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[Replica]

Unicorn scribes will occasionally accompany steel ranger patrols, and, being well-versed in pre-war technology, can cast a shutdown spell that will temporarily disable robots. They are otherwise unarmored and rely on the rangers for protection.

Laser pistol interaction for unicorn scribes.

When they die, they could also drop an item called "fragmented/broken laser pistol" which could be dismantled for spark batteries (with a 50/50 chance of it being charged) and perhaps something else.

[Lycaeon]

Irradiated crystal ponies are a good idea. I'll stick them in the development list for later.

No laser interactions for unicorn scribes as of now. They're already going to be armed should they come to your Stable, and I'd like for them to be disarmed completely if caught in a cage.

[Indigo_Surprise]

I can't wait for the next vanilla update. It'll be amazing to be able to clear out raider and boy scout forts.

[Replica]

I'd like for them to be disarmed completely if caught in a cage.

...

Which they can't...

...

Because they are trapavoid...


....


Right?

[Lycaeon]

Oh, unicorn scribes won't have [TRAPAVOID]. Just the power armored rangers. I use the tag based on whether or not something's too strong or large to be trapped in a cage.

And Indigo...boy scouts?

[Pokon]

Oh, unicorn scribes won't have [TRAPAVOID]. Just the power armored rangers. I use the tag based on whether or not something's too strong or large to be trapped in a cage.

And Indigo...boy scouts?

Might be SR's.

[Indigo_Surprise]

Steel Rangers are the pony BoS. The BoS are just power armored boy scouts. It's my personal mission to kill them all.

[Maklak]

My fort continues!

Ham, Buried Treasure and Chalice form a new squad with security batons. Once they skill up, they are going to upgrade to hunting rifles and later AMRs. We already have 2 of those powerful weapons, but nopony is any good at using them.

The camp gets invaded by bloatsprites. Soldiers now train outside and engage them. Those things are fast and agile, so it is fun watching all the pursuits and missed shots.

Power Drill has entered a strange mood and claimed a Mason's Workshop.

We have a few prisoners of war, so of course there was a debate what to do with them. Overwhelming majority of us lost a friend or family member to their buddies. It is no wonder that an overwhelming majority wants some kind of execution. The decision is as sickening as it is practical: We give them a sporting chance by releasing them in the middle of the barracks and the soldiers get some training with enemies who can kill them. I fear that we are succumbing to the same kind of madness as the rest of this wasteland. Still, what would be a better use of them? Selling them to the slavers? (( I put an animal stockpile next to the barracks, which is also a pasture. The prisoners are pastured in the barracks. Simple. Efficient. Glorious. ))

A Wastelander caravan has arrived. Good.

One of the released Steel Rangers puts up quite a fight. He even entered martial trance. Ups. (( I can't disarm them for some reason. I have an active garbage dump and did d->b->c, d->b->d and k->d on the cages. )) Her marital trance ends quickly and she just tries to retreat from the onslaught. Not only is she good at dodging and blocking, her Power Armour blocks the blows that get connect... until Stronghoof stabs her in the tail with his ripper. It hurts a lot. After that there is a flurry of blows, she looses her chainsaw and is quickly killed. Not one of her counter-strikes connects.

A kitten wandering outside alerts us to the presence of a Raider. Well, let him come if he wants. Wisely, he chooses to escape, but not before wounding the kitten. Another raider comes and is caught in a cage. A third is scared away by a cat. (( I'm getting cats and letting them breed. FPS is getting lower anyway. They make cheaper spotters than sprite-bots. ))

The wastelander caravan arrives. We get all kinds of things from them: metal, salvage, wood, food, pets and ammo. In exchange they get a big heap of worn clothes and horseshoes as well as some crafts, barrels and prepared food. I guess some ponies in the wasteland are happy to wear even torn clothes.

Crab Apple is ambushed by slavers. Civilians are ordered inside. The slavers mill around and kill sprite-bots and kittens, so the military, except for the newest recruits, are told to engage. Strong Hoof is ahead of the others and gallops straight into a foalsnatcher. He barely even slows down the soldiers as he is ripped apart and shot in the head for good measure. 
Library Card and Stronghoof are the first ones to face the invaders who are still busy with a Sprite-bot. Brass and Bloody Steak are behind, followed by Trueblood. It is over quickly and none of the soldiers get wounded.

Prisoner executions commence and Ham gets his first kill. She smashed an unconscious pony's head with her steel security baton.

Some snatchers come and get caught in traps. A slaver ambush shoots some workers atop the wall. They have a hunting rifle, two revolvers and a kinetic sledgehammer. The security engages. Brass and Library Card are the first to be there. They pass the leader with a sledgehammer and charges their gunners. They kill one on their first pass and fight the rest of them. Their leader is the last one to die and there are no wounded on our part. Just as the soldiers head back, they trot into another slaver ambush. These guys all have chainsaws, combat barding and helmets, as well as lots of shields. Everything goes smoothly.

Power Drill finally begun his construction. He needed two piles of bones, so we had to kill some animals for him. (( To think that after all the feral dog attacks from a few years back, we would ever run out of bones. )) He took scrap metal, two pieces of tetrachedrite, two stacks of bone, a rough crysoberyl, two logs of wood and some chitin. This better be good. He made an artefact table worth 74400 caps.


Moneybags makes our first =steel chainsaw= The material here was determined by steel chain, so as long as I only have steel chains, every ripper, chainsaw, and combat rifle with those upgrades will be considered to be made of steel. Also, the Workbench has been reserved for our most skilled mechanic. I will however, have to get rid of all the rippers and chainsaws not made of steel, just to be sure that only steel upgraded combat rifles are ever going to be made.

As the caravan leaves, the last of the prisoners are killed, who happen to be the Steel Ranger leaders. The caravan guards get a piece of the action too. After that the wolves are moved to the barracks "pasture", so they that they are watched if they get some stupid ideas. They are +tame+ and trained for war. Soon afterwards they are released to roam the Stable freely.

The gate fortifications are finished and a turret is positioned there, to act as a spotter. 

12 new migrants have arrived despite the danger. This brings the population up to 69, including 6 foals. 

Warm Smile has given birth to an Earth Pony filly, Indigo. This brings us to 70 population.

Evening Prayer had given birth to Fun Times, an Earth Pony Filly.

Brass tried to install SATS, but burned through 5 pipbucks with no effect. That's a total of seven. Graaaaaaa! Why can't thos stupid things work?

I finally manage to convince Brass to make a minigun potion. Immediately afterwards he goes to sleep. I lock him in that room. Get thirsty, you bastard! A Nurse Redheart upgrade potion gets made in adjacent room with a robot pasture. 

A caravan from home has arrived. They didn't have anything good except wood and scrap and not one of their pets was a robot.

Brass drank the minigun upgrade potion and... nothing happened. there was no announcement and Brass is flashing because he is a skilled mechanic and soldier, not because he drank something.

A Minotaur has come. It is very fast. Everypony is ordered inside and the levers are pulled, but not quickly enough. Power Drill, Strong Hoof, Cream and Clay Whistle are caught outside the vault gate, with the caravan. So is Bloody Steak. No, the lever is pulled too late! The Minotaur makes it inside the Vault! The gate protecting the Depot is closed. if we are going to die, so are the traders.
The Minotaur wounds Power Drill and charges Stronghoof. The caravan guards come to help. Stronghoof is stunned by the collision and the Minotaur punches him in the head and kills him on the spot. Bravery Rainblossom, a caravan guard is very seriously wounded, but crawls away. The rest of the caravan guards actually do most of the work and the beast accumulates wounds. A war wolf comes to help, bus she is punched so hard that she flies away with her spine broken. Not before she got a few bites of the monster, though. Even with her grievous wound, she still comes back at the Minotaur!
Two protectorponies join the fray and the sparks start flying. Bloody Steak does most of the damage with his =Steel Ripper=. I knew it was a good idea to order a few and restrict the workshop to the best mechanic save Brass.
The ranged soldiers are tardy and complain about lack of a valid target. Some are far away or decide to go to sleep. Too bad, but the beast is so fast that it is unlikely their shots would even hit their mark. On the other hoof, the only ranged caravan guard hits the enemy with a steel pellet in the head and stuns her. Too bad that wasn't a proper rifle. The beast quickly shrugs it off and continues it's relentless assault. The gunner is repaid with a broken bone. 
Libaray Card catches up with the crowd. She might be able to do something with her =Steel Chainsaw=. Every part of the Minotaur is at least bruised, while some are cut open, but it doesn't even slow her down. Cutting off a few pieces might do the trick.
The beast is slain as quickly as it appeared. It dies from a kick to the head by a protectorpony. Our security forces did most of the damage, while the caravan guards took most of it. That's fine by me. Stronghoof will be missed, and Power Drill as well as some of the caravan guards are wounded, but overall it could have gone a lot worse. The she-wolf has suffocated.
(( There are 15 pages of that fight. I won't even paste it. ))


During the fight, Brass gets thirsty and upgrades Mr Hooves to Nurse Redheart. Yay! Finally something that worked. My production of upgrade drinks is stranded by lack of barrels. In any case, Stronghoof was supposed to get a battle saddle, but now he is dead. I should test how it works (or doesn't work) for Brass.
Curiously, Brass is no longer visible in Dwarf Therapist.


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STUFF

I looked at the weapon RAWs to figure the upgraded rifles out. Turns out, the material for the rifle is determined by the chainsaw/ripper and the material for those by the chain. There are some steel chains in the salvage, so as long as I don't make any chains myself and build every ripper and chainsaw that isn't steel into a weapon trap, or otherwise get rid of them (or forbid them, if nothing else works), I should be fine. I can get away with making all the other parts except the chain out of bronze.
Also, the mechanic's skill determines the quality of Rippers, Chainsaws, Recharged Chainsaws and Recharged Energy Lances, so it is best to set the Workbench profile to accept only highly skilled mechanics. Or have two of them; one for important things, the other for fixing wires and stuff.
I think these hints should be in Your manual.

Recharging Chainsaws and Depleted Energy Lances doesn't drop depleted batteries. Is this intentional? I imagine the energy is either transferred from the battery to the item, or the battery is replaced, and the depleted battery from the weapon removed.

Dismantling medium and large robots could drop steel parts. Just saying, plates don't bottleneck upgrading robots anyway.

I haven't noticed any self-repair in robots, but I haven't been looking very carefully.

Very young ponies should be renamed from foals to baby ponies, if possible. (As in G1 and "Baby Cakes")

I tried to scale down a picture of a Steel Ranger to make a sprite, but I failed. Oh well, it worked for a parasprite before.

Aha, I don't have to set a Stable-tec terminal on repeat to get Bow training, if I don't want to waste heavy ammo. Hunting rifles use Bow skill too! So does Spitfires's Thunder, which in this mod is not a minigun, but a better AMR. Therefore the progression is: Hunting rifle -> AMR -> Spitfire's Thunder (except it has no quality I think). The melee attacks on those weapons are the same and use mace, which is trained by security batons. It may be worthwhile to train with those for a year, so that elites are more resilient, should the enemy approach them. Enough glass cannons died on me.
If it isn't there already, Your manual should mention that Hunting Rifles and AMR use a different skill than the rest of the guns.
I would also like to be able to manufacture hunting rifles once I get AMR schematics.

Revolver uses... MISC_WEAPON. This is weird, but it could be used as training for a minigun battle saddle. Does having legendary +5 in misc object thrower help with battle saddles?

Ponies weight 70 kg with no variation. they should vary in size, so that select few can wield big weapons with one grip, while others not be able to use them at all. It works like that for Dwarves and Dwarf Therapist has a tab that helps with this. In the show and in all kinds of fanfics, the ponies vary in size.

Steel Ranger scribes should know a bunch of low-level spells, including healing. It would be annoying when not only do "Cans" shrug off most blows, but also regenerate yellow and red wounds like hydras. The Zebras used to target the Scribes first, if possible, for a reason. Or knights. According to Murky Number 7 Scribes stay at home and Knights wear combat armour and accompany Paladins into battle to help them with spells.

Stockpiles are frustrating in this version. For example I don't want helium and healing potions in the same spot, but can't separate them. The fact that some items, reactions and so on have duplicate names is also confusing. And if I want a stockpile for robot upgrades, what category are steel plates anyway?

I think you should increase the value of upgrade potions to a 100. Maybe that way ponies will drink them more often. As far as I can see, the best way to use potions is to lock a pony in the room with them. Otherwise there is no way to micro-manage battle saddles and precious robot upgrades could be carried away in some soldier's waterskin. No, I'm not denying my soldiers their waterskins.

Please consider ways to make installing SATS and battle saddles more user-friendly. I spent hours fiddling with this frustrating process. SATS didn't install despite 7 attempts and I don't think a battle Saddle did either. Would it work better, it the SATS reaction dropped more stones? Or would it just make it possible for other ponies to get upgrades for free. Maybe I should make a very small burrow and keep a pony at the terminal, so he can't outrun the upgrade cloud? I just don't know! Please please please make this as user-friendly as possible.

[Lycaeon]

I will go ahead and add the hints about the weapons materials and bow/mechanic skills.

I just checked the minigunner upgrade potion again...it still works, but the flashing symbol is obscured by the blinking that a drinking pony does. Your pony should now have "Minigunner" after his/her job name. I've increased the flash-tile duration for the next update so it's more apparent. The reports announcement takes place in the 'R' fighting screen.



Depleted chainsaws/energy lances don't have batteries in them.

I'll rename the foals to babies.

Battle saddles use the ranged weapons and throwing skills.

That's odd about the pony size...according to the raws their sizes should vary. Arena tests of the stable-pony creature also show size variation. This may be a consequence of multiple cutie marks during worldgen.

Steel plates are made of steel and so have no category. They're just considered a steel tool.

I'll increase upgrade potion values as well as separate some of the more vague components like canisters into different settings. I think the canisters are the only problematic category. I'm also changing the reaction names for different workshops so you can differentiate similar ones. Can you tell me which item name duplicates you've seen? (Apart from the salvage logs).

The upgrade drinks system is already 100% effective...just keep an eye out for the name changes. I will convert SATS to a program that can be used indefinitely once found. Unfortunately, the upgrade reactions result in a name change that removes ponies from Dwarf Therapist. I don't believe there's a way to fix this, but the number of ponies upgraded with power armor/miniguns/etc. should be low enough that it isn't too bothersome. In any case, those ponies will be in the military most of the time and won't need job management. I've edited the front page to reflect this.

Thanks for the input! I'm doing what I can to improve the playability, which is why yours and everyone else's feedback is valuable.

[tahujdt]

With MWDF, I discovered that added reactions don't count as having the proper materials unless they are in the same burrow as the workshop, whether it is active or not. That will apply here also.

[Lycaeon]

That's definitely useful to know. Thanks!

[ender1200]

Irradiated crystal ponies are a good idea. I'll stick them in the development list for later.

Here is an alternate concept for crystal ponies. Crystal ponies l, not being a part of equestrian were never bombed. Despite this fact the world around them turned into a hellish nightmare as civilizations collapsed and monsters filled the world. This have turns them to an extreme isolationist faction that keep itself safe sare with extremely powerful magic shields. As a civilization that was cut off the rest of the world for more than thousand years they have no modern technology, but they are the vast magic adapts in the world.

Crystal ones will be crystal ponies that were irradiated in the wasteland and can't return to the empire for this.

Edit: and another idea, if they can trade with player stable they treat salvage as vanilla elf treat wood, that is they blame technology for the apocalypse and will refuse to trade in it.

[Replica]

Oh, unicorn scribes won't have [TRAPAVOID]. Just the power armored rangers. I use the tag based on whether or not something's too strong or large to be trapped in a cage.

Oh in that case, nevermind.
I like laser pistols, in fact, I think I like them a little too much, but if we are supposed to be able to capture them then it's just not viable.


On an unrelated note, everything is going great in my fortress.
I managed to solve a very frustrating issue with marauding thieves and snatcher by placing a single obsidian block in the way, so it worked out great.
The bridge to the surface is all done, everything has been trapped and my entire little piece of cavern heaven is all sealed up tightly from cave spiders, scorpions and flying FTB's, it was a procces that I managed to narrow down to just the loss of one riflepony, an unicorn, so it was an acceptable outcome.

Now I am in the process of further securing everything and improving the life of my ponies, I am building a whole shitload of rooms for everyone complete with bed, cabinet, chest and smoothed walls as well as gearing up my militia with copper gear.
Copper gear is not much, but it's better than nothing, and it will at least begin to train their armor user skill which is going to be critical once I get steel gear, combat armor weights a metric ton and makes untrained ponies into walking metal punching bags.

Haven't had any problems with surrounding civs either, seeing as I have virtually nothing of real value, I haven't begun my scavenging industry yet (the only surface trees are on the far eastern side, and that's serious ghoul territory), but I'll get that running once I have prepared my militia enough to secure another cavern sector.
The goal here is to lock down all caverns completely, but with giant cave spiders, scorpions, ghouls and cave crocodiles roaming about that will prove to be an arduous challenge.

I'll get caps to show you guys once things are more up to speed, ain't got much to show right now, it's a work in progress.

[Maklak]

I don't think, I've even seen a screen like the one in your picture. Brasses title is too long to fit in a screen anyway. "Brass" Defensecrew Trustworhyglove Weaver militia... I assume the next word is commander. He is not in Dwarf Therapist and I should test him soon. It should be enough to tell his squad to kill a wolf or something. He is the fastest of them, so he should be there first and either shoot the battle saddle or not.
Maybe your way of changing titles doesn't quite work for ponies who already killed a few times and got one?
dfhack says his title is "Intricate `Brass' Defensecrew Trustworthyglove Weaver"

While you are right that military ponies disable their civilian jobs anyway, I still use Dwarf Therapist to monitor their training.

Who would be most effective at using a stealthbuck, if it even transfers? I only have one of them. Should I give it to Brass if he, in all likelihood, has a battle saddle?

According to Dwarf Therapist all pony sizes are 70 kg. It may be wrong, though and I haven't checked it in Runesmith.

I suspect that chainsaws are a little more deadly than the rippers.

> Can you tell me which item name duplicates you've seen?
I can't give you a name off the top of my head, but chainsaw / depleted chainsaw comes to mind.

When choosing what should share a stockpile setting, think about what people would want to have together. For example Party Hats, Confetti Cannons and Full Balloons should be "Toy-Party", while Deflated Balloons and Helium Canisters "Toy-Party-Depleted". Batteries should be split into "Toy-Batteries-Charged" and "Toy-Batteries-Depleted". You may not want them to be in the same stockpiles. Coiled wiring should also have a category for broken and fixed. And what the hay is "Toy-Junk"?

This is what I have for now.

I like Ender's concept for Crystal Ponies more than "Yet another kind of twisted and mutated beast", but I'm pretty sure Celestia would get their help during the Zebra War, with Cadence owing her so much, her husband being a Ministry Mare's brother inclined towards protecting others and all. Maybe just don't touch them at all and leave them as a mystery. History says there was a kingdom to the north ruled by a Princess :trollface:, but there's not a trace of it now.

Replica, scrap metal is an ore of brass and bronze. Get those (from ore) instead of doing things the inefficient way and smelting scrap directly. You should be able to get some magnetite from grinding rocks later.

[Lycaeon]

Either way, there should be an announcement in Brass's combat logs. Interesting that a title stops the name change from showing up...I'm going to have to mention that on the front page.



Assassin potions (stealthbuck) can't be used with battle saddles or power armor upgrades. They basically allow a pony to sneak when attacking. Next version will allow the pony to make an insta-kill against adjacent pony enemies with a cooldown.

Chainsaws are more deadly...rippers are pretty much a knife weapon.

I've taken note of those stockpile settings and will separate the ones I can. Helium can't be in Party though, as it's not made out of paper.

Interesting suggestions on the Crystal ponies. I've noted them down for later.