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Author Topic: Reducing Deadliness  (Read 1307 times)

DrKillPatient

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Reducing Deadliness
« on: July 22, 2011, 04:06:05 pm »
I've just completed the body structure of my Martian tripods, but unfortunately I made them FAR too hard to kill. They're somewhat like bronze collossi, in that they don't bleed out (although their dismembered parts will spew oil/blood if you throw them), and they're made of steel (changed recently to iron to make it weaker, with little effect), with copper tentacles and a fleshy brain (the Martians) inside. The heat ray instantly fries everything and the black smoke causes death by lung rot near instantly. I'm looking to make them LESS deadly at this point, perhaps someone here has some recommendations...

Some ideas:
- make the heat ray less effective: lowering the temperature seems to do very little here, creatures seem to bleed out at the same rate; although if I could make it ignite stuff without instantly melting them it might be more diverse
- only occasionally causing lung damage by the black smoke, rather than making it assured; is this possible?
- the tripods' limbs never seem to come off, rather, they just go into teal color eventually-- they're not disabled though, as I've seen all-teal tripods keep using their tentacles to attack.
- they have eyes, and disabling them would severely limit the range of the heat-ray, but you can't see them in the combat screen to target them. Why is this?

Here's the raws, if anyone wants to look over them directly:

creature_mars.txt
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

body_mars.txt
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

materal_template_mars.txt
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: July 22, 2011, 04:11:06 pm by DrKillPatient »
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Eldrick Tobin

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Re: Reducing Deadliness
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2011, 04:32:12 pm »
there's playing with joint tags or (what I did to make a colossus easier to take down) adding [DIGIT] tags here and there.

Observe:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are a few extras in there just so I could fully populate a body in case I had to change something later.
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DrKillPatient

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Re: Reducing Deadliness
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2011, 05:34:34 pm »
That certainly helps, limbs are now coming off. I've just noticed that the brain rarely gets touched, though... I had to go into the arena and guided a speardwarf to stab his steel spear into its iron body, "fracturing the body and chipping the martians inside!", and strike it down. Should it not read 'tearing apart'? Maybe the brain's incredibly hard to scratch because it's defaulting to some metal or another, although the code looks right. Can I check that somehow?

I think my biggest problem is the black smoke and the heat ray. I want those features in, but I don't see a way to weaken them without abandoning the original narrative; plus I want the Martians to siege. 20 dwarves with full steel armor and grand master everything still can't stand up against 4 tripods currently, although the Martians are left with most, if not all of their body parts at red, and perhaps some limbs missing. I think the key is the brain at this point...
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Reducing Deadliness
« Reply #3 on: July 22, 2011, 08:59:53 pm »
Dropping the temp of heat rays so that they don't melt adamantine and figuring out some way to get them to not set the world bonfire would be a good start. Maybe make the lungs rot slower.

Also, remember how the Martians died to the Common Cold? Give blood a syndrome that can cause the necrosis of the Martians. Not perfect, but it should work.
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DrKillPatient

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Re: Reducing Deadliness
« Reply #4 on: July 22, 2011, 09:34:40 pm »
I've drastically reduced the temperature of the heat ray, it's now at 26000 (rather than 60000), which seems to be the minimum at which stuff will melt. They don't ignite anything at all with the heat ray, nor have they ever, although I don't quite know why. Lung rot now only occurs 25 percent of the time, if you inhale it.

The blood causing sickness is an excellent idea, and I think it's possible to restrict it to only the martians. They can stab creatures with their tentacles and suck out blood that way, will that actually bring it into their circulatory system? The only organic organ in them is the 'brain', renamed with BODYGLOSS so it's the martians inside the machine.
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"Frankly, if you're hanging out with people who tell you to use v.begin() instead of &v[0], you need to rethink your social circle."
    Scott Meyers, Effective STL

I've written bash scripts to make using DF easier under Linux!

TurkeyXIII

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Re: Reducing Deadliness
« Reply #5 on: July 22, 2011, 10:57:11 pm »
It's chipping the martians because the martians are made out of something hard and brittle.  You've defined FLESH to use the muscle template, but the muscle template gets its material from LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:MUSCLE, which you don't have, and you don't define a tissue material for FLESH anywhere else either.  I'm surprised it doesn't show in the errorlog actually.

The temperature of magma is 12,000, I don't know why you'd need 26000 to melt stuff.
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