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[imperator]

As you flesh out adventure mode and make it even more alive (which seems to be a focus lately), do you think it will be possible for players to become lord, lady, king, emperor where they will lead armies, engage in political simulation/intrigue, hold court and make decisions for the realm and its inhabitants?

[vjmdhzgr]

As you flesh out adventure mode and make it even more alive (which seems to be a focus lately), do you think it will be possible for players to become lord, lady, king, emperor where they will lead armies, engage in political simulation/intrigue, hold court and make decisions for the realm and its inhabitants?

I know Toady wants to do that, but it's very far away from the plan of what to do next, which was to improve artifacts, then make embark scenarios along with being able to manage settlements of dwarves surrounding your fortress, but aren't directly part of it. Now Toady might just continue along the path of adventurer stuff, but that would be quite a large diversion from the plan so I somewhat doubt it will be up next. Though considering the stuff with how you're going to be able to manage sites outside of your own in fortress mode, that might extend to adventurer mode and improve your nobility positions such that you can be lord of multiple towns and actually have that mean something, as it's a somewhat related issue there.

[WordsandChaos]

Will armour and weapons be able to be repaired infinitely or could there be a diminishing effect? Could we, in the future, see 'status' effects, like rust on metal? Like if you leave a sword or a helmet in a pond, it rusts.
Could we eventually see books burn to ash? As much as the thought makes me uncomfortable, I'm imagining a scenario where a great store of information is lost from the world when a fortress library is destroyed by a dragon/forgotten beast/angry dwarf with a torch.

Sorry for the bombarding of questions - one tends to lead to another.

Edit post release, part of my question was answered.

Adamantine is ridiculously strong and exactly as tough. It is impossible to bend. It may actually behave identically to the current version with all that taken into consideration.

I'd like to point out that not bending, in something like a sword, is not a good thing. Not matter how tough something is, it breaks. Especially if it doesn't bend.  From a gameplay 'balance' perspective - even the 'endgame' stuff should have weaknesses. An immortal hero is not a hero - it's just boring.

[therahedwig]

Surely, that would make Adamantine more like Ultima's "Glass Sword": Super strong, but single use, effectively.

Hm... I wonder if the myth arc will mean some of the hardcoded myth stuff, like adamantine will dissapear...

Will it be possible for modders to introduce some 'hardcoded' elements into mythgen? Like, for example, a God of War named Mars, or a God of Music named Eru Iluvatar? How much do you think it'll be possible to shape mythgen over time?

[WordsandChaos]

Surely, that would make Adamantine more like Ultima's "Glass Sword": Super strong, but single use, effectively.

Hm... I wonder if the myth arc will mean some of the hardcoded myth stuff, like adamantine will dissapear...

Will it be possible for modders to introduce some 'hardcoded' elements into mythgen? Like, for example, a God of War named Mars, or a God of Music named Eru Iluvatar? How much do you think it'll be possible to shape mythgen over time?

Adamantine: Not single use. Far more hard wearing and effective, but not without eradicating risk. Nothing should be utterly impervious is what I'm getting at. 
God names: Initially, wouldn't the names just depend on the language files? I'd assume you could just mod those in. A bit hit and miss as to what you get.

[thvaz]

Surely, that would make Adamantine more like Ultima's "Glass Sword": Super strong, but single use, effectively.

Hm... I wonder if the myth arc will mean some of the hardcoded myth stuff, like adamantine will dissapear...

Will it be possible for modders to introduce some 'hardcoded' elements into mythgen? Like, for example, a God of War named Mars, or a God of Music named Eru Iluvatar? How much do you think it'll be possible to shape mythgen over time?

Adamantine: Not single use. Far more hard wearing and effective, but not without eradicating risk. Nothing should be utterly impervious is what I'm getting at. 
God names: Initially, wouldn't the names just depend on the language files? I'd assume you could just mod those in. A bit hit and miss as to what you get. You theoretically

DF's combat is so complex that there usually more than one way to circumvent an obstacle. Adamantine armor is already vulnerable to adamantine weapons, concussion damage is modeled in the game, and you can always take off the armor from a enemy. Toady just needs to taught the AI to make effective use of them all.

[vjmdhzgr]

Adamantine is ridiculously strong and exactly as tough. It is impossible to bend. It may actually behave identically to the current version with all that taken into consideration.

I'd like to point out that not bending, in something like a sword, is not a good thing. Not matter how tough something is, it breaks. Especially if it doesn't bend.  From a gameplay 'balance' perspective - even the 'endgame' stuff should have weaknesses. An immortal hero is not a hero - it's just boring.

Sure, everything breaks even if it doesn't bend, but the thing is, that's for real life. Adamantine is not a real life metal. Adamantine would break the laws of physics in so many ways if it existed in real life. It's material stats are like cheating and just putting the maximum amount for everything. It's 4 times better than steel in steel's best statistics. For most it's over 10 times better. If the new system takes into account the material of the armor, at all, I'm pretty sure adamantine's going to be undamageable.

This is not to say that it makes all dwarves wearing adamantine armor immortal heroes. They'll still be more vulnerable than before. It used to be that steel was actually better than adamantine for most parts of armor because good steel armor could already completely negate the edge of the attacks of the copper or iron weapons invaders would be using, and steel was a bit better at resisting blunt damage. Now if the dwarf is knocked unconscious, either by blunt damage going through the armor and breaking a few bones, or by constantly being attacked and dodging, and attacking, and moving so much that they fall over and keep fighting until they pass out from exhaustion (which will eventually happen), then their helmet will be removed and they can be killed. It was kind of silly to suggest that armor damage would result in a dwarf being made vulnerable before exhaustion, pain, or blood loss from the fact that if armor's being damaged then the dwarf behing it is probably being damaged would.

[Max™]

The max edge on obsidian is 20000, you can get obsidian flakes which still look sharp under a high powered microscope while a steel razer is all jagged and rough looking.

The max edge on candy is 100000, this is a point where it isn't even sensible as a physical object, the closest super material I can think of with support by any sort of theoretical physics is Xeelee Construction Material. This stuff is made by more or less magical hypertech and involves turning off the Pauli Exclusion Principle so electrons and protons fall into the same ground state, producing a material with no empty spaces like regular matter, as thick as a proton, and the amount of energy released in this process would be massive, so the binding energies would be massive, i.e. this stuff could tank a nuke or sit inside a star without damage.

Candy has some properties which are arguably more extreme than this impossible "so advanced it's literally magic" material, like the infinite speed of sound due to the infinite stiffness, though I worry about the fact that friction is a result of interacting electron shells, so trying to hold on to an XCM sword would be... tricky, as would a candy sword.

[Random_Dragon]

The catch here is that while it's interesting, and generally a good idea, to ground fantasy-realm things in real-world physics or theoretical physics, we can (and often should) fudge physics when it's required to make the overall experience better. Otherwise we'll expect things like dwarves making adamantine-based communications systems, if you have stuff like infinite speed of sound. :V

Then again, that would explain a lot about levers...

[Max™]

My kingdom for a percussion instrument with a candy head that causes heads to pop when played.

[peasant cretin]

What happened to the dense, percussive joys of platinum?

[Putnam]

The catch here is that while it's interesting, and generally a good idea, to ground fantasy-realm things in real-world physics or theoretical physics, we can (and often should) fudge physics when it's required to make the overall experience better. Otherwise we'll expect things like dwarves making adamantine-based communications systems, if you have stuff like infinite speed of sound. :V

Then again, that would explain a lot about levers...

Adamantine could merely have a bulk modulus K in the range of 10,000,000,000,000 pascals<K<8,987,551,787,368,176,400 pascals rather than infinite, which would give it a speed of sound v in the range of 10,000,000 m/s<v<c. One may notice that this is a monstrously huge range, but such is the nature of weirdass materials.

[Random_Dragon]

That reminds me, does that make slade something like magical neutronium?

"You drop the slade warhammer.

The falling slade warhammer strikes the planet in the crust and the injured part is crushed!"

[Max™]

Yeah, slade is impossibly dense as well, and has many of the ridiculous properties of candy no less!

[Putnam]

This gives it a much, much lower speed of sound, mind. Its bulk modulus is 4% of adamantine and its density 200,000%, both of which contribute to a decrease in the speed of sound; adamantine's speed of sound is at least 10,000,000 m/s while slade's is exactly 1000*sqrt(2) m/s, or about 1,414 m/s, which is slower than the speed of sound in iron.