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[AceSV]

I've been thinking about ways to revamp my Furry Fortress mod.  I'm starting to think maybe I should put all the questions in one place.  I'm going to keep some of the specifics a secret until it is released, so I can change my mind if necessary. 

Wood Alternatives

I want to try making a playabe race that won't use wood for anything, not even "grown wood" like the elves, which I don't think you can produce as a player anyways.  Without some modding, this would be completely crippling for the experience.  Unlike elves, they would not be restricted from using stone and metal, but there are still some materials that wood is exclusively used for. 

Beds - But that's easy enough to fix.  Mod in cloth, leather and stone beds.  Done. 

Fuel - Wood makes charcoal, which is insanely useful if you have enough and don't want to scrape the earth's core for magma.  But what else from the 1400s could be burned for fuel?  Well, ethanol fuel would be cool and fits into the existing framework of the game, except that logically you would keep ethanol in barrels instead of bars and I don't know if the default reactions would be confused by that.  In the modern day, I know that there are various solid fuel bars used for survival, but I don't know what they are or if they would suitable to a fantasy game.  Anyone have an idea for this? 

Soap - Soap is lye, made from ash, made from wood.  I don't usually bother with the soap industry myself, but I'd hate to just remove it entirely.  Anyone know of alternatives? 


Antman Civ - Solved

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Original

The caste system is set up exactly for an ant-man civ, but the marriage system is not.  Ideally, the ant-queen would breed once and be able to produce offspring for her entire life, but in DF, the default state is for a male and female of similar age to pair up for life and produce children every so often when they're not toiling away. 

The easy solution is to make them ant-MEN instead of ANT-men.  The fortress could have multiple breeding pairs each with dozens of worker and soldier children. 

I saw Meph's golem workshop and I wondered if some kind of workshop process could use ant queen eggs as a reagent to produce ant workers and soldiers as the reaction.  But as far as I know, the golem reaction still uses a transformation syndrome, so it wouldn't be able to produce new workers.  Maybe livestock could be used to "feed" the eggs so they can hatch. 

Solution

Gave up on implementing a "realistic" caste system as it was difficult to display to the player.  Gave males the PET tag, which allows them to breed without marriage.  The majority of ant-people are female, the player can decide whether they will function as queens, workers or soldiers. 

Troll Civ

I've come up with race that will essentially be a civilization of trolls.  I've created troll size weapons for them that are about 4x larger and more expensive than dwarf sized weapons (trolls are about 4x the volume of dwarves and humans).  I'm hoping that the cost will serve to balance out the obvious advantage of being gigantic.  I don't think these guys will be wildly overpowered when it comes to armed combat, since trolls themselves are not all that threatening, but trolls are balanced by the fact that they don't have armor, which a player would obviously provide. 

So the question, should I do something to decrease their armor?  I could make them custom armors that cost 4x as much(left alone, I'm assuming a troll-sized breast plate costs as much metal as a dwarf-sized breastplate).  I could restrict what armors are available to them.  I could restrict armor material to cloth, leather and wood, no metal.  I may also give them penalties to mining, to balance out their size, which would also restrict metal acquisition, though a long enough game would balance it out.  Any thoughts? 


Swimmer Civs
Last time I had an amphibious civ of duck people, which were terrible, since their only advantage was swimming which the AI can't do.  They also had a habit of marching their waterbuffalo caravans into motes and rivers and getting stuck there forever.  I don't think I'm going to repeat ducks specifically, but I am going to have at least 2 races based on sea critters.  Any thoughts on what I could do to make swimming races more flavorful?  Something that would encourage a player to play a different way? 



More to come. 

[milo christiansen]

Soap without wood is easy, use an alcohol based soap. There are other ways of making soap too, look it up (few to no soaps used now-days are lye based).

I have some DFHack scripts that would allow you to remove the carpenters workshop, that may be helpful

For fuel... In my First Landing mod I have some machines that use jugs of plant oil, and you could make solid fuel from that, but it wouldn't be realistic seeing as you can't mod fuel names.

[vjmdhzgr]

FOr the ants you could make it a rare caste, but then add a reaction that turns a normal ant into a queen ant to ensure that you don't end up without one, and then there's two options for getting them to succesfully breed, I'm not sure if one of them will work. So one option could be adding in a male caste with the [PET] token and maybe can't speak though I'm not sure if that's needed that you then just make sure is near the queen all the time and since they're unintelligent and/or a [PET] (still not sure which you'd need) they just breed whenever without requiring marriage. However, I don't know if this will work for the queen, probably not, so you could also add the same tokens to the queen allowing breeding constantly. The other option would be adding in a male caste that is also rare and would probably be obtained by transformation most of the time that lives as long as the queen, is always heterosexual, and always has maximum personality traits that would result in developing relationships quicker. Then add the same always heterosexual, maximum personality traits for developing relationships to the queen, and players would then just lock them in a room together until they marry. Obviously the first is more accurate to how ants work, but has some other problems so maybe the second one could work better.

[kilakan]

For fuels, peat blocks were commonly used in england and other parts of Europe as fuel.  Mining/digging peat out of bogs would work and then you could shift to making coal/coke if those are prevalent on the map.  Perhapes allow a farm to grow 'peat' from spores and then a second workshop to pack it into cubes?  You can also use tied hay and other grass bundles as fuel.  Some sort of general 'tinder packing workshop' could get around ever touching wood for fuel/ash/ect.

[AceSV]

Well if alcohol can be turned into bars of soap, that solves both problems doesn't it?  If you can turn alcohol into a bar of soap you should be able to turn it into a bar of fuel.  Do you have anymore info on that?  I tried to look up how to make soap and I only got lye recipes or melt-and-pour soaps, which are just lye soaps with extra gunk added to them. 

Another solution that was proposed to me is to make ash and charcoal from other plants besides wood.  Maybe something like sawgrass could be grown as a fuel crop, which is being tested in real life as a feedstock for cellulosic ethanol. 

As for peat, that sounds too unrealistic to me.  Real peat takes decades or centuries to form, so it would be way too gamey to be able to grow it yearly for fuel.  It would be akin to just inventing some fantasy crop that does what I need it to do.  But mining peat could be more viable.  I could probably modify the raws to make it form boulders when mined that can be packed into bars or cooked into coke. 

For ants, I think I'll experiment with both options.  Pet males sounds like some kind of pulp adventure fantasy, and I love pulp adventure fantasy.  If both male and female need to be pets, I could try making both queens and drones into pets.  That would make things really interesting.  2nd option sounds like it would be more likely to work and maybe more intuitive to DF veterans. 

Also I've added 2 new brainstorms to the opening, Troll Civ and Swimmer Civ

[vjmdhzgr]

For the trolls I know that carrying weight is based off of the strength attribute, and that body size doesn't affect strength. So an ogre (whose newborn babies are 3 times the size an adult human) with 1,000 strength can only carry the same amount as a human with 1,000 strength. I've also heard that while giant creatures with clothes (like the demons that used to take over human civilizations all the time) have their clothes scaled up in thickness making just plant fiber enough to stop most weapons, they're also scaled up in weight meaning that armor will again weigh more, without any further strength increase meaning they get slowed down a lot more. Obviously with just 4 times as big cloth armor won't get to the level of demons which I think are somewhere around 100 times as big as a dwarf, it is a factor.

So to balance this all out, I'd say keep the bigger weapons, maybe give them bigger shields too that are only barely better at blocking (higher quality from fortress produced stuff would probably stop people from switching to shields from other sources) to further increase the weight, and then make armor more expensive as planned, but also bigger. So overall everything ends up bigger, and weighing more, but they don't have the strenght to handle all the weight meaning past the weapon each piece of armor's weight really matters, limiting how much can be worn. This does have problems with the armor user skill, but given that trolls are probably going to have [SLOW_LEARNER], and that early on trolls will barely be able to wear any armor, I think that armor user skill gain will be lowered enough that it would take a long time for trolls to be able to wear a full suit of armor with no penalty. Maybe even make the skill learn rate for armor user slower than 50% to really ensure this.

However that's just an idea that I think would be good, you can do whatever you think would work better given the earlier information.

[AceSV]

Actually, I'm finally arena testing the troll guys and they are getting consistently beaten by dwarves when they are using their oversized weapons, but usually win when they have dwarf sized or human sized weapons.  That's unexpected.  I might stick them with mauls and great swords then instead of giving them unique weapons, since I find too many unique weapons to be cluttersome. 

The animal which is otherwise analogous to trolls is actually known for being quite intelligent, so I'm not comfortable giving them SLOW_LEARNER. 

[Di]

FOr the ants you could make it a rare caste, but then add a reaction that turns a normal ant into a queen ant to ensure that you don't end up without one, and then there's two options for getting them to succesfully breed, I'm not sure if one of them will work. So one option could be adding in a male caste with the [PET] token and maybe can't speak though I'm not sure if that's needed that you then just make sure is near the queen all the time and since they're unintelligent and/or a [PET] (still not sure which you'd need) they just breed whenever without requiring marriage.

Yes, that's [PET] tag, I've once commenced tests on that. Was aiming for the antman civ mod as well. It didn't work out well. iirc there was some distinction between born [pet]s and bought ones. Now that we have the means of transforming creatures between castes, it might be more feasible. Though there might still be problems with personality and mandate list.

We also have very powerful dfhack these days.

[vjmdhzgr]

Actually, I'm finally arena testing the troll guys and they are getting consistently beaten by dwarves when they are using their oversized weapons, but usually win when they have dwarf sized or human sized weapons.  That's unexpected.  I might stick them with mauls and great swords then instead of giving them unique weapons, since I find too many unique weapons to be cluttersome. 

The animal which is otherwise analogous to trolls is actually known for being quite intelligent, so I'm not comfortable giving them SLOW_LEARNER.

I was talking about slow learner since vanilla trolls have slow learner. As for them losing, that's been my experience too. I'm pretty sure it's mainly because of the aforementioned weapons being really heavy, slowing them down, and in long fights which unskilled arena fights often are, meaning they use energy faster and end up getting tired very quickly. As I said in my earlier post you could just go for a bit of a simpler set of equipment, mine was trying to think of a kind of unique way of military management which would discourage armor use. I can't think of any way to say this without sounding like I'm trying to guilt you into doing what I suggested which I'm not, so if you don't want something substantially different from vanilla than I guess that'd be okay.

I would like to ask you to post the weapon raws though, there's quite a few things that could be making your weapons bad other than their weight. Like how mauls are terrible because they have 10 times the contact area of a war hammer which ends up completely negating the weight that would otherwise increase their damage.

[AceSV]

Actually, I'm finally arena testing the troll guys and they are getting consistently beaten by dwarves when they are using their oversized weapons, but usually win when they have dwarf sized or human sized weapons.  That's unexpected.  I might stick them with mauls and great swords then instead of giving them unique weapons, since I find too many unique weapons to be cluttersome. 

The animal which is otherwise analogous to trolls is actually known for being quite intelligent, so I'm not comfortable giving them SLOW_LEARNER.

I was talking about slow learner since vanilla trolls have slow learner. As for them losing, that's been my experience too. I'm pretty sure it's mainly because of the aforementioned weapons being really heavy, slowing them down, and in long fights which unskilled arena fights often are, meaning they use energy faster and end up getting tired very quickly. As I said in my earlier post you could just go for a bit of a simpler set of equipment, mine was trying to think of a kind of unique way of military management which would discourage armor use. I can't think of any way to say this without sounding like I'm trying to guilt you into doing what I suggested which I'm not, so if you don't want something substantially different from vanilla than I guess that'd be okay.

I would like to ask you to post the weapon raws though, there's quite a few things that could be making your weapons bad other than their weight. Like how mauls are terrible because they have 10 times the contact area of a war hammer which ends up completely negating the weight that would otherwise increase their damage.

Well the point of FuFo is to encourage players to play differently, so it's a valid suggestion, just not what I was expecting.  It'll take me some time to get used to the idea. 

Contact area might indeed be the culprit, as that has also been sized up.  I'm never really sure how the weapon equations work, so it's hard to tell if they are even realistic or balanced.  I didn't test all of these weapons, just hammer vs hammer and axe vs axe. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_MAMMOTH_MAUL]
[NAME:mammoth maul:mammoth mauls]
[SIZE:4800]
[SKILL:HAMMER]
[TWO_HANDED:270000]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:210000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:20]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:400:24000:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:2000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_MAMMOTH_KNUCKLE]
[NAME:mammoth knuckle:mammoth knuckles]
[SIZE:800]
[SKILL:DAGGER]
[TWO_HANDED:180000]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:180000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:4]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:80:1000:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:2000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_MAMMOTH_EDGE]
[NAME:mammoth edge:mammoth edges]
[SIZE:2800]
[SKILL:SWORD]
[TWO_HANDED:230000]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:200000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:16]
[ATTACK:EDGE:240000:24000:swing:swings:NO_SUB:1250]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:300:18000:thrust:thrusts:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_AXE_TREE_MOWER]
[NAME:tree mower:tree mower]
[SIZE:3200]
[SKILL:AXE]
[TWO_HANDED:190000]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:170000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:16]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:160000:24000:hack:hacks:NO_SUB:1250]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:400:4000:strike:strikes:pommel:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_MAMMOPULT]
[NAME:mammopult:mammopults]
[SIZE:1600]
[SKILL:WHIP]
[RANGED:BLOWGUN:WRECKING_BALL]
[SHOOT_FORCE:2000]
[SHOOT_MAXVEL:200]
[TWO_HANDED:110000]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:90000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:4]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:2:10:lash:lashes:NO_SUB:3000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:4:4]
[ATTACK_FLAG_BAD_MULTIATTACK]

[vjmdhzgr]

Well your first problem is definitely contact area. That mammoth maul is garbage. It's size is twelve times that of a war hammer and it's contact area is 40 times the contact area. It would probably be really good against undead though. The knuckle once again is 2 times the size 8 times the contact area. The tree mower is basically pushing a wall into someone with that contact area. The mammopult seems interesting. The mammoth edge might be decent because from what I've generally seen you want either small contact area for piercing armor with edged weapons, or large contact area for cutting off limbs,  and that could definitely cut off limbs though I'm not sure how well it's poke ability would go. There's also the problem of the axe being blunt which I don't understand?

If you want to keep contact areas as they are you can kind of cheat and just increase the velocity of the attacks, which also has the fun side effect of making it so they'd send enemies flying more often. I also just realized I forgot to mention when I said "that's been my experience too." I meant my experience with modding in giants that had really big weapons, but that was a long time ago and I didn't know as much about modding back then.

[AceSV]

In my brain, I was hoping to see a hammer that's as large as a dwarf and turns an entire dwarf into squish when it hits, but come to think of it, that's not how DF works anyways.

The mammopult is a sized up version of the sling, which smaller races have.  I think its melee attack was based on the whip. 

The original plan for these guys was to give them only blunt weapons, but since then I changed my mind and I'll have a different race with only blunt weapons.  I guess I forgot to change that one. 

I tried increasing their strength attribute to [PHYS_ATT_RANGE:STRENGTH:1700:2200:2400:2500:2600:2800:3500] which really lets them wreck shop with any kind of weapon.  But if restricted to leather armor, they are still easily dispatched with edged weapons. 



In other news, I've been trying to play Ant-civ with PET males and have some observations.  After 3 game years and a population of 84, I still didn't get a queen to show up, so I still don't really know if that would have worked, but one of the major annoyances I ran into is that I can't actually see the caste names in fortress mode.  So I can find a drone or a queen by checking if the game calls them "he" or "she" instead of "it", but I have no way of knowing if an ant is worker caste or soldier caste.  Also the migrant waves are odd for an ant-civ, and reinforces the feeling that I'm just trying to force the game to do something it isn't meant to do. 

So I found myself asking, What would Edgar Rice Burroughs do?  To heck with biology, let's go pulp.  How about a society where the females outnumber the males and the males are kept as pets.  The females wouldn't have any sub-castes, they'd all be capable of breeding and become workers or soldiers based on the player's decision.  Also, if the pet males can breed with the females without marriage, they might also be able to bypass the orientation checks, in which case I could make all of the females into lesbians so that they still have the bonuses of relationships. 

[Vattic]

A fair few versions back I was working on an antman mod. I used the pet trick already mentioned, but only the Queens were pets. Breeding has changed since; It will be interesting to know if it still works.

[Di]

I can't actually see the caste names in fortress mode.  So I can find a drone or a queen by checking if the game calls them "he" or "she" instead of "it", but I have no way of knowing if an ant is worker caste or soldier caste.

There was something like [caste_profession_name] last time I've checked. Some mod with diverse caste system might hold examples of that. (The old genesis mod had that. Also, ponymods.)
There are also caste description texts. (As in, description that is displayed only for a single caste.

How about a society where the females outnumber the males and the males are kept as pets.

I don't think much has changed about that since the time of my signature thread. And no, gayness is the bane of animal breeding industry, so it's unlikely that they skip orientation check.

[AceSV]

Well good news, PET males still work, I got an unmarried mother.  However that was the only mess of kids after several years and a lot of ants (80+ I think).  I think the classic problem of needing time off for lovemaking is still an issue. 

Pet Males can be assigned to burrows, squadrons or noble positions.  You cannot assign their labors, but they will work with whatever skills they happen to have.  I'm wondering if I could do something to prevent the males from working so that they just stand around and breed.  I think taking away their hands would work, but that strikes me as a bit roundabout.  Any idea if making them unintelligent would prevent them from breeding?