Bay 12 Games Forum

I dislike the way that players are currently able to lock and unlock doors/hatches instantly in Fortress Mode. It doesn't really fit with how everything else in Fortress Mode is done, where players need to order dwarves to take actions. So my proposal is that doors/hatches should work more like levers. A player would queue up a task of locking or unlocking the door, and then a dwarf with the appropriate labor enabled would need to go and access that door before its state changes. I know that there is already a way to operate doors with levers, but that doesn't allow an unlocked-but-closed state which unlinked doors have by default. Dwarves should still be able to freely open and close doors that have not been locked. However, dwarves would not be allowed to lock or unlock on their own initiative, the same way they don't pull levers on their own. Although maybe a tantruming dwarf could be allowed to lock and unlock for extra fun.

(I'd be surprised if something like this has never been suggested, since it relates to an obvious inconsistency in the general gameplay philosophy. However, the forum search didn't show me anything similar.)