Bay 12 Games Forum

Minor details like that usually escape me.  I'm still confused as to why there are two castes of dwarves...  I'm not very observant I guess.

Names and details escape me too, but the story went something like this:
    A band of bandits (Dancing Dregs) was running away from something, and they got separated. A group came to the site of Matul Remrit (bravemule), and built a safe place for themselves. They also decided to build a tall tower, so the other group can see it, and join them in safety. The first one or two groups of migrants were treated as lost Dregs, and they now live together.
    Apart from Dregs, some Dwarven civilizations spotted the new outpost too, and started sending caravans, diplomats and migrants (called Clods by Dregs). The Dregs were so confused by this that they didn't even kill the diplomat (caravan had guards, so was safer). As for Clods... Imagine a group of refugees seeking refuge in a badit camp, or a mafia mansion, or something like that. After some arguing the Dregs took them as slaves, and called them "Crawling Clods".  They were even generously given beds, some dirty water to drink, and enough work to keep them occupied. They are useless and annoying, but what could possibly go wrong with a little extra workforce?

I played GC for maybe half an hour and didn't really like the mouse interface. I kinda liked the idea of less micromanagement, where best workers are automatically chosen for tasks. 

I preffer hotkeys to somehow make sense for memonic reasons rather than be close together. {b}uild -> {d}oor is preferable to something like 1->4. However I admit, that when I build many of the same item, the keys are often far apart, and my lack of skill{10 finger fast typing} makes me sometimes press wrong buttons, which is annoying. I'm kinda used to programs having menus, where you can press <Alt>+{F}ile, <Alt>+{O}oen and such.

The interface is workable for the most part. Especially with a tileset and DT. I suppose my biggest complaint about it would be tediousness as fort grows bigger. A quick example: Scrolling through 300+ animals in a cage without any filters and seeing only 10 at a time is no fun.

As for mouse support, I'd be pretty happy with the following functionality (some of which is in, I think):
- cursor does not change position when wsitching among 'k', 't', 'q', 'v'. If screen was moved on X-Y coordinates to where it wouldn't be visible, it can be centered instead. Moving up or down keeps cursor where it is.
- clicking on the screen is the same as pressing enter.
- clicking secondary mouse button may be equivalent to 'q' over buildings, 'v' over creatures and 'k' over anything else, like stockpiles. I don't know what to do, when a creature is in the same tile as building.
- moving the cursor over help menu on the right, and pressing something activates that option. (that is help / component choosing menu is made of clickable buttons)
- there are clickable < > icons on the screen (altough < and > are confusing to me, I never remember which one is up or down)
- there is some kind of slider to quickly move up or down many Z-levels, or some kind of << >> that moves by 10 levels at once, and usable with hotkeys.
- maybe more sliders and + - ++ -- to move quicker through various lists.
- clicking on the map moves view there.
- when I make a rectangle abs(dx) and abs(dy) are displayed, so I don't have to count tiles. This is more important for mouse control.

That's about it, I suppose.

That, plus moving "link lever" job to object (you usually have fewer levers than gears, door or bridges, so q over gear assembly -> link to lever -> choose lever), and adding some logic gates would make things so much easier.

I think this was suggested before.

For me it wouldn't matter matter if levels don't flip positions as long as I can sync them with master level. Lets say master is OFF, some slave levers are ON and some OFF. When a Dwarf flips master, all slaves that were OFF flip to ON, so all slaves become ON. It works pretty much the same with bridges and floodgates if you connect them to two levers.

Main problem I can see, assuming you can keep your own dwarfs out of the bathtub-weapon, is enemies passing through it, getting sick, but managing to get inside your fort and spread it around before dying.

That's why I included normal bathtubs at both entrances to long corridor, and doors to keep cats away.

Well, in theory you could do that. Make an entrance to your fort that can be closed off by a drawbridge and a long snaking corridor, that will still let invaders in after main entrance is closed. Get contaminant into that long corridor (either a dwarfbath, or just kill the FB there), and invaders will be infected before getting inside fort. Make sure to burrow dwarfs outside of that corridor, and block it off with cat-impassable door, and put a normal dwarfbath at both entrances.

IMO this is still not worth it, as there are easier ways to deal with invaders than turning a fort into a biohazard zone.

I usually have enough trader trash to have no need to steal.

My only method of robbing caravans is take loot from whatever traders get killed by ambushes before making it inside my fortress. They obviously don't need all that stuff anyway, and the next caravan won't pick it up either. This still counts as stealing from caravan, but at least those annoying monkeys wont get phatz.