Messages

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Faction Halls / Re: [DL] The D'Haran Legions [Archers and Shielders Needed!]

« on: July 08, 2011, 12:45:13 pm »

Was invited to join by Namo, who I see almost every night on Siege.  I think joining a clan would be fun, but it depends on what kinds of expectations there are.  I'd love to participate in Strategus, but I really can't schedule for events or anything.  I've got two small kids and a job, so I just play M&B whenever I happen to have the time.

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Announcements / Re: Official Survey about item power

« on: June 03, 2011, 10:32:10 pm »

I've seen a couple people mention that athletics needs a slight buff regarding acceleration.  The slowdown over certain types of terrain is excessive and reduces high athletics to the same speed as everyone else.  I do think this is silly and would like to +1 to increased acceleration and/or less slowdown over adverse terrain for athletics.

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General Off Topic / Re: Other Worthy Games?

« on: January 30, 2011, 09:17:54 am »

Funny thing is - you posted it just when I finished pondering of wether the game is or is not worth buying.

Have already recommended it once in this thread.  I'll go ahead and recommend it twice.  It's a very fresh experience.

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General Off Topic / Re: Other Worthy Games?

« on: January 30, 2011, 06:04:48 am »

Also, it was nice and fluid for a while, but today, it became very-very laggy. I looked at the task manager, and DF was using 1 GByte of RAM, and 50% CPU capacity. That's a bit harsh, is that normal?
I deleted my older, (how to put it nicely) less successful regions and saves, restarted my PC, and still slow as hell. Haunted maps take up that much more hardware horsepower or what?

Hm. There are two harpies on level 2419. I'm on 140. Maybe handling 2300 levels is a bit much for the CPU.

DF is very CPU and RAM intensive.  It's not very well optimized and tracks tons and tons of data that increases as your fort grows older.  All those levels probably hurt quite a bit, too.  I've never seen anything fly that high before.  I do know people have generated maps with random spires of adamantine that rise up hundreds or in a couple cases thousands of z-levels above ground, and suffer horrible fps right from the beginning.

FPS Death or tantrum spirals are the demise of most forts once you understand the game.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Maximizing_framerate

That's the wiki page for maximizing framerate.  The 3 biggest causes of lag are clutter, pathfinding, and fluid physics.  So keep your animal populations low or caged and designate paths for your dwarves to cut down on pathfinding.  Reduce clutter by selling or destroying unecessary items (especially excess rock).  And stop any flowing water that might be causing complex fluid simulation.  Fire is also bad, for more than FPS reasons... but it will really kill your FPS.  Another interesting trick is to mod clothes out of your game.  I removed all cloth clothing, so that everyone wears only leather clothing or armor.  It helped.  Less variety of stuff for the game to keep track of.  Less micromanagement for the player as well.

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General Off Topic / Re: Other Worthy Games?

« on: January 30, 2011, 12:32:04 am »

I got into Dwarf Fortress again, with a bit of success this time. All is fine and all, great game, BUT:
I wanted to go for more battles, building impenetrable fortresses with no real challenger was not fun for long. So I started at a haunted location - and got ripped to shreds by werewolf with my random team, before I could even train any soldiers. I was thinking- hey, what if I actually set up my team instead of the basic ones? Like, have at least one capabler fighter instead of a fisher and fish cleaner, a wardog instead of a fucking camel, things like that.
I set up my squad, barely touched the inventory (nothing beside the camel-wardog thing). Now my game crashes every time I want to embark with that team. Works fine with random guys though.

What did I mess up?

That's quite baffling.  I would make a bug report for that.  DF is known for plenty of bugs and... err... unintended features... but is also credited with very very rarely actually crashing.  It's never crashed on me.

I would also suggest the Fortress Defense mod for a challenge.

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General Off Topic / Re: Other Worthy Games?

« on: January 27, 2011, 12:57:33 am »

Instantly fell in love with Magicka.

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General Off Topic / Re: Other Worthy Games?

« on: January 26, 2011, 06:32:20 am »

Just read about Dwarf Fortress and immediately downloaded it, currently in the process of having my world generated, very excited.

If you need any help (and you almost certainly will at some point), the forums and wiki are both very nice.  Great community.

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General Discussion / Re: nerfed archer again

« on: January 21, 2011, 10:06:02 pm »

Btw I didn't see in this thread whine from archers. Only some tidy and timid comments\remarks.
Just some attempts to indicate(?)\show some weak\wrong places in current situation. Nothing more.

I've seen 4 types of people on this topic in every thread about it.

1. Archers whining about being underpowered.

2. Non-archers complaining about archers in a non-constructive and childish manner.

3. Players criticising archery in a constructive and well-reasoned manner, especially after trying it themselves.

4.  Archers character assassinating everyone who criticizes archery and attempting to lump them all under #2.

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General Discussion / Re: nerfed archer again

« on: January 20, 2011, 02:58:02 pm »

To make more skill based, increase damage....... gotcha....... I bet you play fps games on instagib servers

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General Discussion / Re: nerfed archer again

« on: January 20, 2011, 02:02:13 am »

Pure luck at a distance, any ranged can do so, it's not just archers.

No.  It's just archers.  Crossbows also to an extent, but their reload requirements are enough of a disadvantage to make up for it.  Archers have no equivalent disadvantage.  They can move fire move fire move fire move fire.

And there is no way in hell I could have done the same thing with a thrower.  Thrower is way more inaccurate and shorter distance.  I was on that town map where one side spawns on a bridge and runs onto land and can either go straight into town or left along the shore.  I stood on that roof and engaged in archer battles with two different archers who were standing just beyond the bridge where they spawn.  Over that distance, I could land 1 in every 3 or 4 arrows exactly where I intended it.  Throwing rocks, I would have never hit anything at that distance.  Standing on that roof, I would have been putting all of my time into dodging arrows and offering no pressure on the enemy in return.  If I did hit, I would do no comparable damage.  If I moved to the ground, I simply would have been chewed up like the peasant I was.

Only archer.

And who goes pure archer these days?

forgivers, apparently, which is who those comments were directed to.

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General Discussion / Re: nerfed archer again

« on: January 20, 2011, 01:34:22 am »

...

At level 23, my archer is at PD5 and 125 wpf, which is enough to be decently accurate and get kills.  I've even topped the scoreboard for multiple consecutive rounds on a couple occassions, mainly with arrow kills. 

I'm also PS5 with 74 wpf in one-hand.  With a mere warhammer and no shield, I was far from helpless in a fair fight.  I could get kills before ever getting close to an enemy, soften people up before they can reach me, take out cav easier than I did with my polearm/shield/thrower.

FFS my very first round at level 1 with this character I went 2-0 just by standing on a rooftop and spamming with a hunting bow and bodkin arrows.  Yes, it was lucky, but that's the point.  No other class can stay completely away from the fight and get a positive score on pure fucking luck.

I also made tons and tons of money compared to my other character, because I only needed a couple expensive pieces of equipment.

Archery is so easy and offers way too much reward for how easy it is.  So little effort and risk involved compared to every other class.  It just doesn't make any sense to play any other type of character.

Ok, I will say one thing in the interest of fairness, at risk of sounding like I'm stroking my own ego.  I've been playing snipers in FPS games since the Future vs Fantasy mod for Quake 1 back in 1996.  You wouldn't think being forced to lead your aim is so horrible if you ever played on a 28.8 modem before the invention of client-side prediction.  Archery in this game is nothing to me, so perhaps I'm not the best judge.

And being a "pure" archer is a challenge you intentionally impose on yourself.  You can't complain about the outcome.  You're choosing to invest massive amounts of points for a very very small increase in archery ability.  You could take some of those points to make yourself capable in melee, and probably not even notice the hit to your archery.  What are you doing with your extra skill points, anyway?  Are you only spending one skill point on an actual skill per 3 levels, and boosting your stats with the other two? I maxed out power strike, weapon master, power draw, and athletics for my level, and still had points left over for stat boosts.  I don't understand why you can't.  I also don't understand why you can't leave off 5 wpf in archery for 50 wpf in melee.

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General Discussion / Re: nerfed archer again

« on: January 19, 2011, 08:56:51 pm »

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Sensible game design = effort + risk = reward

Archers currently do not step away from the far right of this equation.  Yes, I've tried playing an archer for a couple weeks.  Yes, I used to always carry a shield (before I switched to archer).  All the arguments I see from archers fighting for their class to be more powerful are complete BS.  Explain to me how archers fit into the effort + risk equation just like every other class, and I'll leave the subject alone.  Until then, I'll be playing singleplayer.

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General Discussion / Re: We all need some lovin, and nerfing.

« on: January 19, 2011, 02:46:05 pm »

The last part is incorrect, FYI.

Care to explain?  Are you saying that some classes should be inherently better than others?  If every class has advantages that are coupled with equal disadvantages except for one or two, then that is imbalanced and not fun for anyone not playing those classes.

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General Discussion / Re: We all need some lovin, and nerfing.

« on: January 18, 2011, 10:27:33 pm »

Yes, every play style is supposed to have pros and cons.  Balance is when every class has pros and cons of equal gravity to every other class.  Yes, there is a rock/paper/scissors element to class balance, and this is fine. 

People complain because they believe that one class or another is too underpowered or overpowered to participate in that game of rock/paper/scissors.  When rock is smashing through paper or scissors are lightsabers, you have a balance issue and imbalanced games are not fun. 

The huge forum debates erupt when people disagree about these issues.  So long as the participants in these debates are mature and honest about it, they are a good thing.  They help to determine if scissors really are lightsabers, and need to be toned down.  No, not everyone is mature or honest, but this is no reason to discourage debate or ignore balance issues.

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General Discussion / Re: Archers.

« on: January 18, 2011, 02:28:17 pm »

There's primarily one consideration to follow when considering shooting into melee. Is your teammate winning? Then why in hell's name would you shoot, you stat padder. Is your teammate losing? Might as well, it might save his ass. There we go, done. A simple set of rules for shooting into melee. The same thing applies to groups, but is a bit more complicated.

I think this is bad advice.  There is no way to judge who is in the process of winning or losing in a game where people die in one or two hits, fights often involve more than two people, and ranged hits are as deadly as they are.  Especially in the current state of the game where things have been capped and people are more equal in equipment and levels.  In the time it takes you to carefully judge if your teammate is needs help, you may have already failed him or failed to notice a threat incoming on yourself, and you've wasted time you could have been taking to line up a decently safe shot into melee.

There is dead and not dead.  You see an enemy, you shoot him, until a higher priority target is recognized.  The only exceptions to this are when you see teammates outnumbering an opponent 3:1 or more.  Even then, you take a shot if you can safely get it so long as there are no other available targets.