The freaking sun woke me up. I just can't get much sleep lately. Hopefully it will at least melt some of the snow.
> Buying ammo.
If ammo can't be made cheaper, some caravans should at least bring us bins with gunpowder. But that said, the efficient wood to 4 ash reaction makes it easier to make our own ammo than it used to be.
I think having blanks around or ponies otherwise touched by Pinkamenas (such as forgetting a relationship) should produce some bad thoughts in ponies around them. In the novel memory therapy had it's own set of problems. Or maybe add this to pinkamenas themselves, so that anypony passing near them gets a bad thought. Either way this requires an interaction that runs a script and shouldn't be a priority. Come to think of it, I think I've seen a "misery" script somewhere.
I think tinkering too much with things like relationships is prone to weird errors and even game instability.
> Cakes in war crates
I'm in favour. We already have drinks and cans anyway. There are even some foods that can be kept for a very long time without preservatives: olive oil, sugar, honey, salt, pepper, apple vinegar, wine and maybe some other things could last that long. But if we are to find stashes of oil, sugar or honey in civilian crates, I'd rather have low chance for a stack than lots of stacks of 1. And since those are stored in containers, they would still have to be "opened" at the kitchen, like the cans. Those things can be canned too, except for honey and wine, which are better stored in glass or ceramic containers.
> Come on Maklak, why so discriminatory? Gryphons are people too you know.
I'm fine with an occasional Dashite or "former slave" being born, but once we add ghouls, Griffins and who knows what to the mix, the explanation for who marries who and gives birth to what becomes thinner than the fast talk in Baby Cakes. If there is a sterile tag, it should also be used for ghouls.
> I've found that if I'm fortunate/unfortunate enough to start in an area where a wild sprite-bot shows up, I can just send my initial army towards it and have them beat on the thing for a while.
I embarked with wooden knives and on day 1 got two of those things, but I haven't even thought about attacking them. My bad.
> > This makes long 10-wide room with workshop at the end, big pasture in the middle and only one entrance valid, correct?
> That works, but isn't necessary - you only need to pasture the creature next to the workshop and it'll instantly be affected once the worker runs the reaction.
The thing is, animals fight when they are too tight and I need lots of them close to the robronco workshop. Either that or restock them often, but I don't like to touch the pasture interface more often than I have to. I need 3-5 military-grade robots to deal with anything crazy that spawns. I need a whole bunch of chickens and nest-boxes for them, so it should be rather close to the kitchen. I need dogs and slaves and all kinds of pre-upgrade robots too. The needed space quickly adds up, that's why I came up with a long 10-wide room idea.
> Just for laughs, now I have a subtle feeling that Applejack was slightly racist against unicorns.
When I read the novel, I got the impression that few Unicorns were actually deployed on the battlefield and those who were, had either offensive spells or shield and the Zebras targeted them first. I think that most of the Unicorns had auxiliary or civilian roles and the bulk of the fighting and dying was done by the Earth Ponies. That's one reason the armours targeted them and played on their strengths. That said, those were the first (and successful) series of Power Armours. If war took longer, new ones would be developed, probably more like Scorpion Power Armour MK2 and there would be models for all castes, including Twilight Alicorns.
> Maklak, [...] which of these two embark surface prospects is the most favorable?
*Grumbles* As far as I'm concerned, none. There are too few trees, but I prefer the Untamed Wilds - no pink cloud and lots of medium quality salvage. BTW:
* Low quality salvage -> 20% + 10% for scrap ore, 2% for a damaged civilian crate and 1% for a civilian crate. Oh, come on!
* Medium quality salvage -> 40% + 20% + 10% for scrap ore, 32% for a DC, 16% for a C, 8% MoI, 8% MoP, 4% MWT, 2% MoM, 2% IF, 2% II, 2% RCo, 2% ST, 2% Explosives.
* High quality salvage -> 80% + 40% + 20% for scrap ore, Crates: 64% DC, 64% C, 32% MoI, 32% MoP, 16% MWT, 8% MoM, 8% IF, 8% II, 8% RCo, 8% ST, 8% Explosives,
4% MoA, 4% MAS.
Maybe I'm spoiled by the earlier versions, but I used to have lots of scrap and stuff from low quality salvage. Now it's trash and salvaging starts at medium quality.
I think the explosive crates should be only found inside other crates (MWT, MAW, MoM (low chance, used for fireworks), IF, II, RCo, ST (low chance, used for mining)) and not directly in salvage. Either way we will have plenty, so we can mass-produce mines from sensor modules.
I'm in favour of salvage processing, vermin and bodyparts burning and crates opening
not being AUTOMATIC. Yes, it is annoying to add those thing on repeat, but at least I know what I have and don't get an explosion of stuff before I even get underground. It also allows me to control which workshop does what, while automatic reactions have an annoying tendency to trigger all the workshops of that type in the area.
> While I appreciate your efforts to improve the raws, some of the things you mentioned (Like the Super Sentinel) are spoilers for newer players. Your suggestions are great, but otherwise you needn't go into that much detail.
The way I see it, new players won't read the whole thread anyway. Or my long posts for that matter.
> > Actually it may be worthwhile to send crippled soldiers on expeditions, maybe they'll miraculously get healed!
> The transformation only affects the worker running the reaction.
I suppose I should just start a fort, send a wasteland expedition and see what it does. I have great trouble understanding multiple interaction chains, spread over multiple files.
Either way, wasteland expeditions could make a stable like Pineapple work.
> > Pinkamena stats
> The speed allows her to perform the interrogation before the subject manages to damage her with its hooves/claws, while zero strength prevents her from killing the subject as you mentioned.
I suppose giving her normal stats, similar to Mr. Hooves, would make her too overpowered, as a few of them with some escort could meet a squad of Rangers head on and leave blanks. Oh well, I suppose I should just play and see how cumbersome she really is. I don't have any suggestions that wouldn't make her overpowered for now.
As a side note, this is why I don't like the idea of inst-kill assassins; too hard to balance.
> Good point on the Rangers - I forgot to add a syndrome that makes them unconscious (Unconscious TRAPAVOID creatures can be caught by cage traps).
So I'll need a bunch of cage traps and an EMP mine in a special entrance corridor to my fortress. Good.
> They still move, albeit slowly, so in this version you can probably pasture a Pinkamena close enough so that the ranger comes after it.
Until I have Pinkamenas to spare, I don't want to risk it. Even less so, if there are EMP mines in the area. And a civilian trying to pasture something next to an enemy will get scared, run away and spam cancellations.
> > Consider adding an interaction to Mr. Hooves that gives robots near it some recuperation boost.
> Added to the development list. Thanks!
On a similar note, I'd remove the "designate healing" reaction and instead let Nurse Redhearts use their injectors at will. If they can only do that at most once per day, it will still make most sense to keep them in the hospital or in a safe place in the barracks. Even more so because we won't get that many Nurses with Power Armour competing for healing potion and Med-x canisters. Having to fit a terminal in the hospital and designate healing is rather awkward. Nure Redheart AI should be good enough to recognize patients on it's own. You don't even need to nerf them by making them slower or stationary; they are weak and precious enough to not give them as escorts to soldiers and one injection per day is rare enough, so that just pasturing them in the dining hall wouldn't do much good either. The only thing that will work reliably with this system is burrowing wounded ponies next to Nurse Redheart, which is good.
I think the healing autoinjectors and power armour healing should be nerfed to +1k recuperation and disease resistance and only Nurse Redhearts should get it at full strength. Even after this nerf, I'll still be able to assign autoinjectors to wounded soldiers to heal them up. They are the most powerful hoof item so far. A further nerf would be to reduce the duration/wait period ration to 1/4 or less. OR make the boost much smaller, like +500, but continuous, whichever makes most sense.
> > Pellets
> I didn't have time to do extensive testing of the new airguns, but there was an increase in penetration compared to the originals.
Well, maybe I'm wrong and they're better now. Either way, I should probably make some and see if they do more than just dent the skin and very occasionally bruise slavers. If they can would, cause bleeding and very occasionally stun, that's good enough for me.
> > Move Hazmat suit to Over layer (same as gas mask) and make it wearable with normal jumpsuit.
> The hazmat suit is a different type of jumpsuit. I will consider making it a different layer, though.
I imagine the
hazmat suit to be somewhat bigger than the pony inside and normal jumpsuit as something tight-fitting. But then there were utility jumpsuits with pockets and even armoured jumpsuits. Either way, Power Armour can fit over light jumpsuit, but shouldn't fit over a hazmat suit. Security and Combat Armour still could.
> The hazmat suit is intended to provide more radiation protection than ordinary power armor, and the latter's integrated healing potion auto-injector has the disease resistance.
I still think that Power Armour should get a disease resistance boost, but possibly smaller than that from the hazmat suit. It is a sealed environment and was built to provide the best protection possible. Plus the autoinjector is pulsating and I'd prefer it nerfed anyway, to make Nurse Rdhearts more useful.
> > But seriously what's with that bottle?
> It and the other artifacts aren't available in the mod yet.
Ah right, I haven't noticed them in the loot tables. Well then, the best use of theatres is Masterwork Speeches.
> > I think you got the memory orbs backwards.
> These are excellent suggestions, and upon re-examination I'm not sure why I didn't design the system as you described it. Much thanks for this!
Hey, you did a lot of good job that they work at all. Design and implementation sometimes cloud each other, that's why you have us for second opinions. I was a bit worried that what I've written was unclear, but it looks like you got it anyway.
Oh and while you're at it, there should be low chances for interrogated prisoners to know about other factions. For example Talons and Rangers occasionally fight each other and slavers go to places or just interrogate captured ponies before selling them. That way we can still get a location of a Ranger bunker from just slavers and Talons, but it will take much longer.