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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]

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.

The bolded statement is something I have great interest in.  Not a "nuclear reactor" sort of thing, but I think it's well within universe to add a rock that constantly leaks power that could be harnessed by alchemy to produce fuel.

The problem I am facing with fires is how to safely start them.  Since dwarves produce workshop products right beneath their feet, there's a good chance that they'll wind up lighting themselves on fire.  As an alchemical disaster, this was quite humorous, but makes the practicality of intentionally lit fires a bit difficult.  Toady stated in the development logs that this is a planned future feature, but I will look into some other mods that deal with this concept to see if they have a more effective methods of dealing with unwanted side effects.  Maybe I can track down something that works and permissions to use it.

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?

Atom smashing has been greatly "nerfed" since 40d.  It's not a surprise to me that it isn't working on bog trolls, especially if there's more than one of them.  It's really only useful for garbage disposal nowadays, or as a light defense mechanism against smaller creatures (i.e. goblins).

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.

This is correct.  Unfortunately, it makes ideas like Carn's stationary bolt thrower impossible.  I will, of course, revisit some of these ideas if new versions of DF make them possible.

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.

This is similar to my line of thinking for second tier advances, though how I go about the "chances" for advancement may be a bit different.  There are literally a million things that can be done with this idea - which is part of the reason I'm so surprised that it hasn't really been explored very much.  Some sort of synthesis of tech advancement and the "heavy armor" concept is something I would like to play around with.

[narhiril]

I've run into a bit of an unusual problem...  Nephilim caravans refuse to unload their pack animals.  I'm asking around to see if this is something I can rectify, but it may just be a bug with the way the caravan system handles flying civilizations, as their pack animals can't follow them closely like regular caravans.

If I can't get a fix, I might have to just cut their trade caravans altogether.

[SirAaronIII]

Maybe you could make them have only flying pack animals, if possible. But then other races might get the animals too which might kind of get weird.

[narhiril]

Maybe you could make them have only flying pack animals, if possible. But then other races might get the animals too which might kind of get weird.

Right, this is the problem.  There are only one or two tokens that influence which animals are used, and neither of them offer the possibility of adding a new pack animal and setting a civilization to only use that one.

I'm not cutting nephilim caravans solely because doing so would effectively remove them from the game, since wars aren't declared nearly often enough for that to be a viable option.  I am instead tweaking the lore files to reflect their current behavior.  Nephilim will come to your trade depot en route to other nephilim settlements, but will refuse to allow you to touch any of their goods.  You can still forcibly steal their goods, but doing so too often will incur their wrath.

[Carn]

Is there a way to simply remove them from ambushing, but not sieging or thieving? Or modifying the frequency at which they ambush, or the size of their ambush parties? I figure you would have looked into one or all of those already, but I know nothing about the way DF handles such things. They weren't the only offenders in terms of ambushes anyway, if 3 lizard ambushes, 2 bog trolls, and 2 goblins all hit a caravan at once it, telling the vivisected traders "hey - at least no nephilim were there to help gut you" is a small comfort.

If ambushes could be scaled to the wealth/population of a fort in terms of frequency and / or size, that would be ideal. I thought sieges worked that way already, but I could be wrong.

[Alem]

Just started using this mod, and it is -very- enjoyable. I can't think of anything to contribute that I don't see here anyway, but I did find it rather amusing when I was alerted to Vile Force of Darkness, and thought to myself "the skeksis are attacking? Awesome!". Then the "skeksis" completely wiped me out. Bloody bog trolls 

[Carn]

Making Nephilim aggressive towards some other ambushing races would help alleviate the insta-death to caravans as well, even if the ambushes themselves can't be directly controlled.

How does DF handle wealth in terms of items from invaders? Once they enter your area, does it belong to your fortress? Once they die?

I don't know if it's a possibility to have thieves or other mischievious creatures steal items from the deceased. The main reason being that it would reduce the amount of "free goodies" a fort would get from ambushes killing each other.

I personally like to play in horrifying undead and savage areas, and in vanilla skeletal eagles and trolls and such would often murder goblin ambushes for me. This result in both thinning out wandering threats and providing free loot.

Perhaps a creature who eats items? Rust monster, slime, something like that? That might be a neat idea even if ambush on ambush action isn't viable. Another possible threat to forts, that's rather subtle and unique. You'd have to be unconventional in fighting them if they could eat away weapons and armor, too....

[narhiril]

Is there a way to simply remove them from ambushing, but not sieging or thieving? Or modifying the frequency at which they ambush, or the size of their ambush parties? I figure you would have looked into one or all of those already, but I know nothing about the way DF handles such things. They weren't the only offenders in terms of ambushes anyway, if 3 lizard ambushes, 2 bog trolls, and 2 goblins all hit a caravan at once it, telling the vivisected traders "hey - at least no nephilim were there to help gut you" is a small comfort.

If ambushes could be scaled to the wealth/population of a fort in terms of frequency and / or size, that would be ideal. I thought sieges worked that way already, but I could be wrong.

The way DF handles things is quite confusing.  Certain tokens affect diplomatic relations in ways that complicate modding a fair bit.  For example, the [ITEM_THIEF] and [BABYSNATCHER] tokens not only make that civilization steal from others, but also forces them to ally with the goblins and forces them into conflict with the dwarves.  These tokens seem to completely discard the ethics tokens for determination of war and peace.  Also, removing [CAN_SPEAK] has no effect on social skills, but forces hostility.  In Fortress Defense, hostile races used this workaround to force them to attack the player.  Some of these races would also attack the goblins, and declare war on each other from time to time.  What gets really confusing is when these tokens are overlapping - like a race without [CAN_SPEAK] but with [ITEM_THIEF] - will it be hostile to the goblins or friendly to them?  Unfortunately, I need to plug through these possible permutations until I get results that resemble the concepts.

All in all, I'm left with a mess of intertwined tokens that somehow (not always logically) influence friend and foe.  I would love nothing more than a token to disregard all of these complicated interactions and simply force a race into alliance or hostility with another (I put up a post in the suggestions forum to this effect), but unless something like that comes along, I will have to work out how these tokens interact with each other through mostly trial and error.  This is what is slowing down the diplomatic changes - I know exactly what I want the mod to do, but need to figure out what configuration of tokens will produce that result.

I'm devoting the next few days to testing.  So far, the nephilim are behaving as intended - friendly to the dwarves, hostile to ambushers.  Their caravans didn't quite work (flying civilizations' caravans don't work right in the current game), but I'm simply writing this into the lore as an unusual racial unwillingness to allow their goods to pass into foreign hands.  I *think* (cross your fingers) that I am within two or three test builds of getting the relations right.  Then I can move on to jamming a bit more content into this next update, which is still on schedule for late this month.

I hate to be a tease, but it's looking really nice.  The "tech tree" is working perfectly so far.

[narhiril]

An update.  I ran into an issue today with some of the training reactions.  Apparently, DF only advances a skill if a reaction successfully creates a product.  I am working on a way to resolve this without unbalancing any of the reactions.  What I've come up with is this:

Training reactions will output a single "slab of accreditation."  These slabs are otherwise worthless, but can be removed from the game at an alchemy lab (ten at a time).  This reaction re-uses the slabs for documentation of !!SCIENCE!!, thus consuming them and training the organization skill.  For the reasons stated above, this reaction must output one slab of accreditation in order to train the skill, resulting in a net loss of nine slabs per reaction.  But, in the spirit of alchemy, if you're very lucky, your scientists may create something special, which I have some very, very cool plans for.

That's all I'm going to say for now.  I am changing the poll up here in a moment - it looks like Orichalcum is going to be the name of the tech tree metal, but I will consider revisiting other names if future needs demand them.

[Alem]

Something I just ran into recently, and am uncertain if it is something I did wrong or a random quirk. The magma powered alchemist lab didn't seem to be recognizing the iron bucket as magma safe. Tried moving the bucket around from stockpile to stock pile and no dice until I removed the tag requiring magma safe buckets. Now to see just how badly I maim my alchemists .

[narhiril]

Something I just ran into recently, and am uncertain if it is something I did wrong or a random quirk. The magma powered alchemist lab didn't seem to be recognizing the iron bucket as magma safe. Tried moving the bucket around from stockpile to stock pile and no dice until I removed the tag requiring magma safe buckets. Now to see just how badly I maim my alchemists .

Noted and fixed for 0.12a.  Thanks!

Still can't get will o' wisps to spawn properly...  Not sure what's wrong with them.  That's the last major issue that I know of.  After that, I can give testing one more spin, and if bog trolls and goblins start fighting each other, I'll have the version ready to release.

[Alem]

I certainly can't wait. This mod is a blast. I'm getting murdered far more efficiently than ever 

[SirAaronIII]

Hm, I was wondering about that. I actually wondered whether iron was actually magma-safe, or if you had changed it not to be or something.
Anyway, my !!FUN!! with this mod.
So I built a Dodge This trap. Since the drops gasp weren't immediately killing, I decided to build a machine to pour water in there so that enemies who didn't die would drown (except for those who don't breath). Guess what happens next? That's right, the machine horribly fails and floods everything. Now those poor humans can't get in to trade.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Actually, is kind of fitting cuz he's sitting in a lil' pool. Ha.

[narhiril]

Will o' wisps are working now.  Things have been going abnormally smooth, and it's freaking me out.  I am testing the diplomatic changes, which is the last remaining feature to test.  If all goes well, I could have 0.12a out as early as Friday.

[Carn]

Very cool, I look forward to discovering in what new ways we can get our dwarves horribly murdered!

So, Nephilim are currently planned as a sort of counter-ambusher? They only send caravans (unless you're at war with them) and their purpose is essentially to lure out and attack ambushes?