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[kingofthehour]

1. Will offsite squads be able to destroy, pillage, or conquer sites or just take artifacts.   

[Shonai_Dweller]

1. Will offsite squads be able to destroy, pillage, or conquer sites or just take artifacts.   

As Toady said last month. Not at first. Attacking stuff is hard. This release is about artifact hunting.

[Inarius]

During world time, (or after) does older dragons have better chance to survive an encounter than younger ones ?

[iceball3]

During world time, (or after) does older dragons have better chance to survive an encounter than younger ones ?

If I'm not mistaken, seeing as dragons gradually get larger as they age (up to a cap), assuming the dragon didn't start off at full-grown age, it'll gradually get bigger and thusly become a stronger combatant for the combat simulations that take place during worldgen.

[Inarius]

Yes, but worldgen fights are not exactly calculated as the "normal" fights.
That's why you can see watery-blob titans lasting 1000 years, even if they could be one shot by a single handed kobold.
Hence my question.

[Urist Tilaturist]

If the technology cutoff date is 1400, when are we going to see primitive cannon in the game? They can smash through armour and megabeasts with ease, but are very unreliable and prone to explode, which seems suitably dwarven.

[DG]

Which seems suitable for DF Suggestions where it has been suggested already.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Did we get any reply in DF Suggestions?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Did we get any reply in DF Suggestions?

Every single suggestion is read and noted by Toady. There are more than 14000 threads there, he's not going to comment on them. Because pretty much every time the answer will be. "Yeah, cool, one day, no schedule." Same as you get here when you ask questions about the far future.

As it happens, Toady has commented on gunpowder in the past. You'd have to Google it yourself but my vague recollection is that once it was 'no way' and now it's 'not out of the question, like anything else'. Possibly. Might be misremembering.

[Urist Tilaturist]

I'd be surprised if it was "no way" given the 1400 cutoff. In order to exclude gunpowder the cutoff would be back in the early middle ages, before the Song dynasty, so no 2 hand swords or plate cuirasses either.

[Inarius]

I remember he wanted not to ask industrial gunpowder and guns and things like this, but didn't want to exclude completely the use of explosive powder, more or less.
Anyway, the fact that there are plate cuirasses 2 hand swords or the fact that it is historical or not is not the question : remember we are speaking of a game named Dwarf Fortress, with dragons, artifact, magic, vampires and adamantine...

[Urist Tilaturist]

Gunpowder isn't remotely close to industrial age technology. The first battlefield use of firearms was in 1132.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I'd be surprised if it was "no way" given the 1400 cutoff. In order to exclude gunpowder the cutoff would be back in the early middle ages, before the Tang dynasty, so no 2 hand swords or plate cuirasses either.

Well, like I say, I don't recall the original comments much. They were quite probably just a false rumour mentioned by someone like the many ancient 'Toady hates modders' and 'Toady hates sex' rumours which somehow persist.

Anyhow, 1400 isn't a strict number. This is still a fantasy game. And since the variant of fantasy worlds available is about to expand rapidly beyond what was first imagined 10 years ago, I imagine nothing's completely out of the question any more.

[Urist Tilaturist]

I remember he wanted not to ask industrial gunpowder and guns and things like this, but didn't want to exclude completely the use of explosive powder, more or less.
Anyway, the fact that there are plate cuirasses 2 hand swords or the fact that it is historical or not is not the question : remember we are speaking of a game named Dwarf Fortress, with dragons, artifact, magic, vampires and adamantine...

Toady said that technology past 1400 wouldn't appear in game. This doesn't include cannon, which first appeared in the 12th century. The fantasy elements are added onto that technology level.

Gunpowder weapons predate full plate armour and 2 hand swords, so if the game is going for a pseudo-medieval feel they should be included. I'm obviously not asking for modern rifles to be added.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Ancient interview with Toady in which he says...something about gunpowder (but certainly no Steam Punk):

   And we’ve even got someone now who volunteered to research ancient medieval medicine.  And he has sent me some great summaries of the different things that came in and that directly influenced my healthcare changes I’ve been making over the past months.  Couple months.  And you know what was practical back then and so on.  Cause we have a general constraint.  It’s not – I mean it’s not something we could adhere to fully, but the basic idea is that anything prior to the 1400s is fair game for technologies and so on.  And that includes more than most people think because there were some advanced civilizations back then.  And you also kind of want to pick a model for things we’re gonna use.  We’re gonna end up using the kind of 800s Arabian chemistry model, cause they did a lot of interesting things that seem very dwarfy. 

   But we’re not gonna use – we might have this as an optional thing because a lot of people want to see, like gunpowder for instance.  But that’s the kind of thing that’s prone to cause arguments.  And that’s something where we don’t care about it so much.  And we’re gonna kind of have a – go with what the undercurrents of the community are on that. 

   But there’s other things like there’s an undercurrent of people that want steam _____ for example.  And are interested in steam engines and Jules Vern type contraptions and stuff.  And we just, I mean that seems kind of like a fad that’s remerged _______ really interested in that.  We weren’t particularly interested in and it’s seen a lot of use in games recently, so we’re just not gonna do that. 

But, as I say, that was 8 years ago. Now we're moving onto "create any kind of fantasy world - Let's go beyond Tolkien!". So all that could have changed now.