Bay 12 Games Forum

To play devil's advocate, I'd point out that police in the US face a rather unique situation, in that so much of the general population is armed with lethal weaponry. Over here in kangaroo land, nobody owns guns, barring those that use them for agricultural purposes or sport. We've got fairly strict gun control laws. Your average cop doesn't need to be worried about getting shot when they pull someone over.

In the US, they face the constant risk of gun violence. Thus, they're trained to deal with that, which is essentially military training. Little wonder they act like it.

Perhaps if people weren't allowed to own guns in the US, there'd be less violence? Training time spent on avoiding getting shot could be spent on deescalation techniques?

As I posted in this thread; http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=176557.msg8148974#msg8148974  Violence caused by police are a multifacted problem.  There was not a high rate of police shootings of civilians until after the militarization of the police in the US.  This has been a gradual trend over the last half-century or so - both of lowering of standards for police training, a move away from de-escalation training, and an overall increase of "us-vs-them" mentality amongst the police.  Furthermore, the justice system has been corrupted by prosecutors backed by for-profit prisons, and a distinct lack of accountability among the police - given the same department they work at would be the ones investigating any crimes an individual officer commits, as well as often the same judges some of these officers will have worked with for years or even decades, leads to a great deal of nepotism. 

The only realistic means to change that is to
1.  Enforce federal standards for police training and psychological screening,
2.  Eliminate for-profit prisons and the drug war,
3.  Elevate any crimes committed by police officers to that of federal statute, and thus being directly overseen by federal courts,
4.  Ensure any crimes to which a police officer is suspected of is investigated by a federal body like the FBI. 

Quite honestly, citizens owning guns is not as much an issue in the US, at least as far as people legally permitted to own firearms are concerned.  In fact, people who go through the measure to get a concealed carry licence in the USA are less likely to commit a crime than a police officer, which should say something to the measure in which there is actual accountability.  Even beyond concealed carry, more than 2/3rds of gun violence are carried out by people who are not legally able to have a gun.  Part of the problem in the USA, where that's concerned, is "felon with a firearm", itself a felony that can carry a multiple year sentence, is very rarely prosecuted.  Less than 1% of failed background checks are actually investigated by the police, and if I remember the figure correctly, around 20% of said rejections are from prohibited persons who are themselves breaking the law even attempting to get a firearm even as they are denied, meaning we have millions of people each year trying to get firearms illegally who the police just... ignore. 

Of course, if you were caught using cannabis before you were an adult and later the police learn you own firearms, the police might decide you're such a threat to society and they will skip even no-knock raids and fire into your bedroom from the curbside to kill you because you stood up and started walking towards the door, then proceed to refuse to even show a warrant after the fact to your family for the next 3 months+.  But this falls back into where police officer's priorities stand - they gain more for getting people for a 2-8 year sentence of drug possession than going after a 1-2 year sentence for felons having firearms, and prosecutors are more likely to win a plea bargain for such than say, armed robbery or assault, so police in the USA far more aggressively go after any sort of drug offences than other crimes, as that's where they get the most bonuses from.  Sadly, so many officers just see what they're doing as nothing more than a job, take as few risks to themselves as they can, and just try to maximize the money they can make, which leads to others suffering for it. 

Quote from: Evaris on May 01, 2020, 06:10:43 pm

8.  Moving of cutting down trees and gathering plants on the ground to the zones menu, letting you automate keeping paths clear, maintaining a tree farm (perhaps with a submenu of "cut after tree reaches a certain number of z height units), and preventing dwarves from traveling too far from the fort.

While this is a good idea, it seems to me it would be more difficult to newcomers than what we have now. The designations menu is one of the first they'll learn, due to mining being in there.

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20.  Trees should be knocked down / collapse if a tile is dug out from under them, and should not grow on tiles where there is a tunnel dug beneath them, soas to prevent holes in the ground giving easy access to your fort, and / or at least alerting you to the presence of said hole in the fort.

I agree trees should be allowed to fall without sufficient rooting, but the latter part of this point makes little sense. Not only do RL trees not care whether there is a space some meters below them (how could they?), but it's quite a !fun! emergent future. The new graphics should make these holes more distuingishable to newcomers who normally wouldn't notice the difference between "." and "·".

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23.  The embark screen needs to be reworked, the just embark haphazardly should be renamed to haphazard embark or randomized embark, to help new players realize they should be planning things out.

The "just embark" gives you a decent start unless you've chosen an intentionally difficult embark location. It's a good newcomer option, they shouldn't be reprimanded for not min-maxing, or scared off by the very meaty planned embark menu (regardless of redesign).

Well, I'd suggest reworking designations completely and changing how the menus work, so my suggestion was in regards to that.  IMO, cutting trees is generally a different activity vs digging and the like, which I would put under a reworked "build" section to be more user friendly in general. 

As for trees caring about a hole beneath them, I mean, they kindof do, and you're not going to get a tree growing past a sapling, generally speaking, unless you've got more than a few inches of dirt. 

On Just Embark, I think having labeled options with descriptions would be better.  Even without outright min-maxing, the just embark option really isn't all that good, in my opinion, and if we were working on a singular default embark profile, it could certainly be improved to be more noob friendly.  Even quick, minor optimizations like trading out meat for garden vegetables which are edible raw in double the amount for the same cost, or bringing along enough poultry for egg production and/or sheep for yarn and milk, bringing along gypsum powder should any dwarves need casts, a stock of lye at the beginning so the dwarves have soap, etc.  Also goblets / mugs so you don't have your starting dwarves complaining about drinking their booze without on day 1.  While we're at it, perhaps the default embark points might be mildly increased to provide such for new players on the steam release with the default profile.  (idk, to 1600 maybe for an even number, and slightly easier than it is now by default?)

1.  Merging of menus.  The ability to look at things being spread across multiple keys creates a lot of clutter, when you could have a look menu that then has secondary keys that allow you to look into different parts of what it is you're viewing.  Also, the menus absolutely need mouse support.  (and left clicking to look at something would to me make sense as a default)

2.  As with the above, menus can be renamed and reordered to make more intuitive sense.  So, select build, for example ; you would then see workshops, furnaces, furniture, mechanisms (relabel traps), constructions, etc.  This would make things less confusing for new players.  Move digging into the same menu set, as well as things like smoothing stone under a "stoneworking" submenu.  Even if it means more clicks, it being more organized would make it far more accessible to new players. 

3.  Lack of information.  Looking at something should have an interactions screen, that shows you, for example, if you're looking at livestock, whether it can be milked, sheared, butchered, etc. and list what workshop it can be done at. 

4.  Expanded weaponable / armorable alloys.  This is the point that had me make Orichalcum in the first place, but a number of alloys that one would think a dwarf could use for something, can't be.  For example, you're able to make silver and copper weapons, but not sterling silver weapons.  Brass was historically used in weapons, and is nearly as strong as bronze, being far superior to copper, but dwarves can't use it for arms or armor by default, and sometimes you have a ton of zinc on your map.  Similarly nickel, cupronickel was used historically by the chinese in "white bronze" and is comparable in strength to bronze.  Platinum being an amazing weapon material but you're restricted to using it by default to decorative purposes rather than practical ones even as a siege is in the process of breaking you.  So on and so forth.  The metals you can work with should be expanded to make maps less hit or miss by the roll of dice on the map.

5.  Difficulty options on base world gen that on the easiest setting toggles off megabeasts, werebeasts, the amount of the world covered in evil biomes, etc.  Leaving advanced generation the same, but a "peaceful" lowest difficulty setting that would restrict the generation of any sorts of innate threats to your fortress from afar would go a long way to helping out new players.

6.  Give the expedition leader the abilities of a manager without the need for a desk and the like.  This would more smoothly let players plan things out to be constructed in the beginning of a fort as needed before infrastructure is in place.

7.  Rework of the orders menu into the management screen, to be compiled with other policies in place, such as enforcing mandates so you don't accidentally trade things, or automatically queuing mandated items or not. 

8.  Moving of cutting down trees and gathering plants on the ground to the zones menu, letting you automate keeping paths clear, maintaining a tree farm (perhaps with a submenu of "cut after tree reaches a certain number of z height units), and preventing dwarves from traveling too far from the fort.

9.  Military overhaul.  The entire menu system needs to be reworked - especially scheduling. 

10.  Refuse and corpses should honestly be combined by default under the stockpile system.  Also, dwarves should be less sensitive to the corpses of enemy combatants. 

11.  As others have mentioned, a grazer rework is in order, grazers should be able to wander and find food if they are not in a designated pen / pasture. 

12.  Stairs and ramps need a tutorial at the very least explaining how they function.

13.  Fishing needs to be reworked.  Fish should be less likely to be caught as populations dwindle, an announcement posted when it's reaching such, there should be a zone setting to leave a minimum percentage of stock to reproduce, bodies of water that go off-map should be effectively inexhaustible, (at the very least, if it's a major river or an ocean!) and fish cleaning should be given higher priority than fishing soas not to leave seafood to rot when the dwarf in question has both tasks enabled. 

14.  Cooking all your booze and/or boozable plants by accident is a mistake I made many times when I was a noob.  I'd set it to have booze cooking disabled by default, as well as any food items with both options for cooking or brewing defaulting to having cooking disabled. 

15.  Construction / channeling dwarf AI could be reworked.  Have it run a check to see if building any parts of a construction would get in the way of building other parts in it, then setting up a queue.  This would let us at least put down lengths of walls or designating an area to be channeled out without making it inaccessible.

16.  Pathing optimizations.  Greater multithreading, perhaps a seasonal check of ideal routes for designated tasks, pre-planning wildlife movement on extra threads before they come to map, etc.  I don't know if any of these are already done, but pathing is by far the thing that seems to lead to fps check, and while pathing priority already exists, perhaps having an automated version of it that adjusts every season by default would help optimize the game more, while still allowing players to manually designate preferred routes.  (but also preferably showing players where the automated preferred paths are)

17.  Groundcover like grass and floor fungus shouldn't block access to sand/clay.  Dwarves should be able to dig up tiles to access such - I mean they can already just by placing a dirt road.  Not having to go back to a patch of dirt to build a road over every few seasons would be a good reduction of tedium for experienced players and confusion for new players.

18.  constructions should be more intuitive.  Constructed floors shouldn't block constructed walls, a straightforward way to work around the present system might be perhaps to have the system queue up a deconstruct order immediately alongside the construction order when one is placed in overlap?

19.  Dwarves should not get stuck in trees like cats.  If a dwarf is stuck in a tree with no way down, they should be willing to risk a broken leg jumping down in favor of not starving / dehydrating to death. 

20.  Trees should be knocked down / collapse if a tile is dug out from under them, and should not grow on tiles where there is a tunnel dug beneath them, soas to prevent holes in the ground giving easy access to your fort, and / or at least alerting you to the presence of said hole in the fort.

21.  Announcements need a filter. 

22.  A colony opinions screen that shows things your fortress needs or your dwarves are complaining about would be quite helpful to noobs and those wanting a less tedious experience.

23.  The embark screen needs to be reworked, the just embark haphazardly should be renamed to haphazard embark or randomized embark, to help new players realize they should be planning things out.

24.  Stairs;  Up/down stairs should be able to be designated to dig on the surface.  (leaving down stairs) to make it more intuitive to new players. 

25.  Tattered clothes should either have a stockpile of their own, or go to refuse piles by default. 

26.  Workshops should be able to be assigned wheelbarrows.  This would go a long way to cutting down wait times on stone and the like.

Edit: 27.  Also, bugfixing in general needs to be prioritized.  There are so many long-standing bugs that need to be addressed, some of which go back a decade.  Please, take a good chunk of time to fix a number of them, given many can be game breaking or accelerate FPS death.  Others are just unending sources of frustration. 

Well, I was able to replace them after the siege finished with random otherdwarfs, though there's still been no reports or anything of the dwarves that haven't shown.   So.. that's odd.

Fortress mode, no errors that I've seen?

So, I've just got this gaping hole in the ground when i try to run Armok Vision, what's up with that? 

https://i.imgur.com/j9apqZl.png

Right, so, update, I finally got all my parts, and the motherboard was dead on arrival, so...


Anyone else have an interest in taking up this until I have a functioning PC again? 

Good news / bad news. 

Bad news:  My computer is dead. 

Good news:  New computer parts will be here by next week?