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[Akigagak]

Actually, it's generally more of a 'stick the pointy end in the poison, keep your hands the hell away' method, if the poison is deadly.

[Footkerchief]

This all seems a bit complicated for a way to poison weapons. I just figured you'd set up a workshop and apply poison the same way pretty much every people in history who are known to have used poisoned weapons did, its pretty much a bronze-age technology(The proto-greeks, ie the Acheans and Daniaans(sp?) were known to favor poisoned arrows) and even peoples who weren't even metalworking cultures have used poisons on missiles. A simple, by hand application to the pointy bit seems to be the generally used method.

Toady does plan to support poisoning weapons in a workshop or whatever, but we're discussing workarounds because that support isn't coming for a while:

This warrants a question. How will poisons/weapon coatings operate in dwarf mode?

I'm not going to allow that until the ethical framework and repercussions are in place.  Dwarves with poison weapons seem strange to me, so I'd like to do that stuff first before I worry about the interface, jobs and storage.  That is, you'd be allowed to make that decision, but it would cause quite a fuss in general.

My personal preferences would be to allow them to use poisoned weapons, but let the ethics of some dwarves interfere (using poisoned weapons might give dwarves who care about such things an unhappy thought, and might have diplomatic repercussions by having other dwarven groups look down on such behavior.)

Yeah, I addressed this somewhere up there or before, but anyway, ultimately the idea is to allow you to make decisions counter to ethics at the price of the happiness of traditional minded dwarves (or all of your dwarves if the ethics of the situation go beyond a simple surface tradition situation).  However, most of these things are also lower priority in general.  I should get to certain things like poison weapons for dwarves at some point, but likely not this time around, unless you are grabbing poison weapons dropped by others (in which case your dwarves probably won't give a crap this time around).

[smjjames]

I realize the trade stuff is coming after this release, but I do have a question related to the timing of traders since it got discussed slightly in some other thread. While it was origionally in reference to the current version, I want to make sure of something as far as the next release goes.

I'm asking about the Human caravan and when they are suppoused to come. Now, other people have said that they are suppoused to come during the summer of the second, maybe third, maybe fourth year. However, I regularily either never get the human traders even though they DO have access to my fort from the embark screen or I get them many many years later. My question is, do the human traders have a set year they are suppoused to show or do they come when you have a certain amount of exported wealth (which I suspect is the trigger) and in the next release, when are the human traders suppoused to come so that I know whether there is a bug with it or not.

The Elves come on the following spring like clockwork, no matter how far away they are.

Just reviving my question since I seem to have sparked some confusion about this and this really needs to be cleared up. Also, link to the thread where the discussion about it is starting to heat up a bit (no flaming, just sparking discussion and curiosity about it) http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=47378.0

[Halmie]

I heard somewhere throwing is fixed in the next version.

Is this true and if it is will modded in things like throwing darts and javelins be possible?

[Greiger]

I don't think toady specifically fixed throwing itself, but the materiel rewrite probably nerfed it significantly.

You can only throw stuff so fast and now that stuff has what could be considered defense values, it seems likely that a small thrown projectile wouldn't be able to do significant damage anymore.  Unless the max speed imparted on an object by throwing is insanely high that is.

Be amusing if legendary throwers could break the speed of sound with their throws.  Or how it currently seems to be, the speed of light.

[Lancensis]

Also, trade. Dwarves are not humans, they will never have paintings to trade.

I take issue with this statement. You do not know my dwarves. They want to trade paintings.

Which is fine, of course, But since underground farming can only yield one type of dye, they're going to have a hell of a time with it.

Paint isn't made from dye. It's made from a pigment and a binding agent, and many rocks and soils are usable as pigments. They're mostly incredibly poisonous, but that's rarely stopped dwarves before.

[melkorp]

I would just like to note that people are discussing the physical effects of condensates on living tissues via contact in a game that represents everything as little @'s and g's.

Noted!

[jpwrunyan]

Ah yes, *that*.  I had imagined a re-writing of the current fluid dynamics.  ...

Why would water without any pressure move fast?

But ya, if there was some way to get it to teleport at maybe 3 instead of 7 but stop once it was level-ish the slowly widening slopes of water wouldn't stick out as much.

Your hopes are a bit screwy though as hydraulics dudes probably don't have an especially good way of representing water in tiles like these.

That and Toady, being a mathematic professor, probably understand hydraulic sufficiently.  The only difficulty facing him is HOW to implement hydraulic into Dwarf Fortress without the FPS being shot to hell.
Remember, one of the most difficult problem for computer to simulate is fluid dynamics (if you try to do it realistically).
Though I think the current issue with Dwarf Fortress' fluid dynamic is that water seems to have a really high viscosity (which will result in water flowing really slow down a channel).  Of course, this may be an artifact of the fluid being represented in 1/7 chunks (low viscosity fluid will spread to a thin film rapidly, while tracking it in 1/7 chunk inherently slows it's rate of spread).

If you've watched the numbers dance very much it's clear that the units glide around on top of the next layer below them as a group but in a random sort of direction unless they hit a spot two digits lower at which case they fall down to that level and possibly continue the process. The teleport behavior requires actual pathing so it's slower but this non-wander behavior gives the kind of constant directional progress we want.
...

Exactly.

Anyway, I was operating under the assumption that if Toady were able to do it himself and it were easy, he would have already.  I hadn't thought of the performance issue, but there are still some odd properties with water that come about because of innaccurate simulation (again, my presumption).

For example:

1) if you channel into the floor and it has access to a larger body of water above it, nothing happens.  So a toilet-like U-bend (S-bend?) isn't possible.

2) if you channel a one tile access to a river, split access into 4 sub-channels, let those channels dump into a tube which has a one tile exit for the water at the bottom, and your tube overflows.  I guess because the 4-splits serves to suck more water from the river?  Pretty sure that's not right.

3) again, you can have a 7-tile of water back-logged up a 1-tile channel accross the map and have it dump into a huge reservoir.  Water will actually seep into the ground and dry up before the reservoir fills, if it ever fills.  The water should flow faster in the channel and slow down once it gets into to the reservoir.  Pretty sure this is also not the case.

Perhaps you guys are right and its not a matter of expertise.  Either way, it doesn't seem to be working properly.  If I am wrong and water actually does work that way in large quantities, by all means disabuse me of my misconceptions.  But I am pretty sure (from an interview I read) that Shoku's got it right.

[Nadaka]

I suppose one way to make water move faster would be if 1/7 water flowed around like higher levels did. But then you might get a little puddle of water randomly skittering about like a living thing and muddying an entire level. But i think it would end up flowing faster.

[jpwrunyan]

The problem is not so much the 1/7 water tiles.  It's that the 7/7 water tiles don't turn into 7 1/7 water tiles fast enough in certain situations.

[Nadaka]

7/7 water would turn into 7x1/7 water faster if the 1/7 water was free to flow away because  2/7 water would not have to randomly walk all the way to the edge of the 1/7 water before it fell off.

[mendonca]

I thought I would try and display visually why the current fluid dynamics system is not that realistic when you channel out the final wall to a water source ... hopefully shows why you should get quite a bit of pressure to fill your channel relatively quickly ...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

[Footkerchief]

I heard somewhere throwing is fixed in the next version.

Is this true and if it is will modded in things like throwing darts and javelins be possible?

Throwing itself is not that different.  What's changed there is that 1) leveling up in throwing won't increase attributes like toughness, 2) the wounding effects of thrown projectiles shouldn't be so dire, and 3) any military dwarf that manages to pick up throwing skill can teach it to other dwarves in a demonstration (although they still won't use it in combat).  Throwing darts and javelins won't be any more possible than they are in the current version (e.g. hacked in as ammo for a ranged weapon):

If a dwarf tantrums and gains some skill in throwing and teachs it to others will they actually ever use it outside of tantrums... Or will they just be better at tantruming...?

They will just be better at tantruming, he he he.  With the new squad/civilian equipment stuff, we are slowly crawling toward things like throwing weapons and civilian daggers (or would civilian hatchets make more sense for dwarves?), but for now there's nothing new and thrown.

[Neonivek]

Mostly the largest change is that I believe weight has been taken into account.

So coins, dirt, and pebbles arn't .50 strength weapons.

I guess it is almost time for the Sling Staff

[Flaede]

Mostly the largest change is that I believe weight has been taken into account.

So coins, dirt, and pebbles arn't .50 strength weapons.

I guess it is almost time for the Sling Staff

atlatl