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Author Topic: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod  (Read 2602 times)

Reynard

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Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« on: August 02, 2009, 07:22:56 pm »

Lessim Mogaim - Less Sim, Mo' Game.

The inspiration for this mod is the realization that at some point adding more realism to a game makes it less fun. While I love the work Toady has put into the underlying geology of the DF world gen, somewhere around the fifteenth variety of opal a line was crossed. In the spirit of making DF more fun to play for me personally, some frustrating elements have been smoothed over, one or two overpowered maneuvers disallowed, and one trivially easy but essential aspect of the game has been made more challenging (farming). DF has crashed once or twice with this running, however, I'm still trying to figure out why... so while I'm bug chasing, I wanted to get thoughts and suggestions on the direction for this mod. I don't have it put up for download, though I suppose I can if anyone wants to give it a try. I'm more interested in hearing if the community is receptive to a mod that guts all Toady's nice geology.

Major changes overview:
Minimizes the headache of noble demands and site selection by pruning the matgloss_stone files of anything nonessential, and put everything left in the blender so that it all has an equal chance of showing up everywhere. Every site is guaranteed to have roughly the same mix of metals and gems. Flux requirements have been removed completely. Iron + coke or charcoal + fuel or magma = steel.

Most of the aboveground crops have been left unchanged. Underground farming has been massively curtailed though. Survival without aboveground farming is not hard, but your dwarves will not be very happy about the lack of variety in their diet.

Minor changes:
Reduces training mishaps and micromanagement by introducing 'training' versions of the five major dwarven melee weapons, far less likely to bench an able-bodied dwarf even before their first battle.

Crossbow bludgeoning has been changed to use the 'whip' skill rather than 'hammer' to fix that little trick of crosstraining hammerdwarves to crossbow. Crossbow bludgeoning damage is also reduced.

Obsidian shortswords have been disabled. Dwarves may by short hairy drunkards who live in caves, but they're not cavemen! You're guaranteed steel, use it. Obsidian shortswords don't bother anything really, no reason code them out. If you don't like them don't use them. :)

Major changes details:
Matgloss Stone changes:
It's almost easier to list what I've kept than what was removed. All stone layer types have been combined into one extremely generic gray "Stone" stone layer. The following metals have been kept: tin, copper, bronze, iron, steel, silver, gold, platinum, and adamantine. All except adamantine occur as veins, everywhere, though I'm debating pruning platinum or making it CLUSTER_SMALL. Tin, copper, iron, silver, gold, and platinum all occur in minerals. Other minerals include coal (renamed from bituminous coal) and obsidian(only occurs bordering lava now), both also appearing as veins. Finally, fifteen new types of stone were added that do not naturally occur, creatively named things like 'red stone' and 'blue stone' and 'dark red stone'. One for each of the fourteen possible foreground colors. This part is currently incomplete, but the goal is that if you want to create colored projects, a smelter reaction that creates 10 colored stone from 10 raw stone can be done. The fifteenth new stone is 'cold stone', is similarly created from regular stone at a smelter, and has bauxite's temperature tolerances for magmaproof mechanisms. The gemstones have been cut from 127 to 21, and a few colors juggled so that brighter colors generally means more valuable.

Plant changes:
Only one aboveground crop was changed. Pig tail and rope reed have been combined into one aboveground plant, cotton (I always thought the lack of cotton was odd). If you want a cloth industry, it has to be farmed aboveground now. Of the six underground crops, only two survive. Dimple cups are unchanged, cave wheat is no longer brewable, and both are now plantable all year round.
Three new underground crops have been introduced. Taking the place of plump helmets in the 'I need food now' category is the mat lichen. It has a very short growth time, a value of 0, and can be eaten raw or cooked, and cannot be brewed, milled or threshed. Stalactite hops are inedible, have a long growing time, but are the only underground plant still brewable. The third new crop, the chroma blossom, is something I'm still working on. The goal is to have it involved in the colored/cold stone smelter reactions.

In short:
Mat lichen - Fast and very cheap food.
Stalactite hops - Slow but brewable.
Cave wheat - Requires milling to make it cookable, but is not worthless.
Chroma blossom - Smelter reactant.

Finally, the [OUTDOOR_FARMING] tag has been added to the dwarven civ entity. Your dwarves are going to be expressing tastes for sunshine and gutter cruor and whip wine and everything else. If you want to meet these new demands, outdoor farming is a requirement. Happily the plant biomes have been scrambled just like the stone environments, so you should have access to everything.

What hasn't changed:
Creatures and are untouched. That's a far more daunting rebalancing task than I care to tackle.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2009, 10:54:07 pm by Reynard »
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Rowanas

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2009, 07:30:28 pm »

wow, might be worth a try if you put it up. I think you may have cut it down a bit too much, I know I'd be happier with more diversity. Also, changing everything to an aboveground plant does sod all. The basic aboveground farm is built on the same level as my underground farms but just has the tiles channeled out from above instead of dug.
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I agree with Urist. Steampunk is like Darth Vader winning Holland's Next Top Model. It would be awesome but not something I'd like in this game.
Unfortunately dying involves the amputation of the entire body from the dwarf.

blah28722

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2009, 09:36:14 pm »

I really liked the simplifying of the gems' colors.

Great idea imo, this game is somewhat needlessly complicated in terms of minerals.

Have you considered removing the (economic) stone that don't have any uses?
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Reynard

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2009, 10:28:57 pm »

Already done! Gone are the dreaded days when a dwarf, excited eyes caged between a horned helmet and a beard, would exclaim with jubilation, "Microcline! A fortune of microcline, overseer!"

In all serious, this is what is left:
Layer: Generic "Stone". That's it. It's gray.
Mineral: Tin, iron, copper, silver, gold, platinum and coal veins. Lava features encased in obsidian. Deep adamantine. Fourteen colored stones and bauxite substitute "coldstone" can only be created via smelter.
Metal: Tin, iron, copper, silver, gold, platinum and adamantine are dug out. Bronze and steel are alloyed.
Soil: Clay, dirt, sand and ooze. There wasn't really much call to prune these, but something was annoying about sandy_loamy_clayish_peat_sand.
Gem: I made an effort to retain zodiac birthstones and anything I considered well known. Onyx, lapis lazuli, turquoise, bloodstone, carnelian, agate, jasper, citrine, rock crystal, moonstone, peridot, jade, aquamarine, opal, garnet, amethyst, topaz, sapphire, emerald, ruby and diamond were my final 21.

As for aboveground farming... I know it's not much more difficult to make an aboveground farm. Protecting it from giant eagles is what I was thinking of - it's another access point to your fortress, whereas underground farming is impregnable. It means more fun engineering projects to protect your farmers from snipers. Aboveground farming was totally optional before, I've just tried to make it slightly less so.

I think I will make platinum be CLUSTER_SMALL. It's fairly ridiculously valuable to be occurring in veins...
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ein

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2009, 10:37:54 pm »

Great idea.
Especially the coloured stones only from smelter reactions.
No more glaring yellow in the middle of an otherwise perfect legendary dining hall.

Also, I think I remember seeing a vein_small somewhere.
I like the idea of having valuable stuff only in veins.
Clusters are annoying.

forsaken1111

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #5 on: August 02, 2009, 10:44:08 pm »

I don't understand the idea behind disabling obsidian swords. IIRC They were used by civilizations like the aztec to great effect, and were pretty deadly.
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StealthArcher

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2009, 10:48:42 pm »

I don't understand the idea behind disabling obsidian swords. IIRC They were used by civilizations like the aztec to great effect, and were pretty deadly.

This is true.  I like Obsidian weaponry.
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Reynard

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2009, 10:52:57 pm »

Heh. I guess nothing is forcing me to use obsidian hatchet-swords, and obsidian is going to be pretty rare anyway - I'll re-add them since it doesn't really bother anything. :)

Does anyone know the syntax for including a plant in a smelter reaction? I'm not sure why mine is not functioning.
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forsaken1111

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2009, 10:56:44 pm »

Heh. I guess nothing is forcing me to use obsidian hatchet-swords, and obsidian is going to be pretty rare anyway - I'll re-add them since it doesn't really bother anything. :)

Does anyone know the syntax for including a plant in a smelter reaction? I'm not sure why mine is not functioning.

I mean really, how cool is a piece of wood with sharp glassy rocks on it? God that looks like it would hurt.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Telcontar

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #9 on: August 02, 2009, 11:14:52 pm »

Far too boiled down for my tastes overall, but I do like your Lichen food type. I've been rebalancing farming in my personal mod, and it somehow never occurred to me to make the default food type non-brewable. Would definitely complicate things. Right now I just have my GROWDUR jacked up to 1200 minimum, so you have to plant more than a full season beforehand.

Furthermore, do you really think that cross-training hammerdwarf and crossbowdwarf was that big of a deal? I reduced the damage crossbows do with bashing, but I figured it was a perfectly 'realisitic' mechanic.
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Reynard

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #10 on: August 02, 2009, 11:28:17 pm »

No, hammerbow training wasn't a big deal, but it never made good sense either, and it was something people used to their advantage. So out it goes! It's a minor change but I'm trying to be thorough in keeping a list of what's different.
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forsaken1111

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #11 on: August 02, 2009, 11:30:20 pm »

Honestly I'm with Rowanas on the above/under ground farming issue. Its not appreciably harder to make an open-air room unless you happen to have flying enemies, which I've encountered all of 2 times. Also can't you just cover the room once you've channeled out the ceiling? IIRC you can build stone floors over an open pit and it still counts as lighted.

Hm...
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Slogo

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #12 on: August 03, 2009, 10:21:07 am »

For obsidian maybe you should lower the damage % from 133->100% or 133%->125%. With the way it is now there's never a reason to make a steel sword if you can make an obsidian one. They cost less fuel, steel is more valuable/limited, and it takes less steps to produce.

StealthArcher

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #13 on: August 03, 2009, 10:47:51 am »

Reason is because all you can make with Obsidian is short swords.  While that may not matter much now, by next version, you will probably want a mix of weapons.  Obisidian helps conserve your steel for others.
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Slogo

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Re: Lessim Mogaim - A rebalance mod
« Reply #14 on: August 03, 2009, 10:53:03 am »

Right but my point was that Obsidian short swords 100% completely outclasses Steel and you'd never ever ever make Steel short swords if you could make obsidian. If Obsidian swords were 125% (or 100%) there would at least be a trade-off.
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