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[Neonivek]

There is also one HUGE reason World Gen dwarves don't harvest Adamantine.

Demons are literally endless. You might be able to fend them off, once, twice, maybe a thousand times... But eventually they would win.

[NW_Kohaku]

I dont think half the world would be unsettlable if addy wasnt on the map.

DF is a simulation, and offers a variety of conditions. Are you really going to argue that 'no adamantine' shouldnt be an option because some players are bent on finding 2 layers of shallow metal, deep metal, no aquifer, clay, and on a brook?

How many players refuse to play aquifers; probably as many who refuse to play without shallow metal, or safe water.

or, and not to trek into this, feel the need to trapspam?

I imagine that people (who can by the by turn off the magma sea) would be willing to play without adamantine everywhere.


pedit:  and you can turn off volcanoes.  and indirectly alter every other mineral but addy.

actually, im unsure if addy fluxes at all or not

Umm... You realize you just reposted a comment Toady just deleted (which doesn't strike me as particularly abiding by the wishes of Toady...) right after I already answered what you were saying, right?

You absolutely can alter the candy's appearance.  (In fact, there's a worldgen setting to just outright disable it.)

If people don't like aquifers, they just turn them off entirely, removing any need to try searching for non-aquifer land. (Again, it's a single button press on LNP.)

People want maximum minerals? There's a worldgen setting for that.

People can play without the HFS now. 

But why would they want to?

There's a reason people might want aquifers in the game, and a reason some don't.  Desire to remove HFS is so rare you apparently haven't even heard of it because there's no reason to do it at all. It's removing a game feature for no good reason, because unlike aquifers, it doesn't intrude in the rest of your gameplay until you disturb it.

Beyond that, you're assuming that the game is even meant to make candy rare. Again, people are pining for how things "used to be" in a single moment of the game in between periods when candy was ubiquitous. (It honestly reminds me of the metal rarity complaints from people who started playing only in 2010, when metals were so obscenely common the only thing stopping their spawning was there already being so many metal ores that there were no other places to put them.  People actually cried foul that metal was being limited to amounts where they couldn't make an embark-wide wall out of solid gold... when that ludicrous abundance was only ever there because a bug broke the code that was supposed to limit metal prevalence.) For all we know, it was a coding mistake that candy was ever rare at any point at all.  Obviously, a lot of coding time and effort has been put into the HFS, and it seems ludicrous that Toady would want to put a gate down that makes it so that you only have a tiny percentage chance of experiencing what has essentially been the "final boss fight" of DF's fortress mode for most of its existence.

[pisskop]

Its seems equally ludicrous that there are tubers of adamantine every city block through the whole world.

are you confirming that its possible to reduce, but not eliminate the quantity of addy from their spires?  or imcrease the amount?

pedit:
youre posting about how its possible to customize the world, butit still remains that every world tile will have spires no matter what else.

the density is currently nonnegotiable and youre arguing against customizaion because its popular to use it as the cliche climax of a fort

[NW_Kohaku]

What, exactly, is this simulation that we're trying to preserve in making HFS rare? 

Volcanoes are real things that exist in real life, and DF simulates them.  Aquifers are real, as well.  Liquids and all their properties exist as part of a simulation, whether they harm a player or are tamed by the player, because they are simply directionless forces of nature that react when interacted with. 

What does the candy simulate, exactly? It exists for one purpose: To hide a surprise.  Its valuable properties exist purely as a means of making people want it, while the point where the trap is sprung is variable solely to keep some suspense when players gather it even after their first time handling it.  These aren't inert forces that exist blind to the player's desire, these are direct plays upon the player's motivations as a means of shaping gameplay strategy, and that is gamey behavior, not simulationist behavior.

The HFS doesn't exist as a simulation.  It's a vestige of its gamier past. It exists as a temptation not for the dwarves, who mindlessly follow your orders, but for you, as a player.  It's also, again, the "final boss of the game".  It existed in 2d mode as a guaranteed killer because the game back then was about building a fort, losing it, and then making an adventurer that explored its ruins, because losing your fort is fun. (That's the reason the slogan exists - to encourage people to keep playing in a world where they had "lost", because exploring the remains and your impact upon the world after your character's deaths was supposed to be a core part of gameplay.)

Again, Toady made it possible to encounter the HFS no matter where you embarked for a reason. You're assuming it's some sort of mistake, when it really isn't.

If you want to make it random whether the game has HFS or not, why not just use DF Hack or something to randomly make either no HFS appear or HFS appear in that one world upon worldgen, which is acted upon without informing the player, because that's functionally the effect that you want to have.  After all, players are warned when they're embarking on aquifers, but there was never any warning that they wouldn't get an HFS until after they dig down and find they get no end game.

[Bumber]

If you play a 2x2 (or smaller) fort, and you don't align your embark properly, there's a chance you won't get any HFS.

Edit: It's about 31% chance of no HFS for deliberately unaligned 2x2, assuming my math is right. 75% chance of no HFS on any 1x1.

[NW_Kohaku]

I believe that the HFS was changed to be placed every second X and Y tile apart specifically so that even the smallest possible embark in the vanilla game, a 2x2 fort, could not miss an HFS.  Only if you use something like Nanofort to cheat this part of the game can you miss an HFS... Or, you know, turn HFS off in the worldgen settings.

[Bumber]

I believe that the HFS was changed to be placed every second X and Y tile apart specifically so that even the smallest possible embark in the vanilla game, a 2x2 fort, could not miss an HFS.  Only if you use something like Nanofort to cheat this part of the game can you miss an HFS... Or, you know, turn HFS off in the worldgen settings.

It's not every second X and Y. They're placed randomly in 2x2 areas, as such:

OO|OO|XO|OO
OX|XO|OO|OX
OX|XO|OO|XO
OO|OO|OX|OO

You can still miss with 2x2. You can get anywhere from 0-4 spires. 3x3 or larger is required if you're not deliberately aligning your embark.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Come the mythgen update, all things supernatural will probably have changed beyond recognition anyway. Other planes will or will not exist and be defined (hopefully in an adjustable way) according to the type of worldgen you get.

Dig too much adamantine and you might open a portal to another plane, but what the heck happens to those who harvest too greedily at cosmic eggshell fragments? Hopefully it'll be interesting enough to discuss that those ridiculous spoiler tags will be done away with forever.

--edit: 1x1 is a vanilla setting these days.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

(offtopic)

Whoa - did I insult somebody? I don't remember insulting anybody. But my post was the first to be deleted, so it presumably contained an insult. Was the scathing sarcasm too much?

(afaik, I just corrected his post to proper English rather than "tihs Stuff" so that I could read it better, and then rebuked him for not reading the previous posts by making my argument out of the previous posts.)

If it is true that I did insult somebody, I'd really rather know. I didn't feel I had done anything wrong, and if I did, I'd like to know, in order to avoid doing it again.

The problem is that it is now deleted, so I can't really review it.

[pisskop]

Now that Im off a phone I can probably attend to this a little better.

1)  Your point about being able to 'disable candy' is superfluous.  The discussion, as I understand it, is about there being spires everywhere.  And there are.  Every single city-block sized area has one.

1a)  The idea that because some players would disable aquifers, or that you can disable hell itself has nothing to do with the idea that addamantine is everywhere.  Its far from the rarest stone in the game.  And any arguement that 'players would circumvent it or refuse to play anywhere without addy' is kind of pointless, since we are talking about customization.
  And since when has 'players circumventing the game mechanics' ever been the impetus to do/not do something?


2)  Your primary response is 'LOOK AT ALL THE CUSTOMS YOU CAN DO'.  Thats not addressing that we cant alter the frequency/density of addy.

3) We also have no way of either directly oir indirectly altering the amount of admantine per spire.  To the best of my knowledge, all spires have a 2x2 hollow tube running up the middle, and the minable adamantine is that which prevent LoS into hell itself.  I asked if anybody knows if its possible to affect how much minable addy there is in general.

4)  The point about it being an unnatural occurance and thus not governable is somewhat moot, because while volcanoes and et al do exist, DF isn t a realit simulator.  Its a simulation of a high fantasy world, and within it a fortress.  You cant use the idea that its and unnatural occurence to justify not being able to change it because so far as we know it is a natural occurence.  There is no evidence within lore that they were sealed away or that some god came by and made them.  As far as we know it was always there and the world was placed on top.  Adjusting the frequency of the spires shouldnt be out of the question once we establish that it isnt some magical thing.  Its metal.  And below it is rock.

5)  Perhaps the best point youve made is that its the climax of the game, and a bait to the players.  It being 'far away' or difficult to find/get doesnt make it impossible to edit.  How many fortresses actually bother piercing the third cavern?  In the base game, zero of the ai forts do.  Theres a whoel wasted cavern added for exclusive player benefit, and all of it is customizable.  You can choose the plants and animals.  You may not be able to do so for the hellspawn, but we arent asking to.

6)  The best arguement I can see for not being able to is that it would be a time-consuming task to code it.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

The solution is to make it an option. Personally, I think that while d_init may be more permanent and thus easy to set once, advanced worldgen options would be a better place. Just have it be [ADAMANTINE:NO], [ADAMANTINE:EVERYWHERE], or [ADAMANTINE:RARE]. Maybe even [ADAMANTINE:RARE:23] where 100 is the current setting. Then every time a spire would be generated, it would have a 23% chance of actually being placed.

[NW_Kohaku]

Now that Im off a phone I can probably attend to this a little better.

1)  Your point about being able to 'disable candy' is superfluous.  The discussion, as I understand it, is about there being spires everywhere.  And there are.  Every single city-block sized area has one.

1a)  The idea that because some players would disable aquifers, or that you can disable hell itself has nothing to do with the idea that addamantine is everywhere.  Its far from the rarest stone in the game.  And any arguement that 'players would circumvent it or refuse to play anywhere without addy' is kind of pointless, since we are talking about customization.
  And since when has 'players circumventing the game mechanics' ever been the impetus to do/not do something?


2)  Your primary response is 'LOOK AT ALL THE CUSTOMS YOU CAN DO'.  Thats not addressing that we cant alter the frequency/density of addy.

3) We also have no way of either directly oir indirectly altering the amount of admantine per spire.  To the best of my knowledge, all spires have a 2x2 hollow tube running up the middle, and the minable adamantine is that which prevent LoS into hell itself.  I asked if anybody knows if its possible to affect how much minable addy there is in general.

At best, this argues for another worldgen setting for HFS density. I'm not averse to another worldgen option, but that's not a good argument for anything else, especially not trying to change what is supposed to be a basic aspect of the game many players enjoy just fine the way it is now.

But this still fails the most basic question, why would anyone want this at all?  At best, all it does is randomly deny players the chance to have an end game, when they already can simply choose to postpone the endgame indefinitely, and only tackle it at the time of their own choosing (or if they get too greedy).

4)  The point about it being an unnatural occurance and thus not governable is somewhat moot, because while volcanoes and et al do exist, DF isn t a realit simulator.  Its a simulation of a high fantasy world, and within it a fortress.  You cant use the idea that its and unnatural occurence to justify not being able to change it because so far as we know it is a natural occurence.  There is no evidence within lore that they were sealed away or that some god came by and made them.  As far as we know it was always there and the world was placed on top.  Adjusting the frequency of the spires shouldnt be out of the question once we establish that it isnt some magical thing.  Its metal.  And below it is rock.

This completely misses the point of the argument I made.

Water does not really exist for game reasons, it exists for simulation reasons. It's just there, or not there, based upon simulations of natural topography.  Volcanoes are the same. 

Magma seas exist mainly for gamey reasons - they are much shallower than they should be and it's possible for dwarves to easily mine down to them because players enjoy being able to have ready access to magma.  There is no good simulationist sense in them.

Dwarves stay awake and go without food and drink for months at a time not because this simulates any aspect of dwarven life, but because there's no other way to simulate the massively accelerated timescale that fortress mode operates upon... which is also not a simulation, but a gamey deviation from simulation to make a game that is supposed to last a game decade or more fit within a reasonable timescale.

It's one of those basic skills in understanding games to recognize when there are necessary breaks from reality to accommodate a game, no matter how simulationist it may generally strive to be.

The same applies to HFS.  What, exactly, is being simulated?  This isn't some sort of hypothetical 'what if' scenario, we're not simulating a hypothetical ecosystem based upon magical energy sources by placing HFS down there, it exists purely for the purpose of creating an end game scenario. 

Arguing simluationism for a mechanic that does not exist for simulationist reasons is like arguing that passenger planes would be able to fly a lot faster if they got rid of all the cargo space and passenger seats.  It's completely ignoring the purpose of the thing to achieve some irrelevant side-goal.

5)  Perhaps the best point youve made is that its the climax of the game, and a bait to the players.  It being 'far away' or difficult to find/get doesnt make it impossible to edit.  How many fortresses actually bother piercing the third cavern?  In the base game, zero of the ai forts do.  Theres a whoel wasted cavern added for exclusive player benefit, and all of it is customizable.  You can choose the plants and animals.  You may not be able to do so for the hellspawn, but we arent asking to.

Funny how my "best point" was also "my primary argument" and happens to get buried down here near the end...

If the argument started as "why doesn't anybody but the player use all this candy lying around in the third cavern" and you then complain that nobody but the player goes to the third cavern, haven't you already answered the main argument this whole thread was trying to ride upon, outside of presuming that v0.28.x was somehow "the definitive Dwarf Fortress, nevermind the versions that came on either side of it."

There is, again, not even a valid simulationist reason for asking for this change. 

There is not a valid game reason to ask for this change. 

There is no valid reason for this change.

6)  The best arguement I can see for not being able to is that it would be a time-consuming task to code it.

That's a statement limited to your own personal biases.

I still have yet to see a single valid reason why Toady should bother. 

Once again, claiming "simulationism" is not a good reason because it is not a valid measure of a gamey feature.

[helmacon]

*off topic

This isn't some sort of hypothetical 'what if' scenario, we're not simulating a hypothetical ecosystem based upon magical energy sources by placing HFS down there,

I googled magic ecosystem simulation and got rather disappointing results.

...I'm going to go mod my creature simulator now.

[NW_Kohaku]

I googled magic ecosystem simulation and got rather disappointing results.

Actually, that was just my throwdown example of simulationism of a fictional system because I've discussed it at length before.

[gchristopher]

3) We also have no way of either directly oir indirectly altering the amount of admantine per spire.  To the best of my knowledge, all spires have a 2x2 hollow tube running up the middle, and the minable adamantine is that which prevent LoS into hell itself.  I asked if anybody knows if its possible to affect how much minable addy there is in general.

It's accessible and can be modified through dfhack. Spires, (formerly) fortresses, underground shafts, etc, are all collected together as map "features" in a structure that records their details and whether you've discovered them. It's not too hard to modify an embark to have adamantine in every square, or not at all. IIRC, spire height is also in there.

If you really have a fetish for adamantine-free embarks, just go ask for help over at the DFHack thread or modding forum.

This request seems to fall into that category (fetish for really different embark than most people like). I'm the same way, I always mess with embark elevations and change a soil layer to Black Sand (not white or red, those sands are for losers) and hack in some potato seeds so the dwarves can all drink vodka.

The game can already accommodate us weirdos who want particular embarks, thanks to the excellent player-made tools. And it's possible without needing to change the game just because you want things like a 12-layer aquifer, 5 waterfalls and 9 biomes on one map, gigantic adamantine spires, or no spires at all.