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[Firehawk45]

Related to the last topic of spawning enemies in workshops:

What about having a magical workshop with the ability to spawn some ghostly enemies as kind of training dummies for your militia? Like a ghostly bronze collosus, which will die after a certain amount of time, but in the meantime provides some "live" combat experience for your dwarfes.

Test of Armok, yes, sounds cool, i can see people killing the trial monster(s) with traps, marksdwarfes behind fortifications and lava though, but thats kind of the danger room discussion, isnt it? I want it.

Also, some more golem and turret variants would be really cool. Maybe linked to the spawn enemies idea. A turret that shoots pure death (deadly syndrome, does not spread, slow rate of fire (can you adjust rate of fire?)), little golems (not as strong or durable as normal golems, but easier to make, link to the terracotta army you are planning), maybe more golem materials (mithril golems, SLADEMATINE GOLEMS!) and turrets that can walk (needs a very very very rare automaton drop, or again, another spawn enemies )

Just my thoughts, at least those that make some sense, the rest is junk and gets melted down and recycled right now

[fasquardon]

I like the idea of tombs that spawn enemies when you open them up.

I don't like the idea of each invader having their own priest class, because it makes it harder to have low-magic games.  I would like the idea of each invader having a priest class that you could toggle on/off depending on mood.

I don't have strong feelings either way about the idea of standardizing fossil items - I've never gone through the trouble of exhuming them in my own fortresses, I can see advantages to doing it either way.  Standardizing would be more in keeping with the overall philosophy that Masterworks has.

With regards to your idea about making fossils more random, I think I'd probably dig up fossils more often if they were, since I'd always be hoping to get something amazing out of them.

I was thinking that dinosaur fossils could be another way of using the "spawn a creature in a workshop" idea.  Say you dig up a sauropod fossil, you could then take it to the temple of life and turn the fossil into a living breathing sauropod (or possibly sauropod breeding pair, for ease of management).  So sauropods, raptors and tyrannosaurs would only be available through digging up fossils.

Though this does make me think - since races can do all the reactions assigned to them, and we are talking about lots of reactions to create hostile, or potentially hostile beasts - would this have a tendency of making the dwarfs go extinct?  Or alternatively, would dwarf caravans arrive bearing Anubis warrior pets (even though all summoned anubi would be hostile when you run the reaction in your fortress)?

fasquardon

[Meph]

Test of Armok, yes, sounds cool, i can see people killing the trial monster(s) with traps, marksdwarfes behind fortifications and lava though, but thats kind of the danger room discussion, isnt it? I want it.

Traps = Trapavoid.
Marksdwarves = Good point... mh... maybe it could shoot back ?
Magma = The item you want ? It melts. No magma

More turret variants I could do, but at some point it just gets exaggerated. Lets see what I can come up with, there are enough tower defense games to borrow from. Terracotta Army stuff is planned already. And Mithril Golems exist already The problem is that I have to make 3 new creatures for every time I make a new material for them. Walking turrets I wont do ^^

EDIT:@fasquardon:

The civ will run the reactions, but no transformation take place in worldgen, so the civ will never spawn any hostile creatures. Spawning dinosaurs only from fossils would be awesome, but they are tagged "friendly" and wont work as pets.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Test of Armok, yes, sounds cool, i can see people killing the trial monster(s) with traps, marksdwarfes behind fortifications and lava though, but thats kind of the danger room discussion, isnt it? I want it.

Traps = Trapavoid.
Marksdwarves = Good point... mh... maybe it could shoot back ?
Magma = The item you want ? It melts. No magma

More turret variants I could do, but at some point it just gets exaggerated. Lets see what I can come up with, there are enough tower defense games to borrow from. Terracotta Army stuff is planned already. And Mithril Golems exist already The problem is that I have to make 3 new creatures for every time I make a new material for them. Walking turrets I wont do ^^

EDIT:@fasquardon:

The civ will run the reactions, but no transformation take place in worldgen, so the civ will never spawn any hostile creatures. Spawning dinosaurs only from fossils would be awesome, but they are tagged "friendly" and wont work as pets.

What if you do the Cave-in, Cage-trap, and... tame them?

[smakemupagus]

Standardized fossils = awesome

[Tierre]

Fossils - i was talking about it for a long time but didn't voiced any opinion on it and here you are - getting even better ideas than i could even think of:) Basically for fossils that's all - you make 3 types of stone - the ancient rubble and trap and fossil which lie in the rubble. Can make traps either more common or more rare and even turn them off if you want. Then just make a fossil reaction which is going to give you a cut gem of weapon, armor, chest, ancient fossil and so on (might do it even with soap - less chance to let it go into some decoration). After that automatic reaction to get staff of it - weapons or armor, coins and precious metal bars and gems from treasure chests, books and alchemic reagents up to philosopher stone from anicent mage's storages and from fossil - t-rex bone and shark tooth and also maybe t-rex egg which can spawn a t-rex (build cage traps around archeologist so it can move into them and be cought and tamed if it works anyway). Maybe can do with some other rarer things - like demon armor and weapon (demonic material needs real good bumping - i think better do them from slademantine).Also it can be a chest of ancient elves with some treant seeds, or norrium/silphium seeds/plants, planks/bars of steeloak and ancient elven magic books which are required to make treants even appear (like a building mat for a spawning circle for elven things).
Hm it is a good idea to think  aout at all - workshops require magic book as a building mat to make some things - like a book of armok teachings to build armok temple (can be given by slaying an armok guardian), elven book of nature to build spawning circle for trants and spitting plants, and so on. Well it may be easier to use it as a component in  a reaction but this way it can make less hauling jobs for dwarfes.

[Meph]

Not a reagent... building mat sounds about right. That way you only need the big item once.  I can spawn groups of smaller enemies for the reagents you get from it. One thing that I want to avoid is unnecessary buildings, so one spawnpoint for stuff you set up, and one "evil hostile spawnpoint summoning circle" would suffice. I wont make 1 manufacturing and 1 spawning buildings for every theme... too much.

[ed boy]

I've finally gotten round to typing up my thoughts on the magic system, and it's quite substanstial. I'm not a fan of the current magic system - each of the different branches seems like too much of the same thing over again, so I suggest an alternative that will provide a large variety of flavours. Keep in mind that the spell lists are just example possibilities.

Spoiler: some thoughts about magic systems (click to show/hide)

The magic systems are very interesting, and hold great potential, but they seem too much like mirror images for my liking. For example, the church of dark depths gives us Demonbound(melee), shadowmancer(mage), and unnamed one(super). The fountain of eternal youth gives us the earthamancer(melee), lifeamancer(mage) and spirit of nature(super). The hall of the mountain king gives us stonebound(melee), magmamancer(mage) and mountain king(super). I believe that we can give them all a distinct use. Each would have a different 'fuels' for their power, of varying degrees of effectiveness. I also believe that it would be better to have an extra form of magic, one that the elves can provide. The four forms of magic would be as such:

Dark magic. Guaranteed results now, but at a high cost. Hopefully it won't be you paying that cost.
Low level dark magic would be powered by animal material, be it food, bones, etc.
Mid level dark magic would be powered by a substance called liquid pain. It can be extracted from any sentinent (be it your dwarves of POWs). The sentinent it is extracted from suffers great pain and many syndromes, but may survive if tough and allowed time to recover.
High level dark magic would be powered by bodies and death.
Dark magic focuses on making your dwarves more dangerous to others.

Nature magic. Results are not guaranteed but are probable, and take a lot of time and investment to achieve.
Low level nature magic would be powered by grown plants, which take a long time to grow and have expensive seeds.
Mid level nature magic would be powered by the products of animals that cannot be gotten mature and take a few years to come to maturity
High level nature magic would be powered by a few very old plants/animals, which take a long time to grow and require significant upkeep.
Nature magic focuses on sustaining your dwarves and addressing their basic requirements.

Good magic. Low probability results, but attempts are not costly.
Low level good spells are powered by prayer alone.
Mid level good spells are powered by holy water. Holy water is produced by taking buckets of water to a shrine and slowly blessing them.
High level good spells are powered by holy crystals. These occur when mid-level good spells are successful, or may be found with very low probability.
Good magic focuses on protecting your dwarves from harm.

Dwarven magic. Results are guaranteed, but can be not worth it unless you have strong, skillful dwarves. Powered by dwarven skill and strength.
Low level dwarven spells occur everyday in dwarven industries with low probabilities, or by mass dwarf prayer.
Mid level dwarven spells are powered by dwarves sacrificing crafts.
High level dwarven spells are powered by dwarves sacrificing extremely expensive crafts, or even artifacts.
Dwarven magic focuses on the skills and products of your dwarves.

Here are some example spells for each of the magic types:
Dark magic:
Dark magic has high costs, but hopefully your dwarves won't be paying those costs. It focuses on strengthening your dwarves.
-Bathe in blood. Uses animal blood. Grants the dwarf who uses it immunity to nausea and fear for some time.
-Schaudenfreude. Uses animal corpse. Grants the dwarf who uses it great happiness.
-Mass Schaudenfreude. Uses liquid pain. Grants dwarves nearby grea happiness.
-Bloodlust. Uses liquid pain. Grants the dwarf who uses it immunity to fear, nausea, pain and exertion for some time.
-Frenzy. Uses liquid pain. Grants the dwarf who uses it enhanced speed, and greatly enhanced strength for some time.
-Cannibalize. Uses dwarf coprse. Permanently grants a dwarf the effects of bathe in blood.
-Mass Bloodlust. Sacrifices a sentinent, Bloodlust on all others nearby.
-Mass Frenzy. Sacrifices a sentinent, Frenzy on all others nearby.
-Bloodritual. Sacrifices three sentinents, permanent Bloodlust on another.
-Fleshritual. Sacrifices three sentinents, permanent Frenzy on another.

Nature magic:
Nature magic requires long-term maintenance to sustain it. You have to make a long-term commitment with nature magic, but it can be very lucrative once set up and maintained. It focuses on maintaining and sustaining your dwarves.
Note that the trees and plants depicted here are not actual trees and plants, but animals that cannot move. This allows them to require feeding, and butchering. Castes can allow the plants to reproduce, and to give a small chance of getting the next tier of plant. They have varying degrees of biomass requirements to sustain them.
-Goldbushes can be bought from the elvan caravan. They require minimal biomass.  Every year, they produce a gold bar. May be slaughtered for two immediate gold bars. Produce Goldbush saplings, with a small chance for Platinoak saplings.
-Platinoaks are grown from platinoak saplings. They take years to come to maturity. Once mature, they produce two platinum bars a year, but require two times the sustenance of a goldbush. May be slaughtered for five immediate platinum bars. Spawns goldbush saplings, with a small chance of platinoak saplings and a small chance of Rainbowmetal saplings.
-Rainbowmetal trees are grown after many years from Rainbowmetal saplings. Ther require a very large intake of food, and every year produce three bars of each type of metal, except adamantine. May be immediately slaughtered for ten of each bar. Does not produce saplings.
-Nightweed can be bought from the elven caravan, and requires minimal biomass. Every nine months, it drops a stack of food which, when eaten, makes a dwarf not need sleep for a season. May be slaughtered immediately for three stacks. Produces Nightweed saplings, with a small change of Darkwatch saplings.
-Darkwatch bushes are grown from Darkwatch saplings. They drop the same food more often, and require only slightly more biomass. May be butchered immediately for ten stacks. Produces Nightweed saplings, with a small chance for Darkwatch saplings, and a small chance for Eversee saplings.
-Eversee trees are grown from Darkwatch bushes. They require significant biomass. Their food grants a slight speed boost, immunity to sleep for two seasons, immunity to blindness, extravision and magmavision. They do not produce saplings. They can be butchered immediately for a stack of twenty-five food an a single 'heart of the night', which grants these effects permenantly to one dwarf.
-Cramweed can be grown from bushes from the elves, taking eight months. They drop cramfood, one unit on which can be processed into ten cheap food units, or butchered immediately for twenty-five food units. Small chance of producing plentyhorn saplings. Minimal biomass required.
-Plentyhorns produce plentyfruit at the same rate, and require little biomass. Plentyfruit can be processed into 15 mid-quality food units, which makes the dwarves not required to drink for some time. May produce Fountainfruit saplings.
-A fountainfruit tree requires significant biomass. It produces fruit at the same rate as the other two, but it may be processed into 25 units which also give no_drink for a short time. It can be butchered to produce a fruit of sustenance, which makes one dwarf never require food or water, or air, and is no longer reliant on alcohol.
-Healberry bushes can be bought from the elves. They produce healberries, which when consumed give a dwarf extremely fast healing for some time, but cannot restore lost limbs. They spawn other healberry bushes, and possibly Timenut bushes. They can be butchered for a stack of healberries and some timenuts.
-Timenut bushes produce timenuts. They youthen the eater by a year, and provide the same healing properties as healberries. When butchered, they produce a small stack of lifefruit. They have a change to produce lifeoak saplings.
-Lifeoaks produce lifefruit. When a lifefruit is consumed, it youthens the eater by a year, and provides amazing regernating, capable of regaining lost limbs. when butchered, it gives a stack of lifefruit and a seed of immortality, which can give one dwarf permanent regenration and immunity to aging.

Good magic:
Most good magic is not costly to try, but has only a chance of succession. High level good magic, however, is costly, but its benefits are direct and large. It focuses on protecting your dwarves.
-Bless water. A bucket of water is obtained, and is attempted to be blessed, with a 1 ing 5 chance of success. If failed, the water is lost but the bucket is preserved.
-Pray for food. Costs nothing, but has a 10% chance of giving a single unit of food
-Pray for drink. As above, but a 15% chance of a single unity of drink.
-Pray for shelter. As above, but with a 5% chance of a full outfit of clothes,
-Absolve. Takes a hostile sentinent, and uses holy water to try and absolve them. 1 in 5 chance of success. If successful, the target dies and leaves behind a holy crystal.
-Multiply food. Takes a bucket of holy water and a stack of food. 1 in 2 chance of success, and a 1 in 5 chance of producing a holy crystal. If successful, the stack of food is doubled.
-Barkskin. Consumes holy water. Changes a dwarf's skin to be as hard as bark temporarily. 1 in 5 chance of being permanent, 1 in 5 chance of producing a holy crystal.
-Heatshield. Takes a holy crystal. Makes a single dwarf immune to heat and cold damage for a period of time.
-Ironguts. Takes a holy crystal. Temporarily changes a single dwarf to be immune to disease and sickness and symptoms, and changes the material of the organs to iron. 1 in 3 chance of being permanent.
-Homeostasis. Takes three holy crystals. Makes a single dwarf permanently immune to heat and cold damage.
-Steelflesh. Takes three holy crystals. Turns a dwarf's flesh into steel. 1 in 2 chance of being permanent.
-Ressurect. Takes three holy crystals and a dwarf corpse. Ressurects that dwarf.

Dwarf magic:
Dwarf magic is all about the strength and skill of your dwarves. Some of its effects require highly skilled dwarves to be worth it, others are targeted towards increasing the skill of your dwarves. It focuses on material goods and a bit on your dwarves skills and attributes.
-Amalgamate. Takes two items of equal quality less than masterwork, and produces a single item of upgraded quality.
-Split. Takes a single item of masterwork quality and produces four of the base material (e.g. 1 masterwork wooden chair becomes four logs)
-Deconstruct. Sacrifices a single item to give a dwarf some experience in the crafting skill (e.g. sacrificing a wooden chair gives carpentry experience). Amount increases with quality.
-Augment. Takes a single item, and a base material of a different sort. Changes the item to the material of the base material (e.g. 1 bar gold plus 1 copper warhammer becomes 1 gold warhammer).
-Strengthen. Consumes a weapon. Increases a dwarf's strength based on the value of the weapon.
-Toughen. Consumes armour. Increases a dwarf's toughness based on the value of the armour.
-Quicken. Consumes clothing. Increases a dwarf's speed based on the value of the clothing.
-Expand. Takes three masterwork items with the same crafting skill. Gives one dwarf a permanent boost to learning that skill.
-Reproduce. Takes a stack of a hundred food and five masterwork items. Creates a new dwarven baby.
-Perfect. Consumes an artifact. Gives one dwarf fast learning in all skills, and immunity to skill rusting.

[Meph]

@ed boy: I appreciate the very long and thoughfull post.

As a note I want to say that the current system is so similar to help players understand it.

Sadly, most things are not possible. Liquid pain, taking buckets full of water as ingredient, corpses as ingredient, animals that cant be bought matured, seeds for plants that cant be bought, sacrificing sentient creatures, making people younger, give immunity to heat or cold damage, (all buffs, like the different skins only work through transformation, so only one buff for each  and all kinds of other problems), basing things of the value of items, basing things of the quality of items... my best guess is that 80% of your suggestions are impossible to mod into the game. And I am really sorry to say that. I do however understand that many new reactions would make sense, and that 4 magic systems, for the 4 races, also fits well.

[Putnam]

Unfortunately, I've found that most suggestions are impossible to add to DF.

Also, I've heard that interesting effects happen involving transformations into creatures with lower max ages. Could that be used to make people younger?

[ioi101]

Is it possible to make a reaction that creates magma? Specifically say a building which you build with one open space slot, and the magma drops through in an open reservoir below? Or maybe in some other way?

I was thinking of a mega-building, Great magma temple of armok, where you sacrifice things to Armok to get.. magma. Like say, blood, or a very hard to get type of custom brew that maybe requires cavern-only plants to be mixed in with other plants, etc. And then with the magma you could create near-surface level magma forges, traps, anything. There's always a use for magma.

[raledon]

Suggestion: food system overhaul:
Food value should be adjusted. Currently, a barrel of cooked food can reach the value of 20K, more than many legendaries.
High quality food should be worth a lot, but currently a food based industry is the way to go (just lost to it, though, as I got invaded too early).
Part of it should be, I believe, in readjusting the quality control- a masterwork meal will consist of mostly masterworked ingredients and very few none masterwork, instead of the current pick-the-highest.
Dwarves will have the option of rationing, from half, normal (same as now), double and quadruple and up to 8x.
A dwarf eating less will have a reduced stats, while fattening will induce happy thoughts, add the "fat" description (makes him last longer without food) and adds bonuses. Bonuses apply only to double and quadruple.
Eating 8x will not grant a specific bonus, but increases the chance to eat well made food.
Higher quality food will grant bonuses, while a "like" (if the food contains an ingredient the dwarf likes) will make the food a +1 in quality level (masterwork will turn to legendary).
To sum it up: eating a lot grants dwarves bonuses, making them eat more in bigger intervals, and extra bonus if they eat good food.

[Tierre]

That's for Toady:) Not for modders. Absolutely impossible to change without rewriting game and we don't do it - that's developer's business:)

[Meph]

Yeah, the food is not balanced currently. One the one hand your masterwork lavish meals are over the top valuable, on the other hand 1 gold-object buys you all the food you ever need. I wish I could limit the amount of food caravans bring.

Anyway, have a new idea.

Familiars
Each mage has the interaction to transform one pet into a special pet for him. Lets say a giant spider for the necromancer, it stops approaching enemies with webs, while the necromancer fights ranged... or a demon hound for the demonbound, to help him in close combat. Each can be wartrained and assigned to the mage, and they do buff each other with interactions. This way people dont put them somewhere else. Magmamancer with 2 fire imps linked to him ?

These could be transformed from a generic pet creature you have to buy first, or from a specific type of creature. However only works once for each mage.

Oh, and I can give Magmamancers special abilities as long as they stand in Magma. Yes, we have the technology.

EDIT: Just remembered this one here: Make Magma and Water in Workshops @tierre (or any other volunteer) could you just run a test for this ? I never tried, would really love how it turns out in fortress mode and if that can have any use. I already know that you still need a volcano or magmalake for enabling the magma buildings, but this should power them nicely.

[ioi101]

Yeah I think it's perfectly fine to require that you find natural magma for the workshops to appear. But the ability to make near-surface magma forges without a 100 lvl pump stack or a piston would be beautiful. It shouldn't be easy, but something to look forward to setting up in a mature fortress.

And yeah food is hard to balance. Is the happiness that dwarves get from food connected to the value of the food in a hardcoded way? I.e. can you mod food so that it's cheap but dwarves still get a high amount of happiness from eating it? If so, I think just an across the board 1/4 or so multiplier to the current value of food would put it in better balance with other ways to make value.