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[Iceblaster]

IDEA

A gem crate which would contain gems. It would help late stables keep up with the need for spell training, and help new stables if they aren't lucky with immediate gem veins.

[Byakugan01]

Just got a crash...at the embark screen no less! As far as I can tell, all I did was view one pony's stats and then switched to and tried to view another pony's stats too quickly. I might have hit an adjacent key instead of v though, but petty sure it was the view option that caused the crash. Or, you know, it could be just random crash. I had some of the ponies skilled out, and was in the middle of skilling out the rest of them.

[Thirtyeight]

Apparently we can still butcher slaves, and ponies will put the resulting products to use. I can't decide if this is horrifying or awesome. If Lycaeon ever makes Raider Shantytown, this will prove most fitting.

[Lycaeon]

Byakugan: Thanks for informing me! I just spent a couple minutes in different embark screens rapidly switching through stats and editing skills and experienced no crashes, so it's likely a random case. There are no DFhack hotkeys that use 'v' either. Let me know if it happens again.

Gzoker: Thank you for bringing up the potential exploitation of expeditions with crippled/unnecessary members. Skill and equipment don't improve chance of survival, so even slaves and blanks can be used to no consequence (Indeed, for this version I foresee many overseers using their fodder ponies for expeditions). On the other hoof, once I introduce the perk system, members of expeditions will have a chance of gaining perks from surviving journeys into the wastes, with more dangerous locations associated with better perks. That should incentivize sending more valuable citizens.

Hiring mercenaries as you suggested is planned - you'll be able to purchase "Talon mercenary" tokens from slaver caravans, and have the choice between using those tokens in expeditions (With each expedition costing you the resources to equip and pay the number of mercenaries you send), or spawn them as actual Talon griffons (Using chickens) armed with integral weapons and armor to defend your Stable.

Maklak: I'll consider the use of concrete blocks for furniture, but it seems redundant due to the existing masonry and plywood systems.

> Speaking of which, I think the expeditions should require a hacksaw for cutting down salvage and a wheelbarrow to haul it back too.
> Scribe / Delayed would be a good place to put Teacher, Student, Organisation and maybe something else.
> Hazmat suit suggestions
Good ideas.

> Oh, and BTW, I recently updated my military guide for 0.30, including the advice to kill sprite-bots, the wood to 4 ash reaction at the Kiln and a list of syndrome-giving equipemnt.
Thanks!

Thirtyeight: I would just remove the trade trigger for the Rangers, as that's what usually brings them early. Otherwise your population must be 110 ponies before they begin scouting out your Stable.

> Apparently we can still butcher slaves, and ponies will put the resulting products to use.
It's an unintended game behavior (Both have NOT_BUTCHERABLE, but the game refuses to recognize this for transformed creatures), so I haven't done any testing on butchered pony products.

Replica: Love the picture, and the grumpy cat insignia.

Iceblaster: I don't think another source is necessary; you can trade for polished gems from certain caravans and convert them into roughs at the arcane gemcrafting stations.

[Byakugan01]

Oh wow, I am getting screwed over in this embark. Giant Rad scorpion right off the bat, the militia decided it would be good idea to take it on single hoofily, one at a time *facehoof*. The one that DIDN'T get killed outright went melancholic after letting the team doctor try and practice her wizardry on him. I'm down to 5 ponies and the first month isn't even over yet. And on an odd note, when I tried to designate a food stockpile at first it kept telling me that the workflow function was not enabled, and asked if I wanted to enable it. After I threw down the first stockpile it stopped asking though. Just something odd I thought I should note-I think it was another of those random bugs, or it might just be for the first food stockpile after embark? Not really sure.

As for gems, you forgot rock grinding.

[Lycaeon]

It's a bug with the one of the DFhack hotkeys triggering without pressing Alt. You can fix it by pressing Alt again. You can fix it permanently by opening the dfhack.init file in your DF folder with notepad, finding this line "keybinding add Alt-F "gui/workflow status"", and changing Alt-F to Alt-Y. I'm opening up a hotfix section in the first post for small things like this that don't merit a new update.

Rock grinding: Yep, that's the default source.

Edit: ASCII version is up. Sorry for the delay.

[gzoker]

>Hiring mercenaries as you suggested is planned - you'll be able to purchase "Talon mercenary" tokens from slaver caravans, and have the choice between using those tokens in expeditions (With each expedition costing you the resources to equip and pay the number of mercenaries you send), or spawn them as actual Talon griffons (Using chickens) armed with integral weapons and armor to defend your Stable.
I woke up with this exact thought, and come to the board to suggest it, but it seems I've been ninja'd. For the first part, i hope we don't have to pay for the same thing twice, mercenaries tend to be armed, that's why they get hired.

For the perk system, yes that would be a good enough incentive. I would also like to note that a wasteland is supposed be hell on earth equestria, so being unfair is kind of a requirement. Still, being able to increase the survival rate would be nice. I guess the militia will be drafted from the survivors (of the expeditions) who gained enough perks.

[Maklak]

> My new embarking strategy is to only bring high quality salvage (around 20), 10 food, 10 drink, then go from there.
Yep, after the antique / scrap value nerf, I can no longer bring swarms of robots, so I take a few logs of high quality salvage if I have spare embark points. Otherwise I tend to bring some wood, stone, leather and other basic things.

> Eh Maklak, drew a quick soldier doodle for you out of boredom.
Looks good, even though the pony lacks a horn. Did I get an EP in Orange? I didn't even notice.
I didn't like the grumpy cat at first, but I like cats and am grumpy, so it's fitting.

BTW, I have some free time now and my 0.30b and my group is called "The Orange of Dye" and my Stable "Fruitfaction". I have to run it in WINE and no crashes so far.

> A gem crate which would contain gems. It would help late stables keep up with the need for spell training, and help new stables if they aren't lucky with immediate gem veins.
Well, we have some random gems from mining, rock farming / grinding (which would be even better with concrete making stone furniture and construction more efficient and freeing up more rocks to grind) and processing gems from the caravans. MAS crates also have a chance to drop high-end gems, so we're pretty much covered, but that said...
I'm actually in favour of your idea. Sort of. MoI crates would be much more interesting if they sometimes contained a crate with quad (or more) the chance of gems as from rock grinding as well as silk cloth and thread. Since you get both chance of gem crate to drop as well as chances for what's inside to drop, it should be easy to balance. I would prefer it if the gem crate hardly ever dropped (8% chance or less), but was a treasure trove when it did.

> Skill and equipment don't improve chance of survival, so even slaves and blanks can be used to no consequence (Indeed, for this version I foresee many overseers using their fodder ponies for expeditions).
This is exactly what I plan on doing when trying out expeditions. I have a lot of salvage on the surface, though. 

> Once I introduce the perk system, members of expeditions will have a chance of gaining perks from surviving journeys into the wastes, with more dangerous locations associated with better perks. That should incentivize sending more valuable citizens.
Yes. Sort of. Maybe. This will be hard to balance, I think. It might also cause more savescumming among so inclined. But overall is probably a good idea. Still, depending on migrant availability, we may opt to still use green recruits for this and train the survivors once they perk up. Which is sort of how some countries use their military.

As to survival rates, make it so that (Scorpion) Power Armours give a syndrome and when expedition interaction sees that syndrome, it makes the bleeding less severe. That way it would be safer to send veterans. Of course a gradation system based on armour and weapon tier and battle saddle would be more accurate, but just Power Armours is less work and good enough.

> spawn them as actual Talon griffons (Using chickens) armed with integral weapons and armor to defend your Stable.
*Snort* I hope nopony tells the mercenaries to their face that they're a bunch of chickens *snort*. (That was a joke.)

> I'll consider the use of concrete blocks for furniture, but it seems redundant due to the existing masonry and plywood systems.
I think of it as complementary to those systems. There are three things I want concrete for:
* all constructions of the same colour,
* greater speed of and efficiency of making blocks for constructions
* and conserving stone for rock grinding.
More efficient stone furniture helps with the third goal. Otherwise I have to reserve hundreds of rocks for thrones, tables, cabinets, pots for food, coffers and all kinds of other furniture that quickly adds up. Either that or use another material, but wood is better conserved for bins, barrels and charcoal and metal too expensive, so it pretty much has to be stone. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, because even parallel Mason shops can't quite keep up with my demand and I sometimes run low on stone despite constantly mining.

Oh and consider renaming wheelbarrow to "cart", "dray" or whatever those two-wheeled carts that the ponies in the show use are called. I imagine ponies would use those rather than actual wheelbarrows.

The title song is awesome. The song that plays during the game is kinda annoying.

[gzoker]

A zap apple ghost has just visited my fortress. I got the message of the caravan's arrival, then the screen zoomed at them as usual. I unpaused the game, and zap, the wagon have just teleported into trade depot in the middle of the map. The other wagons and merchants walked there normally. A funny bug i can't replicate, but I shared it none the less.

Edit: random feral unicorn just beat my Mr Hooves to a pile of scrap. Luckily the turrets has finished it off before the robot died, so i hope it will recover. Without graspers the unicorn ghoul only bucks and gores - and the latter is quite devastating. Also are ghouls supposed to be in wilderness areas, or is this a special treat just for me?

[Maklak]

I just got another idea that shouldn't be that hard to implement and is kind-of in tune with the MoM arc: Loudspeaker system.

We have a theatre and masterwork speeches (masterwork music doesn't work, due to artefacts not dropping. BTW, that proposed gem chest from MoI would be a reasonable place for them with 1% drop. Also move the Rarity Statuette there, due to how frequent MoI crates are.) Their downside, apart from micro-management involved in running the reaction a few times a month is the limited audience. What if it could propagate the effects throughout the entire stable? I think it would be great. Sprite-bots and perhaps pipbucks are the natural devices to be used as loudspeaker system. I'm pretty sure it has to propagate through creatures and not say, special furniture anyway, so how about this:

Whenever a Masterwork speech or Masterwork concert is performed by a pony with appropriate CM, not only do ponies in vicinity, get a buff, the pony gets two range 60 (200?) interactions to run on sprite-bots without LoS (let's hoof-wave it as using the broadcasting equipment of the theatere), than any Sprite-bot hit by it (unless it is already active), gets interactions to propagate it to more sprite-bots as well as interactions to grant the benefits to nearby ponies (but shorter range than the theatre itself). Another chain reaction affects pipbuck-wearing ponies within 60 (200?) tiles of either the theatre of affected sprite-bot, but they only grant the benefits to themselves. Power Armours should have this too.

If the first version of this only uses sprite-bots and masterwork speeches, that's just a few extra interactions and syndromes and shouldn't be that hard. Music, pipbucks and Power Armours (basically if you have SATS, you get affected) could be added over time.

Also, Sprite-bots themselves could have an interaction that affects nearby ponies in some way.

Replica will probably like this idea, because he likes sprite-bots.

I'm not sure if just the basic version or other sprite-bots should have this. Definitely the kind of sprite-bots that we build from parts should be part of loudspeaker system, but I don't know about the ones with strapped explosives.

EDIT: I just got "A ballistic weapons expert, she takes great pleasure in crafting fine pistols and rifles." ant the CM bonus is 260 skill rate in Bowcraft. All the reactions to make guns use Weapon Smithing. Another disappointment was a hunter with no bonus to shooting.

EDIT2: The game crashed when accessing military equipment with the cursor on 3rd position. Since I didn't fix the init (display mode, seasonal saves with autobackup and some other minor things), I didn't get any backups. I won't play much at this rate.

> Damn! What did you mean by cursor in the third position?
Well, it was in the third position in a squad, I think. Or maybe it was in the list of ponies? I just assigned a second pony to a squad and pressed "e", then crash. The squad contained just one pony previously with a training axe (surprisingly good weapon against weak wildlife) 4 shields (2 eqipped), security barding (haven't made it yet) and  security helmet (same). No uniform was ever assigned to that squad.
Most of the time the "equipment" seems to work fine. Then it suddenly crashes. I don't know why.

[Lycaeon]

Damn! What did you mean by cursor in the third position? Was it in the column with non-assigned ponies or in the third pony in the squad? How large was the squad and what equipment was available for it? I haven't been able to replicate this bug in my tests, so for now I recommend quicksaving using [Ctrl-Shift-Q] before entering the military screen. If you do get a save before a crash, I would appreciate the save file so I can look into what's causing it.

All I know is that it's a problem with dfhack r3.

Gzoker: Each time you use the Talon mercenaries on an expedition, you'll need to provide them provisions and payment (I haven't decided on the form of currency yet, but it'll probably be in caps as you described). They already have weapons and armor. I may require the spawned Talons for the expeditions instead of their tokens - you can pasture them around the expedition staging point like a squad. That way you'll need to wait for them to return before sending them out again.

> I unpaused the game, and zap, the wagon have just teleported into trade depot in the middle of the map.
Drastic measures must be taken to survive the wasteland.

> Also are ghouls supposed to be in wilderness areas, or is this a special treat just for me?
They have a small chance of showing up outside the evil/savage regions.

Maklak: Savescumming the expeditions will be possible but unproductive as the chance of gaining a perk is low, and each expedition takes a minimum of a week before the team returns. Having power armors and battle saddles increase survivability is an excellent idea! Thanks!

> Concrete blocks for furniture.
> All the reactions to make guns use Weapon Smithing.
Good points.

> Oh and consider renaming wheelbarrow to "cart", "dray" or whatever those two-wheeled carts that the ponies in the show use are called.
Cart sounds good.

> Having sprite bots act as conduits to extend the range of performances and other Stable events.
Also a great idea, though the Pipbuck extensions will be tricky to implement. To eliminate the micro-management problem, I plan to have the theatre reactions transform the worker into a performer for a month, and during that time constantly provide their performance buff.

[Byakugan01]

I wonder if the crashes are related to complex scripts? If there's a error in part of the script, then it could be fouling up the rest of the scripts-just a wild guess on my part.
Edit: Eh, serves me right for making a wild guess

On expeditions, how about making it cumulative? Each power armor or battle saddle involved also increases the survivability of the other ponies, with a full squad equipped as such having an almost 100% survivability. This gives serious incentive to use your best ponies for this, while making the use of weak ponies a rather foolish idea. I don't know if this is possible though.

As for the songs...I love them both. I find the ingame one very soothing.

[Putnam]

I wonder if the crashes are related to complex scripts? If there's a error in part of the script, then it could be fouling up the rest of the scripts-just a wild guess on my part.

Maybe in terms of values edited by the scripts, but at the very least, my scripts only add syndromes to creatures and stuff.

[Maklak]

I described my crash at the bottom of my previous post. Basically I added a second pony to an existing squad, pressed "e" to add equipment and it crashed. It works most of the time, though.

> On expeditions, how about making it cumulative? Each power armor or battle saddle involved also increases the survivability of the other ponies.
Makes sense, but it's much easier to check if this pony has a syndrome from power armour and a battle saddle. Checking adjacent ponies would have to propagate syndromes among them, with multiple ponies in vicinity spamming each other and the syndrome having to stack the correct number of times... I don't think this is even doable. What's doable is giving a pony in Power armour a syndrome to spam on other ponies and when such a pony is checked for expedition bleeding, the results could be less severe. But it is easier to just check each pony if she is wearing a Power Armour or a battle saddle.
In other words: Each pony in Power Armour having two or three "heavy support" interaction that they can use on other ponies to increase their chances during expeditions is the closest reasonably doable thing. I think.

Another thing that could increase survivability during expeditions is being under the influence of a "Friendship" syndrome from statuette workshops. This is in tune with the novel and side-fics. Besides, we need at least one statuette for this.

[Thirtyeight]

Okay, I'm still having problems not being able to make things because I'm told I don't have things the stocks page says I do have. Hologems, paper stacks, etc. I'm starting to think that the stocks page can see into crates I haven't opened yet.

I know that things that are being hauled can't be used in constructions, but this is happening too often for me to think that is the case here.