Bay 12 Games Forum

I'd much rather have dwarves go insane than leave.

Who says that they cant do both?
Think about it, Why should an insane dwarf stay in one place?
You could have insane dwarfs wandering around the world, attacking whoever they find.
You could ''find'' them latter in adventure mode, or might even have one come back.

                              Urist McCrazy has arrived!

''Miserable'' dwarfs leave fortress, taking all of there possessions and as many of the items that they have crafted with them as they can carry.
I put miserable in quotations as I am not sure what emotion would be best to describe The level of unhappiness to make a dwarf leave to take its chances in the wilds.

This would give more reason to make sure that dwarfs are happy and will allow those poor sods that failed during a strange mood to maybe find a new lease on life somewhere else.

I don't think that there is a need for torches or bonfires for light in caves. All the light needed is mysteriously provided already.
What is the source of the mysterious light? Why don't you dig a little deeper and find out.

Dwarven blood should be alcoholic.
Think about it. Dwarfs drink alcohol from as soon as they can reach it. Before that If you assume dwarven breast milk is alcoholic.
Dwarfs drink alcohol the same way most drink water. How do they do this without dropping dead?
Answer, dwarfs don't get drunk as there body harnesses the ethanol for energy.
And by the same token, this is the reason dwarfs become lethargic when they go without. That is to say, the alcohol becomes deluded and/or depleted.

...

I cant help wonder if this were implemented if it would lead to cannibalism/auto-cannibalism.

If there is going to be more milk, then there should be a separate category for milk.
I know its dwarfy to keep milk with blood, but as long as blood remands useless its only a chore to sort them apart.

Earthquakes-Lower building strength and may collapse unstable caves/structures.

Volcanoes: Magma! But it may erupt, creating new land/layers/minerals and spew an ash cloud over the land.

Locusts & similar: Code these events similar to invasions but instead on focusing on dwarves they focus on buildings/food supplies/water supplies.

Hurricane/tsunami: Add ocean related storms. Or simply expand on the current weather system.

Plagues: I imagine this would give doctors and hospitals a greater purpose. Possibly even require experimentation in vaccines to cure the diseases.

All of these sound like they kill your fps, and would be best left in the world generator, if at all.

Continental Drift: As years go by, continents slowly drift...What once was a tropical island may eventually become a frozen tundra. Similarly, what once was a glacial cap may become nothing but a big puddle...in turn raising ocean waters across the entire world.

There is a "Periodically Erode Extreme Cliffs" option in the advanced world generator, So I don' see why we can not have a "Periodically Continental Drift" too.

Global warming: Dwarves are not very Eco friendly, eventually that Ozone layer is going to fail with all those furnaces.

I have to disagree. With magma forges and magma smelters, dwarfs are very eco friendly. Only steel absolutely needs fuel, and even if you used steel for everything, you would not make much of an impact.

Meteor/Asteroid Impacts: Leaving craters and potentially collapsing caves beneath impact. May leave ash clouds.

I don't know about impacted, but meteorites would be nice to see in the game. I can think of uses for them. They could be normal metal or special or even a magical piece metal.

.....Why do we need this? It simply makes it much, much harder for newbies as they are forced to set up squads, which many veterans have trouble doing.

It would only be harder if dwarfs could not mine/cut unless they were in a squad.
I am a newb, but I did not find making squads particularly hard to do.

Given the discussion on the DF talk about mutli-tile trees, this MIGHT be important later, but for now really doesn't have a lot of use. However, once the larger trees are implemented, they MAY take more than one dwarf to bring down, and thus teams of woodcutters would be needed. I can also sorta see what you're getting at for mining, and maybe for later masonry. Once things get a bit better scale, and stuff like large foundation stones need to be moved or carved, having the masons in teams makes assigning the task easier. I don't think it should work like military squads, but 'work gangs' might be an idea worth exploring a little more. Anyone else have anything to add?

The reason I said mining and wood cutting squads instead of work squads is that unlike most work, mining and wood c. happens in a largely uncontrollable environment.
The "invisible uniform" aspect is made to accommodate non army dwarfs carrying weapons and in turn preventing them from waring armor, leaving them unprotected.
Being able to make them into a squad of a sort would give the player control of what the dwarfs in question ware.

As shown by a search for "civilian squads", this has been suggested a number of times:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102738.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=91607.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64155.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=50258.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=74880.0

Spoiler: tags (click to show/hide)

civilian civilians work working worker workers squad squads group groups crew crews

I looked at all of those and none of them said what I wanted to say.
And did you look at the timestamps?

« on: February 26, 2012, 09:15:06 am »
« on: August 21, 2011, 03:38:12 pm »
« on: August 18, 2010, 06:01:44 pm »
« on: February 27, 2010, 05:35:51 pm »
« on: January 10, 2011, 08:57:59 pm »

Do you mean, noble mandates automatically go to the job manager? That'd be tough, since most mandates are non-material-specific now. Or demands, or whatever--it's too general to hope to have one reaction. Take ddonohu2's demand--flasks. That's metal flasks, leather waterskins, and (I think) glass vials. That's (4+m) reactions, where m is the number of metals that can be made into flasks. And which ones SHOULD the game choose? Probably the leather waterskin one, as most forts have much more leather than any given metal to spare, but a sandy fort near a volcano might decide that glass vials are cheaper to make, or a nice player might make silver flasks for his/her duchess, or lead ones for trading to elves, or bronze ones to give the militia classy booze-containers, or the fort is shor one leather, or...so many possibilities, which the game can't really judge which is the best.

I was thinking it would work the same way that Smelter works, and that you can only make things that you have the resources for,
 filtered through the dwarf-nobles preferences.(Despite not saying anything in the op.)
 Your statement makes me think that will not be possible with the way things are.

I think something that closer to my original idea would be that nobles take there demands to a workshop.(Some of the same problems though.)

Beter idea: Noble demands and mandates are noted on the Job Manager screen.

I agree, that is a better idea. DF is only going to get more complicated, and it is better to leave this kind to thinking to the player and leave the computer to keeping track of the items in any given fortress. But this idea will make thinks more streamlined.