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[Byakugan01]

How about this for expeditions: Have special castes (transformation, called "training", needs equipment, and a mean to learn, either memory orb or book) just for that, so you dont try to get mister nopony to face the deathlands, but a specialiced group of ponys. Basically the tenpony tower idea, the normal residents dont leave it, the scavengers do.

I thought about things like:
Hacker (brings back blueprints (?), the content of electronic safes and some other crap he downloads from terminals)
Medic (Has the cumulative reduction of bleeding danger, but doesnt bring back loot)
Lockpicker (The content of crates, plus some small chance for rarer stuff)
Scavenger (not the name i want, because it overlaps, brings back salvage, a good junk of it, medium and high quality)

So, you could put together your own scavenging party, depending on what you need, and if you feel greedy, you leave the medic at home, risking your valuable lockpicker. Risk reward it is.

Also, i thought about sending groups to trade with other settlements. Either for bottlecaps (needs goods, depending on who you trade with) or for goods (you need bottlecaps for them).

The problem with this idea, is you're basically training ponies who have NO other use than for expeditions. Might as well pay mercenaries to do it. Besides, our stables tend not to be Tenponny tower types.  Ours have, just to reach their destination, survived the dangers of the wasteland. Depending on what you bring, they might not have even had guns to do it with, or even knives-just their hooves and teeth and wits.  If we're feeling charitable, maybe they had two sticks and a rock that they picked up, but they had to SHARE the ROCK! We're basically Wastelander Steel Rangers who happen to come from a Stable in order to build a new Stable.

More seriously though, with the lockpicker we basically already do that stuff at the stable. And why not bring back the whole safe if you can? It's valuable metal, which many stables would need (since safe is going to likely be made out of iron or steel). The same issue arises with the Hacker-generally, you're going to want the whole terminal, since those things are very valuable to a Stable. Medic-this is a great idea. Should still bring back loot, since it's not like they cannot pick stuff up (maybe not as much as other ponies though). But rather than being a separate skill that needs to be trained, it should use the existing medical skills. More reason to sacrifice hapless ponies (or slaves or blanks!) for medical SCIENCE!


And on a even more serious note; Littlepip was Missus Nopony when she left Stable 2. A mere month or so later, and look at where she was at. Which reminds me of something I thought of then forgot about before; Expeditions should have a chance to increase the skills and stats of the ponies you send, depending on where you send them to. All places with hostiles could train combat skills, but certain places could also make them slightly tougher, faster, stronger, etc, just by virtue of surviving in those environments. I mean, Canterlot? Phillydelphia? Between the ghouls and the Cloud in the former, and the Rangers and the Slavers in the later, those places might as well be deathtraps. By making the survivors of expeditions come out tougher and stronger, you have an incentive to put strong ponies there in the first place; the more expeditions they survive, the more valuable they will become to your fortress and the better they will become at going on expeditions, thus giving incentive to create a crack team just for this purpose, who can also do other jobs around the fortress.  At the same time, they should have a chance at decreasing empathy and other related skills and stats. The Equestrian Wasteland, afterall, is a harsh mistress.

[Treason]

Maklak:

The plasteel depleated energy lance is fairly rare, though if you process scrap like mad, you're likely to run into a few.  Recharge them at a workbench (you'll need some charged spark batteries) and they're a more lethal spear/pike upgrade.  They seem to be the preferred weapon type as every time I leave weapon choice up to my ponies' judgement, they always pick up a charged lance.

[Iceblaster]

>Energy Lances are rare
Damnit I got one in my forts but didn't have a prismatic generator to get spark batteries... I think I accidently sold it

[Treason]

>Energy Lances are rare
Damnit I got one in my forts but didn't have a prismatic generator to get spark batteries... I think I accidently sold it

Spark batteries aren't exactly rare.  They show up in any number of crates, quite a number of them already charged.

Trust me, unless the percentage of charged batteries found within crates is changed, you have no need for a generator, be it prismatic or flux (flux being the one that any Unicorn assigned to operate it will take a depleted battery and zap it with magic to give it a charge).

Edit: On an unrelated note: The only times I've experienced any sort of crash is when attempted to gen a new world with custom settings, right after saving a stable.  It's pretty much a guarantee, in my experience.

Also, frame rate seems to have taken a dive with this latest update.  I was averaging 100 fps with a fort of a 120 in the previous version, but switching to this one and I'm fortunate to get 70 fps with 60-70 ponies..and that's in glaciers, deserts and badlands where there's nothing else living to supposedly mess with fps.  I'll do some more observational data-gathering and report on what I find (and yes, I'm aware water and flow does a number on fps, as does smoke and steam.  Several of my maps, I had 0 water sources and was still pulling crummy fps).

Update on that observational data-gathering:  New fort.  Part Good Biome, part Evil Biome embark.  3 necrotic ghouls that make an immediate run towards the center of the map and my ponies as soon as the game is unpaused.  I was prepared and brought LOTS of robots.  The three died...7 bale hounds were spawned..they died and 3 of my robots...a mr. macintosh immediately spawns and head-shots a pony.  I get inside, finally.  Start digging out some farms.  Irradiated cloud spawns and my only doctor decides that THEN would be a good time to run outside to clean up the never-sufficiently-be-damned spatter that laser and plasma "bolts" turn into when hitting the ground and is now rotting on the floor.

..gonna be a while before I can do some actual observing.  On another side note, never assign a pony with a thief mark to anything important.  I spent 2 weeks dodging crap because I decided to make them the miner and they quite working to go and steal something then cackle with glee while avoiding shots from angry robots, ravenous ghouls and the curses shouted at him from his fellow settlers.

[Iceblaster]

Thief Mark? Never gotten a pony with the Cutie Mark before, or is it something completely different?

[Replica]

CURIOUSBEAST_ITEM

[Treason]

Latest observation:  Genning a new world right after having played a Stable for a little while does indeed cause a crash.  I am unsure of the exact length of time.

[Iceblaster]

>Crash when genning world immediatly after playing
It may be just me but were you genning a large or very large world, because those tend to crash DF on my computer.

[Treason]

>Crash when genning world immediatly after playing
It may be just me but were you genning a large or very large world, because those tend to crash DF on my computer.

Genning standard sized Equestria setting.  My issue is that I can gen a world just fine after starting the game, but it's only after playing it and then trying to gen a world, do I experience a crash.

[Byakugan01]

So...my civ has bronze bars, but nor bronze secuity stuff or weapons-all I could even find on the embark screen was wooden training weapons. How does this even happen?

[Treason]

So...my civ has bronze bars, but nor bronze secuity stuff or weapons-all I could even find on the embark screen was wooden training weapons. How does this even happen?

What shows up in the options for embark are dependent on how many points you have left.  If you do not have the required points, they won't show up.

..Or, it could be a bug.

Edit: *snicker*  My Wastelanders come from "God."  I am trading with "Merchants from God."

[Replica]

Edit: *snicker*  My Wastelanders come from "God."  I am trading with "Merchants from God."

God damnit Treason, you gotta screencap that for us. xD

[Lycaeon]

Treason: Thanks for reporting the gameplay issues. I'm positive both the crashing and reduced fps are due to dfhack r3 or one of its many plugins/scripts. The information about the world gen crash is definitely useful as it can be replicated - trial and elimination should pinpoint its source, and it doesn't negatively impact gameplay. Restarting the game after a save lets you generate a new world, or you can make a new DF folder.

> I am trading with "Merchants from God."
Awesome!

Maklak: I'm enjoying the reports, thank you.

> I still say, there should be an efficient reaction to make steel at the prismatic smelter.
> Since we can't make Hunting rifles, could we at least refurbish them?
> It would just be more reliable to be able to forge all T1 weapons.
Noted.

> There is no option to make plywood wheelbarrows.
Plywood is too fragile to make sturdy wheelbarrows, methinks.

> Two pipbucks got equipped on the same pony It is as I feared, the hoof upgrades will be used inefficiently.
You can avoid this by assigning specific shoes instead of choosing the general options.

> It would be doable to have each pony in Power Armour give "Heavy Support" syndrome to two other nearby ponies, without stacking.
> When it comes to expeditions causing bleeding, divide the effect into smaller chunks in separate interactions.
Both of those may be doable, but I haven't had the time as of late to mod the deeper expedition mechanics. I'll keep them in mind.

Neowulf: I'm leery of adding new inorganic stones, but I'll look into adding more ash sources.

Firehawk: Having specialized classes only useful for expeditions is excessive, though I may reconsider once the full system is introduced (At which point the micromanagement may be worth it). Trading with friendly civs is on the development list.

Byakugan: Unfortunately, it's not possible to improve skills with interactions. Perks should make up for this deficit, however.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback and help in answering questions while I was away.

Life has picked up for me again so I won't be able to devote as much time to modding as before. Smaller releases are possible, especially in light of the dfhack problems.

[Thirtyeight]

Are we able to tweak the EQUESTRIA worldgen or will that cause massive problems?

[Maklak]

I'm sick and barely holding together. Anyway, I played some more.

"Build memory recollector" / "Dismantle memory Recollector" is more fitting to electronics bench. It also doesn't use mechanics, so the product has no quality.

Silvertongue, one of my soldiers (how did he even end up in the military? I use just the military CMs for that) is blind and wouldn't shoot his rifle. His eyes weren't gone. And now I can't even find him at all. That was weird. Oh and bones, my Necromancy adept, died before I got spells.

I combine the gunner and sniper squads and switch everypony over to medium calibre ammo. It is more devastating than small calibre. I cut the trees around the embark, so the rifleponies quickly make it to legendary and frequently kill animals at a distance. They do eat up a lot of expensive ammo, though, so I consider moving them underground once they all max out.

I embarked in a Wilderness and keep getting green clouds of irradiated dust that are devastating to pretty much every living thing. They cause severe illness and sometimes rot or even outright kill ponies and animals. They are absolutely devastating and I'm not even in an irradiated area. Whatever happened to those brown clouds that were just a nuisance?
Well, I might be able to protect my own ponies with the "Go inside" order, but it gets worse. Traders came to my place and were hit by a cloud on the way. It was enough to bug them. Some of them made it to the depot, but it said "there are no traders right now" until they left.

I somehow wasted 2 mines. I had one explosive and 1 emp mine, I run the reaction to deploy them close to a bunch of chickens and now have no deployed mines or the ingredients to make them. Do chickens need to be grown up? Does this not always work? What am I doing wrong?



> The plasteel depleated energy lance is fairly rare, though if you process scrap like mad, you're likely to run into a few.  Recharge them at a workbench (you'll need some charged spark batteries) and they're a more lethal spear/pike upgrade.  They seem to be the preferred weapon type as every time I leave weapon choice up to my ponies' judgement, they always pick up a charged lance.
I think they used to be steel. Plasteel should pierce steel armours with no problems. And of course "individual choice melee" will go for plasteel lances. with "individual choice" they go for the most expensive weapon and plasteel has value 150, 5 times bigger than steel. A charged energy lance is now called "plasma lance". Too bad my spear wielding pony has lost ability to stand and has such poor speed.

> Also, frame rate seems to have taken a dive with this latest update.
I don't know. I haven't run into any major problems, but this mod has lots of new items, materials, reactions and now dfhack. It adds up.

> > There is no option to make plywood wheelbarrows.
> Plywood is too fragile to make sturdy wheelbarrows, methinks.
In that case we shouldn't get plywood cages either.

> > Two pipbucks got equipped on the same pony It is as I feared, the hoof upgrades will be used inefficiently.
> You can avoid this by assigning specific shoes instead of choosing the general options.
Heh, obvious in hindsight.