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[Demdemeh]

Maybe I'm just terrible at DF, but with the decreased efficacy of farming, I almost don't feel able to survive (especially on an aquifer embark) WITHOUT the extra points. Military just doesn't seem feasible on normal embark points.

[Maklak]

Normal embark points are not enough to take robots, but enough to survive. I use plant gathering for additional drinks. At the price of a few logs and scrap you can make bronze serrated disks to sell to caravans for food, as well as make equipment for the early security. With all the feral dogs and other animals sending wave after wave, you'll also have a lot of meat.

Gzoker, I don't make potash. I need beds, bins and barrels. I order saltpetre from the caravans instead. Disassembling small calibre bullets will also help with gunpowder a bit. Oh and burning trash at the salvage yard makes some ash for potash too. Gunpowder isn't abundant for me, but I get by.

[gzoker]

I played a few short lived stables in the last few days, and I have a suggestion. Could we have a concentrated gunpowder item, say 'a barrel of gunpowder', what we can't make normally, but we can order from the caravan. Processed in a workshop it would yield five (or ten) bags of gunpowder, so we had a little more supply, and we could make more ammo. If it had more instances like salvage do, then we could import more then 4 of it. Thats more than 20 (or 40) bags per year. In the endgame we will need a lot of bullets. Thoughts?

My small stables always have a problem with producing potash. After around the third year i use up all my resources on the map. On a 2x2 map there are not enough trees to keep up with production.

[Lycaeon]

> I go to set up my starting equipment only to be handed over 10,000 points.
Yep. It’s a side effect of making items out of salvage (Which is something you don’t want to do ingame, since it skyrockets your wealth and triggers earlier attacks). I may just remove the value of high-quality salvage entirely, as it’s easy enough to buy despite its worth.

> Maybe I'm just terrible at DF, but with the decreased efficacy of farming, I almost don't feel able to survive.
As Maklak mentioned, a combination of hunting and trading will satisfy your food requirements (Farming chickens and brahmin also works), while a source of fresh water provides a drink supply.

> I played a few short lived stables in the last few days.
Mind telling what ended your Stables? For development reasons.

> Could we have a concentrated gunpowder item, say 'a barrel of gunpowder', what we can't make normally, but we can order from the caravan.
That’s something I’m working on, but getting traders to bring custom items is tricky as they’re diluted by ordinary goods. Maklak’s above points are good. I also plan on introducing a plant burning reaction for reliable ash production, to be coupled with a wasteland crop that grows fast but only produces thread.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! It's been really helpful in balancing the next version!

[Indigo_Surprise]

To answer your farming question, this is what I do. On embark I bring 9 seeds of every plant that isn't just dye or that you have to process to make edible. I then have my miners make However many 3x15 rows as there are plants for the Spring. As your fort gets bigger you'll expand into these empty spaces. My rows consist of 3x3 patches, which is why I bring 9 of each seed. Each row will focus on only one plant for the most part. You can't grow all plants year round, so pick a plant that grows in multiple seasons. Next row do the same until you're out of three-four season crops and fill up the blank seasons with other seeds.

This applies to underground crops as well, and be sure to floor off the ceiling of your surface farms and connect them directly to your food stockpile with up/down stairs (elevators) to minimize hauling. I'm the King of Crops, my forts always live on plants only like proper ponies, with the occasional bit of emergency meat. Also I tend to bring up to 80 cheap plants and drink to eat on until crop production gets going. Always embark with a farmer too.

[gzoker]

Lycaeon: i wrote a short summary, but i'm a under a bit of medication and my brain is a bit fuzzy. So please excuse me if something is not clear enough.

So first thing to note, i have experience using the military, both ranged and melee.

I made a basic underground design for a small stable, and I was trying to find the most pleasing aesthetics for it. In the mean time I was experimenting with aboveground defenses for fun. So I played the same embark four times redesigning the underground and changing things around above and watching how it unfolded. Saving them wasn't the point.
I armed my civilians with combat rifles in every stable i could, and they used bronze ammo. They didn't got any armor and they didn't train. I tried to get as much wealth from salvage as I could(~1.000.000). I also prevented the wild life from coming to my site, as i trapped a large radscorpion behind a stone door. Archery targets are like honey to them; [BUILDING_DESTROYER] is easy to exploit. I had to do this because bloodwings are bear sized flying badgers, only there is more of them. With a small militia you have no chance against them, and I think wild life should be more manageable at the stage of the stable when you actually care about it. Later there are more interesting enemies, and legendary axeponies butcher anything anyway. Burrowing underground against everything is just boring, even if it's more realistic to run than to fight. So I think there should be a lot fewer of them at every one time.

My stables died mainly to raiders. First stable's militia was using simple melee weapons and bronze security barding. Fortifications were a simple wall with a bottleneck. Six ponies aren't enough against three ambushes, and sledgehammer and four shields are deadly combination for a crazy unicorn. Blocking every bullet is nonsense. Civilians were useless.
On second try I used a dodge me trap with with four turrets. They couldn't shoot fast enough, a lucky raider got in, killed everyone.
The third died to a minotaur reaver. Simple wall with a door on it. It got through, killed everyone. It wasn't the one with the hood, but the one after it. The raiders took their time, and didn't come to that stable.
Number Four died to raiders again. My militia were the same ponies as in the first stable, and they did better this time. Still, six melee ponies aren't enough to hold a stable against raiders. One got wounded, then another, and another, and one by one they ended up in the hospital. Then the raiders just walked in and killed the civilians, then the resting soldiers.

I don't know, guns don't seem to really work with low skill. Every bullet gets blocked by shield wall. Then the hostiles get in close and end it in a few hits. I'm aware that I should use guns from behind fortifications, (i almost always have sniper towers around the map) and wait for lucky hits, but most of the time i run out of ammo sooner then my enemies die. Then i just sit on my thumbs again, and wait for them to leave. Again, burrowing down is boring. I think the game is most enjoyable when you are not sure about the outcome of a situation, and you can decide both ways.

Also, ponies kick hard. I have read more than a few combatlogs, in which the enemy (not the ones with shields) died in less then three kicks. Now i always give my future military commander 3 kicking, 3 dodging and 3 teaching at embark. They are quite good against feral dogs and smaller wild life even without a shield or weapon.

Maklak: i played around in ten or so worlds since i found this mod, there wasn't a single time i could order saltpetre or found an embark that had it. Grinding rocks for it is not an option. Mining too much decreases fps like crazy, so i have to limit how much i dig around. An obsidian farm is too much hassle in the first few years, and eats up fps too.

Indigo: Yeehaa, another farmer.

[Lycaeon]

> To answer your farming question, this is what I do.
Good advice!

> I had to do this because bloodwings are bear sized flying badgers, only there is more of them.
Agreed...I will lower their numbers in the next version. I'm starting to see a trend where making something just as deadly as it was in the novel is usually not a good idea.

> My stables died mainly to raiders.
I'd forgotten about the multi-shield problem. Upon reconsideration, I'm going to remove shields from raiders, wastelanders, and slavers. They weren't present in the novel, and they certainly weren't intended to block rifle fire and flamethrowers. I will leave them in for Stable ponies and the Talons, however.

With that and the reduced number of attacks, the hostile civilizations should become manageable in open combat (Weapon and cage trap hallways were and still are highly effective, but I suppose you didn't use them for your Stables)

The feedback is much appreciated gzoker! I haven't had the time as of late to run Stables outside of testing new features, so reports like this allow me to make small but essential improvements to gameplay.

I hope you feel better soon!

[Indigo_Surprise]

By the by, Ly, what version had other entities with multiple cutie marks? I'm making a custom entity that's a conglomerate of slavers, raiders, and wastelanders. I'm going to need other cutie marks for flavor within my own castes.

[Deon]

Are you sure you can remove shields now? A few versions back I tried to remove shields from entity, and they still used default shields.

[Zangi]

>> I had to do this because bloodwings are bear sized flying badgers, only there is more of them.
>Agreed...I will lower their numbers in the next version. I'm starting to see a trend where making something just as deadly as it was in the novel is usually not a good idea.
Reducing their numbers to 1 or 2 at most will probably help a lot.  Thems really fast compared to radscorpians and can fly, so that makes em the number one non-ghoul danger.  Unlike Radscorpians, they can and will run down any pony it chases.
I'm just glad that by default, they try to run away, unless they get into a rage...  Also, they kick protectapony arse.

Are you sure you can remove shields now? A few versions back I tried to remove shields from entity, and they still used default shields.

If they still use shields, what about reducing the number of 'grips' on those ponies?  At least they won't carry 2-4 shields in that case.  Not as OP as Stable Pony shield wall... but the enemies have numbers and are replenished every season, while your ponies, once injured.... well it can be permanent and/or long lasting.



Also, slave converting fortress is finally a go, 31 normal ponies and +8 random slave ponies waiting for me to set-up the resource center thing. 
I totally lowered the trigger for the slave merchants on all 3 counts.  Might be limiting my own population frelled something up, cause I had Talons knocking on my door and I think they have similar triggers.
Clarification: That was in previous games, no slave merchants, but yes talons.

EDIT: Also, can't seem to butcher caged bloodwings/wild animals.  Totally forgot if this is a DF thing or something in FO:E.

[Lycaeon]

> What version had other entities with multiple cutie marks?
Well, the non-Stable ponies have cutie marks already...they're just nonfunctional. Only Stable ponies have diversified talents; the early version of the mod (v0.71) just copied these over to the other civs, so there aren't any slaver or raider specific talents.

> Are you sure you can remove shields now? A few versions back I tried to remove shields from entity, and they still used default shields.
Hm...I wasn't aware of this. I will check if this is the case in the current version - if it is I will use Zangi's suggestion and reduce graspers for non-Stable ponies. Thanks for the heads-up!

> Also, slave converting fortress is finally a go
Glad to hear it!

> Can't seem to butcher caged bloodwings/wild animals.
Untamed animals need to be killed first and put in a refuse pile. The wiki has some more info on this.

[Indigo_Surprise]

I know how to mod creatures. I just prefer to adapt something someone else has already made than make my own. Not so good at coming up with new things, better at expanding on existing ones. Which is why I wanted to know which version gave nonstable ponies their own cutie marks.

I remember something about raiders having lots of different marks instead of just having one. Things like trampled berry vines, mutilated corpses.

[Pokon]

I remember something about raiders having lots of different marks instead of just having one. Things like trampled berry vines, mutilated corpses.

Pretty sure those were removed for, realy, taking up space in the RAWs. I suppose if they were playable, they would have more marks, but at the moment they just dont need them.

[Indigo_Surprise]

I remember something about raiders having lots of different marks instead of just having one. Things like trampled berry vines, mutilated corpses.

Pretty sure those were removed for, realy, taking up space in the RAWs. I suppose if they were playable, they would have more marks, but at the moment they just dont need them.

I know exactly why they were removed. Nevertheless, I want them so I can start on my own custom ponies.

[Putnam]

Just copy horses...