfs many years to do.  I could also envision it requiring certain alchemical and ritual components that would require extraordinarily rare reagents as well as extremely esoteric knowledge known by only a select few people that would be difficult to get to the fortress or find at all.  Perhaps some sort of contract magic could be involved (like in NW_Kohaku's thread), involving negotiating with gods or demons or whatever.  That would be rad...

   

[Sabreur]

Regardless of method, I think we all agree these things should not be mass producable. Personally, I like the idea that they are not producable by normal means at all. A bronze colossus is a strange, mystical creation. Something like that should require possession by an angry deity for inspiration and the soul of the creator for materials.

[kaenneth]

Like a Mechanic getting a Fel Mood....

[10ebbor10]

I would be for a recipe-based construction of a colossus if it was contingent upon extremely high quality components and extraordinarily skilled workers that would take pretty much the DF equivalent of what it took to organize the building of the pyramids of Giza.

Like, I could envision a bronze colossus necessitating such high precision in machining of whatever parts that (within the tech constraints of DF), it would take legendary dwarfs many years to do.  I could also envision it requiring certain alchemical and ritual components that would require extraordinarily rare reagents as well as extremely esoteric knowledge known by only a select few people that would be difficult to get to the fortress or find at all.  Perhaps some sort of contract magic could be involved (like in NW_Kohaku's thread), involving negotiating with gods or demons or whatever.  That would be rad...

Which would make them useless just for when a player thinks I'd do it just because I can. Again = A high cost doesnt balance something. It either makes it OP,when you get or underpowered. What I would propose is that making Collosi is decievingly simple once you have the fragments of one of them, and that you could then rebuild it, with the addition of a dwarven soul to control it. The quality of the workers would determine how long it would go before going crazy, and to allow them to better spot the signals.

It would also be fun If we could make real golems, whose stats and such are decided by random chance and the quality of workers and materials.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Oh and you can already sacrifice a dwarf and spawn a friendly bronze colossus with a little modding.

The "No, you can mod it in yourself so it shouldn't be added to the vanilla game." response really bothers me. That's like saying Toady shouldn't make it easier to assign dwarves jobs because you can just download Dwarf Therapist.

Agreed. Doesn't help that you can't actually mod the stuff that would make this interesting...

The difference is that the raws are actually, as mentioned, used in-game. For everything. Also, if Toady wanted adamantine to be unmeltable, there's a setting for that: MELTING_POINT:NONE.

All raws are used in game. Technically, even that line of dialogue in Skyrim is used by the guards if you complete that quest, it's just that quest can't be started so the only way to complete it is with console commands. But aside from that, some raws, like the ones for adamantine and for the guards' dialogue in Skyrim, probably aren't supposed to be the way they are and should be ignored. And Toady essentially did make it unmeltable anyways.

A. So...a line of dialoge that never gets said is used in-game, how? And, again, how is adamantine's properties not "supposed to be the way they are" if there is an easy (maybe a minute of work?) way to change them?

Aside from acid being elfy and the idea that the raws are somehow untrustworthy, I agree with you. As to the second point (the first depends on one's definitions of "dwarfy" and "elfy" (FYI, I use "awesome" and "cheap, respectively)), the raws are as good and reliable a source of info for DF as a physics text is for RL. They don't say everything, but what they say is more or less true, except where bugs or underimplemented features come into play.

Exactly-they are reliable except for when bugs or underimplemented features come into play, or when there was a mistake. Unless Toady says a specific piece of coding is finished and there are no errors with it, then you can't really trust that piece of the raws.

So...wait. You think that the melting point of adamantine is buggy/underimplemented because Toady hasn't changed it to what he wants, and you know he wants it different because he has...what? Left it completely unchanged since the material rewrite?

Why, because a magical, unearthly metal has some unearthly characteristics that can only be explained by magic? Um...BCs are kinda magical in their description.

I'm not going to talk about adamantine, like I said before. But BCs aren't necessarily magical. To actually answer your question, once again, look at the what I said above.

...The stuff about how Toady's lack of action in changing adamantine is proof that he wants adamantine to change?

Or even better, one dwarven soul tormented by the spirits of those whose blood fuels the colossus! That could be what transforms the dwarven mind into that of a murderous monster. The only ways to keep a bronze colossus under control are to sate its bloodlust and keep your dwarves away, or to drive off the invading spirits with more blood sacrifices. But the more spirits paid to the beast, the swifter the dwarven mind within deteriorates once the spirits tire of their new companion in eternity, so ever more sacrifices must be made to keep the original mind sane...
Wow, this stuff almost writes itself! Or maybe I read too much fantasy.

Using blood as fuel? The spirits of whatever the blood comes from tormented the soul controlling the colossus. Hmph. Dwarfy enough, but too environmentally friendly. The elves will approve, which is bad.

Why is environmentally friendly so bad? It's hard to be awesome if you've poisoned the land so much that nothing but silver barbs, muck roots, and maybe dimple cups can grow...

I would be for a recipe-based construction of a colossus if it was contingent upon extremely high quality components and extraordinarily skilled workers that would take pretty much the DF equivalent of what it took to organize the building of the pyramids of Giza.

So far, so good...

Like, I could envision a bronze colossus necessitating such high precision in machining of whatever parts that (within the tech constraints of DF), it would take legendary dwarfs many years to do.  I could also envision it requiring certain alchemical and ritual components that would require extraordinarily rare reagents as well as extremely esoteric knowledge known by only a select few people that would be difficult to get to the fortress or find at all.  Perhaps some sort of contract magic could be involved (like in NW_Kohaku's thread), involving negotiating with gods or demons or whatever.  That would be rad...

Putting aside the exact lengths of time, I don't like anything that requires legendary dwarves just because. Maybe a single moderately-skilled dwarf could make a crude bronze statue for the BC to be made from in 20-50 years, with legendaries making it in 5-10 years, higher skill providing a gradual shift, and multiple dwarves being able to work on the same statue. Something like that. Legendary dwarves might be required to make it practical, but shouldn't be required to make it possible. This is, BTW, on top of the "Special Event" idea of how to make it possible in the first place (probably a secret of some kind).

Of course, mere golems and automations would be simpler, but also dumb and/or not able to do detailed work (art, engraving, pretty much anything but entertaining noble children, hauling, maybe combat and/or other menial tasks).

[Sabreur]

It seems to me that not many people object to the idea of being able to create a bronze colossus, it's just the exact mechanics of how to do so without utterly breaking the game balance that makes it tricky.  Either making it the equivalent of a megaproject, or making it an extremely rare 'mood' with very difficult material requirements seems appropriate.

The one thing I'm worried about is that even awesome material requirements might not be enough to keep this balanced.  I'm thinking it might be wise to make a player-made Bronze Colossus not completely controllable, sort of like a 'friendly' werecreature.  Every so often, a Bronze Colossus' love for violence overcomes its loyalty to its creator and it randomly mauls whatever is nearby for a few minutes.  If the dwarf responsible for its creation dies, then it goes completely ballistic and behaves like a normal hostile BC.  Maybe also make friendly BC's hostile to each other, so if you do manage to make more then one they'll immediately drop everything and try to destroy each other.

[10ebbor10]

It seems to me that not many people object to the idea of being able to create a bronze colossus, it's just the exact mechanics of how to do so without utterly breaking the game balance that makes it tricky.  Either making it the equivalent of a megaproject, or making it an extremely rare 'mood' with very difficult material requirements seems appropriate.

The one thing I'm worried about is that even awesome material requirements might not be enough to keep this balanced.  I'm thinking it might be wise to make a player-made Bronze Colossus not completely controllable, sort of like a 'friendly' werecreature.  Every so often, a Bronze Colossus' love for violence overcomes its loyalty to its creator and it randomly mauls whatever is nearby for a few minutes.  If the dwarf responsible for its creation dies, then it goes completely ballistic and behaves like a normal hostile BC.  Maybe also make friendly BC's hostile to each other, so if you do manage to make more then one they'll immediately drop everything and try to destroy each other.

Guess what the last two pages were about, except for the adamantine robot vs magical statue debate.

There are three problems with your idea.
1. Players will just lock up their creator dwarves
2. Players can't control the BC's, not even if they want too.
3. It prevents players from having more than one BC.

A good development idea is to avoid restricting your players as much as possible, but rather allow them to take risks and such. Therefore the proposed ideas a few posts back was that, when a BC is killed or you find the secret, you can easily repair/ build one BC. However, in order to be able to control the BC, a dwarven soul is required. However, the BC's magic will slowly corrupt the dwarven soul, so every so often you need to do another soul sacrifice to keep the BC in check. Sadly, the levels of sacrifices would continue escalating, so in the end it might turn uncontrollable. With carefull management, a player could control their own BC, but the risks are there.

It's more fun when a player causes his own FUN, rather then the game rolling a die and throwing some fun on top of you.

[Vattic]

A lot of this could be achieved if it was possible to win mega-beasts over to your cause. I'm not sure what would motivate a BC and allow you to bend it to your will; Maybe he secretly wants a heart ?

[kaenneth]

I don't have the raws in front of me, but I really doubt vanilla dwarves would practice dwarven (or other sentient) sacrifice; outside of fel moods.