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Author Topic: Xenosynthesis and magic fields  (Read 50100 times)

NW_Kohaku

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Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« on: February 04, 2011, 02:02:27 pm »

So, I have been working on making a revised Improved Farming thread, reformatted so that the proposal is better-formatted and more easily readable.  In spite of these efforts, however, I haven't been getting many takers on people willing to read through the argument and comment.  I am having trouble coming up with exactly what people would be comfortable with in regards to magical plantlife being a basis of farming, and as such, I'm making another sub-issue spin-off thread.  Basically, I'm throwing the idea out on its own, and seeing what explodes.

The major problem I have is bridging the problem of magic and science.  Generally speaking, the corollary to Clarke's law would state that magic is just science you don't understand. However, many players and Toady himself, to an extent, have stated a desire for less predictable magic.  When working on the Improved Farming thread, however, I think I have hit upon an idea to make a system where magic operates on something rational enough that it isn't just a random roll against a chart of pre-scripted magical events, yet also isn't something that turns into a "magic industry" where magical stuff just rolls off of assembly lines - that is, turning magic into an energy source for a "xenosynthetic" ecosystem, modeled in some ways on the chemosynthetic life forms from black smoker vents.  Magic exists as a static charge of energy created by certain events, creatures, or possibly artifacts or other items on the map.  Living organisms attuned to that form of magic can use their xenosynthetic abilities to use that as an energy/"food" source, living off the magic energy field, yet at the same time, exhausting the ultimately finite energy sources. 

This finiteness is a key aspect of the idea - like with real ecosystems, it drives competition, and sets the ultimate limits on what these creatures or systems built off these creatures can accomplish.

To keep the background as minimal as possible, in the Improved Farming thread, there has been plenty of discussion over how to make a more compelling, realistic, involved, yet not overwhelming farming experience for players of DF whose complexity is not as front-loaded as current farming is, but makes farming simple at first, yet progressively more complex.  To this end, the thread has evolved towards simulating whole ecosystems, rather than just farm plots, and blurring the lines between a farm plot and the wilderness. 

In trying to create this ecosystem, however, the problem of underground ecosystems comes up - they obviously do not rely upon sunlight as their energy source, but upon some sort of magical source.  Yes, it really does have to be a magical source of energy, as there is no hard science way of explaining floating guts or flying heads or amethyst men or purple worm grass or the other crazy things in the deeps without magic.  It actually makes less sense to have a magical energy source that lets those magical monsters live, but the ever-more competitive world of plantlife actually doesn't have some sort of magical source of energy feeding the ecosystem.

I'll just throw out the most relevant things put out about this in the IF thread, however, there were also a couple other threads that are spiritual predecessors to this, this one on the HFS, and also continued in another one I started on making physical gods.:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So then, my question to all the players out there is to weigh in on this sort of mechanic - a mechanic where you could invisibly impact the magical energy levels of the map, and the only way to really tell that you are doing it may be to just look and see if plants or vermin or even larger creatures of that sphere start popping up with greater and greater frequency. 

Things like having too much magma sphere in the area might start causing magma men to start appearing in the mamga tubes with greater frequency, eventually leading to some dwarves to start actually being taken over by magma spirits and becoming magma men, themselves, if you do nothing to stop the trend.

Extra Credit problem: Look at the spheres already in the game, and try to come up with ways in which these can actually manage to have impacts in-game.  That means both "what sort of life forms they create", and "how the spheres gain dominance in an area."
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Kogan Loloklam

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2011, 02:24:29 pm »

For the sake of giving you an answer...

Old hat, so, TL:DR.
It's all been revisited and revisited and revisited again.

Not that I am not confident your suggestions would improve farming, just that it isn't a novelty anymore, so it's hard to focus the attention it deserves on it.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2011, 02:26:52 pm »

I guess I could be a little more specific, though, in what I'm asking for...

For starters, "I don't like it" isn't sufficient, you need to say a "why you don't like it".

Also, in the case of people like Kogan, you could help by linking back to what you might consider your definitive answers to the question.

EDIT: And to be more specific about what I really mean (quoting a few things probably didn't help much), this is about making a player-alterable, yet not controllable magic-based ecosystem, whose magic is based upon what the eventual magic system Toady has been kicking around will eventually be.  The idea being that magic-based creatures are specific to certain kinds of magic, and flourish when their specific flavor of magic is common (like with evil and good biomes now). 

The difference between this and what came before being that the balance of the ecosystem can be altered through its finite boundaries and mechanisms, letting you gradually shift what kind of biome it is if you meddle in the ecosystem enough, intentionally or unintentionally.  (That is, you can turn the land into an evil biome.)  This not being a direct consequence of any one action, but the gradual accrual of various factors that may or may not be in your control.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2011, 02:35:36 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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Sphalerite

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2011, 02:47:37 pm »

I like the idea that the activities you perform in your fortress can shift the local environment by changing the strength of the local spheres.  For example, crushing immigrants by the dozen under a drawbridge should have the effect of turning the local region Evil or Death-oriented over time.  Dumping magma on the surface repeatedly could well cause more plants and animals associated with Fire or Magma spheres to show up, and building hundreds of gem-studded golden statues and placing them around your fortress could increase the strength of the local Wealth sphere.  Cover every square of your fortress with masterwork engraving, and the area will become a focus for the sphere of Art.  It would be a bit like that old game Black & White, where your actions as a god would actually be over time reflected in the look of the landscape, except with a lot more than just a single morality axis.

To make this work Toady would need to code specific actions to be associated with specific spheres, and keep a running track over time of how much of each sphere's action had been done.  He'd also need to have specific plants and animals for each sphere.  That's not a big deal, the beginning of that is already in place with the GOOD and EVIL tags.  There could also be specific events that are triggered if the score for a specific sphere gets high enough.

I think it would be a neat feature.  Don't know if Toady has any interest in it.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2011, 03:37:43 pm »

Well, I seem to remember something about Toady wanting sphere-based magic systems that were procedurally generated, but can't find specific quotes from him that really illuminate much.

Looking back over all the loads and loads of arguments on magic is just depressing a giant, depressing bog, though. 

I'm hoping that this could somehow thread the needle between the random magic and the scientific magic crowds, instead of becoming another slog through people trying to argue about what the other people really want.

Currently, we have magic creatures with just no rationale behind how they work, other than just because that's what the raws or hardcoding says it should do.  If we are going to make a full model of this created world, it needs to have some sort of at least magical logic behind how some of these things happen.  Having just pure depth in the cavern systems alone making the area "more magical" is at least something of a start, especially if we can then start doing things like having specific depths that certain plants need to be at to start growing, however, I think the notion of an "underground magic climate" where different types of caves form based upon some sort of biome condition which players can only vaguely manipulate (other than just settling elsewhere) would make the game much more varied and interesting.
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Black_Legion

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2011, 04:17:58 pm »

I like the idea that the activities you perform in your fortress can shift the local environment by changing the strength of the local spheres.  For example, crushing immigrants by the dozen under a drawbridge should have the effect of turning the local region Evil or Death-oriented over time.  Dumping magma on the surface repeatedly could well cause more plants and animals associated with Fire or Magma spheres to show up, and building hundreds of gem-studded golden statues and placing them around your fortress could increase the strength of the local Wealth sphere.  Cover every square of your fortress with masterwork engraving, and the area will become a focus for the sphere of Art.  It would be a bit like that old game Black & White, where your actions as a god would actually be over time reflected in the look of the landscape, except with a lot more than just a single morality axis.

To make this work Toady would need to code specific actions to be associated with specific spheres, and keep a running track over time of how much of each sphere's action had been done.  He'd also need to have specific plants and animals for each sphere.  That's not a big deal, the beginning of that is already in place with the GOOD and EVIL tags.  There could also be specific events that are triggered if the score for a specific sphere gets high enough.

I think it would be a neat feature.  Don't know if Toady has any interest in it.

Especially with mods like http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=d5e7ee9887d327c93b563e96d19a1f7c&topic=76451.0 this could be a real possibility if we are given tokens that identify what sphere animals and plants belong to. Essentially if you have a Boatmurdered or Ardentdikes scenario you could see blooms of magma ferns, coal weed, ect. begin to cover your map along with the rise of certain wildlife like magma crabs or rock life wildlife. This I believe would add a nice sense of impact and importance to the way you design your fortress and I think this is well in line with what Toady stated he wanted to do with more random and unique creatures and plants.

 As to causing your own dwarfs to take on certain traits due to your tinkering with the spheres I think "less is more" should be taken into consideration. Say your abuse of magma leads to your dwarfs slowly developing harder, rock-like skin if they were born and raised in the fortress or gaining cosmetic traits like eyes that glow like a forge or an aura of heat would be more appealing to me rather than having your dorfs turn into magma men. I think that by keeping dwarves similar to the way they are but giving them quirks such as those above give the playing a better sense of connection with his fortress' inhabitants, like they are becoming one with the location they inhabit. Drastic changes like turning them into walking blobs of magma, while intriguing seems like it would be too much of a drastic change for dwarfs themselves. If this is used for ghost then this seems like it would fit well as it seems appropriate that the spirits of the dead would be more drastically effected by the sphere-alignment of an area. Being haunted by a murderous spirit composed of magma and iron seems highly appropriate to dwarf fortress. Other spheres could have notably different effects such with regards to possible benefits or traits you could induce on your dwarfs.

Think of a a Death-aligned fortress having emaciated, hollow eyed workers that toil untiringly under semi-undead overseers with eyes burn and smolder with blue corpse-fire. These ghastly nobles send  gaunt, pale soldiers that attack the enemies of the fortress with slow, purposeful attacks all the while shrugging off  grievous injuries that would fell other creatures as the restless spirits of those that have . Here is a good example that incorporates cosmetic quirks and actual in-game benefits that could affect your dwarves should the your fort become a living embodiment off death. Your dwarfs diet could subsist of the hoards of skull nettles and corpse blossoms that have since taken over the landscape. Taken far enough your dwarves could even take a penchant for cannibalism furthering the feel that your fortress has become the living embodiment of death on earth. These changes would all take place over a sequence of years, anywhere from 5 to 10 years, encouraging the player to invest in aligning their fortress. Specific constructions such as shrines and monuments could help speed up this process of conversion.

Simply put I like this idea and given enough options this could lead players to have very unique and intriguing forts, especially if you consider allowing the possibility for a major and minor sphere to affect the landscape.
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zephyr_hound

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2011, 04:33:06 pm »

DISCLAIMER: I'm sleepy right now so this might not make much sense :S

My first reaction to this was "no thanks", but then I read it through again and started thinking harder about the implications. I do, cautiously, like the idea of having something like this in vanilla DF. Sphalerite's suggestion especially seems like it might be a sensible solution to the magic issue. At the moment we have good, neutral and evil biomes, what if that system was nixed and a number of new sphere variables are created which produce another level to the "map" in worldgen? Tie evil areas to titan shrines or lairs, have a "magma" sphere associated with volcano/open/close to surface lava, etc. And then tie that to actions in fortress mode. The formation of a dwarven ghost would bump up the "evil" variable a large amount; multiple ghosts and you'd start seeing skeletal/zombie creatures and things like foul blendecs appearing in what had been a good biome when you embarked. Forts that rely on magma traps a lot would find fire imps and magma crabs starting to spawn on the surface and causing fun in their booze stockpiles. I would LOVE to see something harking back to 23a in the sense that if you start digging wells and having water channels everywhere for fountains and waterfalls and drowning traps, you develop a risk of finding frogmen or giant toads in unexpected places.

I guess then we'd have "mundane" as a sort of default setting, which means forts embarked in non-variant terrain will see creatures like giant bats/giant olms/cave crocs in their caverns and groundhogs/foxes/deer above ground. As the fort grows and evolves, you start seeing stranger creatures depending on which sphere values are being encouraged. It could be another way to make longer-lasting forts more interesting, since at the moment you basically get big enough to fend off sieges and either eventually fall to a FB disease or simple FPS drop. And let the influence expand across the worldmap with the age of your fort. Imagine if your fort can genuinely become a blot of scorched evil corrupting the landscape like those old Boatmurdered jokes--or a vale of happy sunshiny fun and gambolling unicorns when you encourage the elves instead of magma-drowning them :P



Regarding farming, I would also be interested in a way to make different crops have real and unavoidable terrain requirements. We should not be able to grow strawberries outside in a year-round frozen tundra--yet I can. I'd like to see crops that have environmental requirements, and you simply cannot grow them without it--i.e. those wild strawberries need warmth and light, so either you can build them a (real) greenhouse to keep the snow off them, or concoct some sort of magma heating system.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2011, 05:09:11 pm »

Well, the "your dwarves turn into magma men" example is for the most drastic impact of a system you let go completely out of control.  Sort of like how letting enough dwarves get unhappy enough will lead to the most drastic situation of a tantrum spiral just waiting to go off when the first guy snaps.  The point should be that you can recognize that all of a sudden, fire berries are growing inside the fortress hallways instead of just outside, and dwarves are spontaniously catching fire without actually being burned, and think that just maybe you should tamp down on the rampant magma sphere power growth before your whole fortress gets consumed.

The idea being that, in the same vein as many other features of DF, such as water pressure or magma or cotton candy, there's a drastic, often massively fatal consequence for not learning to respect what you are messing with, and building around those constraints. 

The difference being that you can immediately see what happens when you mess with water pressure.  This would be more long-term and involve environmental clues.

I do like the idea of increasingly skeletal dwarves, though.  Especially in conjunction with some of the farming practices we have been talking about...

"Three months ago, Urist died.  I knew him. Two months ago, we took the reclaimed soil from his body from the worms, and spread it in the fields.  Yesterday, the corpse blossoms were harvested.  Today, I minced the corpse blossoms and made a roast.  I was praised for the "masterwork" quality of the roast.  I took a sample.  Urist tasted good." - Diary of a FellTowers cook.

Part of the point is, however, that you generally don't want it to get too easy to manipulate.  If massive amounts of death change the magical atmosphere of the zone, then you have only partial control over "things not dying".  Of course, things die all the time, it's just part of life, so I don't think we could really make merely lots of dead things cause biome changes (although maybe death in warfare or from obviously horrific things like burning to death might cause changes,) and maybe there can be something to do with proper respect for the dead (memorial slabs, even for enemies, and maybe a festival/party declared just for the dead, a Halloween type thing to appease the dead) that could counteract it.

I would like to see player actions have an impact, but not give players easy, overt control over their environments.  At the same time, I don't want to see a sort of natural entropy where every fortress becomes a rotting graveyard after 4 years because of all the siegers and random cavern stuff you repelled.  It needs to have some counteracting balance.

Of course, if you WANT to become a Boatmurdered-esque blight upon all that is right and just in the world, then you could certainly go about trying to torture all the creatures you find and desicrating all the bodies you want.  We already have "Eviler Than Thou" contests in the DF forums, anyway.  More to the point, however, is that part of what I want to make in the Improved Farming section is a notion that you can exploit the land only to a certain point before the backlash becomes too great.  Trying to over-plant an invasive crop brings on Irish Potato Famine-like tragedy when the diseases that kept those plant populations in check finally catch up to the crop.  Trying to have too much fun with the magic system causes all kinds of calamity to rain upon you.
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Sphalerite

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2011, 06:19:41 pm »

Having a sphere becoming more powerful shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, either.  If you should somehow manage to bring the sphere of Healing to powerful local instance, it should have effects like making your dwarves heal injuries faster and never get infections.  A strong influence of the sphere of Food should increase the quality of what your kitchens produce, and cause food not in a stockpile to last longer without rotting.  The sphere of Scholarship should make your dwarves learn faster, and forget their skills more slowly.  It shouldn't be easy to bring these spheres into local power, but the rewards should be worth it.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #9 on: February 04, 2011, 06:34:54 pm »

Just for fun, I decided to throw that chart of spheres onto a spreadsheet, and use the RAND() function to pick a few to think about.

First up is 45, which is... "Generosity"... Well, damn. 

OK, OK, so "generous" plants are plants that, I guess, are more fruitful.  Perhaps those spheres foster greater cooperation (and altruism in the biological, not moral sense) rather than competition in the ecosystem.  I guess that we could have something like flowers that give out nectar to bees and even dwarves in copious amounts, fairly easily, and maybe there could be, I don't know, a type of animal that maybe behaves like a domestic chicken, even when wild, such that it leaves food behind on the ground you just have to go pick up.  Ecosystems like this would be pretty fragile, and anyone strangling the golden goose would see it dry up pretty fast.  I guess "generosity" sphere-generating activities would entail things like NOT murdering the elves for their stupid caravans of nothing but rope reed thongs and sandals, and maybe even just plain giving away all the crazy crap sitting in your trade depot you don't need.  Maybe when we get the caravan arc, and there are famines in the world, trading favorably to those people could get you "generosity points".

... *shudder* I feel all soft and elfy just for considering such undwarfy things.  Where's my mermaid baby soap?  I need to wash off some of these unclean feelings.

OK, another spin of the wheel, and... "Mountains"

Easy one, really.  Anything with a high elevation should be "mountains"... or should it be coming from the inside of the mountain? I wonder if "unnatural" mountains count, so we could make a pyramid, and that counts?  Anyway, there are already mountain-type creatures, like Giant Eagles and Harpies.  We just need some sort of mountain-plants to go with them, and we really don't have those, do we?  I could see some of those scraggly pines that you always see in Japanese silk-screen paintings, but I'm not sure of much agriculture that takes place on mountains that aren't terraced into rice paddies.  Actually, maybe some rare mountain herbs?  A flower that only grows at extreme elevations, but is a cure for some syndrome that is otherwise fatal?  Adventurers have to go out to find the rare flower at the top of the highest peaks, but to get there, it's covered in tengu or something.

Next roll... "Darkness". 

I think this would call for lighting to actually be implimented to make sense.  Making your dwarves live without torches, killing bioluminescent flora and fauna, and of course evading that horrid sun, could do that.  Maybe shadow fruits or something could exist.  Eating them makes you start having altered dreams... You start getting all stretchy and insubstantial.  Light starts to actually hurt the cave-adapted.  Shadow monsters and even bogeymen might come out. 
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Darvi

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #10 on: February 04, 2011, 06:39:03 pm »

Next roll... "Darkness". 

I think this would call for lighting to actually be implimented to make sense.  Making your dwarves live without torches, killing bioluminescent flora and fauna, and of course evading that horrid sun, could do that.  Maybe shadow fruits or something could exist.  Eating them makes you start having altered dreams... You start getting all stretchy and insubstantial.  Light starts to actually hurt the cave-adapted.  Shadow monsters and even bogeymen might come out.
Grues *rimshot*

*Rollin' some dice*
In which file of the raws do I find the Spheres? Don't wanna waste my time looking.

edit:never mind, checked the wiki.

37: Fish

That's easy. More fish if the sphere's more influential. Dunno if fishing increases or decreases the influence, though.

53:Justice

Blah. Build prison cells and appoint a Hammerer. I guess  that sphere makes sure that criminals don't get killed by hammering, maybe?

65: Marriage

Yeah, more marriages increases the influence of this sphere. I guess this makes dorfs even happier if they're married.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2011, 06:46:14 pm by Darvi »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #11 on: February 04, 2011, 06:57:21 pm »

Part of the point, though, is how it would impact the ecosystem - what sort of plants, vermin, and animals grow in a "Justice"-dominated area?
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jseah

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #12 on: February 04, 2011, 07:02:12 pm »

Adding to the water pressure idea, you want some systems that have harsh consequences. 
I think the many ways your fort can go poof because of one minor mistake with catastrophic consequences is a signature element of DF. 
Forget farm = starve; forget water pressure = flood; wire pump wrongly = fail to stop magma-ing the world

Likewise, I propose that magic spheres have positive feedback. 

1. Plants and creatures that are sphere aligned reinforce the sphere
Sunberries use the good sphere energy in a particular embark tile.  They also generate good sphere energy while they're alive, exactly equal to the amount they used throughout their average lifespan.  Unicorns eat them, and also generate good sphere energy.  Hence, when a place is good-aligned, it tends to stay that way. 

If this energy is tracked along embark tiles and separated by rock, that should be enough detail.  Just a number for each embark tile detailing the amount of sphere energy in each tile.  Different spheres should coexist as well, without opposing influences, evil does not subtract from good, but the way they change the biome does pull in opposite directions. 

Importantly, you need some way to detect if the cavern levels/surface get connected by too open a pit or too many small holes.  Then you can bleed sphere energy from one into the other. 

This feedback system would also ensure that you either balance the spheres or you live with the consequences. 
Despite my liking for the immediately lethal stuff DF has, in some cases, you should be allowed to continue with the fort.  Magma sphere going wild would kill dwarves pretty quick but good or wealth spheres shouldn't. 
At the same time, you don't want to polarize the game into "spheres that are good to have" and "spheres you avoid".  Each sphere should bring it's own advantages and it's own problems. 

Nature and good spheres could result in too many unicorns and elves moving in.  If that wasn't bad enough, plants might start breaking down your walls to "return them to the earth". 
Magma spheres could give your dwarves fire resistance and in extremes, burn everything slowly, which your dwarves survive better.  At the same time, you still have to treat an immense amount of tiny burns.  And deal with traders frying on map entry. 
Wealth spheres could lead to dwarves stealing from each other, or working themselves to the bone to earn more wealth.  Nobles get too uppity with mandate demands (platinum statue x10) and everyone's room quality expectations rise. 

So yes, make the consequences balanced, make the spheres compete to terraform the area.  And by terraforming, they impose their consequence.  What the player makes of it, weaponized, industrialized or otherwise, is up to us. 

2. Spheres do not oppose each other in principle, only in practice
Magma sphere plants raise temperature around them (adding to the magma and fire spheres) and lime the soil.  While Nature sphere plants grow best in nitrogen rich, temperate and are nitro fixers.  Evil sphere use massive amounts of nutrients and require extremely nutrient poor conditions, but are worth crap and have poor yield.  Good spheres only grow in nutrient rich and use comparatively little and have best qualities. 

Sphere aligned plants might carry syndromes that align things that eat them towards that sphere.  Evil plants could emacipate things that eat them, mainly through poor diet.  In extremes, a rare evil plant could carry a zombify syndrome, animals and dwarves that eat it rise as zombies or skeletons when they die. 
Magma plants raise the body temperature, which could be fatal in strong doses.  Or required by fire bees to maintain body temperature. 
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Darvi

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2011, 07:05:24 pm »

I'd guess the biome will become less wild. Marriage totally isn't an ecosystem thing though. Doesn't mean that it can't happen though, since the dwarven civilization could also be seen as part of the ecosystem. Or maybe I'm just overthinking things.

edit: effing ninja
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optimumtact

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #14 on: February 04, 2011, 07:07:40 pm »

Rolling for Science :)

Hmm Freedom, this is an interesting one, I'm immediately thinking about animals that are free in that they roam more or travel more, perhaps migratory animals or the animals in the are moving a lot more, plants are more difficult as freedom is a rather abstract concept, I can't really think of any that fit well. Perhaps the plants will be less likely to have any costs associated with their use (i.e no disease or poisonous crops). This could have an effect on the dwarves as well, with dwarves being more likely to share items with each other and items could cost less. Freedom could be increased by any number of things, allowing animals to migrate across maps without hunting/killing them, letting dwarves throw parties and other events more often, allowing dwarves things like their own beds/rooms.

Also I think there's also the possibility that the sphere system could be linked to the experience gain of dwarves, for example, in a justice dominated sphere dwarves might gain experience in justice related skills, like Leader/Observer/Judge of Intent faster. This opens up the possibility's of your dwarves also adapting in other ways then just appearance. ( I know that those three skills are not super useful but there is potential for other skills to be built into the game that relate to justice, like having good judges for crimes and the like.)
Logged
alternately, I could just take some LSD or something...
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