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[Splint]

Alright, so, this might sound really stupid, but would anyone be interested in a 34.11 community game featuring one of masterwork's non-orc/dwarf races? I know that there's a new version on the horizon while we have a new-ish one out and all, but masterwork's... Well, a masterwork! And enemies are less hit-or-miss in 34.11.

It's frankly an epitome of what can be done with 34.11, and I love the mod dearly, even if I've only seriously played two races and puttered along with two others (the hermits and warlocks, both of which I love immensely.) Now, that being said, would anyone be interested in it, and if so, what races would be played and would you want certain harder things enabled?

It'd be kind of a story-driven tutorial of sorts I suppose (since I sort of accidentally did that with Riverrun and Blackhold.) and I'd be giving the guys an honest shot for the first time in a long while.

I'm asking because I'm saving a current project for a nice big update (or at least for more people to die.) Meanwhile, Blackhold is in pseudo-succession mode and I can't access Riverrun to continue it until I get the last two bits for my new rig, assuming my old hard drive still works after months of sitting disused and a little soda getting on it last week.

RACE OPTIONS
I'll list them out, along with my past experiences with them, that you might make a better choice.Dwarves and Orcs have been played extensively, as seen in Blackhold and Riverrun, and thus not eligible. Due to the hermit being limited to a single  (technically two) units, he's out as well.

WARLOCKS: I've played them.... To a point, far enough to make ironbone gear and build skeletons, but no further. I find myself highly impatient with them, because everything has to be done with the least qualified personnel for the early-to-mid-game: Your warlocks, ghouls, and very few unupgraded skeletons (as ghouls have this rather nasty habit of ripping the heads off of smaller enemies, denying access to the souls needed to animate skeletons.) And lady luck generally fucks me with well armed dwarves or humans as my first enemies usually.

Warlocks chosen.

KOBOLDS: Never played the last masterwork version of them. Very little experience with them, their castes, reliance on toxins and ranged combat (which I dislike due to disproportionately large material investment needed to reach the "not totally incompetent" area of skill compared to melee fighters in 34.11,) or giant tree-bearing ogres.
GOAL WITH THIS RACE: Conquer the Caverns in some fashion.

HUMANS: Only ever played an early version of them, long enough ago that I have very little recollection of how to do... Anything, with them.

SUCCUBI: Manual only, as I never felt they fit right thematically, but after giving the manual a twice-over, I am kind of warming up to the idea of playing as them.

GNOMES: Literally no experience beyond reading the manual. Personally, I don't like their focus on machinery and nature since I'm not very mechanically inclined or particularly kind to anything large enough to kill me people easily. Or ravens/crows. because fuck those birds. This makes me the least qualified to do any sort of fort with them.

[slay_mithos]

I'd say succubi or warlocks, because they play differently, and didn't get a proper tutorial fort like the humans, or multiple community stories like the kobolds and gnomes.

Well, any race has interesting things anyway, so go with whatever, I guess.

As for ranged combat for kobolds, there are ways to have even low skill lay waste to the enemy.
I mean, iron and steel trees as materials already give reliable ammunition (a bit slow to grow at first though), and with poison on top of it, they can become killing machines fairly fast.
It still benefits a lot from having fortifications and walls more than the melee, but you also get less death early on.

Well, I personally am a fan of ranged, even in 34.11, and even with dwarves, I usually end up with two third of my military as ranged, racking 90% of the kills, with walls, snipping towers and all that.

[Meph]

40.24 Kobold fort with Reborn?

[Splint]

40.24 Kobold fort with Reborn?

40.24's invasions are too hit or miss for my liking.

As for ranged combat for kobolds, there are ways to have even low skill lay waste to the enemy.
I mean, iron and steel trees as materials already give reliable ammunition (a bit slow to grow at first though), and with poison on top of it, they can become killing machines fairly fast.
It still benefits a lot from having fortifications and walls more than the melee, but you also get less death early on.

Well, I personally am a fan of ranged, even in 34.11, and even with dwarves, I usually end up with two third of my military as ranged, racking 90% of the kills, with walls, snipping towers and all that.

That relies on quantity over quality with the one aspect of even the vanilla game I greatly dislike (as projectiles, while damaging, aren't appropriately deadly because of thier tiny-as-hell contact area.) If they actually seemed to get the job done without needing either a ridiculous amount of investment (that ammunition has to come from somewhere,) or so many people attacking at once a fluke is bound to kill the target/hit a vital blood vessel, I wouldn't care nearly as much. In fact, it almost seems like they need some sort of deadly poison to be any real threat to some races, which honestly doesn't paint ranged combat as very favorable when a speardwarf can just jab something a couple times and be done with it.

Don't get me wrong, as it stands rangers have utility to deal with certain threats - disabling cowardly mounts and killing most kinds of poison blood/gas monsters spring to mind - they just don't form the basis of my defense because to me, melee fighters get the job done far more efficiently for far less investment in materials and training time.

[Nuhaine]

So, Warlocks.

I embark with the alchemy embark, plus 7 picks and 8 slaves in an area with a river and flux stone. This lets me create the philosopher stone (cheap & early steel/mithril etc) as well as 10 books. The rest of the points typically go into a random crop for shredding later on.

First thing I do after embark is enable all crafting, stone, and farming skills as well as mining. Then I dig up/down stairs straight down to stone, and then one more layer. There, I dig out a 9x9 area centered around the stairs so I can build two masons workshops, two crafters workshops, butchery, tannery, and soul siphon. Then, I butcher all the prisoners as I dig out my dining hall, using it as temporary food storage. I set 'make rock blocks,' 'make rock hourglasses,' and 'make totems' to repeat and build the stonecutter to create a few tables and beds. I also make a bunch of stone block barrels to store the ~500-800 meat that I'll have.

I also dig out a 5x15 next to the butchery and soul siphon where I create a dark altar, demonic attorney, and hoardmaster's quarters. I set construct skeleton to repeat and deactivate mining from all my warlocks but 1 who has all other labors deactivated until I create a pylon, activating mining for the first 6 skeletons created. Following this I dig out an area from the river or some ponds and make a well (rope from tannery) since warlocks don't need booze.

After the well I wall up my entrance and make a mechanized bridge that I can close from my dining hall. I make another 9x9 area for 6 jeweler's workshops and 2 gemcutter's shops. I cut stones into gems and then merge the gems into large gems, which can then be traded for souls in the hoardmaster or used to construct pylons. 5 souls is 1 blood goat, which is equal to 1 skeleton. Around 6 of my warlocks will do nothing but cut gems.

Note: The 'Praying' labor is needed for many things, such as getting souls from graveyards and dark altar reactions.

With six skeletons and a warlock miner I'll typically strip mine a massive area using channel because it mines 2 layers at once. Later on I create a crap ton of every kind of furniture to lavishly decorate large rooms for each warlock to keep them happy. I also set orders -> refuse -> warlocks gather refuse from outside to yes so my skeletons will drag in anything that I kill topside if I happen to get a ghoul. I just keep making skeles while keeping myself walled off to work on my military. Warlocks are 100% self sufficient if they have souls, and if you ever run out of rocks just make a crap ton of graveyards (16+) and put a skeleton on them to permanently run the gather souls reaction.

I'll generally start working on my books through the central library, using ash from the crematorium/clothier combo to make ink and setting up shredders and my philosopher stone for creating rare metal to shred (bone can be turned into flux from one of the workshops if you haven't found any/didn't embark with any on your map) for spell reagents. You can deconstruct any library to get your books back, so feel free to experiment and do whatever strikes your fancy.

For military I upgrade skeletons. I'll mine some ore and build a smelter, buying wood to burn into fuel from the attorney if I don't get any fuel stones from mining. Then, I make two anvils and the corrupted forge. To get ash for Ironbone I'll build a clothier and a crematorium. I'll buy a ton of blood goats, setting a skeleton to milk them on repeat. Sometimes I'll turn meat into barrels through the Blood Winery as well. I'll typically breach the caverns and create a large area in my soil layer for them to graze, with the workshop set up nearby. Then it's just bloodsteel and a soul for dreadnaught metal. For masterwork dreadnaught armor I'll upgrade a high creativity attribute skeleton to legendary through the inscription studio. I don't know if it does anything on top of dreadnaught, but I'll also make rune robes from the fleshsmith  for them to wear. I'll generally find amusement in sending in one of these rightfully named crypt lords to take on multiple sieges at once.

For weapon skill I give them a training weapon and raise some non-civ member (loyalty cascades are evil) undead with the circle. I'll have the skeletons attack the undead while wearing armor and a shield with the training weapon, and this typically raises them to legendary after awhile. Then I'll pump up their attributes to godly levels with soul syphon. If you have enough of these uber dreadnaught skeletons you can even take on the HFS.

[Splint]

I'll chalk that one up to warlocks I suppose. Going to ignore the rest though, not to be an ass, but because it's not really relevant to my planning.

So that's 2 for warlocks, 1 for succubi and kobolds.

[Immortal-D]

How much, if any, of the Warlock features will carry over to Necromancers in Reborn?  I would enjoy seeing a .34 Warlock Fortress if you could emphasize the reactions and magic that Necros will receive, as this would allow me to practice for when 40.xx Invaders are fixed.

Alternatively, a 40.xx Kobold Fortress which makes a serious effort to conquer the Caverns and Circus in lue of Invaders would make for a good tutorial as well.

[Meph]

How much, if any, of the Warlock features will carry over to Necromancers in Reborn?  I would enjoy seeing a .34 Warlock Fortress if you could emphasize the reactions and magic that Necros will receive, as this would allow me to practice for when 40.xx Invaders are fixed.

Alternatively, a 40.xx Kobold Fortress which makes a serious effort to conquer the Caverns and Circus in lue of Invaders would make for a good tutorial as well.

40.x kobolds cant dig.

[Immortal-D]

Ah, my mistake.  I thought they had access to Ogres or similar to perform all the heavy lifting.

[Splint]

Ah, my mistake.  I thought they had access to Ogres or similar to perform all the heavy lifting.

They have ogres to do the heavy lifting in battle, not in general. And considering what I read an armored ogre did to an armored dwarf in a guy's Camp, I think there's a reason for this besides game limitations.

I'm gonna go ahead and edit the title, since so much of masterwork seems like it depends on attacks from races you irritate (be it through theft or raiding or what have you,) and other functions not yet fixed/updated to my knowledge, that I'm looking to run with this on 34.11 (no offense intended to reborn; it's just that the 34.11 version is a much more polished product so to speak.)

I'll put yours on kobolds though.

[Meph]

Nah, if it's 34.11, please try Warlocks.

[Splint]

I'm a little sad the turn out wasn't a tad better. Oh well. Guess I'll do a coin flip, since I don't wanna act on so little input otherwise.

[Rekov]

1) Wait for elves to come out.
2) Do elves.

[Dracko81]

Do what you want to do, regardless of what you do there will be people who wanted you to do something else.  Any of them would be interesting to me, because the only races I have used in 34.11 are dwarves and gnomes.

If you do something you don't want to do - like the gnomes - the experience both for you and your audience will be diminished.

[Splint]

Do what you want to do, regardless of what you do there will be people who wanted you to do something else.  Any of them would be interesting to me, because the only races I have used in 34.11 are dwarves and gnomes.

If you do something you don't want to do - like the gnomes - the experience both for you and your audience will be diminished.

It's less not wanting to and just various things not appealing to me personally. For example with gnomes, I like the concepts of steampunk power armor and teslacoil defenses, or repurposing factories into deliberate death traps, but it all requires the one thing I have virtually no experience with: Powering stuff and mechanical engineering, because I never saw the need to build things like drowning chambers or massive automated spike pits or the like - my soldiers, once I semi-mastered the management of a militia, always steadfastly eliminated intruders with both extreme and efficient (if messy, what with my preference for swords) prejudice.

With Warlocks, the problem I have with them is a painfully slow early game, (past which I don't know what I'm doing) while I like their general concept overall, while Succubi and humans I've not played in a painfully long time, or at all, leaving me flying blind with them (which lets the audience point and laugh at the dum dum who hasn't managed to do "x" yet.) Most'd also take me out of my usual little comfort zone in some fashion, which is also a good thing.

Actually, any of them do have that last bit, since for the most part I don't know shit about shit in how to play them at all beyond the manual, now that I think about it...