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[Meph]

Why not have them use silver directly then? That way you can either use silver as weapon/armor material, which is not that great, or you can refine it to moonsilver againt EVIL, or you can refine it to mithril. A bit like iron to steel, just more expensive.

I dont know about new metals, they always clog up menus. I would certainly like to see heavy use of woods for armors and weapons, since we already have ironbark and steeloak, but I cant think of any exclusively elven fantasy metals, besides the mention silvery stuff.

Silmarils, no idea. You have to wait for Smake

[IndigoFenix]

Idea for a tree shaping system:

Instead of using logs, use tree seeds to produce a shapable sapling tool made from the seed's tree type's wood (in df2014 all trees have seeds, and you can reference the wood type from the seed).. The sapling can then be grown directly into the required item.  Dfhack can add the grown tag to items produced this way.

I don't think elves should ever use logs for anything.  They shouldn't even have access to carpentry related labors, everything should be done by tree singing.

[smakemupagus]

Not sold on pistols. Warhammer [eldar?] have them, yes, but the elves here are not eldar. Drow come from D&D, they dont have pistols either. Daggers, scimitars, bows only.

I'm not a huge D&D guy but I got the adamantine reference and hand crossbows, i.e. pistol crossbows as masterwork gnomes call them, from the monster manual actually ^^
link

"A drow using one of the hand crossbows for which their race is well-known."
Hand Crossbow (Standard; At-will) ♦ Poison, Weapon
Ranged 10/20; +30 vs AC; 3d8 + 9 poison damage.

Aside question, what is adamantine in D&D?  is it different/more common or otherwise more elfy than our MDF bluestone?

[than402]

it's a ridiculously hard metal that sunders other weapons and objects easily when used on a weapon,and absorbs some damage when used on armor.unlike DF adamantine,it's a bit more common(but still a luxury for the average Joe of a typical campaign world),it is not blue,and is quite heavy.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Adamantine

[IndigoFenix]

Why not have them use silver directly then? That way you can either use silver as weapon/armor material, which is not that great, or you can refine it to moonsilver againt EVIL, or you can refine it to mithril. A bit like iron to steel, just more expensive.

I dont know about new metals, they always clog up menus. I would certainly like to see heavy use of woods for armors and weapons, since we already have ironbark and steeloak, but I cant think of any exclusively elven fantasy metals, besides the mention silvery stuff.

I was just trying to keep things close to the original source:

Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim.

Presumably it's rather soft in its native state, the method of hardening it being a trick of the dwarves - and you've been looking for ideas for how to give the dwarves more metalworking talents than other races, so that fits.  Elves used mithril when they could get it, but mostly for jewelry and crafts rather than armor or weapons.  As for ithildin ('starmoon', the shiny alloy associated with elves), it was often used as a symbol of the friendship between the two races (for instance, the tree-decorated door of Moria), since the elves required mithril to make it, but mithril itself was mined by the dwarves, which is one of the reasons why it isn't readily available anymore.  It isn't explicitly stated to be hazardous to evil creatures, but it wouldn't be too out of character if it was, given the nature of elvish magic.

At any rate, mithril isn't said to be related to silver except in color, so turning silver into mithril doesn't make sense.

Actually...if you don't want to add more metals (well, just one, really - hardened mithril), maybe the dwarves could produce adamantine from native mithril?  Dwarf Fortress' adamantine is basically LOTR hardened mithril with a different name, after all (the original adamantine, as in the doors holding back the Titans in Greek mythology, is said to be extremely heavy).  Then you don't have to add any new metals - just make regular mithril soft, let elves produce weak but special-effect weapons from it, and give dwarves an extra, less hazardous adamantine source.

[lightstar]

Some ideas:

1. To make elves more elfy give them access to more stuff from woods:
A. greenhouses where food can be easily grown (already in the lists of buildings by Meph)
B. There should be some animals for elves only - give them good control over those
C. Give them good ranged weapons - elves are supposed to be good at bows
D. Elves are also supposed to be good at magic - but lets not take them the gnomes way
F. Give even good elves access to poison, and possibly even war spiders. I like the idea of war spiders..... these are full grown, mounted, spiders with a poison attack (Evil elves can have access to more things......)
G. Give them the ability to "grow" trees where they like in 7 days time:  can be used to create walls for defense.
H. High level of cave-adapt
I. Low mining skills
J. Not good with blunt weapons
K. Can work with and create mithril - but not with other metals. Mithril is very good for them.
L. Good at creating cloth - light and strong

[Nelia Hawk]

just a random idea about building/branches/trunk/tree/age/growth/nonsense, that in the end is totally pointless and too "mechanical" and "restrictive" etc... oh well... but maybe someone gets some ideas from the idea or so...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

just throwing a random idea in here (without 100% reading every word in here.. tired.. and just want to throw the idea in here):

what if elves dont build/construct/craft anything but instead grow everything. (well no idea "how" to mod it or if it is possible.. and also didnt really read every linked topic in here... but i guess the basic idea of "growing" is with elves anyways)

lets say they have some sort of seed/growth building that you "construct" that kind of works like the warlock pylon... just in like 10 tiles around it on the same z level it slowly auto constructs constructions from the closest to the furthest.
and to grow a z level above you have to "expand/grow" the "growth stem" whatever building with some reaction on it that grows it up one tile (i.e. on the pylon you select "grow z level up" and if you placed the same construction ontop of it it grows it then. and then can grow constructions on 2 z levels. 2 pylons ontop of eachother each with a 10 (? random example number) field radius to grow around on the same z level!)

these grow seed stem buildings thingys would be pretty valuable to keep... similar to how warlocks are pretty valuable well for the warlock race. so if invaders destroy them it would be pretty bad (as they might count as building? or might even be a stationed creature that can be killed... no idea... either way it would be "problematic" if i.e. one bit disappears and everything floats in the air. so not ideal.)

maybe normal growth of walls/stairs/constructions would be .. normal speed. (2 game weeks? no idea .. some timeframe)
the growth z levels up would take a bit longer. (i.e. 3-4 weeks)
and maybe you could build special branch floors that are relatively quick to grow (1 week?) but need to be connected to the stem and that extend the grow range by 1. (basically range 10 around the stem and each branch floor)
maybe the longer the "age" of the stem/trunk/grow building thingy the more branches you can add to that z level... so the lowest parts can have the longest branches and the very top one just a few. (+ 2-5 branches every season?)

maybe the (floor tile) branches would over time grow into trunks (walls) same as the starter grow thingy... so you could have big trees over time and could build rooms inside them. (well with some way to remove the walls again... smoothing job? that makes them into trunk floors then?)

maybe they have some sort of "mother tree" "building" that is the main "base/foundation" of the fort and works the same as the grow "saplings" described above... but the branches of that tree can create new saplings and the trunk bits can "spawn/generate" normal wood blocks that are then used to be placed as constructions and then grown.

another idea is some sort of "fairy" creature that tends to these grow trees... and they are who actually construct the wood then. (as the whole based on time mechanics might be way too much.) maybe these fairys are somehow assigned to the mother tree/growth saplings and then move around it to move wood from the trunk to build the branches or so.
maybe the mother tree could have another function to create fairies?  kind of like hives and bees? (very abstract comparison. maybe how skeletons are used for warlocks for "everything"... fairies are used for elves to "build their trees"/builders. (pretty much totally useless in combat though unlike skeletons, maybe can be trained into combat wisps or so))
maybe a fairy "working" in the trees/branches/workshops makes parts of the tree grow faster?

no idea how the timed everything would actually work... well the warlocks have some timed stuff like the blocks that disappear or the summoned weapons. no idea if in some way such a timer could be added to i.e. a wall block or a floor tile and after X seasons the floor(branch) changes to a wall tile (if nothing is standing on it or build on it).
(also planted plants somehow have a timer that changes them/creates the end plant after a while, who knows if something from that helps)

maybe it would be very abstract possible with 3 different materials... young trunk, trunk, and old trunk (or something similar) and lets say after one year it changed from young to normal and after another from normal to old? so the very first build trunk "walls" end up as the oldest and inner most while the outer "bark" is the young trunk? and maybe the young and normal trunk (walls) can be shaped back to floors and doors to build rooms? where the old trunks/walls/floors are considered higher quality "smoothed" (compared to stone walls)



and maybe you have special workshops for i.e. wood generation, fairy generation, item generation that you can place on the branches (floor tiles)


maybe the starting wagon could be converted into the mother tree? that grows faster the first year ? or just faster in general? and the growth saplings you can "build" wherever you want grow slower ... so the mother tree is always the biggest tree? (so you actually can build i.e. workshops on branches etc... and are not stuck doing nothing till the tree grows)

the whole "killing/destroying" of trunks etc is a awful idea actually... so the trunks are just walls basically and cant be destroyed. the workshops in the branches could be destroyed though.

if the tree trunk is considered "walls/range pylons", and the branches you "build" onto it are considered "floors" maybe you can build "leaves" on the branches that are considered "fortifications"? (elves in the trees shooting arrows without penalty... etc)

maybe you can build a 3x3 "sapling trunk workshop" that is the base for new "fortress trees", and cost special "seed blocks".
they might look like this:
WFW
FXF
WFW
(W=wall, F= floor, X = up down stairway, well whatever works... but i.e. that way elves could walk around in trunks and move up and down the tree.)
and next to these you can build "3x3 branches workshops(?)" maybe similar to how you build addons to the human guild buildings? and maybe you can build 3 3x3 branches far out to a trunk. i.e.
---BBB---
---BBB---
---BBB---
BBBWFWBBB
BBBFXFBBB
BBBWFWBBB
---BBB---
---BBB---
---BBB---
(well this is just one attachment... you could build 2 more branches to it everywhere for a 30x30 block of tree. maybe branches can be 9 tiles away so you can build 3 3x3 onto trunks.)

maybe instead of timed auto growth of branches into trunks there instead could just be a reaction that turns the branch 3x3 workshop into a trunk workshop? (so you then can build new branches further out?)

maybe the mother tree would instead be 5x5 with 5x5 branches? as special tree... and you can run reactions on the trunks to create branches (to build branch floors) and seedblocks (to build new trunk workshops?)

well the other idea is the "pylon/creeptumor" idea that you plant/build the "grow trunk" (workshop?) that ages over time and allows construction X tiles away from it. the older the further away. build branches need to be connected to it. and branches turn into wood/trunk over time that way the tree trunk grows outwards.... and you add branches to it over and over. (awful idea) and the pylon has a reaction to "grow upwards"... well or the pylon doubles as up/down stairwell and you just build a new young one ontop. and the walls the branches change into can be designated like stone so you can dig out stairs and walls and floors etc.
maybe branches first change into leaves (fortification) and then into trunks (walls)? and then age with old trunks = smoothed.

i guess all this is way too "hard-coded mechanics" and would be way better done with just a "mother tree workshop" that spawns wood logs... and then you just build your own trunks (walls) and branches (floors) and stairs etc... and not all this workshop etc over-complication nonsense. and the restriction about "you can just build so and so far away from the trunk with different ranges based on how old the trunk is" would make sense based on a tree... but is probably also irrelevant as game play element and too restrictive.

oh well i just thought maybe something that grows over time in some way would be neat, with distance based on age.... well was just an idea anyways... who knows maybe some bits give other people ideas how to make something way easier and better

[snowhusky5]

That sounds pretty damn interesting (and hard to code), but it would certainly solve the uniqueness problem. I think the older the tree pylons get, the larger range and/or more advanced stuff they can build. It would be similar to research, but easier to lose it if something destroys your tree pylon. Although you could have more than one, of course. Autobuilding (growing) walls/floors/stairs/constructions sounds amazing as well. They would be basically the only race to build significantly above the ground as opposed to under it. Which makes sense for elves. If centralized pylons sound bad, then just constructions that slowly grow from the ground and adjacent other constructions would be reeeeal cool. Basically designing your own megatrees (you could even recreate the tree from Avatar, hehe).

[Meph]

Roses upgradebuilding script allows changing workshops with time. It could simulate buildings that slowly grow.

Another idea would be seasonal workshops. Treant Moot / Fairy Ring only work in Spring or Summer, but not in Autumn or Winter.

Another idea would be that you get 1 product in spring, 2 products in summer, 1 product in autumn and 0 in winter. Essentially everything shuts down in winter, but everything is twice as efficient in summer.

[Nevets_]

I think a great idea for elves would be to adapt the gnomish druid/nature system, with your score going down whenever you cut down a tree or mine a tile.  That way you could still allow some limited mining to find metals and some woodcutting to make roads for caravans or clearings for buildings but large scale human/dwarven type exploitation is off the table.

[slay_mithos]

I don't know about that, because it would mean that it would be very hard to acquire vast amount of materials that are required for any above ground buildings.

Even the current humans have a hard time getting basic rooms and a wall around the base, with the 8 blocks per stone boulder.

If you are basically penalized by getting materials normally, then you would need a way to get a whole lot of wood easily through other ways, which could also be seen as a balance breaker later on, unless you make a special material with 0 value (to prevent wealth from nearly nothing).

[Nevets_]

I was thinking the chopping/mining penalty would be a complement to the shrine/etc. buildings talked about earlier in the thread that let you create materials from seeds/etc.  The way I see an elven race working in MDF would be as a type of hunter / gatherer society that does it's best to avoid altering the land or the natural order of things.  Most resources would come from hunting/trapping and harvesting wild plants.  I don't think DF elves are vegetarians, are they?

Rather than farms they would have seed shrines that would spawn wild plants in the vicinity, and maybe a dfhack integrated reaction that designated all plants in the vicinity for harvest?  Wood shrines would spawn 'overgrowth' plants around them, you would harvest the ones you didn't want and run the spawn reaction again which would upgrade the unharvested overgrowth plants with trees.  Running the reaction a third time would upgrade the trees into greattrees: 2x2 solid wooden tiles 2 z levels high with random 'bough' floor tiles around the top of the second tier.  So you could build a line of the shrines and keep running the reactions (pruning new overgrowth in between) until the trees were thick enough to be your city wall, and if you only pruned the near side of the wall, you'd have an organic looking wall from the outside.  Harvested overgrowth could be woven in a thatchery type workshop into cheap building materials.  Earth shrines could run a reaction that spawns boulders on nearby pebble and boulder tiles to reduce or remove the need for mining to make building materials. 

They wouldn't need many buildings if you removed negative thoughts from sleeping on the ground/under the stars and eating without a dining room (leave in positive thoughts for having a nice bedroom / eating in a nice dining room to encourage eventually building those).  If you go even further with the Wood shrine idea you could have an Avatar/LotR style Home Tree / Caras Galadhon by making an 'enlarge great tree' reaction that adds an extra level to the top of any great trees in the vicinity and adds even more floor boughs, so with a few shrines you could make a giant interconnected multi tree 10 z levels tall, filing in any gaps in the boughs with floors constructed from woven overgrowth.

[Meph]

The problem is that furniture must be inside, and elves need furniture, and inside means a roof and a roof means a wall. It takes lots of time and resources to simply make some beds and tables for them.

[mate888]

I think that elves, as of Toady's canon, should be able to recive animalmen (not kobolds nor cave animalmen though) as fishermen and hunters or gatherers on their forest retreats.

[than402]

I think that elves, as of Toady's canon, should be able to recive animalmen (not kobolds nor cave animalmen though) as fishermen and hunters or gatherers on their forest retreats.

that would be nice,but it's very clumsy both to mod and to manage.you'd have to create a different elven caste for each animal man out there,otherwise even if you receive them,they will only be able to fish,if i remember correctly.and then you must add them POP_RATIO:1 and a sterilization interaction(like the monk from the human mode),or else you'll have a dingo man and an elven woman giving birth to twin elves.

and unless there is a way to apply a template through a reaction,making the interactions to create them from animals would be a pain to write.that would mean the most practical way(that i know of) would involve making an interaction with a different transformation syndrome for every animal man out there(except for the ones based on sea life and vermin,of course).not practical at all.