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Wait for the next release. I want usable mugs damn it!

55 (71.4%)

We can use the current one. I like the big trees and slightly smarter dorfs.

17 (22.1%)

I'll take .34.11 thanks. I want to know I'll get to kill things for sure.

5 (6.5%)

Total Members Voted: 77

[Nakéen]

I gave them names like "MUG tech codex". It should be okay shouldn't it ?

[Amperzand]

Should work, but you never know.  Howsabout Lexicon instead?

[Splint]

Or, y'know, the boring option: Schematics.

[Mr Frog]

Or, y'know, the boring option: Schematics.

Agreed, albeit that only really makes sense for devices. Advanced metal processing should probably use something different. "Processing Notes"?

Also, @Nakeen I experimented a bit with material properties for the jackbots before I threw in the towel, so I might be able to clear some stuff up if you have any questions. (Probably not, though, since I really didn't actually do much).

E:

Also, courtesy link to the discord chat since there isn't one on this page:

We've created a Discord channel to discuss things! Feel free to join! https://discord.gg/0g2sUaS4K5R68cpr

[Splint]

Alright.

So the refinery, weapons, jackborg bits, and combat armor will use Schematics, while ballistic weave and new alloys will use Processing Notes or something similarly named.

PARASOLIAN PLANS
Refinery Schematics - Needed to build the Refinery. Must be bought from Parasolians, as the Contractors steal or buy any materials they may need.

Nuclear Battery Schematic - Uranium batteries require proper assembly, lest they accidentally cook the worker. Uranium batteries can be produced without schematics in a different reaction, but with a 40% chance of resulting in a big ol' dose of radiation that drops all physical stats to the absolute lowest possible or outight flash fries (read: instantly kills,) the worker instead of resulting in a usable battery.

Cybernetic parts schematics - Two schematics to produce a modified endoskeleton and synthetic organs. Both plus nuclear batteries are needed to make jackborg parts, and thus, Jackborgs.

Nanite Paste Production Notes - For those who'd rather take the risky route to cuberizing their soldiers, this series of notes has a tidy grocery list of materials needed to make an ingestible nanite paste.

[Alloy] Production Notes - Multiple separate  tools, need to produce advanced alloys in the Refinery as well as extract other metals.

Medical Cloner Schematic - The Medical Cloner building has one use and one use only: Give injured people thier missing and nerve-damaged bits back. Transforms the dwarf into a "MedClone Patient" creature. Once the transformation ends, the unit should have all thier bits in working order again. The process requires Nanite Paste (to replace the damaged nerves,) and multiple Nuclear Batteries to power the clone pod and Autodoc responsible for growing those parts and putting them in plae properly.

BALLPOINT PLANS
Stubgun Schematics - Allows the production of bolt-action rifles ("stubguns,") in the Tech Lab. Stubguns act as a less expensive alternative to magnetic weapons, being much stronger than bows or crossbows, but lacking anywhere near the killing power of more advanced weapons. Stubguns come fitted with a bayonet.

Ammunition Production Notes - Needed to make stubgun ammunition.

Chain weapon Schematics - Allows production of chainsaw-type weapons, which can slice through shit better than their normal counterparts.

Mass Driver Schematic - Allows Mass Driver production (the railguns we'll be using are a local creation based on a Ballpoint design, and as such don't need schematics to be built.)

Battle Armor Schematics (not quite accurate name, but meh)- Allows production of Corporation armor.

Ballistic Weave Production Notes: Needed to make ballistic weave cloth, and thus, home-made battle armor.

[Mr Frog]

Did a bit of SCIENCE since I was worried that having railguns available from the start would trivialise a lot of early-game encounters. Here are my notes, since y'all might find them mildly-interesting:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The firearms and ammo used in these tests were crossbows with their SHOT_FORCE and SHOT_MAXVEL values and bolts with their SIZE and ATTACK values, respectively replaced with those for railguns and railgun ammo which Nakeen provided in a PM

TEST: 13 female Holistic Spawn with stats roughly corresponding to those found in typical siege mobs vs. 12 decently-skilled female melee swordsdwarves in full iron armor (chain mail, plate, greaves, boots, gauntlets, helmet, shield) and one completely-unskilled iron "railgun" wielder (actually an xbow wielder, but I modded xbows and bolts to use the values Nakeem gave me) in no armor carrying 40 simulated iron railgun slugs. 5 identical battles were carried out concurrently in identical, completely-sealed 8x8 chambers -- note that the extremely-small size of the chamber likely decreases the efficacy of the railgunner by way of putting them in vastly greater danger of a close-quarters attack.

As a control group, I conducted 4 other battles between 12 similar Holistic Spawn and 12 similar swordsdwarves, with no faux-railgunners present.

RESULTS:
Shots recorded: 8
Shots hit: 4
Shots hit that resulted in grievous damage (dismemberment/disintegration) to the struck bodypart: 2

1 of the railgun-assisted units survived the match, albeit with heavy casualties.
2 of the non-railgun-assisted units survived the match, with similar casualties

A completely-unskilled, unprotected unit is not a significant boon against the Spawn compared to a skilled melee dwarf even if wielding a highly-powerful firearm, although they are certainly capable of dealing crippling damage. Subsequent tests possibly should include light armor, as well as a marginal level of dodging, hammerdwarf, and archery skill from training with normal crossbows (I am assuming that the railguns will use blowgun instead of crossbow skill, which cannot be raised without wasting railgun ammo which cannot be produced in sufficient quantity early-game without a crippling level of labour overfocusing)


TESTING CONDITIONS: 13 female Holistic Spawn with stats roughly corresponding to those found in typical siege mobs vs. 12 decently-skilled female melee swordsdwarves in full iron armor (chain mail, plate, greaves, boots, gauntlets, helmet, shield) and on iron "railgun" wielder (actually an xbow wielder, but I modded xbows and bolts to use the values Nakeem gave me) in no armor carrying 40 simulated iron railgun slugs, with Competent dodging, Proficient archery, and Competent hammerdwarf and fighter skills. 5 identical battles were carried out concurrently in identical, completely-sealed 8x8 chambers -- note that the extremely-small size of the chamber likely decreases the efficacy of the railgunner by way of putting them in vastly greater danger of a close-quarters attack.

Again, as a control group, I conducted 4 other battles between 12 similar Holistic Spawn and 12 similar swordsdwarves, with no faux-railgunners present.

RESULTS:

Shots recorded: 35
Shots hit: 15
Shots hit that resulted in grievous damage (dismemberment/disintegration) to the struck bodypart: 8
Shots hit that resulted in fatalities: 1

Most (>50%) of the pulping injuries were recorded late in battle, likely due to prior damage.

Worth noting that a couple dwarves somehow clipped through the walls of one of the testing chambers, likely due to a dodging bug.

The upgraded bolts appear to also double as lethal melee weapons; the "gunners", when faced with enemies, appear to actually prefer to strike with them over using their firearms, to deadly effect.

1 railgun-assisted unit prevailed against the Spawn, as before. One of the railgun testing chambers is considered invalid, however, due to bugs interfering with the normal course of combat (or more precisely, 2 dwarves having somehow fallen out of the testing chamber). As before, 2 of the non-railgun-assisted units survived the match. All of the winners sustained heavy casualties.

According to these results, a moderately-skilled (but with no direct weapon experience) railgunner with no armor is still not a significant boon in combat with the Spawn. Combined with the results of the previous test, it is plausible to conclude that they may in fact be significantly less effective than a well-trained melee unit wielding conventional weaponry.

(please forgive the extreme shittiness of these notes; I don't SCIENCE much)

tl;dr: My fears are unfounded and untrained railgun users may actually be rather pathetic (although they are still capable of dealing heavy damage to Spawn). I should probably do a few tests with them wearing armor for the sake of completeness, but it's late and I've already expended my interest in this for today.

[Nakéen]

Hi Frog, I confirm your observations concerning unskilled marksdwarves using hi-tech weapons.

During my many tests, unskilled railgun users couldn't get a hit and had such a low rate of fire that the Spawns came into melee undamaged.

EDIT: Will rename codices to schematics and processing notes.

Got a question concerning ballistic weave cloth. Do you want the armors made of it to function like a chainmail or a breastplate ? As of now, I made the various armor pieces I modded work like breastplates.

[Amperzand]

Of course, ranged weapons in DF are mainly useful in barrages. Larger scale testing, and more skilled dorfs may be needed.

[Nakéen]

To expand on ranged weapons efficiency. You could say the lethality of a dwarf increase exponentially to its skill level.

Grandmaster Marksdwarves were so lethal that they could take on Megaspawns and Spawnfalloons with deadly efficiency, even without melee support.

EDIT: I'm coming back on the schematics thing. Here is one of the current Codex raws.
As you can see, I initially intended "codices" to be some kind of recipient containing all the data related to X-technology. This is just my personal preference, if you prefer using weapon schematics I will change this accordingly.

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_MAGNETIC_CODEX]
[NAME:magnetic tech codex:magnetic tech codices]
[VALUE:300]
[METAL_MAT]
[TILE:'§']
[SIZE:100]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:1]
[DESCRIPTION:The knowledge obtained from successfully reverse-engineering Magnetic technology is stored inside this Codex. It is extremely valuable and indispensable to manufacture railguns and MDLs components.]
EDIT2: To get a better idea, here's a reverse-engineering reaction :

Code: [Select]

[REACTION:REVERSE_ENGINEER_MAGNETIC_TECH]
[NAME:reverse engineer magnetic technology]
[BUILDING:TECH_LAB:CUSTOM_G]
[BUILDING:MAGMA_TECH_LAB:CUSTOM_G]
[REAGENT:railgun:1:WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_RAILGUN:NONE:NONE]
[PRODUCT:20:1:TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_MAGNETIC_CODEX:GET_MATERIAL_FROM_REAGENT:railgun:NONE] (placeholder of 20% chance of success)
[DESCRIPTION:Successfully reverse engineering magnetic technology would give dwarves access to a tremendous power.]
[SKILL:FORGE_WEAPON]
[CATEGORY:REVERSE]

[Mr Frog]

Of course, ranged weapons in DF are mainly useful in barrages. Larger scale testing, and more skilled dorfs may be needed.

Well, the main purpose of the tests was to determine how they would function in an early-game scenario (since that was very specifically what I was concerned about), in which one likely would not have the materials to mass-produce railguns (since we'd need to get at least some of them off of the yearly dwarven caravan, which infamously does not deliver requested goods in large quantities at all) nor the personnel to make a dedicated railgunner squad alongside your melee troops.

To expand on ranged weapons efficiency. You could say the lethality of a dwarf increase exponentially to its skill level.

Grandmaster Marksdwarves were so lethal that they could take on Megaspawns and Spawnfalloons with deadly efficiency, even without melee support.

EDIT: I'm coming back on the schematics thing. Here is one of the current Codex raws.
As you can see, I initially intended "codices" to be some kind of recipient containing all the data related to X-technology. This is just my personal preference, if you prefer using weapon schematics I will change this accordingly.

[snippety-snoo]

Oooh, I like the descriptions.

I'd imagine schematics for the weapons would, by definition, explain how they work and all other data relevant to their construction, so basically all you really have to change is their names.

Also -- and this is just a silly whim -- maybe have the weapon be deconstructed into (a varying amount of?) scrap metal chunks, which can be melted down? Just a random idea. Might offset the risk of not getting schematics a bit too much.

During my many tests

Did you record any of the data? It would be good to have if so.

[Nakéen]

Did you record any of the data? It would be good to have if so.

Ah sorry, I didn't ! I could run and properly record other tests when I'm done with what I'm currently doing though.

EDIT: I will change the reverse-engineering reactions to produce something relatively usable.

[Mr Frog]

Did you record any of the data? It would be good to have if so.

Ah sorry, I didn't ! I could run and properly record other tests when I'm done with what I'm currently doing though.

No need to run yourself ragged, lol :V  You're already doing more than enough just by puzzling out all this reaction bullshit for us.

Also don't put too much stock into the scrap metal idea, it literally just popped into my head as I was making that post so I figured I'd put it out there :V

[Nakéen]

Well, I already have a dummy reaction to disassemble railguns. So the scrap metal implement would take little time, would just have to copy-paste the products.

[Mr Frog]

Well, I already have a dummy reaction to disassemble railguns. So the scrap metal implement would take little time, would just have to copy-paste the products.

Just don't make the scrap too useful :V  There's supposed to be a certain degree of sacrifice involved with deconstructing them, right?

[Nakéen]

Yeah, there is no gain without risk !

By the way, I don't know what has gotten into me but I did a full 360° turn concerning new metals. They now have properties close to those of reality. Head hurts, ugh.

EDIT: Fuckin' finally ! New metals updated to "real-life" properties. Some may be a bit too strong, as of now here are my observations :
- Pure Titanium is inferior to steel but vastly superior to iron and bronze. Furthermore, Titanium is extremely light, 1.7 lighter than vanilla steel.
- Pure Cobalt is an interesting case : slightly heavier than steel, but defensively equivalent to steel. Offensively, it is better than iron but worse than titanium.
- Titanium Alloy TI 6-4 (Ti+Al+Fe) is extremely light and vastly stronger than vanilla steel.
- High Speed Steel M42 (Fe+Co+Flux) is roughly the same weight as vanilla steel, but matched only by adamantine. It is better on the "blunt" side than adamantine, but far from as great as it on the "edge" side.
- Staballoy (U+Ti) is also interesting in its own right. Mechanically on par with Titanium Alloy, but insanely heavy. 1.7 time heavier than lead, slightly lighter than platinum. It is thus offensively incredible for ammunitions (like in real-life) and blunt weaponry.

Thoughts on that ? I may balance materials properties depending on feedback. And of course, production processes are far from cheap.