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[vjmdhzgr]

To identify castes you can add a description to each one. Examples would be most mods with caste systems. You just say something like [DESCRIPTION:A worker ant, blablabla] then on the soldier ant [DESCRIPTION:Soldier ant blablabla].

[Dirst]

To identify castes you can add a description to each one. Examples would be most mods with caste systems. You just say something like [DESCRIPTION:A worker ant, blablabla] then on the soldier ant [DESCRIPTION:Soldier ant blablabla].

My life got a lot easier when it finally sank in (after seeing the tag table on the wiki SO many times) that DESCRIPTION is a caste-level tag.

[Eric Blank]

Have you ensured that queens/drones are exclusively interested in marrying members of the appropriate, opposite sex (and wont settle for being just lovers), and that workers/soldiers have no interest in anyone? If you do, you might start to see slightly higher chances of marriage. The orientation tag is your friend when trying to balance eusocial organisms where the only breeding castes are outnumbered a hundred to one or more.

[AceSV]

I think I've got my ant-civ working satisfactorily now.  It's not particularly realistic, but this is Furry Fortress, not Textbook Zoology Fortress, so it's fine with me.  I'd like to start focusing on some of the other civs, especially the tree-less one. 

However, I did want to try making some ant-civ livestock, aphids, wooly aphids and mealybugs.  These didn't work initially but I still have a few tricks to try.  I was thinking all of these could be "milked" for honeydew which could be made into mead.  Milking honeydew worked fine, but the still insisted I didn't have anything suitable to make mead.  The warning message said "Needs Honey Bee Honey", maybe the reaction is too specific?  Second, I wanted wooly aphids to be sheared for wool and mealybugs to be sheared for wax, as they have a waxy coating, but the [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:CHITIN_MATERIALS] doesn't have hair by default and I feel like I probably can't easily swap hair for wax. 
   

[Eric Blank]

I don't see why you couldn't swap hair for wax, it's just the material the body covering is made of you're changing, and how it's referred to by name. Just have to add the material to them, make it a skin coating across all body parts, name it waxy coating or whatever, make it shearable at a certain length and cause it to grow.

And yes, the normal mead reaction demands exclusively honey from honey bees. It is very picky. You can write your own reaction, though.

[milo christiansen]

A little late, but: Soap without lye, oops I was wrong, you can't make "real" soap without lye. But! you can make sanitizers without lye, it won't actually be "soap", but it will still work. Unfortunately an alcohol sanitizer will not lather up, but there are solutions to that problem too (some plants produce a lathery substance, not sure how it would react to alcohol though).

[AceSV]

I'm trying the troll-mammoth-people just to see what happens, and one of my civilians scratched a dingo in the head, decapitating it. 

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

If you are still figuring out the Ant civ breeding I have something that will work for you:

4 Main Castes
Queen [Female][Pet_Exotic] --This *should* make it so you can't bring it at embark/order from traders
Worker_Female [Female]
Worker_Male [Male]
Larva[No Gender][Pet] -- you want to be able to buy this
+sub castes for soldiers or w/e you want for castes better at fighting, size, what have you

Queen and Larva have a POP_RATIO:1 and the other Castes will have ratio choice multiplied by 10,000
Worker_Female POP_Ratio 20 * 10,000 = 200,000
Worker_Male POP_Ratio 30 * 10,000 = 300,000

This is so natural births won't produce any Queens or Larva[caste]
But wait they can all breed how can I get the civ to reproduce during worldgen? and not in game? Simple:

You create a interaction, this interaction gives [STERILE] (only way to attach that tag is via syndrome)
This interaction is on all normal Female castes and only target themselves. Worldgen these interactions are not used thus can breed until they are loaded in adv.mode fortress mode and use it on themselves, making them able to marry but not reproduce.

Now why Queens as a Pet you cannot buy, but Larva.
Meph (and my own outdated mod) use workshops to more or less convert creatures to other creatures. You can buy/embark with some larva, use a worker (feed larva royal gel (as far as I know this is what bees do when picking a new queen??)) worker can turn 1 larva into a queen ant caste. Now since both are pets they don't need marriage to reproduce, and since normal female are sterile but normal males are not (they don't give birth) they will magically breed with the queen, having kids. And since the pop ratio for Queen and Larva are so rare they may never happen, the queen will give birth to workers, and other castes that you ranked higher by multiplying by 10,000.

From there you can have things like if there is two queens they will both go berserk/insane (or just one) by setting the other ones DROWSINESS to a really high number (what trapped traders use to go crazy) so you can make it seem there can only be one queen in a fort. If you can still bring QUEEN castes remove the pet tags from it, since you can't remove the PET tag I believe it transfers so the Larva having the PET should suffice. And since the larva is genderless you can pick what type of caste you want them to be (Maybe mindless warriors that can be made to selflessly defend the meeting hall) up to you. Hope this helps your Unique Civ style 

[vjmdhzgr]

The problem with [PET] and [PET_EXOTIC] is that [PET] on its own does nothing to determine the availability of the animal. So the queen with [PET_EXOTIC] will be just as unavailable for trading as the larva with [PET]. You'd need [COMMON_DOMESTIC] to give the civ access to them, which would also give every civ access to them. The plan to allow worldgen breeding sounds good though, but might not be necessary as a friend made a custom civ with mostly nongendered castes, but then some rarer than standard castes male and female breeding castes that gave birth to like 30 at once, and from what I was told they seemed to do well in world generation.

EDIT: I've noticed something else "Now since both are pets they don't need marriage to reproduce, and since normal female are sterile but normal males are not (they don't give birth)" both of what are pets? The male ants weren't marked as pets earlier like the larva were, and I don't know whether intelligent male animals will breed with unintelligent female ones without being married to them, but I'd guess that they don't given my understanding of things.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

The problem with [PET] and [PET_EXOTIC] is that [PET] on its own does nothing to determine the availability of the animal. So the queen with [PET_EXOTIC] will be just as unavailable for trading as the larva with [PET]. You'd need [COMMON_DOMESTIC] to give the civ access to them, which would also give every civ access to them. The plan to allow worldgen breeding sounds good though, but might not be necessary as a friend made a custom civ with mostly nongendered castes, but then some rarer than standard castes male and female breeding castes that gave birth to like 30 at once, and from what I was told they seemed to do well in world generation.

EDIT: I've noticed something else "Now since both are pets they don't need marriage to reproduce, and since normal female are sterile but normal males are not (they don't give birth)" both of what are pets? The male ants weren't marked as pets earlier like the larva were, and I don't know whether intelligent male animals will breed with unintelligent female ones without being married to them, but I'd guess that they don't given my understanding of things.

You are correct [COMMON_DOMESTIC] would be helpful, but then other civs would have the chance to bring these very domestic larva of ant-people. But that may have to be a side effect, however this pet is a part of the civ so it might not need it.

@EDIT
Males count as a normal MALE creature (of course) and don't suffer from the females self inflicted STERILE (normal females not a Queen) which even if they took a lover (separate sexes) they would not be able to reproduce (during play, world gen will breed normally)

Now since the LARVA is a PET pets don't need marriage they just need to be of age (mature, aka age > than CHILD age) but since it is genderless it cannot aid in reproduction (of the Queen) or become pregnant (from the normal males) thus just sits there as a reagent for whichever transformation reactions are made for it.

Now once the LARVA is transformed into the QUEEN caste it become female and does not apply the self inflicted STERILE and can breed. It notices that there are MALEs of the same CREATURE and thus starts the reproduction cycle
NOTE: Since there is no way to remove PET it *should* transfer over just fine (not that the QUEEN is lacking a pet token)

But thank you for the COMMON_DOMESTIC reminder, doesn't take long to do a quick test with and without the tag. But most cases it may require it

[AceSV]

I appreciate the assistance, but I'm not interested in using any super weird mechanics like that.  My experience with modding in general makes me wary of using exploits like that. 

[Emperor]

Meph (and my own outdated mod) use workshops to more or less convert creatures to other creatures.

Speaking of which, someone made a Hivemind Wasp civ for Masterwork, quite a while ago - if you ask them nicely, they might share their raws. They had some neat ideas, especially regarding Queen and reproduction if I recall correctly.

[AceSV]

Okay, so I thought I'd try my hand with the no-wood monkey civ.  I thought I'd be able to make a new item that would be ethanol fuel, but now I don't think I can do that.  Anyone know if I can turn drinks into a barrel of ethanol fuel instead of bars of coke? 

[AceSV]

Well, I tried:

Code: [Select]

[REACTION:DISTILL_ETHANOL]
[NAME:distill ethanol fuel]
[BUILDING:STILL:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:DRINK:NONE:NONE_NONE]
[PRODUCT:100:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:COAL:COKE][PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[SKILL:BREWING]
But this seems to do it without any actual inputs.  I linked the still to an empty stockpile and it was still able to perform the reaction. 


Also, this was unexpected, taking away wood from the civilization also takes away all reactions that require fuel.  The traders do not bring any metals, weapons or armor and they don't have any bins to store leather or cloth.  I also disabled the wood burner job, maybe that's what's required instead of wood specifically. 


Also, the non-wood civ are monkey people.  I gave them prehensile tails with GRASP and this seems to work, but they wear gloves on their hands and prefer to grasp their weapons with their tails instead of their hands.  It's a little weird, but I can put up with it.  It would also be cool to give them grasping feet, but I doubt that would be handled well by the system.  For now, they have STANCE_CLIMBER to portray that. 

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Well, I tried:

Code: [Select]

[REACTION:DISTILL_ETHANOL]
[NAME:distill ethanol fuel]
[BUILDING:STILL:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:DRINK:NONE:NONE_NONE]
[PRODUCT:100:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:COAL:COKE][PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[SKILL:BREWING]
But this seems to do it without any actual inputs.  I linked the still to an empty stockpile and it was still able to perform the reaction. 


Also, this was unexpected, taking away wood from the civilization also takes away all reactions that require fuel.  The traders do not bring any metals, weapons or armor and they don't have any bins to store leather or cloth.  I also disabled the wood burner job, maybe that's what's required instead of wood specifically. 


Also, the non-wood civ are monkey people.  I gave them prehensile tails with GRASP and this seems to work, but they wear gloves on their hands and prefer to grasp their weapons with their tails instead of their hands.  It's a little weird, but I can put up with it.  It would also be cool to give them grasping feet, but I doubt that would be handled well by the system.  For now, they have STANCE_CLIMBER to portray that.

[REAGENT:A:1:DRINK:NONE:NONE_NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:DRINK:NONE:NONE:NONE]

EDIT: Also you may need to grab the container as well?
   [REAGENT:water:150:LIQUID_MISC:NONE:WATER:NONE]
   [REAGENT:water container:1:NONE:NONE:NONE:NONE]
      [CONTAINS:water]
      [NOT_IMPROVED]
      [PRESERVE_REAGENT]
      [DOES_NOT_DETERMINE_PRODUCT_AMOUNT]
Above is just an example, you'd have it say CONTAINS:A that way it should grab anything that has a DRINK in it