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[Tomcost]

Will Thralls have the same pulping mechanics as animated dead?

I hope that not, it will make them much less scary.

[Knight Otu]

Will Thralls have the same pulping mechanics as animated dead?

I hope that not, it will make them much less scary.

In all likelihood, yes. There isn't much reason to make an exception in the code just because you're trying to pulp thrall-flesh rather than elf-flesh. They could get damage reduction (we already have tokens for that) if Toady feels that pulping makes thralls too easy to kill.

[WillowLuman]

But thralls aren't risen like normal undead, they go straight from life to unlife without actually dying, and cannot get back up once they're down. There's no reason to pulp them.

Unless, of course, you can just mash any corpse into permanently broken salsa after death just in case there's a necromancer hiding under a grate or something, or you're just brutal.

[Tomcost]

But thralls aren't risen like normal undead, they go straight from life to unlife without actually dying, and cannot get back up once they're down. There's no reason to pulp them.

Unless, of course, you can just mash any corpse into permanently broken salsa after death just in case there's a necromancer hiding under a grate or something, or you're just brutal.

The question would be then: Do pulping only happen when the body dies? If yes, then thralls wouldn't be able to be pulped. If not, you could pulp a body part still attached to a body. Or at least that's what I understand.

[Footkerchief]

But thralls aren't risen like normal undead, they go straight from life to unlife without actually dying, and cannot get back up once they're down. There's no reason to pulp them.

Unless, of course, you can just mash any corpse into permanently broken salsa after death just in case there's a necromancer hiding under a grate or something, or you're just brutal.

The question would be then: Do pulping only happen when the body dies? If yes, then thralls wouldn't be able to be pulped. If not, you could pulp a body part still attached to a body. Or at least that's what I understand.

The devlog covered this:

03/07/2013 Toady One Next up is a list of old combat mechanics that need to be moved over to the new action system. Every creature's "turns" used to work more or less with a single delay variable which was used all over the place, and many non-combat actions will still work that way in the next release (since I don't need to put it off further converting the 80 remaining minor cases), but there are some combat activities that should be converted now so that that system at least is homogeneous -- dodging, twisting weapons, that sort of stuff. In particular, the last tweaks I need to do for combat reaction moments rely on getting all of the timers interlaced, and I'll need all the combat actions for that to avoid weird arbitrary waits that the reactions don't see. Once that's more fluid, we'll have a clearer picture of exactly what sort of combat mess we have overall. Hopefully a mess that'll be ready for lots of wholesome undead pulping. I guess living things would get pulped too by default sometimes, although rotten tissue should probably be more pulpable, like those month-old forensic cubes they find in trash cans and stuff.

[WillowLuman]

Would pulping just apply to anything coming from a creature by default, allowing ridiculous things like pulping bronze or gabbro?

[Lolfail0009]

HugoLuman, that is dwarven manufacture!

[WillowLuman]

No, dwarven manufacture requires workshops to do things like that with bare hands or random weapons. Adventurers have no workshops!

[Rose]

No, dwarven manufacture requires workshops to do things like that with bare hands or random weapons. Adventurers have no workshops!

The Dfhack guys would like a word with you.

[Caldfir]

The way I envision "pulping" is just a step beyond all-red damage is currently.  For things that move under their own power, pulping shouldn't really have any effect when it happens, since a fully damaged limb is unusable. 

I'm pretty sure that thralls aren't going to be any easier to deal with, since their whole deal seems to mainly be immunity to pain (which seems to afford an enormous advantage in combat), and if you can get a part fully damaged then it can't be used anyway, regardless of pulping. 

The only place it ought to show up is with zombies, and perhaps material-based creatures, though once again, I would expect that mangling a bronze leg into a pulp wouldn't be easy to do (and I suppose "dusting" or "rubble-ing" might be better descriptors).  The mechanic is (from what I understand) something to handle situations where the damage done to a part is extremely extensive, to the point where it seems strange that it can still be used by the creature. 

What you should probably actually be worried about is how much HARDER the (proper non-thrall) undead are going to be in upcoming versions.  Right now the fact they use hit points makes them very very easy to defeat.  The pulping changes mean they are going to be moved back to the standard combat mechanics, but with some way to damage them beyond repair, but this will probably be very difficult to do.  My expectation is that zombies are going to end up somewhat stronger than their living or husked counterparts, and that unless Toady does some reaction-timer stuff along with the combat mechanics, necromancers are going to be (even more) completely unstoppable. 

[WillowLuman]

I don't think they're going to get stronger. The point of pulping is to make Necromancers not completely unstoppable, not to give their minions a weakness in compensation for a power increase. The point of raised undead is that they can be called up in huge numbers to overwhelm defenses, while individually being cannon fodder, while husks, being rarer, are very tough enemies but only have 1 life.

[Putnam]

Pulping is so that:

1. Reraising is no longer permanent.

2. (I think) the arbitrary hit-point system that undead currently use is no longer necessary.

3. It'll probably help with the whole "skull turning into dust and somehow not losing structural integrity" issue.

[ravaught]

I know that this has been an ongoing subject in the forums, and that a lot of talk has gone into it, but when(if ever) can we expect to see some updates to the UI?

The last UI updates were the split unit screen in 0.34.01, the stone tabs in 0.34.03, the squad assignments (and nicknames) in 0.34.08 and the resizable unit, stocks, world gen and embark screens in 0.34.10.

But like for all features, there is no timeline for UI updates.

The parser you mentioned comes up frequently as a suggestion as well (some call it a third party interface or API). There was a lengthy discussion thread a few years ago, and Toady wrote a detailed response why he's against it.

Yep, he sure did. I read them then, and I read them again today just to refresh my memory. They don't change anything, honestly. I have an immense amount of respect for Toady and what he does as a developer, but that doesn't mean that I am not going to continue questioning what I see as, and Toady admits as, bad design decisions. In those posts you linked he openly acknowledges the poor state of the UI, the wacky keybindings and other such things. He just says he 'doesn't like working on them.' As for the third party interfaces, well, he certainly has a right to do as he pleases for whatever reasons he wants. I just hope it doesn't bite him in the long run.

[mastahcheese]

I just thought of this after reading about various mega project works and epic feats of skill performed by players, but they aren't things that legends will remember, for example, building a magma cannon, or having an adventurer swim across an entire ocean.

So this makes me have to ask, Will we ever get the ability to enter in our own entries into the legends, so that we can remember specific events that the game wouldn't normally recognize?

[DG]

The way I envision "pulping" is just a step beyond all-red damage is currently.  For things that move under their own power, pulping shouldn't really have any effect when it happens, since a fully damaged limb is unusable. 

I'm pretty sure that thralls aren't going to be any easier to deal with, since their whole deal seems to mainly be immunity to pain (which seems to afford an enormous advantage in combat), and if you can get a part fully damaged then it can't be used anyway, regardless of pulping. 

The only place it ought to show up is with zombies, and perhaps material-based creatures, though once again, I would expect that mangling a bronze leg into a pulp wouldn't be easy to do (and I suppose "dusting" or "rubble-ing" might be better descriptors).  The mechanic is (from what I understand) something to handle situations where the damage done to a part is extremely extensive, to the point where it seems strange that it can still be used by the creature. 

What you should probably actually be worried about is how much HARDER the (proper non-thrall) undead are going to be in upcoming versions.  Right now the fact they use hit points makes them very very easy to defeat.  The pulping changes mean they are going to be moved back to the standard combat mechanics, but with some way to damage them beyond repair, but this will probably be very difficult to do.  My expectation is that zombies are going to end up somewhat stronger than their living or husked counterparts, and that unless Toady does some reaction-timer stuff along with the combat mechanics, necromancers are going to be (even more) completely unstoppable. 

Creatures do get an arbitrary buff if they are killed and then raised and I assume it was done to make them more difficult. Find a creature that is skinny, kill it, raise it, and then check its description. You'll notice that it's now giant and packed with muscles. To be scientific you can weigh the corpse before it's raised and then again once you kill the zombie; you'll see that the zombie corpse weighs more. I did some testing on dragons and their zombies for a thread where I was trying to prove if undead worldgen dragons start out fully grown but the changing weight of zombies thwarted me. There was also the zombie bacon thread.