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Have few types but with many possible functions for each.  The simpler option

38 (42.2%)

Have many different types that each takes a particular input, for long assembly lines

29 (32.2%)

Have many types, allow using the wrong ones, but using them correctly lets the items have quality levels

23 (25.6%)

Total Members Voted: 69

[IndigoFenix]

Okay, question: is there any method, using DFhack or whatever, of getting children to perform labors?  Gnomes have a 20 year childhood and while I don't want the children to actually work like adults, having them be good for something other than eating the food would be nice.  I'd like to think that gnomes learn some skills, like how to reset a trap or animal training, early on in life.  Any way of doing this?

[Meph]

Sure, you dont even need dfhack. The data/init/d_init.txt has this setting:

You can have your dwarves start/arrive without any labor types enabled here by setting this to NO.  You can also set it to SKILLS to make the labor list set by skill, or BY_UNIT_TYPE to have it done by overall unit type.

[SET_LABOR_LISTS:SKILLS]

This means if a woodcutter arrives as a migrant, he will automatically have woodcutting enabled. Kids would have the skill enabled as well, but since they never learned a skill, they wont arrive with any. But there are two ways around this:

1. Natural skills. My favourite. You could give gnomes 1 natural skill in engineering, mechanics, toolmaking, whatever you see fit. Children would automatically have this labor assigned when they arrive (just like every other migrant as well) and will do the jobs, like any adult. You still cant toggle their labors though, so they are somewhat independant. I think this is an interesting game feature. Kids that might do some jobs, if you want them to or not.

2. Dwarf Therapist. It already has an inbuild option to assign labors to children. Some people consider this cheating. It certainly needs manual input by the player, but allows more freedom of choice.

3. Why not both? The DT option is always given, even for dwarves, kobolds and orcs, and giving gnomes a few natural skills will make kids more usefull. If you think its unbalanced that they have this 1 free skill level, lower the skill learn rate of that skill by 5%. It evens it out.

And maybe you find some nice ideas in this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134856.0 Unrelated to the kids, but related to tech and electricity.

[IndigoFenix]

Oh, that's it?  Interesting...

I've been reading up a bit on gnome lore from various sources - I'm going to try and make them a kind of blend of different versions.  D&D's lore of gnomes being required to take up one skill before they come of age works very well.  I'm thinking of making multiple castes, kind of like kobolds and their signs, but without the increased learning rate - just a natural skill that lets them work in their craft as children.  They might also all have a natural skill in animal training/animal care, since the one other quality that gnomes seem to be associated with besides their love for mechanics and crafts is their bond with animals.  I'm considering AT_PEACE_WITH_WILDLIFE (maybe even talking to animals so gnomish adventurers can recruit wildlife...being so tiny, they've got to have SOME perks to make them worth playing as), but that might make things too easy.

[Meph]

Keep in mind that transformations dont add skills to civ members. If you transform a dude into caste:mechanics with 3 natural skills, he wont get those.

AT_PEACE_WITH_WILDLIFE sounds about right... Although I think that the elves would disagree with gnomish industry and metalworks. ^^

[IndigoFenix]

Well, gnomes are often thought of as the go-between for elves and dwarves in that sense.  Lovers of both nature and industry.

That list of ideas is pretty cool.  I wasn't even thinking of special projectile traps.  I did think of using the millstone as a dynamo, but do you want to change its name for all races?  Maybe make a dynamo tool that can be hooked up to a millstone...  And making the battery a container is much more efficient than my previous idea of using multiple tools and automated reactions.

On another note, I'm putting in steampunk clockborgs (I don't have a better name for them).  Gnome soldier loses a limb - strap him to a machine that replaces it with a metal clockwork prosthetic.  And while your're at it, get all his other limbs replaced, as well as clockwork eyes and metal teeth, why not.  A gnome with steel limbs is generally capably of killing a human in the arena, despite being only a fraction of their size.  The torso and head are still flesh-and-bone though, and they don't get any extra immunities, also the artificial limbs won't heal naturally so it's not actually much more useful than just giving them weapons and armor, but...metal arms and legs are still pretty cool.

I am currently drowning in clockwork animals.  There are just too many of them that I want to put in.  Trying to make a good mix of funny animals, cool animals, and creatures culturally associated with clockwork (like beetles or cuckoos) while trying to avoid redundancy is tricky business.  Hopefully I can manage to keep the count below 30 models...

[Meph]

Millstone renaming would be either for all races, or none. If you can just make a dynamo-tool that is used in a millstone reaction, I would appreciate it. If you got a better name for the millstone, let me know. I dont want to add dynamos to all civs, because its electricity. But if you got somethine nice, mechanical sounding for it, why not? I can easily write a custom millstone (or just use the quern), and use the vanilla millstone to add power-needing reactions.

I still would prefer a plugin for that, but if no one is writing one, we can do the millstone thing.

steampunk clockborgs => So... XCOM Mech Troopers, yeah? Why not leave their name as is, just call them gnome. But give their profession titles a (*) or something, a little mark, so that people can see easily who is enhanced and who isnt. The unit description can show it, and the professions. No need to come up with a fancy name for "a gnome with metal arms", if you dont want to.

[Meph]

I just saw something in the LFR raws that you might like:

Code: [Select]

[INORGANIC:DFHACK_ITEMSYNDROME_MATERIAL_FIELDBARRIER]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_VAPOR_TEMPLATE]
[SYNDROME]
[SYN_NAME:strength field barrier pack]
[SYN_CLASS:DFHACK_ITEM_SYNDROME]
[SYN_CLASS:DFHACK_ARMOR_ONLY]
[CE_MATERIAL_FORCE_MULTIPLIER:MAT_MULT:NONE:NONE:1:2:START:0]
This means that everyone who equips the item with the name "strength field barrier pack" takes only half damage from all attacks. Maybe that gives some new ideas.

[IndigoFenix]

I'm still getting a handle on itemsyndromes.  I want to make a whole bunch of clockwork armor and equipment that increases one stat or another (powerlift armor, rocket skates, cuckoo clock helmet...)  Is it based on the material or the item itself?

[Meph]

Can be either. The example shown affects the item, so it doesnt matter if you make it from brass, steel, wood or some magical uber-metal. It will always have the affect.

You can also tie effects to materials, but that uses a different syntax. I havent used it much myself. But it would allow things like: Play a werewolf race, pick up silver object, get burned. Or making normal weapons, which have no effects, from a better material, which adds an effect. So a breastplate made of ice would actually freeze water around you... things like that.

[IndigoFenix]

Wait, so let me get this straight.  You make an inorganic material with associated DFhack keywords, but you don't actually use it in-game, and DFhack searches the inorganic files for the associated keywords and applies the syndrome to items based on their common name (not their actual ID name)?  That's what it looks like, but it seems like a very weird way of doing it.

Also, do DFhack materials have to be inorganic?  I generally prefer to use fake creatures to store my vaporstone and special materials, since it prevents titans and slabs from being made of them.

[Meph]

It has to be inorganic. And yes. You make an inorganic, which you dont apply anywhere. It just happens to have the correct tags, and dfhack sees that, and applies the syndrome to all items with the NAME. Not ID, but name. Thats how its set up. => Itemsyndrome with Item Types.

The other way is to make an inorganic with the tags and make the item out of that inorganic. => Itemsyndrome with Materials.

And ProjectileExpansion, but thats something different again. ^^

[FrisianDude]

Maybe your gnomes can have leprechaun pets. But then, I can't stand leprechauns since one of them strangled a boozebelly kid in Gunduduruk.

[IndigoFenix]

Aw, great.  Does the syndrome for creature spawning ALSO use the NAME of the creature?  I assumed it didn't because the ID is also one of the SYN_CLASSes, but...

[Meph]

No, the spawning uses creature_id. Everything always uses id, except for itemsyndrome. ^^

[IndigoFenix]

Oh, that's good.  I'd hate to have to do all those materials and reactions again.

I think I'm going to copy/paste the dwarf building/reactions, at least the ones involving crafts (no religion, magic, guilds, tavern, etc, at least not yet).  Are there any that are likely to cause problems?
What are you were planning on doing with that artificer's workshop?  Are the reactions it uses complete?