I played my 0.30b fort some more.
I used #clean all to remove 2700 contaminants to see if it helps FPS. Well, it is 70 now and I didn't notice before.
Knife is still lying wounded and now is starving, dehydrated, drowsy and very unhappy. One of her cats hangs around, but all the ponies are busy elsewhere. Meanwhile Explorer is starving in a hospital bed. Knife eventually dies. Which may be just as well, because his injuries were as bad a Pierce's.
Explorer gets taken by a mood while in the hospital and still waiting for a long series of treatments. He crawls away from bed. It might actually increase his chances of survival, given how the doctors prefer other jobs to tending to their patients.
The concrete wall was built surprisingly fast. I had a single rock grinder with 3 wide stockpile for cheap stone as well as a stockpile for flux stone. Then there were four stockpiles for concrete blocks with no bins. Work was completed fast. The fortifications on top of the wall are progressing much slower.
An ambush of crazed raiders show up and take it upon themselves to exterminate a pack of wolves. The security is told to seek and destroy. This includes the ponies with ineffective batons.
I just had a thought: A great place for expedition staging area would be the hospital. After all if a pony gets there, that pony has a good chance of dying anyway and doesn't need to stay conscious.
Hm, a snatcher comes along and kills a cat close to the entrance and then a second ambush shows up. We close what entrances can be closed. Hm, another snatcher. The main squads are told to kill one of the foalsnatchers. Internal security is told to return to the compound. Gah, the raiders went around the wall and are chasing ponies who went to fetch stuff. Meanwhile a Minotaur Reaver comes along. Not good. Everypony inside, security station close to the gate. The raiders kill Steel Chain, a good herbalist and Bone Amulet. The Reaver just sort of mills around. Three raiders pursue Drill and run right into security, including Slug who is almost out of ammo. A few others chase Cheese Cake, who gets rescued by Friendly Fire, also low on ammo. He knocks out their leader with a precise shot, which stops the whole squad in their tracks. I send the rest of the security to get them. Oh crap, the Minotaur runs for the gate. Focus on the monster!
Friendly Fire and slug beats the rest of the wounded (by FF's pistol) raiders to death. Meanwhile the Minotaur runs straight for Deadeye, who shoots and misses with his combat pistol. Grapple desperately races to intercept the Minotaur. She fails. But that's OK, the Minotaur was after a cat and Deadeye is safe for now. Two steel small calibre bullets hit their mark and wound it's muscles. Good, Deadeye has 25 more in his quiver. Grapple and Minotaur finally collide, less than 10 meters from Deadeye. Lotus and Badge run to catch up and the gunners are done with their raiders. Grapple blocks and dodges the punches, but just barely, with no time for counter-strikes. Lotus enters the fray and Deadeye stuns the monster with a shot to the head. Surprisingly, even stunned, it keeps on fighting. To make things worse, it becomes enraged.
Lotus gets stunned and the Minotaur tries to take away one of his shields, but Grapple knocks out one of the monster's teeth with her shield and it releases the grip. She then kicks out another tooth for good measure and Lotus has time to recompose himself. Fishing Hook also died to the raiders and the wall didn't protect anypony. Oh well. Lotus gets stunned again, right under Deadeye's feet. Badge finally comes. The Reaver is badly hurt already and there are enough ponies to force it into mostly defence. Pierce joins the fight. Lotus is the main focus of the Minotaur's attacks and in exchange bites him in the lower body. Just like the last one, the Minotaur is eventually knocked out and Pierce kills it with Energy Lance to the brain.
Explorer's strange mood compels him to just hang around close to where he was hurt. He reported that he can make crossbows earlier. I commission a crossbow workshops. Not that we need crossbows, but maybe he'll somehow snap out of it.
Hm, I had a cage with Mr Hooves next to the workshop, made a Nurse Redheart, but it didn't work. I just pasture 2 Mr Hooves close to the workshop and make a Mr. macintosh to see what happens.
Heh, Explorer wanted a Bowyer's workshop after all. Let's see what useless crap he makes.
FPS is at 45. It's probably the liquid flow. Oh, and the wall is pretty much finished, except for fortifications and turrets.
Hm, Explorer made a fir revolver. Not that useful, but could be worse. He crawled back to the hospital afterwards.
An irradiated cloud blows through the middle of the camp, ignoring the walls. A few ponies get irradiated.
A Mr Macintosh got completed inside a cage. I guess, I'll give it to Pierce. Huh, I can't, it is not a "work animal" (not war trainable). Oh well, I'll just pasture it close to the entrance, which will probably result in fire at some point. Is there another way to assign an animal to a pony? I tried v->p->work animals.
Sigh, another Feral Minotaur Reaver. Civilians inside, security do nothing. Oh wait, it chases Evening Tale. OK, it's inside the walls. Kill it. It gets missed by a lot of pistol shots. Then Grapple intercepts it. Hm, wasn't I supposed to give her combat Armour? Ah crap, it breaks her leg, then kicks her so hard, she flies away. Grapple desperately blocks most of the blows and retreats, but things are looking bad for her. Lotus catches up with the Minotaur. There is ranged support, but the gunners are standing so far away that they miss all their shots. Grapple finally passes out from pain and the Minotaur wastes no time in killing her. Now Lotus has to fight it alone, but help is on the way. the gunners and Mr Macintosh ignore the Minotaur and just shoot a radscorpion that wanders in through the eastern gate. The fight is rather messy and as usual Pierce finishes it with the =Energy Lance= to the brain manoeuvre. Grapple is a pretty big loss.
We got lots of salvage from that caravan and most of the crates haven't even been opened yet. There are 15+ Stable-tec processing matrices and other terminal parts, so each skill could get it's own terminal. Othert than that, there is a little bit of everything.
> Try embarking on a terrifying evil swamp like I've done with Lemon and Orange, and you'll see why I ask for harder salvaging.
I embark in "Wilderness" and the salvaging is hard enough. I tend to loose some salvagers and wood haulers to wildlife.
> On a side note, I've decided to do away with a zone marked for the storage of my plywood boards. I just disabled plywood from my areas of finished goods and leave the boards in the sawmill. I put my plywood shop right next to the mill and it works out even better than the zone surrounding it.
Yeah, that works too.
> Cyberponies
We already have Robobrains, but this would have to be more like Deus. Which means another caste with very low frequency and very occasional strange marriages and births. Well, Deus was fertile, I guess, but being born as a cyberpony couldn't be explained, unlike an occasional ghoul or pegasus.
Well, a cyberpony could either be a stable citizen or a pet and both have their disadvantages. For example do you want them to wear clothes and work like normal ponies for the purpose of assigning them to squads?
>
Military Sentry BotsThe military versions of what we have are supposedly quite powerful. I haven't seen them in action yet, but they have miniguns and steel frames. If more robot variants are introduced, I'm fine with it.
> Strategically, I see these things as the ultimate sentry guns, too slow to chase attackers, but able to seriously hurt invaders who'd penetrated your stable.
We already have minigun turrets and Mr Macintosh robots for this. I think.
Then there is the Ultra Sentinel, but it is hostile only, which is just as well, given how dangerous it's friendly fire would be.
> K9000 minigun
No no no NO.
Fluff-wise a gun made out of a dog's brain makes no sense. Cyberdogs / robobrains maybe, but not a freaking gun.
In-crunch how would it even work? Just another Spitfire's Thunder AMR variant? A minigun that uses large calibre ammo chests (which I think Lycaeon said wouldn't work anyway, because there is a maximum shoot force for material emissions)?
> Finally, what if stables could build their own version of Liberty Prime?
Liberty Prime is the single thing about FPS fallouts that I hate the most. I mean they are wrong all over, but a giant unkillable mech that throws infinite exploding tanks that respawn behind it's back? Wtf :/ To make things worse after it gets blown up, the BoS wants to rebuild it, rather than simply comment on how impractical and wasteful that would be.
> It would be awesome!
No, it wouldn't. It would be bucking stupid. BTW, the FoE version of this abomination is called
Krogoth. You can read
here why the idea doesn't work. Yes, it may be possible to build a mobile land fortress, but for the same price it costs to build a whole bunch of normal tanks, which are more manoeuvrable and ultimately better when used as a group.
Well, if we can tame a Minotaur Reaver or build something similar to Ultra Sentinel, I'm fine with it, but no Liberty Prime, Krogoth, Raptors and things on a similar scale.
> Nice little neural implants that promote learning? Synthetic lungs that remove that pesky ability to drown?
This would require body transformation and loose all those learning bonuses from cutie marks, I think.