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[Iburnaga]

How do modders go about balancing out new races, creatures and civs? I have a dragon like race that's fireproof, has fireball and the firecone and move at nearly elf speed 150 points off. Should I give them a negative damage block maybe?

[Rowanas]

With the way fire works at the moment, those elves are screwed, the humans are screwed, and the dwarves are pretty safe. You would have to make them leap into oncoming axes, or make them short lived/low birth rate.

[Funk]

don't add lot of No tags (i.e. no_eat)
keep the size,numbers,birth rate,tech level df kind of has one,life span,
genreal word gen fighting powers down to stop the over runing the world or just plan killing every thing by year 10.

remmber that you can changesome things after world gen.

[Teldin]

The most important thing to balance when it comes to civs in world-gen is their entity biomes. If a creature is powerful you can balance out them exploding out over your world by forcing them to remain in certain restricted biomes. That way they won't go to war with everyone, and you'll still have all your standard elves, goblins, etc. If you made a high-powered race that lives in forests, for example, expect your elves go to extinct within a few hundred years.

[Slogo]

yeah, I'm aware of that and that's one aspect of the race but I also want them to be challenging but balanced for Fortress mode. Essentially I'm hoping to make a set of sieging/thieving races that offer challenges but without just being crazy ridiculous.

[Teldin]

If you're only interested in dwarf mode, it's a matter of getting around the ways people use to lameify their forts: traps and moats. It's not easy to 'balance' a race because people all use different methods of defense. Personally I go all-military; no traps or moats or drawbridges.

Challenging without being impossible is not hard. Firebreathing trapimmune fliers are still certainly doable. I would give them fire imp fireballs rather than dragon breath though, that shit is wack.

[mission0]

If you're only interested in dwarf mode, it's a matter of getting around the ways people use to lameify their forts: traps and moats. It's not easy to 'balance' a race because people all use different methods of defense. Personally I go all-military; no traps or moats or drawbridges.

Challenging without being impossible is not hard. Firebreathing trapimmune fliers are still certainly doable. I would give them fire imp fireballs rather than dragon breath though, that shit is wack.

Don't forget the building destroyer tag as well

[Slogo]

hah I completely made the previous post in the wrong thread. I guess it's not completely off topic though.

[Greiger]

I also have a dragonlike race.  In order to balance them I modified their personalities a bit twards the angry side(seems to produce more berserk failed moods) made them carnivores, gave them a speed of 1100 (which should be 100 points slower than most everything), and made them take cold damage at a higher temperature, and decided against firebreath.

For refrence, that's balancing out 1-3 damage natural attacks, magma immunity, and a size of 7.  Which seems to have prevented them from being too strong in worldgen, and about as difficult to play as dwarves in fortress mode.

[Eatnobles4breakfast]

Remember, what happens in worldgen is not always real life. For instance, in my modded version, kobolds and slowly-moving rocks regularly assasinate giant robots made of adamantine...The best way to test them out is to make a fort real close and tick them off...

[Slogo]

Well you need to do both, balance them for worldgen and balance them for fortress/adventure play. I'd recommend doing the 2nd first as you can tweak properties like litter size, starting population, and max age to balance out the worldgen.

[Kruniac]

I made "Dragon-Kin" that are essentially the same size as the megabeast, FIREIMMUNE, SUPERFIREIMMUNE, has a humanoid body type, a tail, no wings, and breathes fire.

Then I set their tasks to "Hunting" and watch the carnage ensue. Poor groundhogs never stood a chance.

[Krisnack]

I think a good portion of us modders are guilty of creating overpowered races. My own example would viperides. Let's see, six arms, size 10, METAL_PREF, pretty much suited for taking on Terrifying biomes with lots of nearby goblins.

[i2amroy]

I managed to create some seriously overpowered creatures as well, however, I think that my creatures have turned out to be an example of how an overpowered creature can be easily balanced with just a few tags being removed or added.

What I did was create the Seraph and Fallen Seraph creatures they have the: ability to open doors, fly, go into trances, [FIREIMMUNE], [FIREIMMUNE_SUPER], [EXTRAVISION], [PARALYZE_IMMUNE], [trAPAVOID], [NOBLEED], [NOEXERT], [NO_DRINK], [NO_EAT], [NO_SLEEP], [NOFEAR], [NOSTUN], [NOPAIN], [NONAUSEA], [NOBREATHE], [SIZE:25], [DAMBLOCK:500], attacks that deal 4-36 BURN damage, [SPEED:50] = 6,666.666 in-game speed, and a heatdam point that is just under magma's temp, causing them to only be harmed by it very slowly, and they don't die of old age.

The things that balance out all of those tags are few, but mighty. Those things are the [NO_GENDER] tag, the fact that their entity is set to never send out adventurers, only to siege when you reach a metropolis with a population of 140+ dwarves, and most importantly, the lack of a [BUILDINGDESTROYER:?] tag, meaning you can just lock them outside if you wish or atom smash them. Also, they only like to live in caves, which slows their takeover.

All of this means that they are really overpowered, but there are only at max about two hundred of them, (I have their entity set to generate a lot, instead of just 7 per site), and since they never adventure, the only times that they will kill megabeasts is when the megabeast attacks them. If you do see a seraph in the legends though, you already knew who won that battle. I think that it has turned out as a wonderful example of how to create creatures that are balanced even though they are super powerful.

[Slogo]

Have you actually tried atomsmashing them? It seems like it could be... difficult to do given their blinding fast speed and the delay on bridges. That'd only leave locking them outside or trapping them in magma.