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Author Topic: Lets have them inventions!  (Read 2605 times)

Haymaker

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Lets have them inventions!
« on: January 05, 2012, 10:17:02 am »

So, I did a quick search to see if anyone else has suggested this before.. Do not magma me too hard if similar thread exists somewhere, somehow. Probably only doable somewhere waay past army and caravan arcs.

New labor! Research/inventing
Dwarf with this labor enabled and proper workshop build (assigned study could be enough too) would start a research improvements on another labor, preferring a labor he is the most skilled with. Each "research" job would yield hidden points to a randomly picked improvement every now and then and it should take long time untill a research is complete. (Three years for unskilled. About year for legendary?)
Now what would the complete research?
-Minor, stackable global bonus to the associated labor. (Your beekeepers install and harvest colonies 3% faster, YAY)
-Unlocks a new/foreign item to be manufactured.
 This can mean an item in raws that never was available for any civ. Lets modders put in useless/supercool weapons that can be   researched
-Improves a weapon or armor/bonus to produced stack of items/reduced material cost for an item.
-Improves random material (Steel is now denser, cuts better!)
-New !!Fun!! (So, the researching dorf just put a troll corpse and that other microline together and now you've undead metal troll raging around in your forest)

Now, on the process of research. The tasked dwarf would randomly pick stuff associated to the labor he is researching. Furnace operator using mostly metal bars and such, farmer taking crops and so forth to waste. The results would be irrelevant to the resources used. You might get something useful for nothing or spend 20 gold/platinum bars to nothing real useful!

Some of the research knowledge would be only limited to one dwarf. Say, that grandmaster weaponsmith who spend years and years to study now only knows how to make mauls.


Now, humans would come to offer items for your dorfs to share the knowledge. They and elves could also come to demand a stop on this outrageous research spree, threatening with war. Kobolds would come and steal your knowledge either by kidnapping a child to learn something simple as steel making or sieging upon the fortress with kidnappers pathfinding towards that one genious dwarf who only can make those powerful items.
Aaand if there's magic and research, it could invoke the wrath of titans, fbs and whatnot.

Well there, free to hate or/and love on this. I leave you with one "minor" suggestion


HFS opening up itself. Get enough wealth or kill enough siegers or just simply by beating the place. How would HFS open by itself? By creating a gigantic slade mining shaft from the depths to the surface itself to a random spot in the map before pouring forth yet another wave of angry clowns. Good luck finding enough time to set up a trap corridor.
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Kattaroten

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2012, 10:28:30 am »

Errrrmh... Footkerchief... Do your thing
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Dwarf Fortress: You have a team of hundreds working for four years to make a game where you save the world again. We have one guy for four years make a near-infinite world generator, write the physics,generate histories,form detailed descriptions of every human, elf, dwarf, and goblin generated, caverns, and huge randomly generated monsters made out of who knows what. You. guys. suck.

Babylon

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2012, 01:43:32 pm »

kobolds don't steal children, that's goblins.

At the moment kobolds don't do anything but starve in year 4, but they used to steal items.
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ayoriceball

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2012, 01:54:03 pm »

kobolds don't steal children, that's goblins.

At the moment kobolds don't do anything but starve in year 4, but they used to steal items.

They still do, if you mod them to survive longer or embark around year 4.
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Don't dwarven ladies know they're beautiful the way they are? They don't need to starve themselves to look like those elven bitches.
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Deimos56

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2012, 05:32:51 am »

I would think directed research would be the sort of thing I'd expect from dwarves if they research at all. They don't strike me as the sort of people that just tinker until they come up with something. Maybe they could do both, but the unfocused researchers have a chance of putting a lot of points towards a given... "Tree".

Maybe have a description of some sort detailing why you're receiving a bonus, and have them ordered in a semi-logical manner? ("Your dwarves have learned a new smelting technique that allows them to smelt two ore with a single unit of coal!" (Either half coal use or double ore production/job) ---> <Stuff> ---> "Your dwarves have designed an inefficient new smelter that allows mass production!" (Can produce fairly large quantities of bars in a single go, but cannot use magma fuel and eats coal horribly))

I think it makes sense that they should take items related to whatever they're researching and do things to them. Maybe occupy a smelter briefly so they can see how the metal melts. Or some other strange thing.

While I like the idea of goblins/kobolds trying to steal knowledge, I'm a bit confused about why the elves would be opposed to research in general. Maybe if you're learning too much about deforesting...

Learning how to forge/produce foreign goods and items would be nice. Probably need multiple instances of them, though. To do horrible experiments upon.

Material improvements would probably be moderately rare, and the altered material would have to be produced in a process of some form. ("We've figured out how to infuse wood with molten iron to make it stronger!" Or something...)
« Last Edit: January 06, 2012, 05:36:25 am by Deimos56 »
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peskyninja

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2012, 05:43:10 am »

Microcline isn't a metal and this bonus/buffer thing it's impossible or indesirable in dwarf fortress.
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UltraValican

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Footkerchief

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2012, 08:39:05 pm »

I think a new meme should just be a gif of footkerchief telling n00bs it's been done already-- sort of a 'let me google that for you' kind of thing.

That would not be productive.  Collecting a list of links is only difficult the first time; after that the tags make it easy for me to find the list again.
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peskyninja

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2012, 07:33:10 am »

I'm against everything related to research.
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Burn the land and boil the sea. You can't take the sky from me

Thou son of a b*tch wilt not ever make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, f**k thy mother.

sobriquet

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #11 on: January 20, 2012, 11:52:14 am »

**drinks swamp whisky** well, i'm all about productivity.  besides, it can be supposed that, given the expansion of DF into the mainstream post-tv tropes and NYT writeup, we'll always be dealing with new players.  And the evolution of an organism is as good a thing as could be hoped for, whether it's a forum or a forumite getting untold layers of muscle and fat.  Still, there are many times where I want to clean the forum with magma.  Just a click-able URL that spews hot molten rock remotely...

:::thinks about this::
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peskyninja

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2012, 12:31:27 pm »

I'm against this kind of research/discovery/inventions the OP is describing because IMO it's too arcade or unrealistic. I think Toady and ThreeToe can think something better the same way they are doing with magic.
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Burn the land and boil the sea. You can't take the sky from me

Thou son of a b*tch wilt not ever make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, f**k thy mother.

knutor

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Re: Lets have them inventions!
« Reply #13 on: January 20, 2012, 02:05:42 pm »

-Unlocks a new/foreign item to be manufactured.

I like this idea the best out of all of Haymakers suggestions.  As long as the foreign item was sized correctly for dwarf use. 

Some agile misfit dwarf, somewhere, must harbor a deep, dark desire to use a blowgun or craft a metal whip.

Sincerely,
Knutor
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