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Author Topic: Creating an actual reason for elves to have wood  (Read 1049 times)

Chevaleresse

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Creating an actual reason for elves to have wood
« on: August 16, 2014, 01:33:46 am »
How would one go about creating an interaction/reaction that allows elves to produce logs without felling trees? Normally a reaction needs reagents, but in this case the whole idea is that your reagent isn't an item, it's an object in the world.
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GavJ

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Re: Creating an actual reason for elves to have wood
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2014, 01:41:26 am »
1) Reactions never require reagents
2) What is this for? A player civilization? Or just an explanation for the NPCs? The NPCs have an explanation already: they cut down branches from large trees using technology as yet unknown to dwarves. As for a player civilization, simply make wood a farm crop. Mod in a darmable "Tree" that produces a plant material that you then go process in a reaction ("strip branches" or whatever) and makes normal logs and seeds as a result.
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samanato

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Re: Creating an actual reason for elves to have wood
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2014, 01:51:12 am »
Elves have "grown wood" crafts, which implies that they don't even use logs; they just shape trees into earrings and barrels and what have you. 

Elf mode is pretty hard to do at the moment, when tree-harvesting doesn't exist yet.  (I suppose you could do DFHack wizardry with the plant tool for the orchards themselves, but again, you can't harvest the tree's products, when you can't chop wood.)  You could make a "sapling" plant that is harvested and directly made into crafts, which is really not the best option now that trees are tall and have real fruit...
« Last Edit: August 16, 2014, 01:53:53 am by samanato »
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GavJ

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Re: Creating an actual reason for elves to have wood
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2014, 01:54:57 am »
Quote
which is really not the best option now that trees are tall and have real fruit...
So? That might even be a roleplaying reason WHY they use farmable sapling plants. "The elves don't want to harm such majesty as the full size trees" or whatever.

It's also a helluva lot easier to shape a sapling into an earring than a 60 foot tall tree... if you wanted to run with that idea, you could make individual plant species for every product, and grow them all in farm plots.
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Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Chevaleresse

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Re: Creating an actual reason for elves to have wood
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2014, 02:12:13 am »
I just thought of making logs since that would be much faster and much less tedious (albeit probably less complex) to do that and copy over dwarven workshop permissions rather than creating an elf-specific reaction to simulate treesinging at every workshop. Even then, it wouldn't require live trees. Is it possible to have a powered workshop (a la magma forge) that draws power from a tree that is adjacent/below? This would still require the incredibly tedious modding of every reaction that the elves can magically do at the moment, but in the end might make for an interesting mod.


EDIT: This is for a playable version of elves that allows you to actually follow elven ethics instead of being (in your countrymen's eyes) horrible tree-slaughtering maniacs that doesn't make inventory management quite so pitifully easy as plain free wood crafts would be. Plus, I think having to build around trees would be interesting and quite elfy.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2014, 02:17:21 am by KingMurdoc »
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Re: Creating an actual reason for elves to have wood
« Reply #5 on: August 16, 2014, 02:12:55 am »
no sadly the magma thing is only for magma
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Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Chevaleresse

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Re: Creating an actual reason for elves to have wood
« Reply #6 on: August 16, 2014, 03:43:54 am »
Hmm. Looks like the best solution here might be a workshop that produces wood at a slow rate for free. Kills the whole elves-need-trees thing, but opens up some options. Is there a way to have workshops grab available materials from an entity or from the map? In the manner of how animals available at embark are determined, i mean. That way you could have the treemaking shop produce logs of wood that are available to your civ or to you specifically.


EDIT: I've decided on the "free logs" approach, and I'm posting a thread about starting an Elf Mode project. Comments can go there.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2014, 04:16:32 am by KingMurdoc »
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