@sabbykat: Love the long report.
So summarized, is there any way to alter what rain/cloud syndromes occur?
Yes, simply set rain to 0, and then add your own custom rains. This is how Naryars Demon mod works, or Xangis Fear the night. You remove all the demon types, add only your custom demons. (demon mod) They dont care for the number in worldgen. You remove all werebeasts and vampires, add your own ones.(fear the night) Same thing you can do with the weather. Remove all rains, add your own 3, deadly, almost deadly and little bit less deadly. You now only have these three. Its a lot less work then 30+h of embarking.
1. I first have to check if the evil plants and mosses work underground. I know I cant make specific interactions for caverns, that does not work.
2. It affects everything that hsa opposed to life. Husks and thralls included.
3. They also kill traders and diplomats. And migrants. Its only fair that they kill invaders as well. Your custom rains could only affect dwarves however, if you want this.
4. Ok, will be balanced.
5. Cant make inorganics with good/evil tag. Would be awesome, but doesnt work. I actually never tried, and will give it a go, but 99% sure that its not a supported tag. Trees I can do. Trees that if felled spawn an undead/evil treant creature, or release poisonous gas... thats possible. The gas only in cavern 2 or 3, because otherwise traders arrive with barrels/bins made of the poisonos-gas-wood, which is a stupid AI quirk. Otherwise the mod would have those.
@deon: FPS was the first thing that came to mind ^^ But sounds like an awesome idea, depending on how good or bad I can implement it. I could also make corpses turn into groups of vermin that eat your food and bite people with special syndromes.
Note: Sorry, you want feedback - you got feedback, Sabby-rambling-style!
Ahhh, that's awesome to hear it's possible. Now, if I had the slightest damn clue how to do this...
(no, not expecting you to tell me specifics!). Thanks for confirming it.
Do you think you could add in a few options to the mod sometime in the future, that would give 'pre-defined' weathers, like have say three options as you said 'nuisance, dangerous, and horrifying'? If it's simple to do, I don't think (from what I know of the gui/modding in DF) it would be that hard, and I know at least two others who have similar plights to myself with this, and I'm sure others could get use from it, too. though, perhaps it might be best to suggest this when you're tackling 'revamping' evil/good biomes...
Though, adding such an option is probably a good move eventually. Just like 'harder mining or smithing', and how you've now made the surface more... 'required' - letting us control the risk of weather and related matters is probably wise. So if we want hard farming AND extremely dangerous weather/clouds for even more sucidal challenge, it's a simple button flick, instead of trying to mod things and not break the mod in the process.
(this is all my opinion, of course).
Edit: I saw you 'inorganic evil/good' issue, and hopefully it's stimulated some thoughts for you! Be neat to see the two types even more defined instead of just 'colorful grass and fun rain' for both.
1. Ugh. Gotta hate the limitations. I hope you can, it would be quite amazingly fun (even if just for theme!) to see.
I love the new caverns and their appearances as is, but I would love to see what a darker variation could look like...
2. Woot! That was a big discussion between me and other players, how we wanted to play with the challenge of the undead, but they weren't really... 'hard' more so than just bloody annoying. try to haul that hand off to burn it? Nope, animates, your idiot dwarves freak out. Kill it, try to drag it another 10 blocks to the furnace, repeat endlessly in an annoying spiral. I had ideas to make it so special metals would 'kill-kill' the undead (per classical RPG feel), or giving them a set 'revive timer' - so a corpse/piece can only revive so many times, before it stays dead, keeping the challenge, but stopping the infinite annoyance, etc etc. But this rune concept works quite well too.
I'm actually going to do a large test fort using ONLY traps, in a normal rain, undead biome, and see how easily I can thwart undead by a few simple trap designs (since you can rune traps according to your post earlier). I think this may be a balance issue, as spear traps, weapon traps, etc, are infinite in use, and slapping together 10 copper spears/discs with runes on them all over the fort (to help in case of a break out inside) may negate the threat a touch too much... though, you could just do the same with a few military dwarves I suppose...
3. Actually, Caravan's are fine. Why? Even if they die - I still get the goods I ordered, and I've had this go on for 15 years in a fort, and never had other races 'get angry and siege me'. So really, I just gain a ton of free material (as they generally will reach my depot before having issues and start dying), and I just waltz out, and get a butt-load of free loot.
Migrants arrive wearing shoes, so unless it's raining immediately (depends on the biome), a good 50-80% of migrant waves will make it in quite safely and unharmed discounting possible undead/siegers in hiding.
Sieges arrive WITHOUT shoes or helms (most races, goblins have helms, which negate rain but not what's on the ground). So my dwarves are safe if it's not raining, while the moment siegers step foot on the map, they are doomed due to no shoes even if not raining.
I don't see why making the more 'civilized' siegers have shoes is too much issue, unless it's a modding problem. Not a major issue, but it does kind of trivialize this rain and the danger it gives.
4. I abuse this myself, but I felt it should be noted as it's too good. >.> <.< I hope others who use it don't try to lynch me now, like talking about fight club...
5. That'd be quite an awesome step
And be a good step to 'improve' the danger of the caverns for evil biomes. And aww, no Wagons with genocide gas?! Come on, it's so FUN! Just like Magma, when it burns down your entire map and roasts 90 of your dwarves as you didn't notice the flames all over the map... which so didn't happen to me, nope. >.> Like my first day play masterwork, when 'fire skulls' still spawned everywhere, and they rushed inside my cavern-moss covered fort, and my entire surface/inside of fort turned into an inferno... *cough*
More balancing matters!
1. 'Gem' furniture and matters, are too... 'nice'. Discounting trading, Gems have little use bar fluff - so I use them for BEDS, Dressers, Tables, chairs, Doors, you name it, and I don't need to lift a finger for wood, stone, etc, which is all inferior to gems by a large margin. Only pure gold objects can best it, and I'd rather just trade that pure gold to traders myself, which further dampens the need for gems.
Further, a little... 'trick' to the above. Make/acquire a ton of crystal Glass, transmute it into 'clear diamondsx3', use clear diamonds for furniture, trading, and related materials, and watch your dwarves be 1000+ happiness. Admiring their rooms, doors, tables, legendary dinning halls, royal palace bedrooms, etc etc, and generally speaking, it's quite easy to do this. And it has 2x the value of gold, so even more bonus to the happiness feel of it all. Just embark with a bunch of cheap ash or potash or similar for the glass (or wood for a cheap-cheap alternative), use those useless cheesemakers to process the glass and work all of this on the side while you focus on main industries, and you'll have not only a beautifully uniform hall of tables/bedrooms of crystal white diamond, you'll never have happiness issues or damn near.
Not sure if this is 'ok' with you, or not, but thought I'd point it out. it's not per say 'easy easy' to do, but the real cost of it is just a bit of time since wood is infinite, and rock crystal is VERY common in a lot of biomes/generally useless due to its low value, so using it for crystal glass is the best move.
2. Turrets, seem to be GENERALLY quite useless. Now, let me clarify this a bit.
Bullet Turrets - The back bone of turrets, they cost (last I recall) Two? Mechanism, which is reasonable. The issue being... they're quite useless. Yes, bombarding and 'injuring' attackers IS valuable, definitely! But against pretty much all siege races (and a lot of dangerous animals) their damage is quite minimal just causing bruising, and that's about it. it does chip bones at times, but against anything with even basic leather armor on - it can't even tickle them.
My solution for Bullet turrets to make them a bit more viable, would be (if possible?) to make them fire 'bullet material' based on the case material. So if the base is copper, if I make a steel case - let it fire steel bullets which still would not per say be 'fatal', but would make it able to at least harm armored foes of lesser materials, and maybe do more damage to larger critters. I DON'T expect/want it to be a literal 'gun turret' that can shoot through things and kill them. Merely allow it so they can be upgraded (with hefty costs to create advanced types?) and upgrade as your fort evolves. When I'm sitting on 30 million value, and have minotaurs and such major races swarming me with 150-200+ siegers, these seem like a complete waste of time even with 30+ of them firing at a single target (which I've done to test out viability of swarm tactics
).
Slade Turrets - Slade turrets confuse me. They seem to inflict shallower damage (flesh depth), but have a stronger knockback, and also seem to be less accurate by a good 30% then bullet turrets (in identical situations with an immobile target). they cost THREE clockwork pieces, and slade bars to create, yet... they seem to be worse? Against armor, they seem to penetrate a tiny bit, but the blows almost always are bruising and never 'break bones' or anything that could account for their heavier cost.
My thoughts would be (unless I'm not seeing some hidden effect, after AMAZING amounts of use - I always set my embark points to 10,000, to acquire 2-3 turrets, merely to help deter pesky animals
), that you make Bullet Turrets more designed to... 'deal with' fleshy, poorly armored foes, delivering precise strikes but lower damage. Where Slade Towers, as it seems you want, would be more the 'anti armor' tower, designed to harm those steel-cladded goblins who just love to ambush you every 10 minutes, inflicting more seriously 'internal' damage from the blunt impacts.
The knockback of Slade, seems to be inferior. Against anything that isn't a small bird/animal, it doesn't seem to knock back anything from say, a goblin or up from my experience. Instead, I found it more valuable to use this and bullet towers in a 'death hall' with a 3 wide path with traps, and the edges with 'pitfalls' down 20 floors onto spikes, so when goblins and such 'dodge' these projectiles, they leap off to their doom. But I feel that's a bit opposite of the purpose of this turret!
Web turrets - Now these, THESE are amazing. Setup right, you can ensnare trap immunes, flying pests, and various uses. The costs to make it are fair (I'd argue even too little for how damn amazing they are!).
The only 'issue' I have with it, is dwarves are idiots and will run into them even when they are ON FIRE and promptly get melted. But alas, that's a hazard, and micromanaging solves it. Not a big flaw for the power it gives.
Acid Turrets - I've found these completely, and absolutely bloody useless. I've tried them on nearly everything, and I cannot see its effect. It's range is terribly small too, and it seems if the target has armor or a shield (no battle reports, just what i see) it gets negated entirely or just has a horrendous application rate. I can't comment too much on it, as I've TRIED to get it to do an effect - but I just can't get it to work in real-game applications. Haven't tried the arena, but i prefer in-game applications where a more realistic situation would play out.
Warpstone turrets - This... causes dizziness and fever, I think? Again, it seems to be blocked by armor or shields (and some siege races, quite a few, are immune entirely). For the cost of it (since you can't get warpstone, without harder mining last I checked), it really just seems inferior in every way for cost vs use.
I'll try to do a more extensive testing of of Acid/warpstone turrets in game soon, and really test them hard then drop some feedback here (if you wish it!) to help and try to see if we can find a place where they're useful, but not OP. (which is what you're trying to avoid, I'm sure
).
Fire Turrets - These are nifty, but their range is far too short for practical implications. They quite expensive to create for amount of material, and generally seem to be 'meh' at best.
My suggestion? Either increase their range a good bit further (not sure what their max is now, I use them ONLY in tight halls, but their range seem to be 8-9 blocks). Or revamp them, and make them 'lob' projectiles that explode into flames and burn foes at impact (I think you have some things like that in game now?).
Hellfire Turrets - These things cost an arm and a damn leg to make, but are SO DAMN AWESOME!... if they actually reliably did damage. #1 ANY unit with a shield, will basically take this from a rape machine, to a total joke. A copper shield will negate it 100%, and I've not seen (hard to see though!) it hit a target with a shield, ever. Which is basically every single siege race that isn't beakwolves, or simpler siegers.
Further, the damage from it seems quite sporadic, though I assume that's a DF quirk - nothing that can be done.
Now, a really nasty trick for these to deal with shields? Mix it up with a web turret. Web 'em, the fire will then ignite the web and engulf the attackers in an inferno indirectly, shield or not
This is extremely effective vs 'living' races, but TOTALLY useless against automatons, undead, Demons (generally, some variations it works), etc etc.
Because of this little work around with web turrets, I think Hellfire turrets (besides the horrifying effect of friendly fire, flaming webs and dumb dwarves, etc), are just perfect the way they are. It takes a lot of coordination to build these into a setup that won't get instantly destroyed by archers, while also being effective against sieges/intruders, and they are quite fragile, so when destroyed, are a very hard hitting lose to you, especially due to the mechanism rarity.
3. Slade. If you embark with a volcano, Slade becomes the most op thing ever seen for trap-kind. Slade not only is heavy (good for blunt blows), but damn sharp too, and infinite in supply thanks to the great magma forges. Setup slade production, melt into bars, smith into spears/serrated discs, and now, you got a nearly untouchable, undefeated trap setup with a material that costs you a single block of stone to produce!
You may say 'trap immunes solve that' - not at all. Web turrets resolve the trap immune (as do dust mines, and others), as well, with intelligent setup, you can mix spears into the 'hall' of traps, which are manually controlled and WILL strike trap-immunes.
I don't know what to suggest for this, but slade seems to be too easy to abuse for traps generally speaking. It's effective, and nearly costless in value. Slap in runes now being added, and I'm terrified to even try this again, as I was wiping automaton/Minotaur/Demon sieges of 120+ out with a few lever pushes...
You could simply remove 'slade metal' being creatable, as if I recall, it's quite useless now. Volcanic gear needs slade BOULDERS not bars, so no danger to it, unless I'm missing something here x.x
4. Maces, hammers, etc, over-all seem to be quite useless in the Mod. In vanilla, they were quite OP, but in the mod, I've had artifact-wolfram/iridium/etc type maces, hammers, meteorhammers, and various types, and have a legendary 15+5 max possibility Legion with over 4800 strength using it on a naked foe, and basically all it did was bruise the living hell out of him. Rarely, I got a head shout that caved their head in - but half the time, it was 'outer brain' only damage and they just kept puking, and puking, and puking... and I kept bludgeoning him in the head again and again and again, and the damn thing will not die. tried this multiple times.
note: I haven't tried the above in the new versions, so it may be moot. But I haven't heard any talk about it, so I'll try to outfit some guys later and give it some testing! (Yes, I know maces are for armored foes, but the issue is finishing off ANY foe was impossible, naked or armored
).
5. This may have been asked/played on, but I can't find anything about it. but what's the difference between say, guns and crossbows? They fire the same rate according to the guide, but is there any difference between theme? I would assume by logic, crossbows are inferior, yet I doubt that's the case. What are the differences, generally?
6. Oh, and the 'flashing shadow grass' in evil biomes? I'd advise turning that off. I tested it earlier, and vs a similar size biome/setup WITHOUT the grass flashing vs with it flashing, I saw a good 25-70 FPS drop just from that (fresh maps, 7 dwarves, no rivers, normal embarks, etc). The grass was the only variable. While neat, it seems to have a hand in nerfing FPS a good bit.
And that's enough blabbering for now, you're going to grow to hate/ignore me.
Since I have no idea how to create 'new weather' for the mod and google/search for the forums is proving pointless, I'm instead just going to settle somewhere randomly, and try to create a fort to show off various points of my issues, and then hand it to you to witness it first hand so we can both see on equal footing. This is gonna take a while, though...
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Topic: ☼MASTERWORK-DF☼ V.3 - New release and old post. This will be locked later. (Read 1857732 times)