Bay 12 Games Forum

If you wanted to deal with workshops in a more realistic way, you could add apprentices to workshops. Apprentices would begin work for a professional at a young age, with housing and food provided by the master dwarf. The most novice apprentices are basically haulers whom make deliveries and make sure that the master dwarf is well stocked with supplies. The more advanced apprentices do the more basic and routine stuff the profession does. Meanwhile apprentices are accruing experience from the lessons of the dwarf until they become full-blown professionals themselves. This would cover the trouble of hauling and how young dwarves get educated in one fell swoop.

To automate this, you need a system where customers go directly to the craftsdwarves and commission work. You could even have shopkeepers go directly to workshops and buy up merchandise to sell at their own shops (They may already do this... I've never made it to the economy). This saves the player from having  to do everything themselves. Plus it's just more realistic.

You could get more complicated. You could have employees, adult dwarves paid to do hauling or other crafters to meet demands of customers (and the player).

You could get even more complicated. You could have unscrupulous dwarves with no competition sell low-quality goods at very high prices. Different stores have different reputations... so a store frequented by nobles has higher prices than those frequented by commoners even though they have the same goods... etc

You could get even more complicated. You could add weird relationships between master and apprentice. Some masters are generous and some miserly and cruel. What if the apprentice doesn't want to become what he's becoming? (I never wanted to be a pet store clerk! I always wanted to be... a lumberjack!) If the apprentice is too gifted, does the master get jealous?

I didn't see this on any of the bloats, so I'm hoping this isn't redundant.

I see a lot of fortress-trading around. What about world trading? It takes a long time to develop an entire world's worth of fortresses. And some of us don't have the patience or the time to build really awesome forts. What I propose is this:

1) Guy builds a fortress in world A.
2) Guy uploads the world to download.
3) Another guy downloads, builds a fort, then uploads the game.
4) Repeat #3 as needed.
5) Community members downloads world and explores an intricate, well-developed world as adventurers.
6) Earth wins!

What do you think?