Bay 12 Games Forum

Hello, fellow dwarfists. Here's a list of suggestions I've collected over my time spent with the Steam version of the game. I played the classic version for a bit a couple years ago, but mainly the adventure mode, so you could say I'm pretty green in the DF field.

If this suggestion dump is not the optimal way of sharing suggestions and it should be divided into separate threads - please let me know.


General UI issues/suggestions:

• when a window is opened and mouse cursor is insde of it, the scroll wheel shouldn't change the elevation on the main screen if there is no scroll bar in the window.
  
• when I go to any window with a list, it would be very, very nice (and a huge time & sanity saver) to be able to go back to it (with the same position, filter and sort order) after diving into details. For example, when I go to the Citizens menu and sort by the mood and click the magnifying glass icon next to a dwarf to see their details, I'd like to go back to the citizens list with one click where I left off.
  The stocks window could use the same treatement.
• let the player click dwarf's name in workshop assignment, location assignment, squad assigment etc. screens, so that I can access their details (with possibility to go back to the same assignment screen).
• when game FPS drop, the UI becomes less responsive - some clicks are not being registered. Can UI be handled in a separate thread from the main game's thread?
• give ability to unpause on any screen.
• add more ways to scroll long lists (trading, stocks, etc.) - for example with page up, page down, home, end keys.
• when a window with a prominent and very often used search is opened (stocks, new work order screen, etc.) focus that search bar to save that 1 uneeded (and with time increasingly annoying) click.
• using translated name in one place (for example in petitions, sculpture or engravings) and the original in others (citizens/creatures overview) is confusing and makes looking for entities harder than it needs to be. Translation (in addition to the original text) in the details of a creature/entity is fine, but use the original text in all other places for consistency and usability.
• borderless window display mode for that cool feel when you switch to a window on another monitor and the game doesn't minimise nor does it have a title bar at the top, taking up precious pixels...mmm

Building:

• when an error occurs during building designation ("no access", "no material", etc.), don't quit the current building designation. Let me try again in a different location without having to go through the menus again.
• when a cage is built, give an option to put or release a creature from it.

Stockpiles:

• give an option to differentiate between artifacts and non-artifact named objects. Currently both fall into the "Artifact" quality.

Combat/combat log:

• aggregate combat log for all fights that are occuring.
• possibility to unpause or skip frame when combat log is open.
• an option to stop the game automatically when combat occurs, with a toggleable exception for hunting.
• display newest entries on top (so that the player doesn't have to scroll down every time they want to see the combat progress) or give a sort button for the player to decide which order they want.

Trading:

• there should be a button for "Deselect all" in the "Move to trade post" window so that after the trade is done, the player doesn't have to go through every category to manually find and deselect items so that they get distributed into stockpiles.
• in the same "Move to trade post" window, there should be a "Toggle containers" button so that player doesn't have to go through dozens of apple wood, pear wood, maple wood and whatever the hell wood bins to find all the items they want to be traded.
• when exiting the trade window either save the selections made on both sides or warn the player first that their last 15 minutes carefully selecting 289 items will go to waste in a quick right-click.
• easy partial of container content's selection: in the trading window, if I select a container first - select all of the items inside, so that I can easily exclude one or two items (like an artifact or a forbidden export). Currently to do that I have to manually select every single item in the container but the ones I want to exclude...
• let me refuse counteroffer so that the merchant doesn't select my items they want and I don't have to look through my stuff they selected and deselect it if I don't want to trade it. Current options are "Okay" which selects my items or "Accept counteroffer" which I didn't use (never wanted to agree) but I presume it carries out the trade with the selected items.

Work orders:

• adding favourites to the work orders screen so that the player doesn't have to type in "rock throne" or "rock mug" for the nth time.
• add "Suspend" option to a work order.
• add drag & drop support for work orders.
• add a toggle button for "And" / "Or" work order's logical conditions, so that player can specify whether all or just 1 condition needs to be met for the work order to activate.
• when choosing an adjective in work order's condition's details it should be possible to exit to the conditions list rather than to the work orders list.
• give an on/off toggle for job cancellactions for given work order.

Military:

• confirmation before squad deletion would be nice.
• on the other hand, confirmation of each kill order seems redundant. You're most likely in pause already when you do it, so you can easliy cancel the order.
• ammunition assignment is missing from the "Equip" menu. There's no way to assign a specific type of bolt.

Dwarf details:

• Labor > Locations doesn't show to which location performer is assigned to. It just says "Performer". It would be nice to know at least the name of the location if not have the opportunity to click it and be transported to it.

Citizens / livestock / etc.

• add a name and profession filter (not sort) for quick search.

Labor:

• let the player choose the custom work detail's icon. Currently when more than 8 are created, the roman numerals automatically assigned to them reset to 1, so those icons become meaningless when looking at dwarves' labor assignments.
• add a way to display more than 4 assigned work details. Either scale the icons down or shift all of them to the left to make space or scale them down by 50% and create another row.
• let the player decide work detail priority.

Notifications:

• let the player choose which category of notifications they want to see and which should be suppressed.

Minecart routes:

• when clicking the minecart icon in the route, highlight the minecart in the main view.
  The same could be done for track stop and the stockpile. Without this it's very easy to get lost and confused in which route/minecart/track stop/stockpile on the list is which in the world.

Justice:

• when selecting creatures for interrogation, do not close the creatures list when I click "Schedule" or "Cancel". Let me do multiple selecitons/cancellations without having to go back and forth multiple times.
• display the newest intelligence/interrogation reports on top so that an increasingly long list isn't annoyin to scroll down each time a new report should be read.

World map:

• give the possibility to search for a region or a settlement.