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Author Topic: Working on a new "babysitter" species for my dwarven daycare  (Read 695 times)

Ragtatter

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Working on a new "babysitter" species for my dwarven daycare
« on: September 01, 2018, 03:07:01 pm »
I'm trying to design a new species for use in my dwarven daycare. The goal is to have an animal with a sturdy "breeding caste" that produces tons of insane, vicious, but ultimately harmless offspring. So Urist's friendly, affable pet might give birth at any moment to a swarm of small vicious attackers, giving my dwarves a taste of real combat without putting them at TOO much risk for dismemberment.

At the moment, I've managed this by creating two castes with the "crazed" tag that the offspring can be born as, but I was wondering if there was a better method of getting offspring that will attack dwarves. Crazed works, but the drawback is that they attack their parents, too. I've tried to reduce the damage from this by making their parents and non-crazed siblings considerably bigger.

Is there some way to get a creature to change castes as it ages, or maybe have its tags change as it enters a new life-stage? The ideal would be something like babies have the "BENIGN" tag, while adolescents get the "CRAZED" tag. This would serve the double purpose of getting them further from their parents before they "go mad", and helping spread the !!FUN!! further around my fortress.

RAWS below the spoiler tag. I'm open to any suggestions!

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"Born underground, grown inside a rocky womb.
The earth is our cradle, the mountains will become our tomb.
Face us on the battlefield, you WILL meet your doom.
We do not fear what lies beneath,
We can never dig too deep."

pisskop

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Re: Working on a new "babysitter" species for my dwarven daycare
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2018, 03:10:33 pm »
Nerf their attacks?  make rage weasels with the rage such weak attackers they may as well be wearing sockum pillows.
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Demonic Gophers

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Re: Working on a new "babysitter" species for my dwarven daycare
« Reply #2 on: September 01, 2018, 04:13:19 pm »
You could try making the weasels NOT_LIVING, and give the ragers OPPOSED_TO_LIFE.  That should make them attack ordinary living things, but not their parents.  It'd also give them protection from the undead, which might or might not be a problem.

The only way I can think of to make them go through a temporary violent phase is with a multi-stage interaction.  They start off crazed, so that they'll initiate combat quickly.  Once in combat, they should use any interaction with no usage tag.  This could transform them into a peaceful caste, or apply a syndrome with CE_REMOVE_TAG for CRAZED or OPPOSED_TO_LIFE.  After a year it wears off and they start attacking things again.  When they reach adult age, the second stage of the syndrome kicks in and makes them peaceful again.  Make sure the cooldown time is long enough that they die before they can use the interaction again, or get into the final, permanent state of the transformation.
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Ragtatter

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Re: Working on a new "babysitter" species for my dwarven daycare
« Reply #3 on: September 01, 2018, 05:52:23 pm »
Okay, NOT_LIVING/OPPOSED_TO_LIFE is a brilliant solution.

I also seriously nerfed all the combat ability of the "rage" variety, and tested 30 of them against a dwarf in the Arena. I left for dinner after unpausing and was gone for two hours. When I got back, half the weasels were dead, and the rest were trying to bite the dwarf to death. The dwarf had passed out from exhaustion, but other than his head being a little dented and bruised was unharmed.


Updated RAWs:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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"Born underground, grown inside a rocky womb.
The earth is our cradle, the mountains will become our tomb.
Face us on the battlefield, you WILL meet your doom.
We do not fear what lies beneath,
We can never dig too deep."

Ragtatter

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Re: Working on a new "babysitter" species for my dwarven daycare
« Reply #4 on: September 02, 2018, 11:56:10 am »
So, on playtesting in a "live" fort, the game crashed right as the weasels gave birth. Not sure if this is a glitch just due to the sheer amount of offspring, or maybe the game not liking tame pets that are also "opposed to life". I'll have to test it some more.

I'm also wondering if there might be some risks of a loyalty cascade, now that I think about it.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2018, 12:01:30 pm by Ragtatter »
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"Born underground, grown inside a rocky womb.
The earth is our cradle, the mountains will become our tomb.
Face us on the battlefield, you WILL meet your doom.
We do not fear what lies beneath,
We can never dig too deep."