SUCCESSION GAME HAS STARTED. Sign up now!
This is a Dwarf Fortress mod. All craftscatship is of the highest quality (?). It menaces with spikes of hilarious. On the item is an image of cats in Dwarf Fortress. The cats are being struck down.
It began, as all too many stories do, with a wizard. This was not a particularly good wizard; he was most famous for his dramatic failure to create the long-sought-after three-humped camel. His latest crazed idea, though, promised to be better: An attempt to grant animals with sentience.
His experiments showed promise at first - his monkey mathematicians, or cheap knockoffs thereof, were prominently featured in a number of traveling shows. But when he finally thought he'd perfected his spell, the cat he tried it on displayed no sign of increased intelligence whatsoever.
Of course, that was because it worked rather well. Realizing in its first moments of sentience that this madman would likely never let him have a peaceful moment again, the cat feigned to be unchanged - and took the first available opportunity to run for the hills. He spent the next few weeks with every female cat in a two-mile radius. And thus, a race was born.
I figured this needed to be done.
I have added cats as a playable race in fortress and adventure mode.
Download link: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=1478UPDATED DOWNLOAD LINK:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=1832I'll leave the 1.03 link up for anyone who's playing the succession game, if it still exists.
Noteworthy features:
- As they are size 3, cats tend to die rather easily. That, and the 10-20 year lifespans, should make for some Fun and unavoidable tantruming. But since they grow up in only one year, they replace fast. Splode away!
- Cats cannot use the default weapons as they are too large, so I added in some relatively weak ones. Daggers for sword skill, tiny clubs for mace skill, mallets for hammer, hatchets for axe (they do about half as much damage as the other weapons; don't use them for soldiers), small spikes for spear, trowels for digging, and I modded blowguns to shoot with the crossbow skill. I also made new types of armor for them, since I didn't think it was quite right that a size 3 cat takes as much metal for armor as a size 7 human or size 6 stout dwarf. Also, cat armor offers less protection.
- Cats are carnivores. As such, they do not have planters, herbalists, brewers, millers, threshers, weavers, dyers, or clothiers. They can do everything else though. Only smaller.
- Includes a custom cat language made with the DF Word Generator by Mephansteras. The Perl script.
- Also included are the worldgen parameters for a world in otherwise unmodded .40d. For a good time, check in Legends mode and look for "The Scalded War." The first battle is 1.5 thousand cats taking an elven retreat without resistance, but oddly the rest of the war is a couple dozen instances of cats attacking the dwarves and, despite outnumbering them 30 to 1, losing every time. The war is STILL continuing, so if you play in Fortress mode as the cat civilization The Wrack of Whirling and embark near the middle right of the map, you can start at war with the dwarves, who will most likely kick your sorry fuzzy behinds so hard. It'll be Funny.
Cat Splosion "Strategy Guide"
Fortress Mode
Food is a little harder to come by with cats, since you can't just spam farming. Pretty much the only way to get by is trade, hunting, fishing, and livestock raising, which are dependent on factors other than your cats' skills, so if you don't have enough of a food source, you're just gonna have to watch your cats starve until they become sustainable again. Or all die off. This makes embarking with animals very important. Dogs make good meat. Although you could just train them into war dogs, but, c'mon. Dogs, people.
Also, you can embark with, and eat, nonsentient cats. This is a good idea, as they are cheaper. Also, it's funny.
Cooking is a very useful skill to have, as you can get more from your skills by cooking tallow. You can even trade for and cook inedible substances such as flour, cheese, and plants. However, cats will NOT eat any meal that does not have at least one edible item in it.
In practice, this generally means no tallow-only roasts. However, this is easy to work around by making sure none of your stockpiles hold tallow, then queueing the "render fat" and "cook biscuits" jobs together - the cook will render the fat and start on the meal, and since the tallow is already in the kitchen it will get used automatically - and if you haven't rendered any more fat, he'll only have meat left to pick.
Cats will drink booze but do not require it. Building a well is probably a good idea. To that end, you'll probably either want to start with a rope or trade for it with the dwarves. Sadly, there's no way to disallow cats from using plant-based objects such as Rope reed without also keeping you from embarking with or trading for wood.
Hunting is about twenty times more Fun, as predators are even more ridiculously deadly. If you do hunt, take precautions and either don't hunt when predators are around, or send military cats when they show up, or such. Make sure you outnumber them by a lot.
Talking of military, if you want to survive any military encounters it would be wise to have a lot of soldiers and equip them as well as you can. And then you should piss off the elves, dwarves, and humans because it's hilarious.
Adventure Mode
I've never had a cat adventurer live long, but I've never tried - after a few battles I get bored and go on a suicide mission.
The best strategy for survival I've figured is to recruit as many cats as you can, lead them to the nearest cave, and let them go in ahead of you against the alligators and wolves and cougars that will be there because every animal that managed to kill a cat nearby during worldgen (which ain't that difficult) is going to be there. You can probably get a few kills in, but remember: Hold back until they're alright fighting your cohorts.
When all your allies are dead, sneak around and loot their corpses. Stack their chainmail on yourself, take the rest and sell it for better armor and weapons.
Probably not too different from general adventure mode strategy, except that your allies will die a lot more often making looting their bodies a much more productive source of wealth.
Legends
Cat ethics make for some fun interactions with other races. They don't get into squabbles with goblins much, but they don't have much problem with lying, so they generally into a couple scraps with elves over truthfulness. Cats will swarm them in the hundreds, and pretty much never lose. Also, they eat their kills, which is awesome.
They also love torture and such, which means they can get in trouble with dwarves. The cats generally lose, despite being monstrously outnumbered.
Also, worldgen tends to take a bit longer as there are heck of cats running around. Large maps tend to hang up a couple times during worldgen. Also, since cats die every 10-20 years, there's a lot of "Hsieoro McCat became the leader of somewhere" spam.
So, let me know what you think. I'm open to suggestions since I'm a n00b modder. I probably won't take any professions off the list, with the possible exception of Milker and Cheesemaker if I'm convinced - Cats can't eat uncooked cheese, but milk and cheese are animal products, so why not.
Also, note that cats cannot use siege weapons.
UPDATE: Version 1.1
Cats can now be weavers and siege engineers/operators - note, though, that you still can't build ballista arrows. Cats are now MINOR_METAL, meaning you start with copper instead of iron or steel. Also, I allowed copper, bronze, and bismuth bronze for making anvils. As a side effect, even dwarves start with a copper anvil by default, so you can't trade it in for the full 1k points anymore - but that was cheatery anyway, so there.
.
Author
Topic: Cat Splosion V1.1 - Haha, everybody hates you now! Also, you start with copper. (Read 24662 times)