Bay 12 Games Forum

If someone doesn't prepare for invaders you could also argue that they've been playing the game badly, but they still have the .ini option to turn invaders off.

The option to generate worlds where nobody dies will soon be in.  Worlds where nobody needs to eat are also along those lines. 

No, your claim that the AI needs this one act to be considered two separate crimes, from a totally objective standpoint, is a load of bull. I know this because of my background as a computer scientist, who does indeed have experience working with AI.

My opinion is that your proposed method of handling the crime of unsanctioned digging of engraved walls isn't a good one. I'd prefer it if digging engraved walls received the same modifiers to crime severity as vandalising items and buildings that have quality levels.

It isn't so clear when we consider all the factors.  Strictly you are right from a necessity standpoint, but it is still a limiting mechanic. 

In my idea, digging walls is indeed one crime, digging engraved walls is considered vandalism and is treated just like all other acts of vandalism.  Digging the walls on it's own does not count as vandalism, but digging engraved walls does.  This means dwarves will favour digging unengraved walls all else being equal unless they are totally okay will vandalism and it is unpunished. 

Not entirely sure what you're trying to get at here. Do you mean to say that AI won't be able to keep track of in-game law changes without separating this one act into two separate crimes?

If you are, then you're wrong, and I honestly don't know how you made it to that conclusion.

Players could be shown crime severity through the justice screen when highlighting said crime, there is still no need for it to be displayed as, or treated by the code as, multiple crimes at once.

The AI acts upon the total number.  We need to know what the seperate elements that contribute to that number are because our ability to set laws alters those numbers and therefore allows us to in effect control what AI criminals do. 

Seems reasonable, though creatures that have a neutral opinion on law should have a cap on the severity calculations equal to the severity required to be given the death sentence, since any more severity is largely irrelevant if the law is unimportant to you.

Except that people's respect for law should not be the only reason people don't break it.  People should have ethics are well, so the inhibitory factors should be threefold.

• How much do I respect the law?
• How much is doing this against my ethics?
• How much do I fear punishment.  That is Punishment severity / Percieved odds of getting caught.

Goblin-raised people who have neither respect for either the law or have any ethics against what we are doing will only regard the punishment angle.  The exception is that they will not dig a tunnel to give invaders access to your fortress, because that counts as [TREASON] which goblins have strong ethics against.  If there are invaders outside your fortress and goblins are hungry, the goblin-raised will be disinclined to dig a tunnel to get at food on the surface even if they would normally steal food happily. 

On the other hand, we have two factors.  We have the desirability of food, stuff like leather has a negative value here and we also have how hungry we are.

I always say that cave fish eat decaying cave material that fall into the water, much like some fish which live in the totally dark Twilight Zone in our world, They could also feed on general cave funguses, or some kind of odd fictional cave plankton

That is best abstracted by having them 'eat mud'.  So we have three sorts of fish.

Fish that eat mud.
Fish that eat algae.
Fish that eat other fish.

How about we combine the idea of using pipes, with the occasional use of paper-wrappings (IDK if its particularly historically accurate, but it could be, and it works for my next idea)

And dwarves who are either prone to unconciousness, or who are smoking after a long time without sleep (assuming youre like me and dont set up beds too much) run a risk of catching fire while unconcious, based on what theyre smoking and how long it's been lit. Fires from this of course would spread over wooden furniture... or through the booze stockpile...

I think paper was too valuable until modern times to be used for smoking purposes.  If dwarves fall to sleep while smoking, other nearby dwarves need to be able to understand the fire risk and immediately try to set out the fires.

Very true, but that's part of the problem: What, precisely, constitutes a valid breeding pond, can the player fabricate it, and can the game recognize it? Simply digging a 1-z pit in solid bedrock, far away from any access to light, oxygen, or nutrients, and dumping in a bucket brigade from the nearest murky pool, obviously should not result in an ideal pond in which hundreds of steelhead trout are likely to grow & thrive.

You actually listed the requirements.

1. Oxygen
2. Light
3. Nutrients

Presently these things aren't properly represented in the game.  We can add algae in as a fourth requirements, we have a suitable pond, we add in algae (or it just grows).  Then we add in vegetarian fish and then if we wish we can add carnivorous fish as well. 

Factors to consider:
- Surface area. Simple contact with breathable air is one way to oxygenate water, and "aerating" it with pumps/waterwheels should speed up the process (although doing so might also hurt any fish who get too close).
- Depth. Some fish, particularly bigger ones & especially bottom-feeders, simply prefer deeper water.
- Salinity. Marine fish should die in fresh water, and vice versa.
- Flora. Fish can survive on nothing but hand-feeding, but if Toady's going to do this, we should help him do it right. Aquatic plants (and/or fungi), from algae to giant kelp. Both freshwater and marine, both on the surface and underground. This would necessarily take place not before significant Cavern updates.
- Above/Below ground. Exposure to the sun should harm/blind/stunt/etc. cavern fish, and surface fish should likewise be ill-suited for life in the caverns. More importantly, fish should (in general) only know how to eat those plants that their own species is familiar with.
- Soil amount/quality, in which said plants can grow. This would necessarily take place not before significant Farming updates.
- Fish size/population density, in relation to total pond volume.
- Feeding: All edible material thrown into the pond should (eventually) become either fish food, or plant food/compost.
- Predation: Fish getting eaten by animals from outside the pond (birds, alligators, etc.), pond fish eating each other, pond fish eating aquatic vermin.

Bottom Line: Until we the players are able to control all of that and create our own artificial (but very realistic) pond zones with full ecosystems, AND the game is able to recognize them as such, I think we're better off continuing to let worldgen do the work for us. If it's a surface river or lake, or a cavern pool, and there are fish in it, then it's a good place to farm fish. Wall it off and empty some aquariums into it.

Unrelated thought: Fish ladders. We should be able to dig/construct connect shallow pools that enable river-spawning fish to go around otherwise-impassible waterfalls. One completed and designated, some spawning fish might try to use them--and if they're successful, their offspring should try to repeat the process in subsequent years. Includes the potential for sending some of your workers off-site to build a fish ladder downstream from your fort.

The interesting question is what do cave fish eat?

Maybe you still want dwarves to eat, but don't want them to dig through your walls though. That was what I was suggesting the .ini option be, not disallowing any unsanctioned action, specifically the digging.

For the record, it doesn't mess up my playstyle, I don't really care if I have to replace natural stone with blocks, I already do that plenty when I run into ores and gems, and I don't really ever have starving dwarves either, I just actually consider the preferences of others.

The preferences of others are irrelevant.  They have been playing the game badly, things they don't prefer should thus happen. 

Fun fact: I'm a computer scientist

Fun fact number two: This is a load of bull

AI doesn't need more severe crimes to be displayed as multiple crimes in order to distinguish them, it can track severity just fine. It also tracks changes in values just fine too, so no need to worry about the fluid nature of the raws.

The first may be a fact, but the second is your opinion. 

It does need to be displayed separately when the crimes severity is being modified over time by things that the player and AI governments are doing.  The player needs to know the severity of the crimes themselves. 

The creatures acts on the total severity of all the crimes they are about to commit, added together.  So in some cases they will commit more crimes than less. 

When authors or artists write books or create works, they should reflect the values of the authors or artists; that is already in.  However on occasion a creator should create a work that advocates values that they don't themselves agree with and aren't necessarily even aware of.  This should be biased heavily towards the theme of the content, so a historical book concerning a battle should have a high chance of accidentally promoting pro-peace or anti-peace content, even if the author intended it to be a neutral account.

The same link between content and values should apply elsewhere.  There should be a higher chance that someone with relevant values concerning the topic should add those values in.  So a book about two people getting married should tend to reflect their authors values on romance and family, even if they are aware of their advocacy.  People with strong views on a value should also be biased towards the initial selection of topic according to that value. 

So instead of there just being specifically pro-value books, there would also be less explicitly ideological books that are still ideologically biased and the ideologically biased would be drawn towards topics in which their particular bias is relevant. 

The consequence of not feeding your dwarves is that your dwarves starve. It is possible to prevent this by giving them the [NO_EAT] tag in their raws. Dwarf fortress is pretty good at giving you the ability to avoid dealing with things things that don't fit your playstyle, why should this feature be any different?

You said that it was possible to mod out the need of dwarves to eat and then argue against starving dwarves logically doing unsanctioned things to meet their needs rather than simply passively starving because it 'messes up your playstyle'.  That isn't a very good argument, if you don't want to worry about the effects of starving just mod out the need to eat and your playstyle can be as you wish. 

The fact that starving messes up your playstyle is why we make sure feeding our dwarves is part of our playstyle; they should mess up your playstyle. 

I didn't use an example, I suggested that unsanctioned digging of engraved walls should be a more severe crime than the unsanctioned digging of natural/smoothed stone, though I probably could've been clearer about the word "especially" meaning that the vandalism would be especially extreme if it were an engraved wall that was dug out. Not sure why one act would need to be listed as two separate crimes caused by the same ethic, it's hard enough for dwarves to survive a single beating. I do agree that if dwarves value the law, as most do, and are coerced into criminal activities by any means, including hunger, they should definitely try to keep their sentence minimal.

Because of the AI.  The AI needs to be able to logically distinguish between three different situations.

1. A forbidden food item lying in the middle of the dining hall.  [CRIME:THEFT]
2. A forbidden food item bricked up behind a wall. [CRIME:THEFT]+[CRIME:FORBIDDEN_DIGGING]
3. A forbidden food item bricked up behind an engraved wall. [CRIME:THEFT]+[CRIME:FORBIDDEN_DIGGING]+[CRIME:VANDALISM].

In all circumstances the dwarf will go for item 1 first, then item 2, then item 3.  That is because the crime value of the former item is the least of the three.  However consider if item 2 was not in fact forbidden, in that case the only crime would be forbidden digging, under that circumstance the dwarf would weigh up the relative severity with which your civilisation treats both crimes, they will go for whichever crime is least severe. 

Crime severity would be determined by a mixture of the ethical badness of the crime according to the ethics of the creature and how severely punished it is according to your own civilisation's laws.