May 9, 2024: The May '24 Report is up.
News: April 23, 2024: Dwarf Fortress 50.13 has been released.
News: February 4, 2021: Dwarf Fortress Talk #28 has been posted.
News: November 21, 2018: A new Threetoe story has been posted.
Forum Guidelines
That said, I think FEAR's AI was a bit overblown. Functionally I barely noticed much difference from the "feel" of the AI's intelligence in Half-Life 1.
Upgradeable workshops seems like a vastly superior solution, if people want to see more varied achohol-related tasks (which is a very good suggestion if it adds new gameplay: aka some alchohol is brewed instantly while other types take time to "age", gaining quality over time.)
quote:
Originally posted by Tormy:
<STRONG>Rail system? I dont like the idea to be honest. It wouldnt really fit into a fantasy world.</STRONG>
Mining Carts totally fit into fantasy worlds, particularly where Dwarves are involved. This is a great suggestion.
Steel Bar x5 (16 avg distance) (x2 selected)
Limestone x40 (18 avg distance)
...
etc.
So it could display how many of each resource you have and the average distance, but it'd only display one line per material type (because that's all you really care about.)
An alternative multiplayer suggestion might be a way to share content around. 10 players play DF or Adventure Mode and their play data is automatically uploaded to a master server. Other players would then be able to connect to that server, download that fortress info, and play in a universe that incorporated all 10 player-built civilizations or heroes/villains.
It's the same sort of content-sharing that I get the impression Spore will have when it's released.
Randomness should come as a result of events (which can include things like your dwarves doing bizarre things like Strange Moods.) Adapting to different events each game will keep the game fresh, whereas having a random tech tree (in a game which is already very poor at telling the player about that tech tree) is a bad idea.
quote:
Originally posted by Gangsta Spanksta:
<STRONG>What you see as a feature of the game, I see as something that hasn't been implemented yet, because it is more difficult to code than say adding a new item to the game. Since DF is a living work in progress, I have a strung hunch that hiding things, like the insides of a goblins fortress, will be an eventual -- or is a planned -- edition of the game. It is unrealistic to see what treasures are inside a goblin's hideout. To me that is due to an unimplemented feature that should be part of the game.</STRONG>
Wha--?
Look, you'll always have line of sight of everything in your own Fortress. Always. It would utterly fail as a game in the kingdom-running genre if you couldn't see everything you controlled.
So the fact is you do see everything in your own fortress and that's essentially cheating. It's "godmode" line of sight.
So "it's cheating!" is a bad argument against numerical stats in DF. However there are plenty of other good arguments that can be used to argue why they shouldn't exist (and have been made in this thread). And the best of those arguments is that you just don't have perfect knowledge of your foes - just like you don't expect to have "godmode" line of sight in a Goblin fortress, you won't have "godmode" knowledge of each goblin's stats.
Why? When I play DF, I see 15+ rooms at once. It's a giant, enclosed stone fortress...and I see 15+ rooms at once, including all the inhabitants, friend or foe.
So unless DF is a game about a mind flayer running a dwarven fortress (an idea not without its merits) then there's already some "cheating" occuring in how much information you're given about your fortress.
In short, "cheating" is a terrible argument. I agree that numerical stats shouldn't exist, but there are better reasons than "it's cheating".
Even for dwarves you don't need a really exact measure of their skills or stats as long as the description is clear. As some people have mentioned, a lot of the terms used aren't as clear as they could be with a number attached to them (ie "Which is better proficient, competant, etc...?") A color-coding of these stats or a legend would help, but a number is certainly the most clear way to spell it out (and you'd even still include the text: "Cooking: 5 (proficient)")
