Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[FantasticDorf]

Its nice to see the question i raised a long time ago about what happens in the case of animal theives being finally answered.

> Is there a extremely minute chance that keas arriving from off the map could already have stolen artifacts or stolen objects that you could take off them?

Work through murdering the kea population and you might get your anvil back that was stolen in the summer of the first year. 

[Shonai_Dweller]

Its nice to see the question i raised a long time ago about what happens in the case of animal theives being finally answered.

> Is there a extremely minute chance that keas arriving from off the map could already have stolen artifacts or stolen objects that you could take off them?

Work through murdering the kea population and you might get your anvil back that was stolen in the summer of the first year. 

Is every single object going to be tracked? Seems like it's only artifacts in the next release. Question is fine, just don't expect your anvil back any time soon.

Although I guess objects stolen by kea who are already historical are tracked too.

[AceSV]

As artifacts grow in power over future releases, might we see animals that steal artifacts become elevated to greater status? 
For example:  The assumption is that artifacts will eventually become like The One Ring or Excalibur, so would a kea that steals The One Ring become a Gollum-like creature, or would a kea that steals Excalibur become King of the Britons? 

[Shonai_Dweller]

As artifacts grow in power over future releases, might we see animals that steal artifacts become elevated to greater status? 
For example:  The assumption is that artifacts will eventually become like The One Ring or Excalibur, so would a kea that steals The One Ring become a Gollum-like creature, or would a kea that steals Excalibur become King of the Britons? 

Since neither of those objects ever corrupted a dumb animal, it's not a very useful comparison. Are there any actual examples from literature of artifacts causing animals to become intelligent and try to take over sapient civilizations?

[FantasticDorf]

Well if its a primordial force object (going off the mythgen talks), it'd be interesting for a stolen magical/natural artifact to have some kind of effect on them such as turning them into a kea-man or growing tenfold & sprouting tentacles under the influence of negative chaos energy if they've managed to swipe such a powerful evil artifact.

As artifacts grow in power over future releases, might we see animals that steal artifacts become elevated to greater status? 
For example:  The assumption is that artifacts will eventually become like The One Ring or Excalibur, so would a kea that steals The One Ring become a Gollum-like creature, or would a kea that steals Excalibur become King of the Britons? 

Since neither of those objects ever corrupted a dumb animal, it's not a very useful comparison. Are there any actual examples from literature of artifacts causing animals to become intelligent and try to take over sapient civilizations?

In literature probably not unless you sort of reference the island of doctor moreau by H.G wells as being a misdirected attempt to conquer the world with animalmen, also one of threetoes ASCII stories touches upon a evil wizard commanding apemen.

I doubt we'll be seeing Throgg the Trogg or Troll King (if you get the warhammer reference) in our cavern embark as per botched magical accident giving them full intelligence & malevolence anytime soon.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Well if its a primordial force object (going off the mythgen talks), it'd be interesting for a stolen magical/natural artifact to have some kind of effect on them such as turning them into a kea-man or growing tenfold & sprouting tentacles under the influence of negative chaos energy if they've managed to swipe such a powerful evil artifact.

As artifacts grow in power over future releases, might we see animals that steal artifacts become elevated to greater status? 
For example:  The assumption is that artifacts will eventually become like The One Ring or Excalibur, so would a kea that steals The One Ring become a Gollum-like creature, or would a kea that steals Excalibur become King of the Britons? 

Since neither of those objects ever corrupted a dumb animal, it's not a very useful comparison. Are there any actual examples from literature of artifacts causing animals to become intelligent and try to take over sapient civilizations?

In literature probably not unless you sort of reference the island of doctor moreau by H.G wells as being a misdirected attempt to conquer the world with animalmen, also one of threetoes ASCII stories touches upon a evil wizard commanding apemen.

I doubt we'll be seeing Throgg the Trogg or Troll King (if you get the warhammer reference) in our cavern embark as per botched magical accident giving them full intelligence & malevolence anytime soon.

Ah yes, I can well imagine the origin of animal-men in mythgen being the result of a bunch of rhesus macaques messing with the harp of fate. That's kind of artifact related. While both Dr Moreau and the threetoe story wizard followed the general trope of an evil sapient corrupting or enslaving innocent beasts, which is more the way I imagine DF stories to end up (who knows though!). 

[AceSV]

Since neither of those objects ever corrupted a dumb animal, it's not a very useful comparison. Are there any actual examples from literature of artifacts causing animals to become intelligent and try to take over sapient civilizations?

So I guess the technical DF question would be, if an artifact gives whoever "possesses" it some kind of power, will the simulation require the possessor to be [INTELLIGENT] to benefit from those powers. 

In the case of The One Ring, whoever wore it could become invisible.  A kea probably wouldn't think to wear it or might not be physically able to, so no invisibility for the kea.  But, The One Ring had a will of its own and corrupted its surroundings to try and return itself to Sauron.  So it would stand to reason that The One Ring would still try to manipulate the kea for this purpose, and give the kea whatever power was appropriate to accomplish this task.  The question then still being whether The One Ring requires that the creature has a minimum level of intelligence in order to have power over it, and then whether a kea in fact possesses that much intelligence, since parrots in general are as smart as human children and keas are particularly intelligent among parrots. 

In the case of Excalibur, (technically, in earlier tales, The Sword in the Stone, which is not the same sword as Excalibur) the civilization of Britons had decided that whoever possessed the sword was rightful heir to Uther Pendragon and King of the Britons, the implication being that God would deliver Excalibur to its rightful owner.  I would imagine that there have been similar artifacts in history, mythology or literature.  So the question is, would the DF Britons decide that a kea who wanders off with Excalibur has been chosen by God to lead them as the heir of Uther Pendragon, or in a sufficiently fantastical setting, could God in fact send a kea to steal Excalibur and thereby usurp the throne of the Britons? 

(that's getting sig'd) 

[Shonai_Dweller]

I think you're better off waiting for the mythgen release to start work before demanding intricate details about the far future. Doubt you'll get much besides. 'Dunno, we'll see when we start thinking about it'.

[Random_Dragon]

Minor nitpick, the sword in the stone wasn't Excalibur. Now, I wonder what'd happen if a kea made off with the sword in the stone...would the stone come along for the ride, since an annoying little parrot is unlikely to be the rightful king?

And what happens if dwarven Britons weaponize this by trying to shoot would-be-king keas out of the sky while they're carrying the sword in the stone, stone and all, over the heads of a goblin army?

[FantasticDorf]

Depends on how strict the terms of ownership would be, would make a amusing & dwarf-eccentric bug report on Mantis to have a civil-war caused by a loyalty cascade over whether a kea that has stolen a heirloom is the rightful heir.

> Do/will artifacts carry a [DIFFICULTY] rating to determine how much of a priority they are in a quest compared to say killing some low level beasts or are they all on the 'same level' of quest requests

[Valtam]

Depends on how strict the terms of ownership would be, would make a amusing & dwarf-eccentric bug report on Mantis to have a civil-war caused by a loyalty cascade over whether a kea that has stolen a heirloom is the rightful heir.

> Do/will artifacts carry a [DIFFICULTY] rating to determine how much of a priority they are in a quest compared to say killing some low level beasts or are they all on the 'same level' of quest requests

I believe they won't carry it during this pass, as (I believe from last time I checked) we currently don't have difficulty ratings for murder quests either. If you ask your current liege or commander about what to do next as a fresh recruit, they won't hesitate to ask you to kill a Bronze Colossus, and they probably don't know yet that such a quest won't be easily accomplished (unless there is an underlying King Pelias motivation that is not conveyed through text).

Going to check the wiki and raws, but haven't seen that thing.

[Egan_BW]

Of course the rightful king is a kea. I see no other possibility.

[LordBaal]

Ratmen from warhammer comes to mind. Granted is not an artifact per se but replace warpstone with artifact on the narrative and it would be more or less the same.

[exdeath]

You told something about cylinder worlds, will the game support toroidal planet? Stuff like this thing presented here http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2014/02/torusearth.html ?

[mikekchar]

Not trying to dismiss the question, but I struggle to understand the interest for non-flat worlds.  If you think about it from a "realistic" perspective, DF worlds are not big enough to form spheres (or at least not big enough to form spheres and also have earth-like gravity).  Although, the linked article asks the question, "Can torroidal worlds exist", I will spoil it by saying that they can't form naturally -- accretion disks have a maximum particle size.  Above that particle size, the particles come together with their own gravity and form moons -- that eventually clear the disk (see the rings of Saturn for a great example).  And even if you built a torroidal world, the size you would require in order for it to have earth-like gravity would be much greater than DF allows (though, I have to check the density of slade to be sure...)

To me flat maps make the most sense -- you are playing on a section of a spheroidal world.  The map is a projection onto a 2 dimensional square.  It sucks that you can't go beyond the edge of the map but that's a technical limitation of the game.  Not only does it make the most sense, but it is also exactly what you find with most fantasy literature (probably because everyone is copying Tolkien, but still...).  I remember thinking that even Naruto has this square map and no mention is ever made about what happens when you wander off the map (despite being able to go to the moon...).

What might be cool is to have some explanation why you can't get through these square sections -- and/or possibly making the sections non-square.  For example, in a site, your other-worldly influence can only extend so far and when dwarfs are outside of the site, they are no longer influenced by/visible to you.  Similarly, Armok's view only extends to a section of a planet and so the god seals it off so as to avoid unwanted interference. But I am rapidly descending into suggestion territory.