Hi everyone, I've started up an LFR fort recently, and I've managed to make it quite far up the mech tech tree. However, I've encountered a problem where I can't begin magnetic projectile research, even though I have all required reagents: copper bars, neodymium bars, iron bars, tanned hide and a stack of iron bolts. Anyone else got this?
Some of these reagents are imported, being in brackets, since I had to import the neodymium bars and some leather. Maybe thats the problem?
Edit: And after fiddling for a bit, suddenly its alright. Well, never mind then.
Just out of curiosity, has anyone else really employed spider and other t4 constructs? Sure feels like it took forever for me to get to this level (5 ingame years of micromanagement). Are they effective?
Spiders are effective in numbers, but generally a pain to get them positioned properly. I've had some success placing them in pits and dropping foes into them or confining them to small "death chambers." As for the more advanced constructs, they're mediocre individually, but in even just a small group they can be frighteningly powerful. My current fort has four mantids and a steel tarantula guarding (pastured at) my fort's surface entrance, and they tear just about anything short of a siege to shreds with some wear and tear and occasional losses, which I import the materials to replace. I haven't had quite enough material for a mithril tarantula yet, but they have an additional attack that injects poison. They keep the trade routes open without throwing away more dwarven lives.
Constructs will really start to shine when I finish up scarabs, which will be made from steel, damascus steel, or mithril, will be war-trainable, and can be assigned to units as extremely powerful permanent bodyguards. Golems are the next logical step after scarabs, but golems will (similar to in Dragon Age lore) require a dwarf rather than a slimer to become part of the golem's interface. Golems will be substantially more powerful than scarabs, craftable from mithril, voidshard, damascus steel, or adamantite, war-trainable, and may come with different variants, each with different special abilities. And before you ask, yes, adamantine golems are going to be
overpowered as hell, but it will take a massive amount of both research and raw materials to create even a single one of them.
The teal anvil that is part of the mechanized defense laboratory is a reference to the anvil of the void from Dragon Age.