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Yes. Text gets cut off too often.

No. I dont care/like the names as they are.

Dont you have anything better to do then making such tiny adjustements?

[Meph]

The multi-races would be rare, maybe 1-5 of those per fort. Probably... I havent written the system yet. They would get their race ability, yes, and might marry giving birth to dwarven children... but there is a small chance that a dwarf/dwarf couple might give birth to a kobold, or goblin, or human... There is no way for me to stop this... thats why it should be an optional setting. It's just as rare as the migrants. So 50 migrants => 1 foreigner. 50 born babies => 1 foreigner. Just call it adoption. ^^ "Give birth to adopted human child" lol.

[silentdeth]

"Give birth to adopted human child" lol.

And call him Carrot, and make 'em captain of the guard

[mavj96]

I think that would be very cool.

[Meph]

In the last update I standardized the names of workshops a bit, using Study and Laboratory. Maybe I can take it a bit further:



EDIT: I had a long boat ride yesterday night, so this is the result. Now I am on a beach on a small island in Thailand, having breakfast and waiting for the dive resorts to open. Yeah.  

Anyway, who wants 1 new study, 2 new laboratories, 5 supernatural buildings and 4 new siegeweapons? Good idea, bad idea? Too much, good design, bad design?

Thaumaturg: Items that give syndromes/boosts/interactions when worn, to normal dwarves. no mages required. I am thinking of "gauntlets of ogre strength" or "boots of speed" and "ring of invisibility" and "amulet of magic resistance".

Biologists Lab: You take rare drops from sentient creatures to learn about them. I would use rare castes with itemcorpse for this. So you kill 50 goblins, get 2 of these items. Biologist studies them, gives each dwarf a boost/interaction that damages goblins. Sort of race-specific fortress-wide leveling up. Similar to dwarves learn about the domestication of animals, they should learn more and more about the weakness of their enemies.

Herbalists Lab: Uses special plants (drow plants, elf plants, cavern plants, good/evil plants) to make special powders for ammos or traps, make drinks with reagents, maybe make items directly from plants.

Vampire/Werebeast/Megabeast/Demon/Necromancer: Should be self-explanatory. Get one of the mentioned rare creatures, gain access to the workshop that allows making more or controling them a bit.

Siege Engines: I explained it a bit on the screenshot. Dwarf transforms into immobile dwarf standing on it, gets interaction to shoot at enemies.


And all the remaining buildings (alchemist, chemist, researcher and so forth) would get some more reactions.

[sayke]

hey meph! =) first: awesome work. i'm installing 3e now, and trying to get a sense of all the changes. none of it seems too complicated but there's really a lot here...!

with respect to the visual standardization of workshops, though - i'm not sure what the point is! they work now and are beautiful, and while the new ones should surely be added, and the new ones are beautiful, i'm not sure what the point of having them all 5x3 is. i like the fact that things are different sizes and shapes. it makes for an interesting-looking fortress, and besides, the more advanced/awesome buildings should be bigger, right? =)

maybe just make the supernatural ones bigger! i mean, the reward building you get from conquering hell should be badass!!

just my 2c =D

[silentdeth]

Biologists Lab: You take rare drops from sentient creatures to learn about them. I would use rare castes with itemcorpse for this. So you kill 50 goblins, get 2 of these items.

As someone who just melted down about 2500 rusty crudcaps, I would say you need to make these drops have some other use to prevent clogging up the map with items. Just making them out of rusty iron/steel would do, then they could be melted down.
 

Herbalists Lab: Uses special plants (drow plants, elf plants, cavern plants, good/evil plants) to make special powders for ammos or traps, make drinks with reagents, maybe make items directly from plants.

Like the idea a lot, but perhaps should be called Botanists Lab instead of herbalist. 

Siege Engines: I explained it a bit on the screenshot. Dwarf transforms into immobile dwarf standing on it, gets interaction to shoot at enemies.

I have a few concerns about this. First off, maybe not use dwarfs, I have this image in my head of "Urist McSiegeEngine transforms into a dwarf" right after about 100 goblins show up. I would make them either toolkits, or existing turrets, to make them a higher tech level. Another concern is range, even if they can shoot clear across the map they will not unless you do something with dfhack or such to tell them to. At the same time you don't want them be constantly checking 100 tiles around them for bad guys as that would kill FPS. You would need something like the DFhack siege plugin to say watch this area for bad guys.
  If you made them dwarfs and they were in the military that might work if you gave them a specific kill order, as that seems to ignore range. You may still run into problems if the attack is native to the creature, that may not ignore range like a dwarf wielding a weapon would. I also doubt an interaction would work right either. If you made it line of sight but gave it a long range, they probably would still only shoot at things 15-20 tiles away, the normal range of a ranged squad. If you removed line of sight, even if that increased it's range, it would make it shoot through walls, and probably hurt FPS a lot.
  Finally, pets. There is already the issue with the golem's AoE spamming the combat log with it hitting everyone's pet. You would need to make sure the things like the fire webs hurt unfriendly animals, but not your own pets.

It is something that is going to be difficult to pull of and have it work well enough to be useful.

Chemist: Remove rust from items

You mean remove rust from the actual item right? Not from bars? Cause removing rust from items could be useful.

Also for the next update, I really think you should spend some time cleaning up the raws. There are still reactions for things like the bifrost forge showing up in the manager work orders. 

[Meph]

Silentdeth: The manager lists all permitted reactions? Wow, never noticed that... I usually toggle the buildings when people use the buttons in the UI, but I guess I should expand it to the reactions then as well.

Biologist Boost: I havent decided on the system yet... I cant target corpses of specific creatures, which would be the best solution by far, so I have to use itemcorpses, like I do on megabeasts. And then make 3 or 5 levels of boost per race. For example all dwarves would gain an invisible interaction that can only target goblins and adds a material weakness for all materials, 2:1. This means they take double damage from any material. Or a specific warlock spell (decay, anyone?) is identified and your dwarves learn to avoid it. I can do all kinds of things. But maybe thats something for the Thaumaturg.

After reading up on it, Botanist makes more sense then Herbalist. It was just that Herbalism is in the game already, so the skill name fit perfectly.

The siege engines you did not quite understand. I dont want to build turret-like units from toolkits, the workshops are the siege engines. I just use dwarves as an artificial way of manning them. And yes, they can transform back into a dwarf while seeing a siege, why not? Normal siege operators run away as well. I think it can be done quite easily. Gas/Tar/Pitch would start always, contaminating an area, and the Arbalest/Trebuchet would only fire on target. The gas/tar would of course hurt everyone in range, makes no sense to have dwarves immune against poisonous gas or flaming tar. I dont think it will be hard to make, should be fine.

@Sayke: I only "standardized" the archeologists size, from 5x5 to 5x3. Because it was the only study that wasnt. And I changed the laboritory design to be accessable from north and south, instead of just south... I know people want such a change, too many buildings are south-only.

The Supernatural stuff is more for fun then anything else... started as a design exercise, dont know if I really want/can write all these.  I guess I can make them 5x5 or 7x7...

EDIT: About the point of standardization: You know the mod. You know the buildings... but most people dont, and there are 100+ custom buildings. Hard to remember them all. But if all Studies look similar, and all Laboratories look similar, with color-coded differences, then you can more easily identify them and say: Yep, thats the something Lab. And yep, thats my Study-Area. I mean the shrine/altar/temple have the same design, the libraries do, the forges kind-a do... why not here as well? I would put them from the ===MISC=== sections into their own ones, STUDY and LABORATORY.

[sayke]

@meph - fair enough man! upon overnight reflection i agree that that level of standardization makes sense for new people who don't know the workshops. please do make the supernatural buildings big and ominous, though - some really shady stuff goes on in them, so they should look the part!! =D

cheers -

[Meph]

Just for you. 

[Gamerlord]

Please Meph, for the sake of all that is good in this world, make them square.

[Meph]

Why?

[Gamerlord]

Because it's all the weird-ass elongated buildings that make me have to modify my normal symmetrical/square fortress layout! And for someone with borderline OCD like me, it is torture!

[Meph]

So... you are saying I should keep them non-square?

[Gamerlord]

 

[Meph]

Well, the evil stuff is the leading point of the poll, so I guess people want it, square or not-square.

I have also read up a bit on chemistry, and I must say that it will get quite difficult to port a system based on RL into DF, which can be easily understood and serves an ingame purpose.

For example to make Ultramarine dye, you need: Kaolinite, Sulfuric Acid, Sulfur, Charcoal, Ammonia, Carbonic Acid, Lye... that is mixed in the chemist. Then pressed into cakes, in the screw press. Then dried in a kiln. Then grinded into dye-powder in the quern/millstone. So yeah... I think people just grind 1 plump-helmet instead. Or buy dye(10) from any caravan.

Or making industrial cyanide. You need a platinum-coated catalyst, Oxygen, Ammonia, Methan... and with that you can smelt ore without fuel. Again I'd say that people would rather use fuel/magma.

There area few things I find interesting, especially early chemistry, Salts, Oils and Spirits, used for acids, poisons and more ways for things to go boom!, but I might have to add a few more inorganic mats. Higher drop-rates for Realgar, Cinnabar and Rocksalt, replacing Kimberlite with Apatite, Opriment or Vanadenite... or mineable guano deposits, bat-guano comes to mind.

I have much more here, but I try to keep it understandable. Its also a but hard because some things have medieval names, while others only have modern names. Oil of Vitriol is Sulfuric Acid, or Aqua Vitae is Ethanol... I probably stick to the old names, but I might have to invent a few for the newer stuff, like
Methan or Thermite.