My 0.88 fort continues.
((I forgot to copy a file from another computer and lost some of this log.))
On 16th October 206 the new immigrants are sorted.
Checklist was volunteered for an experimental training program. From now on her job is to learn gunnery at the terminal. Surely this can't be as good as going to the shooting range, but if it works reasonably well, it will give us an option to train those skills that otherwise require a lot of expensive materials to "learn on the job". Terminal training may also potentially help off-duty soldiers to learn faster. Checklist's first assignment was to spend ten days at the the terminal and report for evaluation. The results turned out to be very promising, so she was told to keep training. If the results of this short test are to be extrapolated, training at a terminal should actually be faster than at the shooting range, but she won't learn anything other than gunnery this way and for a full-scale training this would require multiple terminals and training hologems. Having a few Stable-Tec terminals assigned to soldiers and set to training on repeat is a good idea, though. ((25 XP per job at a workshop is good; she learns faster than the BB gunners and in April reaches 6 gunner after 6 months of training. BB gunners have 2 or 3 and they trained longer, but they also have some other combat skills on 0 or 1.))
Two more pairs of ponies are chosen for the military. Mirth and Apple Valley as well as Stone Pots and Big Questions.
The idea of having ponies train for a year with no weapons was questioned. I have decided that half of recruits will receive chainsaws to train with. This will both help them become useful faster and make the evaluation of hoof-to-hoof training easier. It may very well be that its benefits are meaningless and it is better to have soldiers train with their target weapon from the get-go, except without a shield. Chainsaws will be given to recruit squads 2, 4, 6 and 8, namely: Saber, Cherelee, Bright Future, Whip Lash, Traction Bench, Sophismat, Stone Pots and Big Questions.
Psalms, one of the longest-serving veterans and a very skilled dodger, is going to become the Vault Dweller (Champion). While he isn't quitting his job as military commander and a squad leader, his secondary task will be giving demonstrations to recruits to bring them up to speed. ((That didn't work all that well. I guess the Vault Dweller should be outside the military and have labours disabled.))
The gate is going to be changed a bit. There will be a catwalk over it. Since some ponies asked about it's safety, it will be protected by fortifications. Did they seriously expect me to design a catwalk with no railings over a dangerous area?
An underground live target shooting range and trap is devised, but that is for later. The magma factory complex is a priority.
Military Campaign has entered a strange mood and took over a craftpony's workshop. He grabbed some unsorted salvage, cloth, a marble block, a rough chrysoberyl, some brass and green glass. He made... a scrap hologem of binding. It is quite a beauty, but we can't use it to learn binding spell for some reason. Ah, I think it must be made of (Toy-Spell Hologems) material and not out of scrap. Well, in any case it is a nice model. Woodcrafting is not what we need here, though.
Speaking of spells, two are now ready to transcribe into hologems: Rage and Bind. Once that is done, Unicorns may start learning them. After checking the GOAT results, it turns out that only a hoofful of our hornies have outstanding magical talents. Psalms and Chalice have a knack for restoration, Evening Prayer for alteration and Saber for destruction. That's OK, though. With enough training all Unicorns can learn spells, they just won't be as effective at them. Fleur has chosen to prepare the hologems herself. ((Yeah, so it turned out that some of those are Earth Ponies.))
The cage trap close to the waterfall bears fruit: We got a few more war wolves. Some of the pups turned out to be fully domesticated.
Bureaucracy died of thirst right where she was. She had broken legs and couldn't move and got No Job. Nopony moved her to the hospital or gave her water. Stupid chimeny. Stupid hospital bugs.
Radhog Scraps has grown attached to a Steel BB rifle. Well, We'll see about that later. For now he can keep it, I guess. Quite a few more soldiers got attached to their chainsaws.
A caravan has come. Wisely they went by the road, arriving close to the entrance. They brought some food, cloth, leather, pellets, a dog and a protectorpony. Overall nothing too useful. We gave them a big profit as a compensation for their risk. On the bright side, Fleur talked to the liaison and we should get some good stuff next year.
A thief got caught in a cage trap by the entrance ans was executed. They were a good idea. A second raider thief shows up, scaring a few ponies, then runs away.
That's odd. After putting the minigun potion in her Flask, some time later Library Card has synthcola there, which would suggest she drank it. Yet she is still visible in Dwarf Therapist. The upgrade drink is not in Stocks either.
Detergent got imprisoned for violation of a production order. She was supposed to make two large gems, when we need those for magical research. Whatever. Two for one shouldn't make such stupid demands. Great, he wants even more large gems. I could burn illusion gems if I really wanted to, but I'm not going to. At least Fleur has the good sense to ask for bins and security helmets.
With some wood from the surface, there is finally a surplus of wheelbarrows. They'll be useful for magma workshop. There are also some idlers, so 150 more boulders are prospected for gems. The results weren't that impressive and we got barely enough to carve some lenses and hologems. The following research failed to produce anything useful. We are stuck with illusion spells for now.
Pesky Questions has withdrawn from society. He took over a craftpony's workshop. We had to kill a Brahmin for bones, but after that Pesky began his mysterious construction. He made a crown and became a great stonecrafter.
Since ponies tend to sleep at the hospital, more rooms are prepared. They were actually ready for some time and this was an oversight. Even more rooms are planned to be dug out once the magma complex is finished.
Brass and others complained about how heavy their armour was, so I let them switch back to security barding. They get to keep their steel combat helmets and boots. Hopefully no they will be able to move and fight faster.
((BTW, I just watched a history programme about plate armour not really limiting movements or slowing a knight down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqC_squo6X4))
A plan for how to most efficiently approach the problem of learning spells is drawn. There are 35 Unicorns out of 86 ponies, which is quite a staggering number. Every one of them is encouraged to try her horn at the arcane terminal, until she learns a spell. After that she is excluded, until the next spell is chosen.
((I'll still use a spreadsheet for this. The ponies blink a cage symbol after learning a spell and it shows up in their combat reports.))
((This actually turned out much less troublesome than I expected. I can leave a single spell at the Arcane terminal on repeat, check the reports window once in a while and focus on other things. Once a pony learns a spell, she is excluded from the terminal. The most time-consuming thing is selecting all Unicorns in the profile. DT->sort by caste helps with it. It would be great to have one terminal per spell or at the very least per magic school. Of course this method is only good for normal arcane terminals. I doubt any fort will need more than one MAS terminal.))
((Hm, FPS on my Sandy Bridge G540 computer is 55, while underclocked Core 2 Duo had it at 60. The game is starting to get sluggish. I may need to destroy some items.))
Fleur De Lis has been promoted to a senior director and demands nicer rooms. I guess it is time to engrave them. Bleh, those engravings are ugly. I'll check the init option to disable them and see what it does.
Radhog Scraps severely cripples a wolf with feral dog bone pellets. After he runs out, the wolf escapes and he wisely chooses to get more ammo rather than chase it.
Things are quiet. Almost too quiet.
Here are some malformed dumps from DT. It's snapshot doesn't work too well under WINE and I don't plan on putting together multiple pictures in GIMP, since this is not a true Let's Play. This is better than nothing, I guess. Come to think of it, military status is useful for labour assignments. I definietely don't want my soldiers to also be specialised in some jobs, like mining, woodcutting, masonry, crafting and so on.
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Annoying Feature: I get Earth Ponies with magic cutie marks. This should be changed.
I think Short Burst already has SATS and I had her burn some pip-bucks. This is much less important for the current version, but it would be helpful if "re-learning" a known ability was in the reports menu. Maybe it would work if the interaction didn't check for itself? There are lots of things: SATS, battle saddles, spells. At some point I am bound to miss a report and keep training it.
Since we already have rockets, why not robots/turrets with rockets?
I have 41 females and 44 males. When I glanced over the castes, there was no difference in frequency between genders. This should be changed to 2/3 females to better reflect the gender ratio in the show and in FoE.
> Hey Maklak, I don't know if you've seen this, but do you want to join my haunted desert expedition?
I've already answered that. Not really, but I don't mind much either way.