Bay 12 Games Forum

- Dwarves executing military or diplomatic tasks are in crisis mode (this ranges from attacking a creature over a messenger bringing in an urgent message to someone running away from danger)
- When any dwarf is in crisis mode, there are 50 ticks per calendar day instead of 5 (example values).
- Dwarves in crisis mode get a proportional higher amount of actions per calendar day (50 instead of 5, as example).
- Other dwarves get their usual amount of actions per calendar day.
- ALL dwarves have their usual hunger, sleep, production, etc. rates per calendar day

This results in crisis mode dwarves being able to fight and negotiate much more in a short calendar time, while civilian life slows down, so they don't get in the way without becoming less productive.

This solves the problem that sending out a squad (as is a development goal) takes weeks of calendar time to even reach the edge of the map, moving at ordinary fortress mode speed rates (coordinating fortress mode and overland movement). It also becomes possible to resolve minor skirmishes, trade and other diplomatic negotiations in less than a day. It becomes possible to have night and day, and, consequently to attack and have attackers that use the cover of darkness. Messengers could come in with urgent messages, deliver eg. a request for aid, and you could send out a squad the same day. With the current system, that would take weeks if not months: that makes any but statistical interaction with the outside world impossible.

(Came up here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=112537.0)

Currently the cursor jumps 11 places when you press shift+arrow. Depending on what you want to design, customizing the distance ad hoc could be very helpful. Changing it in the game would be most practical (since it's nothing more than inputting a number), but making it changeable in the init would do.

Problem: when you make changes in the raws, and a new version arrives, you're in a dilemma: transfer your modified raws and keep your changes but risk to lose Toady's changes, or you have to edit every single change you've ever made in the raws back in, manually.

Suggestion: Instead of using raws as a take-it-or-leave-it whole, allow partial raws. The game will then compare them with the base raw set and fill in if nothing is defined (eg. a new creature), or override the basic raws with the mods (e.g. in the creatures file of the mod, a dog creature is defined with six legs instead of two).

Advantages: Smoother updating with new versions, keep your own cumulative changes to the raws, easier switching and combining of mods.

Disadvantage: slightly longer startup.

The underground caves are wonderful, but after a while they become a little ... predictable in their shapes, patterns and sizes.

So I suggest to put the mathematical formulas these are based on in raws. We can design new ones. (Or at least some of us will be able to The rest of us can tinker with the existing ones.) The game would then be able to pick (semi-randomly) between different styles, so different places in the world will actually look differently.

The same can happen for mountain and landscape shapes, vegetation patterns, ore distributions, shape of veins and mineral deposits, etc. City layout is also an obvious candidate, but there are other threads about that specifically.

I just wanted to vent how incredibly frustrating, obtuse and dysfunctional the uniforms interface is. Why can't we change uniforms after squad creation? Why can't we reselect the standard selection? Why is ENTER (the confirmation key) used as DELETE? Why WHy WY WRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!! >sob<

That is all.

Water still flows like jelly. That might be fine for magma, but water should flow more smoothly. If you fill a broad channel, you'll see that the water does not quickly fill the lowest water level, but instead it slowly flows down from the top of the water source. As a result, you get a diagonal slope, as if it were a candle where drops of molten wax flow from the top, accumulating into a mass near the candle.

Instead it would be better if water spread out quickly, only to rise in level when there's no lower place to go. So water that needs to find another place has to teleport (as it works now: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3549/interview_the_making_of_dwarf_.php?page=9) to the lowest place available.

However, sometimes we want to have a "wall of water" effect, especially when great volumes or high pressure are present. To preserve this, we pose a limit (e.g.. 100 squares) for the distance searched to place water. So even if square 101 from the originating point of the water is dry, it will still only search within 100 squares, placing the extra water on top of layer 1, making it 2.

With these modifications, water would flow more quickly and smoothly, while still seeing to it that long distances or huge spaces aren't filled in a flash.

Squads train together, sharing their skills. However, it would often be more effective to:
- have dwarves of different skills in the same squad
- have dwarves focus on their skill, rather than become dabbling in all the weapon skills of his squadmates

A way to solve this problem could be to ignore squads with regards to training; in other words, consider training a civilian activity. An alternative is to have alternate squads for training. Or, the simplest, be a bit loose with training, let soldiers train cross-squad, so everyone that has an axe assigned to them can all go to the lessons of the legendary axedwarf, even though he isn't in everyone's squad.

In addition, let dwarves focus on the skills of their chosen/assigned weapon, regardless what the rest of their squad does. The training isn't very effective, there's no point in wasting time to become dabbling in all weapon skills, while ignoring the main skill.