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Author Topic: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.  (Read 931 times)

n2

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Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« on: December 06, 2008, 05:28:17 am »

Dunno if it's already in the future goals or not..

How many items can a person carry? Well that depends on how heavy, and how large they are. If it's a large barrel, you can only haul one (even empty), but if it's wooden sticks (they are small) you can carry a few as a heap with both hands. (lets say, 5 but it's just some random number). But if you tie them with a rope in two heaps, you can carry two heaps (twice as many), one heap in each hand. 5 small stones in a heap or two buckets with 5 stones each. Weight limitations are still there, and buckets will add to weight. A plate armor is large for hauling purposes while a two-handed halberd is medium (you can carry it with one hand, even tho u cant swing it). And so on.
Furthermore, if a dwarf is using pushcart, the weight he can carry is multiplied while size depends on cart. A larger cart will occupy additional grid. An animal pulling a cart is even better, but it would take two grids for animal and cart, and a dwarf walking and controlling the animal, which takes a special skill. (still, a dwarf with his animal and cart is performing a hauling job). Now that's some use for all those mules! Although carts can't be used on stairs (need ramps).

A ladder is a tricky thing as it can be used differently and I don't know which way would be better in DF.
1) An item any idiot can use. No special skills are needed to just place a ladder so that it stands on the ground at its lower end and is leaning on the floor 1 level higher. It has the same direction limitations as a ramp, also at least one free hand (and at least one leg) is needed to climb it, meaning animals can't do that. (And shuddup about cats, it's an almost vertical ladder, ok?). It's possible to place it from above or below.
The upper grid is a hole for other purposes (drop items etc).
1a) long portable ladders? Not needed tho.
1b) portable ladder in adventurer mode. May become useful as the world becomes more interesting with game development.
2) a ladder can be mounted in place, firmly and vertically, as those fire escape staircases on buildings. It is connected to the floor at it's upper end, raising a bit above it, and at its lower end it's connected to the wall, the floor, or a ladder one level lower to make longer staircase. Not sure about direction limitations (from where to get on/off a staircase), but it has no "empty space 1 lever higher" requirement as a ramp, and a hole with a staircase is still a hole (drop items etc). Mounting a ladder this way may need some skills. Also, one hand, one leg, no animals.

- "One hand" is obviously related to item sizes.
- Someone climbing a ladder will fall down if damaged (an easy target for archers)
- Ladders will prevent animals from going where they shouldn't.

If I were to add something else, items should have a chance to break from falling, depending on material, quality, type and falling height.

PS. sry for my engrish, as it's not my native.
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Kashyyk

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #1 on: December 06, 2008, 10:25:14 am »

I like the gist of it. Seconded.
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Tormy

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #2 on: December 06, 2008, 10:52:41 am »

Right now the system is absolutely unrealistic. One dwarf can carry a caged dragon. I am pretty sure that Toady will work on this part of the game to make it realistic...however I don't know that how will it work. If we would like to see some realism, lifting and moving something like a caged dragon would require at least 20 dwarves I guess. Perhaps if we gonna have tracks that would be a good method to transport heavy objects on those using big mining carts or something like that.
Also, the max. weight what an entity can carry must depend on the SIZE of the creature and his/her strength. Also the type and number of bodyparts is also important. What if a creature has no arms for example?
« Last Edit: December 06, 2008, 10:56:04 am by Tormy »
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n2

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #3 on: December 06, 2008, 11:13:33 am »

Right now the system is absolutely unrealistic. One dwarf can carry a caged dragon.
What's unrealistic is that a dragon can fit in the cage. Still, carrying even a cow is not something an average person can do.
Quote
Also, the max. weight what an entity can carry must depend on the SIZE of the creature and his/her strength. Also the type and number of bodyparts is also important. What if a creature has no arms for example?
Max weight can be defined for each race with strength as a modifier, which is another way to do the same thing.
But it's a good point, item size should be related to creature size rather than be an absolute value.
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Warlord255

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #4 on: December 06, 2008, 04:33:48 pm »

Clothing hauling.

'Nuff said.
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Tormy

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2008, 04:43:27 pm »

Right now the system is absolutely unrealistic. One dwarf can carry a caged dragon.
What's unrealistic is that a dragon can fit in the cage. Still, carrying even a cow is not something an average person can do.
Quote
Also, the max. weight what an entity can carry must depend on the SIZE of the creature and his/her strength. Also the type and number of bodyparts is also important. What if a creature has no arms for example?
Max weight can be defined for each race with strength as a modifier, which is another way to do the same thing.
But it's a good point, item size should be related to creature size rather than be an absolute value.

1 cage can contain unlimited number of creatures right now.  ;)
Hopefully something will happen about this. The sooner the better.
So.. cages/containers etc. will need to have a predefined max. storage capacity. Since bigger creatures wouldn't fit into the ordinary cages, we will need to have different sized cages also. [I guess it would be easy to modify these in the RAWs anyway..]
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LegacyCWAL

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2008, 08:00:40 pm »

Also, the max. weight what an entity can carry must depend on the SIZE of the creature and his/her strength. Also the type and number of bodyparts is also important. What if a creature has no arms for example?
Size should not have any effect on how much a creature can carry, only strength.

Hell, if anything, being bigger would make something weaker.  The ant is a perfect example: it can carry many times its weight, but if you scaled it up to a large size, it would be crushed under the weight of its own skeleton.
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n2

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #7 on: December 07, 2008, 02:10:17 am »

Size should not have any effect on how much a creature can carry, only strength.
Rather, size has effect on how big or many, not how heavy a thing can a creature carry.

Quote
Hell, if anything, being bigger would make something weaker.  The ant is a perfect example
Tell it to giant cave spiders T_T
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Tormy

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #8 on: December 07, 2008, 08:05:12 am »

Also, the max. weight what an entity can carry must depend on the SIZE of the creature and his/her strength. Also the type and number of bodyparts is also important. What if a creature has no arms for example?
Size should not have any effect on how much a creature can carry, only strength.

Hell, if anything, being bigger would make something weaker.  The ant is a perfect example: it can carry many times its weight, but if you scaled it up to a large size, it would be crushed under the weight of its own skeleton.

Nop, I don't think so. If a creature is bigger it must have a higher max. strength value in most of the cases. [Just think about humans...a "human dwarf" powerlifter can be extremely strong, we've seen it in some videos...but he is nowhere near as strong as a 2m10cm/150kg extremely strong "human giant" powerlifter.
So strength must scale with SIZE...but not always! Some creatures can be huge but quite weak [compared to their size].
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LegacyCWAL

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2008, 01:23:36 pm »

Like I said, that's strength, not size.

Bigger creatures of a given species tend to be stronger than smaller creatures of the same species due to anatomy.  However, as species size increases, volume goes up a hell of a lot faster than strength can, winding up with the exact effect I talked about: an elephant-sized ant would be crushed under its own body weight.

Keep in mind now, that does not mean you can't give bigger creatures a higher strength score.  Like the aforementioned GCS.  A creature can be however strong you want it to be.  But in the algorythm, to calculate carrying capacity, it should ONLY factor in that strength score.  For example, consider three creatures (with otherwise comparable anatomy)*:
1) SIZE:1, STR:2
2) SIZE:1, STR:15
3) SIZE:10, STR:15
#2 and #3 should have the exact same carrying capacity as each other, #1 should have a hell of a lot lower carrying capacity than the other two.



*Numbers and stats pulled completely out of my ass for the sake of illustration.
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Creamcorn

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Re: Item sizes, hauling and ladders again. Falling items break.
« Reply #10 on: December 07, 2008, 01:31:03 pm »

Clothing hauling.

'Nuff said.

AH YES! Clothing should have a foldable tag on it/stackable folding!

I guess I aprove of this thread.
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