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[Dante]

Yeah, I think the possibility of re-walling will pretty much dispel any such risk

Not entirely but definately a lot of the continuous risk unless you chose to explore further.

You'll still have to clean it out the first time, and then fend off monsties while building the wall.

And we have examples of the animalmen riding flying mounts, so it might be quite difficult to entirely wall off your fort.

I meant in the specific case of looking for, and getting access to, magma, which was being discussed earlier. You could drill down through as solid a bit as you could find, and if you ever poked through and didn't see glowing molten rock in the distance, just rewall that tile immediately. Can't fly through rock.

[Footkerchief]

I meant in the specific case of looking for, and getting access to, magma, which was being discussed earlier. You could drill down through as solid a bit as you could find, and if you ever poked through and didn't see glowing molten rock in the distance, just rewall that tile immediately. Can't fly through rock.

It won't be that easy to scout for magma anymore.  You have to send dwarves out into the forbidding darkness, and who knows what might find them out there: "I also think I'll be able to update discovery/revealing of the local underground so that it depends more on where your dwarves have actually been, instead of revealing everything. Active LOS around every dwarf isn't feasible, but it can push the frontier off through the connected areas when a dwarf is vaguely nearby, anyway, so that there can be enormous connected (adventure-explorable) caverns without having them pre-revealed just because you have some dwarves tinkering around far, far above."

[zchris13]

Donut shaped worlds.
Ringed shaped worlds.
World-Archipelagos

[CobaltKobold]

Floating/flying island worlds (sky ocean)

[zchris13]

Floating/flying island worlds (sky ocean)

That's what I said.

[Christes]

Donut-shaped worlds are over-rated.  I'm all for the projective plane, myself.

[Sysice]

What, no love for the tumbling cylinder?

[Quatch]

What, no love for the tumbling cylinder?

Its all good until the gods put it on fast-dry, or forget the dryer sheet.

[Protactinium]

Mostly it's no fun to fall of the edge, but you get such a great view of the elephants.

Funny how Discworld references also work with DF references.

No wonder elephants were so powerful!

[PermanentInk]

I dunno, I always heard it was turtles.

[LumenPlacidum]

ATTACK:EDGE/BLUNT:contact area:penetration size:verb2nd:verb3rd:noun:velocity multiplier

Is the contact area of a weapon giving us the size of the striking surface?  So, making a weapon with a high contact area would prevent it from striking smallish embedded things, like eyes?  Is the penetration size a measure of how far into the body the weapon can cut/pierce?  Like, how many layers and such?

[Neruz]

I do recall toady saying that contact area is used to determine how many different things a weapon can harm at once.

Like, a bolt, with a small contact area, can only damage a small area, but a titan-sized hammer with a huge contact area can damage multiple areas, like say the body and both legs.


It's basically to prevent the old "You strike the Ogre in the left upper arm with the crossbow bolt!"
"It's brain is pierced through!"
"It's liver is pierced through!"
"It's hand is lopped off!"

etc.

[Footkerchief]

ATTACK:EDGE/BLUNT:contact area:penetration size:verb2nd:verb3rd:noun:velocity multiplier

Is the contact area of a weapon giving us the size of the striking surface?  So, making a weapon with a high contact area would prevent it from striking smallish embedded things, like eyes?  Is the penetration size a measure of how far into the body the weapon can cut/pierce?  Like, how many layers and such?

Here's what we've heard about contact area:

What will the functional difference between a war hammer and a mace be in the new combat system aside from using a different skill?

Yeah, the difference I've got right now is the contact area.  So a mace will have larger wound areas but won't concentrate the force as much.  It may be that this indicates one weapon is superior to the other in most normal applications, but I haven't had a chance to test that sort of thing carefully. 

So contact area at least determines how the force of the blow gets spread out.  Dunno about whether eyes would get hit -- the new BP relationships (AROUND, SURROUNDED_BY) might partially dictate that now.  I'm guessing you're correct that penetration size controls depth, based on a comparison of various weapons' stabbing attacks:

Spoiler: selected weapons ordered by penetration size (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

morningstar
[ATTACK:EDGE:10:500:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:2000]

large dagger
[ATTACK:EDGE:30:1000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]

halberd
[ATTACK:EDGE:50:2000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]

short sword
[ATTACK:EDGE:50:2000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]

long sword
[ATTACK:EDGE:50:3000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]

two-handed sword
[ATTACK:EDGE:50:4000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]

battle axe
[ATTACK:EDGE:1500:6000:hack:hacks:NO_SUB:1250]

spear
[ATTACK:EDGE:20:10000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]

pike
[ATTACK:EDGE:20:12000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]


It's easiest to see the pattern with the swords, which all have the same contact area for the stab, but increasing penetration depth with size.  Note that axes have a higher penetration size than short swords -- this makes me think penetration size acts as a volume or something, so the actual depth is (proportional to) penetration size divided by contact area.  That's my best guess, anyway.  Seems odd that the depth isn't specified directly, but maybe there's a reason for it.

Also note that the halberd's stab is very shallow compared to the spear and pike.  Cool.

With this level of detail it's not surprising that the CRIT_BOOST system is gone.

edit: Huh.  I was looking at the body details plan in last year's raws preview, and I realized there aren't any tongues.  Tongues are important!  I guess this might be related to the inherent oddness of the mouth as a hollow body part.  One of the many DF-sounding lines in the Iliad is about tongues: "The son of Phyleus got close up to him and drove a spear into the nape of his neck: it went under his tongue all among his teeth, so he bit the cold bronze, and fell dead in the dust."

[Shoku]

Yeah, I think the possibility of re-walling will pretty much dispel any such risk

Not entirely but definately a lot of the continuous risk unless you chose to explore further.

You'll still have to clean it out the first time, and then fend off monsties while building the wall.

And we have examples of the animalmen riding flying mounts, so it might be quite difficult to entirely wall off your fort.

You'll have a ceiling to build up to so relatively-not-really. Much easier than having to make the ceiling yourself.

*walls two units wide give you room to stick the next layer's wall up and I'm not thinking these underground layers will be three layers tall. That's about where wall building takes a lot of time (unless you wanted a whole forest walled off or something.)

The temperature gradient we see in worlds suggests that they're either spherical or that the cold edge is at least getting a significantly different angle of sunlight (so your cosmic table might be cyclindrical.)

*The general temperature goes fractal but summer's addition to that value grows larger further from the cold edge. This is what keeps glaciers on the edge.

[Neruz]

We've seen caverns that are over 10 z levels high, and possibly more. Caverns don't penetrate 'layers', but layers are of indeterminate thickness, i think i remember something about 5 - 15 z levels, but i can't be sure.


Toady intends for the endless invasions to be a constant threat, no matter how well established the fortress is, i think you'll find it much harder to fully secure yourself against the underground enemies than you think, especially if you want to get at the goodies.