Bay 12 Games Forum

I think the sub-priority idea might be better done by reordering a list of jobs. It just seems more intuitive that way, but it's only a difference of interface, I like the idea.

A list of jobs would get big fast. Consider how many smoothing jobs there are just for smoothing out an 11x11 room with walls (effectively 13x13 - 169), then add on all the hauling tasks for whatever is around, and throw in auto-created tasks like gathering webs. Good idea in principle, but falls apart when the scale sets in.

I'd also want to set some other jobs to one of the 7 priorities for some work details. Then my foresters can focus on gathering herbs and fruit, falling back on low priority woodcutting, then on fishing. And when I'm running out of wood I could just set up some higher priority cutting jobs without touching the work details again. They'd all drop off their haul and go chop down trees.

If you mean assigning a sub-priority to a work order, I agree.

I like the competency limits too. I think it would be preferable to linking stockpiles of different metals to restricted forges. Right now if you want a steel weaponsmith, a steel armoursmith, a bronze weaponsmith, a bronze armoursmith and a forge for other metals that's 5 forges and at least three stockpiles. Limiting jobs by competency would reduce it to 1 forge, with stockpile(s) and extra forges being optional - and you wouldn't be limited to one smith per skill-metal combination either.

I wonder if it would be better added to work orders than work details though? And maybe it could be more like "top 5 weaponsmiths". Then you can arrange it so only your best (or equal-best) Xsmith(s) get to work on the steel jobs, the top 5 can do bronze and precious metals and anyone can dabble with cheaper metals. You could set it up before you have any legendary dorfs and not have to tweak it again when you do - or when they have fun.

That would certainly give more control, and I see the usefulness of it. Perhaps if it had all the operands item count has? (at least, more than, equal to, etc.)
I can see how straight-forward and powerful it would be to have a work order set to "2nd best or better" for steel swords and another one set to "3rd best or worse" for copper maces, for instance.

Counter-suggestion: Why limit yourself to current characters? Just add an extra 6 icons (one for no added quality to make lists nice): Circle, Triangle, Square, Pentagon, 5-point Star, 8-point Star.

Having icons like this would also mean that modders could change them, for instance I could throw in the Elite: Dangerous material quality icons (conveniently also 5 grades) after making them appropriately sized.

That said, for ASCII-mode the suggestion is valid.

Work orders are great for hands-off processing, but it could do with some improvements:

• A toggle to suppress completion of a work order - I don't need to know my process 1 limonite ore is done for the 20th time
• A toggle to let a work order check activation even if it's already active and deactivate if needed - I don't need to know that I don't have limonite order because the last piece became inaccessible
• Related to the above, a toggle to remove existing jobs on workshops if the work order is deactivated - I want to prevent using my last piece of coke on ore
• Work orders for smelting ore groups that have the same output, such as all iron ores, similar to gem cutting - Magnetite and hematite are effectively identical, and limonite isn't far off

Semi-related: An option for infinitely repeating jobs on workshops to not remove it if there's an issue, such as perpetually processing lignite, so that it doesn't need to be a work order.

That’s actually wrong.  “I.e” = “Id est” = “That is”.

TIL, thought they both effectively meant the same thing.

I'm watching a playthrough right now where someone is using a tileset and I can see that warm rocks flash with the following: https://i.imgur.com/8SiZrFR.png
During all 4 lets play streams of premium plus the PAX preview I've not noticed anything like this, or any other similar info describing useful tile-based information as an overlay.

Overlays would be a concise way of showing quite a lot of information about the map area you're in, and would also avoid adding lots of extra artwork requirements to show the same thing "naturally" (artwork for warm and damp versions of everything sounds like insane amounts of work).

It would be nice if you could see the following:

• Potentially hazardous rocks (warm/damp) - It seems like the only way to identify them in premium is to mouse-over
• Potentially valuable rocks (gems/smeltables) - It looked hard to identify at a glance, especially in caverns
• Rocks with open space either above or below them (ideally both at the same time) - Being able to look at multiple layers at once like this would help with mentally picturing things (at least for me)
• User-specified filtering for the type of rock (e.g. magma-safe) - Would make finding some things by rapidly scrolling through layers very easy
• User-specified grading for the type of rock (e.g. density) - Same as above, but for things that aren't a binary yes/no

Here's an example for a gem overlay based on the PAX preview video: https://i.imgur.com/XuAdBWR.png
I didn't realise just how many gems there were until I went through and added the overlay manually, unless I've marked some of those incorrectly.