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[Lycaeon]

After brainstorming the maneframes, I came upon a problem - the buildings made from linked terminals continue to function even if the original maneframe was deconstructed or otherwise destroyed. This puts their development on hold for now.

Maklak: One heavily irradiated cloud (The highest starting form of radiation) is likely to kill a pony if he passes through the whole cloud. One irradiated cloud, likely not. I'm figuring out how to stop them from showing up in non-evil/savage areas. I also need to correct a mistake where hazmat suits won't protect against heavily irradiated clouds.

> Speaking of screwed up values, a masterwork plywood board is worth 120 bits and we get ten of those per log.
I may remove the woodcutting skill, then. The unimprovable tag only prevents decorations from being added to the item.

> Now we need someone to figure out how to use mines effectively.
Mines stealth automatically so most enemies can't see them, and they won't trigger unless the enemy walks within 1 tile. They also have a large explosion radius.

> Hazmat suits over or under armour.
It doesn't make much of a difference in terms of gameplay...I opted for armor going over the hazmat suits as this better protects the suit from damage that would expose the pony inside, fluff-wise. Also, hazmat suits don't add [NOBREATHE] - you need a gas mask for that.

> I'd like healing potions to work continuously on wounded soldiers, not just before a fight.
Healing potions and Med-X are triggered by being wounded.

> Perhaps slave ponies should be shareable or milkable?
Nope.

> Batteries are surprisingly difficult to make, compared to other technomagic, how many we use, their price and how common they are.
Technically they are the fuel cells used by sky wagons and other means of transportation in the novel. I know that's more energy than they contain in the mod, but they were downsized for gameplay reasons.

> Is the blowgunner skill planned to be used with energy weapons as "blowguns" that fire "darts" that have effects on impact?
Maybe...I haven't had the time to brainstorm the implications of Putnam's projectile expansion script.

> The 0.30 doesn't have a Stonesense, so I guess I'll have to fix that next.
That would be very nice, and much appreciated! No pressure though.

Treason: I like to think that most Stable ponies aren't suited for the horrors of the wasteland.

Iceblaster: We're only missing sprites for Stable citizens, raiders, wastelanders, and slavers. Ingame sprites for those are problematic in that there's no way to add different sprites for different castes in the same creature - there would be only one sprite per profession regardless of whether its a unicorn or earth pony. It'll also take a lot of time I can't afford.

Neowulf: Using potash for gunpowder and fertilizer is fine; I see no need to add extra steps.

> When you look at how rare and useful the two talismans it needs are it really doesn't make sense for a building with infinite water and power to have such a crappy output.
The trade-off is the instant product, bypassing the months of time plants normally need to grow. I'll increase the chance of the second plant, however. Potash is now plentiful enough for the fertilized reaction to be a viable option.

> As for the pot, it becomes relevant as an "OHCRAP" option early game if the hydroponics output is bumped.
Regular farming should be sufficient for that.

> So far the ponies have turned 3 5-stacks of rat weed and a 2-stack of prickle berries into the correct number of mulch items.
Interesting...that opens up plants as a source of ash again, though it's not as urgent now that burning logs at the kiln yields more.

Tahujdt: A decoration talisman certainly sounds like something Rarity would design. I've added colored bricks to the development list, limiting the colors to bright primary ones so the amount of inorganics won't get out of hand.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

[tahujdt]

Maybe instead of primary colors, just Ministry ones.

[Treason]

Blast!  My latest stable managed to capture two out of five nightstalkers that showed up on my map, but they killed off all the males!  It's going to take ages before I can get a breeding pair going, unless I'm fortunate enough to have one of the two females already pregnant.

[Iceblaster]

Nightstalkers... Aren't those the supermutants that had the stealth boys? If so, what are there analogs in FO:E because I haven't encountered them.

[Thirtyeight]

You are thinking of nighkin. Nightstalkers are the coyote-rattlesnake hybrids.

[Pokon]

Nightstalkers... Aren't those the supermutants that had the stealth boys? If so, what are there analogs in FO:E because I haven't encountered them.

Blue Alicorns take the place of Nightkin, in that they have invisibility spells. Project Horizons has straight-up Nightstalkers, actualy.

[Iceblaster]

Thanks, I got the two confused... Eugh the image of a coyote and rattlesnake together made me cringe in fear

[Maklak]

> After brainstorming the maneframes, I came upon a problem - the buildings made from linked terminals continue to function even if the original maneframe was deconstructed or otherwise destroyed.
True and we know that players are already juggling Power Talismans and Arcane Terminals.

> I'm figuring out how to stop them from showing up in non-evil/savage areas.
For now I just watch the clouds more closely and don't leave the soldiers outside during alerts. So far it works.

> > Now we need someone to figure out how to use mines effectively.
> Mines stealth automatically so most enemies can't see them, and they won't trigger unless the enemy walks within 1 tile. They also have a large explosion radius.
There is more than that to using mines effectively. For example will they push and damage each other if multiple are pastured inside a single tile? Will an enemy trigger all of them to explode at the same time? If not, will the dust clouds from one mine damage the other mines? If a mine is close to the wall, will it hurt the soldiers one z-level above? I predict that keeping a bunch of mines together is a bad idea and a good minefield would be a snaking corridor where they are at least 5 tiles apart, maybe more. It should probably also be covered in cage traps. But I don't have the mines to figure that out in 0.30b and tests are better than guesswork.

> > Perhaps slave ponies should be shareable or milkable?
> Nope.
A good choice, but I still find that answer funny.

> > Batteries are surprisingly difficult to make, compared to other technomagic, how many we use, their price and how common they are.
> Technically they are the fuel cells used by sky wagons and other means of transportation in the novel. I know that's more energy than they contain in the mod, but they were downsized for gameplay reasons.
That's not even an answer. Well, maybe I should give this another angle: Processing Matrices are like Computers. They don't need that much power, but are very complex. Well, complex enough to hold friend of roe recognition, pathfinding and using what weaponry they have attached. Batteries just need to hold a lot of energy inside them and are orders of magnitude simpler. Yet it somehow takes very similar resources to make a Spark Battery and a Basic Robot Processing Matrix. This is why it doesn't quite work for me. Besides, even with all the Sprite-bots, Puipbucks and such, Equestria still needed more batteries than Matrices, I'm pretty sure of it. Although the war was about energy resources, so batteries couldn't have been all that cheap to make. Hmm... In-crunch a stable needs more batteries than it needs Processing Matrices ant talismans, but fortunately for us, those are plentiful in salvage and can be obtained from T2 weapons too.
Anyway, my second proposal is to use T1 gemstones for batteries and it doesn't matter which ones. I think Project Horizons described making batteries from powdered gems, so we could have these reactions.
T1 gem (all kinds) -> powdered gems
4 x powdered gems -> Spark Battery
Depleted Battery + powdered gems -> charged battery.
It would at least give us a use for low-quality gems besides lenses for researching basic spells.

> > As for the pot, it becomes relevant as an "OHCRAP" option early game if the hydroponics output is bumped.
> Regular farming should be sufficient for that.
It should be and the plant shouldn't be growing instantly, but in a biome with freezing water there is still the "Oh crap, I have no water and my Quarry Bushes were just started and there are thirsty ponies in the hospital. But I guess I can just solve it with #liquids and pretend the ponies melted snow or ice.

> Nightstalkers.
I think I've read somewhere that tame animals can get pregnant from wild animals on the map, but I'm not sure. Either way, Nighstalkers are among the best dogs you can get, because of their poisonous bite. One oddity is that they lay eggs.

I've been working on another guide recently, but it isn't ready yet. This one is about gems, magic and reverse-engineering. The topic is rather broad, but I hope to get recommendations for what to spend gems on when I'm done with it. For now, I only have this:


Move REPAIR_POWER_ARMOR from Armoury to MWT prismatic forge. It depletes a battery, but the reaction effectively forges boots from steel, so it should be at the forge.

Considering how much trouble it takes to get locations of bases, bunkers and weapon caches, I propose that the maps be re-usable, once we have them. there should be some chance of a cache drying up or otherwise becoming unobtainable, so the reactions should consume the map and produce another with 0.50 <= p <= 0.98.

Reaction proposal:
(Scorpion) Power Armour Processing Matrix -> Pipbuck.
Reason: All have SATS and we can make those Processing Matrices, so Pipbucks should actually be easier, if anything. 

[tahujdt]

SATS is not the only feature of Pipbucks. Pipbucks can hold gajillions of gigabytes, connect to two-hundred year old networks, decrypt all sorts of stuff, detect radiation, listen to the radio, etc. Power Armor is fairly easy to make, once you have the materials. Pipbucks are much more valuable. If you remember from the novel, quote, "Most [Steel Rangers] would be more interested in protecting your Pipbuck than protecting you." It might not carry the same weight, since it's not canon, but in Project Horizons one researcher, who had been trying for years to reverse engineer Pipbucks, says that she only managed to repair one or two.

[Maklak]

> Pipbucks.
I think Power Armours have similar functions. (SATS, communications and so on). You can even reboot PA from a pipbuck and vice versa.
> Power Armor is fairly easy to make, once you have the materials.
Power armours are not easy to make. If they were, US army would be using them by now, with their inflated budget and all. It is not just the Carapace. The servos are tricky, but doable. Equestrian power sources are more efficient, so let's say the armour can carry enough batteries to operate for weeks. The biggest problem is the processing matrix that responds in real time to movements of the user. It is more complex and easier to crash than what the pipbucks have.
> If you remember from the novel, quote, "Most [Steel Rangers] would be more interested in protecting your Pipbuck than protecting you."
I agree with them. Pipbucks are relics and ponies breed continuously anyway. Besides, Steel Rangers would be even more interested in Power Armours than pipbucks, so this doesn't prove what you think it does.
> It might not carry the same weight, since it's not canon, but in Project Horizons one researcher, who had been trying for years to reverse engineer Pipbucks, says that she only managed to repair one or two.
And even factions with orders of magnitude more resources, like the Steel Rangers and The Enclave and Master Red Eye didn't produce new Power Armours (or at least not in quantity), but were repairing and re-using the old ones. (We can make PAs at all in this mod, because it is challenging and fun, not because it makes sense for a 100 pony stable to reverse-engineer one of the top achievements of Equestrian industry in just a few years.)

That aside, in-crunch, you would be using up a perfectly good Power Armour matrix to make something with just some of it's functions and ultimately less valuable. I would just like that as a possibility to give to Unicorns in Combat Armours when I have reverse-engineered PA matrices, but don't have enough Plasteel for Scorpion Power Armours for all the military.

[Firehawk45]

The reason equestrian power armours are not produced in any quantity is the list of stuff you need for it. Lets brake it down:

The armour itself:
- Steel (easy)
- Servos (tricky, but doable)
- Injectors (scavengable, the stuff in them, not so much)
- Battle saddles with heavy weaponry (the lightest gun i remember from the novel was a saddle with douple machine guns, thats quite hard to get hold of)
- The whole technomagic crap in them (rebreather, processing matrix, EFS, SATS, communicators, etc. Needs to be engineered, and thats just not doable without the facilitys of old Equestria)

The enchantments of the Armour:
- Self repairing
- Healing (at least i think there was a healing spell in there, could be wrong)
- enhanced strength for the wearer
- propably some materialstrenghteningvodoopokus and other stuff someone infused into the armour

See the problem?

[Maklak]

- Injectors (scavengable, the stuff in them, not so much)
Dash, Med-X, Healing Potions and so on are all producible. The first two are pharmaceutical drugs and the HPs are a liquid that can "trap" a healing spell from a Unicorn.

- Battle saddles with heavy weaponry (the lightest gun i remember from the novel was a saddle with douple machine guns, thats quite hard to get hold of) 
Weapons are not that much of a problem with a good machine shop and Red eye made them by the truckload. Ammo (especially brass) is more tricky, but doable.

- The whole technomagic crap in them (rebreather, processing matrix, EFS, SATS, communicators, etc. Needs to be engineered, and thats just not doable without the facilitys of old Equestria)
Yes, that's the real problem. In this mod we just make a processing matrix that does all this from three gems, when a battery costs two. That's why I started this discussion.

- Healing (at least i think there was a healing spell in there, could be wrong)
I'm pretty sure Steel Hooves had just an injector for healing potions, but Project Horizons would put Healing Talismans in there. Well, there could have been different models (SH had an old one) and some Armours could have been upgraded with some MoP technology after the war.

- enhanced strength for the wearer
That's just the servos and real-time processing matrix at work. Like in Alien 2. No "enchancement" about it, except for working in-tune with the user. Even with that, the users have to be trained to "Let their armours do most of the work".

> See the problem?
My point exactly. Pipbucks just have processing matrices without tons of other stuff the PAs have. And batteries should be easier to make than processing matrices.

[Thirtyeight]

Any idea what could be cluttering up my salvage yard? I have a pile for finished goods, is there other things that salvage produces?

[Rydel]

Use 't' to inspect what's inside it

[Thirtyeight]

Thank you, that was extremely helpful.