Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: kontako on March 29, 2015, 05:01:16 am

Candlesticks shouldn't be buildable, in my opinion. Rather a dwarf needing light would carry a lit candle around with them, and place them to light a room (place them as an item, not 'construct' them) - as it would be IRL. Continuing on this I would think a single slab of tallow to produce something in the vicinity of 50 candles, simply to feed the demand.

What I am getting at, is that due to the timescale we would need candles that last several days.  Otherwise, dorfs would be carrying 20+ candles around with them or get nothing done.  Otherwise, they'd spend all their time carrying candles to/from their workplace as they extinguish too quickly.

I see illumination as being the job of children, idlers, and/or a possible caretaker profession, whose other duties include things like Cleaning and relocating animals. It *is* possible to make candles so large that they burn all day. But yes, it'd be far more dwarfy to take advantage of natural cavern illumination (which, like Deboche, I presume will exist), such as transplanting bioluminescent fungus seedlings into stone pots, and then carrying the potted trees upstairs to use as streetlights. Etc.

And yes, Candle <> Candlestick. A candle maker is/was a very viable profession, indeed there were chandleries pretty much everywhere, doing constant business. But a candlestick maker was pretty much capped at something like 2 candlesticks per customer, with no repeat business, ever.

The main thing I am bothered by is that this suggestion is for a process unique to dwarves and that it is reliant on the "Strange Mood" mechanic which is pretty arbitrary and random in how it works.

Actually, previous comments (not that I'm expecting you, or indeed anyone, to have read them all) have stated that Innovations are not limited to dwarves: Every civilization, of every race, would have its own set of knowledge determined during worldgen. Customizable worldgen settings would allow for different settings of "base" tech level (roughly where everybody is at Year 0), a global rate of advancement (how fast everybody invents stuff after Year 0), and possibly the extent to which a civilization's discoveries will be influenced by that civ's gods (if you don't have a god of agriculture, you might not learn much about farming). Each civ would exit worldgen with an assortment of known technologies--some of which are part of a "required" core (everybody gets enough garments to cover all body parts, a couple of weapons, etc.), and some of which are basically random. Different civilizations might also willingly exchange knowledge with their trading partners & especially allies, and/or forcibly extract it from their enemies.

As for the randomness of Strange Moods, I've suggested making things more regular in a variety of ways. Tie the frequency of Moods (all of them) to the population of the fort: A fortress with 200+ dwarves should have 10 times the strange moods encountered in an outpost of just 20 people. "Regular" strange moods can strike anyone, but only those of above-average intellectual curiosity & creativity can become Inspired. An Inspiration, once it hits, will very likely, but not always, operate on that dwarf's highest-level skill. An Inspiration that fails (for whatever reason) does not cause the death of the dwarf, but rather lingers in the back of his mind, allowing him to try again at some other time.

I wish to suggest more be done to make the "Inspiration" mood be reliant on more than just random chance as it seems to be in this suggestion right now.

As shown, it's not all random, although some randomness is essential in order to ensure that each fortress discovers technologies that are different enough to make the fort feel different to play, thus making the game more interesting & increasing its replay value. Players are able to influence, but not entirely control, which Innovations get discovered, by locating their most invention-minded dwarves, and training them in fields that can give rise to the desired inventions. All told, this is pretty much exactly how Research & Development is conducted in the real world: Take your most experienced, creative workers, and keep throwing resources at them until they invent something. (Not necessarily what you wanted, but something.)

It is my understanding that inventing a new technology or making a discovery requires at least three things:
. . .
3. Satisfactory economic conditions for actually building/doing the darned thing the inventor/innovator has an idea for

That is a  requirement for the adoption of a new technology, not the invention of same. In my post yesterday, I mentioned a reaping machine--it was actually invented TWICE before it really caught on, because in both cases, it was invented under conditions with a surplus of cheap farm labor, and was therefore not a meaningful benefit to society--that had to wait until its removal to Australia, in the middle of a labor shortage. Inventors (especially dwarven ones, if what we've seen so far of their mentality is any indication) do not have to be especially concerned with the potential socioeconomic ramifications of their work--only the success or failure of the work itself. Besides, plenty of things are designed to have no meaningful impact on the overall function of society at all--yet everybody still knows about Rubik's Cubes, pointillism, and beatboxing.

Just to keep you posted, I'm still adding to the list of possible innovations (the most recent one was Lathe), but there's yet more research to be done. I've caught up with every single technology-related thread that the Suggestions forum's ever had, and am now chewing on some books.
How Invention Begins, Echoes of the Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines, by John H. Lienhard is pretty good, but the real star here is . . .
Ancient Inventions, by Peter James & Nick Thorpe. It's got things like brain surgery in India in the 5th century BC, and the reaping "machine" (no actual moving parts, sadly) invented in Roman Gaul in the 1st century AD, and a similar design from 14th-century China, both of which were forgotten until the Roman version was repopularized in 19th-century Australia. Best of all, the book ignores everything after the year 1492, eerily close to Toady's own self-applied cutoff of 1400-1450ish. So just ignore the chapter on Sex Life (which doesn't seem likely to be added to the game) and a couple of da Vinci designs, and the ENTIRE rest of the book is relevant to DF.

Apart from that, the only real change I've decided on is that Inspiration moods should not produce actual artifacts. Let the other moods keep them, and once artifacts gain the magical properties that Toady's been hinting at, that will provide a nice balance between magic and technological innovation.

Adding a new type of justice noble, the Detective (or some more period-appropriate name), might not be amiss. Appointed from one of your Fortress Guard (requires Captain of the Guard to appoint), the Detective can perform the labor of Study Crime Scene, with "success" dependent on his analytical ability & Observer skill.

Do you believe that your master mason should take longer to produce a table than your novice mason though?

I believe that my Master should take longer to produce a ≡table≡ than my Novice to produce a -table-. Or, alternatively, make it so that the two craftsdwarves work equally fast (on average) when they're both working to the utmost of their skills: They'll crank out the same number of tables, the Master's just look way better.

And yes, I support the quality/speed scaler, available in both the Manager's screen and individual workshops. (The workshops should also be able to be flagged as being outside the Manager's control.)

Make actions that really should be done every day, like eating, drinking, sleeping, & breaks take only a handful of ticks, and increase dwarves' movement rate, so that they actually CAN hear the lunch bell, head to the dining hall, get their grub, wolf it down, and get back to work in less than one dwarf hour.

Drastically increase the working time for all crafting jobs, so that the mason takes 6 days to carve a stone table, rather than 6 tables per day. While we're at it, make higher-skill dwarves take longer to perform the same task than their Dabbling counterparts: Any bozo can take 5 minutes to sharpen the end of a stick and call it a training spear, but a true master can easily take a year or more to create perfection, and still think it well worth the trade-off.

Make all combat actions happen nearly instantaneously, except perhaps periods of unconsciousness.

We know that Erebor was not a hidden stronghold for several reasons:
It had the human town of Dale (itself an aboveground and completely obvious settlement) practically right outside its front door,
it was located inside literally the ONLY mountain anywhere around,
it was a major trafficker of all kinds of goods, and exported a good deal of luxury items,
and the side-door is always described with mentions of its great secrecy and camouflage . . . qualities that are NEVER applied to descriptions of the front gate.

As for DF fortresses, I've always found it silly that the goblins & megabeasts magically know not only how many dwarves your fort contains, but how much wealth they've accumulated. It would make far more sense to have invaders only concern themselves with your fort's exports, and regard your fort's population as completely irrelevant--except when calculating your militia's probable ability to repulse attacks. Even better would be for invaders to be attracted to WHAT you're exporting (and/or obviously gathering): Forts with a visibly thriving agricultural industry should be highly appealing to goblins, who are presumably astoundingly bad about growing enough food to feed their innumberable mouths. Bronze collosi, on the other hand, wouldn't care about food at all, but they might have a similar hunger to absorb metal and increase their mass even further, so your metal-bars stockpile might draw them literally like a magnet. Etc.

You're talking about the Cheyenne Mountain complex (NORAD's secondary command post, built under a mountain in colorado, designed to withstand multiple nuclear strikes if necessary), right? It's not really very hidden. It's southwest of Colorado Springs. Just outside of town. There are roads leading right up a guard post outside the main entrance. There are signs telling you where to turn off the nearby major roads to get there. It was never really intended to be hard to find, just secure against whatever an enemy during wartime might be able to throw at it.

All right then, consider the networks of tunnels dug by the Vietcong:
Cu Chi tunnels
Some areas of the Vietnamese jungle were honeycombed with them, and they had camouflaged entrances, pit traps, barracks, armories, storehouses, and even hospitals. Add a couple of magma forges and some cats & beards and you've got a bona fide DF fort.