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Messages - zy

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DF Suggestions / Re: Partially completed tasks shouldn't be 100% canceled
« on: January 11, 2007, 05:53:00 am »
quote:
Originally posted by qwip:
<STRONG>Are we trying to fix something that's really a player problem?

This is a game about supply chain management.  The player who strategically places food/drink/stockpiles in relation to planned work will benefit from the existing system, and those who don't are seeing the issues described above. If you have jobs that send a dwarf from one side of your fortress to the other, perhaps that just your bad planning?  (I certainly feel like its my fault when I realize that I'm hauling recently mined rock out to the mine entrance to be mason'd into blocks, which are then hauled back to my bar/block stockpile deep inside the fortress.)
</STRONG>

I don't think that's a fair criticism of what I'm describing, no, and I've already mentioned the use of pit-stop stockpiling (the recent custom options are ace for speeding up delivery lines). But even if you have inbox / outbox piles right next to the workplace, that doesn't mean the job itself might not be taken by a peasant many miles away who then travels several leagues to haul an item two squares in order to put it back on the available list. And who can, themselves, give up and wander off half-way.

It's not even such a concern to me that a job takes a long time and lots of hands in a big fortress (a neat simulation of bureaucracy...). I'm more concerned about seeing items with a shelf-life go to waste or disappear into the system when they are really needed. Plus, I suppose, seeing an expert tanner abandon a rare skin, or a master weaver just drop her spider thread on the floor and dash off after she's fended off a snakeman ambush to collect it, just doesn't sit right with me.

Though that's probably bitterness that I have to wait till clocking-out time to grab a pint while my dwarves can get away with it any time.


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DF Suggestions / Re: Partially completed tasks shouldn't be 100% canceled
« on: January 09, 2007, 05:26:00 pm »
I'm not so convinced that the tie-up from keeping goods in workshops for a job order, or in some other pipeline, is any worse than the tie-up from seeing those same items suddenly tasked to be hauled to and from stockpiles before you can use them again. As long as I could cancel the original job and thus free up those items for other uses then I would at least have the option of aborting and re-using before they waste or get trapped in the system.

(If you're worried about items going MIA then the item screen in job assignation could show similar items currently flagged as tasked but not yet placed or finished -- all within existing functionality, possibly? -- and with the option of intervention).

I'm also unconvinced that master craftsdwarves would walk out on a job for a drink, half an hour before completion, when they know that it would undo days of labour as the prized meat, thread, hide etc. rotted or wasted in their dereliction of duty. How do you code when you're hungry, Toady? Do you dash straight off, or do you give yourself five minutes to finish what you've been working on? And do those five minutes not turn into an hour sometimes?

For all of their supposed skill levels, none of my dwarves have been coded with a love of what they do.

Of course, if this extra effort means that you eat more, drink more or pee longer when you're finally free, or that you take an extra long break after the deadline to make up for your overtime, then there's a bit of balance to the overall productivity. Heck, you could introduce a hangover state for citizens who can't handle the pace of fortress living.

The danger I see is the time I'm spending in nano-management, coming up with tiny stockpiles and impromptu job cancellations, when I'd rather be thinking about how I can stage the best club night in all of dwarven history.


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