Bay 12 Games Forum

...actually, he'd eventually fall into a fay mood and then go mad because there are no other dwarves to supply his needs.  But oh well.

Stone is an important part of management in the game right now.  Players need to arrange ways to get stone away from wherever they're digging if they want to build there, and have to manage the removal of stone in order to keep things functioning, just like in a real mine.

Possibly, though, stone could be allowed to stack if placed outdoors.  This would keep the gameplay essentially intact, without requiring an absolutely huge expanse of stone-storage outside the fortress.  It also makes sense; you can't stack it indoors, but outside you could dump it into a giant pyramid or something.

For deeper in the mine, there could be an option to dump it into chasms...  but how would players decide how much to dump?  They need some of it.

Of course, untagging it could also be an annoyance if the situation making it unreachable is only temporary, or if only one dwarf is affected (one dwarf stuck in a room could decide that every plant in the world is unreachable and untag them all!)

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Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>Here's a frozen world and the populations.</STRONG>

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When I'm selecting blocks for building something, each block listed actually corresponds to a block somewhere on the map, right?  And when I choose it, I'm selecting that block specifically, rather than one of that type.

What I'm getting at here is that if, say, I have one slate block two feet from where I want to build a road, and one on the other side of the map, they'll both look the same on the menu...  and if I choose the wrong one, the dwarves will walk all the way over to get it.

Perhaps all identical materials should be concatenated into a single line on the list of available items, like so:

Dirt
Slate x 12
Talc x 7
Obsidian x 2

...and selecting one should just have the dwarves to use the closest material of that type.

I don't know how the player would be able to increase and decrease the number to use, though, since they just have 'enter.'  Maybe it could work like this:

Dirt
Slate x 12
...3 selected.
Talc x 7
...2 selected.
Obsidian x 2

...so the player can add one to the number of selected blocks by hitting 'enter' over the block, or subtract one by hitting 'enter' over the line listing how many are currently selected.

Anyway, it wouldn't work for more complicated things, but as far as I can tell all raw stone or blocks of a given type are identical.

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The one who liked Granite wanted wood, stone, blocks, and rough gems. He took everything except blocks and gems, I checked and found Granite blocks in my bins. I slammed out orders for more grey blocks, some light and dark blocks too. To no avail, after a month or so of waiting and 15 or so assorted blocks in my piles he went beserk. The dogs got him, I assigned him two when he went loony and he attacked them fist.

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The one who liked Rock Crystal was a fisherdwarf who moped around untill I build a glass workshop. Then he wanted cloth, rough gems, and shell. He didn't grab anything. I only had spider silk available as cloth, couldn't make others for lack of correct plants and barrels/bags/vials. Had both turtle shell and cave lobster, cut and uncut Rock Crystal. He just sat there untill he decided to go drown himself.

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When a dwarf gets a serious wound, though, they are likely to be maimed for life.  It's not so strange for extremely tough, previously self-relient types of people to completely flip out when faced with that sort of thing.

And we're not talking about 'seeing a rat'.  We're talking about having the fortress that you slaved to create crawling with rats.  We're talking rats and vermin crawling over you while you sleep and eating the food out of your hands.

And don't forget the other things.  Portions of the fortress are covered in noxious, wretched miasmas of decay so thick that they actually obscure your view.  Friends and relatives die regularly and are sometimes just left to rot on the ground.  Wild raccoons and other horrible monsters are just waiting for the chance to rip out your throat. If you make a mistake or fail to meet a production order, the sheriff cuts you to pieces with an axe.  Horrible creatures regularly crawl out of your drinking water and try to murder you in your beds.  Filthy new immigrants are constantly being shoved into your fortress' cramped quarters, forcing you to work yourself down to the bone to get new quarters ready and leaving you with barely enough food to get through the winter.  And when food runs out, you're reduced to grubbing for rats, beetles, and worms in order to survive.

And then, when inspiration finally strikes--when you finally a chance to do what you've been dreaming to do for your entire life, the one reason you really went through the hell of this horrible fortress, the one true Dwarven dream--when you finally feel inspiration strike you and can see the form of your artifact in your head, you end up wasting three months doing nothing as your incompetitent leaders fail to provide you with the necessary materials. Eventually, the vision begins to fade and you realize you can no longer remember what the artifact you'd waited your entire life for even looks like.  Wouldn't you go mad, too?

Don't ask why your dwarves go insane or throw tantrums.  Ask how they manage to stay sane the rest of the time.

[ August 19, 2006: Message edited by: Aquillion ]