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Author Topic: Flexible metal assignment to entities.  (Read 1109 times)

Captain Mayday

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Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« on: December 12, 2008, 04:45:58 am »

Hello

Currently the game seems to follow some vague method for obtaining which metals the civs are to use for their items.

Let us consider another method. Please see the following example of a tag.
[METAL_USE:<metalname>:<freq>]
For simplicity, all standard metals are assumed to be at 1. All Deep metals are assumed to be at 0.
Modifying these can be achieved by altering specific metal frequencies.
There should be a master control for this called ALL_METALS which includes all non-deep metals.
Thus by giving humans the following:
[METAL_USE:STEEL:0]
We can ensure that humans do not traditionally have items made of steel.
By the same token, we can use the following
[METAL_USE:ALL_METALS:10]
[METAL_USE:ADAMANTINE:1]
To give an entity the ability to have rare Adamantine items.
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Neoskel

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #1 on: December 12, 2008, 07:32:57 am »

This would also allow the modding of a bronze colossus entity which only uses bronze equipment. I like it.
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Neonivek

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #2 on: December 12, 2008, 07:45:57 am »

Toady kinda wants Civilisations to use metals that they have access to instead including some creatures.

I guess these tags are in a way sorta of legal cheating :D
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Captain Mayday

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #3 on: December 12, 2008, 07:48:03 am »

Toady kinda wants Civilisations to use metals that they have access to instead including some creatures.

I guess these tags are in a way sorta of legal cheating :D

Hm. This is a fair point. However my Tigermen, Lizardmen etc dwell exclusively not in the mountains and they get all my DEEP metals. I don't know what is causing this.
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TrombonistAndrew

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #4 on: December 12, 2008, 09:09:36 am »

So maybe you want to specify limits to what metals a civilization can use, and it'll still be up to them to go find the resources they can actually use?
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Warlord255

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #5 on: December 12, 2008, 06:26:49 pm »

So maybe you want to specify limits to what metals a civilization can use, and it'll still be up to them to go find the resources they can actually use?

A fair compromise.
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Untelligent

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #6 on: December 12, 2008, 08:28:39 pm »

Except that won't work with entities with access to a creature whose parts they can smelt to gain access to an otherwise unfindable metal.

Perhaps a system identical to the one we currently have, albeit with tokens that guarantee a civilization's use of specific metals?


Wait, hold on, I thought of a better idea: a more intelligent system that looks at reactions when determining what a civ can start with. For example:


Reaction: widget A plus wodget B equals metal C.

If civ Q has access to widget A and wodget B, give civ access to metal C.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2008, 08:36:04 pm by Untelligent »
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Mephansteras

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #7 on: December 13, 2008, 12:35:43 pm »

Hmmm...but I think the reason Humans don't get steel in the current version is that they aren't technologically advanced enough to make it, not that they don't have access to the resources.

So maybe we need some way to set technological levels for races to be able to do stuff?

So, if we had a smelting technology level we could have this progression:
0 - No metal
1 - Copper, other low melting point base metals
2 - Basic alloys, like Bronze, and higher melting point metals like Iron
3 - Complex alloys, like Steel

We could have a similar technology level/ability for mining.
0 - No mining, maybe dirt digging (kobalds)
1 - Slow mining (humans)
2 - Moderate mining/tunnels (goblins)
3 - Fast, deep mining (dwarves) (could find Deep metals)

Thoughts?

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Granite26

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #8 on: December 13, 2008, 01:40:33 pm »

I think that that is too hard coded.  How about defining individual technologies (reactions) into each race, or using something similar to the body structure.  (I.E. Basic Metalworking implies everything iron and weaker, and there's a Basic Metalworking tech set that has all the metals listed).

That way modders could add new techs (ores, weapons, etc) and give them to the right races.

Mephansteras

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #9 on: December 13, 2008, 01:51:47 pm »

Or we could have tags in the metals themselves saying what tech level is needed to smelt them?
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Granite26

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Re: Flexible metal assignment to entities.
« Reply #10 on: December 13, 2008, 02:58:01 pm »

only if you can't imagine a situation where you'd want a race to use iron but never copper...