Presently it is very difficult to use syndrome-bearing materials for anything due to the inability to coat weaponry or deploy such materials in a useful way, therefore in this post i suggest a possibly easier to implement alternative: Syringes and other devices that can deliver injection-based syndromes. In addition to that: AI hints for syndromes to help them use syndrome-bearing materials.
Syringes themselves are of course items and thus very easy to add, and TOOLs can already contain materials, this suggestion aims to extend this functionality to weapons too, as well as the addition of syringe functionality and tokens to enable this for attacks. There are two new tokens, to be put in weapon attacks:
- [INJECTS_CONTENT], which will, as the token suggests, inject any contained material into the bloodstream and trigger any [SYN_INJECTED] syndromes.
- [DRAW_BLOOD], which will behave as the equivalent attack token for creatures does, except it draws as much blood as possible to fill up the item's container.
Neither of these tags work if the item in question lacks a container. Injection will also not work if the contents are logically not-injectable(such as actual items). Drawing blood does not work if the item already contains something.
The possibilites this would open up are quite varied: Syringes, Injector Daggers and Arrows/Bolts come to mind, all of which can of course be put into weapon traps.
Are syringes compatible with DF's world and time period...? Yep, primitive syringes existed a few hundred years before that, and these are dwarves we're talking about, surely they must have come up with the idea? Not to mention, a syringe isn't exactly complicated, as far as devices go.
AI should not be afraid to use attacks that have the INJECTS_CONTENT tag with a TOOL that contains a beneficial syndrome-bearing material in it on friendlies.
How do you get a material in a thing? That is incredibly easy using a simple reaction.
The second and the more complicated part of this suggestion deals with how the AI sees syndromes and the materials that contain them.
In order to facilitate AI's use of syndromes i suggest new hardcoded syndrome category tokens that are tied to AI behavior to use these materials in the right way.
The main tag is [SYN_USE:X(:X)...] Where X is a sub-token that determines the what AI will use this syndrome for. Multiple sub-tokens may be specified in a single SYN_USE token.
A few proposed sub-tokens(they don't have to use these names of course):
- HEAL: AI will consider this syndrome to help with healing somehow.
- LETHAL: AI will consider this syndrome as one to invariably result in death.
- BUFF_GENERAL: This syndrome somehow provides a general buff not specifically related to fighting.
- BUFF_COMBAT: This syndrome helps in combat.
- DEBUFF_GENERAL, DEBUFF_COMBAT: As above, except it the syndrome harms the functioning of a creature instead of helping it.
- TRANSFORM_GOOD, TRANSFORM_BAD: This syndrome transforms a creature. Either to its benefit or not, respectively.
The SYN_USE tag propagates upwards through to materials, attacks and interactions. So all of the above will apply to AI's use of these things.
The syndrome category system also has a few benefits elsewhere:
For interactions, this syndrome category system can be used to partially replace the clunky AI hint system there.
For procgen syndromes, they can now be constructed backward: Start with a category then add appropriate effects. This will allow for more varied procgen syndromes if AI knows how to use them.
As an aside, blood should have a LETHAL syndrome as well as a special syndrome tag such as SPECIAL_BLOOD that will only trigger the syndrome if it is injected into anyone else other than the creature from whom the blood came.
Sorry for the odd, scatterbrained writing style and typos. Sleep deprivation. Severe chronic pain.
Also sorry for the existence of this suggestion, being tired causes odd ideas.
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Topic: Syringes and Syndrome hints (Read 832 times)