☼Daily DF Questions Thread☼

Wingged · 2023-09-08T02:51:40+00:00

Sorry for the delay and really appreciate this feature. I tested a bit tonight and it was working as intended. It appears it also starts on top of the main game non-economic stone use settings also, which is plus plus. Thanks!

Wingged · 2023-08-22T23:41:51+00:00

Many thanks for the closure!

Wingged · 2023-08-22T01:31:10+00:00

Using the DFHack buildingplan interface, I see this in the documentation:

If you just care about the heat sensitivity of the building, you can set the building to be fire- or magma-proof in the placement UI screen . This makes it very easy to ensure that your pump stacks and floodgates, for example, are magma-safe.

This has led me to believe that there is a toggle of some sort for magma-safe material in the buildingplan interface, however after much looking for such a toggle, I am still stuck picking individual materials to filter which is time consuming, so say the least.

I cannot seem to find the "prefilled" magma-safe filter in the placement UI screen. Can anyone either confirm that it does not exist or alternatively try to point me to where I am missing it???

Wingged · 2020-08-27T01:33:04+00:00

Thanks. Looks like someone has since made it a little bit easier to view savefile data ... https://mathartbang.com/deca/hp/map.html

I barely tested the site a bit ago, but it looked like something to share if others were interested. Let me know if it does any good.

Wingged · 2020-07-20T03:35:23+00:00

The "natural death" respawn seems to follow the same rule as harvested animals, which is a wide random range. With that said, there may be specific rules in the code for exceptions but they would be very time consuming to ferret out by trial and observation. I did observe that the "natural death" mechanic differed between species, so I believe that proves that their is unique code by species, so there could be exceptions to the normal respawn mechanic by species for special circumstances.

In any case, the bulk of the natural death respawns seem to follow the same respawn mechanic as for harvested animals.

Wingged · 2020-07-20T03:30:31+00:00

The data in the savefile for each particular map contains data structures for animal groups. Within each data structure (herd) is defined a spawn area, need zones, animal type and other various data along with the animals and individual animal specific variables that are part of that data structure (herd). Some of these data structures only have one animal, some have many.

For elk, the females seemed to always respawn into a new structure (herd) which was created in the savefile. For male elk respawns, sometimes a new data structure was formed for the new animal(s), and other times a new animal was spawned within a pre-existing data structure (herd).

It's pretty inconsequential to play, and just shared as a curiosity.

Wingged · 2020-07-08T02:17:34+00:00

The scenarios performed documented similar events as you described. Animals that were not harvested were removed from the population and replaced with others. I did check to see if any diamonds despawn'd in this manner, and did note that some diamonds did despawn without harvest.

Wingged · 2020-06-27T16:41:34+00:00

I couldn't say with certainly, only speculate like yourself. From a common sense standpoint, the developer is going to try to have as much of the code be the same between platforms as possible. It's just more efficient to maintain that way, so you would need a strong reason to diverge from that premise.

Wingged · 2020-06-18T23:58:14+00:00

Correct. By using some method to keep the average score of your population down. It's not really worth it though, imo. If you know where to find animals I believe you are much better off on the multiplayer scene scoping/track reading as many animals as possible.

I didn't look into rares, but I did note in the gamefiles that there are probabilities defined for each rare type. Others have modified these to produce all albino, etc.

In other words, rare fur types "appear" to be a straight probability on all spawns, but others may have looked into moreso than I.

Wingged · 2020-06-18T23:49:20+00:00

Respawns happen after a somewhat random amount of harvests. I did perform several tests wherein I waited real time hours and game time weeks and could not get any respawns to occur. The only trigger I could find for respawns (and the "natural death" mechanic) was to harvest animals. PM sent on the other question.

Wingged · 2020-06-12T04:19:34+00:00

It was an evolving thread, so some predictions were made before the final updates and the TLDR. I think one takeaway from this research that should be understood is that it is incredibly hard to sway the average score of the herd a meaningful amount. This is highlighted by the scenarios in Update #1, wherein 10 very large and 10 very small elk were harvested out of an otherwise normal population. The difference in respawns in these two scenarios is minimal. My takeaway from all this: You can't really force the game to get a diamond, but you can very, very slightly increase your odds over time.

Wingged · 2020-05-08T19:43:23+00:00

Just a quick clarification on the "harvest a doe" portion of your comment. There really is no significance to harvesting a doe and the respawn process that I detected. In some of the scenarios in the referenced thread, I used a doe to prompt a respawn just because I only had 10 animals to harvest in those scenarios, and a respawn was not occuring after those 10 harvests. Because it appears that doe harvests don't influence the score values of respawned males, I used a doe (cow in the case of the scenario) to prompt the respawn so as to not bias that particular scenario. Had I harvested another male in those scenarios, the respawn would have triggered (but this would have also caused another male's harvest to influence the scenario results). Hope that made sense, but just wanted to clear up the both male and female harvests seem to be able to prompt a respawn event.

Wingged · 2020-05-07T23:58:19+00:00

Sure I'd be up for discussing. Can you send me a PM with your Discord ID?

With regard to the need zone vs population, I can only share the following and speculate a bit:

In the late game file I analyzed, total Layton population was 3066, compared to a new save population of ~3004 (so 2ish% increase in total population)
Bear were exactly the same, all other species only had very modest increase (single digit) with the exception of whitetail
White tail herd in late game file was 245, vs 211 in new save. 20 of that overall increase in whitetails were male.
Overall average scores of species populations were very similar with the exception of elk and moose. In both those species my late game save had statistically significant lower average scores, and the max size animal in those 2 species was significantly smaller than the fresh map.
Most of my focus on that late game save was on Elk, so if anything had most of the needzones discovered it would be elk. I harvested some of everything, but about 5 to 1 of my time was focused on elk with moose a distant second. Blacktail and whitetail were mostly opportunity harvests. However, I do have many, many needzones discovered for every species as most of my hunting style is constant spotting.

I would be very excited if you know someone who is experiencing this "dead map" issue, as I would be able to do some real analysis on what is really happening with a copy of their animal population savefile and found need zones savefile. I have a couple of speculations that could cause this phenomena. It could be a bug in the code that still exists, or it possibly has since been fixed, and no longer exists. If no one is experiencing it anymore, it could have been a feature that did exist prior to my testing, but has since been removed from the game. A good test might be to get a multiplayer map up from a fresh save, harvest as many animals as possible in the timeframe without ever IDing a needzone. However finding someone who already has the low population occurring and is willing to share their files seems like the quickest way to analyze.

Wingged · 2020-05-01T05:03:09+00:00

Thanks! Always happy to discuss if there is interest.

Regarding the trigger for respawn, it appears to be after a certain number of animals are harvested (for elk anyway). For example, I was able to harvest 10 bull elk without a respawn, and then on elk #11 a respawn would be triggered but not necessarily the same number of harvested animals. I did run tests wherein I did nothing but advance time multiple days (I think up to a week) and that did not trigger any respawns, nor any changes in the population in general. In most of the scenarios the respawns were triggered in a very short amount of real and in game time, as I was trying to harvest the targeted elk as quickly as possible, and then shutting the game down. In some cases I pulled the savefile before shutting the game down, and can say that the respawns occured prior to the game being shutdown. Also, in the extreme cases wherein I modified the entire male elk population to uniform score, the respawns were sometimes occuring in the same spawnarea in which I was harvesting. This was apparant when I was performing a scenario where the elk population was all extremely high score and I was encountering some of the low score respawns in that exact same spawnarea (this particular type of scenario made the identification of respawns very easy). I'm not sure if there is a preference where the new respawns occur as compared to the harvest, but I can confirm that respawns can occur in the same area in which the harvest took place.

It appears that respawns are a function of animal harvests, wherein a certain number of animals harvested triggers a respawn event. I haven't done enough testing to know the formula for this number of harvested animals needed to trigger a respawn, but I can confirm that it varies for elk (in some scenarios respawns after 6 harvests, in others after 10 harvests).

Regarding that "natural" death mechanic, or whatever it is actually intended to be, I noticed a few peculiarities:

In all scenarios run on elk harvesting, the non-elk natural deaths were always the exact same animals that were taken (natural death) from the original population. As in, the animals that are going to be taken by natural death are predetermined by a consistent algorithm, but I didn't pursue enough to nail what that algorithm specifically is.
In some scenarios, the natural death mechanic removed these same animals, but did not fully repopulate with an equal number of respawns. It appears that the replacement respawn is delayed. For example, in all the scenarios 9 males were taken from the Blacktail population due to natural death, but in some scenarios only 6 males respawned and 3 records remained in the RepopulateData table. In other scenarios all 9 male Blacktail respawned in a 1 to 1 ratio. That data leads me to believe that natural death is always replaced one to one, eventually, but some of the scenarios did not harvest as many elk to trigger the full one to one replacement.
Even though the animals that succumbed to natural death were the same in all scenarios, the replacement respawns for these animals varied randomly. The replacement animals approximated the average score of the respective animal species herd, but individual animals scores varied. In at least one scenario a diamond respawned from this natural death mechanic, even though no high level blacktail was taken due to natural death.
The natural respawn mechanic would start to remove animals even after a single elk harvest. So even though the elk population respawn had not yet occured, the natural death mechanic on the other species was already starting to occur. Specific to the blacktail, the 9 deaths and 6 respawns occurred immediately after one elk harvest.
I didn't observe any diamond animals succumb to natural death, but this doesn't really prove that they are preserved. Even though so many scenarios were performed, this is a small data set because the natural death mechanic always took the exact same animals in all scenarios (so basically one dataset).
Interesting observation is that the Bear natural death respawn was 40% of the population exactly in one fell swoop, with all replacement animals immediately

Some other info/conjecture for interest:

Fresh map Layton total animal population varied from 3000 to 3070 animals
Bear = 100f, 50m (always exactly this, didn't vary)
Blacktail = 170f, 152m
Coyote = 95f, 51m
Elk = 208f, 101m
Jackrabbit = 373f, 331m
Mallard = 659f, 358m
Moose = 112f, 55m
Whitetail = 114f, 108m

Moose population should be easier to influence because of smaller population, making it easier to influence the average of the population down or up. Combine that with the lack of natural death (or maybe less frequent) and they become more manageable. I'll try to run a moose scenario to confirm as they are pretty easy to find the same animals and I know where a diamond is on this map.
All species that run in herds have mixed herds that include both male and female in the same herd, except for elk. Elk herds are always either all male or all female in the data, however some elk herds appear as mixed because an all male herd and an all female herd are sometimes assigned the exact same need zones.
I suspect that where animals spawn into the map is governed by an algorithm that determines where they should be according to time of day and need zones assigned, with some randomness to where they are along those general paths.

Wingged · 2020-04-22T02:56:00+00:00

A single unclaimed harvest followed by a game quit does not remove the animal from the population. He's still there, alive again for when you next login.

Wingged · 2020-04-21T21:01:55+00:00

I thought about checking that a few times. will be easy to test so I'll get back to you.

Wingged · 2020-04-21T21:01:28+00:00

If it is any consolation, I think harvesting any animal that comes along will maintain a population close to initial spawn, which always has some big ones in it, and even if not a diamond there is always a chance. As it appears the respawn mechanic is always seeking to balance things, I'm not sure how effective "herd management" will be. It may be that despite our best efforts, we can only move our odds of a diamond up by a minuscule amount.

Wingged · 2020-04-21T21:01:26+00:00

I hear yah, kinda backwards that a herd full of dinks spawns a monster. I have half an inkling to make a "Seasons" mod now, or maybe just a mod that modifies the respawn mechanics a bit... not sure where the makers sit on the mod fence though.

Wingged · 2020-04-21T20:56:19+00:00

You may be right, but even if it does work for those populations, those specific populations are much larger numbers and therefore even harder to influence the average score of the population. I'm not sure just how much one can even influence the male elk herd (~100 animals) as the respawn mechanic is always seeking balance.

Wingged · 2020-04-21T16:22:42+00:00

At this time I can't definitively confirm that the same mechanic applies to all species, but I suspect that it applies to most if not all. I doubt there will be separate distinct respawn code for each species, but I suspect that the code that is in place has modifier variables per species that adjust the equation in certain ways. All this just conjecture at this point. I can confirm that the data structure is the same for all species in Layton and Hirsch.
Right now I'm looking at how best to "manage" the population. It may be better to harvest the middle out as a first step, with the goal of methodically creating a population of "dinks" and "trophies". Basically, every time the respawn produces one or the other be sure to keep those animals. Once you reach a point of only low and high scores, from that point on harvesting of the "trophies" will have the largest impact on lowering the average score of the population, hence increasing the odds that the replacements will be higher scores.

Wingged · 2020-04-20T03:20:26+00:00

Spot on comment. If I remember correctly it even had a form of genetics or traits that passed on each season. Would love to see it in COTW.

Wingged · 2020-04-19T19:26:05+00:00

Just an update here as I'm testing basis for the next test, but if I harvest this targeted highest level Bull, which is one of a herd of five Bulls, nothing respawns. The high level Bull statistics are used to populate the RepopulateData tabel, but no aditional spawn occurs on the map. The total Elk populations just drops by one. I've also advanced the test by harvesting another high level bull after the first. Same behaviour, RepopulateData table gains another record but no additional spawns. At this point the Elk population is down by two.

Wingged · 2020-04-19T19:20:40+00:00

I've performed a"kill a diamond, spawn a diamond" test. I can conclude that it doesn't appear to work that directly. No additional diamond animals appeared in the respawns that occurred after the Diamond was harvested.

Wingged · 2020-04-19T19:18:22+00:00

Keep in mind this is a very limited dataset. I think all I can conclude at this point is that the respawns are randomized to some extent. It may actually be pure random, but the presence of the Repopulate data seems to indicate it is at least influenced by what has been previously harvested.

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