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[Manveru Taurënér]

Having 2 speeds to change in between either manually or automatic in the same game mode would just overly complicate and hurt the general game experience in my opinion. I'm all for some minor tweaking of the current speed, but if I had to keep changing speeds back and forth like it's the sims or something I probably wouldn't be interested in playing any more :>

How would you solve the coordination problems between the fortress and the outside world?

As said said before, not.

You just stick to the current fortress timescale and stay with it. You could make full moons last longer, have week long day and nights, and it would all come toghether. As for it taking several weeks for armies to move off the map, note that it's an abstraction. What would really happen is that they prepare and stuff for several weeks, and then leave, however, this is not shown in fortress mode

And this. I think it's not so much an issue for sending off armies as that could be tweaked easier to approximate the time it'd take to prepare and depart, but rather for stuff such as sending out messengers or similar when that will be needed, as those would at times be more crucial to get off in a haste and should also logically not need any preparation time at all.

[QbertEnhanced]

You just stick to the current fortress timescale and stay with it. You could make full moons last longer, have week long day and nights, and it would all come toghether. As for it taking several weeks for armies to move off the map, note that it's an abstraction. What would really happen is that they prepare and stuff for several weeks, and then leave, however, this is not shown in fortress mode

That has the deficiency of being really silly. Especially in a game that models toes and eyelids.

[GreatWyrmGold]

You just stick to the current fortress timescale and stay with it. You could make full moons last longer, have week long day and nights, and it would all come toghether. As for it taking several weeks for armies to move off the map, note that it's an abstraction. What would really happen is that they prepare and stuff for several weeks, and then leave, however, this is not shown in fortress mode

That has the deficiency of being really silly. Especially in a game that models toes and eyelids.

Problem is, not only will all of these ideas involving a faster timeline take a while to implement (not a problem for something that's definitely a good idea), there's one of two problems depending on if you can switch or not. Either you take forever to go anywhere, or you have a group of issues depending on how you switch. Let's say for the sake of argument that non-switching time tweaks are a bad idea and hear how you suggest the switching work. To start, is it always player-chosen or are there some things that switch it to fast-mode or slow-mode?

[QbertEnhanced]

You just stick to the current fortress timescale and stay with it. You could make full moons last longer, have week long day and nights, and it would all come toghether. As for it taking several weeks for armies to move off the map, note that it's an abstraction. What would really happen is that they prepare and stuff for several weeks, and then leave, however, this is not shown in fortress mode

That has the deficiency of being really silly. Especially in a game that models toes and eyelids.

Problem is, not only will all of these ideas involving a faster timeline take a while to implement (not a problem for something that's definitely a good idea), there's one of two problems depending on if you can switch or not. Either you take forever to go anywhere, or you have a group of issues depending on how you switch. Let's say for the sake of argument that non-switching time tweaks are a bad idea and hear how you suggest the switching work. To start, is it always player-chosen or are there some things that switch it to fast-mode or slow-mode?

I'm not op, but in my opinion combat would be the main auto switch to slow mode.
Sieges would be difficult, but maybe a siege would only switch to slow mode once combat actually started? Though that would leave you open since things would zip by rather fast.
I wonder what the op's thoughts on this are.

[Silverionmox]

How would you solve the coordination problems between the fortress and the outside world?

Well, one could have them get a speedup (and temporary suspension of hunger/thirst/sleeping) when heading off-map as well as for the start of their journey after leaving the edge of the map, to make up for the loss of time travelling to it. There'd also need to bee good ai for organizing all the supplies needed for they journey quickly. I think that way you could get it all down to acceptable levels. It'd also have to be made so you couldn't exploit it by making cancelling these missions hard or even impossible as long as an ambush/force of darkness/megabeast or similar appeared while they were leaving.

Edit: Also along with some minor slowing down of the current fort speed.

I'm wary of that way of solving things. There will be tweaks, then tweaks to compensate the unintended side effects of tweaks, tweaks to counter their side effects, and so on. For the game as it is jury-rigging like that could work, but there are plenty of features - many of which concern interaction of sites with the outside world -  to be added still, and the cumulative effect will be a huge mess of stopgap solutions that cause more problems than they solve, IMO.

Even with good AI, because no matter how good the organization is, hauling food from the storeroom still will take days in game time. And one should be able to send out a properly outfitted squad within hours, if it's an emergency. You could give them that relative speed, and simply slow down the time and the non-involved dwarves to avoid exploits.

As said said before, not.

You just stick to the current fortress timescale and stay with it. You could make full moons last longer, have week long day and nights, and it would all come toghether. As for it taking several weeks for armies to move off the map, note that it's an abstraction. What would really happen is that they prepare and stuff for several weeks, and then leave, however, this is not shown in fortress mode

The problem with that is that they also really do need game time to prepare (mostly running around to collect provisions and stuff), it all adds up. When you send out an army to intervene in an impending battle, you just don't have that time, so something's got to give. For the economy you can abstract pretty much, because it's ultimately the stuff produced in a year that counts, but for military and diplomatic manoeuvres, days matter.

[GreatWyrmGold]

You just stick to the current fortress timescale and stay with it. You could make full moons last longer, have week long day and nights, and it would all come toghether. As for it taking several weeks for armies to move off the map, note that it's an abstraction. What would really happen is that they prepare and stuff for several weeks, and then leave, however, this is not shown in fortress mode

That has the deficiency of being really silly. Especially in a game that models toes and eyelids.

Problem is, not only will all of these ideas involving a faster timeline take a while to implement (not a problem for something that's definitely a good idea), there's one of two problems depending on if you can switch or not. Either you take forever to go anywhere, or you have a group of issues depending on how you switch. Let's say for the sake of argument that non-switching time tweaks are a bad idea and hear how you suggest the switching work. To start, is it always player-chosen or are there some things that switch it to fast-mode or slow-mode?

I'm not op, but in my opinion combat would be the main auto switch to slow mode.
Sieges would be difficult, but maybe a siege would only switch to slow mode once combat actually started? Though that would leave you open since things would zip by rather fast.
I wonder what the op's thoughts on this are.

Alright, define "combat." Does the game switch to slow every time a combat log pops up?

Silverionmox: You have a point with the "days matter" thing.
[/quote]

[Manveru Taurënér]

How would you solve the coordination problems between the fortress and the outside world?

Well, one could have them get a speedup (and temporary suspension of hunger/thirst/sleeping) when heading off-map as well as for the start of their journey after leaving the edge of the map, to make up for the loss of time travelling to it. There'd also need to bee good ai for organizing all the supplies needed for they journey quickly. I think that way you could get it all down to acceptable levels. It'd also have to be made so you couldn't exploit it by making cancelling these missions hard or even impossible as long as an ambush/force of darkness/megabeast or similar appeared while they were leaving.

Edit: Also along with some minor slowing down of the current fort speed.

I'm wary of that way of solving things. There will be tweaks, then tweaks to compensate the unintended side effects of tweaks, tweaks to counter their side effects, and so on. For the game as it is jury-rigging like that could work, but there are plenty of features - many of which concern interaction of sites with the outside world -  to be added still, and the cumulative effect will be a huge mess of stopgap solutions that cause more problems than they solve, IMO.

Even with good AI, because no matter how good the organization is, hauling food from the storeroom still will take days in game time. And one should be able to send out a properly outfitted squad within hours, if it's an emergency. You could give them that relative speed, and simply slow down the time and the non-involved dwarves to avoid exploits.

As said said before, not.

You just stick to the current fortress timescale and stay with it. You could make full moons last longer, have week long day and nights, and it would all come toghether. As for it taking several weeks for armies to move off the map, note that it's an abstraction. What would really happen is that they prepare and stuff for several weeks, and then leave, however, this is not shown in fortress mode

The problem with that is that they also really do need game time to prepare (mostly running around to collect provisions and stuff), it all adds up. When you send out an army to intervene in an impending battle, you just don't have that time, so something's got to give. For the economy you can abstract pretty much, because it's ultimately the stuff produced in a year that counts, but for military and diplomatic manoeuvres, days matter.

I'd still easily take that over having to dabble with different time-scales. And armies etc should take at least few days to organize most likely, especially when we get to the point of summoning the hill dwarves to bolster its ranks that part will be a non-issue I think. And for smaller things that should go faster I doubt you'd lose that much as they'd basically run and pick up some backpack with supplies and head straight off the map, and with some extra speed on that to compensate the loss would be negligable.

The game as a whole is a huge abstractation tbh, and with some parts you just have to settle for inoptimal features to keep it fun :>

[Silverionmox]

I'd still easily take that over having to dabble with different time-scales. And armies etc should take at least few days to organize most likely, especially when we get to the point of summoning the hill dwarves to bolster its ranks that part will be a non-issue I think. And for smaller things that should go faster I doubt you'd lose that much as they'd basically run and pick up some backpack with supplies and head straight off the map, and with some extra speed on that to compensate the loss would be negligable.

The game as a whole is a huge abstractation tbh, and with some parts you just have to settle for inoptimal features to keep it fun :>

Things like training, recruiting etc. are part of the economic business of a fortress IMO and can be abstracted along with the rest. You'll still need to deal with sending rescue parties right now because somebody was kidnapped, thieves were spotted running away with an artifact sock, a messenger pleads for urgent siege relief, etc.. You can't simply take two weeks to gather your men and compensate it later, because two weeks later the hostage is well hidden, the artifact is sold and the village is burned down already.

Giving a relative speed boost to those particular dwarves is just what would happen: they do what they need to do while the rest of the fortress goes in slow motion. I even doubt it's possible to give them a real speed boost, because often enough fortresses hug the FPS limit as it is. Even if you did, you couldn't control them properly because they would flit about the screen. Not being able to order your military about is not good for the game. I personally am more annoyed by being distracted by eg. "We're out of charcoal" spam while there's a combat situation going on. Keep in mind that the military mode would only be active when there is actually something interesting going on, be it combat, the arrival of of someone important, etc.

Greatwyrmgold: the way I see it, crisis mode (or military mode, focused mode, or detailed mode, or precision mode, whatever it will be named) would be active only when a dwarf is doing a time-sensitive task (or something time-sensitive happens). Eg. a messenger enters the map (time-sensitive), runs to the mayor and delivers his message (end time-sensitivity). Eg. a dwarf spots a forgotten beast, panicks, runs away (time-sensitive), reaches safety (end time-sensitivity).

It could also apply to dwarves running away from breached water reservoirs. That way we can finally have flow rates that aren't either ridiculous from a calender POV, or give the dwarves no real chance to run away.

[Manveru Taurënér]

snip
It could also apply to dwarves running away from breached water reservoirs. That way we can finally have flow rates that aren't either ridiculous from a calender POV, or give the dwarves no real chance to run away.

I fail to see how that is possibly in any way a problem? Until history progression in fort mode gets implemented it doesn't really matter how fast the calendar is, and even then it'll only affect various world happenings translating into fort mode. How fast stuff like dwarf movement speed or water etc works related to calendar time can't be made realistic without destroying the game :>

[GreatWyrmGold]

Silverionmox: Putting aside the flow idea, there are some issues with what you are saying. First off, the FB--dwarves run from all kinds of crap. Will every frame where there's a dwarf afraid of a random wild animal or something be in slow-mode? And for the messenger, does that apply to liasons or just an arbitrary group of messengers from off-map who happen to come from nearby villages to request aid? In short, either you're suggesting arbitrary things to trigger the slowed mode (which probably wouldn't be turn-off-able, because that would remove the point), or the game's always slowed.
Why not just suggest dwarves handle time-sensitive stuff better?

[10ebbor10]

As a general rule of thumb, forcing players into doing something is not a good idea.
Besides, the slow motion thing is going to be abused anyway, so why not give the player direct control already.

I'd rather have a complete and consistent abstraction. It's (way) easier to implement, makes only a bit less sense, and doesn't constantly break immersion, once you get over the initial break from reality. I'd consider it an acceptable break from reality. Fast forwarding and such would really break immersion for me.

Second, I believe I still haven't got an answer to this question?

What would you do about the fact that it seperates the live of the dwarves from the flow of the fortress. Ie, slow mode= Watching the dwarves, fast mode= watching the fortress grow.
As someone in the previous thread said, the lives of dwarves are only amusing because we're forced to watch them; ie they form the background. When you disconnect these from each other, you also disconnect most players from their dwarves. (Except from the dedicated ones who slow down regulary to watch them.)

[Silverionmox]

snip
It could also apply to dwarves running away from breached water reservoirs. That way we can finally have flow rates that aren't either ridiculous from a calender POV, or give the dwarves no real chance to run away.

I fail to see how that is possibly in any way a problem? Until history progression in fort mode gets implemented it doesn't really matter how fast the calendar is, and even then it'll only affect various world happenings translating into fort mode. How fast stuff like dwarf movement speed or water etc works related to calendar time can't be made realistic without destroying the game :>

It's one of the admirable goals of DF to have significant interaction with the outside world, so that's something that we need to leave room for. The flow rates is just another problem that gets solved along the way.

Silverionmox: Putting aside the flow idea, there are some issues with what you are saying. First off, the FB--dwarves run from all kinds of crap. Will every frame where there's a dwarf afraid of a random wild animal or something be in slow-mode? And for the messenger, does that apply to liasons or just an arbitrary group of messengers from off-map who happen to come from nearby villages to request aid? In short, either you're suggesting arbitrary things to trigger the slowed mode (which probably wouldn't be turn-off-able, because that would remove the point), or the game's always slowed.
Why not just suggest dwarves handle time-sensitive stuff better?

I agree that that currently "whenever a dwarf panicks" isn't a good trigger. Either that gets fixed, or we could use "whenever damage is done to a dwarf by an enemy" as criterium instead. As for the messengers, yes. They'll move fast, so it'll just take some seconds, depending on the windyness of your entrance, until they reach the first guards.
We'll have to decide at some point which interactions are to trigger it.. whenever a dwarf should panick, official business and a few disasters seem to cover everything.
The player probably should be able to mark creatures as unimportant, after which they wouldn't trigger crisis mode. "Dwarves should handle time-sensitive stuff better" is rather vague, and ultimately, will not be possible for fast interventions.

As a general rule of thumb, forcing players into doing something is not a good idea.

A game is all about forcing players to do stuff. The goal is to make them like it anyway.

Besides, the slow motion thing is going to be abused anyway, so why not give the player direct control already.

I can't find a way to abuse my particular take on it.

I'd rather have a complete and consistent abstraction. It's (way) easier to implement, makes only a bit less sense, and doesn't constantly break immersion, once you get over the initial break from reality. I'd consider it an acceptable break from reality. Fast forwarding and such would really break immersion for me.

To me, needing a week to reach the edge of the map, and all the consequences it has with interaction with the outside world, is much more serious than changing the pace of time in a predictable way, when needed. A matter of taste presumably.

What would you do about the fact that it seperates the live of the dwarves from the flow of the fortress. Ie, slow mode= Watching the dwarves, fast mode= watching the fortress grow.
As someone in the previous thread said, the lives of dwarves are only amusing because we're forced to watch them; ie they form the background. When you disconnect these from each other, you also disconnect most players from their dwarves. (Except from the dedicated ones who slow down regulary to watch them.)

In my conception of the solution of the timescale problem (which is different from the OP's), the current mode is still the normal mode. Only when you need precision in time (battles, messengers, disasters), then the timescale changes: there would be eg. 50 ticks instead of 1 tick per day... for the creatures involved in combat, messenging, etc. Everything else stays the same, including consumption rates per calendar day etc.

[assasin]

why can't you just put the rest of the world into fortress mode scale when using fortress mode? if it takes you a week to walk to the edge of a map it should take several months to travel to other forts or cities. so if you send out an army you could check travel reports while fiddling around with your fortress until they arrive.

[10ebbor10]

Whenever damage is done to a dwarf is a bad trigger too, because that means whatever enemy you have is already in the fort, giving you no time to prepare, as well as a series of other problems.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Silverionmix: I'm on a tablet, so I'll just list my counterarguments in order of the arguments they, uh, counter.

DF will have interaction with the outside world, but that doesn't mean we should screw with the interface. If it ain't broken...

Triggers: If "whenever a dwarf panics/sees an enemy" is a bad trigger, we need to scrap that idea. If we scrap it, there's no good way to get dwarves to slow time when they're in a fight wth an enemy, unless the slow-time doesn't start until the dwarf is damaged, which has several issues of its own. If time doesn't autoslow for combat, we need to make a fast-mode for combat. Having messengers force slow-mode until they reach your guards is dumb; how do you define guards, and what if you're not protected by them and rather by, say, some kind of trap/s? Can you not see issues with marking critters as unimportant at will? And why is "dwarves handle time-sensitive issues" not a good way for fast responses to happen when most things that would require them autopause the game? And of course it's vague--there's at least a thousand situations it would apply to.

Games are not about forcing you to do stuff, they're about letting you do stuff within limits. By your logic, the best game would be an awesome but non-interactive one, whic isn't really a game at all.

If tere is the slightest difference between the modes, as far as anything goes, it will be abused. It's not like "minimising haling distances improves efficiency," or even "building this complicated device improves efficiency," but "oressing this button improves efficiency."

I think that reaching the edge of the territory you control taking a week isn't too unreasonable, considering that you'd have to be pretty damn far away in DF for it to take a week. Dwarves aren't as slow as you all seem to think--a muner can dig many tiles a day, and I don't think it takes multiple days to build something in a workshop, barring huge haling distances.

And one last question: Why is the slow mode needed? Couldn't we accelerate the working and consuming speeds a la the suggested fast modes and leave out all of the issues, obvious and not, which would occur with such a fundamental change to the Fortress Mode engine?