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[Sorcerer]

I should perhaps also point out, Ponies will have items available that can counteract the lower than normal skill gains, through magic items, food, and through The Elements of Harmony! (more on that later)

[Phenoix12]

...Hay just a thought since your planning on removing uncut gemstones for flavor reason...
I was just wondering what are we supposed to do when a pony goes into a fay mood and wants rough uncut gemstones?

I think a lot of the stuff for flavor your adding and changing is cool but there is a line where the core gameplay mechanics will prevent you from doing some things. Though this is fine because I rather have the gameplay rather then some flavor changes that take away from the game as a hole because there is a line where flavor will actually start to be detrimental to the core game.  The flavor of the pony world is awesome but you don't have to follow it to the dot on everything. These are just my personal thoughts.

[Sorcerer]

Uh.. i never said i was removing the uncut gemstones, I said i was reducing the amount of gems to six types with five quality ranges, they'll still be usable as gems, the lowest quality ones will barely have any magical effect at all and will mostly be used for decoration.

[Hetairos]

Code: [Select]

INNATE
110:NONE:NONE:NONE

FAVORED
90:16:32:32

GENERIC
50:8:16:16

UNFAVORED
25:8:12:12

DISABLED
0:1:1:1
Disabled is used for things that should not be skillable, like alchemy for non-pegasi, and butchering.

Could you explain what do these numbers mean for us who don't speak raw?

What about hunting? Ponies don't really need it, and back in 34.11 I had to screen every migrant wave for hunters lest somepony would run away and open fire at local wildlife.

[Sorcerer]

The first is xp gained for each action. Dwarves are at 100 so consider it a percentage of "default".
The next three numbers represent rate of skill rust and threshold for demoting a skill. Higher numbers mean less rust. 1:0:0 basically means you won't be able to gain any skill. Hunting is a bit of a hassle. I don't think I can remove it altogether but I'll see about making sure there's no migrants coming in with hunting active

[Phenoix12]

DF 40.06 is out. (I wonder how many more until its 'stable')


I had another fun game of Fortress mode!
Ended even more *fun* then the last one.  This time from a fay mood gone bad. (gold everywhere but not a single gemstone)


Also another question of the gemstone variety.
Is the main reason you’re removing most the gem types for flavor reasons or what?

I can't be for flavor reasons because there is nothing in the show that says that all the gem types that exist in the world don't exist in Equestria.

Maybe instead of removing all the gem types you could just add in the magic ones (since I don’t think EVERY gemstone in Equestria would just have powerful magic in it) ((but I guess that would make them more rare then you wanted but that would make them more valuable and worth wild for players to get which adds in a layer of *fun* to the mod)) or just add a researchable building/reaction to be able to convert specific types of gemstones into magic ones.

[Hetairos]

So "generic" means skill gain rate is halved in comparison to a dwarf. Sounds good.

Reporting another bug - there is no tile symbol (or whatever are these called) for cocoa beans. They are displayed as a black space. I'd suggest taking a look at all the plants added in the 34.11 version; dandelions, for example, have a similar problem. I'm going to test the chocolate production chain and see what happens.

[Sorcerer]

The thing is, most of the gemstones in vanilla dwarf fortress are variations of the same minerals, where the difference is mostly in coloring and the real world area they are found.
What follows is an account of my reasoning for the change, tho i may make a larger layer type of "gem filled soil or rock" where you can find large quantities.

In MLP gems are an abundant resource, Spike was served a sapphire cake, and most of Rarity's outfits use literal BUCKETS of gemstones.
If you look at for instance "A dog and pony show" or "Dragon Quest" You'll see that for the most part, gems come in piles of similarly shaped and colored gemstones.
The most common gems in the show are Red, Blue, Green, Orange, Purple, and White, with some pink and light blues thrown in here and there,
You see the same types of gems in most scenes, and many of them have been named individually in the show

The blue ones are always referred to as sapphires, which are blueish in real life
green ones are emeralds, likewise green in real life
red ones are rubies, often referred to, with some special ones mentioned, like the fire ruby.
white, pink and light blue ones are usually shaped in a more traditional diamond cut, and diamonds come in both pink, white and blue variants

This leaves two of the "common" gems unaccounted for, the purple and orange
while not named specifically, I've gone with Amethyst for the Purples and Citrine for the orange, both fairly common, well known gems.


Tho you have alerted me to one thing, it may be that there are fewer gems in the game than should be. I'll look into that later today and possibly push an update.

[Phenoix12]

Well you could cut down on the diffrent color versions of gems and such
Though you still are missing some major gem types from that short list of yours.

Found this helpful pic that shows all the major families of gemstones
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YvMqmrV10WY/UN3aEdVesMI/AAAAAAAAAAY/ZnrM7eyrr5g/s1600/precious-gemstone-names.gif

Also turquoise is a gemstone type I remember being in the show.  In Over a Barrel Little Strongheart was giveing them to spike.
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121225003945/mlp/images/6/62/Little_Strongheart_%22you_like_gemstones%2C_yes%3F%22_S01E21.png

[Hetairos]

Found this helpful pic that shows all the major families of gemstones
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YvMqmrV10WY/UN3aEdVesMI/AAAAAAAAAAY/ZnrM7eyrr5g/s1600/precious-gemstone-names.gif

+1 for this. Nice find.

[Maklak]

You don't need to cut down the number of gems and can instead use them for reactions with reaction classes, like FoE did. For example:

[INORGANIC:CITRINE]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:2][DISPLAY_COLOR:6:7:1][TILE:169][IS_GEM:citrine(R1):citrines(R1):OVERWRITE_SOLID]
[ENVIRONMENT:ALL_STONE:CLUSTER_SMALL:100]
[REACTION_CLASS:RESTORATION_LOW]
[SOLID_DENSITY:2650]  Common to quartz gems
[STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:CREAM]

I think this is a strong alternative to reducing variety of gems.

> Spells are already planned, Tho they'll probably be imparted via syndromes rather than castes,
> because castes has a nasty tendency to scramble the pony descriptions
Of course you need syndromes for spells. Namely syndomes from evaporating rocks from workshop reactions which give the pony a CE_CAN_DO_INTERACTION. But you could make some spells stronger or exclusive to unicorns with magical cutie marks. In FoE there were 5 or so schools of magic, each having 1-3 basic spells, 1-2 advanced spells and 0-1 master spells. Normal unicorns could learn basic spells from one school and that's it, but you could choose which school. Some Unicorns were talented in one school of magic and those could learn all basic spells from all schools (and cast them more often) and advanced spells in their own school. Finally a magic master could learn all spells and was the most effective at casting them. Non-unicorns got sick from using magic reactions.

While not be-all-end-all of spells, FoE system worked quite well. It took some effort to develop all basic spells, the necessary workshops and finally teach them to at least half the Unicorn population and wasn't that overpowered, especially that the more powerful enemies were resistant to magic.
Some notes on FoE magic system: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118893.msg3959710#msg3959710
Reactions and necessary infrastructure: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118893.msg4157271#msg4157271

Here is another thread on spells, but I didn't find it all that useful for ponies. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101264.0

One downslide of FoE spell system is that it uses skill Alchemy, which you already use for could factories and I don't think there is another good candidate. Trapping maybe? No one uses that.

> I should perhaps also point out, Ponies will have items available that can
> counteract the lower than normal skill gains, through magic items, food [...]
I'm all for wearable magic items with \ITEMSYNDROME. For the most part they seem to work pretty well as long as they're somewhat scarce, so only veteran soldiers get them. Food is another matter. It is prone to either being too rare and short-lasting to matter or spammable via farming. I think Masterwork even went as far as to make certain plants only give one crop per year to nerf magic drinks and poisons, but I don't like having to wait that long; my forts tend to die of FPS or other issues in 5-8 years.

> ...Hay just a thought since your planning on removing uncut gemstones for flavor reason...
> I was just wondering what are we supposed to do when a pony goes into a fay mood and
> wants rough uncut gemstones?

After I repeatedly asked for it, FoE eventually got a reaction to turn cut gems into rough ones with 60% chance, so getting gems from a caravan became viable. I used it to order what gem types I didn't have in abundance from the liaison.

[REACTION:RECOVER_GEM]
   [NAME:prepare polished gem for carving (60% chance)]
   [BUILDING:ARCANE_GEMCRAFT_STATION:NONE]
   [REAGENT:A:1:SMALLGEM:NONE:NONE:NONE]
   [PRODUCT:60:1:ROUGH:NONE:GET_MATERIAL_FROM_REAGENT:A:NONE]

I have one request. Armour User gains are the slowest of all military skills (unless using danger rooms withhout shields or something), so please make it at least INNATE for all ponies. Preferably 500% and no rust. In my experience it is that bad.

And that first number is not the number of XP per try, it is a multiplier. A workshop job usually grants 30 (or was it 60?) XP, while a single use of military skill grants like 2-15. Then that is multiplied by XP rate (0-500) and divided by 100. Seeing as integer arithmethics works, even 99 learning rate can severely slow down training of those skills that give particularly low xp per use (namely military and especially armour user).

Do 40.05 saves work in 40.06?

> tho i may make a larger layer type of "gem filled soil or rock" where you can find large quantities.
FoE had a rock grinder with a reaction to grind 10 rocks and possibly get some gems out of it. Between that, concrete slab production, masonry and making mechanisms, I had no such thing as too much stone.

So I made a rather long rant about FoE, but I really liked that mod to the point of reading through the RAWs after each release. I sincerely think you should take a peek too, Sorcerer. There are a lot of good ideas in Lycaeon's RAWs that could be applied here (Well, maybe except for expeditions).

[taliakirana]

The rock grinder would definitely be a good idea to borrow. A few posts back I also suggested adding a display case type building. Mostly so we can have a use for the trinket artifacts.

( I in fact added that to my own copy, plus that neat blockcraft workshop and reactions (because it includes a reaction to turn lignite and bituminous coal blocks back into a usable state) somebody posted. As well as that assistant medic position... so I have an easier way of tracking my medical ponies. Sorry I don't play without some tweaking, but I found these things really useful.)

[Lukander]

Actually in a spell system that is moderately or mostly like the FoE one; the [MAGIC_NATURE] skill could stand in place of [ALCHEMY]. Leaving the [ALCHEMY] skill for the cloud stuff perhaps?

I'm currently tinkering with a system that uses secrets for worldgen and adventure mode, and a Reaction/syndrome side for Fortress mode.

[Phenoix12]

I have one request. Armour User gains are the slowest of all military skills (unless using danger rooms withhout shields or something), so please make it at least INNATE for all ponies. Preferably 500% and no rust. In my experience it is that bad.

I'm not sure about this...  There should be some training needed, but the no rust would be a decent idea since in most situations armor isn't constantly trained... also I'm pretty sure someone wouldn't forget how to use armor so no rust would make sense.

[Maklak]

Hm, either I missed it or ponies have no way to make bows and arrows. I think they should, because Unicorns can use those.