Currently workshops and rooms come in the forms of buildings. This means that in order to have your dwarf complete a task, like the making of a wooden bed, he has to simply take a lump of material, be it a bar of soap or a block of steel or some other random puss that happened to be semi solid, and construct a strange 3X3 tile construction, seemingly out of nowhere. Then he will begin working in this building and produce whatever you ask him to without any tools. This also means that before a dining room can be assigned, or a bedroom/dormitory created, it must first have a bed(and your dwarves will instead sleep in the rain)
This to me seems rather gamey and very much unfitting for DF. I would like to suggest a different method of making rooms to live in and workshops for dwarves to turn raw materials into useful objects without the use of such abstract constructions.
The idea is to replace rooms that are linked to buildings(bedrooms to bed's, dining rooms to a single table) and workshops(which are rooms
inside a building) with zones that can be fulfilled over time. This means that many rooms will not only be more intricate and full of meaningfull interactions for your dwarves, they will also be combineable or made sepperate for singular functions(jewlers shop for just cutting gems, farmer's workshop for just processing plants into fibers and thread.)
Workshop areas!This basically means that workshops will now be designated the same way that zones are. And with rather similar functionality.
In order to build a workshop you would have to select an area. A workshop area can be designated anywhere. Each area, depending on it's type of workshop, will require certain
tools in it.
This means that if someone were to construct a masons workshop, then optimally it would need a table, a chair, a retainer with a bunch of tools suck as chisels, hammers, rock saws etc. However, the difference is that not every workshop action would require every single tool. This means that as soon as you have a single chisel and hammer and a lump of stone, a dwarf
can begin working on a simpler construction such as a table or a slab, whereas further tools would be necessary for jobs such as "create stone grate" or the like.
An image to demonstrate the idea:
the three rooms are meant to be a masons shop, an ironwork and a kitchen. As you can see(
or cannot, in which case I appologise deeply. The tools used to create this did not quite have the same tileset as DF) they each have multiple tables and chairs(represented by "n",
tile was missing) as well as many other tools that currently do not exist in the game or have a function.
They can also contain stockpiles in them, as in the above example is the case with the masons workshop and the kitchen.
Some explanation as to what I imagined in the picture
- The masons shop chests, tables, chairs and various tools for cutting, smoothing, engraving, drilling and holding stone blocks and boulders. Also has a stockpile for various tools and materials that are left over or needed in random tasks.
- The iron works(forge, smithy, whatever you prefer) has anvils and right next to them cisterns of water, chests, tables and chairs as well as forges.
- The kitchen has chests, a long list of tables for various tasks, a system of ovens/stoves hooked up to a small heater by pipes, meat hooks, presses and distilling barrels, and a stockpile for various necessary items, as well as a sink connected to a water supply by large pipe right behind the wall.
This is by no means a complete or accurate list of things that those workshops should have or need, but it gives a general idea of how things may work in such a system.
This means that many workshops that are currently necessary, for instance the wood furnace, ashery and soap makers workshop, can now be combined into one zone that has the necessary tools to create soap directly from tallow and ash or anything else(
if you are really that into making soap, that is. its ok, it's cool. Im ok with that. Im ok with that if you're ok with that, bro.)
Workshop management, settings and UI.As far as traversing the menus and build orders, the workshop zones would function much the same as workshops from a UI point of view. This means that
Q will still locate the nearest "workshop"(zone) and the player will be given options from there on for new tasks and so fourth.
All buildings in the workshop are placed by the player, and each workshop would have a settings page where the player could define what tools the workshop should contain, what tasks it should be allowed to preform, and what dwarves are allowed to work there.
And an example of newly created zone and how task creation works(left:
q near workshop. right: after pressing
a):
as you can see, there would be a great deal of clarity. All available tasks would be displayed, and all unavailable tasks would also be listed along with indicators as to why they cannot be completed.
An example q menu near a mason's workshop and the "workstations" sub-window:
Notice that the
Workstations menu on the right lists all possible areas where a dwarf can preform a certain task and also lists the amount of tools and how everything can be regulated. This gives an idea of how many tasks of what kind can be done at once.
Through monitoring of such menus, the player can decide what modifications to make so that more tasks of a specific kind can be preformed.
Personal workshops and revamp of personal areas!As you know, many nobles require rooms such as studies and items such as weapon racks and armor stands and cabinets. However, they currently serve little to no purpose. With a system where areas can be designated as workshop areas or the likes, some nobles would now require personal workshops, or other areas or both. Some nobles may be particularly whimsy and simply request a non-specific empty workshop area and fill it up with tools to produce and tinker in their spare time.
An example image of what that may look like:
Here there is a noble bedroom(
or a regular one, if that's how you roll in your fortress) with two rooms connected to it. Both have been assigned to the noble. The one on the left is his personal library, which contains a table and chair, some chests and a lot of bookshelves. The room to the right is the noble's workshop that contains many tools and items he himself has gathered there. In the image he is more focused towards metalcrafting, but this may be anything from cooking, to jemcrafting, to clothesmaking to anything in between.
This would mean that many noble mandates, such as "
obtain 1 iron anvil" or "
craft hammer" or "
collect X webs" or "
smelt copper ore" or "
create glass whatever" could now be tied together with their personal lives and tasks that they preform. A noble with aspirations or a fondness towards metal-crafting may request ores or tools, while a cook(
heaven help you) may require ingredients, recipes(
this I believe is planned.) or certain tools for cooking and use in their personal workspaces.
The bedroom(added 10/27/2015)Or as I will eventually call it, the living quarters.
All that personality stuff that a dwarf is said to possess, his personality, his interests and dislikes, these things should be expressed in some way or another, and what better way to show it than personal projects. This is treading on some seriously slippery territory(mainly the private property question, though I believe that zones offer a solution to this as well), however I think that as it stands, bedrooms are the one rare occasion where a dwarf actually has a place of his own where he can go to relax from the rest of the fortress. It would only be fitting that each bedroom might contain different items. The bedroom of a dwarf who deeply indulges in reading may be littered with books and parchments and scrolls, while the bedroom of a dwarf who enjoys music may have an instrument or two, a room where a child lives would have toys while some more studious dwarves without status may decide to try their best to furnish their bedroom into a study or a place of meditation. A very glutinous dwarf would have food lying around all over his bedroom. Basically, this ties in less with the whole <zones> idea than with some expansion on fortress dweller behavior and AI and things. HOWEVER, this brings up the question, if a regular dwarf suddenly wants his room to contain a table or a bookshelf or a still or an anvil or anything, how would these dwarves go about getting them? They cannot just go and pick them up. This is why I suggest that a new menu be in place, as well as a new function for the bookkeeper. When a dwarf desires something to be his, he will queue a request to the fortress bookkeeper, who will then consult the "property availability" menu, where he will then tell the dwarf if he may or may not take a certain item. It may not be a perfect fix, but I somewhat like the idea of giving the bookkeeper a purpose.
Fun concept: This also allows for "theft" to happen internally within the fortress, adding greatly to the fun. "Economy" zonesThe game currently does not have an even remotely functional internal economy, however, it does have a semi functional external barter based economy and even as it is, many semi-economic areas can be created to interact with the outside world.
Taverns
Taverns are places where travelers stop to rest, have a drink or eat a meal. Taverns are planned but their mechanics are not quite yet planned in depth.
A tavern could be created by setting up a zone and assigning a person as a tavern keeper(noble class) who would consort with the travelers and hear their requests and demands. A tavern would also have servants who would serve the travelers and visitors. It would require a stockpile that would contain prepared food and drink and probably bedrooms that would be considered a part of the tavern zone and tables for eating.
example of very basic tavern with just tables, guards, servants, counter and stairs to stockpile(not in image)
Curiously enough, there are a couple of colors that are not used to specify a profession(these are pink and light baby blue... yes, those two.) and it is possible that along with taverns and such jobs, there might be a few new professions such as servants. In the previous image, I used pink to indicate a servant dwarf.
I suppose that it would be entirely possible to set up a price for all tavern services. The price would most likely be barter, as coins have historically been a bad idea for the game(or at least have not worked out), so there would probably be a list of items that are usable for trade and the declared worth of such items in proportion to goods and services offered by the tavern. This would make taverns into a form of specific item income(The travelers are a story for a different thread though).
Trade Depot
As it stands, a trade depot is a strange abstract construction that has one of the simply exploits. As it stands it has some serious bugs . I proppose that this also be removed(as any other building, actually) and replaced by a zone for it's purpose. The trade area:
Simply put, it is a place that has two free zone stockpiles(This category currently does not exist. It means that a stockpile is at the complete mercy of the dwarves working in the area.), one for your items, and the other for the merchant's. Some restraints for their mounts/pets/haulers/caravan pullers and not much else.
Mandated markets/stores
As with the implementation of noble mandated or required rooms, a new type of room that nobles would use is a personal shop or market.
Simply put, nobles that produce or mandate certain goods will use these rooms as shops and stores for travelers and adventurers. The items exchanged are technically already owned by the nobles and are mandated or created from mandates that the noble puts forth, so he cannot just take an already existing adamantine sword and sell it for a =*<<kitten skull>>*=.
Collective rooms, living quarters, dining rooms and other social rooms.
Instead of creating a bed or a table and then creating a room out of one of those objects, players would designate a collective zone and make it fir one or more subcategories(some are just planned and currently do not exist, but you get the idea):
- Living quarters
- Dining room
- Dormitory
- Sculpture garden
- Office/Study
- Library
- Hall (specifically for meetings and events)
- Well
- Shrine
- Temple
- Barracks
- Archery range
Zones like these can be combined, so you may make a barracks with an archery range with a dining room in one, and assign it to a squad, so that your military squad can train as much as possible and almost never have to leave the barracks unless necessary. Overall this is here just to completely get away from making rooms from a single building with the q-r function.
Schools, daycare and conditioning the young.As of now, the young are simply peasants without a cause, and babies are a burden. Schools, daycares and other such rooms are needed to not only keep the parents from taking babies into battle, but also to condition the future of your fortress the way you goddamn want it to be. A daycare would be a room with beds and toys(Yes, they would finally have a purpose) where a child would be taken care of by a nanny or some other care related profession of dwarf
A school would probably contain chairs and stools, but depending on the regime set it may also have beds for keeping the buggers inside.
The true value of a school would be to alter a dwarfs mental state. All the way from the statues of war scenery to the permitted(allowed,forbidden,mandatory) literature that dwarven children would read to the personality traits and past of the teacher keeping watch over them. All these elements will determine what your dwarves want, how they behave and what they wish to achieve in life. Statues of soldiers may cause them to aspire to become great soldiers, training with wooden weapons might help them already get some skills going while they are still young.
A school seems a rather complicated structure, as it may involve within it several other workshop systems. Suppose you wanted your dwarves to grow up to become soldiers, then the school would have a training grounds. Suppose the goal was to create masterful smiths, then there would be masonry stations. If the goal were to create explorers and adventurous kindred spirits(Which currently do not exist, but heck!) then you would let them read stories and myths of the world beyond.
Fun concept: schools are where feuds and friendships are formed the strongest in young dwarves. This would greatly add to the fun.Extra rooms and changed roomsLibraries Libraries in real life are for the perpetuation and preservation of knowledge, art and culture. As it stands, most sentient creatures have a personality/psyche, and there's about to be a rewrite of that. I expect that soon dwarves will no longer be born with all their likes and dislikes and associations. I suspect that many such likes and dislikes, interests and knowledge will be obtained from either other dwarves or libraries.
As it stands, a library would be a room that would contain bookshelves and cases that contain books and parchments(and probably also tables and chairs). Dwarves would go to libraries and read books based on some stats related to interest, intellect and curiosity etc.
The contents of mundane books and parchments:
- knowledge on gods, beasts and creatures of the night
Contents of non-mundane parchments and books(these mostly are merely conceptual and there to give you an idea of what is possible to store. I wont go into the mechanics of using these objects.): - knowledge on other planes
Fun concept: If a dwarf with higher intellect has a higher tendency to go to a library and learn things in books, then that means that he would have more knowledge and in turn be more intelligent by nature of his AI.Offices/Studies
Studies are places of, well, study. As of now, we do not have much use for them. Basic studies would mostly remain unchanged(a place to sit and a place to put down your stuff that you will study). However, as time comes, many situations may occur where some object, text, letter, or any other information carrying object(corpse? well oh my) must be studied, and that is where studies become important. A study would be a place where anyone can go to examine objects and texts. Adding more things to studies quite literally changes what objects can be examined and worked on.
For example:
- a traction bench can allow someone to analyze a corpse(and perhaps thus determine what or who killed it)
- a lense stand can allow for the verification of documents(messages, letters) and detection of other small clues
- a drill stand can help research some stone/wooden forms and objects(if there ever comes a time when the materials objects and layers of rock are not instantly recognizable)
- a container and some ink is all you need to start writing.
perhaps one day research/alchemy can take place at a study....
Fun concept: A study with a telescope and an open roof/glass roof with a clear view into the sky could be an astronomers observatory. Where dwarves study the stars.
Please comment what you think about this and discuss. I hope Toady notices this and I hope you enjoy the idea. I will try to update it further with more images and further explanations and ideas. For now I am out of time.
Thank you for reading.
