Bay 12 Games Forum

I decided to start a new fort finally. Took me forever to find a proper embark--I checked five different worlds. Since I had no iron in my first fort, I wanted an embark with that metal. The vast majority of my worlds, however, were bizarrely lacking in iron (I'm not geologist, but judging from the literally thousands of tons of iron and steel used in modern society, I'm assuming iron is pretty common). I went with a swamp in my first world, since I had mineral scarcity cranked a bit too high there. Unfortunately, this place has a (admittedly light, but also more than several layers deep) aquifier, and I'm now discovering exactly why these things are considered insanely annoying by players. DFHack does have a cheat to bypass that, but that is...well, cheating.

I checked legends and they were all alive.

It doesn't matter. The fort was pretty boring--chill, admittedly, but nothing happened besides goblin sieges my military destroyed without issue. All I did was make endless hordes of gold crafts and lavish roasts and then buy crap from the caravans. I plan to start a new fort in a more difficult place and hopefully with more crap happening.

I think a completely unappreciated bit about DF's ASCII tileset is the cute little ways Toady represents objects, like wheelbarrows being <Ö> (the handles are the umlaut!); ores being the british pound sign because they're generally worth a lot of money; up/down staircases being <X> because that looks like two staircase symbols of > and < put together; and of course, dwarves being perpetually smiling smileys. It's just so wonderfully charming in my eyes and I hate how people can't see that. The official tileset is so incredibly busy and the colors are miserably drab.

I am not even going to get into the fact that the ASCII is WHY the game has so much content in the first place. Even if Toady were a professional artist, pumping out sprites for the like 500 animals in the game would have absolutely infeasible. Steam players going "finally, DF has REAL graphics" drives me up the wall when they wouldn't even have the absurd amount of STUFF in the game they greedily enjoy if it hadn't been ASCII for nearly two damn decades.

I wanted to make a topic along these lines but this already exists so I'll just post here.

I think Dwarves should not only be more social, they should be in conflict more often. As of now, the only times dwarves fight is either tantruming or getting into drunken bar brawls. I think this should be expanded upon. Two dwarves that already hold a grudge against each other may end up in a physical altercation similar to a bar brawl. It shouldn't be to the death--just bruising, minor cuts, MAYBE a broken bone if something goes wrong. Other dwarves nearby may either watch, avert their eyes and go away, try to pull the fight apart, run away and call the fortress guard if it exists, or even join in if they support one of the fighters. They can feel a variety of emotions from: they might find the fight thrilling, they might be scared because they don't like violence, they might feel that one side is justified, etc. If nearby stuff, Dwarves might grab these things and use them as misc. objects--for instance, beating their opponent with a mug.

These fights would not be crimes unless someone got seriously hurt--at best, the fortress guard will come in and break it up and send everyone way, and serial brawlers may suffer more severe punishments (I could go into a tangent about how the guard should do more than just beat people to death and/or jail them but that's for another time; I will say that being able to dodge and evade the fortress guard before they arrive would be neat though). Not only does this add flavor, it also means hospitals are useful for things other than just wars and tantrums. Also, dwarves wielding weapons such as soldiers or hunters should put them away, cast them aside, or at the very least NOT use them (with using weapons being a straight-up crime)...

...unless they are under a lot of stress. A dwarf who's severely stressed might snap into a full blown tantrum during a fight, resulting in them fighting lethally, which causes everyone to freak the fuck out. This would be a flat-out crime. Building off of this, we can have cool things like gangs of dwarves that get into full blown gang wars against each other inside the fort. Fun!

For something a BIT less violent, Dwarves should be able to communicate with others when doing jobs and also when a few tiles away. My three metalsmiths should chat with each other while forging gold crafts, perhaps becoming friends, or enemies, or rivals. A rival nearby could motivate a dwarf to work faster and/or better (or maybe worse if they're working TOO fast).

I think it would also be cool if dwarves had opinions on stuff besides preferences. For instance a metalsmith could look down on carpentry and thus mock or tease the local woodworkers if they're particularly vindictive or cruel, nursing grudges that can go on to become full blown fights if they keep pushing it. Likewise, they'll have a very minor negative thought about seeing too many wooden objects around, especially those that could be made with metal instead. The general viewpoint of a civ on various jobs could be defined in ethics: Dwarves for instance, would generally find metalworking, stonecrafting, and masonry to be more respectable than woodworking or bone carving, but of course individual dwarves could still like those, and dwarves with those professions would be very strongly biased towards them. Fostering a relationship with a dwarf whose profession you don't care for could raise your opinion of the job/dwarf ("Wood may be for the elves, but Urist McWoodworker? He's as good of a carpenter as I'll ever see"), as could said dwarf making a masterpiece artifact or somehow impressing you in some way. BUT, a grudge against a dwarf whose profession you already dislike would only strengthen your dislike ("Of course that fuckin' bellend Urist is a woodworker--should go live with those prancing Elves, by Armok")

Put simply: Dwarves' socializing should do more stuff. As of now, it doesn't really do a whole lot--a dwarf socializing does very little interesting from a gameplay perspective. Dwarves fighting with each other, intentionally avoiding ones who annoy them, hanging out with friends, competing with rivals, and making their opinions on stuff known and causing conflicts and friendship via those opinions, would all be amazing features, I feel.

I had a titan come to my fort recently and after killing it with my military, I decided to butcher it for its meat. I got a stack of 88 meat that weighs around 167 kilos (assuming the in-game weight unit is a kilo which I think it is), but my dwarves just leave it on the floor of their food stockpiles. Like, the meat is IN the stockpile, but not in a barrel where it wouldn't rot. I have tried everything: I set the barrels for each stockpile to the max, I made 20 new barrels and 20 new rock pots each, I forbid and reclaimed, I dumped and then reclaimed, they just leave it on the floor. Is the stack too big to put in a barrel? Is there any way I can split it if it is (I have dfhack and I'm willing to use it if i need to)? I really do not want all this tarantula titan meat to rot in my stockpile!

(Incidentally this is also happening with a stack of 37 water buffalo meat)

Hi, I'm playing a 0.47.05 fort right now, can I install this over my DF installation without deleting my fort?

Three or four years into my fort and I had the food and booze situation mostly under control. Buying tons of food and drink from caravans and brewing my three farms' output meant I had over 1100 drink for 150 dwarves. I also decided to make a tavern so my dwarves can dance and sing and recite poetry.

A few months (in-game) later I notice some cancelled "give water" and "drink" jobs. I check my stocks and I have 70 drink. Is my tavern sucking up all the drink because I struggle to imagine a mere 150 dwarves could pound away over one THOUSAND units of booze in less than an in-game year, especially since dwarves need sustenance way less than real-life people do. Did I greatly underestimate how much drink a fort needs? I have to basically have my brewers brewing around the clock or I suddenly notice that 800+ drink disappears in the blink of an eye.

I think there's a completely justifiable beauty to ASCII and I absolutely despise the modern idea that it's outdated and not "true" graphics. The amount of people I saw going "Finally, DF has Graphics™ now" around the Steam release launching was seriously about to make me go Joker Mode, not gonna lie. It always had graphics people! Quite lovely and charming ones at that! I vastly prefer the clean vibrant rich colors of the ASCII DF tileset over the extremely busy and yet somehow horrifically drab and washed out official tileset. The only tilesets I'd probably ever use are the ones that are still based in ASCII.