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[SuaveChinchillaMan]

Hey, so I've got a modding quandry: Is there any way for syndromes, or any other effect to erase a creatures memories once it comes into effect, so that the creature doesn't hold a drug? Basically, so you can have something like a mind control spell, or a mutant virus that transforms or affects the creature, and also makes it no longer want to attack whatever had attack it in the past? Or could this only be don with weird DFHack/ lua script fuckery?

[Tachytaenius]

Definitely-- as far as I'm aware-- the realm of DFHack and Lua. But that's a good thing to work in! Just say "DFHack required" on your mod and put scripts inside the mod zip as DFHack lets you (the modding guide shows you how).
You can set a function to run when a unit is infected with a syndrome. That function can do whatever you want to the unit/histfig, like clearing vectors related to memories (which you can see with the gui/gm-editor script). See onSyndrome here: https://docs.dfhack.org/en/latest/docs/dev/Lua%20API.html#list-of-events
And see the guide I wrote with myk a while ago: https://docs.dfhack.org/en/50.14-r1/docs/guides/modding-guide.html
And of course, try the DFHack discord to learn specifics. In fact, that's what I'd really encourage you to do. It's not really doable to just explain everything you could possibly need in a forum post, at least for me. All that is unless for some reason DFHack is outside the realm of things you want to work in?

[SuaveChinchillaMan]

Definitely-- as far as I'm aware-- the realm of DFHack and Lua. But that's a good thing to work in! Just say "DFHack required" on your mod and put scripts inside the mod zip as DFHack lets you (the modding guide shows you how).
You can set a function to run when a unit is infected with a syndrome. That function can do whatever you want to the unit/histfig, like clearing vectors related to memories (which you can see with the gui/gm-editor script). See onSyndrome here: https://docs.dfhack.org/en/latest/docs/dev/Lua%20API.html#list-of-events
And see the guide I wrote with myk a while ago: https://docs.dfhack.org/en/50.14-r1/docs/guides/modding-guide.html
And of course, try the DFHack discord to learn specifics. In fact, that's what I'd really encourage you to do. It's not really doable to just explain everything you could possibly need in a forum post, at least for me. All that is unless for some reason DFHack is outside the realm of things you want to work in?

Underrated reply.

[joostheger]

You could try something affecting it's mental attributes. There is an attribute called 'Memory'. using syndromes you can affect stuff like this.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Attribute#Soul_attributes
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Creature_token#MENT_ATT_RATES

Maybe if you set the creatures memory-capacity to 0, it might forget everything it knows. Worth a try.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Syndrome#CE_MENT_ATT_CHANGE

[Tachytaenius]

You could try something affecting it's mental attributes. There is an attribute called 'Memory'. using syndromes you can affect stuff like this.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Attribute#Soul_attributes
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Creature_token#MENT_ATT_RATES

Maybe if you set the creatures memory-capacity to 0, it might forget everything it knows. Worth a try.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Syndrome#CE_MENT_ATT_CHANGE

Doubtful that will work—I had a hermit scholar whose attributes I didn't control. I believe her memory went to zero (or at least near zero) after a few centuries but I could still see she was having thoughts and all that. Worth a try regardless.
Besides, how will you make them forget poetic forms, relationships, scholarly knowledge, etc?

[SuaveChinchillaMan]

You could try something affecting it's mental attributes. There is an attribute called 'Memory'. using syndromes you can affect stuff like this.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Attribute#Soul_attributes
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Creature_token#MENT_ATT_RATES

Maybe if you set the creatures memory-capacity to 0, it might forget everything it knows. Worth a try.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Syndrome#CE_MENT_ATT_CHANGE

I will give it a shot! Although, I will say, that I was under the impression that "memories" were purely a way of creatures to remember certain emotional thoughts they have had in the past, and have little to do with whether a creature has "tagged" another creature as having attacked it at somepoint in the past, and therefore permanently being an enemy.

[SuaveChinchillaMan]

You could try something affecting it's mental attributes. There is an attribute called 'Memory'. using syndromes you can affect stuff like this.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Attribute#Soul_attributes
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Creature_token#MENT_ATT_RATES

Maybe if you set the creatures memory-capacity to 0, it might forget everything it knows. Worth a try.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Syndrome#CE_MENT_ATT_CHANGE

So, modifying their memory value to zero doesn't
t work,  I don't think. I've messed around with it quite a bit.
Yeah, affecting memory doesn't really do anything. So far, I haven't had too much luck, although if you can interupt the current combat actions of all the combatants sometime using dfhack and typing

gui/gm-edit world.activities.all

And editting the conflict levels for all nearby conflicts to -1 or 0 will sometimes work.

Doubtful that will work—I had a hermit scholar whose attributes I didn't control. I believe her memory went to zero (or at least near zero) after a few centuries but I could still see she was having thoughts and all that. Worth a try regardless.
Besides, how will you make them forget poetic forms, relationships, scholarly knowledge, etc?

[SuaveChinchillaMan]

So, messing around with how much memory someone has doesn't really help much. I've tried quite a bit, and it doesn't seem to keep them from continueing to attack someone, or to forget they were attacked later.

[joostheger]

What exactly is your scenario here? I had once a species that i wanted to brawl among eachother. But what i didn't know, is that unintelligent beings dont brawl, they just fight to the end. Or flee, but either way, they never make peace. By making them intelligent, they know when to stop: when their enemy flees.

So, instead of focussing on memory, maybe there's another way.

Are these enemies OPPOSED_TO_LIVE? are they animals? are they of an opposing faction?

[SuaveChinchillaMan]

What exactly is your scenario here? I had once a species that i wanted to brawl among eachother. But what i didn't know, is that unintelligent beings dont brawl, they just fight to the end. Or flee, but either way, they never make peace. By making them intelligent, they know when to stop: when their enemy flees.

So, instead of focussing on memory, maybe there's another way.

Are these enemies OPPOSED_TO_LIVE? are they animals? are they of an opposing faction?

This could apply to anything that you want to forget that it was ever in conflict with another creature. If I am not mistaken, creatures remember who has attacked them in the past, I think using Hist Fig data. The problems this causes in-game is that various night creatures that retain hist fig memories will fight each other when it would be ideal that they did not. For instance, if someone with an "Infected Thrall" type sydrome (that kind which is transmitted by fluids I think) infects another person, even after that person is transformed into a thrall, since they still have all the same character data, they remember that that person attacked them and stay permanently aggressive to the infector, even though they are now Opposed to Life as well. And if you have ever visited a necromancer tower, you may have noticed that the intelligent undead often break into infighting as soon as you arrive, either because they retain some kind of faction/civ data from their previous lives, or because one attacked the other in worldgen. There's also a lot of irritating bullshit involving were-beasts.

In any case, it would be really cool to be able to somehow have a syndrome, tag, or something that activates a script that causes other creatures with said tag to NEVER be aggressive to them, even if their character data says they should be. This would be great for zombie-plague scenarios, or raising intelligent undead lieutenants in fortress mode, and would have broad modding applications. But I just don't have the knowledge of the games inner workings or DFhack script writing to know how to do this. At least, not without a lot of help.