I'm very happy with the Ambushes so far. I've lost more lives than when they siege. Which is nice (Only is DF is more death a good thing), they come later though, I didn't get my first one until year 3. Had a few snatchers before that though. I suppose one could think of it takes some time for the hordes to reach you. However the Vulpine Infected still kept me on my toes, and still arrived at the first year.
I consider it harder. Sieges are no longer season to season year 'round, but if you can bunker down and defend against the Vulpine in the winter, you'll have no trouble with the Standard Infected anyways.
I'd like to run some tests with migrant Infected, I believe they have promise, they're just way to easy to detect. Perhaps if they don't start rotting until they feed, have the interaction effect themselves and their victim. Other then that, I'll try running a test with werebeasts, maybe I can get them to change at a different time then at every full moon.
RANDOM CHANGE : poisonous stone now only affects privations, and wagons are now fireproof. This means no more dieing merchants unless they're part of your civ.
Hmm, yes I see what you mean about digging still being too easy - I like embarking in thick soil lands in vanilla DF. This carried right through for me as I found a sand layer and just dug out huge swaths of the 'soil' to get my infrastructure up. Having all soil have the risk of having dig-interruption 'drops' sounds fair - certainly it would encourage me to look for less soil so I can get to ore faster. Though since you want players to build above ground forts, I take it there's an assumption that players will always want to embark in high vegetation (shrubs and trees) areas?
I was thinking something along the lines of a drowsiness syndrome, not something that will kill you or deter you from digging soil to much, just something to make it take longer. So mining in vegetation deprived environments is still possible. But I swear that I've never seen a desert with a tree in the last few versions,
no wood is certain death in this mod.
Ironically, I'm probably helping the player more than I am hurting them, this large cluster will be smoothable and engraveable. So in the long run, it might be more of an advantage.
I'll probably be changing pneumatic guns to be easier to make, (simply because currently guns are cheaper then them) 1 mechanism instead of a gunpart, perhaps plastic instead of metal and no wood. Maybe making them a bit weaker.
On the note of resources, have you considered putting in a reaction to make many stacks of pellets/bolts at once, just as bullets/shells come in bulk? Currently a whole log has to disappear to get 25 wooden pellets/bolts. In my last Corrosion fort I had some 30+ riflemen who went through ammo very fast on archery ranges. Building lots of air rifles or crossbows and using wooden ammo to train up rifle skill sounds like the economic way to train an army in this mod but current pellet/bolt production is very resource inefficient.
It might seem like that, but here's how the math looks on paper.
For bullets :
1 wood + potash* = Potassium Nitrate
Potassium Nitrate + charcoal = gunpowder
shells/bullets (= 1 metal bar) + 1 metal bar + gunpowder = bullet/shell
* I'm assuming you're getting the ash from vermin, not wood.
So you end up using 2 wood and 2 metal for 60 shells or 100 bullets.
4 wood/metal = 100 bolts/pellets
or 1 bone -> 5 pellets/bolts
So while bolts and pellets are more intensive on one resource. Bullets and Shells take more time and resources to build. I suppose I could make the gypsum -> sulfur -> gunpowder route a little tougher, but in order to get gypsum you either need dig into hard rock, which is in the caverns most time, or an embark with little soil and hard rock right under you, so you probably deserve an easier route at that point.
Enough about me though, if you want to find a plausible reason to keep people out of soil then maybe have a new type called 'polluted soil'. The premise being that the zombie apocalypse has lead to many fires and whatnot as cities burn to the ground with no-one to put them out.
Now, I'm not a scientist or anything, but it's not a huge leap to guess that it would really mess with the atmosphere and perhaps even cause poisonous rain. The rain would seep underground and imbue the soil with its toxicity.
This could be an explanation for 'evil' rain and mists as well. I guess that the reason it doesn't rain toxic sludge in non evil areas is because you're playing hundreds of years after it started, and over that time the poison has been leeched underground (a good explanation for your cave creatures maybe?). I mean, who has World Gen set to below 100?
This seems like the most plausible route for several magical anomalies. I could have a couple different types of dangerous soil. Toxic sludge might be understandably rarer, but also more potent. It won't be deadly, probably on par with decomposed trash except worse.
My other idea was just a 'dense soil' that makes miners tired and need to sleep.
Actually, I guess something you could do is make some zombies amphibeous. A half completed sewer could result in an early fortress death. That depends on your own personal taste for zombies though. Undead vs infected kind of deal.
I've experimented with this a little bit, but the only way to keep zombies out at the moment is to have a moat (dry or water) with a bridge. So a swimming infected will probably be a semi-megabeast at most.
Perhaps a way to create it, or maybe a reaction that's only available to Warlords, or Enlightened Humans, or even your own parent civilisation if there's a way to keep you from getting it. That way you can trade for it.
I have some notes on concrete, you were supposed to be able to create your own. Lime -> Sand -> Water, but all three pose problems, lime is basically limestone, which is not in the game. For sand, I'll have to create one reaction for each color of stand a minor work around, but still annoying nevertheless. And you can't have a reaction that requires water at the moment. Civ's don't respect modded reactions unless metal is the product, so that's why they don't trade them.
Another suggestion is barbed wire for traps. In fact, if there was a way to make it so that barbed wire would release a syndrome when touched that would reduce agility for a short time that would be awesome.
I can't think of any way to make that happen though. 
Can't, wish I could though, that sounds like a good idea.
What else? Perhaps a way to make kevlar from Gloomapeck silk? I guess it's risk vs reward.
I don't remember if this is in your version or not, but 3 Gloomapeck silk can be turned into Gloomapeck Silver which is weak against most creations, but fantastic against infected!
I have one bar so far! Going to level up my weaponsmith a little more before I let him touch the thing.
I got a bit bored so I tried my hand at making the battery powered kiln. I think I succeeded. It all works for me! Very exciting because it's the first proper thing I modded in. Mind you, I did just copy and paste stuff from between your RAWS and the default ones. 
Wow! You did a very good job.
I'm very intrigued by this idea, and I'll check it out. I'm all for making pottery and glazing a more viable process, it will probably get in, but one thing that's nagging me is that glazed crafts can be worth some big money. Considering ash from vermin, clay, and fuel from batteries are all free. The only thing you have to lose is some time. So I might remove those at most.
What does rock chop axe mean?
Chop axe is a weapon in Corrosion, there is currently a bug in DF where metal items are displayed as 'rock' [name], so chances are you're just looking for a metal chop axe.
You can make them a the metalsmith forge -> weapons and ammunition -> material -> chop axe.
You could make a poisonous gas-rock thing found in clusters (whatever size) in certain soils and give them the same name and tile as the soil. You'd never know if what you're about to dig was toxic. It'd similar to current toxic rock layers, but reversed with small clusters of the hidden poison.
I'll probably be upfront with which soil is dangerous so the player can avoid if they would like. I could see that becoming kind of frustrating very fast.
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Topic: =-~Corrosion~-= [UPDATING] ***43.x (thanks Evil Bunny)*** <<Infected>> (Read 244316 times)