Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

#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.

[Meph]

God damn it, I hate plants.

I will just rename all of them to "process creature to sausage"

[jonveck]

> Oh, and somehow I would like to rename the still to distillery. Or is my english weird again?

still [stil] noun.
1. a distilling apparatus, consisting of a vessel in which a liquid is heated and vaporized and a cooling device or coil for condensing the vapor.
2. a distillery.

Still is effectively synonymous with distillery.  However, I can definitely understand why it might come across as weird sounding to non-native speakers.  It's fine how it is, but hey:  it's your mod, you could most certainly make it a distillery if you wanted.

[Werdna]

@Werdna: Yep. I agree. I even thought about making wolfram, titanium, mithril... all these new metals... completely non-tradeable. That way you have to work for them.

I had thought about it too, but it would screw over any embark without mithril, and if you play an invader-heavy game its fairly important to have access to mithril/volcanic vs late-game races.  Is it not possible to ramp up mithril value, to simply make it more costly to purchase from traders?  Ideally I'd like to be making decisions like "Do I buy 5 bars of mithril, or a web turret, or a spear golem?" in those early years.  The prices for turrets and golems I think are perfect, it takes some serious industry on my part to afford them, and they're worth the cost.  But bars of mithril I can purchase with less than half a bin of stone crafts.

Oh, and somehow I would like to rename the still to distillery. Or is my english weird again? And cut off all these "Workshop" from the names. Soapmakers Workshop. Tanners Workshop. Masons Workshop... why? Just Soapmaker, Tanner and Mason seems to be fine ^^

Distillery is more like an upgrade to a Still, but would work fine.  Most people think of a Still as a single piece of equipment for distilling, whereas a Distillery tends to be several stills where mass-distilling is done.  Either ones fits into the DF concept! 

Soapmaker/Tanner/Mason calls to mind the actual professions rather than their workspaces.  I think you may be looking for Soapery, Tannery, and I can't recall a word for a Mason workshop.  Masonry traditionally isn't done in a shop...

[Kurik Amudnil]

My thought on the student/Scribe name was Scholar
Also, it seems to me that you could merge Scribe and Archaeologist into Scholar.  When the Archaeologist isn't out looking for artifacts he can be back at the library learning about them and other Scholarly pursuits.  This would also free up a labor slot for something else such as the gunsmithing

[Meph]

My line of thought was:
Archeologist (labor) => Archeologist (workshop)
Scribe (labor) => Scriptorium (workshop)

The names make it very easy to know what is what. Scholar makes sense though, but I dont know if people connect the two things directly. I also have to draw the line between Scholar and Researcher/Inventor... The Gunsmith is actually something I am not sure about. It is only one late-game building, which one application, making one type of ranged weapons. There are 4 types of ranged weapons, and I know many people turn Guns off, because it doesnt fit the medieval theme of DF and I cant toggle these new, patched in labor names. People will end up with gunsmiths running around in a game without guns. ^^ But I can do whatever I want with the names, which makes it hard. Too many options.

Werdna, if I make mithril super expensive you can just mine it/make it from silver and trade it away. I rather remove it from normal trading, but still keep an option with "crate of mithril bars", because I can control their price individually.

The workshop name ending makes sense, seen from that point. You are not building a carpenter or mason, ok, yeah ^^ 

I would really like to remove the soapmaker (workshop) entirely and move the reaction to the chemist... but I am afraid many people will start looking frantically for soap then. I usually dont remove vanilla features. But since the Chemist (labor) makes soap now, it would fit.

[smakemupagus]

I thought that making mithril from silver (and obsidian from which to craft volcanic from blocks, for that matter) is much more powerful than being able to trade for it.  Maybe I don't use the Trade liason meetings as aggressively as I should.

[Werdna]

Werdna, if I make mithril super expensive you can just mine it/make it from silver and trade it away. I rather remove it from normal trading, but still keep an option with "crate of mithril bars", because I can control their price individually.

Wait, what workshop is this?  Huh, I didn't know.  I just returned to DF from a long break and haven't dug into all the new MW features... this seems horrifically overpowered, it completely bypasses steel in the technology progression.  If this is the case, the only reason to set up a steel industry really is to bump mithril to welded mithril.  Silver is just so common, it sounds like I could have a mithril-equipped army in year one and skip the early copper-clad army entirely! 

And what is the volcanic reaction, is it just obsidian? 

[Meph]

Werdna, 4 silver bars make 1 mithril bar. And mithril is not stronger then steel, but exactly even, just lighter. And you need steel+mithril for welded mithril. BUT you can also make volcanic, which is twice as good. You need magma, steel, mithril, obsidian and slade to make it... That leaves the question: Do you go for welded mithril? Or rather safe it for the very expensive, but very good volcanic?

[fricy]

Hey everyone, new boy here, but I'd like to chip in too.

First I'd like to thank Meph for this great mod, I only played one fort in MWDF, but I enjoy it very much.

Personally I find the castes make MWDF too easy, esp. the military castes, and I disable them.  DF rewards specialization and the castes just further specialize dwarves right from the start, essentially giving your military free super-dwarves with each migration wave.  The bonuses are just too good IMHO.  I also found myself fiddling too often in DT, trying to fit the caste to the job, and just didn't enjoy it.  Mostly just personal preference; but Meph please consider tuning down the military caste bonuses if you feel you need to tune invader difficulty.

I agree with this line of thinking, advanced materials and features are too easy to get right now, and they need to be somewhat nerfed to make the mod harder. The only enemies I have a problem with are corrupter wizards, with their area effect breath attack they can lucky-one-shot a whole legendary mele squad. Breath attack/webbing FBs also pose a risk, but nothing else I encountered gave me any problem. You don't even need a danger room in MasterWork, training works as it should be. (unlike in vanilla )

So what I have in mind is a kind of tech-tree progression system with the new guild houses. Most of the new MW workshops should be unavaliable until the guild house of that profession is built. You won't be able to  smelt mithrill/wolfram/etc. until you have the appropriate guild housed in you fort. To build a guild you should have at least one lvl10-12 dwarf (or even a legendary?) of that profession in your ranks too. When building the guildhouse you get one blank blueprint that you can use to build any one of the advanced workshops, the others workshop blueprints could be purchased from (dwarf) caravans, or researched...in the architects guild for example.

To slow down progress further the wealth/status of your fortress could also be a factor. Like only the mayor/baron/queen can give you a licence to build guilds, no guilds until you have at least a mayor, and only like 25% of them after. When you get upgarded to barony you can build 60% of the guilds, and all guilds will be avaliable when the king/queen arrives. Of course you can choose which ones you want to build, but their number should be limited.
IMHO 15 guild houses are a bit overkill, I'd say the ideal number of guilds is 6-10, so a mayor can mandate 3 guilds, with a baron you get 6.
Furthermore: When you build a guild the highest ranking dworf in that guild gets noble status and will drive you crazy with mandates - like all nobles do. Imagine this with 10 guilds/10 extra nobles - you get my point.

The library system could/should be rolled into the guild system as well, so they can be built as an attachment to the guild houses to give the essay reactions. I'm not sure where the scriptorium fits in this way though...

One problem with this is that the advanced building are mostly metarworking/smithing related, so some work is needed to balance this, maybe new buildings into weaker guilds - the potter comes to mind. The other balance issue is the bifrost/volcanic/slade. I don't think they fit into the smiths guild, so a separate guild may be needed - they could be merged into either adamantine or runesmithing, or ... no idea...

I also have an extra building that can be implemented: the Tavern where you use booze and food to generate either coins or information from caravans. The information can even be a random blueprint, or some bonus succes % to your expeditions that you send out into the world. If possible to do, this building should generate (?unarmed?) fights between the caravan and your dwarfs - nothing like a good fight in a bar.   It can go into either the sociolizers guild or the foodmakers.

So yeah, that's my 2c. Let me know what you think of it Meph, if you found any usable idea in there. And once more thanks for your hard work with this mod.

f.

[Meph]

I think that balancing is very difficult, because people use different playstyles. Here the best example:

Player A takes metalworkers, furnace operators and miners, and a lot of drink/food at embark. He goes straight for metalworks, has steel in the first year, completely disregards food/booze production, and buys out the first caravan using gold crafts. He is a very low-wealth fortress, with smiths having high strength and endurance attributes, and full steel armor.

Player B builds a moat and concentrates on nice design. He smoothes and engraves, makes booze and masterwork roasts. He has a leather and cloth industry, producing high-value tradegoods. Everyone is very, very happy and the fortress is extremely wealthy. He is however unable to defend himself against a single ambush, and the caravan is killed. He cant even leave his moat.

I cannot balance the mod to be fair for both players. Thats why I want to add more of these balancing settings. I probably should play a longer fort with the current version, to see how fast which parts can be done.

Fricy, it is always sad to see good suggestions that unfortunately go to waste because modding limitations do not allow these things. About everything you suggested falls under that category. Cant be done. Buildings linked to skill lvl? impossible. Getting one free item? impossible. Linking nobles to specific jobs? impossible. Taverns with fights? impossible.

I could base most custom buildings upon reagents I produce in guilds (which was my first idea anyway) and slow down progress and the amount of different industries you can have at the same time. But people heavily protested that idea. Thats why I rather do a single guild building for the next release. Making lots of guilds for everything would also require MASSIVE changes to almost everything. Completely overhauling the learning and magic system, all buildmats and tech trees for example. Thats 100h of work for you. Well... me.

I do like the idea of a Tavern. Its very dwarfy. I do have the "Paupers Pub" for the kobolds, but havent considered a building like that for dwarves. I think the, very creatively named, Music Stage could be deleted and I can put music and other stuff together in a more lore friendly Tavern.

I do like your long feedback. I always have to say, I rather read 10 pages of good ideas and a pair of fresh eyes going over the content, then reading 10 questions about how this reaction works, and how good that item is.

[jonveck]

> I cannot balance the mod to be fair for both players. Thats why I want to add more of these balancing settings. I probably should play a longer fort with the current version, to see how fast which parts can be done.

And I do not think you should balance it for both, or either.  It would be a shame to punish someone for their play style.  Of course, it could be said that vanilla is the simulation and MW is the strategy wargame, but if you can provide options to allow for both, why not?  I absolutely love your dedication to giving players the option to make things harder for themselves.  I mean, this is a game where a little tweak to the raws can allow me to create 1000 adamantine swords out of vermin remains... or, as you said, turtle up and face zero chance of invasion.  Balance is a fragile, near-unobtainable thing in DF.  The real issue is what makes the game more fun, right?  Because any decent player can create a fortress that thrives, and I contend that what the majority of us really play for is not some mystical balance, but those, "Oh, shit, look what I did, that's awesome!" moments.

[sayke]

@meph - Love the direction you're going here! I've got a few notes and suggestions, though:

- I would suggest renaming "Toxicist" to "Poisoner's Workshop", because "Toxicist" just... Sounds weird =P I've never heard it outside this mod.

- Instead of "Inventor", might I suggest "Tinker"? Tinkers invent things, but they also fix, tweak, and improve them...

- I quite like the Bowyer/Gunsmith distinction. In practice they are just very different skillsets, plus it makes sense for guns to stay in their own category so they can be disabled if need be. In the meantime, you've freed up several skills for other uses anyway - is freeing up one more immediately necessary?

- You could require 8 bars of silver to make one mithril, thus increasing its rarity, thus allowing it to have a higher value but still be tradeable! Mithril should be expensive but doable - you should be able to armor up your military in welded mithril *eventually* but it should take several years, right?

- Why not keep the Soapmaker's Workshop? It doesn't hurt anything, and soap is important - I have a small soap/potash/etc assembly line area with all the related workshops, and it works fine.

- What all are you doing with the awesome newfound web-syndrome technology?? You should totally make gnomes have different kinds of web-shooting guns...

- I'm very much in favor of your two difficulty-balancing buttons - the +1 equipment tier, and +skill levels... Awesome.

And I actually laughed out loud when I read your line about making everything use "Process animals to sausage" ;-)

[Werdna]

Werdna, 4 silver bars make 1 mithril bar. And mithril is not stronger then steel, but exactly even, just lighter. And you need steel+mithril for welded mithril. BUT you can also make volcanic, which is twice as good. You need magma, steel, mithril, obsidian and slade to make it... That leaves the question: Do you go for welded mithril? Or rather safe it for the very expensive, but very good volcanic?

I dunno, it just feels too easy.  Silver is so common; 4 silver->mithril requires drastically fewer job steps than steel; no flux stone is needed; low weight is important to keep your melee dwarves cruising (its effectively free levels in Armor User).  Its better in many ways, even if functionally equivalent in combat.  The concept of Mithril, as a fan of Tolkien, was always something rare, something uniquely dwarven and one of their finest treasures.   

I really love the diversity of MWDF, the fact that if your embark doesn't have this or that, there's a reaction over here that lets you work around it.  That makes the find-a-good-embark game so much less painful and gives some nice diversity in play (and avoids tedious over-reliance on trade).  But I feel that MWDF makes the military game much easier in so many dimensions, that it forces me to layer on all kinds of extra self-challenges compared to vanilla DF, even with the extra invaders that I always enable.  The military diversity is great, but the balance is a little bit off*.  To me there is a balance problem when you can safely skip 75% of the armor materials in the game and can go straight to a steel-equivalent.  Setting up a steel industry in vanilla is a major deal, there is such a feeling of accomplishment when that first military squad is running for the forges to grab their shiny steel armor, especially if you won that race before the first sieges arrive.  I just don't get that same feeling with MWDF - it feels like my dwarves are coated in uber without even really trying.  Half of my melee are still fresh draftees from the last migrant wave, and they're already receiving mithril goodies - and that's just from mining mithril directly and playing the trader game.

You probably remember me bitching about mithril way back when, so in the spirit of not nagging so damn much (haha), I'll float this suggestion:  I'd love to see mithril one step harder to make than steel.  What if mithril was an alloy instead of an ore?  A (steel bar + 4xsilverbar) = 2 mithril bar and waste bar reaction would require a player to have advanced through the steel age, and not shortcut it.  Mithril would feel like a real dwarven accomplishment then.

* my other main balance criticism aside from metals are the free proto-golems that arrive with immigrants; I've seen these single-handedly drive off early ambushes and even give entire siege squads holy hell.  I understand though that this one is a little harder for you to control since it is a pet.

[sayke]

You probably remember me bitching about mithril way back when, so in the spirit of not nagging so damn much (haha), I'll float this suggestion:  I'd love to see mithril one step harder to make than steel.  What if mithril was an alloy instead of an ore?  A (steel bar + 4xsilverbar) = 2 mithril bar and waste bar reaction would require a player to have advanced through the steel age, and not shortcut it.  Mithril would feel like a real dwarven accomplishment then.

I second this, or something like this. Maybe leave single rare mithril ores around, like gems in silver veins, but no clusters...? Welded mithril should then require some more obscure reagent then steel, because producing mithril should require steel regardless. Welded mithril should require something weird and light and otherwise decorative... Titanium!!! =D

[Werdna]

You probably remember me bitching about mithril way back when, so in the spirit of not nagging so damn much (haha), I'll float this suggestion:  I'd love to see mithril one step harder to make than steel.  What if mithril was an alloy instead of an ore?  A (steel bar + 4xsilverbar) = 2 mithril bar and waste bar reaction would require a player to have advanced through the steel age, and not shortcut it.  Mithril would feel like a real dwarven accomplishment then.

I second this, or something like this. Maybe leave single rare mithril ores around, like gems in silver veins, but no clusters...? Welded mithril should then require some more obscure reagent then steel, because producing mithril should require steel regardless. Welded mithril should require something weird and light and otherwise decorative... Titanium!!! =D

Yeah, I was just thinking about Welded in light of my suggestion; it seemed a little too simple to add +1 steel bar to the mithril and call it Welded.  But then again, Welded Mithril ought to be a relatively minor reaction compared to the Volcanic reaction.  I like the Titanium idea though.  I'm pretty sure that can be gotten from traders even if your map has none, since I often trade for a titanium bar and then trade back goblets for quick profit.