Might it be possible to disable caravan guards from being obsidian dwarves? Four times now the dwarven caravan has been ambushed, an obsidian dwarf guard shoots off a fireball and the dwarven and orcish caravans (and the ambush, to be fair) burn to death chasing each other around in the flames.
I'm actually thinking of modding Obsidian dwarves out of my next game. They're more annoying than anything. Anytime they sense danger, they start belching fire all over the place, and I've never seen it do anything to an enemy. All it does is ensure my fortress lawn will never be anything but an ashen waste.
hum steel dwarves are overpowered a bit.... just had one get stabbed through the heart, and both lungs, and he healed before he died........ so he's now running around happily with 3 massive scars on his chest.
Giant Gargoyles can't bleed out. I think this is related to them not having anything listed as blood. Ex.
http://i964.photobucket.com/albums/ae125/Background_Guy/gargoylebug.jpg?t=1290905956
Is there a certain size the world needs to be to get attacks and wild creatures? I usually make a world with all settings in the middle but ive never seen any weird beings or monsters in over 10 forts..
Typically, the longer the world gen, the less megabeasts active from being killed off, though they don't get cut down like butter in gen like they used to. I can't really vouch for that being the main reason, as the titan and megabeast pop/wealth requirements probably have a MUCH larger role in things. To be fair, I haven't done but one fort in Genesis and I haven't been back to it in a while...
...I never really input all that much anyway, other than rambling and sometimes bringing up balance issues on accident, like Illithid's poison.
I genned a world stopping at 300 years, and went adventuring.
...
Now, I'm pretty tough already, not legendary, but grand master sword user, using a plain steel short-sword I found. I went to fight a Dragon, and the thing was thick, I had to put it unconscious and keep banging its head so it would die..of blood loss.
My militia in Baldedgilds have beat several gargoyles to death with their bare hands, including a giant one. It's pretty funny imagining these dwarves shattering marble with their fists and wearing it away until they're beating on this unconscious creature's stone internal organs, and finally my steel dwarf commander, Fleshring, embeds his fist all the way into the thing's solid rock skull. Dwarves of The Special Dike are tough! They probably don't even need pickaxes to dig out their homes, just fingernails.
...I guess we can add to Deon's to-do list: "make balors as tough as bronze colossi."
Give them skill levels, and perhaps 3x or 4x uber-muscle-tissue (or muscles made of red steel).
If you are a dwarf, balors pose no problem, as you are fire immune, and the main trouble I had with mine was that every scratch I gave it made it gout flaming magma gas stuffs.
Okay, I'm doing Genesis tweaking now.
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Gave skills to my creatures (creature_custom_tt.txt). Beware the giant otter's bite and twisting-away(wrestling) skill.
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Gave skills to SCORPION_DESERT_GIANT and tigermen...
Lions etc. get wrestling skill, you know they can twist away from your grasp.
Foxes and wolves get more skills...
Little foxes about 2-3 level skill, giant lions 5-6. Wolf awareness 7.
...
Kangaroos, added [BIOME:DESERT_BADLAND] (not a sand desert) and frequency from 5 to 25. And kicking and wrestling skill.
Skills to anubites, cave carp, armorman and nith. And muskox, elk, polar bear, reindeer, elk bird, and the cat-sized CRUNDLE.
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Manera, the wall-crawler, gets FLIER to simulate wall-climbing. Beware, if you make home in the caves.
Blind cave bear upgrade...
Wrestling skills to raptors... I think they were one of Deon's favorite beasts. I don't think they dodge 5, more like 3. Jump-to-side isn't what pack predators do...
Out of curiosity, about how much stronger is hide/fang then leather/teeth normally? I assume it doesn't beat out metal or anything?
I made the tough materials, and just put 2x values to them. And little bit more tooth max_edge. Deon approved the materials and they're now a core part of the Genesis mod
But it's a huge advantage in battle, having double strength skin, muscles, bones, teeth, sinews. Pity the dwarf who tries to defeat a cavern monster with her fists.
My arena test at the time: tough-material elephant vs normal...
I really
want to like Genesis Mod!
As I'm reading other mod threads and longing to incorporate certain mods into my game, I keep stumbling across posts by
Deon which stated he was already incorporating (or was considering the inclusion of) said mod into Genesis. And all I can think is, "cool!" This is especially nice, since many of those mods are outdated and wouldn't work with the latest DF build without a lot of effort.
Genesis seems to have just about every feature I could possibly want in a mod.I love the new materials and workshops in Metals Revamped, not to mention Adventure mode Spellcraft and Crafting, Soil is Fun, Expanded bestiary, Flavortext Mod, and even the Additional Features. I can even appreciate some (though not all) of the new races and castes that were added.
However... I have some serious issues with balance. And, from what I'm reading, it seems that the development of Genesis may be going in the
OPPOSITE direction from my play style.
What I'm reading suggests:
* With their fire, Obsidian Dwarves are not only overpowered, but dangerous to everyone - even themselves.
* Steel Dwarves seem way too overpowered - to the point that the only reason I can see why anyone would want to play as any other dwarf (with the possible exception of Apid Dwarves)is to have a greater challenge.
* The acid breath of Aspid Dwarves seems overpowered. Even if their breath was fixed so it didn't incinerate stuff, I can see it as giving them a huge advantage in combat.
But I can deal with that much. What bothers me even more is how 'beefed-up' a lot of monsters, megabeasts, and races are in general. And the development plans seem to lean almost entirely toward making them
even tougher and more bad@** ? (It almost seems as if there's a trend toward
munchkinism... or a desire to tell tales on the scale of
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.)
For instance, just one person complains about how easy it is (for a tough dwarf with Grand Master sword skill) to slaughter a balor and the response is to "Give them skill levels, and perhaps 3x or 4x uber-muscle-tissue" ? (Nevermind the fact that most of the balor's attacks were innefectual merely because the dwarf had fire immunity.) And I see talk about giving all these new skills to other critters, even mundane creatures? (Seems counterintuitive to me to give
skills to non-intelligent animals.)
Don't get me wrong, I can see some improvement towards balance in Genesis. Someone pointed out that megabeasts no longer "get cut down like butter... like they used to." (Though, I also see concern that even now not enough megabeasts survive for the player to face.) But as I said, the general trend seems to be toward making DF more of a challenge.
The reason I'm writing is to ask if there's
any possibility you would consider branching off Genesis into two versions:
* Hardcore Edition - for experienced, hardcore DF players who look to Genesis to breath new life into DF by providing ever increasing challenges and who can appreciate the development toward an ever increasing variety in experiencing
FUN.
* Newby Edition - for inexperienced DF players
and those who prefer a leisurly pace and play experience, but who still desire to experience DF with the amazing new materials, workshops, spellcraft, crafting, soil, bestiary, and flavortext. For those who prefer their bestiary to consist of
unskilled, dumb animals. Also, for those who prefer that the ambushes, races, monsters and megabeasts to be only
slightly more challenging than vanilla DF.
I will understand if that is asking too much. But, perhaps additional files could be included with simple instructions how how to "neuter" the game to make something similar to a 'Newby Edition'? Perhaps a method to easily disable certain races and monsters that some would consider overpowered? (For that matter, I'd be happy with a version of Genesis
without any new races, castes, or creatures and then I could manually combine this with
Legendary Lands or similar.)