Bay 12 Games Forum

Hello guys...

As you might know or not know, life hasn't been much easy on me, but that's the same for everyone. In fact as a matter of fact life has been quite nice to me in the last couple years. Right on the darkest moment, on the verge of homelessness and hopelessness, found a life saving job that has been not only quite nice economically, but also mentally. I won't become rich from it, but is a small fortune relatively speaking in a country where minimum wage is $4 per month. It feed us well, clothe us and puts a roof on our heads, plus gives pete a good education. Is stressful at times, as any job but nothing that a bit of effort can't solve. So the job is good, its what I'm trying to say.

My wife and I never argue, over 8 years of marriage we have fought seriously exactly only once, and had exactly one lesser argument. She's not the most affections person in the world, and I know this, but I also know she express her care and love in a different way, not with words, hugs of physically in general. That's just the way she was raised and her 3 brothers and 1 sister are all exactly the same. All apparently good in that front too.

Our kid is a smart, handsome, joyful and energetic kid, healthy as a horse, just passed to 1st grade from kinder-garden and got into a pretty good private school along with some of his buddies. He's just a happy, nice, healthy kid, all good there too.

I'm living, like, basically most people dreams. At the very least my own darn dreams from like 3 o 5 years ago for certain, when we were starving, I had to ration my food for them to eat and had to do a lot of weird jobs were I was even threaten for crap my bosses made and in general was going into an early grave.

Yet, I should be happy, and I am at certain degree, but I just keep thinking on how my family would be better without me. At the worst cases if I'm completely gone or at least just living by my own somewhere else. Cant' stop thinking my wife could definitively find someone better than me in all aspects, my kid can have a better fatherly figure in his life, and basically everyone would be just happier if I weren't in the picture.

Don't get me wrong, I know they love me, specially my kid, but I know they will definitively be better without me. Maybe, I could just leave and keep supporting them from the distance without interfering in their lives until they find someone else better than me, which shouldn't be hard at all to be honest, and then I could simply drop everything and let that dark maw swallow me whole.

My mother in law and my sister in law are with us too, after my father in law died they too had a good darn time and as soon we got into a better position we started helping others, and they were first in the line. My sister in law just started high-school in a good place too. We have helped as many people as possible. But many things are beyond our means to help.

Overall, I think my discomfort is from past mistakes, what I should have done and that I'm simply not good enough, have never been and never will. I've spoken most of this and how I fell with my wife and she assures me things are good, that I should not feel this way and while things will never be the same, things are okay. I don't buy it.

Being honest the worst have passed my head and that just illustrates my point on people being better without me to start. Don't worry however, my rational side just knows that this is not an acceptable answer and it would not solve anything. If anything, I'm more worthy alive than dead, as long I have a job at least. This also makes me think that I'm 36 now and basically have only 4 years more of work worth. Once you are 40 who's gonna give you a job?

Does anyone feels like this? Like an impostor? Unworthy of any measure of success?

I'm doing some research for the company I work for and would like to know what's considered a good salary there, well I guess it also depends on the city/region and line of work.

But in general, what makes a living wage there?

Ok, I was told the premise was not clear, so sorry if Im not being clear.

The program is MS Access 2007.

The data base is for a spare parts inventory.

There are spare parts wich have a brand code like say ACME brand, code ACME123. Which is a piston. Spare parts factories only have a single code for each product.

Then there are OEM that are the codes applied by the tractor manufactorers themselves. This codes can be one or many for some reasons. In this example, the ACME123 piston could be for John Deere engines A, B and D. And have John Deere OEM's JD123, JD1BC, and EJDABC. This three OEM's all refer to the very same piston.

Ok ACME has in its catalog the piston like this: ACME123 (OEM JD123)
Sparex has the same piston as spx5512 (OEM JD1BC, EJDABC).

What Im trying to find the best way to merge the 3 OEM as one so if the user in the field OEM inputs any of the 3, the 3 are selected as the OEM for that spare part.

So far all I have thought is brute forcing it in a table were each code has a row for each equivalence. Which mean in the example the codes would ocupy 6 rows of this table. But this is exponential, no, linear. A piece with 12 OEM (which sometimes they have) would ocuppy 144 rows for all the possible cross references.

I don't know if this thread already existed, but couldn't find it. Anyway, here it goes.

My wife and I are expecting a baby! It was a planned pregnancy and while we feared that it might take us a while to get pregnant, it was fairly quick.

So there's that. I hope this thread can counter balance a little the sad one.

This is mainly intended to Toady but of course is open to discussion. I have a ton of things on my mind right now and perhaps a lot of things are intended eventually but I'll let them loose here anyway.

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On clothes wear and tear: Have clothes endurance tied to the quality and/or materials and real wear. Somethings should wear out pretty quickly (shoes in example) other things like capes should last for many, many decades or even lifetimes or generations.

On clothes raw materials and production: Different sized animals should give more or less leather, hair/wool, and different products should need different amounts of leather/cloth/wool. A dress shouldn't be made from a single rabbit skin, just like an elephant hide shouldn't be all used up in a single pair of shoes.

On night creatures: Further rawify vampire/werewolf proprieties. So in example somebody can have a world filled with wereducks that are weak against birch and bronze and wereturtles that die if touch sand, because why not?

On manager job orders:: Even while it's last update was really great, we still need things like auto-assigning trees to feel (quantity and type), ingredients in food and booze and other minor things. Also it would be nice if the craftmanship level or range on the goods could be defined so we could order the making of 20 at least superior quality cow meat roasts for example. And finally just like the embark profiles, it could be useful if we can export/import job orders from a raw file while in game for sake of easiness.

On paper usage by some nobles: Paper perhaps shouldn't be required for the manager, broker and bookkeeper to work, but some perks should be introduced for them doing so. Faster job orders? More focused workers? I figure a paper with the orders in your desk is harder to forget than a conversation with your boss a few weeks ago.

On usefulness of nobles: Having those really noble (baron, count) positions in your fortress allow you to ask/automatically receive tributes from other settlements around you (if any). In a true feudal way of life having a noble would allow you to get access to resources offsite without need of trading. Weapons, soldiers, food and so on. On the other hand a noble might reclaim certain metals/jewels/materials for himself and those would be used only for whatever they seem fit (personal wealth, coinage, weapons, whatever). This could replace the nonsensical mandates.

On exploration of the surroundings: Being able to send citizens to your surroundings to explore and/or get things.

On constructions: Priorities for constructions, that's it. Just like for designations, so dwarves don't wall themselves inside a 3x3 pillar in example.

On hauling tools: Dwarves can carry more than one small item (seeds, crafts) at the same time if they own and carry a bag or backpack. This could help specially in the case of seeds where the dwarf won't take the seed bag from a barrel but instead will pick up the seeds with its own bag and then empty that inside the bags inside of the barrel.

On workshop's hauling tools: Being able to assign wheelbarrows to workshops. This could help a lot specially in mason and stone craft workshops. I know workshops are currently placeholders and eventually will become more like areas so I don't know if this would need that first or not. In either case an entry job to a workshop like the errand boy with the wheelbarrow seems like a good way to start apprenticeships.

On apprenticeships: Once a dwarf is Expert or Professional on something he could take one or several apprentices that would assist on the tasks related to the field at hand (fetching materials, working on orders alongside the master. While this would train dwarves faster it could also slow down the speed of work than simply having dedicated haulers bring in the goods needed. Once/if workshops become areas and more complex an apprentice could start in the metal-smith feeding the furnace and doing nails and simple stuff like that.

On dinning halls: Being able to make dinning halls like Taverns but for citizens only. Automatic storage of drinks, food and related (mugs, dishes and related wares) but without the inebriation issues. Perhaps only nobles get served while regular dwarfs have to self-service. Dancing floors should be optional(manually on/off) for these.

On baby location: Moms leaving their children in a cradle furniture or/and with their siblings/neighbors/spouses when going to work if their job is considered dangerous (military, hunter).

On guilds and knight orders: Bring back guilds and introduce knight orders which could have all kinds of spheres, duties, preferences and bring politic diversity to the game.

On monster hunters: Be it with guilds, religious groups, knight orders, or lonesome, introduce dedicated monster hunters. Urist McBlemonth and Urist McVan Helsing could show up in fortress were the player is having a vampire issue. The player could see them as saviors or enemies, depending on their intentions and goals, if wanting to get rid of vampires or if going for a vampire fort.

On vampire forts: They are too easy now, we need some consequences for A) Vampires not drinking blood for years, decades or centuries and B) Having a fully converted fortress and getting caught at it. Vampires should become weaker, crazy or whatever, while your fort should be shunned, cut of from trade and besieged by your own (former) civilization.

On stockpiles: Better wood stockpiles (and stockpiles in general). But for starters wood stockpiles should allow more than one log per tile, as furniture piles should allow for stacking chairs, empty bags and the sort.

On ranged weapons: Define and rawify different baseline reload time for ranged weapons, or how long will it take for a total rookie to reload the weapon. The expertise level of experience on the weapon will gradually reduce the reload time. The range and stopping power of the weapons should vary depending on the projectile employed and the strength of the user in the case of weapons that use the wearer muscles (bows) and in the quality and state of the weapons in the case of mechanical ones (crossbows).

On military training: Make marskdwarves take ammo from bins to practice. Smooth the bugs in training and perhaps introduce squires.

On equipment of weapons: Allow soldiers carrying more than one weapon, a second or even third, fourth... weapon could be useful as long they know and try to use each whenever it apply best. This would be specially useful in the case of marskdwarves which could carry a crossbow, a short sword and a personal dagger, knife or axe.

On soldiers food and water: Make them eat/drink while on duty if they want to, do not make them wait to get out of it or storage it in trunks on the barracks.

On armories: Armories should be places definable from a weapon rack or armor stand, and just like barracks assignable to squads, where each rack/stand is then automatically or manually assigned to a soldier or group of soldiers for them to storage the equipment while off-duty.

On pipes: Make wood and metal pipes, faucets and manual pumps that you need to place in walls/floors to transport/drain liquid from one place to another easier once installed. This would allow for safer plumbing, water sources and the introduction of things like fountains and true baths.

On organic waste: While there has been debates whether or no Toady should introduce feces and urine in the game I propose another way. What if creatures periodically create something simply called waste. You could imagine it like feces yes, but in reality it shouldn't necessarily be that. Remember that dwarf mode has compressed time, so this waste could be simply the garbage, dirt dragged on the shoes and left overs of meals by the dwarf during a month or whatever. The same in the case of animals and others. This waste could then be disposed off in pits, plumbing or used as a base for fertilizer (left over from meals do make a good source of it in real life).

On seeds and cooking: Cooking vegetables shouldn't destroy it's seeds unless particularly ordered to do so. At least for some vegetables. It stands to reason that in example pumpkin seeds will taken out from the pumpkin before shoving it into the oven.

On aviculture and eggs recollection: There should be an option, either in general orders, or from the manager, or in the nest box where the collector should leave alone fertilized eggs instead of snatching them all every time. A simpler way would be a setting where you order to leave at least X amount of eggs when collecting, and make collectors prefer unfertilized eggs over the ones fertilized.

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I'm sure all or most of these things are planned for the future, and some of them I already wrote them down in other places here, but still wanted to make a new, consolidated and updateable thread for my crazy ramblings. Thanks for reading.

What if we had a look out job, or border patrol duty to single dwarves or squads were the dwarf or dwarves leave the fortress for some time and then comes back with info about the surroundings of your fortress. You could have maps (accessed from some menu or something) where you could "load" the sites adjacent to your fortress, but instead of loading everything you would load only what's visible from the point of view of a dwarf entering from a point either in the surface of the cavern layer.

So, if you dwarf is travelling the surface and there are no cavern entrances then you would only be able to see the surface level.

Other side of this would be that depending on the skills/memory of the dwarf the descriptions/maps could differ more or less from the reality (details like trees and such could be randomly generated with increased randomness for poor memory/observation skills dwarves). Also depending on their skills (like tracking and others) they could potentially spot sieges before happening and in the case of squads even engage(and hopefully defeat) small raiding parties or other small enemy groups.

If they are given mounts they could do this rather faster than dwarves on foot. They could also escort caravans if the need arises and in general be the first ring of defence of your fortress.

And so on.

Obviously this would have to wait till the army arc but I don't know if such thing as explorers/patrolling/recon was contemplated.

Priorities for constructions, that's it.

Want me to elaborate? Ok.

Imagine you want to build the following:
W W W
W W W
W W W
It's almost sure your dwarves will build a ring rather than a solid column, since that's how they roll.

So, just like digging and deconstruction, you set a priority over the construction, that in this case would look like this:
2 2 2
2 1 2
2 2 2The central pillar is done and then the rest of it.

What it says on the tittle, I'm trying to fill an artificial pond with live captured fish, assigning them to a pond zone and they simply stay there, dying. Why?