Bay 12 Games Forum

One potential problem I want to bring up with adding 'hidden hp' as a failsafe: This could end up hiding problems.

Basically creatures might appear to be dying properly, but in actuality would be dying from their 'hp' getting 0. I think it is best to avoid this.

Personally I do not have a problem with a dynamic system generating the occasional near unkillable monster. The problem is when it comes to more 'common' things.

Part of the issue is we are discussing realistic or simulated methods for killing undead when we do not understand the method by which undead operate. I'm pretty sure Toady actually mentioned this.

For example, perhaps it will eventually be determined that the motivating force behind skeletons is some sort of magical ether than covers them like muscle tissue and bleeds like blood. Perhaps most things pass harmlessly through this invisible ether. In this case you would need to break the bones (essentially severing the connection between the bone and ether). Certain materials (silver?) might interact with the ether making it much more effective. Weapons of this material could basically 'bleed' a skeleton to death.

That being said, perhaps the conversation should not be so much how to kill the undead, but how should the undead operate.

In terms of fleshing out the races:

Kobolds are supposed to be sulking, right? I kinda like the idea of a Kobold sneaking into your store rooms and just staying there. It would hide in a barrel when dwarfs come in. Kinda like vermin. Cause they sort of are. I think more needs to be done with them to fit into their roll better.

Someone already mentioned this in this thread, but Humans are sort of "eh." I'm not sure exactly how to make them more interesting. Part of the problem is I don't know what Toady's grand vision is for the races. Like I know its intentional know that elves consume sapient species. I'm not sure what other strange and unexpected twists for the races are in store. If anyone has a link to any information about this I think it could be helpful.

Elf's and goblins both feel fairly distinct at this point. Elf's have all of the classical fantasy baggage to help them be "cool" in addition to some unique additions that the DF world has added to their mythos (canibalism).

Goblins have the whole tower and demon stuff going for them. That and the hordes of goblin armies.

Dwarfs are... Well what can I say, they are Dwarfs.

Right now these thoughts were of these races as non-playable races that serve as foils to the dwarfs in DF. If more support is added to make them primarily playable, they would need more to flesh them out.

However, on that note, it might be interesting if an outcast elf could join our society. Maybe the elf got fed up of wood and wanted to see a bit more stone. I would put him in my military and have him lead a group of swordsmen and watch him feast on my enemies. Similarly, you could have a few members of your population from other races as well. This could also create racial tension in the fort.
 

How can you keep saying this? If you turn off migrants or caravans, your game would get harder. Turning things off shouldn't always make your game easier, it should do whatever turning off whatever you turned off does.

I think what the logic here is as follows.

Generally in a game, as you move up the difficulty curve, more features are added. It also plays partially into the learning curve, but for example: in alot of RTS the initial levels may only have infantry and that's all you are fighting. Then as the game gets harder, tanks get thrown in.

So someone playing a hard game is going to want all the features in. If the only way to make the game hard is to turn everything off, its not going to be very interesting. It would be sad if you had to choose between an easy game with alot of fun things to do, or a challenging game where you don't have migrants, or other things that can be fun.

Granted, in some cases it can be absence that increases the difficulty. We discussed risk and reward, and how there would be some risk with using rivers (river raids). However, not having any water at all (in a desert) will have difficulties as well without any direct rewards. Perhaps the desert is its own reward because of mineral deposits. However, the desert is essentially harder because of a lack of a feature (water).

Ultimately I agree that init options should not be in to make the game harder or easier. They should be there to simply toggle whatever they toggle. Some things may happen to make the game harder, some may happen to make the game easier. Some of them just add in risk/rewards.

For example, turning off the sieges gets rid of the risk of attack. But it also gets rid of the reward of getting iron loot from the goblin attackers.

A pop cap helps you avoid difficulties of managing large forts (and can help FPS but that's a different matter), but at the same time it means you have less dwarfs to work on your projects.

Some future init options may make the game easier when turned off, but get rid of features. Some may make the game harder when turned off, but make the game easier. Some may just represent trade offs. There is nothing wrong with this.

Ultimately I don't like the idea of init options killing features. I think it would be better if there were ways in game to avoid the features. Players that don't want sieges could avoid goblin infested areas, or perhaps send tribute to the goblins to sate their greed. Players that don't want migrants could tell their mayor to turn migrants away. Don't want the economy. Maybe your military could enforce the strange communal system your dwarfs use. Or perhaps a liaison could be sent to the king, with a bribe, to hold off the tax collector. Certain things like weather, temp, and pop caps, that relate strongly to FPS, I have no guff with.

I think integrating alot of the init options, or "potential init options," would help keep the game world consistent, and maintain the games integrity as a simulator (Many simulations that allow you to turn off things makes a distinction between simulator mode and "arcade" mode). however, I have nothing against init options or people who want/use them. I just think in some cases they aren't necessary, and integrating the options into the game could add fun new aspects.

I wish we could somehow cut off the first page and a half of flamage on this thread and transplant it under a different topic header.

Alas such things are not possible, all we can hope to do is too endeavor to soldier on with what has become a great brainstorming session.

However, since the crafting/trading topic has come up again, perhaps we should take the opportunity to address it with some depth; its obviously something people care very much for.

I suppose the first thing we have to think about is what sort of behavior from this section of game we should be seeing (ignoring difficulty for the time being).

The ideal behavior will require caravans to be generated on the world screen and travel along it. Part of it depends on how the fortress falls along the caravans route. If Caravans are traveling between location A, and our fortress, and those are the only routes, we should see the following behavior:

A-Fort Caravan:
Such a caravan will likely almost always be bought out by the player. It should only bring what it knows or suspect the player will buy. After some time is should have a good idea of what the players purchasing capacity is. Furthermore, it should only buy goods that it could then turn around and sell at point A for a profit. Perhaps this means that it may only accept higher quality items, perhaps it only takes iron items (maybe point A has no iron). Maybe they don't want clothes or cloth as point A exports these in great quantities.

After a few seasons, the player should start to see a pattern. The caravan would bring mostly items that they wish to purchase. The amount of items the caravan would bring would be enough to nearly clear out the player of the items the caravan is willing to accept, or at least clear the player out of the amount of items that he has shown he is willing to sell.

If its profitable for the merchants, they would start bringing more wagons along. We could start seeing that the fall caravan would see 12 wagons bringing in booze, and then one wagon leaving filled with golden crafts that we have made. If profits are not to be found, perhaps we are not interested in cloth, and that is the only thing of interest from point A is cloth, and the player never wants to buy cloth, a caravan from point A may stop coming.

Note in a situation where a caravan that goes A-B-C-Fort, we can treat it all as C-Fort, where everything A and B supply and demand are also supplies and demanded from C. The overhead costs (A and B are farther, so it cost more to transport there) for items from A and B would be higher though, so you might have to pay alot for that iron anvil imported all the way from the dwarven capital.

(A quick note, the fort in these situations is at the end of a route, the caravan would essentially just turn around and do the whole thing backwards after they leave, ie: A-Fort-A or A-B-C-Fort-C-B-A).
 
In a situation where a caravan goes A-Fort-B-Fort-A, essentially the Fort is along the middle of a route, we will see mostly the same type of behavior. The main difference is that there is more flexibility in how the caravan could make a profit. Perhaps the same caravan would come in Fall, and then again in Spring. In Fall it would be coming from A, and in Spring coming from B. At each time it would accept and bring different items.

A quick note. Alot of this behavior (the motivation of the caravan masters) could be abstracted depending on how complex Toady ends up making the global economy.

So how does all of this add up to a better gameplay experience?

Well, caravans should bring mostly only items that the player is going to buy. Perhaps the first few caravans that come buy don't get it quit right, but the caravans are still learning at that point. Each caravan should have someone who negotiates the content of the next caravan, as currently works. I don't think they should be called liasons (that implies they are official government officials), and I think in most cases the caravans would be simply merchants looking to make a profit. Perhaps the dwarven caravans are headed by some dwarven official but in other cases it should simply be negotiated withe the "caravan master."

Second, caravans will be selective about what they buy. There is alot of ways in which they could be selective. They could care about quality, material, quantity (don't want to buy more than a certain number), or just what the item is (mug, toy, weapon, ect). Of course it could be a combination of all these things. Some things may just be valued less, other things they may not except at all. Maybe they value rock crafts much less than metal crafts. And then maybe they do not even accept cloth items. Just an example.

The result of this is that the player would not be able to simply churn out crap. They would have to cater the caravans, and as they sell more stuff, the caravan capacity may increase. I think all of these things would make the whole trading and crafting feel not only much more balanced, but much more organic as well.

I think a rewards/risk idea with starting areas would be great, but I also agree with the idea that as a fort progress their should also be an increase of difficulty. Playing the world is fantastic, but I also want to play a single fort to its fullest and see how far I can push it and how well it can adapt to both pleasant and unpleasant conditions.

I completely agree with all statements included in that quote. Playing the world should not come at the cost of actually playing the fort, because playing the fort is the gameplay mechanic that you actually do.

On the concept of playing the world, there could be a certain level of advancement in the world based on world gen ended. Perhaps a world in the early years would not have discovered the secret of making steel, or adamantium, or magma forges, or pumps, or ect. These technologies could develop as the years go on. If you have a fort in early world years, maybe one year a caravan would bring the secrets of the knowledge. Perhaps a metalcrafting dwarf taken by a mood could discover the secret of steel. Maybe the philosopher noble could actively work towards discovering some of these secrets. Discoveries would of course be available to later forts. If feel like this could give the game some continuity. As you start a new fortress, it could be with the knowledge, that while your last fort exploded in gore and death, it at the very least gave all of dwarven kind the ability to pump water. I'm not sure how feel myself about this idea.  Comments?

Ultimately the game should probably be such that you fully play the fortress and by doing so play the world.

How about they just explode in a 5 tile radius?

That would be great: "Job Cancellation: Urist McDwarf has exploded."

Once diseases are introduced perhaps failed moods could cause some sort of mind fever that could be spread to your other dwarfs. What the symptoms of this fever are? There are a whole slew of options.

Edit: Typo fix

I don't have a problem with the presence of low-risk, low-resource areas. It's ok if sites without rivers, magmas or chasms are "safer". Some people just like to build quiet, peaceful settlements, and the player should always have that option. Of course, those dwarves that go for the riskier areas should also have greater rewards.

After thinking about it I completely agree with you. The link between risk and reward needs to be tweaked, and some small things can fix that. My comments about needing universal things to make the game harder is so that people can build up fortresses in nice peaceful places, and then be able to see how it stands against some challenges once it is ready. I've had forts where I wouldn't want alot of the traditional threats (carp, goblins, old school starvation) being focused on making a giant statue of my face, but would like some type of conflict to spice the seasons up.

In regards to a succession war, I think there are a lot of ways in which the player could influence, some of which have already been stated.  Another example is, if your fortress was large enough, you could offer to host a meeting of lords. Nobles from other fortresses would come to hope to resolve it, with your mayor as mediator. The success would depend on the skill of your mayor, or of course, you could just slaughter the lords that you do not favor.

Perhaps you could also declare your fort in favor of one candidate or another. If your fortress was powerful that could decide things. It could be a matter of, "well the fortress of bloodydwarfmoon supports lord mcDwarf, I suppose I no longer have a chance to support mcDwarf's claim."

Of course if your fort was smaller, it might not even be affected by such a civil war other than seeing its caravan's disrupted. Or maybe if the civ split into two, your fort would just end up on one side or another.

Similarly, it might be nice if you could declare independence. Your highest ranking noble would declare himself king of the new dwarven empire you have formed.

Man I am really liking this thread. From the ashes of a brewing flame war, something interesting has emerged. Let's keep the ideas flowing.

Correct me if I am wrong, but prospecting is usually done above the surface no? At least that is all that I have ever heard about. If its done below the surface how is it done different? I am asking about real life prospecting.

Prospecting may take alot of study to get good at, however DF is a fantasy game. I think allowances could be allowed. They are made with alot of other skills (metalcrafting for example). There was also a time period in American history were hundreds of relatively uneducated people were prospecting. Granted most of them met with little success, but still... It might be nice if miners could at least have a chance to tell if they missed a gold vein by a tile.

The hollow rock message could be the same one used for chasms. So people wouldn't know if they struck chasm or HFS.