Version: V4J (unofficial patch though, many/most bugs exist in both official and unofficial)
Tileset: Masterwork Obsidian
Modifications: None. Raws are untouched.
Below is a very messy list of issues, balance concerns, and thoughts that I've compiled over my recent masterwork 'binge'. I was hoping the community could pitch in their own experiences with issues/bugs, and their opinions on suggestions and balance issues!
Meph himself has requested this be posted, so lets give him some input on ideas and assistance crushing these bugs! (god I feel so cheerleader saying that >.>)
~*~ World Generation ~*~
~ Malachite is ABSURDLY common. I can see prospect all showing 142,000 malachite while the second common metal is maybe 8,000 in a 140+ depth embark. Copper should be fairly common, but come on!
~ Re-balance evil biome animals. Namely, Nightmares (spawn in packs of 4-7, shoot fire, fly, and are horrifyingly deadly), Giant Gargoyles (can wipe iron-clad army of 5 dwarves, and spawn 5-8x more often then non-giant gargoyles), Nightwings are similar to gargoyles with stone skin and similar just easier versions, but extremely common (every 2nd embark has them generally).
Giant Gargoyles are the most 'unbalanced' of the list, partly due to their insane deadliness, but also that giant versions generally are meant to be rarer than their smaller counterparts, which is the opposite for these buggers.
Nightmares are simply... insane. Not only are they quite large and fly, super aggressive, but also spit f'ing FIRE. If you've played DF for more then a week, you know the horrors of fire, grass, and dwarves. Add in they come in packs of 3-6 you're basically going to lose a lot of dwarves if caught outside with them.
Nightwings are ALMOST balanced, the issue simply being how common they are and how deadly they are to newly embarked and young forts. Flying, stone skinned, aggressive mobs are not fun to deal with especially with the issue of flying mobs 'sitting' on a units head mauling them, while they can't fight back in melee range making them very deadly if they do this.
All three of them are too common for their danger levels.
~
I would also note, the general population in Evil biomes is... insanity. One biome is TERRIFYING yet looks happy, has hedgehogs and coyotes as the biggest threat. Embark into a 'sinister' biome, you got undeath, mushroom grass, nightmares, gargoyles, stranglers, every damn evil you can imagine ripping you limb from limb. this isn't counting the general insanity of animal spawning in general, like lions on a freakin' Glacier...
~ Re-balance special 'clouds and rains'. They are INCREDIBLY rare. Some examples...
'ice Clouds' in frigid biomes. Unique in that they destroy clothing, wood, and similar products adding a MAJOR challenge if you encounter one. I've embarked on 132 counted embarks on glaciers, and seen ONE ice cloud.
Ice 'hail', similar to the cloud but as a rain. Never witnessed it once in 132 recorded embarks, and probably 100+ prior to that count.
'Beer rain' and similar positive rains I've witnessed once in a good 30 embarks on various good biomes from good glaciers, to Joyous Wilds Tropical oceans, Forests, and anything in between.
Edit: embarking in a good biome (Joyous Wilds Temperate Swamp), I've noticed custom weather is broken. I see 'dusting to piles' of Honey and Milk on the ground, but it never rains nor shows a cloud of it it simply acts as an invisible, effect-less rain and gives dwarves bad thoughts, while they do NOT gain the benefit of it (presumably not needing to drink and/or eat for a time).
'Sand Storm' clouds I don't know if are still even in, but used to cause sheer chaos if it hit, I think it blinded people and caused some form of nasty debuff like wearing down clothing on dwarves. I've embarked on EASILY 300+ 'desert' embarks since I first encountered a sandstorm cloud havent' seen one since that one time.
I'd argue creation of various new clouds/rains would be a viable idea as well not just for evil biomes, but normal biomes on rare occasion. I'd actually be quite happy to write the raws for it myself, if I was given a general bit of guideline how to do so for Masterwork (Keeping them sensible is key of course).
We especially want feedback on cloud and rains in both good, and evil biomes! Have you seen any of the fore mentioned 'special' rains/clouds? If so, how often do you see them occur? How many embarks do you see 'special' weather that isn't vanilla related? Give us input! Meph commands it!
~*~ Siege Races ~*~
~ Minotaur and Jotun Thieves. These races need to have their 'building destroyer' tags removed since we can't fix the building destroyer function. If you set such invaders say, to skill 7 (no way to choose each race's skills), a Minotaur or Jotun thief is basically invisible to you bar a really luck discovery. Instead of stealing items, they will go into your base and topple EVERY building they can, and can quite literally topple your entire fort while you desperately try to guess where it is in your base, and move some form of observer nearby to try and catch it. Assuming its' a Jotun, you're likely going to have lots of !FUN! When you discover it, and it starts throwing fireballs everywhere... when discovered, they also will NOT flee, but go after more buildings.
The thieves of these two races need to be disabled, or the building destroyer tag removed from them as this is simply absurd when you set them to a moderate skill level.
~ Find a way to disable underground 'sieges' unless the player has actually discovered the caverns. I've had games where I had 2-3 underground sieges going on in caverns I didn't even see, taking my fps from 250+ to under 100 from the hundreds of foes below (often killing off some cave animals and duking it out with tribes and/or corpses). Add in undead biomes, and you get a whole lot of FUN lag. I've simply had them disabled due to this FPS drop, as I don't really desire to rush into the caverns and be forced to fight on 2-4 fronts simply to prevent FPS collapse. I know it may not be feasible to do what I suggest of course, but it's a shame I have to remove a fun threat due to FPS drag.
~ Armor is worthless on siegers. I've wiped out entire sieges of skill 15 invaders with simple glass weapon traps which are an infinite and extremely cheap item to mass produce on practically any map with a sand layer. Does the glass penetrate their armor? Nope. Bounces right off as you'd expect. That is, until it hits their arms, hands, feet, lower legs, and similar areas cutting them clean off without effort and bleeding them to death practically instantly. Similar issues can be applied to arrows, animals grabbing legs and ripping them off, amongst various other incidents.
What do you think we can do to fix this without adding armor to these body parts? (Meph is dead against that)? Saying 'don't use that system/item then' or 'deal with it' isn't productive input. Balancing out flaws like this is key to make a great mod/game.
One vague idea (not sure of impact on balance in world gen) would be to make their exposed limbs (hands, forearms, feet, shins, and such spots) covered in a 'rock skin' layer. This would add some limited protection, without adding more 'clutter' to units. Wood and Bone Arrows won't be slicing off limbs easily, nor should glass trap parts (at least green glass) or similar cheapness.
~*~ Balance and Other ~*~
~ Furniture shop, add a way to make Gem furniture sets, and maybe Glass too! Extra points if we can make it so each furniture 'set' is generated strictly as one gem type (So if a furniture set needs 10 gems, the first gem is topaz - the entire set will be topaz for coloration sake).
~ Improve the fishpond fail rates on Rods and Nets. I would never bother with fishing nets/rods when a bucket is simple a block in cost. Fishing farms also feel horrendously inferior (for food) compared to Herbalism, Farming, Animal Butchering, Hunting, natural Fishing (though not much better), etc.
I would go as far to suggest a possible overhaul of the fishing farm, allowing various fish types to be caught specifically, and each returning not per say food but various useful materials an alternative function for some things (such as Shells, Flux, Bones, etc etc, for more alternatives and safer means in undead biomes to acquire items that would often be fatal to work towards). Plenty of possibilities for unique fun, like rare chances to spawn a Carp Monster on the fisher to ensure it's not risk free!
~ Uncertain if possible, but perhaps add 'exclusive unique' items from Expeditions? Example, raiding gnomes to acquire new turret-types (not craftable turrets, simply those specific turrets) or similar items? Expeditions seem over-all rather useless especially for a mature fortress needed to produce items for said expeditions.
~ Perhaps add all the 'armorable' pets from the armory, to the pet shop for a 'balanced' price? Frustrating if I want a legion of unicorns for fun, but the elves decided to not embark on a good forest depriving me of that hilarity of steel-cladded gore-happy unicorns!
~ Add a function into the War Kennel, to bolster Observer skill! Why was this not done already?
~ Change the Brick Oven (Magma) off the hotkey of V its non-magma version uses the same hotkey.
~ Allow Collosus Elephants (and many, many more) to be armored! They're only 10x larger than Giant Elephants, what could go wrong? (Like me accidentally letting two get thralled in my fort before I wrote this, promptly eradicating a 25 man army and legion of defenses as if it didn't exist... ever try to bi-sect a 10 story tall animal? Yeah. Doesn't end well.)
Do you have an animal you wish you could armor in steel plating to unleash hilarious and horrifying despair on your enemies? If so, please post and tell us!
~*~ Bugs and Errors ~*~
~ Centaurs are... very broken. You can cut their entire torso off and they will still live quite happily, even continuing to fight. Now if I'm correct, having your torso sliced off=no human body on a Centaur, meaning it should die due to no brain. It doesn't. I have a torso less centaur harassing my fort at current... rather... amusing to imagine, but still a bug.
~ Research has an odd glitch that causes research, especially in magic academy buildings, to fail MUCH more often than it should. I've had events where I had to try and acquire an air magic building over FIFTEEN times for one success. No Burrows issues, no hauled off, the research simply failed. It says 20% failure, but fifteen times? Often, I see it take 4-8 times to succeed on any building related to magic too.
~ I've witnessed a bug I cannot pin down and is fairly rare (about 1:10 embarks), with no real pattern to cause. Basically, my dwarves will take upwards of 10x longer to drink or eat. They'll grab a barrel, show the thirsty icon flashing but instead of finishing in 4-5 seconds (at 250 fps), it take up to a MINUTE for them to finish. They get unhappy thoughts from not drinking, but eventually do drink (and there is booze available, talking 1500+ booze for 7 dwarves).
Even if you abandon and reclaim the fort the event remains. No specific type of boozes cause the issue. No specific biome causes the issue. Not world specific. All seen with the original seven, and all migrants have the same 'event'. I've explored the DF bug tracker, and found no reference of note to this specific issue.
This issue above has been in Masterwork since version 3.0 at the minimum.
It MAY be related to the Biome as I noted events where it continued to be a bug even in fresh, new forts in the same Biome. Further testing is required.
~ The Speaker's podium effects to boost stats SEEMS to not work. I've ran say, one that grants +memory and similar, and noted the rates on therapist. Ran this effect 5-6 times back to back where all my dwarves idle (and see combat logs of them gaining memory, etc). Therapist shows NO gains at all. I tried this this with other reactions, NO gains on all of them.
~ The Archeologist study excavate stone (5) produces relics, chests, and similar items to be identified. I've noted in the past I had an issue where the found relics and items were NOT 'identifiable' by the study, yet in other maps, they produced identifiable items. I've not found a correlation to why but I can confirm this 'bug' still exists, my current embark such items found via the excavate stones are NOT identifiable (stocks show 50+ of them available, and I see them nearby, not in bins, no barrows, etc). They WILL identify map-generated chests, fossils etc, however. I'm trying to pinpoint anything that would cause this. Input from others on this would be useful!
~ I've noticed in this recent version, my ox/cows who haul my beginning cart slowly 'go nuts' and become opposed to life (diseases and such are off). Every single time, 1 by 1 over a season they go 'nuts' and my other defenses put them down. This ONLY occurs with the starting animals hauling the wagon no other animals do it. Seen this across 10+ embarks now. Seems related to the Evil Biomes (no matter the weather/cloud type, only my starting wagon animals go nuts).
~ Cave Fishing is entirely, 110% broken. Meph claimed to have fixed it but I've tested it on 30+ embarks in all 3 caves that had water, and have gotten 'there's nothing to catch in X area' EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I've even used region-Pops (dfhack) to boost cave fish and such population to millions, with no results after years of testing. Every time I see cave-fish-population, it's in the tens to hundreds and likely the cause of the issue. Surface fish seem fine if you can find them.
Please give ANY input/experiences with any of the bugs above, how you caused them, what biome you were in, or any factors that could have influenced/caused them to help Meph pin them down!And that's that. Meph is one man, we're a legion of Urists. We can experience and test bugs, balance, and matters and give him valuable insight as a community - hence why I have made this thread.
Yes, it's messy. yes, it's opinion filled. Yes, it's a rough draft of notes I scribbled down as i played without any real intention to post it here... but here it is.
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Topic: A list of Bugs, Balances, and Issues - Community Input Requested! (Read 3762 times)