Bay 12 Games Forum

Sure that I will repeat a few things but I was already thinking about open a similar thread specialized on GUI so I want to get this in on top of some other things.

So start with the GUI the current one is OK well technically its great in most parts but sadly don't piggyback a lot of muscle memory of new players what is an unnecessary obstacle.
To begin with, a good mouse-keyboard interaction would be helpful.
- WASD movement of the courser, a tooltip that emulates the look command you hover over something for a second or so.
- If you in the designation or zone/stockpile creation menu mousdrage to mark an area.
- Radiant menu with right-click for the major commands that need a special courser position (look, unit, build properties, build inventory). Left-click to execute the last command if you not in a sub-menu like designation.
- Build menu streamline like why the heck workshops have their own menu but beds, doors, coffer, cabinets are not in a sub-menu for furniture?
- Since you mostly on the left side of the keyboard with a WASD control place often use menus around there. On top of that, you can go and click with the mouse on a point in the menu to go deeper or activate that point. (like klick on channeling in the designation menu instead of using the shortcut keyboard command its maybe not the most efficient way but you don't need to lock up what you need and then search for the right key you can just click with your mouse if you already look at this point anyway)
This are just some examples with the military I donīt even want to start its a mess. Since its already shown this will be overhauled I wait and see how this play out before I want to make to much fuzz about it. But yeah way to unnecessary complicated.

So now how to get the noobs to survive at least longe enough to get hooked after we remove obstacles in the way how the game plays its the gameplay itself that maybe stomp them because of the lack of knowledge.
A complete tutorial would be a bad design decision. Forcing players in a sandbox game to do stuff even if it's just the first time is REALY bad. Better is to give them just goals to archive. Rimworld, for example, does it with just warning you about critical stuff like "he there is no food" to inform you that you maybe have a problem. DF, on the other hand, could give you in the embark some warnings For the start something like "he Aquifer are not easy to handle and can be a source of trouble for underground exploration, continue?" or "Ther is a Tower nearby this location this will mean you probably attract relatively soon a necromancer, continue?"  would be huge.
Ingame some basic quests on your first fort (and never again) like, "Your Dwarfs will need Food and Drinks. Build a Kitchen and a Still" would be already enough. Of course, you could explain every step but most players are not complete morons with an IQ of short under 80 like some tutorials want to make you believe. Just give them a direction to start with should do the trick to keep them around until the FUN hit them and they start to lose their first fort and want to use the newly gained knowledge to tackle the game in another one again this time better and bigger and maybe survive the FUN that kills them the first time to encounter more FUN.

A bit late to the party for a comment but I think I can add a few things. First I don't have a problem with stressed Dwarfs. After the changes I had like 2 or 3 Forts that go down thanks to it but after that no more were lost to stress.

But even if I have found solutions to this problem it's still shows a lot of wired interactions. I have to be really careful and set up a lot of things fast and with not much of freedom to change some things up. Yes different amount of Temples, Tavern layout is different etc. but overall it's the same things I do all time because it's the only that have proven to work.

In my opinion the stress system need to be split up. Currently, everything can become a memory and it's quite hard to remove one. You need got things in quantity not quality to really keep it under control and you have to micro minimize stress factors. It is a hard task to figure out but if you understand that you just need to shower you dwarfs with as many positive thoughts as possible its get a lot easier and way less real.

A lot of suggestions is to make Dwarfs a bit smarter in their need fulfillment. But I think we need to first fix how the system work. Currently, getting in the rain is the same effect as have a nice place or contact to your family.

My current suggestion for the stress system would be a 3-layer Split up. An Emotional layer, a Mind/Memory layer and the Character layer.
You could think about this with a permanent stress and a temporary stress.
Every thing they see, do or experience go first in the Emotional layer. It has a fast Impact on stress but is replaced fast as well. Strong emotional reaction can become memories.
Memory's and thoughts are something that a dwarf will have from time to time and have a similar stress change then the real thing would have. If he remembers something or encounter a similar situation he will strength the memory otherwise its slowly decay until the dwarf forget it.
If a memory is long enough in the mind of a dwarf it can start to effect the Character. Character should have 2 influences on the stress system. One is the resilient to stress this does't make stress slower to accumulate its more to determinant the break point of the dwarf. The other one is the factors how certain things impact the Dwarf. Value Family for example make every emotional or memory around this have a bigger impact on stress(positive and negative).

This would be my suggestion to change the system. Its more realistic than the current one in my opinion, it gives you a better response time to stress, less to worry about some once in the blue moon things and it gives a lot more balance levers than the current one what will later be useful I guess.

I know I could talk a lot about changing the system that is already in the game but I don't see a lot of potential to archive with this one the thing DF is all about. To be a good simulation of a fantasy world with a good simulation of characters.

So ok we KNOW magic will come. We know it will be rng. So why we donīt change the topic a bit up? What magics we want and what it adds to the game? How we can archive rng generation with this ideas?

Well, I would break the whole thing up.

We already have a basic religion system so Divine actions are not so fare off. Grandpriests, Holy Champions, Avatars of Gods, Wonders and Warth if you make them angry. Think it would be given a lot of fun and good chance to make the religion system a bit more depth and since the Gods already just generated the way you can implement a second generator to roll different powers for the gods and demons to.

Another part could be the Inertmagic. So magic everyone can do with proper study and some talent. You could run the attunements for races and character and the known spell effects in the generator. And the development of different combinations and how important in the civilization magic is would come over the history.

And the last one for my ideas on the topic could be the Since like like magic. Alchemie, Formulas or exact to follow rituals. Stuff like this was made a theory, try it and fail or success.
It should be not to hard to put a lot of RNG in this kind of stuff I suppose.

I think this is a good way how to go on with the from time to time upcoming implement wishes of the "give us magic" fraction. Ask them to define their ideas to fit the game not just to do them. And well maybe DF will have not one magic system but a lot of magic sytems that all have some RNG facts and splittet and mixed. This would add a lot of FUN^^