Bay 12 Games Forum

This stuff's been planned for a long while, at least as far back as 40d when you could assign dwarves a spare weapon, it was a placeholder for when breakage came into the picture. IIRC this is going to be the big weakness of obsidian swords.

That said I'm in favour of wear and tear, though most likely when it's implemented it'll be based on assigning each rock, soil, wood and other material type a proper hardness value and interacting accordingly, like the combat engine does with tissue layers.

Either way quality should have an impact here - something made by a dabbling smith shouldn't be anything like the value of a masterwork.

It should also be possible to repair a broken item - doing so shouldn't require any more metal but should reduce the item's quality, unless it's been named/is an artifact, at any rate.

Artifacts should probably only break under exceptional circumstances and even then be fully repairable.

Improving the depth/difficulty of farming and trade, to the point that sieges mean something even if you can just raise the drawbridge. I like the idea that if your fort can support itself through a siege, it's because you put a lot of work into your farms and built your fort in the right place.

Lifts could very easily be made to work like minecarts, IMO - Throw in some kind of Lift Stop machine for whatever floor you need it to stop on and build the lift at the top of the shaft as a powered, 3x3 structure say, needing several chains, a log or bars, a bin or minecart and a couple of mechanisms and run it from the hauling menu like carts are now - Send Up When Full, Ride Down When Empty, Dump Items etc. Moving parts wouldn't really be necessary.

If you want to make it harder give lifts a maximum depth (maybe depending on the strength of your chains), requiring your metal items to make a couple of stops on their way up from the magma foundries.

Ideally, the game would have a drainage-based water table, requiring pumps or some other sort of run-off (eg, breaching the cavern and piping it out there). It would be neat for new-dug fortress sections to be riddled with gutters (or use carved-tracks as gutters) that lead in to a pumpstack or grating, and for rain to trickle down improperly-sealed areas aboveground. It could even act as a cheap irrigation method for farms. Unfortunately for that to happen you'd probably have to change the way the game calculates water or else your framerate would be murdered by your cavern-drains and your drainage fall.

Apologies if this is a rehash of others' ideas; searching found so little on the topic that I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out I did it wrong.

That said, this game could use a serious reworking of Constructions and the Architect job.

 Currently, Architecture makes no damn sense. It's applied to a near-arbitrary set of buildings, some of which - Roads and Supports - are essentially redundant.

While you could say that the architect is needed for complex structures, eg windmills, moving bridges and the like, it's a bit nonsensical to have regular masons and carpenters happily building aqueducts and cathedrals all over the place. In 2D, for all its gameyness, the architect's job made more sense.

Another complaint is that building aboveground is too micromanage-ey, especially when you get to roofing. I agree, for all that they're dwarves, and therefore more comfy carving underground than building above.

This could be fixed by changing the way constructions work in the following way:

* When (b)uilding (C)onstructions, an option allows you to Build Quickly or Use (a)rchitect.

** When using architecture, unconnected constructions can be placed anywhere, just like mining can be designated anywhere. Dwarves still won't try to build said constructions unless they are properly connected up.

** When designing a building you also have the option to place scaffolds, ladders, a worksite stockpile and cranes.

*** Scaffolds are non-durable wood or metal structures dwarves can quickly assemble and take back down.

*** Ladders are a special piece of furniture that allows a dwarf to climb up one level, as long as it's placed on a supporting structure such as a wall. Dwarves cannot haul heavy objects up a ladder.

*** Cranes function like vertical minecarts, and require at least one rope/chain and one mechanism to build. Temporary cranes are used on building sites, more permanent cranes are something the Improved Mechanics people have probably done to death.

*** Worksite stockpiles are filled by haulers, wheelbarrows and minecarts and builders prefer to take from them.

* Bring in the same Floating/Supported distinction used in machines - here, "floating" means the construction is directly above empty space.

** Supported constructions can be built quickly, ie as normal - flooring dirt, building tracks, replacing mined-out walls and emergency-walling-off is unaffected, and you can build solid multi-tile constructions with some difficulty.

** Floating structures - walls, floors, rails and stairs - require the architect to design the building first.

* When designing a construction, Architects do not carry each individual brick (Time to design is calculated via number of blocks), and once the construction has been designed, masons/carpenters build it in the usual way. The big difference is that they quickly assemble scaffolding and place ladders and cranes where designated.

* New building type & job: Thatching. Thatchers can build a roof using only a ladder and cloth/fiber (much as ropes are build from cloth, just to streamline things), and do not need to design it, so thatched roofs can be built quite quickly. However, it is not possible to build on thatch.


TL:DR: Architecture is required to build large, free-standing structures, and can be used to design said structures more easily. Scaffolding and ladders are added to make this easier. Thatching is added to quickly and easily roof buildings without an architect.

All dwarves possess the Secret of Quantum Mechanics. These principles enable them to stack items indefinitely, link machines together with no physical connection, make indestructible structures, and are entirely responsible for the behaviour of the Dwarven Catapult. It was initially granted to them by their deities so they could crowd into the narrow tunnels of the first mountainhome.

The auto-burrow thing sounds like it would be very handy if/when we're able to retire fortresses, you could set them up to make sure the fort functions about the way you were managing it. It may be useful while you're still playing it but I'm having a hard time envisioning how exactly it would be implemented.

Actually now I think about it it's pretty similar to one of NW_Kohaku's ideas in their Class Warfare thread - assign an area to a noble for management. Not sure if it was fleshed out in that thread, but IMO, the easiest way to start this one off is, after you've built workshops, assigned quarters et al, the administrator assigns enough dwarves to fill all of your bedrooms. Professions are picked based on what workshops you have, going from most specialised to least (ie, dwarves with all labours enabled would be assigned last).

...

Actually, there should be options for your administrator - assign dwarves by Profession, Religion, Clan/Family (it would be nice to setup a little family woodcarver business in an out-of-the-way corner of the fort, or the sprawling stalactite towers of Clan Raash, all linked up with bridges) or even class to create non-assigned Noble or Legendary Worker districts. If the Guildmaster or High Priest arrives, they may demand to be put in charge of the relevant burrow. In addition there could be an Auto-Assign function, which picks based on workshops and tries to put dwarves of the same religion or clan together as well.

In this case, the Burrow should be more of a, "use the buildings here and nowhere else" zone than a "DO NOT LEAVE, CITIZEN" zone.