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[Lycaeon]

> Yeah, I'm confused by slaver caravans and slaver ambushes showing up at the same time and fighting each other. Why?
By design there are hostile slavers looking to invade your Stable for slaves, and friendly slave traders who would rather make a good profit off you. I consider hostilities to be due to rivalries between competing slaver guilds.

> As this happens a steel ranger thief with a rocket launcher is uncovered, he fires one rocket at a retreating wounded slaver and sets fire to the entire map.
Enemy ponies being able to set fire to the entire map: Yes/No?
Granted, it's just the rangers, but I was reluctant to give flame weapons to enemies for this very reason.

Excellent read as usual Replica. You can also burn those Ministry posters at the salvage yard for ash.

Due to concerns I'll be reverting Steel Rangers to population-triggered only at 110 ponies. The incoming Talon mercenaries should fill the gap....with flying gunners.

In other news, expect a release early tomorrow morning. The new version will be finished tonight, but I usually put in some time for stability testing, especially for new features like the Talons.

[Indigo_Surprise]

I'm vehemently against pop triggers for the Steel Rangers. Why would they care about 110 ponies in a slum? Think of their motives, they want technology. How are they going to find out about it? If they hear about a group of ponies selling off loads of valuables, they're going to start poking around. Having Unity as a population trigger makes more than enough sense, they want to make more of themselves so high populations will obviously interest them. Population alone doesn't interest the Rangers in the slightest.

[Lycaeon]

Ok, trade trigger it is then. 30k of exported wealth should be only moderately difficult to avoid...you can always close up shop and turn away caravans. It adds a modicum of challenge that I feel the mod needs, and makes sense from an in-story perspective.

The population trigger remains though. No reason you should be able to avoid the rangers forever just by bottling up.

[P(ony)SI]

...Meh, I can live with it with the barbed wire fix.

[Maklak]

> Enemy ponies being able to set fire to the entire map: Yes/No?
I'm rather against it. I've seen enough !fun! with flamer turrets and rockets and I'd rather skip this part in future forts. It is not that I don't like the idea of flame-throwers and incendiary rockets. It is that end-game enemies have FIRE_IMMUE and DF handles flames poorly and the fires spread throughout the entire map. It just doesn't work for me, and so I prefer to stick with miniguns.

> Why would they care about 110 ponies in a slum?
As Lycaeon told us, there are three possible triggers for them: 300k wealth, 30k trade or any chosen number of population. While the population trigger may not make much-sense in-fluff, those numbers are ridiculously low in-crunch. A population trigger is a compromise, which I support. It is at least something that we can control, well, except for Replica.

> The incoming Talon mercenaries should fill the gap....with flying gunners.
Ah, so the Talons are unfriendly? I think they are going to be quite effective at crippling melee soldiers. In Nikodeng's mod Pegasai crossbow squads made for a good quick response force and flying enemies forced people to build moats around their forts. Also, Griffins make defending by closing the gate much less useful and if they have miniguns, they should be about as deadly as Steel Rangers.

[Indigo_Surprise]

>While the population trigger may not make much-sense in-fluff, those numbers are ridiculously low in-crunch.

Ultimately Dwarf Fortress is a simulation. I want my parameters as realistic and canon as possible.

Also I'll be safe as houses from the Talons. I already completely roof my above ground compounds.

Oh yeah, I've come across a rather strange erm.. situation. A sprite bot is attacking one of my soldiers. For some reason my entire stable keeps rushing out to this soldier, only to get interrupted by it (the soldier) and run away. She still has the regular 'e' symbol so she's not insane, but she only has two possessions now for some reason. Another weird thing, I can't order my military to kill either the sprite bot or this strange soldier. I just don't know. Another thing, this soldier also killed its commanding officer in a fight against a farmer who fell out of line. This same sprite bot was attacking that farmer as well...

[Corai]

I think you have a loyalty cascade in progress. I've never experienced one myself, but that sounds like a loyalty cascade to me.

[Splint]

Botched kill orders are the bane of powerful places.

[Lycaeon]

I'll keep the rocket launchers on certain Rangers for now until I work out a better explosives system.

> Ah, so the Talons are unfriendly?
The majority of the Talons were employed by Red-Eye, I believe. Gawd's company was the exception. They won't have battle-saddles (I was always skeptical of flying with a minigun on your back), but they'll be equipped with better weaponry and armor than the slavers. Griffons are also twice the weight of the average pony.

> Oh yeah, I've come across a rather strange erm.. situation.
Looks like a loyalty cascade. It comes from one of your ponies attacking another pony from the same civ and becoming tagged as hostile. One way to fix it is to isolate all involved parties and let them starve to death.

[Corai]

DFhack also has a tool to fix those events I believe.

[Pokon]

Due to concerns I'll be reverting Steel Rangers to population-triggered only at 110 ponies. The incoming Talon mercenaries should fill the gap....with flying gunners.

Welp, this could only end well. Also, will be interesting to see if there ethics would ally themselves with the slave traders or the slavers proper.

[Splint]

DFhack also has a tool to fix those events I believe.

^^^^THIS^^^^

Good god if for no other reason keep this handy when you screw up a kill order. Normal FUN is fine and dandy, but loyalty cascades are horrible bugs that unless it was your goal, you have no control over and the killing won't end until everyone is either all on the same side or scattered so far apart they can't kill eachother, and when you're trying to keep a place running without bugs like this claiming lives, it's a lifesaver.

[Replica]

> As this happens a steel ranger thief with a rocket launcher is uncovered, he fires one rocket at a retreating wounded slaver and sets fire to the entire map.
Enemy ponies being able to set fire to the entire map: Yes/No?
Granted, it's just the rangers, but I was reluctant to give flame weapons to enemies for this very reason.

Isn't there an alternative type of effect you can use for your explosive interaction?
Fire is nice, but turning the entire map into a giant fertilized farm whenever someone decides to fire an RPG at you seems a little excessive.

Oh yeah, I've come across a rather strange erm.. situation. A sprite bot is attacking one of my soldiers. For some reason my entire stable keeps rushing out to this soldier, only to get interrupted by it (the soldier) and run away. She still has the regular 'e' symbol so she's not insane, but she only has two possessions now for some reason. Another weird thing, I can't order my military to kill either the sprite bot or this strange soldier. I just don't know. Another thing, this soldier also killed its commanding officer in a fight against a farmer who fell out of line. This same sprite bot was attacking that farmer as well...

Homicidal evil sprite-bot and and a really scary earth pony?

Here is what you do.
1. Get DFhack.
2. Use "liquids" command.
3. Place single block of magma on both units.
4. Surround them with water.
5. Unpause.
6. Enjoy this and a loyalty cascade free stable.

But seriously.
Kill both of them, like the others said, if it spirals out of control you are done for, game over, the doors, the end.

[Indigo_Surprise]

I don't think it's a loyalty cascade. Based on what I've heard of them, the whole fort should erupt into civil war. This is just one pony and a sprite bot going at it. Also everypony else keeps trying to steal the other pony's clothes.

[Splint]

It only snowballs when someone kills the original traitor. You'd think that dwarves (And ponies) would be understanding of self defense cases at least, if it wasn't a kill order but just defending oneself from a tantruming/berserking pony/dorf.