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More tech tree!

36 (26.1%)

More ritual tree!

8 (5.8%)

More lore!

12 (8.7%)

More mythical weapons/armor!

22 (15.9%)

Plagues!

28 (20.3%)

More secrets!

21 (15.2%)

More mechanical constructs!

11 (8%)

Total Members Voted: 137

[narhiril]

I just got another milestone in my DF histoy - the first useful artifact for the military. A fey bowyer made a wooden repeating crossbow. Is it actually better than an actual crossbow? Cuz I know how rate of fire cannot be changed, so how much better is it than the vanilla one?

It's probably worth noting that the repeating crossbow uses blowdarts instead of bolts (though it still uses the crossbow skill).  You'll likely want to put whoever's wielding it in a separate squad, both to make them easier to control and to make sure other squad members don't decide to march up to the ramparts with the wrong ammunition.

But since it's an artifact, it's going to be very accurate.  It's not the best possible ranged weapon, but it's a very nice find for an expert or master marksdwarf.  Expect that guy to rack up some kills as long as you remember to make some ammo for him (dwarves CAN make blowdarts and arrows in LFR from metal, wood, or bone).


--


I'm working on the raws for another new building tonight, the crystal growth tank.  This building will allow a sufficiently advanced dwarven civilization to produce "crystalline blocks" of any color on demand using only mundane stone, intended to help with megaprojects and large works of art and engineering.  For those of you who aren't already motivated to use this technology for decor, these blocks will also be slightly more valuable than mundane stone blocks.

[thatkid]

Can we get some crystalline windows as well, maybe?

[narhiril]

Can we get some crystalline windows as well, maybe?

That can be arranged.

[thatkid]

Sweeet.

[Putnam]

Why are meowkin and nephilim apparently so much more powerful than the default intelligent creatures?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13790475/Brouillard.png

This is the meowkin that took the world out of the age of land mover and mountain titan and into the age of Doigt.

Note that Brouillard's daughter, Nageoire Whirldrank, killed the giant that killed Brouillard in 46 at the age of 14.

Also, Brouillard's father was the first princess (father was a princess? How elven!) of the Adoration of Autumn. Damn, this guy's interesting!

Genning the world again, and the world, after going about 100 years in the age of the mountain titan, switched to age of the meowkin. I imagine the entire world is populated by Brouillard's father's descendants at this point

[narhiril]

Why are meowkin and nephilim apparently so much more powerful than the default intelligent creatures?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13790475/Brouillard.png

This is the meowkin that took the world out of the age of land mover and mountain titan and into the age of Doigt.

Note that Brouillard's daughter, Nageoire Whirldrank, killed the giant that killed Brouillard in 46 at the age of 14.

Also, Brouillard's father was the first princess (father was a princess? How elven!) of the Adoration of Autumn. Damn, this guy's interesting!

I honestly don't know the answer to that question.  Nephilim have access to steel and build numerous fortifications, but I haven't been able to figure out exactly what is causing the Meowkin to beat the ever-living crap out of megabeasts at such an alarming rate when their best equipment is made of bronze and they're smaller than every other intellegent race in the mod.

I need to generate a sample batch of worlds and look over population and biomes pretty closely to get to the bottom of this one.

[thatkid]

It seems to be a legend's issue. My meowkin slaughtering goblin peasant can attest to the fact that they aren't all that tough otherwise.

[trees]

Oh man, I haven't had a chance to play this yet, but your description already has me hooked. I can't wait to give this a try.

[Putnam]

Oh man, I haven't had a chance to play this yet, but your description already has me hooked. I can't wait to give this a try.

This mod is interesting; it doesn't change the feel of the game at all, rather, adding something that feels like a natural progression. You see, this game adds a few more RTS elements to the game, which, considering the fact that the game is a real time strategy, makes nearly everything this mod adds feel completely natural. It makes the game harder, in the siege sense, because, let's be honest, who actually LOSES to sieges when you've got traps set up in the vanilla game? A bridge and a long series of weapon traps makes the only thing that can beat you at all titans, and even those are pretty easily resolved by military dwarves. This mod has ways of beating you without making it feel unfair; Hide behind forbidden doors, hoping to make siegers run into your trap corridor? Say hi to bog trolls. Hiding behind traps? Say hi to voidwalkers. This mod is unusually balanced; everything that may be overpowered is quickly balanced by something else out to get you, in quite an amazing way. It's undoubtedly one of the best mods I've ever used; both my "vanilla" copy (I can't keep it vanilla, because I have to have LFR!) and my mod !!experiment!! copy have LFR installed, and a third copy of mine happens to be LFR merged with Genesis (I kind of gave up on that when I realized that I would have to rewrite a bunch of creatures to support all of Genesis's features in LFR). Don't you love the way I ramble when I go on about things I like? This is somehow considered good writing in a school environment (99%! Great writing, but it didn't have an ending!)

[Pan]

And there's the tech tree, which I feel was a very original idea. Nothing against flavor mods (their great in their own way - variety! Makes the DF experience more varied, and makes for cooler stories to tell friends.), but it was really the tech tree here that got me in. To be honest, I must say that I was a little bit skeptical at the choice of races at first, mostly at the 'meowkin' race. But I got used to them and their excellent autumn caravans, since dwarven caravans are crammed with bars of metal, cages of sabre tooth tigers, zingers and fancy ores I ordered the year before. The meowkin caravan brings me the 'normal' trade goods of cloth food and exotic animals for the zoo.
(made sabre tooths and zingers embarkable but expensive pets since I couldn't find a trace of them down in the caves)

 I'm also looking forward to those crystal windows. But make them a little hard to get, else there really is no need at all to look for sand on embark.

Just had one pretty cool goblin siege. Cool cuz I was able to inflict heavy casualties with some different tactic than 'CHAAARGE THOSE ENEMIES WHO GETS PAST THE TWO LINES OF WEAPON AND CAGE TRAPS!'.

 The 5 squads or so of goblins and their ogre and troll buddies milled around my raised drawbridge gate, their unarmed general in the middle of the hoard. Then the bridge opened. Instead of armored, dwarven soldiers screaming bloody murder pouring out, there was... an empty corridor with a tall ceiling. The ogres and trolls roared in triumph, their simple brains sensing no trap but slaughter and destruction awaiting them, led the assault, charging in, three getting snagged by a cage trap. The goblins advanced warily behind them.

 However, just as they began to reach the doors at the end of the corridor, the sounds of grinding mechanisms reached their ears. Out of the ceiling, hatches opened, and zingers fell into the horde. The height of the fall instantly killed and detonated the creatures. Almost an entire three squads of the goblins, and almost all of the ogres and trolls were paralyzed by the blinding light or poisoned and unconscious from the noxious gas. The doors then, unsurprisingly, swung open to reveal a small army of taunting and screaming dwarven soldiers, who charged the broken goblin horde. The crossbow goblin squad and their spearmaster leader, who had been coincidentally at the back, immediately broke for the way out, only to watch, horrified, as a raised drawbridge part of the wall behind them lowered, releasing a large pack of lean, sabre tooth tigers, who descended upon them in a maddened fury.

It took me an entire season to clean up all the dead goblins and their severed lower bodies.

 Anyway, now that my attempt at storytelling is (thankfully) over, I can say that all of the above were true. The goblins and their -10 star general came into the main corridor, I pulled the lever which opens the hatches above, dropping the zingers a couple of z levels onto the goblins. Two of the zingers I dropped died instantly like I said, but the one zinger who broke everything on its body and survived was killed by an axe goblin, dooming the gobs next to him (hehe). Since I was using the first raws for the zingers the flash and putrids were quite overpowered (I had manually removed the frag, pyro and ice). Then I ordered my 15 melee dwarves clad in iron with assorted mithril, damascus and vanilla steel weapons and shields to attack.

 I had thought the crossbow gobs were a concern, but I laughed when they just fired a few (missed or blocked)shots and tried to run. Then I pulled the lever which releases the caged tigers that was in a room (sealed by a raised drawbridge)right at the side of the entrance, surrounding the goblins and effectively massacred them. The goblin general was, sadly, not caught in a trap for my amusement, but at least I had the satisfaction of reading the report of a sabre tooth tiger gnawing at him here and there, then getting his head smashed in with an =iovium war hammer=. I lost 4 sabre tooth tigers, 3 zingers and no dwarves to this siege.

Best siege ever.

[narhiril]

As much as I appreciate the high praises and the fact that people are enjoying LFR, I feel that I owe you guys an apology.  Things for 0.14 have not been going as quickly as intended, primarily due to real life complications.  I am still working on the mod and have by no means given up on development (far from it), but bear in mind that I am also in the process of transferring colleges (for the second time).

Things will settle down for me in about a week and a half, and then I can really start cranking it out.  I just felt that since this update is taking significantly longer than previous (and planned future) updates, I owed some of you more of an explanation than "I'm working on it."

That being said, I'm working on it.

[thatkid]

I thought the next update wasn't going to happen until the next DF update, anyways?

[Pan]

Eh, most of us here are pretty OK with the current version. Take your time 

Although a full list on what to expect next version would be nice. Something to look forward to.

And what's up with the moroii? I mean, are they just there, or serve some sort of purpose?

[narhiril]

Eh, most of us here are pretty OK with the current version. Take your time 

Although a full list on what to expect next version would be nice. Something to look forward to.

And what's up with the moroii? I mean, are they just there, or serve some sort of purpose?

The moroii serve as yet another method for technical advances.  They are disorganized and unfriendly to outsiders, but they look for and treasure relics of the civilization that built the Damascus Sentinels.  Killing them will sometimes yield one of these relics, which can be used for some tier 2 tech advances in lieu of unlocking them by documentation.  Aside from that, they're just there to add one more bit of variety to the underground.

As for a (planned) list of features, it's looking something like this.

LFR v0.14a

-Addition of the Orrery as a tier two training workshop (uses an already present but unused product of documentation).  The orrery can train teaching, student, and observer skills, which can be useful for making squad training sessions more productive.  Like any other training workshop, it produces slabs of accreditation.

-Addition of the Trash Compactor, which will have reactions to destroy technical advancement items three at a time.  This is useful post-T2 for cleaning out the excess slabs, treatises, and other advancement items produced by documentation after you have built all of the possible tier 2 buildings, which can produce these items on-demand if you ever need more of them.  Removal is done three at a time in order to preserve at least two backup copies if the reaction is left to repeat.  This reaction yields a boulder of "amalgamite," a unique but otherwise uninteresting stone-like material inspired by these (though lower-tech).

-Addition of the Crystal Growth Tank.  This tier three mechanical building will produce "crystalline blocks" of any color, which are useful for megaprojects and colored artwork.  These blocks require two mundane stones as reagents.  While the reaction will usually (always) produce imperfected color crystals for the blocks (that are not transparent), it will sometimes (25% or so) also produce a rough crystal gemstone of the same color.  These crystals are relatively low in value, making them a poor choice for decoration of goods, but excellent for colorful gem windows.  This building is constructed using an empty barrel and a rough rainbow diamond, a gemstone that is a byproduct of hadrine synthesis.  Because it now serves a function besides decoration, the chance of production of rainbow diamonds during hadrine synthesis has been increased from 25% to 50%, and their value has been decreased from 200 to 125.

-Official addition of zingers as portrayed in their 0.02a alpha release, but with graphics.

-Addition of a few new easter eggs.

-Addition of the first tier and part of the second tier of the parallel "ritual" tech tree.  I have not made significant progress on this part yet, so I'll release more about that later, as my concepts are subject to modification as I go.  What I can share right now is that advancement in the ritual tech tree is based more on resources invested rather than the mechanical tree's time and chances.  The two tech trees will "cross over" at points with buildings and technologies requiring sufficient advances in both to unlock.

[TehNoob]

Long time lurker here! Just registered to tell you that this is a really awesome and creative mod. Keep it up and cheers! Btw, I tried today and found a minor problem - the training workshop takes any weapon, instead of a spear. Its fine by me tho. Good for putting the useless goblin stuff to use.