Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Urist McTeellox]

Orc Fortress Rebalanced!

This is a heavily updated copy of Smakemupagus' excellent Orc Fortress plug-in for Masterwork Dwarf Fortress. It's based upon Masterwork Dwarf Fortress - Studded With Patches, which in turn is based upon the latest stable release of Masterwork Dwarf Fortress.

Quicklinks

• Download Masterwork Dwarf Fortress - Studded With Patches (beta) (recommended: includes Orc Fortress Rebalanced and latest hotfixes)
• Download Orc Fortress Rebalanced (zip)
• Online Manual (wiki)

In "Studded With Patches" (SWP), you may need to enable orcs as a playable race in the settings GUI. It's recommended you download the SWP version if you want all the latest bugfixes.

What's new?

Dwarves and kobolds may be content to hide behind their traps and pets, but Taiga Orcs desire conquest over their foes! The rebalance changes Taiga Orcs to encourage a style of play that more readily encourages raiding and battle.

Orcs will now take the scalps of their fallen foes, provided they're deemed worthy. Scalps are used for building and technology unlocks. Ten scalps may be sewn into a standard of honour. No clan would build a caravanserai for merchants, or a meadhall for warriors, without first collecting trophies to display their victory in combat. Likewise, codexes are a matter of honour for the clan, and require scalps for their construction.

Dreamwalkers use the souls from worthy foes to weave spirit talismen. Blueprints are now unlocked not through raiding, but by walking the dreams of those who have fallen in combat. Likewise, rituals, ceremonies, and certain reactions also require spirit talismen to complete.

Raiding other civilisations is now much more risky, and carries a chance that they will retaliate! It's usually safe to harass local farmers, and bullying kobolds and goblins, but others may not take kindly to you plundering them! Of course, with advances in your clan now dependent, you may want to provoke your enemies into an attack.

Orichalcum is now much harder to come by, and can no longer be purchased from the shadowbroker, nor obtained by raiding. It can still be manufactured if you've built the arcane forge (which requires two bars of orichalcum to build), although its manufacture now yields much less material, and requires a soul gem as part of the transformation.

Bloodsteel and ironbone are now constructed at the totem pole, rather than at the bonecarver. The totem pole only requires a single totem and a log to construct.

Drydocks, and most orcish religious buildings, now must be built above ground. Your Sun & Stars Orrery now actually needs a view of the sun and stars.

Lots of bugfixes and tweaks. Embarks have been adjusted, merchants return coins in 500-unit stacks, corsairs have their own dagger+gun combo, the tribal crafter knows how to make boots and gloves, sorcerers are no longer as spammy, castes show up at embark, and more! This release also includes all the patches made to the gold (formally 'master') branch of Studded With Patches.

Updated manual

This release not only comes with a manual overhaul, but also with the ability for you to make updates and changes to it! The manual is included in the download as you would expect, but it's also now a wiki that anyone can edit. If you spot a mistake, you can fix it. If you find something missing, you can add it. Please be bold with your edits.

The manual is automatically converted into the Orc Fortress manual included with Studded With Patches, so people can take advantage of your changes almost immediately!

Detailed Changelogs

In case you want to see all the changes in detail, here are selected changelogs from the git repo. Less exciting changes (fixing typos, etc) have been omitted:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Orcfort: Manual is now autogenerated from the Orc Manual Wiki (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Overhauled manual for new Orc Fortress Rebalanced! (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Ironbone and bloodsteel are now made at the totem pole. #98 (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: All sentient races now drop scalps. (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Orichalcum rebalanced. (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Added missing reactions and removed obsoleted ones. (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Male corsairs now have as good an eye for loot as their female counterparts (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Factories now produce earthenware blocks, not greenware (GH #43) (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Lamellar wargear now includes gloves at the tribal wargear workshop (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Update most coin reactions to return stacks of 500 coins (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Disabled overpowered raids on ruins (GH #12) (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Blueprints now unlock by walking the dreams of fallen enemies. (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Many reactions now require scalps (rather than totems) (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Preparing scalps uses the tanning skill, banners are made at Craftsorc (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Updated manual with details on honour and rituals (McTeellox)
• Orcs can sew standards of honour and use them in building unlocks (#60 #61) (McTeellox)
• Updated all orcish rituals for new soul-based talismans (#86) (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Soul updates for orc rituals. (#86) (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Druid codexes are now easier to craft (#13) (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: All buildings now use architecture to build (#61) (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Orcish industry buildings can be built from rusty iron/steel (#61) (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Orc sorcers will no longer spam bone-armour buffs. (#70) (McTeellox)
• Orcish embark profiles fixed (wolves -> dire wolves) (McTeellox)
• Added prepared scalp tools and reactions. (McTeellox)
• Added scalps to the Great Races (human/elf/drow/dwarf) (McTeellox)
• Orcish raids now come with the risk of triggering siege. (McTeellox)
• Orc: #51 - Added costs to reaction names. Raided crates now auto unpack. (McTeellox)
• Orcs now have access to brass bullets from all reactions. (McTeellox)
• GH #63 - Drydock, Storm Altar, Sun Orrery, and Stone circle are outside only. (McTeellox)
• GH #62 - Added 'corsair arms' (pistol + dagger) to freelancer (McTeellox)
• GH #51 - Added orcs ability to raid farmlands for food. (McTeellox)

Notable Masterwork Dwarf Fortress - Studded With Patches changes included in this release:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Update showunitsyndromes.rb (warmist)
• Removed obsolete utilities. (Splinterz)
• Fix for being unable to copy weaponry blueprints in the scriptorium (Splinterz)
• Fix slag being present when turned off in the Settings GUI. (Splinterz)
• Settings GUI: Renamed main button to 'Play', and other fixes (Splinterz)
• Remove 1/2 as zoom in/out. (McTeellox)
• Fix of Falconne's stocks plugin when melting items. (McTeellox)
• Combine all NPC orc reactions into GREENSKIN_ORC for easy management. (McTeellox)
• Fix swapped two-handed and minimum sizes in NPC orc weapons. (McTeellox)
• Enabled fix-armory and diggingInvaders plug-ins (McTeellox)
• blast furnace batch announcements (Splinterz)
• Updated unit-info-viewer for DFHack r4 (McTeellox)
• Dwarf Manual Update Notes (v4g): (There Is No Vic)
• Fixed leather references in embark profiles (McTeellox)
• Added missing 'S' to MATERIAL(S)_(DEFAULT|WEAK|NORMAL|STRONG) (McTeellox)
• Update Dfhack Guide.html (There Is No Vic)
• Updated probability-syndrome.rb (McTeellox)
• Orcfort: Grinding mithril/cobalt/wolfram only requires 4 bars now. (McTeellox)
• Orcish tribal embark actually includes wolves, and no longer blows point balance. (McTeellox)
• fixes for itemsyndrome and spawn scripts (Splinterz)
• Orcfort: All orcs now show their castes on embark (McTeellox)
• fix for priest and candelabra interactions (Splinterz)

Reporting Bugs

While you're welcome to report bugs in this thread, I'm able to track them better if you report them on github. You can also view my bugtracker there to see what's being worked upon.

Future Plans

Improved orcs don't stop here! Plans for milestone 2 are already underway. This includes a cleaner system for buffs, announcements on important events like blueprint unlocks and raids, better uses for tears and blood of armok, improved lighting with rendermax, and more.

Contribute

Contributors are amazing! Here are some ways you can help:

• Join the great orcish rebalance thread, and give your ideas and suggestions.
• Contribute to Studded with Patches, and fix bugs or update the raws directly!
• Improve the manual, it's a wiki, after all!
• Update the FAQ if you see the same question asked often.
• Or just say thank-you below! If you're enjoying the Orc Rebalance, I'd love to hear about it!

Many thanks!

~ T

[Gamerlord]

Hey mate, I had an idea; what about an armour set at the Ancient Foundry called 'Honour Guard's X' that incorporate standards of honour as materials.

[Urist McTeellox]

Hey mate, I had an idea; what about an armour set at the Ancient Foundry called 'Honour Guard's X' that incorporate standards of honour as materials.

That would be some darn tough armour to forge, but would absolutely be a great way to show off your conquests.   I would argue that it should *definitely* provide some buffs, suggestions welcome as to which ones.

~ T

[Teneb]

Hey mate, I had an idea; what about an armour set at the Ancient Foundry called 'Honour Guard's X' that incorporate standards of honour as materials.

That would be some darn tough armour to forge, but would absolutely be a great way to show off your conquests.   I would argue that it should *definitely* provide some buffs, suggestions welcome as to which ones.

~ T

Willpower (or even NOFEAR) buffs to decrease chance of running away from battle, maybe?

[Meph]

Gives NOFEAR to the enemy, so they dont run away, but instead stay and die, like they should. 

[CptCrunchy]

Would this possibly be compatible with the beta release for your rebalance? I'm pretty attached to the orc for I have going

[Meph]

You cant updated saves games with this.

[shadowclasper]

No Bonesmelter? D:

Also, how do you get orichalcum if to manufacture it, you first need two bars of it. But it can't be purchased or raided for (seems like raiding or it SHOULD be possible at an incredibly low chance from a location like 'Dwarven Metropolis')

[mahrgell]

Wouldn't it make sense to make Orcs and Taiga Orcs mutually exclusive?
Or actually completely integrate normal Orcs into Taiga Orcs.

[shadowclasper]

Well what would probably be easier still is to turn 'normal orcs' into 'Corsair Orcs'

Brigands and outcasts with little to no interest in the old ways compared to pure PROFIT.

[Urist McTeellox]

Would this possibly be compatible with the beta release for your rebalance? I'm pretty attached to the orc for I have going

So, the beta actually changes every time I make a commit. But if your beta has ironbone being made at the totem pole, then this is the beta, but with a better manual, a tag in git, and a release announcement.   In which case yes, it's absolutely compatible.

Otherwise, no. (I'm still learning what changes are save-game compatible, but I know that adding scalps to all core civilisations isn't one of them.)

No Bonesmelter? D:

Not yet. One of the things with software is that there are always features to be added and bugs to be fixed. But releasing new versions is pretty easy, the longest thing is actually doing the release announcement itself. I expect there'll be a couple of intermediate releases before the full milestone 2 release, and the beta branch of Studded With Patches will always get live-updates.

Having said that, I love your building concept work, so I'm hoping if I look at everyone hopefully someone will turn that into a building raw that I can include. (Bonus points if they send me a commit or pull request on github / SWP.)

Also, how do you get orichalcum if to manufacture it, you first need two bars of it. But it can't be purchased or raided for (seems like raiding or it SHOULD be possible at an incredibly low chance from a location like 'Dwarven Metropolis')

Oooh, that's a good one for the FAQ. You get orichalcum the same way everyone else is supposed to get it; by being very lucky. It's a rare product from smelting. (Although not yet from the kobold and goblin shanty reactions; they'll pocket it themselves!)

Wouldn't it make sense to make Orcs and Taiga Orcs mutually exclusive?
Or actually completely integrate normal Orcs into Taiga Orcs.

Right now the plan is to integrate them. The Masterwork civilisation space is getting pretty crowded, and Meph and I have discussed a few tricks to keep Taiga Orcs and Cutebolds reasonably balanced when they're NPC races. (NPC Taiga Orcs have the potential to turn up on your doorstep with Orichalcum equipment, when really they should arrive with rusty steel.)

There is a need for there to be an equivalent of goblins for Orcs (and possibly Warlocks) to beat up on. Right now there's a big balance issue in that your main enemies all have steel or equivalent equipment, whereas dwarves theoretically have a more gentle combat curve. There's some discussion of that in the rebalance thread, and suggestions and ideas there are welcome.

~T

[shadowclasper]

If I had to make a suggestion. Make Gnomes or Elves the goblin equivalent. Gnomes would make more sense, given them a ton of ranged weapons that are very lethal or have nasty side effects, but take a frick ton of time to fire after each shot. Sniper rifle army basically.

That, or just have humans with FILTHY PESANTRY

Seriousl. Filthy pesantry for humans. Several ELITE groups that come later, but for the start, it's GUYS WITH PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES AND LEATHER ARMOR

[BlackFlyme]

If I had to make a suggestion. Make Gnomes or Elves the goblin equivalent. Gnomes would make more sense, given them a ton of ranged weapons that are very lethal or have nasty side effects, but take a frick ton of time to fire after each shot. Sniper rifle army basically.

That, or just have humans with FILTHY PESANTRY

Seriousl. Filthy pesantry for humans. Several ELITE groups that come later, but for the start, it's GUYS WITH PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES AND LEATHER ARMOR

You can't control the firing or the reload time of a ranged weapon. That is dependent on the skill level of the user.

You can't choose what units wear or wield during an ambush or siege, though you can influence it through permitted clothes/weapons. Torches aren't a possible weapon, they would just be a club. Though DFHack may be able to change that.

[shadowclasper]

Torch. Club like weapon with an automatic ability to cause blistering and pain upon impact, and has a low percentage chance to light someone on fire.

But yeah, the ranged attack thing is a problem.

I guess the only real way to do it is to have some kind of general faction of vagrants and adventurers perhaps?

edit: Also, if somebody can tell me how to change the .exe for the workshop raw maker into a .dmg, I can make it.

[MuDD]

I'd almost like to see the Taiga Orcs as an enemy use Ironbone and Bloodsteel, then Orichalcum and Mithril later if possible with possible Cobalt/welded Cobalt as a middle ground.

I like the thought of the Taiga Orcs as more of an honorable savage than the ramshackle soldiers of the goblins and "regular" orcs.