Dwarf Fortress

It's not terribly difficult to get started, once you know how. My goal once I get back to my computer is to make a desert fort with a castle of glass.

Videos or community tutorials from the DF website. That is how I learned to play. I learned on the older version and then progressed into the new version with a different tutorial.

Man, I should really learn how to deal with military stuff. Admittedly my preferred military is... Not Good but XD

I just watched duck's videos to get basic idea of controls/concepts and learned rest by trying out <_<

I used a random guide I found on the internet. It was useful when I actively looked at and followed it.

I've gotten into Adventurecraft mod. It's definitely a must have for anyone into butchering and using all of their kills, not just pulling the edibles and some bones for crafting. You can fashion weapons, armor, crafts, containers like backpacks and waterskins. You can also destroy things like enemy weapons and refashion them into things you can actually use.

My current run in it is as a Tigerman peltast who turns his kills into spears to throw at other kills. My main arm is a hammer and shield combo.

So the latest devlog, from today, says Toady's got squads going out on small missions now. Rescuing kidnapees, retrieving artifacts, and doing generic raids if we want to start trouble. So it sounds like we'll be able to start wars in the next release. As well as taking action should goblins manage to kidnap anybody (It's been a while since I've even heard of that happening anymore.) And the artifact stuff we already knew was coming.

We're going to start interacting with the wider world and having bigger reasons to train up armies.

I was going to ask if anyone had heard anything new.

Every couple weeks or so we hear something new. Sometimes it's the beginning of a new feature. Sometimes it's a funny bug that got found and squashed.

Also, the old Civ screen got replaced by a map that lets you see where all these civs are. Like on the Legends screen.

So, you know, strategy map + raids = actual involvement in wars now.

So I read PC Gamer's current interview with Toady One. It's got a lot in it to absorb and it's only part one of the series.

http://www.pcgamer.com/dwarf-fortress-creator-tarn-adams-talks-about-simulating-the-most-complex-magic-system-ever/

Tl;dr magic is going to be just as simmy as the rest of the game, with it rolling into everything and the characters using a basic mental framework to pull emergent behavior with it. Won't talk about the example used so as not to spoil anything, but if there's fire involved in magic, the idea's going to be for the characters to figure out all the different ways they could use fire magic. Like lighting cooking fires. Staying away from the booze pile with it. Weaponizing the booze pile. All sorts of stuff.

This is going to get badass. There's also stuff about order. Like first the artifacts, then the myths, then the beginnings of magic. It's going to take years. And they will be glorious years.

...and yet there are still no aimed projectile weapons.

magic huh? FINALLY a source for the First Anvil.

Have you tried asking about that on the Future of the Fortress thread? I don't recall there ever being a mention of making that as a goal.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=159164.msg7397385#msg7397385

Just posted the question myself. We can watch for an answer, though if it's answered by Toady himself it'll be some time early next month.

edited 21st Mar '17 6:05:52 AM by Journeyman

The thing that gets me that is a fundamental aspect of ranged fighting and a rather obvious thing to include.

It depends on how everything is calculated. I mean, it probably should have been done in the same span as the aimed melee attacks, but if Toady intends to include Ballistics into the calculations, then he's going to wait for his parabolic arc (ba-dum-tsh). I know character strength, skills, and the materials involved factor into melee attacks. We've finally started getting extra calcs involving joint damage in the last release. Arrows and bolts in flight would also require angles and such to determine how much damage they do, and Toady could be waiting for his ballistics calculations before allowing one to choose where to aim.

Trajectories are already included. Including shots arcing. Bolts even have stats to determine if they will penetrate armor or not. The only thing we can't do is the most logical thing done in projectile combat.

edited 21st Mar '17 2:06:36 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Then I'm out of defenses. It is the way it is. He simply hasn't gotten to it yet. For me it's not that big a deal because I'm a fortress builder. Even in Adventure mode, what I ultimately want is to lead others and command them as they do the work.

So for me what's important is the Economy arc and the AI arc where we get more fine tuning on how people do things. We saw hints of that last mentioned in the interview, where he wants to create interacting systems of psychology and everything else (including magic) that just organically create things through logic.

And anything that affects combat also affects fortress mode. Your combat dwarves use deliberately aimed melee attacks all the time.

That was how we got the sprays of teeth everywhere from the hammer dwarves with the Volcano Fortress.

I know. And we're waiting for all this stuff. I can't tell you why he didn't choose to do aimed missiles when he did other attacks. All I know is he didn't.

Still odd though.

Here is to hoping it comes soon so I can watch fortress dwarves deliberately shoot enemies in weak spots.

Possible. I give the odds as completely random. Toady MIGHT toss it in during a bugfix period. Most likely time would be during the next Army arc when he fleshes out worldgen fighting more in service to us sending our subjects out for actual combat purposes, instead of the Rescue and Retrieval missions we get next. We get a general raid option as well, but it's not going to be deliberately combat heavy.

I'm starting to get the same replies I expected. "In combat situations only a trick shooter could actually aim at a specific body part on a moving target with a bow." Truth is, that kind of is the perception of bows, at the very least. They're considered a mass volley weapon whose long range accuracy was not much more than a pre-rifling firearm. Of course, we're not firing at long range. About twenty paces, which is dueling range.

Except historical accounts would suggest otherwise. Aiming for the head, arms, legs, and yes even joints does not require trick shooting. It does require a skilled archer and short ranges, which DF operates in like you noted, but it is not limited to trick shots at all. There are historical accounts backing up individual archers taking such aimed shots usually at limbs or face plates. That and it is trivially easy to aim center mass and hit center mass. Same for aiming for aiming for limbs.

edited 22nd Mar '17 6:42:28 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Folks doing 16 x 16 embarks have found the maximum range of a ballista to be 200 tiles. I did some digging to find the real max range of one (460 meters) and back figured that to find the length of a tile (2.3 meters) and the range of our ammo (Not that I needed to actually do the math to find one tenth of something, but I did it for thoroughness sake) at 46 meters. That's the range we're shooting at.

Just looked up the Armok Vision mod again to see what was up with it. Damn, it's pretty.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146473.0

We are getting closer to the next release with every day. Still no sign of aiming bows, sadly, but we'll be getting artifact movement and the ability to goad other nations into warring with us. It's a start. And who knows what Toady will throw in with the bugfixes. Remember, the psychology rewrite was rolled in with the bugfixes rather than a big release.

Just lost my first remotely successful fort in a reanimating terrifying biome.

It was a pretty intense game, and I learned some useful things for whenever I try a similar embark. I can see why this is considered the 'hard mode' of Dwarf Fortress, you really need careful planning and a fair amount of luck to get anywhere. This fort was lost to undead from the caverns getting in through a well shaft, so the main thing I need to remember for next time is to be a lot more careful with wells (or just find another source of water). Also, next time I won't bring any cats; keeping my stockpiles safe from vermin just doesn't seem important enough to justify the risk posed by having so many little animals constantly running around the fort.