Print

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

[Asi Kom, Legendary Scribe]

Will we be able to send out our own spies to neighboring civilizations in order to gather information about other civs and their intentions in fortress mode? Not in an aggressive manner I mean, but in a "I like to know what's going on to keep the peace" kind of way

[PatrikLundell]

Will we be able to send out our own spies to neighboring civilizations in order to gather information about other civs and their intentions in fortress mode? Not in an aggressive manner I mean, but in a "I like to know what's going on to keep the peace" kind of way

The convention is to use lime green for questions to Toady. This is to allow him to locate questions among all the discussions when it comes to answering them (you can update your post to add the color).

It can also be noted that a fortress is not a civ, but a unit within a civ, so that level of activity is beyond fortress players (who, asymmetrically, can goad civs into wars by attacking their sites [or just by refusing unreasonable pointy ear demands], but can't broker peace). However, it seems likely fortresses will be able to engage in some kind of spying against individual sites (which might sum up to every site owned by that civ). Exactly what will appear remains to be seen, however, as Toady hasn't reached Fortress Mode yet. While he doubtlessly has plans and intentions, issues can and will crop up, causing some plans to be shelved for the time being.

[Death Dragon]

"Bribes, reputation, presented evidence and the new relationship variables 'loyalty', 'trust/distrust', 'fear', 'love/hate', and 'respect' are all in the mix."
1 Does the player have any way to change the 'loyalty', 'trust/distrust', 'fear', 'love/hate', 'respect' values an NPC has to them or are we stuck with the default values? I could see it be possible to increase the fear and maybe respect values, but what about the other stuff?
2 Would reciting a poem exceptionally well make an NPC respect us more and thus more likely to share secret information with us?
3 Will we be able to use coins to bribe people even though there is no economy?
4 If we are able to bribe people with money, will this money then be added to that hist fig's "account" or are the accounts still just world gen only for now?

[squamous]

1. Given that vampires will be getting such an overhaul come next update, can we expect something like being able to ask for/demand blood and gain it in a non-violent/non-lethal fashion, or will NPCs continue to be murderous? On that note, is there a way to create vampires which need to feed on blood, but don't have the BLOODSUCKER tag? I've tried experimenting with just using [CE:COUNTER_TRIGGER:DRINKING_BLOOD:1:NONE:REQUIRED] but it didn't seem to work.
2. I've noticed that sometimes when I put an adventurer in cities, they'll run into asterisks which will turn out to be things like crocodiles and cave dragons in the streets. Are these LARGE_PREDATOR type animals conducting raids on the town or do they live in the sewers or something and come out to cause mischief?

[Untrustedlife]

1. Given that vampires will be getting such an overhaul come next update, can we expect something like being able to ask for/demand blood and gain it in a non-violent/non-lethal fashion, or will NPCs continue to be murderous? On that note, is there a way to create vampires which need to feed on blood, but don't have the BLOODSUCKER tag? I've tried experimenting with just using [CE:COUNTER_TRIGGER:DRINKING_BLOOD:1:NONE:REQUIRED] but it didn't seem to work.
2. I've noticed that sometimes when I put an adventurer in cities, they'll run into asterisks which will turn out to be things like crocodiles and cave dragons in the streets. Are these LARGE_PREDATOR type animals conducting raids on the town or do they live in the sewers or something and come out to cause mischief?

Asterisks on the map can be various things, armies, adventurers, monsters, etc,
Its not just monsters from the sewers, it can be raiders, or things from the sewers or anything in between. It just means "someone is traveling here" basically. So they could be from anywhere.
Most of the monsters taht are asterisks though are from lairs surrounding the city. Not from the sewers So raiding monsters.

[squamous]

1. Given that vampires will be getting such an overhaul come next update, can we expect something like being able to ask for/demand blood and gain it in a non-violent/non-lethal fashion, or will NPCs continue to be murderous? On that note, is there a way to create vampires which need to feed on blood, but don't have the BLOODSUCKER tag? I've tried experimenting with just using [CE:COUNTER_TRIGGER:DRINKING_BLOOD:1:NONE:REQUIRED] but it didn't seem to work.
2. I've noticed that sometimes when I put an adventurer in cities, they'll run into asterisks which will turn out to be things like crocodiles and cave dragons in the streets. Are these LARGE_PREDATOR type animals conducting raids on the town or do they live in the sewers or something and come out to cause mischief?

Asterisks on the map can be various things, armies, adventurers, monsters, etc,
Its not just monsters from the sewers, it can be raiders, or things from the sewers or anything in between. It just means "someone is traveling here" basically. So they could be from anywhere.
Most of the monsters taht are asterisks though are from lairs surrounding the city. Not from the sewers So raiding monsters.

I see. Maybe this is a bug on Legendsviewer then, because there are a bunch of animals listed as "outcasts" like how criminals are outcasts, not like how normal LARGE_PREDATOR types are treated.

[Untrustedlife]

1. Given that vampires will be getting such an overhaul come next update, can we expect something like being able to ask for/demand blood and gain it in a non-violent/non-lethal fashion, or will NPCs continue to be murderous? On that note, is there a way to create vampires which need to feed on blood, but don't have the BLOODSUCKER tag? I've tried experimenting with just using [CE:COUNTER_TRIGGER:DRINKING_BLOOD:1:NONE:REQUIRED] but it didn't seem to work.
2. I've noticed that sometimes when I put an adventurer in cities, they'll run into asterisks which will turn out to be things like crocodiles and cave dragons in the streets. Are these LARGE_PREDATOR type animals conducting raids on the town or do they live in the sewers or something and come out to cause mischief?

Asterisks on the map can be various things, armies, adventurers, monsters, etc,
Its not just monsters from the sewers, it can be raiders, or things from the sewers or anything in between. It just means "someone is traveling here" basically. So they could be from anywhere.
Most of the monsters taht are asterisks though are from lairs surrounding the city. Not from the sewers So raiding monsters.

I see. Maybe this is a bug on Legendsviewer then, because there are a bunch of animals listed as "outcasts" like how criminals are outcasts, not like how normal LARGE_PREDATOR types are treated.

My point was they can be from the sewers aswell, its just that most of them are from lairs

[Enemy post]

What happens if a necromancer tries to incorporate a modded creature with custom bodyparts into one of their hybrid creatures?

[Shonai_Dweller]

What happens if a necromancer tries to incorporate a modded creature with custom bodyparts into one of their hybrid creatures?

Dwarf Fortress creatures are made up of body parts which the system understands. Won't cause any problems, I imagine.

[voliol]

What happens if a necromancer tries to incorporate a modded creature with custom bodyparts into one of their hybrid creatures?

The experiments are seemingly not very dependent on the source material, they seemingly mostly count limbs. I suppose if you had a centipede-creature as either your main race or lifestock you could get some funny results.

[...]
an individual necromancer sticks with one of each kind once they have a successful experiment (that is humanoid, small quad+, large quad+, giant.)
[...]

Will magical experiments have different traits depending on what creatures they were made from? For example, a creature made from elfs being at peace with wildlife.

EDIT: A better example would be a creature made from dwarves needing alcohol.

EternalCaveDragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8005095#msg8005095

Haven't done anything like that yet!  The creature generator does understand the input creature (at least on the first humanoid, before it starts defaulting to the same result to save memory), but doesn't use it beyond counting limbs and stuff to see if the output should be humanoid/quadruped/etc. and also the basic size.

I guess it is interesting that the word "humanoid" is used. Are the "humanoid" necromancer experiments actually humanoids, made from any captured creature with the right body plan (uses one of the HUMANOID body tokens, or has the right amount of stance/grasp parts), including livestock that do? Or is it just a shorthand for an INTELLIGENT/CAN_LEARN creature, in which case "humanoid" experiments from snakeman and centaur civilizations would not end up truly humanoid?

[squamous]

1. Given that vampires will be getting such an overhaul come next update, can we expect something like being able to ask for/demand blood and gain it in a non-violent/non-lethal fashion, or will NPCs continue to be murderous? On that note, is there a way to create vampires which need to feed on blood, but don't have the BLOODSUCKER (ie murdering people in their sleep behavior trigger) tag? I've tried experimenting with just using [CE:COUNTER_TRIGGER:DRINKING_BLOOD:1:NONE:REQUIRED] but it didn't seem to work.
2. I've noticed that sometimes when I put an adventurer in cities, they'll run into asterisks which will turn out to be things like crocodiles and cave dragons in the streets. Are these LARGE_PREDATOR type animals conducting raids on the town or do they live in the sewers or something and come out to cause mischief?

Asterisks on the map can be various things, armies, adventurers, monsters, etc,
Its not just monsters from the sewers, it can be raiders, or things from the sewers or anything in between. It just means "someone is traveling here" basically. So they could be from anywhere.
Most of the monsters taht are asterisks though are from lairs surrounding the city. Not from the sewers So raiding monsters.

[Bydth]

Will the activities of a player fort influence its post-retire activities, such as a fort with a powerhouse glass industry continuing to export glass objects? Will forts that produced lots of high-quality weapons and armor give equipment level bonuses to armies/mercenary groups recruited/based in that fort?

[Bumber]

Will the activities of a player fort influence its post-retire activities, such as a fort with a powerhouse glass industry continuing to export glass objects? Will forts that produced lots of high-quality weapons and armor give equipment level bonuses to armies/mercenary groups recruited/based in that fort?

That's something for the Economy Arc, a ways off.

[Buttery_Mess]

For the Myth & Magic arc, would I be correct in thinking that spheres will be the underlying general mechanic behind magic under which procedurally generated world-specific systems operate, rather than being an esoteric world-specific system in its own right?

Do you conceive of magical effects combining spheres, or will reach magical effect require only one sphere to use? For instance, would you need to or be able to combine a fire and a telekinetic sphere 8n order to cast a fireball spell (i.e one sphere to make the fire, another to move it)?

Will every game object be attached to a sphere and vice versa, for mechanical purposes? I'm thinking of elemental rock-paper-scissors, so you could smash a stone forgotten beast with a water effect but not a lightning effect, for instance. With so many spheres and game objects/actors, would this be impractical or would it simplify working out how magical effects interact with the world?

To what extent do you already have satisfactory physical processes implemented in the game for marrying up to spell effects? For example, fire, heat, etc.

Is there a possibility that the Myth and Magic release will lead to the inclusion of ambient light levels in fort mode? Light and darkness are such important fantasy staples that it would seem like a missed opportunity for them to not be included.

[PatrikLundell]

If I understand it correctly, sphere selection is an earlier step in the world creation process from which a number of world effects are generated, including magic (although not the only source, as magic prevalence and potency are slider settings).

I'd expect there to be both single sphere magic (effects) as well as multiple sphere ones, with various pre conditions, where some spells/rituals may only be possible in locations where all the required spheres have a sufficient influence, for instance, while others can be invoked regardless of active sphere influences (possibly barring opposing sphere influences), using thoughts, focii, etc.

You can't assign all objects to spheres in a reasonable manner. One reason is the fully mundane world, where there are no spheres at all, and the other issue is that the spheres present in a world depends on world gen, so many, quite possible most, spheres will be absent in many (or most, or all) worlds (with the selection of the spheres present being different in different world, of course).

However, it's quite possible items might be tagged with sphere associations that might have some chance of being realized if the specifice sphere is present. E.g. an anvil may be an ordinary anvil, but in some worlds it may also have some special relation to fire, while in another (or the same one) it may have a relation to metal and/or artifice.
In most magic systems I would expect associated object (or shape or color, for that matter) to just have a potential, i.e. dropping an anvil on something would cause physical damage (that may or may not be resisted), but to invoke a sphere relation in addition to that you'd also have to do something to activate the relation.

I don't see why Myth & Magic would be tied to introduction of fortress light sources at all. Adding light sources to Fortress Mode would result in adding a need to set them up (player chore), and possibly maintain them (workforce drain), as well as additional burden on the display system (shading tiles depending on the amount of light on each tile), causing display FPS drain.
A further question is what purpose it would serve apart from the aesthetic? I certainly can see a use for it in Adventure Mode, but there's limited use for it in a Fortress. The accelerated time means sneaking under the cloak of darkness for nefarious critters doesn't work well on the surface, while the general stealth system currently used by weres, kobolds, etc. does work without regards to the time of day (which isn't readily available to the player anyway).