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#1: Put the Alarm Siren in the Military Garrison, it fits and is one buildings less.

#1: Keep the Alarm Siren seperate, I want to have it near my other levers.

#2: I have traded with Gnomes, build Artificer and Weather Control Station.

#2: I have NOT traded with Gnomes, did not have the chance to build their buildings.

[isitanos]

Tried the stonecutter workshop, and being able to make stone beds, stone weapons (spears, etc), stone bins and stone trap components which usually come from wood is sure handy. We also can make metal bars without charcoal/coke, and now we're gonna get booze without plants, which will make things easier in that department as well.

All things considered, I'm kind of worried that this kills the gameplay. It seems to me that no resource is meaningful if you more or less end up using them interchangeably. A wood-less embark is less of a challenge since wood is now redundant, no need to rush for the caves or to trade for some to make beds/bins/charcoal. Metal is much less of an urgency, since stone spears from what I saw are pretty effective weapons, at least compared to the wooden ones (I'd love to know how you make an all-stone spear that doesn't break, btw ).

Maybe I'm missing something and it's all part of your design philosophy. Meph, care to expound on this?


(Edit: Ouf of the blue comparison, but anybody played Total Annihilation back in the days? I kinda got a similar feeling of diluted gameplay when they started adding official extra units to the game. At the beginning you had very distinct land/sea/air combat. Then they added hovercrafts, anti-air turrets you could build on water, underwater metal extractors, and so on, making land and see combat pretty much the same thing. Some mods went even further, making them completely identical. It may seem original and interesting at first, but actually it's a case of more being less...)

[CheatingChicken]

This does not seem right. Are Goblin Eyelids supposed to be that tough?

Edit: Might be because that crazy goblin put his mail shirt over his eye O.o

[bombzero]

@isitanos
Stone stuff from stonecutters because of this.

ever tried to make enough bins in a 200 dwarf fort? not easy in a desert, or even an area with only moderate vegetation.

the cold hammer reactions take 3x as much ore, so are horrifyingly wasteful. still need fuel to shape it.

wood farming is excrutiatingly slow, and is really intended to help with barren embarks. you can turn it off i believe.


stone spears are effective as weapons? btw most stuff at stonecutter takes a secondary reagent. beds need cloth, weapons need wood, so that stone spear is a stone tipped wood spear.

@CheatingChicken, eyelids/small parts act really really wierd. and remember, his mail shirt covers his eyes. 

[isitanos]

Edit: Might be because that crazy goblin put his mail shirt over his eye O.o

Secret goblin tactics! It's harder to go straight and you don't know where the enemy is, but they can't hurt you!

1. ever tried to make enough bins in a 200 dwarf fort? not easy in a desert, or even an area with only moderate vegetation.
2. the cold hammer reactions take 3x as much ore, so are horrifyingly wasteful. still need fuel to shape it.
3. wood farming is excrutiatingly slow, and is really intended to help with barren embarks. you can turn it off i believe
4. stone spears are effective as weapons? btw most stuff at stonecutter takes a secondary reagent. beds need cloth, weapons need wood, so that stone spear is a stone tipped wood spear.

Slightly edited your post for ease of reply.
1. Well that's kinda the point, you embark in a desert to challenge yourself. And if you breach the caverns and excavate the top 1 or two layers of sand completely, you have a safe and efficient underground tree farm. This said bins are always an annoyance to make, but I'm still ambivalent about wood being made redundant. Especially since you don't even need barrels anymore in vanilla, with pottery and rock pots.
2. I guess that's decently balanced, but it contributes in making wood even more useless.
3. Never even used that... too much to check out in this mod. It makes the problem even worse in a sense, because not only do you use wood less but it makes it easier to acquire.
4. Effective enough to kill two megabeasts at least... Didn't know about the secondary reagent at stonecutter, it's not as bad as I thought I guess.

[Neyvn]

I remember there being a mod or something (maybe it was vanilla) which allowed you to "Hive" Spiders. It makes silk farms a little more easier that way...

Any chance???

[Meph]

@silk from farmable spider: I dont know if you checked, but slikworm pets you can buy already

@bombzero: Yep, I will keep it simple, as simple as I can. Hope you like he mancer=ranged, bound=melee for all classes of magic. It will only be those two, and no complicated setups with custom reagents. Except the candles, but they are in to give wax at least ONE use ^^

@isitanos: Thanks for the feedback. I am actually a bit worried myself that some things are too easy to get, for example the blood from bodyparts. Kill an army, make epic amount of booze. I will try to balance these things, but I need people to play and report to me first about it. I cant test everything myself.

The core idea is to give people seperate ways to run the same industry. If you cant have A, you might use B or C. I try to make seldom used things like farming (everyone spams plump helmets in vanilla) or breeding (does anyone bother with milking and shearing in vanilla?) more uses. If you want to run a surface fortress which is essentially a giant farm and make everything from fields and animals, then this should be possible. Even metal-grade armor, booze and whatnot. It should not affect normal fortress buil up to much, because even with some boozebelly goats you cant run a 200 dwarf fort. Or equip your army with drakescales, since they only give so many scales, and only bronze grade.

If you really want to help, then go though the list of items you think need balancing and present your findings to me. I dont know how much of the thread you did read, but you will notice that I take feedback seriously

On this very topic: Someone asked about a reaction to boil eggs to make them edible. Is added and works. Eggs are not stockpiled as eggs though, had to use a "cheese" food item, same problem as with candy and bread. But it works and shouldnt be a problem, this way "edible" boiled eggs are not mixed up with raw eggs as well. If I were ironic I'd call it a feature

Changelog:
 - Fixed slow learning for female mages
 - Fixed bone stud reaction accepting bone items as well
 - Slade bars are now stockpiled correctly
 - Slade bars can now be used to make weapons and armor in the forge
 - Fixed warlock necromancers. They can now really raise the dead.
 - Added reacion to boil eggs in the kitchen. Takes 1 egg, makes 1 boiled egg, now edible.

[Talanic]

I cant use masterwork tags anywhere. Quality modifiers for reagents and building materials are sadly missing. The major problem I have with juggling these complex building mats is this: You disable the weaponry/armory, and cant make plate armor. This would mean (in your example) that the magic system would rely on them, since I cant build them without. Every single piece should be self sustaining. I have some issues with that already, the runes for example, or the armorplate for heavier trap components. Or the Tech Lab researching blueprints for guns, even if people disable guns. It is all layers upon layers and a nightmare to manage (now you know the problem a GUI causes)

Great point about that.  How about I amend my suggestion to Gold statues with Steel armor and two Large Gems (eyes), cutting out the armory.  A dozen of those would take a huge time investment to make, regardless of quality.  Granted, I still see a problem - the dwarves would gladly create temples chock full of statues of armored demons. 

Or perhaps another route would be the 'Temple of Solomon' motif - have a lot of components that must be incorporated, similar to how the Timberyard takes a fairly hefty investment to make.  If the building requires ten blocks of Gold and ten of Obsidian, fifteen bars of Copper, Iron, Steel, Silver, and Platinum...well, you get the picture.

[smakemupagus]

On the stonecutter:

It is so powerful and flexible, I do really like having it, but Isitanos does have a point that it does kind of change the game (bins & anvils are the ones I think of especially).  I thought of making stone bins require a mechanism, and making the stonecutter a big, more expensive building like the Timberyard.

cold hammering and rock weapons are OK i think, for the same reasons that bombzero say.  The tree-farms, I was one of the first to worry about, but in practice they grow so slow and processing the trees ties up a Timberyard full time anyway.   I think it's OK. 

somebody, set up a desert succession game once Meph gets a stable version up

[bombzero]

I cant use masterwork tags anywhere. Quality modifiers for reagents and building materials are sadly missing. The major problem I have with juggling these complex building mats is this: You disable the weaponry/armory, and cant make plate armor. This would mean (in your example) that the magic system would rely on them, since I cant build them without. Every single piece should be self sustaining. I have some issues with that already, the runes for example, or the armorplate for heavier trap components. Or the Tech Lab researching blueprints for guns, even if people disable guns. It is all layers upon layers and a nightmare to manage (now you know the problem a GUI causes)

Great point about that.  How about I amend my suggestion to Gold statues with Steel armor and two Large Gems (eyes), cutting out the armory.  A dozen of those would take a huge time investment to make, regardless of quality.  Granted, I still see a problem - the dwarves would gladly create temples chock full of statues of armored demons. 

Or perhaps another route would be the 'Temple of Solomon' motif - have a lot of components that must be incorporated, similar to how the Timberyard takes a fairly hefty investment to make.  If the building requires ten blocks of Gold and ten of Obsidian, fifteen bars of Copper, Iron, Steel, Silver, and Platinum...well, you get the picture.

except these things are not garunteed to be obtainable, and also you may say order from caravans... no ordering bars from caravans is extremely annoying.

On the stonecutter:

It is so powerful and flexible, I do really like having it, but Isitanos does have a point that it does kind of change the game (bins & anvils are the ones I think of especially).  I thought of making stone bins require a mechanism, and making the stonecutter a big, more expensive building like the Timberyard.

cold hammering and rock weapons are OK i think, for the same reasons that bombzero say.  The tree-farms, I was one of the first to worry about, but in practice they grow so slow and processing the trees ties up a Timberyard full time anyway.   I think it's OK. 

somebody, set up a desert succession game once Meph gets a stable version up

Anvils are OP from stonecutter, but what if you don't have a metal anvil? how do you make a metal one? fixes infinite logic loop.

@using mechanisms to make stone bins... this would be annoying and tie up the mechanics shops, and also give you either a spam of high value bins, or waste the value of the mechanism, i would be strongly against requiring extra reagents to make a simple bin.
more stones to build it. (i.e. 2) can be done in 34.xx i believe. but do you really want added complexity to something so core to running a fortress.

tl;dr, don't use it if you don't like it, like danger rooms.

[mglarev]

I like the stone anvils. That the quality of the anvil does not affect the product quality of the forge is a DF Vanilla problem. Untils it is fixed there, I see no problem.

[smakemupagus]

Anvils are OP from stonecutter, but what if you don't have a metal anvil? how do you make a metal one? fixes infinite logic loop.

absolutely agree, there should be some way to start up or "bootstrap" the metal industry.  but i'd like it better if it were just hard enough to do that i'd consider bringing an anvil, or look forward to the caravan.

@using mechanisms to make stone bins... this would be annoying and tie up the mechanics shops ... but do you really want added complexity to something so core to running a fortress.

personally i'd probably make it an expensive building OR a more expensive reaction.  just my opinion, but yeah, i would really want "proper" metal anvils and wood bins to be simpler to make than the stone versions.

tl;dr, don't use it if you don't like it, like danger rooms.

yep (certainly everyone has their own specific idea of what is the perfect version .. for example i thought that my post was *agreeing* with Bombzero that the stonecutter was at least 90% balanced )

[bombzero]

meh, stonecutter is a little too essential to a fortress to make it an expensive building, however as Meph said its just another means to an end. minor increase in part req. would be fine.

also, i would like to respectfully request that people don't strongly to remove/supernerf a part of the mod because it doesn't fit with their playstyle. just a request, as its quite annoying to have to defend parts of the mod i like for fear of them being made nigh-unusable.
(the above posts were fine btw, as they were more worded as suggestions, my main concern is that previous favorite mods of mine across various games were ruined by the "OMG ITS TOO EASY" people)

(and for anyone curious, i also have a phobia of, griefers, trolls, idiots who can't spell, and immature fools, as all of those have trashed my past favorite games/forums. humans suck.)

[GaxkangtheUnbound]

I have an idea of a dwarven superweapon:
The Will of Armok.
Basically, you sacrifice some expensive stuff in a reaction that produces a hyper-dense stone, which evaporates into a massive cloud. The cloud envelopes all it can reach, and strikes them with insanity (read: Intense drowsiness). It'll require a dwarf to be sacrificed.
I also have a basic idea on what materials should be used:
Megabeast Essence
4 Grand Blood Gems
20 blocks
What do you think?

[Meph]

@bombzero: Still ranting about vherid ?   I still have no idea what that was about.

Anyway. I thought previously that a reaction for the smelter to make anvils from metal would be ok, instead of the magma-safe block anvils. But magma-safe blocks makes so much sense ^^  for the smelter: take 4 wrought iron bars, make a rough anvil or something.

I can alter the stone bins/barrels(pots) a bit, but only adding more stones is a bit silly. Even with 3 rocks for 1 bin it is still easier then 1 wood. I could use blocks for them. Stone => block => bin. Adds a refining step. Other then that no ideas spring to mind.

@gaxkang: Nice name btw, but how would you use it ? The dwarf would die (or I can just make dwarves immune to it, no problem) but civilians wont do the reaction when near hostiles, they cancel and flee. Soldiers on the other hand do not do reactions. PS: This is how the landmines work, with boiling stones.

[GaxkangtheUnbound]

Supposedly, you'd have the dwarf in question have a courage drink to stop them from running, or position the superweapon somewhere far away enough from the invaders that by the time they reach the sacrifice, they'll be driven mad.