Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: Jh00 on June 29, 2010, 10:32:34 pm
-
DISCLAIMER: I'm loving the game, I know it is constantly being developed and that most of what I plan to discuss may even be already planned! I just wanted to point out some aspects of it that really bothered me, so perhaps the developers can have a fresh point of view from someone who has just arrived here as feedback. I already feel bad about pointing these flaws where there are so many merits, but I do this with good intentions.
- Interface could have a little more love. There are lots of times that I need to close DF from the task manager because I don't have an option to "ESC" back, like, if I decided to get another embark position, or if I decided to leave the game without saving. Also, it would be great to have some more sorting options "for the Dwarfs list, stocks list etc".
- Pets are annoying. I have to constantly monitor new puppies and kittens and lock them manually in a cage to avoid FPS drop and to avoid them bringing trash inside. I wish I had some way to automatically select a place for new Tamed uncaged pets to be "stored" or even if I could sterilize all my cats, or automatically butcher them instead as they are born (PETA don't read this).
- Linking levers isn't friendly. The cursor doesn't seem to always focus on the item you want to link to. I learned how to avoid this limitation it by building a floodgate, for example, and just then linking the LAST floodgate on the list. If I had to built several floodgates first, I would be completely lost as to which one to link first. Also a way to check linked objects would be great, because sometimes I just forget to create a note about that.
- I may be missing something, but merchants seems a little pointless now. I don't see any benefit in trading with them, considering that either I can produce most of they have to sell, or the other stuff are worthless. I know economy are being developed, and it seems that will be richer when alchemy is developed too - maybe that would get some higher priority. In the end, when I have everything built, I feel a little empty, because I don't see any reason to keep producing stuff that ultimately will just bring me more clutter and nothing better in return. I tend to start a new fortress when I have everything laid out.
- I have yet to get a baron, after dozens of fortresses. I read the wiki, I produced everything I could, my exports are as high as 50k, I have roads connecting the border of the map... It would be nice to have a hint as to what needed to be done to attain the next hierarchy in the nobility.
- The trading window is very cumbersome. The manager window is much better IMHO, and could be implemented into the Trade Window. Also, it would be great to have goods divided into sub-categories (like, cloth, furniture etc.) just like the "move goods to trade" window.
- I love the "Health Screen". However, considering the loads of medical skills in the game, I think the dwarves health are being underused. Perhaps if they had some "domestic" accidents that didn't necessarily involve combats, like droping a bin on the feet, getting a cold for being in the rain, getting stomach aches for eating bad food. That would bring more "conflict" inside the walls.
- Clutter. I'm in process of ignoring any other trap but Cages and Atom Smashers just to avoid seem the ground littered with body parts and useless stuff dropped from goblins. My biggest stockpile is by far the refuse, and either I keep enlarging it, or I have to manually 1. allow gathering of refuse from outside; 2. Mark refuse to be dumped; 3. Activate my refuse atom smasher, which grows boring with time. It would be great if carcasses would rotten more quickly outside, as well as cloth itens. Metal itens could either rust or just get buried by rain and wind over time and disappear.
- Ability to specify which trade goods are to be encrusted with gems. The workaround of locking the gemsdwarf isn't very good. It would be nicer if I could set "Itens to get encrusted" just as I have the options to select "Itens to be traded", or to define a tag (like "Melt, Dump or Forbid") to itens that would be decorated.
- Someone please petition the king for a a) bones and horns stockpile; b) adamantine threads stockpile; c) Weapon Traps stockpile (separated from the Weapon stockpile) and to eliminate most of the "letter" stockpiles (like Sand bags, Prepared Meals etc); ;
- Cages should not be hermetic, IMHO. Throwing a caged goblin into a pit full of water should drown it. It would be awesome to have a little more sadism in the game :-)
- Humanoid enemies should feel the pain the same as dwarves. They should get thirsty, hungry and ultimately, die. I hate when a goblin falls into one of my pits and stays there indefinitely. I would like to see them suffer :-)
This is not all the suggestions I have, just the ones I think would have made the game a little better for me when I started. I guarantee that if I had to write a thread with everything I liked, it would be much bigger than this (in fact, I plan to write such post tomorrow to give a "positive" feedback from a newcomer, if I see that this thread end up being of any use).
Go go dwarves!
EDIT: Here is the positive feedback (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60508.0) I mentioned before.
-
We've all felt the pain bro, but the game is still in development. All in good time.
I can say, about #3, the ability to simply name levers would be an outstanding convenience. Normally I can keep a mental note for which does what, but once I've got an overly developed 200 dwarf fort with levers everywhere it becomes a bit tedious
-
This isn't really the way you should go about making suggestions... The hopeful goal of the suggestions forum can probably be best expressed in the Eternal Suggestions Voting (stickied right at the top), which is to say that you should be trying to use a thread to get people behind a single course of action.
This is hampered by having people who simply repeat the same suggestions over and over again, which is why Footkerchief is a virtual forum feature repeating links back to where the same ideas have been discussed before. Use the search function with things, and look at what is already on the Eternal Suggestions Voting, and you'll see things like Interface are already very hotly debated.
The ability to get together ESV concensus is also hampered by having a multi-subject thread, which discourages the ability to focus in on fully debating any one specific thing.
Some of this, like the Baron not appearing, or dealing with clutter" seems like it would be better discussed in the general DF discussion.
You don't need to be defensive about seeing problems in this game - there is a reason why there is a bug report and a suggestion forum in the first place, after all, but it's better to avoid a proliferation of new topics when the actual action on these suggestions is based around ranking in the ESV when there are places in those discussions you could bring much of this up.
-
This isn't really the way you should go about making suggestions... The hopeful goal of the suggestions forum can probably be best expressed in the Eternal Suggestions Voting (stickied right at the top), which is to say that you should be trying to use a thread to get people behind a single course of action.
First of all, thank you for pointing out.
I agree with you, and I thought a lot before posting this. I ended up posting here because a) if every suggestion should be posted to the eternal sugestion thread, what's the point of having a whole forum for suggestions? and b) as I said, my intention was to point out what struck me when I started playing the game, as a way to give my feedback on my first impressions. I have loads of other suggestions that I will happily post in the thread you mentioned.
Ultimately, if this particular thread proves to be a disservice, I don't bother if moderators lock or simply delete it.
EDIT: I confused the "thread" with the "voting page", but in fact, I have already casted my 3 votes long ago!
-
While it isn't too much of a pain to address the worries and concerns of new players, if you've ever been in one of the 'weapon discussion' topics, or have seen the 'wishlist' topics, you'll find a lot of the primary discussion for what the Suggestion board was probably intended for, ESV aside. The ESV is on Toady's to-do list, but he also reads the forums.
I'm not really an advocate of necroing topics, or of just shutting down a topic the moment it's slightly related to something else that has been brought up, but one of the reasons why Footkerchief is so appreciated is because he tends to force-feed people the search function. It's true that the board can get pretty bogged down with repetitive suggestions, or even suggestions that show up in the dev logs, but as long as you have people bringing the previous suggestions from older topics into the new one, then new ground can usually be covered without too much of a hassle.
If you're really unsure as to what constitutes a genuinely new suggestion, a topic that refreshes an old idea, a reminder of old ideas you hope someone has a new spin on, or just a plain old redundant topic, then I suggest that you mess around with the search function using the key words or phrases for ideas you want to discuss, to get familiar with what the community has already covered.
If all else fails, then you should probably just lurk a bit more until you've become familiar with what's usually acceptable for starting a new topic, and what's better off left as a small side-note or a bump for an old one. After all, if you've figured out how to play Dwarf Fortress already, I have no doubt that you can get more comfortable with how to use a specific forum.
-
Ok, it seems I failed, so I gently ask the moderator to delete the whole thread.
Thanks.
-
- Interface could have a little more love.
Understatement of century.
- Linking levers isn't friendly. The cursor doesn't seem to always focus on the item you want to link to. I learned how to avoid this limitation it by building a floodgate, for example, and just then linking the LAST floodgate on the list. If I had to built several floodgates first, I would be completely lost as to which one to link first. Also a way to check linked objects would be great, because sometimes I just forget to create a note about that.
I would add also that I do not know of any way to check to where and to what lever is already linked.
- The trading window is very cumbersome.
Oh yes, my poor hand.
- Cages should not be hermetic, IMHO. Throwing a caged goblin into a pit full of water should drown it. It would be awesome to have a little more sadism in the game :-)
A little more?? Read more on forum... you will be surprised...
-
- Cages should not be hermetic, IMHO. Throwing a caged goblin into a pit full of water should drown it. It would be awesome to have a little more sadism in the game :-)
A little more?? Read more on forum... you will be surprised...
Yes, the mermaid infant organ harvesting factories and the elven concentration camps probably prove Hitler would have probably been quite content to have just played DF if he had been born 100 years later.
-
4 merchants are many usefull for getting rare pets. For example giant eagles from elves. These things are worth a lot.
6 If I'm right the trade menu is already made out of sub menu's. It might be usefull to add the option of selecting an entire catagory. (for example load all crafts)
8 using o-r you can select diffrend refuse options and auto select stuff for dumping using i you can designate an area then pressing g will make it a garbage dump if you dump it in the river or magma you can get rid of it.
10 you can use t and c to designate a costom stockpile
12 invasions don't carry any supplies and therefore would be to easy to starve to death.
-
Something to help trading a little:
Ctrl+r - starts macro recording process
Press enter
Press down arrow key
Ctrl-r - ends macro recording process
Ctrl-s - names the last macro you recorded
Ctrl-l - loads a macro, if you use more than one
ctrl-p - runs the macro once
By holding ctrl-p it will repeat the macro, enter/down arrow, which you can hold to select all the objects brought to the depot. This helps a little bit of the tedium in trading tons of stuff away, though doesn't help you looking through the stuff the merchants have to offer. You'll even keep your bins this way because, although you will designate your bins at one point, once you designate something inside the bin, the bin is undesignated for trading itself.
Edit: I'm not certain if you meant moving items to the depot or trading with merchants. This is intended to help in the "trading with merchants" screen. The "Move items to depot" screen has a filtering option, but you seem pretty knowledgeable about the game already so I imagine you're not referring to that.
-
We've all felt the pain bro, but the game is still in development. All in good time.
I can say, about #3, the ability to simply name levers would be an outstanding convenience. Normally I can keep a mental note for which does what, but once I've got an overly developed 200 dwarf fort with levers everywhere it becomes a bit tedious
As an aside, naming is already half-implemented with the Notes function. I believe it is ctrl+N to add a note somewhere? Or is it just capital N? You can assign any tile a symbol and then type in whatever text you'd like over it.
-
Re #10: "Someone please petition the king for a a) bones and horns stockpile; b) adamantine threads stockpile; c) Weapon Traps stockpile (separated from the Weapon stockpile) and to eliminate most of the "letter" stockpiles (like Sand bags, Prepared Meals etc); ; "
The refuse stockpile used to be more easily divided into "keepers" and "rotters". Perhaps some of that functionality will return when the bad or lacking toggles are fixed in other stockpile categories. You can make your own Weapon Traps stockpile separate from the other weapons, right now, by editing the settings on Weapon stockpiles. Stockpiles for sand bags and prepared meals are always used in my fortresses. I would hate to see those eliminated, although we really need a "bagged non-food stuff" stockpile now for rock powders and those could include sand. My prepared meals stockpiles are always quite extensive. I enjoy picturing a hungry Dwarf entering the Prepared Meals Caverns, where the floors are covered with platters of various foods extending as far as the eye can see. They wander bemusedly until they find just the dish that fits their mood, and then off they go to the dining room with their platter of, it may be, Dwarven Haggis, clutched in their hands. :D The practical reason for keeping these separate, and without barrels, is so that I may trade them to caravans.
-
8 using o-r you can select diffrend refuse options and auto select stuff for dumping using i you can designate an area then pressing g will make it a garbage dump if you dump it in the river or magma you can get rid of it.
Thatīs what Iīve been doing, but there is usually so much trash that my dwarves take a long time to clear it all. Beside that, to dump things outside, I need to allow gathering of ANY refuse outside, which means that many dwarves decide to wander far away from my walls to get refuse (unless I first look all around and forbid them first).
12 invasions don't carry any supplies and therefore would be to easy to starve to death.
Thatīs a good point. Anyhow, IMHO a siege is about checking who will survive longer with their provisions. It isnīt feasible that goblins start out a siege without a supply line or provisions on their backpacks. For all I care, they could very well eat the corpses that are usually spread around my fortress (it would kill 2 rabbits with one stick!).
As an aside, naming is already half-implemented with the Notes function. I believe it is ctrl+N to add a note somewhere? Or is it just capital N? You can assign any tile a symbol and then type in whatever text you'd like over it.
I use that a lot: hit "N" (uppercase), place a note with "p", then use "t" to type a note.
The refuse stockpile used to be more easily divided into "keepers" and "rotters". Perhaps some of that functionality will return when the bad or lacking toggles are fixed in other stockpile categories.
That would be wonderful!
Stockpiles for sand bags and prepared meals are always used in my fortresses. I would hate to see those eliminated.
I didnīt mean to eliminate them. I just donīt understand why "Sand Bags" or "Prepared Food" isnīt simply an item in the stockpile list, as "chairs" or "tables", instead of being activated by a letter. We have, for example, Lye that is the only item inserted into "Misc. Liquid", why not having a category for "Prepared Food" as well (which could be divided into "Easy", "Fine" and "Lavish meals"? When I started playing, I got quite confused with those stockpiles "letters".
-
I suppose supplies are planned but first some sort of carrying system needs to be added.