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[NW_Kohaku]

I've seen some talk about this recently, so I'd like to ask directly...

What influenced your decision to attach minecarts to stockpiles? (As opposed to "equipping" them to haulers or dwarves taking up heavy hauling jobs grabbing a nearest cart.)  Do you have plans for further revisions to make more/less involved supply chains using stockpiles, or do you want to just leave things as they are for the foreseeable future? 

Are we going to see a stab at stacking rules added before you go on to other things?


There seems to be a big stumbling block around having to build a large number of specialized stockpiles right away, instead of having giant dump stockpiles, and it may be something that raises the learning cliff a little bit higher to get to learn.  People complain about, for example, seeds not being available because a dwarf collecting a seed from the dining hall brings the barrel that has every seed in the entire fortress inside it to the dining hall. 

[dree12]

Now, the amount of stone is rare enough to make any stone industry unsustainable. Mechanisms are extremely stone-heavy, and last time I checked could not be made of wood.

I find the notion that you could run out of stone in this game highly suspect.  Especially since we have unlimited stone in the form of magma and water sources that never deplete.

I never claimed running out of stone, I just claimed that it was impractical to set up a crafting industry with it. An obsidian factory is inherently too slow to sustain a crafting industry.

I'm currently outputting around 500 excess stone per season with three legendary miners. Note that what you're looking at there is an excess, after my mass production of mechanisms, stone crafts, doors, furniture and other crud.

This requires quarrying, which ruins a part of the map. After something is dug out, it cannot be undug.

[Aerval]

I've seen some talk about this recently, so I'd like to ask directly...

What influenced your decision to attach minecarts to stockpiles? (As opposed to "equipping" them to haulers or dwarves taking up heavy hauling jobs grabbing a nearest cart.)  Do you have plans for further revisions to make more/less involved supply chains using stockpiles, or do you want to just leave things as they are for the foreseeable future? 

Are we going to see a stab at stacking rules added before you go on to other things?


There seems to be a big stumbling block around having to build a large number of specialized stockpiles right away, instead of having giant dump stockpiles, and it may be something that raises the learning cliff a little bit higher to get to learn.  People complain about, for example, seeds not being available because a dwarf collecting a seed from the dining hall brings the barrel that has every seed in the entire fortress inside it to the dining hall.

Do you mean wheelbarrows or minecarts? If wheelbarrows, I'd second that. We should at least be able to equip them to workshops.

[NW_Kohaku]

Do you mean wheelbarrows or minecarts? If wheelbarrows, I'd second that. We should at least be able to equip them to workshops.

Wheelbarrows.  Minecarts are attached to their own tracks, obviously.

The way that I (and probably most people) used to set up stockpiles, I would start off by digging some open space in a soil layer, make a "everything but stone" stockpile, and start dumping all my goods from the caravan into it. 

If you do that now, though, only one dwarf can claim a wheelbarrow to do a hauling job at a time, and they'll take a wheelbarrow to carry things that are light enough you don't need a wheelbarrow for them. 

When we were getting wheelbarrows, I was expecting wheelbarrows to just be left lying around most of the time, and only grabbed when a job that was heavy enough to require a wheelbarrow was needed. 

What this does, however, is make players have to spend more time initially setting the stockpiles up, since they need a complicated manually crafted supply chain, but once it's running, it will generally work well, if you micromanaged it down to proper functionality. 

It does, however, make starting the game up a little more annoying, so I'm wondering how much of this is still just a work-in-progress...

[Lord Shonus]

Why would you even care about your dwarves' stonecrafting skill? I find that quality modifiers are only significant in the expensive stuff. Critical only in arms and armour, where even the best is not good enough.

obsidian swords for traps and early milita

(i prefer to play in metal starved maps)

Speaking of which, are obsidian swords still made of wood, as has been speculated?

Never were. It was a display issue. (Tested this quite a bit myself. A "pine short sword" made from obsidian was far deadlier than a "(pine short sword sword)". It's simply useless against metal armour instead of being on par with steel like it was in 40d/

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
Speaking of which, are obsidian swords still made of wood, as has been speculated?

Never were. It was a display issue. (Tested this quite a bit myself. A "pine short sword" made from obsidian was far deadlier than a "(pine short sword sword)". It's simply useless against metal armour instead of being on par with steel like it was in 40d/

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5346

Obsidian actually isn't sharp enough to cut skin in DF, whereas wood can cut skin.
There is an easy RAW file fix.

[Lord Shonus]

If so, that must be a newer problem. I've seen them slice elephants in half in the 31.xx series.

[Quietust]

Never were. It was a display issue. (Tested this quite a bit myself. A "pine short sword" made from obsidian was far deadlier than a "(pine short sword sword)". It's simply useless against metal armour instead of being on par with steel like it was in 40d/

Actually, you're completely wrong - back in version 0.31.12, a "pine short sword" made at a craftsdwarf's workshop was identical to a "pine short sword" made at a smelter using a custom reaction. You may have thought they were different, but you were simply observing random variance.

All items in Dwarf Fortrress (aside from corpses, body parts, and other things such as fish and vermin) are made of a single material, and that material is used to determine both its appearance and its combat properties.

[Captain Crazy]

Any ideas for using Creature Classes for entity's default domestic creatures? Creature Classes could be such a powerful thing if applied more.

Say, you give Beak Dogs, Grimelings, etc, the [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_PET] or [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_WAR] and put something like [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:EVIL_PET] on the goblin's entity so they'd use that in their sieges. This could allow more customization than the standard evil/good/underground classification. A wierd gnome civ could even have robots with the creature class [CREATURE_CLASS:ROBOT_GNOME] so that they would acquire them automatically, while other entities cannot access them.

Maybe even 'plant classes', too. You could assign specific plants to entities. Dwarves would use their normal line-up. Goblins would use other subterranean plants like 'bloodworts' or 'killer caps' or something, all with the [PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] and associated [ALLOWED_PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] with the goblin's entity.

[Jeoshua]

Any ideas for using Creature Classes for entity's default domestic creatures? Creature Classes could be such a powerful thing if applied more.

Say, you give Beak Dogs, Grimelings, etc, the [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_PET] or [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_WAR] and put something like [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:EVIL_PET] on the goblin's entity so they'd use that in their sieges. This could allow more customization than the standard evil/good/underground classification. A wierd gnome civ could even have robots with the creature class [CREATURE_CLASS:ROBOT_GNOME] so that they would acquire them automatically, while other entities cannot access them.

Maybe even 'plant classes', too. You could assign specific plants to entities. Dwarves would use their normal line-up. Goblins would use other subterranean plants like 'bloodworts' or 'killer caps' or something, all with the [PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] and associated [ALLOWED_PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] with the goblin's entity.

I would like to second ALL of that.  Put it up as a suggestion, it's a good one and pretty far reaching in it's scope for how simple it's principle really is.  In general the Raw format here could stand a lot more stuff like this, using already existing mechanics in new ways.  It would make having multiple races with various feels for their trade goods much easier.

Give Elves [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:ELF_PETS], and set up the elf pets quickly and efficiently, giving them fairies, pixies, wolves, and fluffy wamblers.  You could do the same with Goblins and make it so they only ever have pets like Trolls and Ogres, never Sheep or Peafowl.

[Knight Otu]

I can say *cough* that the idea of using creature classes for domestic creatures and the like has come up in the suggestions forum at least twice. It is certainly something I'd like to see.

[CaptainArchmage]

Great new release! With 0.34.08 I built a test track with the dwarf pushing the cart. On the current version, I tried a few systems where the dwarf rode the cart.

I noticed the stagnant water bug doesn't happen when the brook or stream or river is in a mountain biome, because of the lack of murky pools. I generally try to have a brook because it serves as a source of fish.

Will there be a second major hauling release in short order before the next major release that isn't just a bugfix release? That is, one where we may get increased functionality of wheelbarrows or animal hauling or extra vehicles?

[EmeraldWind]

Any ideas for using Creature Classes for entity's default domestic creatures? Creature Classes could be such a powerful thing if applied more.

Say, you give Beak Dogs, Grimelings, etc, the [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_PET] or [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_WAR] and put something like [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:EVIL_PET] on the goblin's entity so they'd use that in their sieges. This could allow more customization than the standard evil/good/underground classification. A wierd gnome civ could even have robots with the creature class [CREATURE_CLASS:ROBOT_GNOME] so that they would acquire them automatically, while other entities cannot access them.

Maybe even 'plant classes', too. You could assign specific plants to entities. Dwarves would use their normal line-up. Goblins would use other subterranean plants like 'bloodworts' or 'killer caps' or something, all with the [PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] and associated [ALLOWED_PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] with the goblin's entity.

I would like to second ALL of that.  Put it up as a suggestion, it's a good one and pretty far reaching in it's scope for how simple it's principle really is.  In general the Raw format here could stand a lot more stuff like this, using already existing mechanics in new ways.  It would make having multiple races with various feels for their trade goods much easier.

Give Elves [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:ELF_PETS], and set up the elf pets quickly and efficiently, giving them fairies, pixies, wolves, and fluffy wamblers.  You could do the same with Goblins and make it so they only ever have pets like Trolls and Ogres, never Sheep or Peafowl.

That is a good idea. I like any idea that gives different civ creatures more flavor without going extreme.

That also kind of fits my idea of creating creature groups to allow training of similar animals to be easier. I used the example of grizzly bear and black bear, learning to train one should help experience-wise in training the other. Creature classes could probably act as a system for doing that, if you can apply more than one class to a creature and if you could designate a class to be used or not for training as not all creature classes would be suitable for that.

[NW_Kohaku]

That also kind of fits my idea of creating creature groups to allow training of similar animals to be easier. I used the example of grizzly bear and black bear, learning to train one should help experience-wise in training the other. Creature classes could probably act as a system for doing that, if you can apply more than one class to a creature and if you could designate a class to be used or not for training as not all creature classes would be suitable for that.

We have suggestion threads for that idea already...

[eux0r]

isnt stuff like that going into the game later on anyway, even if nobody here ever talks about it? i also think thats the case for like 95% of the esv