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[Suds Zimmerman]

Well, I've nearly got everything ready for the new version, but I've noticed something upsetting: because they have the [IMMOBILE] tag, gunners will not use their interaction attacks. The interactions are available when taking control, but when left on their own they will prefer to just sit dumbly waiting around to die. I've only checked in arena mode, so if that's an arena-specific bug I'd appreciate if someone were to let me know. Likewise, if there's another way to make a creature immobile while still allowing it to attack, that would be very helpful as well. (I seem to recall that setting a creature's HOMEOTHERM to some absurdly high number prevented it from moving - does that still work?)

[Jdorf]

My gunners were working fine last time I tried them (in fortress mode) - I'm assuming their interaction attack is firing a whole shitton of bullets?

[Suds Zimmerman]

Did you port the whole mod to DF 40.12 by yourself? Because it's only version 40 that broke them. And yes, that is indeed what it does.

[chalicier]

Regarding the Ratskin weapon question. I do agree that it seems weird giving them blackpowder. Perhaps it might be an idea to give them a unique reaction resulting in aqua fortis and letting them make nitrocellulose, but then forcing them to mix it with some fungal nitrate weirdness and lots of alcohol to make "EC Powder", the primary component in old shotguns and grenades?

EC Powder has the additional benefit of not really needing primer - it's a bit unstable compared to cordite and easily spark-triggered. We could claim the fungus used makes it red, thus leaving us with "redpowder" weapons.

[Suds Zimmerman]

Hey, chalicier, nice to see you still kicking about.

Why would it be odd to give ratskins black powder? It's relatively easy to produce with little industrial infrastructure via wood kilns and nitre beds, and single-shot black powder weapons would serve a nomadic hunter-gatherer society pretty well in most cases (though with the fauna of the Underhive being as they are, that might be up for debate.)

[Splint]

It's also noted blackpowder weapons are fairly common on very low-tech worlds and even on more advanced ones working muzzleloaders are sometimes kept as ceremonial items (or are actually dressed up lasguns )

Could always make muskets for a playable ratskin race more powerful so they can feasibly take on the wildlife they subsist on when they can't procure ammo for those city-folk autorifles and handguns.

[Jdorf]

Did you port the whole mod to DF 40.12 by yourself? Because it's only version 40 that broke them.

I...uh...no. Carry on.

Regarding the blackpowder/guns thing, I'd say their having gunpowder seems pretty reasonable - after all, it could be made up of any number of things you find in the Underhive, they just can't mass-produce standard rounds. Messed around with the guns after I realised how rarely Ratskin traders even bring gunpowder to make musket cartridges with, so there's now a 'scattergun' that fires shotshells but with less effectiveness, in an effort to suggest the equivalent of wedging shells in a tube and smacking them with a hammer (don't try this at home etc); it seems to be a bit less powerful, but it's still pretty limb-severy. If I could work out a way to make it backfire occasionally as payback, that'd be golden, but it seems like far, far too much work.

Also, christ, if you update it to DF2014 I'll probably get back into that as well and the thesis will get even less love; for god's (or rather my) sake man don't rush things!

[chalicier]

Hey, chalicier, nice to see you still kicking about.

Hi Suds DF2014 kinda rekindled my interest in all things DF.

Why would it be odd to give ratskins black powder? It's relatively easy to produce with little industrial infrastructure via wood kilns and nitre beds, and single-shot black powder weapons would serve a nomadic hunter-gatherer society pretty well in most cases (though with the fauna of the Underhive being as they are, that might be up for debate.)

Mainly because natural clean-burning wood is supposed to be scarce-to-unknown in the Underhive. But ultimately you're right; there are plentiful supplies of nitrates and sulphur in the Underhive. I dunno what my objection is, especially given Ratskins with muskets are canon anyway. Ignore me.

[Jdorf]

This isn't really related to anything, but I had a thought - obviously the ratskins are standing in for the elves (or the other way round), but their not taking wood products doesn't really make any sense, since fluffwise it's archeotech they get pissy about people exploiting. Maybe treecap diplomacy or the ethics settings in general are sort of hard-wired and would be a hassle to change, but it seems like there must be a way to fiddle with what goods they'll accept. Dunno if that's something you want to consider having a look at if/when the mod's ported to DF2014 or what, but it's not exactly a big thing. For the current version, if anyone can let me know whether messing around with ethics (rather than just changing the status of the given ethics) is possible, I'll happily have a nosey myself.

[Suds Zimmerman]

You just need to change [ETHIC:KILL_PLANT:MISGUIDED] to [ETHIC:KILL_PLANT:ACCEPTABLE], I think. Tree cap diplomacy can be gotten rid of too, if you want that. Just delete the tag. Since there's no archaeotech in the game, though, I wanted to keep something around to match their unflinching moralism. Shame there's no [IMPLIES_TREE_KILL], or else I could throw it on scavenged items. Then again, I could make them opposed to killing animals, remove [IMPLIES_ANIMAL_KILL] from all the animal products and slap it on scavenged goods, though I don't know how that will affect them in worldgen and fortress mode. Then again, since I have a different set of raws for each civ depending on whether they're playable or not, it could still be done with few problems.

In any case, there won't be a DF2014 version until I figure out the problem with immobile creatures not attacking, or Toady does.

[Jdorf]

Aye, I know you can change their stance on an ethic. I've been having some fun with that; in a different game, couldn't work out why my sheriff was doing literally nothing about tantruming dorfs hivers handing out beatdowns. Turns out either the Orlocks default to, or I'd decided to change them to, thinking assault was acceptable - the settlers still apparently saw it as a crime to be reported, but the sheriff evidently gave no shits ("what's a few lower eye teeth between friends?"). I was wondering if there was any way to create new ethics - or, as you mentioned, kind of spoof the civ so that they think fuel rods are wood etc. Sounds like it, so I'll probably have a fiddle; I'll post on here if anything particularly interesting/ridiculous results.

And tbh, speaking for myself I'm not that fussed about an update to v40 (although I'm sure there's all sorts of improvements and/or game-breaking !!!FUN!!!); DF is plenty deep enough to start with and this mod adds in a heap more, and on top of that there's plenty of tweaks/personal preferences to make to that. So it's not like anybody's hangin for content (it's kind of fucking up my work schedule, in fact, but I figure everybody's allowed the odd week of deep, deep nerding out).

[Jdorf]

Another "halp how do I raw" question: I've been trying to make a squat faction, as you do, and the closest tileset would be the van saars. Being lazy, I tried just switching out the "graphics_", "TITLE_PAGE" and "CREATURE_GRAPHICS" tags (so where it said VANSAAR it says SQUAT and so forth, matching pluralisation), but when I gave the arena a whirl all the units were showing as blue corpses. They definitely weren't actually dead though; and what's really weird is that swapping tags seems to work for at least some other tilesets - I can make the squats look like Goliaths or Delaques just fine, although haven't tried the others yet - so I can't for the life of me work out what's causing the problem with the Van Saars.

Any ideas? Something incredibly obvious that I've missed?

[Suds Zimmerman]

If I had to guess, I'd wager that your new file is referring to a non-existing SQUATS.png.

[Jdorf]

It's not though, or at least shouldn't be; I left it pointing at vansaar (or goliath, etc). I've even had both versions up next to each other looking for relevant differences, and fucked if I can find any. Very very odd. Oh well, no worries.

Edit: just copied the vansaars.png and renamed it squats.png, then changed all the VANSAARS to SQUATS and that works. Took an embarassingly long time to think of that.

[Liber celi]

I'm back after a long time and have already sacrificed a full day of my life to this excellent mod. And it was worth it.

It seems this

I'm having a lot of trouble finding key bindings for every new workshop. If someone could help, I'd appreciate it

is still a problem in v1.6.1. I believe I can be of use there... I hope I didn't skim over any solution already posted, but Dwarf Fortress taught me redundant work is better than no work!

There are two problems here: Workshops without key bindings, and, more annoying, multiple workshops trying to occupy the same key. Since DF isn't exactly a trumpet, only the first workshop can be built with that key.

Workshops	Keys
Quern/Water filling area	q
Lho Stick Manufactory/Armour Shrine	D
Reclaimator/Salvager	O
Clothier's/Plasma Lathe	k
Fishery/Chem Mister	h
Craftman's/Scribal Desk	r
Breaker Station / Weapon Display Rack	Z
Weight Set/Water Still	W

Workshops	Keys
Craftman's Forge	-
Emplaced Heavy Stubber	-
Emplaced Flamethrower	-
Drafting Desk	-
Reading Desk	-
Book Shelf	-
Book Binder Shop	-
Decorative Skull	-

Swiftly smashing around on my keyboard produced the following list of unused shortcuts:

Q
T
H
J
x

Now, the most straightforward way to deal with this is to semi-randomly assign some workshops to those letters. WFA gets the Q instead q,  Reclaimator (more like reclamator am I right) gets the T because there is at least one 't' in its name, Breaker station gets the x so the art-deco can keep XYZ. BookBShop and the Lho rollery get J and H so the classic 3x3 workshops are all dealt with. Monsieur Chem, Scrapal Desk and the muscle shack get the short end of the (presumably Lho) stick. Also the Plasma Lathe, I forgot about that one.

Workshop	Keys
Water filling area	Q
Lho Stick Manufactory	H
Reclamaitor Shop	T
Salvager Workshop	O
Book Binder Shop	J
Breaker Station	x
Chem Mister	nope
Craftman's Forge	nope
Plasma Lathe	nope
Emplaced Heavy Stubber	nope
Emplaced Flamethrower	nope
Scribal Desk	nope
Drafting Desk	nope
Reading Desk	nope
Book Shelf	nope
Decorative Skull	nope
Weight Set	nope

We can do better though.
Playing around a bit though I found you can set Alt+key combinations for workshops in the raws by using

Code: [Select]

[BUILD_KEY:CUSTOM_ALT_R]for example. This opens new possibilites. A "quick" "fix" could look like this:

Workshop	Key
Water filling area	Q
Lho Stick Manufactory	H
Reclaimator Shop	T
Salvager Workshop	O
Book Binder Shop	J
Breaker Station	x
Chem Mister -	Alt + c
Craftman's Forge	Alt + r
Plasma Lathe	Alt + k
Emplaced Heavy Stubber	Alt + s
Emplaced Flamethrower	Alt + f
Scribal Desk	Alt + x
Drafting Desk	Alt + y
Reading Desk	Alt + z
Book Shelf	Alt + b
Decorative Skull	Alt + t
Weight Set	Alt + w

Of course we could remap all the shortcuts: Say, basic workshops and spammables on lowercase, rarer workshops and decorations on shift, advanced tech and misc on alt. Problem 1: Non-editable workshops occupy all lowercase letters except for a,g,i,v and x. I'm sure there is DF Hack trickery that can help there, but that's beyond my ken. Problem 2: By now everybody that matters is used to the old shortcuts.
What I'm trying to say is: I could try to figure out a more elegant solution, but only if there's demand for it.
Also, if you want me to translate this into the building_underhive.txt I'd be happy to oblige. Enthusiastic even. Overjoyed. Frenzied. Or at least basically OK with it.