Thanks to Shonai_Dweller, PatrikLundell, DG, MrWiggles, Valtam, Bumber, Putnam, and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions!
How many dwarves (or citizens of other races) are you able to send out? Both in one group and as a percentage of the whole population of your fort. Or the other way around, will just one citizen staying home be enough? I guess you can't send all of them out.
You can send out all of your squads, even to the point of depopulating your fortress entirely. In the case of zero population at your fort, it won't end the game unless the army is killed completely or becomes unlinked to your fort's government (the latter shouldn't happen, so far as I know).
When will we be able to peddle/become fake prophets?
There has been no economy work, so acting as a peddler would just be the current adv mode barter system if you get your hands on some crap. You can select "peddler" for your identity's profession when you assume an identity.
You can select a deity and the prophet "profession" when creating an identityv as well. I have the random prophecy generator for you to shout out, but no specific interface for you to build your prophecy. Not sure if I'll get to that now, though I'll need something eventually since it is also the underpinning of wherever the language system is going generally. Also not sure if I'll allow non-identity advs to be false prophets in earnest, as themselves... the brain gets tied up.
How long are these reports going to stick around? Old combat reports tend to disappear.
The current release's combat reports rely on the general announcement system, and those get cycled out. The new squad reports are self-contained objects and remain for the duration of the fort. At some point, we could merge them in with the history collection reports for the world gen battles, when we have more info there -- then we can watch little army paths and so on, though we'd have to be more careful with memory/speed for world gen army paths.
For the upcoming version, will there be diplomatic consequences for accepting/denying such a request other than war? Say, traders bringing more goods or offering it cheaper?
Or more generally, will there be any other diplomatic relations besides war and trade caravans at all? Will there be anything the player has an influence on?
I'm thinking about - analogous to the trade requests - deals like encouraging or deterring migrants/visitors (possibly limited to a certain skill profile), recruiting soldiers from other civs for future allied raids, etc.
Yeah, we'd like to do more with it, but we need more systems first. The economy is the ultimate one, but just having the law/property/status stuff should help a bit. Humans for instance could negotiate the status/treatment of humans in your fort, etc. It's unclear of course how it's all going to unfold.
Hey Toady, have you seen this at all?
Dwarf Fortress For The Blind[/color]
The latest discussion about blinking characters isn't as straightforward as a bit-flip -- there are a lot of interleaved timers and so forth, so it's a mess to turn it on and off, and it's also not simple to use background to convey a state like a creature on a ramp (since background colors mean different things already and we'd need to sort that out somehow). There'll be complications like this, and there might not be time to rewrite things a certain way, but I'm up for suggestions or places where I can help on my end (as opposed to mods etc.).
Does artifact theft, looting, etc take into account whether the artifact is currently utilized in a building construction? (A crucial artifact floodgate, for instance.) A question both for how raiders will handle this behind-the-scenes, and when they eventually turn up to take try to diplomatically/forcefully take that artifact floodgate burried deep in the earth and surrounded by lava.
Is/will the accessibility of the artifact within a site (behind walls, etc) be taken into account, either?
What happens to an artifact mission when the artifact is atom-smashed or something similar? Do artifacts generate historical logs about their destruction by these means?
They don't traffic in building-level artifacts to side-step these issues. Thieves are just frustrated by inaccessible artifact, but that doesn't mean a siege won't eventually come into play (not that those are much better in terms of being able to wall them off).
I'm not sure how artifact states react to atom-smashing, since I changed it once pretty early on in this release when I wasn't doing fort mode. I'll make a note to be sure the events and rumors are managed. This would still mean getting some questers/etc. until you pass along the artifact state to them and it gets back to the quest giver, assuming people were coming at all.
Regarding the magic system, are there plans to make magic capable of changing biomes from one type to another? For example, if magic could affect the weather, could it eventually change a rainforest into a desert during world gen, or vice versa?
PatrikLundell gave a full reply to this -- I just wanted to reiterate that change is a major theme of the magic release and something we'll try to work in where we can. It's hard to say which ones will make it in on the first pass (a lot of it will depend on which code is easiest to work with), but broad, deep, permanent changes to the world will be in the cards, as a specific object of the release.
The "Current Development" note 05/06/2017 mentions fortress artifact theft using essentially the same mechanics as current Kobold theft does, which is not going to work to get an artifact unless you deliberately build a very unsafe fortress (and even then, Keas are much more likely to be able to steal an artifact than anything on foot for a pure theft [i.e. no combat] path).
Are there plans to add fortress artifact theft mechanics that have better chances to succeed, and if so, would the target be for later in the current arc or for a future one?
I have to delve into suggestion-y territory to explain what I mean: Something along the line of tavern visitors who just happen to wander into the museum and drop the artifact into their pockets (basically the way vampires operate: hidden in plain sight). However, for this to be balanced, there would need to be some means by which the fortress could deal with those wanderers (guards who react to crimes [or at least theft of artifacts they're set to guard], restricted access areas [artifact thieves and vampires wouldn't respect them, but they would be respected by "legitimate" visitors, such as diplomats and petitioners], working [as in "activated by visitors"] pressure plates/traps or the like), short of just banning all visitors.
It's not going to happen for this time. It's a difficult problem, as you note, to handle, requiring auxiliary mechanics and fairness to the player. DG's mention of the law/crime stuff coming in with adv thieves might indeed be where we end up working more of this in.
Are questers able to attempt to make trades for artifacts in making requests?
As you mention negociations, will it be possible to trade/exchange the requested artefact?
If so, will it be possible to ask for something the attacking army/civ don't currently have (like another artifact) or a specific task (kill that dragon), the attacking army sending then a group of soldier to fulfill the demand?
Nope. Would be cool to do something there, but right now it's all based on good will or something. I have no idea when we'll get to trades of services like that -- it would be great to eventually have a general system in place that'll allow both parties to truly benefit.
1. We can't raid our dwarf-civ but we can attack other dwarf-civs?
2. If yes we will see dwarves siege our fortress in retaliation?
Yeah.
Will artifact thieves in fortress mode enter the map with intuitive knowledge of their target's specific storage location, or will they sneak around until they happen upon it? If the former is true, will the existence and accuracy of such information depend on reports by affiliated agents who witnessed the artifact during prior reconnaissance operations?
It's not practical at this point to have them not know anything once they know the artifact is on-site, both for game reasons (they'd never find it) and because of how rumors work. If it's not a giant nightmare of memory/etc., we could have the artifact rumors contain additional information, and that would also let us loosen up the pathing knowledge for invaders, but not for this release. They won't try to steal a specific artifact without having a rumor, so the reports matter in that sense.
With the new magic system will there be ways mod in races with specific inborn magical skills? Such as telekinesis, mind reading, shape-shifting, ect.
Will the ability to learn and use spells be open to any race or will you be able to define a race that is unable to use 'active' magic.
Also one question to relating to the stuff you've been talking about in the last few FotF reply... (feel free to ignore it)
Will there ever be some sort of modable, perhaps RAW level, file that allows us to add in custom site types (DARK_FORTRESS, CAVE_DETAILED, ECT.) by means of some very basic tile-based RNG thing so we could make a completely new civ type or monster layer?
(The last one I ask because I think it be awesome if we could define a civ type that lives like in underground beehives like structures or great cities that are just one huge tower... Though if it is something that was being thought about it probably be a long while before we get it)
It's unclear exactly what we'll get with modding vs. generation -- the optimistic note is that our creature generators generally create internal raw files with a syntax nearly the same as the public syntax (there are a few private tags, like [GENERATED]). We already have the myth generator side project creating versions of the existing races with inborn skills in particular blood lines, or available to everybody, or learned through study, etc. and some of that should be guidable by modding. The complications comes in through how that ties into the myth which explains it. Ideally, you could require a tag for a creature and force the myth to explain it, or exclude a tag, or leave it up to the generator, but that will require the generator to do some lifting (which we can hopefully manage).
I'm still not sure what'll happen with site raws. Sites are complicated in their intersections with systems in the game, and it's difficult to just set up little modules that will work with everything, though we still hope to land there somehow.
why are those masks currently disabled in both Fortress and Adventure mode?
I'm not sure if I missed something here -- masks are uncommon for goblin civs and rare for human civs, as the raws currently stand, and others don't get them. Were they broken in some way? They aren't explicitly ruled out anywhere. I recollect seeing humans wearing them in a town, but that was years ago.
Coming up next is the Myth & Artifact release
Just to be clear, artifacts only for this one. The myth generator stuff will come with the first magic release afterward.
Although the (hopefully next update) linked up ties to the civ parent of your adventurer groups might cover it, will there be other ways for the world to become aware of artifacts you stashed in your campsite?
...
I more meant like if they will be aware of the location, as right now there is the missing awareness of it as belonging to your parent entity so people only note if they are directly told someone is there/killed there, versus knowing it exists as part of a given civilization's children entities via normal information dispersal.
I might be wrong, since there's a lot of code, some oldish, and I wasn't able to check everything, but I don't know that there is civ-level information transfer like that at all anymore -- there are enough people moving around now that the idea is that rumors spread between sites, and are generally stored at the site-level entity, site "cultural identity", and individuals (there are some civ-level rules from world gen, and maybe a few other places). So the artifact rumor would need to pass around. There's a caveat that if you are seen holding the artifact, they try to track you down, and they have some abstract advantages there (at least until we have more systems in place to make it more workable).
Will we be able to lie to the invaders and redirect/distract them?
"Nope, sorry, you're a week late, unfortunately. It's a real shame, but, as chance would have it, we've just had the Horn of Undulating Phlegm stolen last week by those damn humans from the Clanging Spandex. Very rude of them! I'm sorry you've come all this way, but you'll have to go and poke them with your shiny sticks. You look very tired, could I interest you in some tea?"
Nope, lying still unsupported! Handling false information in the rumor system is a difficult problem. You can withhold information and refuse them if you like, but you can't plant a lie.
Will we get an indication of the size of the invading force when we go out to hear their demands?
If an army is negotiating with you, their army will actually be on the map at the fringes, as if the siege is underway (but they'll be non-hostile). Otherwise, you don't get a really good idea, though you do get population estimates of their cities if you scroll over them in the new view. We could work some stuff into the dialogue eventually.
Will surrendered items count as exports? Stolen items? Will items our raids bring back count as imports?
I think the export numbers are calculated during official merchant trades, so probably not.
(is there) a plan to connect artefacts with noblesse (artefacts as crown and scepter are natural candidats)?
It's at a sort of in-between place right now. There are artifacts officially linked to entity positions, and position holders will wear them coming out of world gen. There are complications getting that to work in fort mode though. There were also apparently complications in world gen... I think there's currently an outstanding issue where a demon leading a goblin civ was caught holding and wearing 25 different artifacts, but I don't remember what percentage of them were official symbols (as opposed to personally treasured trinkets).
Will non-dwarven player entities have different civ-mode raiding actions? Goblins raiding for slaves/babies; Kobolds doing general thievery, with the option of them attacking enemy forces directly, or doing it stealthily.
It would have been cool, but I haven't done any mod support here for unusual tags.
Toady, with the current direction of a diplomacy, could this lead to influencing the decisions of civs/war leaders into actively turning around armies to help you with reinforcements by delivering friendly forces to help fight on the map?
It'd be nice to get some recognition by armies for being a 'safe haven' to rest with the FOB thing Random_Dragon when you actively put your citizens at risk bordering a goblin civilization or in a extremely hostile & monster ridden environment that armies are too scared to cross over.
Anything helps there, though what we really need are better army positioning/fights to get to that sort of thing, so that reinforcements/rescues generally can make sense in a battle (which would last a period of time, instead of the instant battles we have now). An advantage you'd have in the fort is that most sieges would last a number of days, and you'd have time for help to make the abnormally quick journey over the world map -- a downside would be if we required you to get a messenger out, they'd have to get to the edge of the map, so maybe the timing all evens out.
When can we expect to see the sizes of weapons (and possibly other non-resizing items like backpacks) resize in the sense that clothing presently does. By this I mean not that the items resize automatically to fit the creature carrying it but that the actual items are made according to the size of a specific creature. So for instance a sword made for a kobold is far smaller (and lighter) with a lower contact area than a sword made for an elephant person.
I have no idea. It would be nice if giants could suddenly be walking around with giant swords, but there are some exposition complications that stopped it from happening before.
when it comes to tying squads into the larger military side of things, will the 'army' be made up of different dwarf squads doing the same task? I.E instead of telling Squad A to do X, you would 'form an army' consisting of Squad A and Squad B to go do X.
There's a mission screen where you organize which squads are assigned to a given task (the mission is stored internally using the current "army controller" framework, which can coordinate multiple groups in case they get split up). The squad members all leave off the map and join up into an army on the world map (if you've seen them running around in adv mode, that sort of army). When an army returns, the squad members delist their squad from the controller and then they can be sent off again.
On a side note, what will kobold caves end up looking like in terms of population actually existing there and performing normal civilian behavior?
Nobody performs normal civilian behavior except for your dwarves, unless you count wandering around or the w.g. economy. There'll be a few different places in the caves but not much going on, as is usual so far.
The weapon trap crash reminds me - will that also fix the crashes occuring when ammo breaks? It's not as noticable in vanilla, however with my own modpack I noticed that when a certain type of ammo breaks it also causes a crash.
Yeah, it was a problem with the broken item being unlinked from a temporary combat object before it could make the combat announcement, and that unlinking system has been generally updated, so all cases should be fixed.
One of the few usages of the current Civ screen is to allow you to determine if a civ is truly dead (completely blank on embark), and it is the only known way to make that determination. Will the replacement take over that functionality and, if not, is it planned to provide that information in some other way in the next release?
You can still look at the old civ list, the way it used to be (as a menu item), and you can also see approximate populations of towns now from the map.
Moreso a modding related question, but will we eventually be able to have separate graphics for different creature castes?
I have no idea what'll happen there. Creature graphics could be made arbitrarily more complicated, and there's the matter of stuff like item graphics, and what data should be used there (since it could also easily get out of control). I'm sure there are already suggestions on these lines, but whenever we next look at that, we'll be trying to take everything posted over in suggestions into consideration.
When magic's gonna be added, will the npc know how to use it properly?
Example: If they have the ability to conjure an adamantine sword with the cost of their life, will they just kill themselves whenever they feel like, or will they do it when they're about to die in order for someone else to get it?
One of the interesting and core problems of that release will be getting them to tie together effects and costs in their decision-making. There'll be specific work in this direction, but I'm sure it'll still be broken enough that horrifying things happen (as usual).
Poison from poison pets! Awesome, moddable? Usable by players in any way? Poison coated weapons?
We'll know in a few days! It's the stuff I'm working on now. There'll be new mod tags, but I'm not sure how much will escape from kobold land. Trying to avoid tangents, but the kobs needed something.
Author
Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 1444478 times)