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[Owlbread]

Toady, I was listening to your latest talk and was very interested in the bit about Deep Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. Can you clarify whether the Mountainhomes (capitals of the empire/kingdom) will be Deep sites? Just how deep are these "Deep Sites"? Also, how much control would we eventually have over them? Can I draft them into specialist regiments? Would there be a limit to the number of Hill Dwarves one can have, less than the Fortress Dwarves for instance?

I was just thinking about how great it would be to have irregular squads of drunken Hill Dwarves roaming around the surface area of my fortress, fighting sasquatches and raiders and warning my soldiers of incoming attack. I wonder how the Deep Dwarves would fit into that, though. Maybe if they were superior in their ability to see in the dark, they could be effective defenders/explorers in the caverns.

[Eric Blank]

I think during play the deep dwarf and hill dwarf sites and populations were supposed to be abstracted so they don't take up as much resources. We'll probably see direct interaction with them in the future, but as long as it remains abstracted on the whole we can probably safely have many times more hill and deep dwarves than we can dwarves in our fortress. I figured it's like the population of the countryside living around a land-owning lord's castle which has a fraction of the staff but most of the defenses. He did say the mountainhomes will be "fortress" sites like the site type we create as players, and that they will provide the link between the surface and the cavern settlements. Also said something about using hill and deep dwarf populations in the army arc in the future, so maybe we'll get to send them out lead by a squad of fortress dwarves to defend or raid settlements.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Toady, I was listening to your latest talk and was very interested in the bit about Deep Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. Can you clarify whether the Mountainhomes (capitals of the empire/kingdom) will be Deep sites? Just how deep are these "Deep Sites"? Also, how much control would we eventually have over them? Can I draft them into specialist regiments? Would there be a limit to the number of Hill Dwarves one can have, less than the Fortress Dwarves for instance?

I was just thinking about how great it would be to have irregular squads of drunken Hill Dwarves roaming around the surface area of my fortress, fighting sasquatches and raiders and warning my soldiers of incoming attack. I wonder how the Deep Dwarves would fit into that, though. Maybe if they were superior in their ability to see in the dark, they could be effective defenders/explorers in the caverns.

One of the main points of separating population into fortress pop vs hill/deep dwarves was to not have to have them in the fortress area while still allowing for amassing large armies for off-site battles during the army arc. Thus it's doubtful we'll have all that many hill/deep dwarves visiting our fortress at a time, since the strain on the computer would just be too much, but there'll definitely be a lot more of them around than the total fortress pop.

/ninjaed, but oh well ^^

[EmeraldWind]

That's not how I'm reading the report - he said they're on hold (presumably in fixing or expanding), not that they're gone.

My impression of the report for June was that bandits harassing townspeople are on hold because: A - they are using up valuable dev time and B - there's nothing your adventurer can do with them (e.g. interrogate them, drag them to the sheriff) once they yield. Adding more ways to deal with yielding ruffians seems to have been ruled out for the coming release.

interrogations and temporary prisoners (features I'm not willing to add for the release at this late juncture)

Whether bandits will still show up in towns in some way in the release is apparently an open issue.

We'll see how that turns out.

My thoughts on this was that earlier he mentioned fixing a bit where bandits were harassing themselves. Perhaps he got rid of locations where you might expect to find bandits (example: Hang-outs, wells). Bandits might still appear around town in random locations, but they won't hang out at specific locations yet. And the point about taking temporary prisoners is probably if you wanted to locate bandits on purpose, instead of having to hope you bump into them at some point.

[WillowLuman]

Will we ever be able to dispose of Goblin prisoners other than killing them? If so, how? Hostage exchange and ransom makes sense for the other races, but I don't know if Goblins care enough about their own to pay to rescue them. Maybe exchange one of their valuable leaders for a number of previously kidnapped children?

[Witty]

Toady, how will the issue of "fortress time" be dealt with? Since taverns are apparently on the horizon, won't the time discrepancy lead to adventurers spending several months at your fort just drinking a beer?

[monk12]

Yes it will, and presumably it'll be the same oddness that leads Caravans to spend several months at a fortress and much less time elsewhere. Though it's more likely adventurers won't spend as much time as the caravan, since they'll probably roll in, eat/drink/sleep, and maybe start a fight or play a game before leaving, none of which needs direct player supervision (unlike meeting the Caravan liason.) I wouldn't be surprised if a satisfying tavern experience could be accomplished in an in-game week or two, which isn't too outlandish as far as the rest of the world goes.

Or to answer your question more directly, I don't think it'll be "dealt with," it'll just exist. It's a weird time bubble, but since it should affect their cashflow at the same rate I don't know as it will have an appreciable in-game effect.

[O11O1]

So taverns and their time thing will be "no more weird than half the game's time stuff already is."

[Eric Blank]

Yeah. We discussed this last month if I recall correctly, and concluded that... Well, I don't think there was much of a conclusion, but it seems that our choices are deal with it, or brainwash Toady into actually DOING all that work (which could take a long-ass time, I suppose) and setting the time tables straight so that fortress mode time is as slow and detailed as Adventure mode time. And then we'd have to deal with the consequences of time running that much more slowly, such as a single in-game year taking gods-knows-how-long, even if unpaused the entire time, depending on how slow your computer is. The good news is that a lot more could happen in said year so technically the pace doesn't necessarily need to slow down, but the bad news is that things that take years to happen might not occur before Toady makes some change that results in having to regen all our worlds.

[Keldane]

If Fortress Mode time is slowed to match Adventure Mode, I will be saddened by feeling the need to forgo new Fort mode features in favor of continuing to play the game with years passing at an appreciable rate. I feel it would be likely that I wouldn't update the game anymore, because Adventure Mode just isn't remotely as interesting to me, and time-related things (the next caravan, children and animals growing up, etc) generally already feel like they take far too long.

[EmeraldWind]

If Fortress Mode time is slowed to match Adventure Mode, I will be saddened by feeling the need to forgo new Fort mode features in favor of continuing to play the game with years passing at an appreciable rate. I feel it would be likely that I wouldn't update the game anymore, because Adventure Mode just isn't remotely as interesting to me, and time-related things (the next caravan, children and animals growing up, etc) generally already feel like they take far too long.

Yeah, but one of those last things have a chance of being non-issue when caravans are determined as a part of the setting instead of being randomly generated. In fact, once caravans are moving around you might be able get visits from all nearby civs, rather than just one caravan per species. That might make things even wonkier though.

Heck you might even get multiple caravans from one civ if you live close enough to more than one site in the civ. Like having a hamlet and a city trade stuff to you separately.

Right now though in my current fort I have troubles with caravans showing up too often. They overlap each other and then get stuck in my hallways. So I can only imagine what would happen if we could get more caravans than what we get now.

But as for the other growing up and such that would still be a major problem.

I'm still interested in seeing what kind of changes that caravans moving around independently will bring about, but I imagine that won't be in this release.

[DG]

If Fortress Mode time is slowed to match Adventure Mode, I will be saddened by feeling the need to forgo new Fort mode features in favor of continuing to play the game with years passing at an appreciable rate. I feel it would be likely that I wouldn't update the game anymore, because Adventure Mode just isn't remotely as interesting to me, and time-related things (the next caravan, children and animals growing up, etc) generally already feel like they take far too long.

Hopefully you haven't entirely closed your mind to Adventure Mode because of how it's currently implemented. The next update will be a taste of it's potential but still far from the final vision.

[Cruxador]

Toady, I was listening to your latest talk and was very interested in the bit about Deep Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. Can you clarify whether the Mountainhomes (capitals of the empire/kingdom) will be Deep sites? Just how deep are these "Deep Sites"? Also, how much control would we eventually have over them? Can I draft them into specialist regiments? Would there be a limit to the number of Hill Dwarves one can have, less than the Fortress Dwarves for instance?

I was just thinking about how great it would be to have irregular squads of drunken Hill Dwarves roaming around the surface area of my fortress, fighting sasquatches and raiders and warning my soldiers of incoming attack. I wonder how the Deep Dwarves would fit into that, though. Maybe if they were superior in their ability to see in the dark, they could be effective defenders/explorers in the caverns.

He's talked about this stuff at considerable length in the past. Mountainhomes cross both levels, with access to the surface and the underground. They're at least on the first cavern level, there might be some on subsequent ones (as far as I can recall, Toady hasn't specified that) in some cases. Our control over them would be more or less the same as hill dwarves, they're functionally the same thing except underground rather than topside. We don't know what their cave adaptations will be like, although he's mentioned he wants to do something he doesn't really know what yet (as of last mention). Their regiments wouldn't really be "specialist" but you could make armies out of them anyway. You will have vastly more hill dwarves than fortress dwarves, that's sort of the point of them: Allow you as the player to control realistically large numbers when you get involved in the army arc. There probably won't be any limit besides some very large cap imposed due to technical constraints (it's not possible to designate a variable that can grow to a number of unlimited size) that won't be reached in normal play.

Will we ever be able to dispose of Goblin prisoners other than killing them? Hostage exchange and ransom makes sense for the other races, but I don't know if Goblins care enough about their own to pay to rescue them. Maybe exchange one of their valuable leaders for a number of previously kidnapped children?

The answer to this is almost certainly "yes, but no timeline".

Toady, how will the issue of "fortress time" be dealt with? Since taverns are apparently on the horizon, won't the time discrepancy lead to adventurers spending several months at your fort just drinking a beer?

That's not a bigger problem than any of the other inconsistencies caused by the time difference.

[Keldane]

Hopefully you haven't entirely closed your mind to Adventure Mode because of how it's currently implemented. The next update will be a taste of it's potential but still far from the final vision.

It isn't based on how it's currently implemented, but rather on the fact that I'd rather have control over a group of dwarves indirectly than a single dwarf directly. Simply a matter of preferred modes.

Yeah, but one of those last things have a chance of being non-issue when caravans are determined as a part of the setting instead of being randomly generated. In fact, once caravans are moving around you might be able get visits from all nearby civs, rather than just one caravan per species. That might make things even wonkier though.

Heck you might even get multiple caravans from one civ if you live close enough to more than one site in the civ. Like having a hamlet and a city trade stuff to you separately.

I'll admit that caravans could become less of an issue if and when that change comes about. For now, though, they can be frustratingly infrequent when I'm relying on them for anything, and unless a change to frequency comes before the discussed deceleration (or at the same time), I only see that getting worse.

Regardless, I'm still heavily in favor of Fort Mode time staying as it is. Just my personal opinion.

[malvado]

A Few Questions about Weapons and Combat

1 : Right Now weapons can get their own names after being used, but is it feasible that if a weapon is used for solely (or mostly ) killing one sort of creature (like Kobolds / Goblins ) it would start to become famous and even inspire fear on the enemies its being used?

2 : Have named Weapons (Not artifacts ) some sort of Bonus compared to Normal versions of the weapons and if not, is this something that is going to change in some way or other?

3 : How about elemental damage from Weapons ( That Flaming sword or Ice cold dagger ) , is it going to be implemented and how would it work? Perhaps some of the "magical" items could have an light area as well? It would certainly be hard to be stealthy wielding an Flaming Sword.