Print

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

[kuki]

Hi, so after losing some forts to things like jedi goblin lashers, moody crafters demanding unimportable shells, militia going insane from inappropriate "long patrol duty" thoughts, etc. and going online searching around in frustration, I got the sense that there were some pretty common community fixes for things in the current release (0.34.11). Downloaded DFHack for the tweaks, copy/pasted some things in the raws, now my lashes function as maces, my military knows when they're not on duty, horns can be used as shells, and I'm not losing games to temp-jitter/population-cap related FPS death.

Am I missing anything? Running into a game-breaking bug that ends your fort is a lot less fun than running into a legit mechanic that ends your fort. I had a look at the community combat revamp mod, but it seems to be outdated; are there, for instance, any other widely accepted changes to weapon statistics besides increasing the contact area/decreasing the velocity of whips? I'd love to have some consistency between warhammers and battleaxes, which are both designed to be force-concentrating anti-platemail weapons, but in vanilla DF a battleaxe is only good for lopping off hands and feet unless it's of a superior material, whereas a copper warhammer will wreck skulls through any kind of armor. I'm also curious if there are any community fixes for the weirdly limited mortality some creatures exhibit vs. cumulative damage, i.e. being hammered for pages and pages until a lucky strike to the head finishes things in one shot.

[Lysabild]

When you mention all these fixes I can't help being curious enough if you'd share?

[sayke]

there is a lot of weirdness, actually... check the bugtracker and recent threads. by default, crossbow damage is completely messed up, melting/ignition temperatures are completely wrong, etc.

[kuki]

When you mention all these fixes I can't help being curious enough if you'd share?

Sure. WELL, the fix to the patrol duty thought doesn't actually tell your soldiers they're not on patrol when they're off duty; it just tells them they're not on patrol when they're training.

Whip damage: You can edit the raw files to adjust the performance of whips. Look in Dwarf Fortress > raw > item_weapon.txt; I changed the contact area and speed on my whips to be the same as maces, since I don't understand the combat mechanics well enough to make up new values, and the mace's values are consistent with the suggested fix discussed here and elsewhere http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2712 - my entry looks like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_WHIP]
[NAME:whip:whips]
[SIZE:100]
[SKILL:WHIP]
[TWO_HANDED:27500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:22500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:1]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:20:200:lash:lashes:NO_SUB:2000]

Crafters demanding shells: You can edit the raw files to allow other crafting materials to be used as shells, by adding the [SHELL] tag to the appropriate material definition in Dwarf Fortress > raw > material_template_default.txt. It should look like this (shell is towards the end):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:HORN_TEMPLATE]
   [STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:GRAY]
   [STATE_NAME:ALL_SOLID:horn]
   [STATE_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:horn]
   [STATE_COLOR:LIQUID:GRAY]
   [STATE_NAME:LIQUID:n/a]
   [STATE_ADJ:LIQUID:n/a]
   [STATE_COLOR:GAS:GRAY]
   [STATE_NAME:GAS:n/a]
   [STATE_ADJ:GAS:n/a]
   [DISPLAY_COLOR:7:0:0]
   [MATERIAL_VALUE:1]
   [SPEC_HEAT:420]
   [IGNITE_POINT:10508]
   [MELTING_POINT:NONE]
   [BOILING_POINT:NONE]
   [HEATDAM_POINT:10250]
   [COLDDAM_POINT:9900]
   [MAT_FIXED_TEMP:NONE]
   [SOLID_DENSITY:500]
   [LIQUID_DENSITY:NONE]
   [MOLAR_MASS:NONE]
   [IMPACT_YIELD:200000] used bone for all of these, no data
   [IMPACT_FRACTURE:200000]
   [IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]
   [COMPRESSIVE_YIELD:200000]
   [COMPRESSIVE_FRACTURE:200000]
   [COMPRESSIVE_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]
   [TENSILE_YIELD:115000]
   [TENSILE_FRACTURE:130000]
   [TENSILE_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]
   [TORSION_YIELD:115000]
   [TORSION_FRACTURE:130000]
   [TORSION_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]
   [SHEAR_YIELD:115000]
   [SHEAR_FRACTURE:130000]
   [SHEAR_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]
   [BENDING_YIELD:115000]
   [BENDING_FRACTURE:130000]
   [BENDING_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:100]
   [MAX_EDGE:1000]
   [ABSORPTION:100]
   [IMPLIES_ANIMAL_KILL]
   [HORN]
   [SHELL]
   [ITEMS_HARD]

DFhack is here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=91166.0 and contains the following commands, which I find useful: tweak patrol-duty, tweak stable-cursor, tweak military-stable-assign, tweak stable-temp, and fix/population-cap - respectively, they are the patrol duty fix, two UI fixes, a performance fix, and an instantaneous report to the Mountainhomes of your current population.

OK!

/edit- there is a binary patch that will permanently apply the change to patrol duty thought behavior, but I don't even know what a binary patch is, really, or what you do with one, so I have not fuxed with that.

by default, crossbow damage is completely messed up

I would love a fix for that too. Hammers and crossbows are excellent anti-armor suppressive weapons, but god damn can goblin bones absorb a lot of bolts and hammerblows before the critters actually die.

[Blakmane]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=105871.0

Modest Mod has the binary patch and a lot of other small fixes to gameplay, without the chaff of feature bloat that a lot of mods have.

[kuki]

Modest Mod

Heyyy there it is. I overlooked that one because I thought it was the "Moddest Mod," and assumed it would have the most bloat. Hah. Thank you.

/edit some more: As I look closer, that mod has some built in changes I'm not into, like making most bolts bounce off of most kinds of armor, without giving them any additional strengths.. there are so many good changes I'm going to download it and use it, but I will continue to look for tweaks to crossbows, hammers and war axes on my own, I guess.

[Quietust]

Sure. WELL, the fix to the patrol duty thought doesn't actually tell your soldiers they're not on patrol when they're off duty; it just tells them they're not on patrol when they're training.

/edit- there is a binary patch that will permanently apply the change to patrol duty thought behavior, but I don't even know what a binary patch is, really, or what you do with one, so I have not fuxed with that.

The binary patch actually fixes both problems - it makes their patrol timer cool down when they're training and when they're off-duty.

A binary patch is basically just a set of numeric values to change inside the program's executable. Download a hex-editor (do a Google search for "hex editor" - the 2nd hit should be XVI32, the hex-editor I use), run it and open Dwarf Fortress.exe, then for each line of the binary patch:
1. Read the first (6-digit) number - this is the address where the patch should be applied. Use the editor's "Go to address" command to jump to that location.
2. Read the first sequence of 2-digit values - this is the original data for the patch. Starting at the address from step 1, confirm that the bytes in the executable match these bytes in the patch so you know you're patching the correct version of Dwarf Fortress.
3. Read the second sequence of 2-digit values - this is the new data for the patch. Starting again at the address from step 1 (highlighted in the left side of the window), type in the new values.
Once you're done, save the executable and exit, then run it and whatever bug it was designed to fix should be, well, fixed.

[Igfig]

Modest Mod

Heyyy there it is. I overlooked that one because I thought it was the "Moddest Mod," and assumed it would have the most bloat. Hah. Thank you.

/edit some more: As I look closer, that mod has some built in changes I'm not into, like making most bolts bounce off of most kinds of armor, without giving them any additional strengths.. there are so many good changes I'm going to download it and use it, but I will continue to look for tweaks to crossbows, hammers and war axes on my own, I guess.

Most bolts bouncing off most kinds of armour? That doesn't sound right. I must admit, I took all my numbers for that from Joben's Broken Arrow mod, without any testing of my own. If those numbers aren't satisfactory, you should bring it up in the Modest Mod thread so we can figure out something better! Ditto with any other problems you might have with the mod.

You might also be interested in the Grim Grimoire, which does some interesting things with weapons, tissues, and body parts in the name of realism and balance.

[kuki]

I am basing my understanding of Joben's Broken Arrow mod on the data posten by Pirate Bob on page two of that thread, generated using Joben's modded raws. His conclusion was:

As you can see, these parameters render candy and steel invulnerable to all projectiles, and iron provides good protection against some, but not all, metals.  Also, there is no significant change to deadliness to unarmored targets.

Making steel invulnerable to arrows might be swinging things a bit too far towards making projectiles too weak in dwarf mode, but this might actually be a very nice parameter set for adventure mode, where steel is extremely hard to (legitimately) find.

If you are interested in that data, it is there to look at. FWIW, I agree with his conclusion - makes sense for adventure mode, not so much fortress mode. Still, it makes more sense than armor simply doing nothing to metal bolts of any kind, so for now broken arrow is installed. I have no numbers of my own to contribute to your thread - if I figure out how to equip a quiver of bolts on a dwarf in the arena, I'll get to testing :3

/always find a reason to edit - hey, that Grim Grimoire is interesting, the historical weapons raw file will be a very good starting point for weapons rebalances. I will try some of those stats on a vanilla weapon for my next fortress game and see how I like it.