Orcs did share a few buildings and reactions (and probably still do) with Dwarves, which leads to strange conflicts. For example I changed the megabeast butchering for dwarves, not realizing that I would break it for th Orcs. Therefore several things might be broken.
There are a few, but I've got a reasonably good idea what they are. I wouldn't mind putting megabeast butchering back in.
"remove the existing distillery" => This is impossible.
Oh DF, why do you do this to me? I'm guessing one can't disable any of the core buildings, nor any of the reactions in them?
"essence stones" => No. Please. I want to write a soul-system into the mod, each dead being leaves a soul upon being butchered. Dwarves use if for their religion system, Kobolds probably for their silly magic antics, Orcs I dont know, but Warlocks will make big use of them. Therefore please dont use this idea for Orcs. Makes no sense, Orcs plunder and pillage, but they dont live off death itself.
Ah! We don't want the playable races to feel too similar, and even though orcs already use fallen enemies in some buildings and reactions (in the form of totems), we don't want to step on warlock toes.
In terms of feel, I want orcs to feel like you're itching for combat. Dwarves have their traps and megaprojects, kobolds have their poisons and pets, but if you're an orc, you're not afraid to get onto the battlefield and spill the blood of your foes. I don't think anyone's going to argue too much with that as a theme.
However orcs currently have a problem with itemcorpses. Presently, orcs end up with a
lot of them, and because itemcorpses
replace the corpses which would normally drop, the orcs miss out on things like leather, bone, and totems from their foes. (Orcish ethics are completely fine with butchering intelligent enemies.) So for orcs they're a double-whammy: not only do they miss out on the materials orcs need for their traditional workshops, but they end up with non-rotting clutter instead.
If orcs were the only race in the mod, we could replace itemcorpses with EXTRA_BUTCHER_OBJECTs, since orcish ethics allow them to butcher pretty much anything. However I believe that would completely mess up dwarves, because dwarves wouldn't do anything as disgusting as butcher an elf. (I presume this is why the current itemcorpses system exists.)
So, without stepping on the toes of warlocks, and while still keeping itemcorpses for dwarves, we can potentially solve the orcish itemcorpse problem by having "strip/butcher corpse" reactions at one of the oricsh workshops, and
these become the only way to obtain foreign tools and blueprints. Raiding will still be important in gaining access to materials, some very basic blueprints, and provoking enemies to attack in the first place, but it's
only through direct battle that one gains access to real technology.
One of the gotchas here is that currently that playable races don't drop itemcorpses, and that includes dwarves; who are not only a traditional enemy, but also have desirable technology. I'm guessing having playable races drop itemcorpses is going to seriously mess things up, so we'll need another system to deal with dwarves. Any suggestions or insights on how to jump this hurdle are particularly welcome.
Figuring out how to give orcs an appropriate yet difficult source of orichalcum still remains open. I could say there's a small chance per itemcorpse processed, but I don't know how to justify that thematically. Who walks around with a bar of orich in their pocket?
It also would be nice for orcs (and other non-dwarf races) to have enemies who are equivalent to goblins in toughness and materials. Drow, humans, elves, and dwarves all tend to arrive in steel-level armour, which for a new camp would make them very difficult indeed if they ever remembered to bring gloves and boots.
~ T
