Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

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]

On Orichalcum again, maybe you could make it starmetal/thunderbolt/meteoric iron ? While Dwarves are more technologically advanced than almost everyone, I wouldn't think the meteoric deposits would be cashed yet. And of course, historically, meteoric iron was a highly prized resource for (usually more primitive) many societies.

I appreciate the feedback, but there are some qualms I have about this idea.

I am hesitant to use meteoric iron because it's chemically the exact same thing as regular iron.  Also, and probably more importantly, I had some plans for the distant future to use meteoric iron as another ore of iron that can be found in some unusual places. 

Iron meteorites are thought to be the only source of a few rare elements on Earth (i.e. Iridium), but the properties of these metals don't really seem to make sense for making "precision tools."  I mean, iridium is used in solar cells, but that's WAY beyond the level of tech advancement I want to create.

I have searched for names of other mythical metals with limited success.  Names like vibranium and unobtanium came up, but I have discovered that most fictional metals are tied to specific fantasy or science fiction universes, which doesn't make them very attractive to me.  If I do wind up creating a new, unique metal, I would prefer it to have a more unique name.  Vibranium is used in Marvel comics, and unobtanium sounds stupid (I'm sorry James Cameron and material science theorists, but it really does).

I feel like the modding forum doesn't need any more variations of steel or iron.  I included damascus steel because it's a real (but still somewhat mysterious) metal and it fills a space between steel and adamantine, but that's as far as I want to go down that path.


--

Here's what I'm left with.


I need a metal that...

-Is a base metal.
-Is rare, but occurs in most types of stone.
-Has a property that makes it ideal for manufacture of precision tools without making it an obscenely powerful weapon material.
-Has a name that is either original, mythological, or derived from a real life element.

--

The second criterion means that I more or less have to use a fictional metal.  Since I don't want to rip a name from another specific fantasy universe, that leaves me with two options.

1) Orichalcum - a legendary orange metal mentioned in ancient writings, associated with the lost city of Atlantis.  It is unclear whether or not this metal was entirely fictional or an alloy.  The Romans translated this as "aurichalcum," which resulted in alloys of gold and copper being named "orichalcum," but no one knows what the original metal actually was - if it even existed at all.

2) An original name - I'm open to more ideas here.  I have to approve it, which means it cannot include the words "steel" or "iron."

It would be really nice if I could get some more feedback on this.  I didn't think orichalcum was such a bad choice, myself, seeing as the other two traditional fantasy metals (mithril and adamantine) are already in-game.  To be completely honest, the more I think about it, the more attracted I am to the idea of just leaving it as "orichalcum."

Actually, a better idea: let's put a poll up for it.

[NobodyPro]

Hadrium, you could make it very resistant to blows but heavy (slow) and blunt.

[narhiril]

Hadrium, you could make it very resistant to blows but heavy (slow) and blunt.

I like this idea, but not for this particular metal.  I may add a "heavy armor" metal down the road.

I've got all of the raws for v0.12 written (unless I decide to add a creature or two, in which case I'll need a few days to do graphics).  I'm just bug hunting now.  Cave oysters and pigeons were dying out very fast in worldgen, so I'm changing them into vermin.  I'm not sure how this will affect pigeon training, graphics, or oyster pearls, but they're at least surviving now.

Here's what 0.12 currently has:

-Orichalcum (turned into precision tools at Alchemy Lab or Magma-Powered Alchemy Lab, also a decent crafting metal (value 35)).

-The Advanced Mechanics Workshop (requires precision tools, produces precision tools and advanced mechanisms)
-The Mechanical Sparring Partner (requires advanced mechanisms, a spear, a shield, and an armor stand, and trains any weapon skill)
-The Medical Dummy (requires a splint, precision tools, and several advanced mechanisms, trains surgery, suturing, bone setting, and wound dressing)
-The Morgue (requires precision tools and advanced mechanisms, trains diagnose skill using corpses)
-The Mechanical Obstacle Course (requires several mechanisms and advanced mechanisms, trains dodge, armor, and ambusher skills)
-The Crematorium (requires fire-safe material, turns corpses or five vermin remains into ash)

-A few new hidden items (wink).
-A hidden, incredibly (though not invulnerably) powerful creature (with graphics).
-Bugfixes for cave oysters, pigeons, and a spoiler-related oceanic creature that wasn't spawning properly.
-Reduced overall Meowkin population by making their "kitten" stage longer, resulting in slightly better megabeast survival rates.
-A change to clockwork pendant salvaging, which now yields a precision tool, a mechanism, and one to three advanced mechanisms
-Revised entity relations (see a later post on this page)


A couple of ideas on the table for additional 0.12 content:

-New HFS, to replace or compliment procedurally generated clowns.
-Mood Armor, though I'm not sure how many more armor types I can really think of.
-Rare Drops (will involve new creatures).
-NobodyPro's "heavy armor" metal concept.
-More tech tree elements.



NOW IT'S YOUR TURN

I plan to visit each of these concepts, but I am debating when would be a good time to do so.  What do you guys think?  Do you want v0.12 a little bit sooner, or would you rather wait a bit and see a few more new features added?  If you'd rather wait, what concepts would you most like to see expanded on?

[narhiril]

Remember, since very few people seem to be sharing their feedback, your opinion will more or less dictate strongly influence the development of this mod.

[Carn]

I would love to see more tech progression myself. As much as DF is a sandbox game, having some (admittedly optional) goals to work towards are nice.

On a related note, your mod has excellent ways to fill in the gaps for farming and metal working, but one gap I always found in DF was fuel sources. If you want a thriving metalworking (or glassworking) economy (and you need it to survive in this mod, as everything laughs off stone fall traps and there are WAY too many monsters spawned at once for cage traps to handle, even from just ambushes).

Perhaps some way to get a longer lasting fuel source, or more efficient use of fuel? Perhaps found via alchemy? Basically, something to help bridge the gap between the early stages of wood/coal burning until you can get to magma, and also make alchemy more important earlier (so we can have more irradiation accidents!)

To balance it out, it could be more dangerous to obtain (SCIENCE) than wood or coal, but more reliable (ie: you could get an economy going on maps with little coal or trees). Yes, I know you can trade for wood or coal, but it's never sufficient for the needs of a fortress since beds can only be made from wood.

Alternatively (or in addition) perhaps harvesting a tree would give you multiple units of wood based on woodcutting skill and/or tree type, and wood items would use different amounts. Perhaps a bed would use more than bolts, for instance.

Just some ideas. Rare drops and heavy armor sound cool, too!

[Interus]

I really need to play this since I like the idea so much.  I don't know enough about it to make proper suggestions, but I think that your tech-tree-precision-metal thing should probably bring to mind an ancient civilization.  I was about ready to suggest aurium or something, because I liked the sound of it, until I remembered that it's just gold.  I'd like to suggest quintessium or omniscium.  Quintessium came about because I looked up alloys and a 5-part alloy is called a quinary alloy.  I figured an advanced enough civ would be able to combine several materials to produce their ideal metal.  Also, it obviously sounds like quintessential.  Which is why omniscium came to mind too.  Also I like Q's, and Quin adds nicely to any alloy terms.

Wish I could remember my chemistry enough to come up with some really good names.  Basically though, I'm in favor of a name associated with your own mythology, and not borrowed from anywhere else.  I'm not opposed to orichalcum either though, since it is such a well known fake-metal.

[SirAaronIII]

Orichalcum should be a more advanced metal. Don't really have any good suggestions (besides Paracelsium/ine/ite/whatever mineral-sounding ending you want but that should be more advanced), but I think the name of the first metal should end with an -ine. Just my opinion.
How about khalkine (after a town on an island in Greece, I liked the name)? Or intium (after the Inca sun god)?

[narhiril]

I would love to see more tech progression myself. As much as DF is a sandbox game, having some (admittedly optional) goals to work towards are nice.

On a related note, your mod has excellent ways to fill in the gaps for farming and metal working, but one gap I always found in DF was fuel sources. If you want a thriving metalworking (or glassworking) economy (and you need it to survive in this mod, as everything laughs off stone fall traps and there are WAY too many monsters spawned at once for cage traps to handle, even from just ambushes).

This is an issue that I am working to resolve in the very near future.  Ambushes in particular with more than one hostile race get overwhelming (especially to trade caravans) very quickly, and this was not the mod's intention.  Having eight ambush groups pop up on top of a caravan the instant it enters your map is not particularly fun, in my opinion, so I am trying to implement the following changes.

-Nephilim are no longer hostile by default.  They will not ambush you - ever - but will siege you if at war.  You can also trade with them, which is nice because they carry steel weapons (including the lance, a new type of pike unique to them). 
Status: done and implemented for 0.12.


-Bog trolls should now be hostile to goblins and lizardmen (who, for technical reasons, are still allied).  Thus, since the majority of ambushes in the current version are lizardmen and bog trolls, they should go after each other instead of lingering on your map waiting for a caravan to stomp. 
Status: done, in theory, but not yet tested


-Voidwalkers are hostile by default to everyone except the bog trolls (who they usually consider a waste of time and effort to bother killing).  When a voidwalker siege shows up, it will wipe the map of most other opposing forces.  Voidwalkers are tough enough without stacking other armies on top of them.
Status: done, but I still haven't had enough time testing to actually trigger a voidwalker siege.

Perhaps some way to get a longer lasting fuel source, or more efficient use of fuel? Perhaps found via alchemy? Basically, something to help bridge the gap between the early stages of wood/coal burning until you can get to magma, and also make alchemy more important earlier (so we can have more irradiation accidents!)

To balance it out, it could be more dangerous to obtain (SCIENCE) than wood or coal, but more reliable (ie: you could get an economy going on maps with little coal or trees). Yes, I know you can trade for wood or coal, but it's never sufficient for the needs of a fortress since beds can only be made from wood.

Alternatively (or in addition) perhaps harvesting a tree would give you multiple units of wood based on woodcutting skill and/or tree type, and wood items would use different amounts. Perhaps a bed would use more than bolts, for instance.

Just some ideas. Rare drops and heavy armor sound cool, too!

I like this idea.  Unfortunately, most of the reaction raws (i.e. construct bed) are not public, and the number of logs from each tree is hard coded (to my knowledge), but I am not opposed to "alternate" fuel sources involving alchemy.

I really need to play this since I like the idea so much.  I don't know enough about it to make proper suggestions, but I think that your tech-tree-precision-metal thing should probably bring to mind an ancient civilization.  I was about ready to suggest aurium or something, because I liked the sound of it, until I remembered that it's just gold.  I'd like to suggest quintessium or omniscium.  Quintessium came about because I looked up alloys and a 5-part alloy is called a quinary alloy.  I figured an advanced enough civ would be able to combine several materials to produce their ideal metal.  Also, it obviously sounds like quintessential.  Which is why omniscium came to mind too.  Also I like Q's, and Quin adds nicely to any alloy terms.

Wish I could remember my chemistry enough to come up with some really good names.  Basically though, I'm in favor of a name associated with your own mythology, and not borrowed from anywhere else.  I'm not opposed to orichalcum either though, since it is such a well known fake-metal.

Alloys are not something I have really bothered to touch yet (besides damascus steel), but I plan to introduce a number of alloys as "value multiplier" alloys, which will reward those who bother to gather their (numerous) necessary components with a sharp increase in net value - primarily for trade purposes.  Your love of the letter "q" has also been noted.

Orichalcum should be a more advanced metal. Don't really have any good suggestions (besides Paracelsium/ine/ite/whatever mineral-sounding ending you want but that should be more advanced), but I think the name of the first metal should end with an -ine. Just my opinion.
How about khalkine (after a town on an island in Greece, I liked the name)? Or intium (after the Inca sun god)?

I like "intium" quite a bit.  However, I'm not sure what you mean by "more advanced."  Are you referring to an advanced weapon material, or something with a very high value?  I feel like, even though the material value is modest (35), orichalcum is still quite advanced because it opens up the entire mechanics arm of the tech tree, which leads to combat and medical training workshops - plus possible "second tier" mechanics advances down the road.

The problem with making it an advanced weapon material is that I don't feel like there's a lot of room for that, since mithril, damascus steel, iovium, ether, and voidshard all exist in the gap between steel and adamantine.  I'm also quite adamant (pun intended) about not creating a metal more powerful than adamantine, because I feel that adamantine epitomizes the risk-reward concept, and I don't feel like I have the tools or any real reason to create a bigger risk than the one associated with adamantine. 

[SirAaronIII]

I like "intium" quite a bit.  However, I'm not sure what you mean by "more advanced."  Are you referring to an advanced weapon material, or something with a very high value?  I feel like, even though the material value is modest (35), orichalcum is still quite advanced because it opens up the entire mechanics arm of the tech tree, which leads to combat and medical training workshops - plus possible "second tier" mechanics advances down the road.

I meant more difficult to access, like you have to do more steps. Because in the poll, it says the FIRST tech advancement metal, so there should be others after it, right?

[narhiril]

I meant more difficult to access, like you have to do more steps. Because in the poll, it says the FIRST tech advancement metal, so there should be others after it, right?

I'm actually not quite sure yet.  I have some other ideas for ways to stagger "tech advancements" besides just striking new minerals.  It's considerably rare in testing - only two thousand or so on an average sized map with the highest mineral distribution (about the same rarity as iovium, though a bit more spread out), but not rare enough to not appear on most maps.  But yes, it is a base metal - this is to maintain some consistency with Plato's texts, which say that orichalcum was mined in Atlantis.

Right now, the "step" to acquire it is you have to find it.  It's there, spread thin in a few very common types of rock, but it's not like gold which you can strike by randomly swinging a pick for a minute or two.  I feel like it's rare enough to be exciting when you find it, but not rare enough to be frustrating.  As you dig, you'll probably hit it - almost assuredly if you are doing exploratory mining.  If you somehow manage to not find it, there's the option of using a clockwork pendant to advance, which drops (100%) from damascus sentinels in the third cavern level.

I also added a note to the front page that this mod was designed and tested to use standard or higher mineral distributions - primarily because I wrote the raws for mithril before mineral distribution was even a setting.

[Carn]

Alchemy has a million and one possible things you could add to it, perhaps even having multiple tiers of alchemy labs, like you do with mechanics. Perhaps if you get enough or certain kinds of radioactive reactions, you can have an advanced alchemy lab (mad science sanitorium?)

A lump of highly radioactive material could be dangerous, but possibly used as a fuel source or requirement for more SCIENCE!

Also, there are very limited ways to melt ice (or anything else). Toady never put in an option to build a bonfire, or anything like that. Or even a fire trap. Obviously, we've all been pumping magma to do these things, but a more limited way to do it on a smaller scale could be nice. For making one shot fire traps that are faster and easier to build, but not reusable (or as lethal) or heck, just for melting ice for drinking water for the wounded.

Although the possibility of using radioactive waste to melt drinking water.....hmmmm.....

Just tossing out more ideas.

[Carn]

Also, am I doing something wrong or are bog trolls so enormous they can't even be killed by dropping atom smasher bridges on them?

[Carn]

I haven't played since 40d so maybe the much nerfed stone trap and atom smasher are simply intended changes?


Not sure how much of a pain it would be to make, but perhaps another use for advanced mechanics might be parts for additional siege weapons?

I've always found siege weapons to be fairly useless and incredibly difficult to manufacture. Sure, they're some of the most powerful things in the game, but the crews are civilian so they flee. They're also very difficult to hit with, and have possibility of horrible friendly fire. Since Ambushes love to go after caravans, they aren't viable at all for defending the caravans.

I'm not sure what the technical limitations of siege weapons are, but it's another area that could possibly use the helping hand of SCIENCE!

Perhaps a one man(dwarf) bolt thrower, mounted on a swivel or tripod so as it could get a good field of fire? Basically a javelin thrower, but stationary and using the siege skill (but without the downside of Z level restriction or fixed facing of ballista). That would make it simply a weak javelin thrower, but perhaps it could use rocks for ammo? Or just fire crossbow bolts very quickly?

Ideas, ideas. I'm full of them when I should be sleeping.

[SirAaronIII]

Sorry, but I think siege engines are hardcoded. That's why in some total conversions, we have ballistae even when the setting is OUTER SPACE. Kinda weird.

[darkflagrance]

Here's a thought I'm planning to implement in my current mod: Research.

Have a reaction that consumes experimental alchemical resources and requires the presence of glass vials, and has a 1/100 chance to output a rare reagent. This reagent can be further reacted in similar reactions until you produce some new kind of precision tool. This can then be used as the requirement for a workshop that allows the production of new weapons, substances, or more research.

For example, you might have a "Experiment with gold and silver" reaction that has a 1/100 change to yield raw orichalcum. This could then be used in the "Purify raw orihalcum" reaction that has a 1/50 chance to produce purified orihalcum. Then, the Orihalcum Alchemical Forge would require a unit of purified orihalcum to make, and would allow the player to further synthesize pieces of orihalcum or forge orihalcum into weapons or tools.

You could probably use this idea in creating tiers of technology in your own mod.