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Messages - Aquillion

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631
DF Suggestions / Re: Automoton warriors
« on: April 06, 2009, 02:16:59 pm »
Quote from: Raz on April 05, 2009, 11:56:57 pm
What's up with all the high-tech suggestions anyway? It'd just turn into some generic over-the-top fantasy dwarf race if these were put in. They aren't supposed to have better technology than we do, in my opinion.
They are supposed to produce artifacts, though.

The Dwarf Fortress world is supposed to be a world of strange wonders.  A few mechanical men forged by a god or a mad possessed dwarf would fit in fine.

Massive mass-produced armies of mechanical men made in huge factory-citadels probably wouldn't, because then they wouldn't really be wonders.

632
DF Suggestions / Re: Kegs!
« on: April 05, 2009, 03:59:50 am »
Wow, I was just thinking of this, and here I find the thread was brought back recently.

Yes, kegs are very much needed.  Or at least some way to make barrels that will only be used for alcohol.

The problem is this:  Food builds up and lies around your fortress.  Even when you run out of barrels, your farms keep producing food, which builds up and spams jobs saying "HEY, PUT ME IN A BARREL!"  So you end up with several hundred plump helmet roasts demanding to be placed in a barrel.

And, meanwhile, your stills just shut down with a cancellation message...  and when you try to build more barrels to solve the problem, all those piles of hundreds of plump helmet roasts (which have been building up in the meantime) spam far more jobs than your small number of stills.  No matter how many barrels you make, if your farm is producing too much food, you can't keep up -- food is just much better at grabbing barrels than booze is under the current system.

So, long story short, we need a way to make barrels that only our stills can use.  Kegs would be a good way to do this and could solve other problems besides (like the absurd amount of time it takes to drink).

Of course, you can partially solve this by making a big drinks-only stockpile (it will claim barrels, which will then only be used for drinks.)  But anticipating the need for this requires pretty detailed knowledge of how barrels and jobs work on the part of the player, and is a bit counter-intuitive.

633
DF Suggestions / Re: Flying Buildings
« on: April 04, 2009, 11:53:12 pm »
I don't think flying structures should be common or regular occurrences.  They could be interesting mythical, epic-scale things, though -- the wizard with a flying castle, say, would make a great place for an adventurer to explore if they could reach it (or for players to play in Wizard Mode, eventually.)

A race might have one flying structure or island which they got through a mythical background arc (created for them by their god or whatever), but I don't think they should be able to produce them on their own...

634
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Legendary Children?
« on: April 04, 2009, 11:47:08 pm »
I actually have multiple legendary grower children in my fortress because of my excessive farming operations.  They'll harvest just like any other dwarf when 'all dwarves harvest' is enabled, and earn experience in plant-growing for doing so.  The fact that they don't haul and do one task exclusively means it's very easy for them to get legendary if you're growing enough.

635
DF Suggestions / Re: Elven trading and nobles/diplomats
« on: April 04, 2009, 11:41:32 pm »
Like I mentioned, Golden Salve is already in the game, and the herbs for it are both rare (only available on a few sorts of sites) and impossible to farm.  That makes it perfect for the sort of elven trade-good you're describing, once its functionality is added.  And the elves already trade it, so I think Toady is way ahead of you here.

...actually, I remember when we'd ask him about magic waaaay back before DF was released, the first thing he mentioned was "maybe some things you'd trade for from the elves."  So I think he's been thinking along these lines for a while.

636
DF Suggestions / Re: Automoton warriors
« on: April 04, 2009, 11:34:58 pm »
This has actually been suggested a lot before.  The most common thought is that they might exist as rare artifacts or things powerful wizards could make, but probably not as things dwarves could just produce whenever they want.

They do have a place in mythology (and, therefore, in fantasy.)  Vulcan had two mechanical servants who helped him at his forge, for instance.  I think the Arabian Nights also had a few.  But they're always rare and fantastic things, not something common or easy to make.

Note that this is listed on the dev page as a possible Bloat:

# Bloat42, AUTOMATONS, (Future): Automatons could be created, but it's campy to overdo it, at least in the standard world model. An artifact creating dwarf could make special automatons.

Also note Power Goal 45:

# PowerGoal45, MEET THE CYBERFIST, (Future): You use your iron geared prosthetic hand to crush a piece of stone in front of the cowering goblin, and it passes out.

637
DF Suggestions / Re: Peat as a substitute for coal.
« on: April 04, 2009, 11:33:19 pm »
Quote from: Chromie on April 04, 2009, 10:56:35 pm
Quote

Also, trees are technically constructions.  That is why you get a log when a tile holding a tree collapses,

Wait wait wait.. You mean I can auto-chop all my trees by collapsing the soil layer? MUST DO IT
...that's more work than chopping the trees themselves.  And you make it hard to grow more trees in the future.  And it's horribly, unnecessarily dangerous.

In other words, very, very dwarven.

638
DF Suggestions / Re: Buildable totems and psychological warfare?
« on: April 04, 2009, 11:23:46 pm »
I think the real use of totems will have to wait until we have more detailed religion / magic.

639
DF Suggestions / Forum-thread thingies for every dev item.
« on: April 04, 2009, 11:22:07 pm »
I was reading through the dev items when I saw a few I had various comments on.  Then it occurred to me, why not set up a dedicated comment thread for each one, linked to from the respective item?

A lot of people don't read all the dev items.  And that's kind of understandable, really, given what a massive amount of text it comes to.  And, also, we were having problems with repeat suggestions on the forums.

So why not combine these two problems, and set up a forum-thingy (or some kind of comment thread) for every core, req, bloat, and power-goal on the development page, where people can comment on that item, add their suggestions for it, and so on?  Basically, for every item in the dev log, there could be a link to its comment thread.

Then people will ignore both, of course...  but at least people could look in on that forum and see the most heavily-discussed things that are already planned.  And it would probably be a more convenient way to arrange such discussions, in the long term.  I also think it would be more fun to read them (and more people would do so) if there was a place for natter and comments for each, even if some items don't really need that much commentary.

A bit of a bother to set up, but it's something that people other than Toady can do much of the gruntwork for (as with the endless voting page we have now.)

640
DF Suggestions / Re: Peat as a substitute for coal.
« on: April 04, 2009, 10:37:23 pm »
Quote from: Mount on April 04, 2009, 10:25:17 am
I did know that peat has been used for heating/cooking fuel for a long time, but I wonder... is it possible to use peat in the real world to fire a smelter, or is the burning point too low?  Would it be an inefficient reaction, so that it takes two "bars" of peat to fire a reaction instead of one bar of charcoal?
Like I said in the first post, it was used that way in the real world.  The Romans used it for that purpose to an extent, say.

641
DF Suggestions / Re: Nobles (make them more than a target for murder)
« on: April 04, 2009, 07:28:06 am »
Much of the usage of nobles is on hold until you get the ability to launch military campaigns of your own and manage external areas, I think.

Right now mandates seem to be almost exclusively based on a noble's tastes.  While those should certainly play a role, that's kind of an abuse of power, and it would be nice if nobles (aside from abusing their power) also occasionally mandated things they think are really necessary for the fortress -- demanding clothes when the fortress doesn't have enough clothing, or whatever.

I think that that was the plan at one point.  Dunno if it was just put on hold or what.

642
DF Suggestions / Show the number of masterworks created on a dwarf's thoughts screen.
« on: April 02, 2009, 06:58:31 pm »
It's useful to know how many masterwork items a dwarf has made, since this influences the mood hit (and therefore their chances of going berserk) when one is destroyed.  Also, it's just generally a nice bit of information to have, helping you figure out just how much a particular dwarf is producing at the highest end.

So I think it'd be nice to have as a simple number somewhere in there.  Of course, if you want to expand it, it could maybe give even more information on what a dwarf has created...  the total value of all the things they've made, for instance, or something along those lines.

643
DF Suggestions / Re: Information that should be on the status menu.
« on: April 02, 2009, 06:15:49 pm »
One other thing that might be worth having somewhere:

The number of free and filled spaces in each type of stockpile.  Granted, this will miss out on custom stockpiles a bit, but it'd still be useful to get a warning when my stockpiles for food are completely full, or when my stockpiles for wood are totally empty.

644
DF Suggestions / Peat as a substitute for coal.
« on: April 02, 2009, 03:51:47 pm »
I mentioned this in another thread, but I thought it could use its own post...

Peat has been used as a method of powering furnaces for a long time, historically.  The Romans did it, say.

Peat can be used as a fertilizer, too, according to its article, although I don't know how long that has been done historically.

Peat could be 'mined' or collected from around swampy, marshy areas.  It may even contain deposits of Bog Iron.

645
DF Suggestions / Re: Elven trading and nobles/diplomats
« on: April 02, 2009, 03:42:55 pm »
Elves do have exotic animals in cages, I think.  And humans can bring bars and gemstones IIRC, just like dwarves.

Honestly, if anyone is going to trade the dwarves magical trinkets, it would probably be the elves.  So perhaps we should just wait for that.

At the very least, when Golden Salve actually does something, you're probably going to want to trade with the elves for that -- it's a bit of a bother to get otherwise.

Also, you shouldn't just think in terms of what you can/can't do yourself.  Getting wood, cloth, barrels and bins from the elves is just more efficient than making it yourself -- any half-decent food production line is going to spill over enough extra prepared meals to get you as much as you need.  Woodcutting yourself is dangerous, slow (because you have to drag the logs around), and involves multiple extra labors.  It makes sense to outsource as much of it as you can to the elves.

Also, it would be nice if they traded you a light, high-quantity substitute for charcoal.  Peat would work, say -- even the Romans used peat to fuel furnaces.

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