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[Damiac]

Arise Thread! ARISE!

I saw this thread, and I wanted to add my comments to it, even if it's a little old.

Starting Dwarf Numbers: Why not allow this to be set anywhere from 1 - 200? It's up to the player to decide what they want. Default it to 7.  Some people just want to build a megaproject, why make them wait?  Some want to do a solo run.  Great, set it to 1, off you go.  I see no real issue here, obviously starting supplies may also need to be adjusted upward.

Migrant Waves: First two are fairly reasonable, but later on they get ridiculous.  Is anyone ever happy when they get a wave of 50 migrants? Frankly, I'm happy if half of them are children, because at least I don't have to assign them jobs.  This needs a major rebalancing, we should be happy to get migrants, so I would agree this needs to be adjusted by a factor of 10.  And things should have to be going pretty well to get migrants.

I wouldn't mind a "Difficulty" setting, maybe a seperate one for several areas:

Migration: Higher difficulty means smaller waves, with higher requirements to even get waves.  I would say the current migration situation would be the easiest difficulty.

Resource Requirement: Higher difficulty means things cost more.  I think you'd just have a multiplier based on the current size calculations, so you don't necessarily double the cost of everything, unless you want to.  Current difficulty is probably Easy/Medium

Hostiles: A setting affecting the frequency of sieges, megabeasts, and the like.  Current difficulty is medium.

Combat: The age old "artificial" difficulty setting.  Would act as a negative modifier to your troop's combat effectiveness.  I guess it would probably just weight the random numbers against you for harder settings, and weight them for you for easier settings. Current difficulty is medium.

Happiness: An easy one to program, dwarves seem to have a baseline of 100 happiness, with events modifying that number.  Harder settings either lower the baselines, or increase the negative effects of negative events.  Easier settings do the opposite.  Current difficulty: medium

I don't see any of this as being difficult to code, as you are just modifying existing calculations.  I know some people are really against easy modes, so if you like, imagine the difficulty is only adjustable upward, if that helps you sleep at night.

[dwarfhoplite]

I think that having it go out of control is kind of the point in this game. So i don't support more control over migrants.
However I think their numbers should be reduced, since as it is, you will top 100 dorfs before a single bedroom is ready.

[jpvlsmv]

Starting Dwarf Numbers: Why not allow this to be set anywhere from 1 - 200? It's up to the player to decide what they want. Default it to 7.  Some people just want to build a megaproject, why make them wait?  Some want to do a solo run.  Great, set it to 1, off you go.  I see no real issue here, obviously starting supplies may also need to be adjusted upward.

If you want a starting population of less than 7, after you embark station 6 dwarves behind a locked door with no food/drink, and Urist Stronginthearm's your uncle.  Since the initial 7 start out as only "Passing acquaintence"s (what, they don't talk in the wagon?) you will suffer no ill effects.

If your migration waves are too big, a similar approach will both eliminate the current problem and discourage the next wave to your "terrifying place".

--Joe

[GreatWyrmGold]

Starting Dwarf Numbers: Why not allow this to be set anywhere from 1 - 200? It's up to the player to decide what they want. Default it to 7.  Some people just want to build a megaproject, why make them wait?  Some want to do a solo run.  Great, set it to 1, off you go.  I see no real issue here, obviously starting supplies may also need to be adjusted upward.

If you want a starting population of less than 7, after you embark station 6 dwarves behind a locked door with no food/drink, and Urist Stronginthearm's your uncle.  Since the initial 7 start out as only "Passing acquaintence"s (what, they don't talk in the wagon?) you will suffer no ill effects.
If your migration waves are too big, a similar approach will both eliminate the current problem and discourage the next wave to your "terrifying place".
--Joe

This is kinda dumb. A: Ghosts. B: A poor workaround is no substitute for an actual feature.

My thoughts: Migrants of the "hale, hearty settler" variety should come in fair numbers when your settlement is small, then in decreasing numbers. Once your settlement is rich and comfortable, other migrants should come, but in fairly small numbers. And while starting dwarf numbers could be adjusted on the embark screen, it would cost quite a bit for more dwarves than the traditional seven.

[Damiac]

Right now if you get immigrants, typically the response is "Damn it, now I gotta deal with these guys" instead of "Yes! I need another miner!".

If you got waves of migrants from 1 - 5 it would take a while to get up to max pop, instead of how incredibly fast it happens now.  I think you should have to be trying to get even 5.  It's not like more migrants makes the game harder, in fact it makes it ridiculously easy, and as people have pointed out, it makes dwarves totally disposable.  But it also makes those new dwarves an annoyance, instead of a boon, as they should be.

It's not like these are crazy impossible to program features I'm talking about here.  Just optional modifications to existing numbers, to add tons of possibility (and difficulty) to the game.  You think it's too easy? Try it with 1/10th the migrants, where all your armor and weapons cost 2x the bars, and you're getting attacked by goblins every season.  All the sudden those 2-3 casualties become a big problem.

And if you hate those ideas, well guess what? You can just set it up to be the same as now, or even easier if you want.

[GreatWyrmGold]

At first, you should get enough to get you up to maybe a dozen by the fall caravan and 20-30 by the second caravan, assuming an average level of comfort and dwarven deaths. Immigration from populations of those frontiersdwarves would slow down around then and stop completely by the time your adult population was 50 or so, but if you try you should be able to get enough wealth and comfort and such to get migrants trying to find a better life than at the overcrowded, underemployed Mountainhomes. Basically, if you don't screw up or try to discourage migrants you should get at least a few each year, more in the beginning. How many colonies were founded with seven people and no expectation of more until they got their goldsmithing or something up?

[Waparius]

The idea of a bunch of frontierdwarves at the beginning and then moochers, layabouts and nobles at the end is a good one.

The game needs a compromise between the "Start with enough people to have a reasonable chance of survival" and "Yes! I need another miner!", but at the later stages, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have a huge migrant wave for the player to deal with every so often, just because the fort's become A Fine Place To Live (or the goblins are on the march and the fortress has never yet fallen in battle). It would be perfect if the hardy frontiersdwarves got fed up with all these decadent moochers, beggars and thieves and the new arrivals didn't like the ill-mannered frontiersdwarves who wouldn't know an engraving if they fell face-first into it.


Basically having a big migrant wave or two until the fort hits "Mayor" size and having to either grind your way up to, say, a Barony unless you get lucky, followed by the trouble of coping with huge migrant rushes would be what I'd prefer to see.

Of course losing dwarves should have a way bigger impact than it currently does.

[SuicideJunkie]

Size and frequency should probably be related to how difficult it is to reach your fortress,

If you start a fort right next door to a major city, you'd probably get single migrants every week.
If you're way out in the desert past a goblin marsh, then those migrants are going to have to build up a wagon convoy just to get to you.  40 dwarves once a year, with lots of injuries and many of them dying along the way.

This is probably planned for the Army arc.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Weekly migrants? Only if your fort is way better than the adjacent one.

[GoombaGeek]

What if your exports determined your migrants to a greater degree?

Exporting arseloads of plump helmets would get you more farmers, aluminum goblets more metalsmiths, prepared meals would give more "food"-related jobs (fishing, cooking, brewing, etc.), and so on. Unfortunately, masons would be harder to get, unless you began to make a habit of exporting stone statues... perhaps they could be lumped in with stonecrafting.

There would still be a degree of randomness, but this way you could tweak what you want, and you could turn your first Spring Migrants from OMGPANICTIEM into an assortment of the jobs that you want.

[Bytyan]

I like the earlier suggested idea of liaisons. Early forts should see immigrants outside formal society with "woodsey" skills (Farming, hunting, gathering, stereotypical lower class labour). A noble at home would sort out who can stay and who must leave. Attracting artisans, crafts dwarves, and fine smiths would require liaison in friendly neighboring communities to appeal to the young, adventurous children of the upwardly mobile who can afford to educate. Sending goods to give them and for your liaison to show off would be a nigh-mandatory bonus (mountainhome made, naturally) Attracting settled and highly skilled workers would require promises of influence, a strong noble class, and gifts both tasteful and expensive (a masterful sock decorated with every kind of stone ring hanging from it comes to mind) And needs to be done on a case-by-case basis. You can only get that legendary weapon smith if you give him a title, house his family in royal comfort, and give him a seasonal mandate. Other positions would have other requirements. That would make sense to me.
It adds value to nobles and social skills, and allows players to have some control over what legendaries they want ignoring thier economy and who they want to pander to. I feel I would have less resentment and be less likely to accident urist mcjailthejeweller if he was turning out stone tables like a queen bee turns out minions.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'd like to see dwarves who immigrate at first be more frontiersey than woodsmaney. The two overlap a lot, but the first is based more on personality and the second more on skills.

[Malorn]

I say instead of asking for something complex at this point, we should keep it simple.  Merely reduce migrant numbers with an init option.  Make that the feature request, something simple that Toady doesn't have to spend days on.

[GreatWyrmGold]

This isn't a place where we vote on what we want Toady to make top priority, it's where we chat about what DF 1.0.01 should be like.

[Damiac]

It's hardly a complex request.  I'm asking for modifiers on existing numbers for the most part here. Instead of "MigrantWave = WealthFactor * (rnd 1 - 50)" make it
"MigrantWave = (WealthFactor * (rnd 1 - 50))/MigrantFactor" Where migrant factor is the "difficulty setting".  Obviously that's not the real formula for migrants, but you get the idea.  So with a migrant factor of 10, you'd get 5 migrants instead of 50 on a big wave.

Starting numbers is also an extremely easy modification to make.

Even the combat difficulty modifiers I suggested would just add a multiplier to some damage calculations. 

But as GWG pointed out, this is for suggestions anyway, if Toady says it's too complicated, then that's his call.  All we're supposed to do here is suggest things we want to see.