Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Mouth and Horns only

35 (42.7%)

Forehooves

3 (3.7%)

All of the above

44 (53.7%)

Total Members Voted: 82

[Sorcerer]

gah, sometimes i wish DF wouldn't just assume that an item that doesn't exist in a reaction means ANY item will do instead, the research bug is fixed, next up: trying to add cloth backpacks and quivers.
Unfortunately, these are both hardcoded items, so they have to be added through reactions.

Good job on the CBCS replica, I'll have a looksee now

[Sorcerer]

Cutie mark stuff looks really neat, definately going into the next update!
I've added cloth quivers and backpacks and fixed the free research thing, anyone else found any nasty bugs that need fixing?

[Maklak]

I haven't looked over the RAWs, just the release note for the castes.

I disagree with how you did alicorns completely. One caste has *0.2 learning rates for a lot of skills. There are no males. Princess and Noble aren't the same thing. Overall big Ugh / WTF / ChangeOnInstall.

Liar has *8 learning rate. Much too much for my taste, but it is an Easter egg anyway.

I rather like the nurse pony, especially the personality bonus, although she only has 3 doctor skills out of 5 and oddly high social skills. But then there is a doctor caste too, so good.

I thought adventure pony was another Easter egg, but that caste would actually be useful in adventure mode.

Bow / crossbow / blowgun pony should be merged into a single caste. They should also get a bonus to ambusher.

Armor Expert and Shield bearer. I see no point to them. Maybe add armour user to armoursmith as a joke, but otherwise these two castes should be merged with the rest of the military.

I'd give melee fighters small bonuses to all melee weapons, not just their chosen ones and debuffs to civilian job learning rates (on top of basics for their castes).

Drill Sergeant - very useful.

Siege Operator - no siege engineering? Maybe throw in a small bonus for ranged weapons, so he can be drafted to inactive squad, given a crossbow and shoot things that come too close to siege engines.

Animal Caretaker - no animal taming.

Brewer has no bonus to cooking, but a cook has bonus to brewing.

Ace Flier - Speed 1111 This makes no sense. Why so slow? Wait, did you actually think that 1111 speed is faster than 150 speed? Lol.

Bowyer could use bonecarving at least.


In my opinion you went too far overboard with modifying learning rates. I much prefer the 1.71 approach, with *0.8 to *1.3 being the norm.

Overall you did a lot of good work making a solid foundation for cutie marks and castes. It may look as if I'm complaining too much, but this is my way of offering feedback. One factor you should take into consideration is how fun and useful are those castes for the player and also decipherable without a cheat sheet.

[jaxler]

it also seems you can't tame large animals

[Replica]

Yay, week long project wasn't discarded! :D

I haven't looked over the RAWs, just the release note for the castes.

I disagree with how you did alicorns completely. One caste has *0.2 learning rates for a lot of skills. There are no males. Princess and Noble aren't the same thing. Overall big Ugh / WTF / ChangeOnInstall.

Liar has *8 learning rate. Much too much for my taste, but it is an Easter egg anyway.

I rather like the nurse pony, especially the personality bonus, although she only has 3 doctor skills out of 5 and oddly high social skills. But then there is a doctor caste too, so good.

I thought adventure pony was another Easter egg, but that caste would actually be useful in adventure mode.

Bow / crossbow / blowgun pony should be merged into a single caste. They should also get a bonus to ambusher.

Armor Expert and Shield bearer. I see no point to them. Maybe add armour user to armoursmith as a joke, but otherwise these two castes should be merged with the rest of the military.

I'd give melee fighters small bonuses to all melee weapons, not just their chosen ones and debuffs to civilian job learning rates (on top of basics for their castes).

Drill Sergeant - very useful.

Siege Operator - no siege engineering? Maybe throw in a small bonus for ranged weapons, so he can be drafted to inactive squad, given a crossbow and shoot things that come too close to siege engines.

Animal Caretaker - no animal taming.

Brewer has no bonus to cooking, but a cook has bonus to brewing.

Ace Flier - Speed 1111 This makes no sense. Why so slow? Wait, did you actually think that 1111 speed is faster than 150 speed? Lol.

Bowyer could use bonecarving at least.


In my opinion you went too far overboard with modifying learning rates. I much prefer the 1.71 approach, with *0.8 to *1.3 being the norm.

Overall you did a lot of good work making a solid foundation for cutie marks and castes. It may look as if I'm complaining too much, but this is my way of offering feedback. One factor you should take into consideration is how fun and useful are those castes for the player and also decipherable without a cheat sheet.

All valid points, I appreciate the feedback and here is my reasoning behind some of these (consider it counter-criticism if you will, we are all open to thoughts and opinions here right?):

Spoiler: Counter Criticism (click to show/hide)

Alicorn Nobles
It was intended as a balance thing, one is a powerful soldier alicorn intended to be used as an officer/noble/leader/sergeant while the other is intended to be a civilian noble/general worker.
I thought that if I gave the two no penalties and general buffs in generic skills that they would be too similar to the "lesser ponies", alicorns aren't stronger or more special in any way, they are in ingame terms essentially an unicorn with wings and an unique "horn stab" attack.
Thats it, thats their speciality.
I had bigger plans for alicorn nobles too, but I didn't feel arsed to make anything serious with them and didn't do what I originaly wanted to do with them, that will suffice as an explanation for that.
As for no males... I have no idea what weird crap the fandom has spawned, but I haven't seen or heard mention of male alicorns anywhere. Male noble ponies and royalty, sure, but alicorns? Hmm. Maybe there are male alicorns but I just haven't heard mention of it yet, in that case, my bad.

Liar
Lying is a social skill like the rest, social skills don't mean shit in DF, trust me. 800 modifier is just for fun.
Friendmaking in Dwarf Fortress is actually, when you think about it, a bad thing with all the dying and all.
That archetype is 100% intended as a joke/appleliar easter egg, nothing else.
See it yet?

You should be happy that I didn't add the robot or "tired" caste as originaly intended, those were fun. But inappropiate.

Nurse
Intended to be just that, a nurse.
I once had my hospital in an abnormaly large meeting hall in a fort a while way back, I remember that the dwarves I had assigned to be "nurses" would talk to the permanent cripple patients in the hospital/meeting hall while on break/standing by.
It was probably a bug since unconscious brain dead people aren't suposed to talk back, but I thought it was pretty cool.
My idea was thus to make a class that would specificaly be intended for the role of keeping patients company/in good health based on that one happening, not to replace the professional doctors.

Ranged Military Ponies
We have the Pegasus Hunter for that, he is pretty cool, eh, has its own unique coat color and doesn't afraid of anything.
Besides good hunters are damned op, having a migrant arrive with high ambush and ranged skills should be a blessing, not a granted gift.

Armor Expert/Shieldbearer
They have bonus skill ratio to their choosen skills.
Having a cutiemark for being better at others at parrying arrows with a shield seems totaly legit to me, you should be happy that I didn't go with the 115 archetypes instead, one for every skill in DF. Concentration, Focus, Druid archetypes anyone?

Melee Soldiers
But that would mean merging everything into one class, I can share a feeling that the soldier castes are way too common, but I think that it is uneccesary and slightly op to bunch all skills together, maybe I can make the classes more diverse or give larger skill buffs/but make rarer. I just think that getting a drawing on your ass for swinging an axe is way different from getting one for stabbing something with a giant pike. At most I could merge some weapon skills together, like Spear/Pike, Axe/Sword, Mace/Hammer and so.
Plus they don't actually have debuffs in civilian jobs as far as I know, I just didn't include them at all, that means that all soldier castes currently have the default x1 multiplier on EVERYTHING not in their archetype entry.
It was a lazy move to save time and effort, yeah I know.

Siege Operator
He already has NO FEAR to combat the "civilian siege operators fleeing from emplacement" bug that plagues siege weapons, that seems like a pretty powerful buff to me. The only two castes WITH NO FEAR are the Siege Operator and the Drill Sergeant. Not even the alicorns have that power.

Animal Caretaker
There is the Pegasus Beast Tamer for that, but thinking back giving the Animal Caretaker a x1.5 multiplier on caretaking and the beast tamer an x2 on caretaking seems like a strange choice. That is obviously an error.

Cook
Yes, then there is also a bunch of classes with bonuses to Threshing, even though it is not really related to their skillset.
I guess the idea was to give the cook a full set of kitchen related labours, in my forts I usualy have one decent cook assigned to cheesemaking, brewing, cooking and such.
Seems like a logical choice to me.

Ace Flier
LOL.
Well that explains it, thank you for clearing that up, I had no idea speed worked in reverse here, usually higher values means "go faster" and I thought that it went after the speed rating in adventure mode. Ha.

Bowyer
Why?
Unicorns already have a bonus in bonecarving, adding x0.20 to their x1.30 multiplier seemed totaly uneccesary to me.


You also need to understand that this was a rushed project (I think it took me exactly one week to start and finalize this), I was given virtually no instruction on what to add as archetypes.
You guys gave me an empty google doc, the applebucker, the pie maker and a hamburger cutiemark and said "GO NUTS REPLICA", when I asked for suggestions I was given your response and then utter silence, so I just had to make a bunch of shit up as I went along, it would have totally been cool if you added your own archetype ideas as well, I did in fact not remove the two preplaced archetypes and save for the hamburger cutiemark everything made it into the current system.
Fortunately I built it in a way that allows easy changing, the current archetypes are mostly intended as "templates".
My guess is that in 10 versions of this mod some of those archetypes will either have been replaced, integrated/merged with Lycaeons variants or removed alltogether.

Anyway, I understand your criticism (and my counter criticism isn't intended to be a stubborn jabbing or anything, merely my own reasoning behind the choices I made) and some aspects are obviously flawed or redundant, I am taking it in consideration for future potential updating/modification to the system and all that good stuff.

For the immediate future however you will have to do with your own and Sorcerers modifications, I don't intend to make any changes or moves anytime soon (but it doesn't mean that I am not around and listening for feedback/suggestion).
But that is good right? That means that you, as the very first unhappy user, will be the first to test pilot and change the system!
Yay you.
Post was longer than intended, I type to damn much. I am like the Mordin Solus of typing.


EDIT: Oh yeah, one more thing.
The learning rates were all usualy over 1.3 because the default caste learning skills were already at that level.
I did not replace previous skill rates.
So giving an earth pony an x1.25 rate in herbalism actually means NERFING their herbalism skill rate.
Hence why skills are usualy at 1.5 or higher.

THE MORE YOU KNOW....

For Sorcerer to fix/imminently patch:
Ace Flier speed, change from 1111 to a value lower than 777.

[Sorcerer]

So I was reading through some of the DF files before work today, when a thought struck me.
With this new cutie mark system, it is technically possible to assign certain ponies special classes that can be used for interactions and positions.
For example, I made a new noble position as a duplicate of the champion, and named it the Element of Loyalty, set the position to require a class, and added the class to a number of earth pony castes to try it out..
Success! my first game had two eligible ponies to bear the honors.

Now, what do you think, is this something to explore further, or will it just make a mess of things?
I think that having the elements being appointed by the element of magic could be interesting.
There's currently not a ton of stuff the positions actually DO, which is a shame, but It would add a little something to legends mode if nothing else

[Replica]

Go for it.

Perhaps you can add some useful functionality to it later using reactions or something.
Masterwork has the Cult of the Carp god which has something going on there with the Apostles of Armok and the carp cultists so there should be potential for fun in there.

[Sorcerer]

I've actually already jotted down some interactions that could be interesting to add with regards to the elements of harmony.
The entity positions themselves could serve primarily as a ways to identify eligible ponies.

Some ponies will have an innate connection to each of  the elements(they have the class), but are not true elements until "activated" by the element of Magic. Each Element of Magic will have an interaction to activate one other element of each type once, activating them will turn them into a different caste of pony, with bonuses tied to their element, and some interactions of their own. (unfortunately, they'll probably lose their appearance details in the process).
Each of the elements will grant a bonus to each of the other elements, so getting the whole gang together should prove to be quite the formidable force.

The kicker here is: How do you get the element of magic? Natural? created by tons of studying? magically appointed by an Alicorn princess?
I'd love to hear some input on this! Also I apologize if this post is a bit broken, I've been idly writing it in any breaks that have popped up XD

[Replica]

Interesting.
You could make the element of magic's appearance related to the sonic rainboom somehow (I think Lycaeon made one for his mod, a type of pegasi uses it as an attack and as a way to retreat from what I've read), but I wouldn't know how.
Workshop reaction?
Weather related?
Rainbows?
I know jack shit about reactions, so I wouldn't know where the limit goes.


The "turning them into a different caste of pony..." bit catched my eye though.
Would it be possible to create a reaction that changes fillies to a caste when they reach a certain age (instead of having them being born with one)?
How would that work though? V
Would their descriptors change with them or would they keep their old colours?
Can reactions add a color descriptor to a creature?

[Sorcerer]

That would require unique castes for each color/cutie mark combination, and young/adult versions too.
The caste change is mostly a limitation of the interaction system as it works right now, we can only add or remove certain tags, but this sort of thing will be more than the system can handle at this point.

I guess I could handwave the caste change by making the element castes quite striking in appearance, have them be uberponies so to speak. Not quite canon I guess, but with the limitations we have with the system I think it might be the LEAST immersion breaking.

[Replica]

Understood.
Good luck with that.

Edit: Should point out another minor thing.

You have three reactions that yield the SKIN of three creatures in the crafting workshop.
Not sure what they are there for, but I am defenitely sure that threads of sheep skin are not used anywhere for anything.

[Sorcerer]

Oh, I've removed that actually, it was an attempt to get wool items, milk and cheese without also embarking and trading with meat.
Unfortunately, they seem to be linked...

Is it possible to remove meat as a butchering result altogether?

[Replica]

NOBONES
NOMEAT
NOSKIN
NOSKULL
NOT_BUTCHERABLE

Creature tags that affect butchering.
Placing the NOMEAT tag on every creature would in theory prevent meat as butchering product.
I have no idea what side effects this would have on the rest of the game though.

[Amorack]

I love the Mod, Sorcerer! And Replica, the CBCS looks great.

I noticed something that's probably a bug though. The creature_standard file still has the Vanilla-DF unicorns in it. So I had a strange situation where I embarked in a Good biome and there were unintelligent, presumably butcherable unicorns walking around.

[Mr. J]

I noticed something that's probably a bug though. The creature_standard file still has the Vanilla-DF unicorns in it. So I had a strange situation where I embarked in a Good biome and there were unintelligent, presumably butcherable unicorns walking around.

I guess those Unicorns are to Ponies what Monkeys are to us.