Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 [2]

Author Topic: At a crossroads....  (Read 2795 times)

Button

  • Bay Watcher
  • Plants Specialist
    • View Profile
Re: At a crossroads....
« Reply #15 on: January 22, 2015, 11:26:44 am »

SoundSense absolutely does not require DFHack. It works by scanning the vanilla game log.
Logged
I used to work on Modest Mod and Plant Fixes.

Always assume I'm not seriously back

puke

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: At a crossroads....
« Reply #16 on: January 22, 2015, 01:24:26 pm »

... and you can also run dfhack without actually using it

Its not that I don't want to use it or that I am against cheating or whatever.   Its that I don't totally trust someone elses home made memory hacking utility not to make the game less stable than normal.

On the other hand, I totally run Therapist all the time.  And thats just another memory hacking utility with a cleaner UI.

Soooo.... I'm a bit of a hypocrite, it would seem.

anyway, the point is that you should solve this "I dont know when combat is happening" thing with Soundsense.  Everyone thinks so, even the people who dont use soundsense.

Also, watch for the big red 'C' in the upper left, unless you have your FPS display over top of it or something like that.  I mean, really:  Bluephoenix wrapped this thing up in Reply #2.  I'm just echoing his good ideas.
Logged

Badger Storm

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: At a crossroads....
« Reply #17 on: January 22, 2015, 03:17:56 pm »

I have had, in the past, issue with DFHack causing the game to crash suddenly, but apparently not this time around.  You have to weigh the options:  is stability more important to you, or being able to find out tons about your game with a few keystrokes?
Logged

mscottveach

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: At a crossroads....
« Reply #18 on: January 22, 2015, 10:36:45 pm »

Thanks for all the replies.

The thing that really got me back on track was minecarts!

I had forgotten about the existence of minecarts. (It's funny how you start to not see
something you don't understand.) Experimenting with them now and having an incredibly difficult time
sussing out how to use them (in the best possible sense of difficult).

Suddenly, possibilities are exploding again. Thanks.

One follow up question that is fairly tricky one to answer but I'm curious to see if anyone
has any wisdom...

...I'm pretty paranoid about looking at wiki's and whatnot at this stage because I don't want to
accidentally deprive myself of a satisfying discovery. However, at the same time, some of these systems
are pretty damn inscrutable. Like I finally broke down and snuck a look at how minecarts work and am
not sure I would have ever figured it all out on my own (need for stops, etc).

So on the one hand, I'm glad I looked but OTOH it was impossible for me to NOT see like four different
hilarious and super cool things people do with them that if I had just known the basics I probably would
have gotten around to discovering myself at some point. I mean replicating what others have figured out
is fun too, don't get me wrong, but I wish I knew of a place where I could read how the systems work
in a way that is careful to not overshare. I guess maybe that's what forums are for? Or is there a spoiler-minded
wiki for DF? Or should I stop being so paranoid and just read it all and try to do it and I'll see that there's
always new stuff to discover?
Logged

puke

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: At a crossroads....
« Reply #19 on: January 23, 2015, 05:10:34 am »

The wiki has spoiler tags and warnings for the major game secrets and things like that... as for "how people have used this" sorts of things, you will see some every time you come across an article about a complex topic like minecarts. 

Some of this is good:  I figured out a couple of really good pump stack designs before ever reading about how pumps work, but I would have NEVER figured out certain minecart physics exploits on my own and am glad that I got to read about them.  Also, I would have not known that I could use... See, case in point -- you might not know or want to be told about my next example, so I will shut up about it.

But there are so many things.. SO many that I could only have read about.  I'm not going to test every weapon type against every armor type with every kind of metal to build a matrix of their effectiveness -- but SOMEONE ELSE HAS and that is valuable.  All sorts of things like this that I'm glad someone found for me so that I can play with them.  Maybe if I was retired and could spend more time playing the game, I'd feel differently, but I just can't afford to discover it all on my own.

To your question though, I'd think that the forums are actually WORSE for spoilers.  Not just architecture design spoilers but also major game spoilers.  People tend to like to make little coy references to things which then encourages every one else to talk about it some just to demonstrate how clever they are.  Especially when people say they are new and dont want spoilers. 

"oh, let me be cute by using an oblique metaphor which everyone will then jump in on and expand upon".  This sort of thing happens a lot.

If you want to avoid spoilers, I'd honestly recommend using the forum as little as possible.
Logged

Cryxis, Prince of Doom

  • Bay Watcher
  • Achievment *Fail freshman year uni*
    • View Profile
Re: At a crossroads....
« Reply #20 on: January 24, 2015, 07:31:33 pm »

I've got a fort going on that I want to last awhile but I also want to do some interesting stuff with it

How do you attract a mega east?
How do you get a gobo seige?
And how large of a military do you suggest for a fort of ~60 dwarves?
Logged
Fueled by caffeine, nicotine, and a surprisingly low will to live.
Cryxis makes the best typos.

puke

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: At a crossroads....
« Reply #21 on: January 25, 2015, 05:27:16 am »

megabeasts require a minimum threshold of dwarfs in residence, as well as minimum accumulated wealth.  I think this needs to be created wealth, but it might include imported wealth as well.

I think sieges just require time.

both can be prevented by not having hostile neighbors nearby, or not having megabeasts nearby.  You should still get underground megabeasts, as I don't thing those are region / biome dependent.

I think the population / wealth caps can be tweaked in the game's config files.

Detailed spoilers here: 

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Megabeast 
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Siege

As for how many soldiers you need with 60 dwarfs, opinions will vary from 60 (everyone fights, and rotates between soldering and their civilian jobs) and 0 (fantastic engineering defeats all comers) and basically everything in bewteen.
Logged

Cryxis, Prince of Doom

  • Bay Watcher
  • Achievment *Fail freshman year uni*
    • View Profile
Re: At a crossroads....
« Reply #22 on: January 25, 2015, 12:31:26 pm »

I've got 8 currently
One squad of 5 one of 3
About to make another squad of 5 and upgrade everyone's equipment
Thanks
Logged
Fueled by caffeine, nicotine, and a surprisingly low will to live.
Cryxis makes the best typos.
Pages: 1 [2]