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Messages - nnescio

#31
Quote from: ShadowDragon8685 on November 13, 2013, 01:08:51 AM
... As regards fires, once your colony is mature, I find the best way to handle them, if possible, is just to sell everything which is flammable around the fire, and everything near it which hasn't caught fire yet, draft everyone to stand well away from it, and just let the motherfucker burn.

It's cheaper than a protracted battle with the fire, doesn't risk colonists, and you get some cash back from the things you successfully hocked. ...

Fastest way to deal with fire ('though mostly impractical): Blow it up.

Draft a couple guys and give them frags. Toss 'nades into fire. The resulting explosion will kill the fire.

Blasting charges also work similarly.

This used to be the only way to deal with fire before Tynan implemented firefighting for colonists.

Of course, the collateral damage can be severe, but hey, it's rated D for Dorf!
#32
General Discussion / Re: Wildlife massacre
November 13, 2013, 07:08:49 AM
See, that's why I use the local wildlife to grind shooting xp whenever I get the chance.

(Technically you can fire at dumpsites/stockpiles as well, but those give less xp)
#33
Quote from: RebCom1807 on November 12, 2013, 02:18:35 AM
Quote from: Lechai on November 12, 2013, 12:20:49 AM
(I'm just picturing a scientist getting hit once from a M24, dropping his weapon and running for it. While the Commisar beside him stands firm with his pistol firing non-stop despite the overwhelming odds...)
And taking a moment to shoot the fleeing scientist, yelling something about some distant world's god-emperor.. :P

Unless the commisar's last name happens to be Cain, in which case he will be the first to retreat. Problem is, he tends to retreat towards the enemies.
#34
Quote from: Traveller on November 11, 2013, 11:15:10 PM
So I don't suffer through a lot more trial and error...  What's the specific rules on what will and won't collapse?

It looks like something resembling "any tile that was initially underground, and is not within six tiles of a natural or constructed wall", meaning that you can build an open room 10 tiles across safely--but not 11.

I've been using a lot of pillars in my wide open indoors kill-rooms, and they keep getting shot apart causing collapses.  Hoping that with better knowledge, I can build a sturdier one.  (Though I guess a better option is to just build it outdoors.)

Roof tiles supported by a single pillar:



Supported tiles are in blue. The central wall is in gray. Note that the wall also supports a roof tile on top of it.

The cut-off point appears to be 6-tiles. Any roof tile that is at a 6-tile distance away or more from the nearest support will collapse. For diagonal distances, just apply the Pythagorean theorem.

(e.g. a roof tile that is 4 tiles to the east and 4 tiles to the north of a support pillar will not collapse as it is squareroot(4^2+4^2) = 5.66 tiles away from it, which is less than 6 tiles.)

Walls/Rock walls can support roofs as long as the latter are within the 'support' radius, even if they are not directly connected. This would appear to be a bug.

Example:



Also, sometimes, roofs will not collapse even if they are supposed to. This can happen when walls are mined/sold in a staggered order, 'though the roofs can still collapse at a later point when a farther wall is removed.

In any case, just ensure that each roof tile is supported by at least two walls, and your colonists should be safe enough.

Quote from: Kender on November 12, 2013, 03:02:38 AM
Any idea about the rule of opening a roof underground without collapsing? like the one in the figure, so one can put solar-panel inside mountain?

You have to collapse the roof. Also, to create a skylight, you can only collapse "thin" rock roofs. Thick rock roofs will just drop an endless column of rock when collapsed.

Just ensure that the roof section you want collapsed is six tiles away from the nearest support. This should collapse it.

Example:



(Yeah, I overdid it a little. Note also that solar power panels don't have to be entirely in light to generate power. They will still generate power when at least half of the tiles they occupy are in sunlight.)

Also, as mentioned earlier, roofs will sometimes glitch and not collapse even if they are six tiles away from the nearest support. To avoid this, carve out the rock in square sections instead of in a diagonal/checkerboard/staggered fashion.

Quote from: Tynan on November 12, 2013, 01:50:32 AM
You guys are right, it just checks distance to closest support.

And while roofing is being redone, this won't affect how collapses work.

Is it possible for the roof collapse algorithm to check for contiguousness in the future? That is, a roof that isn't attached to a support by a series of adjacent roof tiles will still collapse, even if it's within the support radius of a wall. It kind of looks weird otherwise, as they are technically floating in midair.

Or does that consume too much CPU overhead?

#35
General Discussion / Most useless colonist.
November 11, 2013, 09:55:08 AM
For me, it's a vatgrown con artist. Gets bonuses to shooting, hand-to-hand, and social, but can't use any of those skills. Other skills are mostly crap.

At least nobles/assassins with lousy skills (in shooting/hand-to-hand) can be drafted and used for riskier tactics. If they die, no big loss. If they survive, well, eventually their fighting skills improve to the point of being useful. But the vatgrown con artist? Urgh. You can't even arrange a convenient 'accident' for him.

(Arrest-> Execute does not count as an 'accident'.)

Gets more infuriating if you got him as an incapacitated raider. He was shooting weapons perfectly fine at you some time ago, and now he refuses to fight at all. What.

#36
General Discussion / Re: Self imposed restrictions
November 11, 2013, 06:30:20 AM
"It's better to be loved than feared."

(AKA "Seriously, guys, Machiavelli was totally sarcastic.")

Cannot deliberately use the fear mechanic to maintain loyalty:
- Do not build gibbet cages.
- Do not beat or execute prisoners.
- Do not sell slaves.
- Do not deliberately harm colonists to induce the "wounded" moodlet
- Do not intentionally expose colonists to corpses.
- (etc. you get the point)

Basically, with this restriction, it's okay for colonists to gain a +fear moodlet from time to time, but it must never be deliberately induced by the player.
#37
General Discussion / Re: fear tec?
November 10, 2013, 08:12:31 AM
Quote from: heero yuy79 on November 10, 2013, 07:45:08 AM
so its not used to repel invaders by making them fear you?

Nope. They are used to enforce loyalty by making your colonists fear you.
#38
General Discussion / Re: Best Rifle?
November 10, 2013, 08:10:07 AM
Quote from: Galileus on November 10, 2013, 07:34:16 AM
Ah... I see... VIDEO GAMES SHOTGUNS...

Related:

#39
General Discussion / Re: Best Rifle?
November 10, 2013, 07:04:25 AM
The shotgun main use was to stop grenadiers. On previous versions, the R-4 (along with the M-24 and M-16) was hard to come by, as there weren't any merc/sniper squads, so it requires a combat supplier to drop by and the RNG to be favorable.

It was quite accurate and the short range means your shotgunners weren't likely to spend time shooting at farther targets, but with the R-4 dropping like candy right now the shotgun is no longer quite useful.

Same goes for the Uzi. Those were quite useful as semi-crowd control as they have a high rate of stunning. Sadly, the R-4 blows it out of the water.

The Lee-Enfield is quite nice when you didn't have enough sniper rifles to go around, and massed T-24 incendiaries can throw raiders into sheer havoc and flush them out of cover. Again, all of these weapons become obsolete when v.250 came around and merc/sniper squads pop up all over the place. The more powerful weapons became common and well, your colonists are at a disadvantage if you don't use said powerful weapons.
#40
General Discussion / Re: has everything been made harder?
November 10, 2013, 03:38:39 AM
Quote from: Stormkiko on November 10, 2013, 02:35:19 AM... Do Raiders have a hard time hitting you in the dark? Could be useful and definitely use that to my advantage if it's true.

Shooting targets shrouded in darkness (that is, entities that are on a "dark" tile) has a 40% miss chance penalty. It's a significant bonus if you can get darkness on your side (build roofed areas, then sell most of the walls except for a few critical supports and cover).
#41
General Discussion / Re: RESHERCHER TABLE
November 10, 2013, 03:35:47 AM
Nope. Sell it.
#42
General Discussion / Re: Capturing wounded Enemies
November 10, 2013, 03:32:51 AM
The storyteller decides when you get a new colonist. Some random numbers are involved, and meleeing increases incap chance, but generally the incap chance for raiders (and the probability of other events that let you recruit new colonists, like slave ships) decreases the more colonists you have.

The first lone raider has a very high incap chance.

All bets are off on Randy Random, however. You can get ridiculous numbers of colonists on Randy if you're good at defending against raiders. It got to the point that I was throwing away less-skilled colonists (especially nobles) by drafting them as grenadiers (and using other riskier, but faster tactics) in order to keep the population count down.

(Oh sure I could choose not to recruit them, but having another meatshield or grenadier around is always useful.)

#43
Quote from: zenithar47 on November 10, 2013, 12:31:27 AM
nnescio, that last post of yours up there was GENIUS. It had me laughing for a bit, nice story! But yeah, now we know that sandbags don't dampen the explosion. But I have had a couple people (I believe) that survived an explosion next to a turret. Maybe the explosion doesn't do the same amount of damage towards colonists as it does to inanimate objects? Plus I wonder if walls would be any different than sandbags in your experiment.

You could test that by putting walls on three sides with sandbags around the outside and seeing if it still makes the same crater. MORE SCIENCE!!!

Thanks.

Walls block explosions entirely (as I noted earlier). Explosions (and most things with range, like guns) cannot propagate through a wall. The wall will be blown up though, so walls can only block explosions once.

I love to build diagonal wall sections on the back side of a turret (the front is, naturally, facing towards the enemies.) They let my colonists repair the turret (colonists can reach diagonally while building/repairing) while shielding them from harm. I sometimes even wall them in entirely if I want them to be on full time repair duty while the raiders attack.
#44
General Discussion / Re: Farm Designs
November 10, 2013, 12:09:30 AM
Quote from: thestalkinghead on November 09, 2013, 11:10:37 PM
the lighting diagrams you provided make a lot of sense, i can see how/why it works now :)

Made a blueprint of your farm:



Hope you like it.
#45
General Discussion / Re: fear tec?
November 09, 2013, 11:30:43 PM
Quote from: heero yuy79 on November 09, 2013, 08:25:27 PM
do I just put a load of these cages near where raiders spawn and put dead people in them and then the raiders run away?

It will lower their happiness but raise their fear. As loyalty is set to be equivalent to the highest of the two, they would still have high loyalty and won't run away.

Also, IIRC, raiders will wreck gibbet cages if there aren't any higher priority targets (that is, your colonists and turrets) nearby.