Bay 12 Games Forum

Well, I had a wounded hunter who was stranded outside the base, with both arms mangled, and who was, of course, immobilized (I guess that too needs to be changed).
He stood there for months, because no one would recover him, and when dwarves tried to initiate a “recover wounded” action, they will stop before the end to get something to eat or drink.
By the end, the poor hunter was starving some meters away from the entrance of the fortress, when all of a sudden, some guy come, grabbed him, brought him to a bed, then feed him and brought him water. I was like "huh, impressive, the other dwarves seldom bothered to bring him water, and this guy took completely care of it, guess it is in his personality". So I checked the personality traits of the rescuer, and there was nothing, except "He occasionally overindulges". So I thought "oh, maybe it's his friend or something". And I checked the relationship screen: They don't even know themselves.

I mean, doesn't it seems pretty rude? A fellow dwarf go out of his work to rescue you, carry you to the fortress, brought you food and water, and you don't even consider it a passing acquaintance? Err...

Suggestion #1: I think that rescued people should show a bit of thankfulness to their rescuers. Maybe this can be the beginning of a relationship: this can lead to nice situations when a rescuer and a rescued became best friend or fall in love with each other. With the future doctors / physicist / etc. jobs, maybe that wounded dwarves will show thankfulness for the doctor who treated them once they recover, or the family of dwarf "killed" by an incompetent surgeon will all have a grudge for the doctor.

And let's not forget that my hunter was stranded for months in the wilderness, wounded, sometimes starving or dehydrated, and his friends never visited him. Right now, only pets show loyalty to their owner when they are in that kind of desperate situation.

Suggestion #2: The friends of a wounded dwarf should visit him, even if he's still in the wilderness. When he's in a hospital bed, they could bring him the kind of food he likes or little owned trinkets as presents, also.
Suggestion #3: Dwarves should be more likely to stop their work to help their friends than to help totally unknown dwarves. Lovers and husbands / wives would even more endeavor to help their other half. Grudges, of course, should be less likely to help the dwarve they don't like.
Dwarves committed in strong relationships (Lovers, close friends..) will give water/food or rescue even if the "Health Care" job is deactivated, or if they're really risk-taker, disobey a "Everyone inside" (or the future burrow limitations) to protect their loved one, which can lead to interesting Antigone-like scenarios.

And talk about the previous dwarves that begun to help it, then aborted the job because they were a little thirsty or hungry while the wounded person was starving to death. Just imagine that: there was a car accident, the rescues are on the way, and suddenly the ambulance driver thinks "hm, it'll be nice to have a slice of pizza, I'll just stop by this Pizza Hut and eat a bit". And after that, he'll return to his hospital and act as if nothing happened.

Suggestion #4: Dwarves should concentrate on fulfilling the "Recover wounded", "Give water" or "Give food" jobs. They should tolerate (to an extent determined by their personality) their own hunger, thirst or drowsiness. And by the way, they should fear less the wild animals and take more risk, because now it's just ridiculous "OMG IT'S A MARMOT GET IN THE WAGON". The amount of risk taken would be determined by the personality of the rescuer, and by the relation that bound them together: A dwarf will not rush past a goblin squad to help a stranger, but he probably will to save his girlfriend.

Suggestion #5: Even if they have to interrupt their job, they'll resume it as soon as they have finished to eat, drink or sleep, unless another dwarf could take care of it in the meantime. Actually, it could be pretty nice that they wait before another dwarf is available before going to eat/drink/sleep, because theses actions last quite a moment.

Suggestion #6: Aborting a health care mission could damage the relationship between the wounded and helper. Friend which does not visit their wounded pals will also risk the weakening of their bounds with the patient, except if they have a good reason to do so (military service, jail etc.).

Finally, something I thought off when reading discussion about doctors :

Suggestion #7 : Surgeon / Physicist should be unable to operate on their family member (and maybe close friends as well), OR some of they will want to be the only one to heal their friends or offspring, discharging other medics from this task.


I think that there is a lot of space to make the Health Care more human, after all we're talking about the life of a dwarf, they should at the very least consider their savior differently afterward.

I'm pretty sure that when we were at the same technology level than the one that's depicted it DF, events like harvest festival or veteran's day meant something and were celebrated.


Anyway, I thought a bit about that really nice suggestion and that's why I thought:

Parties should be implemented so the more the player put work to help the dwarves attend them, the less it will have a negative impact on the fortress.  Eg: The player never bothered to make meeting rooms? The dwarves will spend way more time finding a place to celebrate. Or, they will have a small negative thought ("Was unable to celebrate XXX properly this year").

Also, maybe the parties could be prepared by non-working dwarves? The usual suspects will include nobles (organizing the whole thing), children (preparing rooms, tables, or even decorating with unused trade trinkets), and the standard peasants / haulers (bringing food and booze to the nearer stockpiles, or directly on some tables). Maybe even "On break" dwarves could participate, after all preparing is part of the fun.
This way, the parties and festivals will still be impressive and lively, but won't delay your Giant Canal or your Great Defense Wall at its most critic point.
Soldier will only be allowed to attend parties if they're off duty, of course. But expect bad thoughts for the lone marksdwarf that's forced to wait on the snow while everyone is celebrating New Year’s Eve inside, nonetheless.

Commemorations and religious event could also happen at the site of the original event or near a symbol of the deity, respectively. Near the banks of a river (which could lead to the “Carp incident” commemoration lately, hehehe) for a deity related to rivers, for instance. Or every 3 years after a big battle, the dwarves all gather on the (roughly defined) battlefield where 6 dwarven soldiers and 38 goblins perished in what is now known as Dakust's Last Stand, and maybe the mayor will make a speech or something.

Kind of celebrations I thought of:

 - New Year's Eve / Fortress anniversary (could be a different event if the fortress was able to start at a different date). Two possibilities:
Intimate celebration => Everybody stop working the 25 (or 27, or 30, it'll need smoothing) of late winter. Not that much preparation. Families and friends will gather in their rooms and make parties of their own. Groups of dwarves will choose the nicest room they have. If they have no rooms and still live in a big barrack, then they'll probably seek an isolated place, or the usual "was unable to celebrate properly" thought. Dwarves with no friend or relationships whatsoever will either party alone on their room (probably with a bad thought) or gather in a public meeting room to party with other friendless strangers, possibly starting new relationships. Before the first migrants wave, the 7 starters will all party together, regardless of the relationships.
Or…
General fiesta => Everybody stop working the 25 / 27 / 30 and head to the largest dining / meeting room. Huge preparations, maybe one month long. Everybody talk with each other, and gain social skill. Then when it's 1st of spring, maybe they all do something special? (All drink at once with a special mug, or do something related with the specialty / symbol / name of the fortress)

- Harvest festival: well, since dwarves cultivate all year around, it's a bit hard to tell when they should organize it. Maybe at the end of Fall? It will be a low-scale festival, maybe only celebrated by farmers. Dwarves that need to eat will try different products, or maybe only meals made of plants.

 - Foreigners festival: A special event that could happen every 2 years or so, on mature fortress (and with sufficient import / export). Delegations from humans / elves / whatever race arrives at the fortress, and a festival promoting the culture of this race is held, with traditional dishes, music, etc.
While it will be awkward to have an elven festival inside a dwarven fortress, it seems fun and after all, they aren't allies for nothing. Dwarves could also try to show respect or admiration for the guest's culture, maybe by suspending all woodcutting jobs when the elves are here, or by trying to dress human clothes? At the end, there could be an exchange of gift between the local ruler (expedition ruler / mayor / baron / king etc.) and the chief of the delegation, each one offering a typical craft of his nation of similar value, like:

 “Urist McBoss, Mayor has offered a +<<Silver gobelet>>+ to the human diplomat!
Urist McBoss, Mayor has received a *Steel crossbow* from the hands of the human diplomat!”
 or:
"Urist McGreatboss, Count, has offered a +Bronze luth+ to the elven diplomat!
 Urist McGreatboss, Count, has received a ¤Feather tree table¤ from the hand of the elven diplomat!"

With caravan arc and the like, you could also try to send a delegation once in a while to allied civs, with a gift and some of your best craftdwarves, to get similar results.

- Love day (equivalent of valentine’s day) : Married couple will spend some time together, and single dwarves will actively search for their other half. Maybe also a bonus roll for "breeding", possibly leading to a baby boom some months later. A very low-scale celebration, with almost no impact on the fortress activity.

- Children could also throw a light celebration for their birthday, with their friends, simbling and parents (again, good thought if nice birthday, bad thought if the workaholic parents didn't thought of wishing him/her a happy birthday).

I also saw a lot of good ideas above, like the celebrations or commemoration for disasters, artifacts-related events, military victories etc.
I think that kind of stuff could add a lively and emotional feeling to the fortress, as well as having some benefits (using otherwise useless items (instruments, mugs etc), providing jobs to children and nobles, strengthening the influence of concepts like deities or allied civs in the game…). Will you mind if I had a suggestion to the eternal voting list and link it to this thread?

Sure, but the fact is, a lot of DF fans actually like this stuff, as stupid and unhealthy it seems to be. And these people think that the B12 games forum community is their "home", so we're somehow forcing them to choose between their 2 err.. "passions". Creating a subforum will allow people who like randomness to do it there, and people who don't like it will just leave this subforum alone. After all, no one forces you to visit ALL the subforums, and if it's correctly labelled with an explicit warning in the subforum's description, no one will stumble on some strange 4chan-like stuff by error.

Hm, I have to admit Toady seems to be rapidly losing patience with the forums.
But let me tell you, I have moderated / administrated several forums, and moderation ISN'T the solution. In fact, too much moderation is way more unhealthy for a community that no moderation at all is. The abuse of the ban, mute, lock, edit, delete etc. functions only lead to frustration, anger and bitterness. Over time, people will stop enjoying being here, and will begin flaming, trolling, there will be conflicts, "alternate communities" will be created (we're already there with the new VN forum), people from the "new community" will argue / troll with people from the old one and vice-versa, there will be more conflicts, and at the end the whole community will crumble to its end.

So I don't think this place should be too moderated, that's counterproductive. Look at the facepunch forums : people get banned for next to nothing there. It look like an horrible place to spend some time, and I'll never create an account there.

Another thing : face it, you can't moderate the forum yourself. Especially if you take into account that you're the only developer of one of the bigger game ever created. That's just impossible to manage a forum so big (nearly 9000 users (which only 40 % of them are living in the USA, the rest is all over the planet, so the forum is virtually active all the day), over 650 000 posts... with an average of 1140 post per day) for one person.  I don't say you're a bad administrator, just that this is not humanly possible, even with the "report to moderator" feature.

So considering these 2 points, what could be a solution ?
Apparently, if you moderate so much the forums, it's because you "don't want a new DF player to see that side of the community". That's a good reason, for sure. So one think I thought about will be to create a forum (like "Various nonsense", I never been to it but a bunch of people here seems attached to it, so it will be a wise move), and to put into the forum's description a disclaimer saying that you're not responsible for what is in it, etc., to avoid newcomers stumbling into it. The forum itself will be unmoderated, or very lightly, to remove only the more "hardcore" topics (illegal material, for instance). By doing this, all the randomness of the B12 forum will go into this forum, and the rest will be "safe and serious".

TL;DR :

- Too much moderation is worse for the forum's ambiance that no moderation at all.
- Toady may be The great, but he can't complete his megaproject game and moderate a forum with an average of 1000+ post per day at the same time.
- The "I don't want to show a bad image of the forum to newcomers" problem can be fixed by throwing all the "bad content" into a new forum and to put warnings about it.

That's just my idea, maybe you / other users think differently.

36 hours ? Are you flying in a zeppelin ?

The new server is good, but heh... it's the same size that JK and LR used to be, and these 2 servers are closing... There's still plenty of space inland, but the coastline is already well settled.

Well no it's not totally impossible, but it's still hard beyond belief... I mean, a brown bear is still dangerous for a well equiped (I've got 2 X QL15 longsword and some pieces of chain armor), relatively well trained player, and there's tons of them. I can't figure out how a newbie could be able to try the game in these conditions.

Sneakey Pete : Ah, good. But for the sake of their customers, that sort of thing shouldn't even happen.

They're really pushing newbies toward premium server... but they're doing it wrong, totally wrong.
While this insane bear activity is irritating for mildly experienced GV players, and effectively make them willing of better lands, it's just repulsive for total newbies. That's it : you begin to play, the landscape appear and... TWO THOUSANDS LEGIONS OF BLOOD THIRSTY CHAMPION BROWN BEAR appears to besiege the starter town.
Come on, it's like if you played DF and every time you embark, the wagon is directly put into HFS : it's not hard, it's simply impossible.