Print

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

[Lycaeon]

> Wasn't there a tag that allowed civs to bring exotic pets?
The only available categories are GOOD, EVIL, CAVERN, and PET, all of which have extraneous creatures that would also be brought alongside the robots, so at the moment invader pets have been shelved.

> Oh god, yes. I lost a fortress to invasion. Good one. Reclaimed just with 7 ponies. And now i have a star.
Keep in mind that magic-using unicorns can die just as easily as ordinary unicorns.

> Lycaeon, I like your stable layout in picture in the first post. Please post more of it. I still can't decide on what layout I like, but yours looks like something worth mimicking.
I no longer have the save for that one, and my current Stables are more haphazard. I've drawn out a reproduction here:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You can also refer to the Vault designs from Fallout. Though less efficient, the resulting multi-level Stable may be more aesthetically pleasing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

> After doing some research on Unity...Why would they be attacking our stables exactly?
I always believed it was for more unicorns to convert into new members - for a while Red Eye sent unicorn slaves to the Goddess in exchange for alicorn support for his operations, and slaves aren't the most agreeable bunch. While it may be true that unicorns can't be forcefully converted, imprisonment and psychological pressure (The green alicorns would be perfect for this) over long periods of time are enough to make them suggestible to conversion, especially considering that transformation into a majestic alicorn isn't that bad of a deal compared to the average pony's life in the wasteland (The whole loss of individuality thing wouldn't be mentioned, of course ).

The only caveat is that they kill your citizens...but then again, there's no way to avoid that. Slavers do so as well.

> Has anyone even seen the Unity?
They only have a population trigger (Which is pretty high at 110 ponies) so they show up late, and even then they can get crowded out by other invaders. This is something I'm working on, so any input would be appreciated.

> The one time a group of them arrived in one of my forts they just hung out near the river and looked pretty until Steel Rangers arrived, and they pretty much pulverized each other.
Was that in the current version, Pokon? You also mentioned getting invaded by griffons, so details on both would be helpful (The Talons have similar triggers). Thanks!

[Indigo_Surprise]

Well of course slavers kill others, it's what they do. In Fallout 2 if you join the slavers you have to kill a whole bunch of armed guards to get at the cash earning slaves. That only got more and more difficult as it went along. Use shock and awe, overwhelming firepower to get others into capitulating. Happened to me once when a squad of slavers slipped through my walls. And then a titan came.

[Pokon]

> The one time a group of them arrived in one of my forts they just hung out near the river and looked pretty until Steel Rangers arrived, and they pretty much pulverized each other.
Was that in the current version, Pokon? You also mentioned getting invaded by griffons, so details on both would be helpful (The Talons have similar triggers). Thanks!

It was in a earlier fort, but I dont recall any reworking on them recently.

The Griffons, on the other hand went down somewhat hard. For whatever sadistic reason, they had bloody riot shields and ripper rifles. Luckaly, they....only killed half the stable before I had the "bunker" area sealed with most of the remainder inside it. Then,the loyalty cascade.

[Maklak]

Thanks for the layout, Lycaeon. I may incorporate some of that into my next stable. The Vault layouts in Fallout never made much sense to me, maybe with the exception of buildings in Fallout: Tactics. They are simply too small for hundreds of people. But then most games use level design that makes little sense.

In my Stable a Magic Master would be a prime candidate to assign as militia captain, stable dweller and train using danger room and coin tosser. But I'm not that lucky. In Ponderplanned I got a few healers or monks, some of which were EPs. There were fewer than 5 magically-inclined Unicorns in over a 100 ponies.

> Griffins
They scared me just from looking at the RAWs. And I think they start coming just at 50 population. They are a very good reason to get underground fast and use a raised bridge for an airlock.
> Oh you, [FLIER] tag?
Not just that, they are 3 times as heavy as ponies, have high combat skills and good equipment.

[Splint]

I always pegged the level design for vaults as only being an obviously very small portion. There are a bunch of inaccessible doors after all.

[Replica]

> Griffins
They scared me just from looking at the RAWs. And I think they start coming just at 50 population. They are a very good reason to get underground fast and use a raised bridge for an airlock.

Oh you, [FLIER] tag?

[Morhem]

I had invaded by talons. And, eventually, my scavengers just sayed "Whatever", and continued to work in the open. Griffins just stay at the edge of the map, doing nothing. Im using current version.

UPD: Griffons strike again. My cat wondered into ambushing party at the edge of the screen, took a shot, fled anyway... and they just continued to stay here, clearly unwilling to take any action. Seem to be some problem with them.

[Morhem]

In my Stable a Magic Master would be a prime candidate to assign as militia captain, stable dweller and train using danger room and coin tosser. But I'm not that lucky. In Ponderplanned I got a few healers or monks, some of which were EPs. There were fewer than 5 magically-inclined Unicorns in over a 100 ponies.

Yea, I was, like, super excited when I saw that I have Magic Master right from embark. Forest is reclaimed thou. I have 16 ponies currently, and list of 300+ dead\missing. My sad, sad doctor is always busy with diagnosis, and sewing back legs, chopped by army of violent ghosts. He have a howling ghost buddy following him everywhere, by the way. Considering the only things he do is a little sleep, watching medical hologems, and tending endless wounded ponies, he is not living happy life. Hollywood should make drama movie about him.

And it seems I stopped getting support from Main Stable. No migrants. Pity.

Is there any actual way to say that civ is extinct/will go extinct after 3 waves of migrants? Its a little frustrating =(

UPD: Actually, nevermind it. I had 10 migrants a minute after this post, and even Alchemist (Alteration Adept) among them. Time for a MASSIVE ghost hunt.

[Maklak]

I've decided to go ahead and play Adventurer mode in 0.95. Only the wastelander civilisations are playable as an adventurer, but that's OK. I genned a world and after 52 rejections and got one with 20 Wastelanders, some Slavers, Talons and Steel Rangers.

I went for civilisation Eashealing, because I rather like than name and looked over that map corner earlier. I chose Demigod of course. It took me 3 tries to get UPM. I went with:
Superior: Agility
High: Strength, Toughness and Endurance
Above Average: Recuperation, Disease Resistance, Focus, Willpower, Spatial Sense, Kinestetic Sense, Social Awareness (for 1 extra companion)
Average: Analytical Ability, Intuition, Memory and Empathy.
Low Patience and Linguistic Ability
Very Low Creativity and Musicality.
I got my starting skills as recommended by the tutorial:
Proficient: Sawpony, Shield User, Armour User, Dodger
Adequate observer, Novice Reder and Swimmer.

The name of my pony is Fence Stylefortress. His displayed speed is 964. The place is called "The Dunes of Flying". I have a bronze hacksaw for a weapon, 2 bronze shields, 2 irons shields, tough leather barding, rope reed fiver head wrapping, 4 iron light horseshoes, mottled leather waterskin with 3 water, tough carapace backpack with 5 salted radfish and an iron knife for butchering. Will do.

I walk into a house and talk to a gunner, Palisade Searchclench. We chat a bit and I ask her, if there are any problems around. Her answer is an ominous "Death will find you soon enough." She then tells me, she's bored and wants to be in some other place. I ask her to join me in my adventures and she agrees. There are a lot of ponies in the buildings nearby. I find a sawpony Heal Haresafe and ask her to join. I also find a gunner called Sanctuary Helpshower and ask him to join. He wants me to lead him to glory and death. 

The three of us find a river, but I can't walk into it and learn swimming. Strange. Oh well, there is a bridge. We find rows of bushes. This looks like fields for the village. There are thousands of Midnight berry bushes here. I pick up some rocks, which drastically reduce my speed. I settle for taking 11 quality sharpened diorite rocks with me for throwing at the enemies.

In out quest for something to kill, we find a flock of bloatsprites. Unfortunately they are too fast to catch up with. In fact my companions are faster than me with all those rocks. Throwing a rock at a the bloatsprites doesn't have the desired effect. Eventually we run them into a dust storm. Getting dizzy and even slower from radiation poisoning doesn't help our speed in the slightest.

We run into a bunch or radrats next. I throw all eleven rocks at them. One is wounded in a leg, but that's it. I pick up the rocks, remove them from my backpack, chase after them and get caught in more radiation storms. We travel east and find another river. The lag is starting to get terrible.

We pass by a protectorpony and find more fields with rows of bushes. There is another town. I talk to some locals and they ask us to kill some bandits to the south. It is so hot that all the water from my waterskin has mysteriously evaporated, but a river helps with that.

Night catches us outside, so we go to sleep. After some searching, we go near the bandit camp. FPS gets down to 12, so I try to save and reload. It helps a bit. A hammerpony greets us with "Prepare to die". I throw rocks at him and miss, but the gunners do a much better job. Ha, one of my rocks broke his bone! So does the next one and bullets from fire support. Somewhat anticlimactically, Heal Haresafe kills the badit with a single hacksaw hit.

After I loot the body, more ponies show up, whom I assume to be bandits and throw rocks at them. The rocks only seem to hit their mark when the distance is 10 or less. One of the bandits is wounded and runs away, while Heal Haresafe intercepts a swordspony and gets mauled. I rush to the rescue.

I duel one of the bandits, but my attacks are deflected by her bighorner wool cloak consistently. The teeth of the saw tangle in the fabric. Finally she makes a mistake, and I manage to cleanly hack off her hindleg. After that, the rest is quick.

After the combat and some looting, we sleep on the ground and go to the nearest town. It has shops, but the first one only had bag upon bag of midnight dye. A cabinet in another had such weird items as moulted leather scorpion PA boots, tough leather security boots and tough leather power armour boots. The ponies here sure like leather, but to each their own, I guess.

I try to sell all my spare weapons for coins, but the shopkeepers have no coins, so I just take some food from them and they don't object. I find something that looks like a castle, but is empty inside. The FPS is abysmally low and my adventurer moves once per 5s. The game is unplayable, so I quit. I was aware of lag problems in fortress mode, but wouldn't expect them in adventure mode.

[Morhem]

Maklak, by the way, about militia capitan.
Every time I try to organize some kind of military, I fail in making them even a bit efficient, and in fact, just add work to my amateur-surgeons, and undertakers.

How do you do it proper?

Lets try to imagine, im trying to repel a raider force, 30 melee and 10 gunners.
How much soldiers do I need?
What armor works better? Weapons?
Whats the best way to train?

[Maklak]

> Maklak, by the way, about [...] military [...] How do you do it proper?
Don't ask me, I'm still trying to get the military right and am failing quite consistently, which in my case usually means high death rates and recruiting wave after wave of migrants rather than getting completely wiped out by invaders. I can do my best and give you some guidelines, but they may or may not work for you.

Training:

• Embarking with 2 soldiers:
  
• I try to embark with 2 soldiers, but it depends on cutie marks. For early encounters you want at least 1 weapon skill on each soldier, but for training future soldiers by demonstrations it is better to have one with high dodge and teacher and another with high armour user and teacher.
• It may also be worthwhile to test out combinations, like: "Sawpony 1, Teacher 2, Student 2, Dodge 5 + Sawpony 1, Teacher 2, Student 2, Armour User 5" or "Sawpony 1, Teacher 4, Dodge 5 + Sawpony 1, Teacher 4, Armour User 5".
• According to this thread, starting out with a lvl 5 teacher/sawpony is a very good idea. It can lead to legendary sawponies within the first year. High weapon skill even gives some additional defence because of parrying. Weaponskill / Teacher combo would work even better on a pony with a military cutie mark. She would learn very fast by sparring and give demonstrations so that others can catch up. In any case that thread has lots of good research and info on military training.
  
• Here is yet another thread that recommends 2 pony squads.
  
• Training in bigger squads:
  
• Many people recommend small squads of 2-4 ponies. Alternatively you can make a bigger squad, say 6, but give them 2 "train 3" orders instead of one "train 10".
• One advice on how to do the above is: "Create a squad of 10 soldiers with the same weapon. Go to schedule and clear your training orders. Create a training order, minimum 2, and at the same screen set 1-2 as preferred positions. Create another training order, for the same squad, same month, this time preferring 3-4. Do this 3 more times and you'll get 5 sets of training with preferences for paired training. The positions refer to the order they are in the squad list, so if you do 1-2, 3-4 and so on, the first and second will spar, third and fourth will pair up, etc. Then just copy this to the other months."
• It may be best not to mix weapon types in a squad, but mixed weapon squads can work reasonably well and soldiers with different weapons will spar. I even had melee and ranged ponies in the same squad and it was good for killing radscorpions and feral dogs.
• Just throwing together a few melee ponies with different weapons and cutie marks worked just fine. Their training was slowish and they skipped demonstrations for the wrong weapon types, but learned dodge, armour use and sparred. They also fought some wildlife and foalsnatchers during their training.
• Overall it may be best to start with a mixed squad, assigning weapons by Cutie Marks, then split those into squads of 2-4 when more ponies become available. That way the initial teachers will teach some defensive skills to future squad leaders.
• It may be a good idea to embark with several lvl 5 teachers / lvl 5 {dodger, armour user, axepony, gunner, kicker} or similar and let them train each other, but this doesn't seem to work as fast as 2 pony squads. EDIT: I embarked with 3 Teacher 5 and Axe 5 / Dodge 5 / Armour User 5 respectively and during their first year they didn't fully catch up with each other and none of them exceeded 6 in any military-related skills. Still, when the demonstrations worked, they worked quite well.
• Oddly, it is possible for a pony to simultaneously spar with two others, so 3 pony squads aren't a bad idea either.
• There are several ways to setup military schedules: Train all year 10, give them a few monthly breaks a year or set the "Train X" order to one less than the squad size and let the ponies rotate in and out on their own. This is just to try to decrease the severity of their bad thoughts from long patrol duty, but I'm not sure if it even works. Bad thoughts also occur when a soldier with no civilian skills is not on active training.
• Cutie marks and UPs vs EPs.
  
• Cutie marks are important as they can make the pony learn certain skills thrice as fast. Even if you don't plan on having a ripper squad, but get a pony with a dagger for a CM, it is going to be worth your while to make a dagger squad, possibly by assigning a Unicorn or two to her squad to train with, preferably a migrant skilled in Knife Use. If you can get two or more ponies with the same weapon for a cutie mark to train together, so much the better.
  
• Unicorns train faster than EPs (IIRC 104% vs 80% learning rates for military skills), so it may slow down the training to mix the castes in one squad. UPs also have the "shield wall ability" (due to having 5 grips), which can greatly prolong their lives as long as they don't get zerg rushed or stunned. Unfortunately this works for the enemies too, making for some drawn-out battles.
• You'll have more expendable Earth Ponies than Unicorns, who are better at all kinds of crafting. Military is a place to put the excess population to some use, but it may be better not to mix elites and line soldiers in the same squads.
• Professional teachers and boot camps.
  
• Ponies skill up faster when trained by veterans. It may be good to sometimes break up elite squads, make each member a captain and give them a few recruits to teach.
• It may be a good idea to have teaching squads around that never see real combat, but instead "boot-camp" recruits, who are then assigned to proper fighting squads.
• Individual combat drills give 300+XP per month in weapon skill and 30 dodging XP. They are slow, but can give the soldier some weapon skill to start with. For totally green soldiers individual drills are good, but once they level up a bit, squad activity trains them faster.
• When the rifleponies get upgraded to chainsaw rifles, it is a good idea to give them an experienced sawpony teacher to bring them up to speed on using them for melee. In turn he'll get some gunnery demonstrations.
• Auxiliary training:
  
• Virtual Reality Simulators are nice for supplementary training of weapon skills. It is best to have one skill per VR set on repeat and use profiles to limit access to them to certain ponies. Marksponyship is archery and training it on VRS is a waste. Gunnery is crossbow skill and is used for BB guns, pistols and combat rifles. Sniping is the bow skill and is used for hunting rifles and AMRs.
• Armouries can raise Armour user. Use a few of them same as VRs.
• Pump Operation gym works OK for stat gains. You are likely to see +150-200 in Endurance and some minor Strength and Toughness when training it to legendary. It will also make the soldiers red when off-duty and negate a bad thought for elites becoming peasants. Pumps that pump actual water may be better for this, but dry pumps work too.
• Organizer skill somewhat reduces the time it takes for demonstrations, thus speeding up the training. It may be a good idea to cross-train it for the Stable Dweller (champion) and maybe the teachers by nominating that pony to Manager and having her process lots of fictional orders, for which you don't even have a workshop. Dough is good for this. Don't expect great results from more than just a few levels in Organizer, though.
• Concentration and possibly Observer seem to influence the XP gained by students from demonstrations, so having a Philisopher's Garden or two is not a bad idea.
• Other stuff:
  
• Having a veteran Stable Dweller (Champion) should speed up training of new recruits as long as that pony has the time to give them some demonstrations and the skills to make them worthwhile.
• Military is for life as ponies disable their civilian labours when they get good enough with their weapons. All my civilian defence programs to date have failed anyway, mostly due to lack of equipment.
  
• Live training is a good use for whatever the cage traps capture. There are multiple methods to do that, from throwing prisoners into rooms where BB gunners can shoot at them, through disarming the victims (or luring Steel Rangers into a room with EMP mines) and having the military hit them with wooden training weapons, to simply releasing prisoners in the barracks. In any case, XP gains from live combat are much better than from sparring, provided the targets live long enough and don't wound your ponies.
• If you have wild sprite-bots or other relatively harmless creatures, it may be a good idea to attack them with training weapons. That way they will last a while longer and the soldiers will learn faster. Of course the downside is that this leaves your ponies vulnerable should a real threat show up.
• Trying to train soldiers as wrestlers first might be a good idea with shortage of weapons and abundance of expendable recruits (such as with uncapped population), but otherwise give them weapons as soon as possible.
• Not giving recruits shields may speed up their training of Dodge and Armour User a bit, but those skills are best taught by demonstrations and should those squads be called to combat early, lack of shields will greatly reduce their survivability.
• If future militia candidates are identified but have no military experience, it may be worthwhile to spend a little effort 'cross-training' - namely, allowing them to continue in useful civilian jobs (or Pump Operating if preferred), and assigning them to Inactive squads so they are able to attend Individual Drills in their own time. This will allow them to build up useful military skills, avoid the negative thoughts 'unhappy about the draft' by giving them a base level of military experience, and allow them to build up stats through their civilian jobs. Once a suitable skill level is attained, these dwarves can then either be trained on a rotating basis (eg. 3 months training, 1 month civilian time), or set to train permanently as part of the full-time military force. Another upside of this is that they won't waste time idling and will make fewer friends. They will also have a greater chance of survival when attacked, having weapon, shield and all, but will charge foes instead or fleeing from them.
• The military trains better when they have a barracks, are allowed to train there and are set on active/training alert. (That was a joke.)
• It is a personal matter, whether you use Danger Rooms and coin tossers, but if you do, your feedback will be less useful for Lycaeon.
• There may be a bug where pausing the game accelerates demonstrations, but ends sparring and individual combat drills prematurely, yielding less XP. There seems to be no work-around.

Quick checklist: Based on this.

• Security commander / captain -> squad -> ponies in squad.
• Weapon rack -> barracks -> assign train (T)
• Military screen (m) -> uniforms (n) -> new uniform (c) -> name uniform (N) -> add items to uniform (upper body (A), head (H), feet (B), Weapon (W), Shields (S)) -> assign material components (m) -> leather for head wrappings, or any other adjustments you want. Materials specification is unnecessary, as ponies will still wear whatever barding/helmet/boots they can find and upgrade them according to material and quality. Select "partial matches" and "replace clothing".
• military screen (m) -> equipment (e) -> assign uniform (U) -> select squad, select any squad member in middle column, then select your new uniform on the right and (SHIFT+ENTER)
• military screen (m) -> alerts (a) -> select active/train in left column -> select your squad in middle column (ENTER) -> you will see a green A next to the squad. It is important that active/train is selected.
• military screen (m) -> schedule (s) to make sure that the active/train has training set. This is the default unless you've messed with it.
• military screen (m) -> ammunition (f) to make sure you assigned the correct ammo type for ranged squads.
• if you assign a uniform to a squad, new ponies assigned to that squad will be assigned that uniform automatically.
• if you assign a uniform to a squad, then change the definition of that uniform, it won't affect that squad unless you reassign that uniform to them (shift enter)

Melee Weapons:

• You can embark with and quickly make these weapons: BB rifles (crossbow), Sledgehammers (hammer), Security Batons (mace), Machetes (sword), Combat Knives (knife user), Hacksaws (axe). All of these have T2 upgrades, except for Security Batons, but to make them you need batteries and metal mechanisms, among other things.
• For edged weapons the best materials are: Starmetal (Adamantine) > Plasteel > Steel > Iron and Bronze.
• My favourite weapons are chainsaws, mostly because they can eventually be upgraded to plasteel chainsaw rifles with steel medium ammo, but any type of weapon that has a T2 version should work fine. Personally I'd stick with edged weapons, because they can bleed out unarmoured opponents rather quickly and even cut them to pieces.
• Chainsaws, Chainswords and Rippers get their material from the chain. You get some steel chains from processing salvage. You can make Plasteel chains at the Prismatic Forge and Starmetal chains at a normal forge.
  
• Kinetic Sledgehammers get their material from the sledgehammer and Steel is the best there is.
• Someone told me that Steel Machetes and Kinetic Sledgehammers work best against radscorpions, but I don't know.

Ranged Weapons:

• BB guns are a joke, so you might as well skip them, except for training. Any squad with BB guns should be positioned where they are unlikely to see combat or behind fortifications.
• Hunters use BB guns by default, and that normally means a death sentence to anypony using them, but there is a way to make this work, at least in areas low on ghouls. First disable hunting on everypony. This will make them drop their quivers and weapons. Then go to {m}ilitary->amm{f}unition, remove BBs from hunters and give them either medium or small calibre bullets. When you enable their hunting later, they will pick up the appropriate ammo and weapons, such as rifles. If you skip un-equipping them first, they will just keep their BB guns and have the wrong kind of ammo, which is even worse than shooting radscorpions with pellets. I suppose keeping your hunters in inactive ranged squads could work as well.
  
• You can make combat pistols without any schematics, but you need to make bullets for them too. Doing this early should improve the performance of ranged squads.
• BBs, pistols, revolvers and all kinds of combat rifles use the gunnery (crossbow) skill, while hunting rifles and AMRs use marksponyship (bow). For early game you want the first progression, then upgrade to either chainsaw or ripper rifles. Snipers come into play later and need more gunpowder to train, so it is worthwhile to use VR simulators for them instead. Miniguns use the "Misc. object thrower" skill. 
• A method of training rifleponies that worked quite well for me was not using archery targets at all, but just building barracks on the surface and telling both melee and ranged soldiers to train there. Ranged squads were doing demonstrations and individual combat drills while shooting at whatever wildlife wandered nearby (thus also providing protection to nearby ponies) and skilled up quite fast.
• Virtual Reality simulators are a slow, but sure and ammo-preserving method of combat. They also train only one skill at a time and increase attributes as slowly as any civilian labour. This is a tempting method to train snipers, but in my opinion mixed combat (for gunners) and hunting (for snipers) rifle squads work better.
• When you assign or upgrade ranged weapons for a squad, be sure to give them the right kind of ammo. You don't want your rifle ponies to have useless pellets and be unable to shoot. Don't mix different ammo types in one squad. After you upgrade, say pistols to rifles and change the squad's ammo type, it may take the ponies a while to adjust the contents of their quivers. Unequipping their rifles in the military screen, unpausing, then assigning, them again should do the trick. You can also dump and reclaim the wrong ammo type.
• Pellets: BB rifles (Only use them for training. They can be made in large quantities from bronze at the Prismatic forge.)
• Small calibre ammo: Combat Pistols, Revolvers, Little Macintoshes
• Medium calibre ammo: Combat rifles, Hunting rifles, Chainsaw rifles, Ripper rifles. Also used by miniguns when packed in chests.
• Large Calibre Ammo: Anti-Materiel rifles, Spitfire's thunders
• If you have an experienced gunner squad / teacher, it may be a good idea to cross-train snipers with them. Just assign medium calibre ammo to the mixed squad, combat (chainsaw, ripper) rifles to gunners and hunting rifles to snipers. The snipers will benefit from demonstrations of defence skills and have some covering fire, should an enemy get too near. Once you have AMRs and trained snipers, create separate squads for them.
• Replica will tell you otherwise, but in my experience, ranged weapons are pretty weak. If you use them anyway, it might be a good idea to waste steel on making ammo, as you can make steel from scrap anyway and gunpowder is a more limited resource.
• Ranged ponies tend to be quite fragile and need some meat shields, weather robotic pets or melee ponies. Their fire support tends to wound and sometimes stun enemies, making the job of melee ponies easier. Killing with ranged weapons is possible, but usually takes a lot of bullets and time.
• When a bullet hits a wall with an open space below, it is not destroyed. You can abuse this, by channelling spaces around your archery targets and leaving the ramps. It will lead to a lot of forbidden single bullets / pellets, but they can be collected to bins and reused, potentially saving you the trouble of making more ammo.
• When a ranged squad is created, they get some ammo assigned, but it may be a good idea to assign them much more, possibly over a 100 per pony. This should lead to them carrying more in their quivers and not running dry when in combat, but hundreds of bullets are heavy enough to slow them down.
• You can manufacture these ranged weapons: BB rifles, combat pistols, combat rifles / chainsaw rifles / ripper rifles (require schematics), AMR (require schematics). There is no way to manufacture revolvers and hunting rifles, but you can get those from caravans and invaders.
• Rifles, including the Chainsaw / Ripper variants and AMRs can be refurbished at the Reloading bench, using scrap parts. Chainsaw / Ripper variants also need a new chain and take their new material from that chain.
• Ammunition production requires some explanation:
• You can make 5 pellets per bone or 25 per log at the craftpony's workshops, or 25 form a weapons grade metal at a forge or magma forge or 2 stacks of 50 from a bronze bar at the Prismatic Forge.
• You can make bullets out of gunpowder, brass and weapons grade metal at the Gunsmith's forge or MWT Prismatic forge, using the Metalcrafting skill (It can be trained by making copper goblets for sale.). Gunsmith's forge requires fuel and Prismatic forge doesn't.
  
  • 1x(weapons grade metal + brass + gunpowder) --> 2 stacks of 30 Small calibre ammo.
  • 2x(weapons grade metal + brass + gunpowder) --> 2 stacks of 28 Medium calibre ammo.
  • 3x(weapons grade metal + brass + gunpowder) --> 2 stacks of 14 Large calibre ammo.
• "Normal" reactions to make ammo will use any weapons grade metal, such as bronze, iron or steel, while AP ammo will use steel only. Since gunpowder and not metal is the bottleneck when producing ammo, it may be best to just stick to Steel AP ammunition. Another reason is that only steel medium calibre bullets can be used to fill an ammo crate for a minigun.
• You can get large quantities of bronze and brass (4 per scrap ore) by using the "make from ore" reactions. Steel production is much more labour intensive, so unless you have enough of it for weapons, armour and AP ammo, it may be a good idea to stick with bronze bullets. They are weaker though, especially against late-game enemies.
• Ammunition can be broken down to gunpowder, brass and a metal bar at the Reloading Bench. There is a 1/3 loss of material and it uses the salvaging (woodcutting) skill. This can be quite useful when you have lots of small calibre ammo from invaders, but only use bigger weapons and want to recycle the gunpowder.
• Gunpowder is made at the grinder from either potash or saltpetre. You should be able to get some gunpowder from caravans, but it is also worth it to order saltpetre from caravans. You can make potash from ash at the Ashery and get small amounts of ash for burning trash at the salvage yard. Burning wood for ash at the wood burner isn't worth it, but the Kiln has a reaction to burn wood into 4 ash, which makes producing gunpowder from wood alone much more viable. Reactions:
• 1 coal / charcoal + 3 potash --> 4 gunpowder
• 1 coal / charcoal + saltpetre --> 6 gunpowder

Armour:

• Get Bronze / Iron or Steel Security Barding fast. Bronze is the fastest, since you can make large quantities of it from scrap, but in my experience it can only block hits from a ghoul about half the time, so after outfitting the security with bronze weapons and armour, you'll want to upgrade to steel quickly.
• Upgrade to Steel Combat Armour when you get a Prismatic Forge, but only for soldiers who have a few levels in Armour User. Otherwise it will slow them down too much and it isn't that much better than Security Barding.
• Since barding is the piece of armour that weights the most, it may be a good idea to give some soldiers Combat / Power Armour Helmets and Boots, but keep their Steel Security Barding. This offers better protection than a full security outfit and is barely heavier, which matters for soldiers with poor Armour User skill.
• Power Armour (minigun) is best for EPs, endgame. Scorpion Power Armour is probably the best for Unicorns, but it is scarce enough for other options to become attractive, such as a minigun battle saddle.
• When it comes to leather, Tough Carapace (better than copper) > Tough Leather > Chitin > Leather > Mottled Leather.
• I used to separate leather into tough leather + tough chitin and the rest and use the best kinds to make hoods and the normal leather to make backpacks, waterskins, quivers and shields, but I don't know if you can even make Leather cloaks and Head Wrappings in 0.95, so it may no longer matter. You may still want to use only the toughest leather and chitin for riot shields, just for flavour.
• High quality shields, no matter the material, greatly increase the survivability of ponies when multi-equipped. EPs have 3 grips and UPs have 5. Rippers and Security batons use up 1 grip, while the other weapons need two. Therefore EPs can handle 1 or 2 shields, while UPs can get 3 or 4. In my experience multiple shields stack and their quality matters, because it bumps a pony's shield user for the purpose of calculating block chance. I use leather riot shields, because they are light.
• While the material progression is the same as for edged weapons: Starmetal (Adamantine) > Plasteel > Steel > Iron and Bronze, most armours have limitations on what they can be made from. Plasteel is limited to Scorpion Power Armour, while Power and Combat Armours can only be made out of Steel. Starmetal may be usable for Security Barding, but as of now, that's it.
• You don't have to assign each piece of armour to every soldier. Just use uniforms with things like "Security Horseshoes" and the ponies will sort it out. They will also upgrade when a more expensive security boot becomes available. This usually means better material or quality, but decorations can screw this over.
• Power armour boxes give you upgrade potions and a token to train Armour User. They don't have to be used by the same pony who wears the Armour (so you can have a minigun Unicorn wearing Scorpion Power Armour), but they should be used in tandem, if only because they were meant to be by Lycaeon.
• After Lyceaon nerfed my abuse of hoods, the best armour for fortress mode (adventurer mode has some more options, but wastelander gear is inferior anyway) is as follows:
• Jumpsuit + (Security / Combat / Power / Scorpion) Barding + Leather Cloak (won't fit over Power Armour)
• Leather Head Wrapping + (Security / Combat / Power / Scorpion) Helmet.
• Socks + (Security / Combat / Power / Scorpion) Boots
• The above still works, but after the addition of dfhack and autosyndrome there were big changes to items and the best uniforms. See the upgrade guide below for details, but I'll propose some uniforms here. Those are still subject to change, with hazmat suit size and permit being adjusted.
• Security set. It is meant as the first armour, to be worn over clothing, usually made out of bronze. Even this armour will encumber ponies and slow them down. It provides only moderate protection, so upgrade it when you get the industry up and running.
  
  • Security Barding, Security Helmet, Riot shields and weapons of choice.
• Combat set. Upgrade to Security Armour once you loot it or get an MWT forge. This is made out of steel and at this point you should have no trouble replacing clothing and providing boots and jumpsuits.
  
  • Combat Armour + hazmat jumpsuit (can't be made, so substitute normal jumpsuits if there is a shortage) + minigun or flamer battle saddle or cloak if there is a shortage of battle saddles. 
  • Combat helmet + Gas Mask (if available) or Memory Recollector (if surplus) or head wrapping.
  • Combat Boots. + whatever combination of pipbucks, stealthbucks, autoinjectors and socks seems to work.
• Power Armour set. Meant for Earth Ponies; the bonuses won't work for Unicorns.
  
  • Power armour + jumpsuit + Battle Saddle of choice.
  • Power Armour Helmet + Leather Head Wrapping
  • Power Armour Boots + whatever combination of stealthbucks and socks seems to work.
• Scorpion Armour set. Meant for the most precious veterans. Bonuses work for Unicorns.
  
  • Scorpion Power Armour + (hazmat, if plenty) jumpsuit + battle saddle of choice or cloak.
  • Scorpion Power Armour Helmet + Memory recollector or Leather Head Wrapping.
  • Scorpion Power Armour Boots + whatever combination of stealthbucks, autoinjectors and socks seems to work.

Defensive architecture:

• Early on:
  
• It takes some time, but it is worthwhile to setup a "Safe" burrow encompassing the entire underground part of the fort except for the caverns and make a "Panic" alert that restricts ponies to that burrow. When there is an invasion, switch the civilian alert to "Panic" and they will run inside and still be able to do most jobs. The downsides of this method are cancellation spam, suspended constructions outside and idlers.
• A big "Stable Door" made of a lever-operated raising bridge is an effective early defence, especially in conjunction with using the "Panic" alert and "Inside" burrow. It also adds flavour to the outpost.
• Pasturing a few turrets outside and close to the entrance is usually enough to scare away animals, but more dangerous enemies can kill them with no trouble whatsoever.
• Setting up the barracks outside and close to the entrance means fast response times from security and practically guarantees that they will fight anything that makes it too close. In the meantime they will continue training. If you go to a savage or evil biome, they will get caught in radiation storms, though. Those are quite deadly.
  
• Setting up patrol routes around the camp should be enough to protect you from feral dogs, thieves and the like, but getting a wall around your outpost is strongly advised. The minimum number of security for patrols to be effective is about 5. Still, just having a barracks there may be enough and is preferable for the security to train rather than just walk around the camp in crude polygons.
• The mid and end-game enemies are immune to traps, but you should still be able to get some use out of them. You get lawnmower blades and barbed wire from salvage anyway and animals, slavers and griffins are vulnerable to traps. Just remember that traps block Trading Depot access.
  
• Cage traps are even more powerful than weapon traps and you are able to tame and train some of their catches to add to your defences, most notably Wolves and Feral Dogs. Possibly something better after the MoP arc.
• You can also deploy HE mines (effective against most lightly armoured enemies) and EMP mines (permanently disable robots and Steel Rangers), as well as attach explosives to Sprite-bots.
• After that, having a walled-off courtyard for things like refuse processing is a good idea, as it will stop most enemies. You can expand it later, but I wouldn't make the first one bigger than 50x50 tiles. Even this much is worth 200 stone blocks and lots of hauling. Remember to put a few ramps on the inside, so that sprite-bots and other curious creatures can get down after they inevitably get stuck on top of the wall. Same goes for any aboveground buildings.
• When there are enough animals on the map, including radscorpions, feral ghouls and feral dogs, no new ones will come. On the other hoof, clearing the surface of all animals usually means more of them will come very soon. Unless you consider it training for the military or need the corpses, it is therefore better not to kill everything on the map, but just keep those animals you can at bay. Most of them are quite scared of turrets and other ranged weapons. There is also one cheesy thing you can do to get some respite: Trap some animals where they are out of the way, so they won't bother you and will block migration of new ones. Caged animals don't count, you need to release them in some enclosed courtyard. This has to be done separately for the surface and each cavern layer. It will of course do nothing for megabeasts, ambushes and sieges.
  
• Later:
  
• Once you have a wall and a gate, it is a good idea to surround it with fortifications, so you can put gunners on top by "defend burrows" orders and they will be relatively safe.
• The gate and corners of your fortified wall are a good place for turrets, especially the upgraded variety. They can spot and shoot at ambushes and anything going for the gate will have to pass by them.
• Flying enemies don't like flying over water, so a moat can funnel them towards the main gate and prevent things like Feral Pegasus Ghouls and Griffins from jumping over random parts of the wall, then attacking ponies.
• It is a good idea to have two lockable gates, preferably close-by. 
• One for your ponies, 2 spaces wide and heavily trapped. It should be open most of the time, unless a siege is going on. It should be lockable by a bridge and heavily fortified, with fortifications for gunners and turrets. This would also be a good place for all kinds of complex traps, cage and weapon traps, mines, etc. 
  
• The second one is for caravans. It should include a 3-wide paved road to the edge of the map and the trading depot. It needs 2 gates: One between the depot and the outside and one between the depot and the inside of the walls. That way you get a safe airlock for trading. Once the merchants arrive, just lock the outer gate and open the inner, then trade.
• Having an underground network of tunnels leading to sniping towers is a large project, but may be worthwhile.
  
• The next best thing is having small towers made of fortifications and filled with turrets or sprite-bots.
  
• You can also build a rope restraint outside (steel chains are too valuable for this) and put an exploding sprite-bot there. I haven't tested this, but if they really explode, a sprite-mine may be enough to disable an ambush.
• A pretty devious method of dealing with building destroyers is to have a statue outside, surrounded by 2 tiles of menacing spikes linked to a lever. To save on spikes, surrounding the statue with fortifications, leaving only a narrow path with spikes should also work. I recommend bronze menacing spikes for this, because they are relatively cheap and easy to make compared to steel.

Other:

• EPs get adrenaline rush as a natural ability, which works similarly to SATS. Those effects that stack are multiplied, including a 38% bonus to speed. You can either prioritise giving pipbucks and SATS to UPs, thus making them almost as fast as EPs or prioritise buffing EPs to their fullest. Pipbucks aren't scarce, but you'll always have more soldiers than those devices anyway.
• Ponies who install SATS flash blue mechanisms. Spells and upgrades flash a cage, I think. Either way, learning an ability produces an announcement in the reports screen {r}->"Daisy is fighting"->"Daisy has learned SATS". Try not to miss it and keep a spreadsheet at hand. Otherwise you may end up forcing a pony to learn the same thing over and over, without visible effects.
• SATS and spells generally have short range and therefore are used more often by close combat ponies than by gunners. Spell hologems can be used indefinitely once you have them, but pipbucks are used up, so it is best to give SATS to melee ponies first and only give it to ranged combatants when you have a surplus.
• I think the best upgrade is Power Armour + minigun for EPs and Minigun for UPs (or maybe Scorpion if you have it). Assassin abilities aren't implemented yet and flamers are problematic. I haven't seen miniguns do much damage, but several soldiers with them might just be able to kill a yellow ghoul.
• As for spells, it may be best to go for all schools. As of 0.95 each Unicorn can only have 1 school of magic, except for the rare talented ones, so spread them evenly. Restoration gives you shield, Illusion the infamous rage and a debuff, destruction lots of debuffs. Alteration only has Bind, which reduces speed by half for 150 TUs, but that's quite powerful too. 
• Magically talented Unicorns are rare and should be "utilised" to their fullest. They get better versions of spells with lower cooldowns in their chosen area and can learn one additional school of magic. I'd give them something increasing their survivability, maybe Restoration (Steadfast Ward) or Destruction (powerful debuffs) or Alteration (Bind), but not Illusion.
• There are no "Turn Undead" and "Horn Light" spells and the entire Conjuration school of magic is just for undead enemies. The manual is misleading.
• While I'm not a fan of flame-throwers and rocket launchers, they might be really good for evil areas with reanimating undead. They can't rise up if they get torched to ash.
• Have enough backpacks and waterskins / flasks for everypony and at least as many quivers as gunners.
• You can rename squads. I never came up with anything poetic, but just named them by their weapon type and combat readiness.
• If all else fails, have some spare coffins at all times.

Spells guide here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118893.msg3959710#msg3959710

Upgrade guide
In 0.30 dfhack and autosyndrome was introduced, so from then on some items can grant bonuses or special abilities. This is the list of them.

• Helmets
• Gas mask. Grants NOBREATHE, which may help with radiation storms or getting underwater.
  
• Paralyze amulet. Grants Paralyze spell to Unicorns. There is no way to get it in-game yet, but it will most likely be added to MAS crates.
  
• Power Armour helmet. Grants NOBREATHE (same as Gas Mask, doesn't stack) and SATS (same as pipbuck, doesn't stack).
  
• Scorpion Power Armour Helmet. Grants NOBREATHE (doesn't stack with gas mask) and SATS (doesn't stack with pipbuck).
• Barding
• Hazmat suit gives RAD_2 (Same as Power Armour), NOBREATHE and +2000 disease resistance.
  
• Power Armour Barding grants this to EPs only: SHIELD_APPRENTICE (resistance to spells), RAD_2 (radiation storm and yellow ghoul resistance), +2k Strength, +2k Endurance +1k Disease Resistance, injects healing potions and med-x on demand (doesn't stack with autoinjectors).
  
• Scorpion Power Armour grants RAD_3 (radiation resistance, weaker than RAD_2), +500 Strength, +1k Endurance and +500 Agility.
• Boots, but actually all of these pretend to be socks.
• Pipbuck grants SATS, a 15% boost to speed, skill checks and some stats for 100 TUs with 1200 TUs of wait period.
  
• Stealthbuck gives 2 abilities, usable once per week: hide from enemy when approaching and hide from enemy when fleeing.
  
• Autoinjector with healing potions. For 600 out of 1200 TUs each day it maxes out the pony's Recuperation and Disease Resistance and gives NOFEVERS, NONAUSEA and some small amount of NUMBNESS. It is a good idea to give those to crippled soldiers.
  
• Autoinjector with Med-X. For 600 out of 1200 TUs each day it gives NOPAIN and boosts Toughness and Willpower by 25%.
• Battle Saddles. One of those can be worn like a cloak over any type of armour.
• Minigun Once per 600 TUs grants the ability to emit medium calibre bullets for 400 TUs in the general direction of the enemy on each combat round. There is a 200 TUs wait period, it uses Misc Object Thrower as it's skill, isn't very accurate or as strong as rifles and faster soldiers fire more often. The sheer amount of bullets from a few of those can overwhelm many tough enemies and makes Steel Ranger squads very dangerous.
  
• Flamethrower Once per 600 TUs grants the ability to use a flamethrower for 400 TUs, but at least 50 TUs must pass between each burst. It has range 6, sets the grass on fire and can kill a user without a riot shield. You also have to watch out for friendly fire Under most circumstances flamethrowers are more trouble than they're worth, but they can burn reanimating undead to ashes.

No matter what I do, I cant seem to get rid of that last list tag :( [/list]

[Morhem]

Wow, THATS what I call an answer. Tnanks a lot, learned hellota new stuff, you cant just read on wiki!

I will put it to good use. My thoughts of army composition so far: 10 pony melee squad of unicorns with basic magic(I think it will be restoration, for better survival rate) in heaviest armor possible(Combat, I guess), maybe with Reapers, to max out shields.  Next, 10 pony ranged squad of mudponies, whatever armor, combat rifles for start, to support a first squad. To be upgraded to PA/w minigun.
And last, elite squad led by Magic Master, all magic users(already have destruction, and alteration adepts), to pummel occasional megabeast with implosions, and do other nasty magical stuff.

By the way, in alteration you mentioned only bind, is other really that bad? Time stop may be too much, but dialation, and paralyze?

[Lycaeon]

> Griffons
I think I figured out why they and the Unity behave erratically during invasions, and will fix it for the next version. The Talons also arrive at 80 population and are vulnerable to traps, so those two factors should make them manageable for decently defended Stables.

Thank you for the adventure mode feedback Maklak! It should prove useful eventually, though I'm not sure why you experienced lag issues. To my knowledge fortress mode doesn't have any significant lag problems that would transfer over to adventure mode.

Your general explanation for Morhem is excellent as well (I've linked it under general hints and tips in the first post), though I would like to point out that there's nothing to stop you from giving earth ponies SATS, as the combat bonuses from it and the adrenaline rush stack. The next version also eliminates the spell targeting issues, so unicorns will use all spell levels freely on the same targets.

Morhem, the spells Maklak mentioned are for ordinary unicorns. Your Adept CM unicorns can learn higher-tier spells like Time Dilation and Time Stop, which don't interfere with the lower level spells like bind and so can be learned together.

I will be releasing a mini-update soon with all of the fixes for v0.95 as well as early implementation of talisman research. While we're still far from the Ministry of Arcane Sciences arc, much of the currently available technology depends heavily on processing matrices and hologems, preventing Stables from taking full advantage of them without a reliable means of manufacturing talismans.

I thought I nailed down most of the lag issues in fortress mode, so if anyone continues to experience lag (Or any other problems), let me know with the details so I can pin down the source.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Morhem]

Cant complain about lag in Fortress mode. Most of the time im playing at 90-100 FPS. Once the fortress became crowded, it dropped to 40-50, which is still playable. I also installed dfhack, for just one utility: "clean all". You may call it cheating, I call it +20 dps after each battle.


Also, for a few minutes tried Adventurer. Yes, the lag is severe, from 1k FPS it sometimes drops to 40 when you run fast into unexplored area with many items/trees. And as far as I remember, it was the same in vanilla.

[Maklak]

> I will put it to good use. My thoughts of army composition so far:[...]
That goes directly against my advice of small squads with the same weapon types and utilising military CMs to their fullest, but I'm curious how that turns out for you.

> By the way, in alteration you mentioned only bind, is other really that bad? Time stop may be too much, but dialation, and paralyze?
Magically inclined Unicorns are rare and even they can't learn all the spells, with the exception of Magic Masters. Ordinary Unicorns can only learn apprentice level magic and only one school of it. This used to be different, but they were nerfed. This is why I focused on the bulk of UPs rather than the exceptions. A typical fortress should get a few Apprentices and maybe even an Adept or two. The spells you mention are powerful, but out of reach for most.

> Your general explanation for Morhem is excellent as well (I've linked it under general hints and tips in the first post) [...]
There are still some grammar mistakes in my explanation, and you can't edit my posts for updates, so it might be better if you just copy (some of) that stuff somewhere. Other than that, thanks, I guess I should try to keep it updated and expand it over time, especially after the spell update.

I really have no idea what went wrong with FPS in my adventure mode. This was the first time I tried it and don't know if the problem is the same for Dwarf Fortress with no mods. In Fortress Mode the lag is typical, possibly lower due to fewer items.
> Also, for a few minutes tried Adventurer. Yes, the lag is severe, from 1k FPS it sometimes drops to 40 when you run fast into unexplored area with many items/trees. And as far as I remember, it was the same in vanilla.
Ah, so here's the answer. My computers are too slow to handle adventure mode.

I asked at the modding forum and apparently effects for similar syndromes are multiplied, at least for affecting speed, strength and the like. If this works the same for things like pain, then allowing lower and higher level destruction spells to run on the same creature is going to be OP.