Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Babylon]

This wouldn't require a lot of logic change, just editing a few numbers.

It seems like there are internal priorities. Hunting > Mining > Hauling. I don't know the full layout but I think that just reordering those hard-grained values might make things run smoother.

Basically you'd put the time sensitive tasks as highest (cooking/rendering/butchering/tanning/harvesting/planting seeds) as those tasks have time limits. Then put "skilled labor" tasks (smithing/crafting/other workshops with the priority being more difficult skills first (so gem cutting > masonry). Next it would go to resource gathering (hunting/woodcutting/pond filling/fishing/gathering wild plants/gathering webs) and then the "other" (mining/screw pump operation) and finally hauling.

Example: In the current version, if a dwarf has Hunting/Butchering/Cooking and there is a wild animal, a corpse waiting to be butchered and food waiting to be cooked, at least from my observations that dwarf (if no other dwarves complete any of the other tasks) will hunt until there is no game left, maybe butcher (if the corpses haven't rotted) and then proceed to cooking.

With the reordering of these "hard-grained" values, the dwarf will either cook or butcher until those jobs are completed. Then when there are no more cooking/butchering jobs left it will go out and hunt. When it brings the animal in, he will butcher it before heading out for another kill.

This would be better for the player, but you have to admit, hunting is more fun than butchering.  it does make sense that dwarves would prefer it.

[loose nut]

This whole discussion has left out medical jobs, which IMO suffer from neglect more by far than any other job you can assign a dwarf.

I think you could prioritize jobs pretty simply by selecting the highlighted labor and pressing, say, the "P" key, and the dwarf will prioritize that labor more than others (though affected by personality factors). Basically the same way you would suspend or repeat a job in a workshop. I don't think it needs to be more granular than that, personally.

[isitanos]

Another thing I found myself wishing for very much, coming back to DF after a year-long hiatus. What annoys me the most is not being able to designate my whole fortress to dig out, and then add a new section which gets digged out immediately, for emergencies. Some god-games have a kind of flagpole that you move around and that "attracts" your creatures: if you could put that somewhere to attract miners, it would already be an improvement.

[Evil Knievel]

Reading today's (toady's) update, the topic will soon be in focus. Therefore, I think it is worthwile bumping the thread ...

I have no clear stance on myself, but as an end result i would really like to see dwarves making kind of their own decisions (giving them life and character), while the player sets the overall + emergency priorities.

EDIT: Ok, let me elaborate a bit, maybe it'll be touch on too many extra subjects:

Let's just balance job attributes against the dwarf's attributes to let him decide if he is going to take the job.

Job attributes:
1. importance/urgency of the task
- The player should be able to flag something as very urgent: The lever!
- A dwarf bleeding to death somewhere (all medical stuff): retrieve quickly!
- Food production is more important if the stocks are empty, starving dwarves are around.
- Military orders should always be as important as the player decides (unless there is a discpline problem)
2. riskiness of the job / danger, like having to go out where there are goblins to chop wood/ to retrieve a wounded.
3. Skill requirements for a job.

Dwarf attributes:
1. Dwarf personality, how he reacts to danger. If it's to go out and rescue a dwarf, how much does this dwarf value the life of it? The mother of a child might get a horribly high value here.
2.-  Skills of the dwarf:
- giving him confidence to fulfil the task.
- making him feel this job is too low for him (legendaries only haul when really idle)
- making him unsuited (i am a farmer, not a doctor)
3. Self-confidence in general.
4. Proximity to the job.
5. Already got a job of high enough importance?

Now for each job, make a list of the dwarves that would decide to the job, and then pick the dwarf that has outweighs the difficulties of the job most. Or use some other way of matching. Well, this is just coarse and meant to be inspirational, of course.

[grody311]

Good to hear that the dev(s) is considering tacking this finally.  Definitely worth bumping the thread.  The only way to get an efficient fort is to abuse the hell out of Dwarf Therapist right now (i.e., disable every task except the exact one you want accomplished... every 30 seconds... for every dwarf... over and over again).

Doctors haul dead fish around while the hospital ward is full of dying patients.  The broker picks tulips right next to the trade depot... 5 minutes after I've already requested him to be there.  And everyone fights for the opportunity to haul rocks around.  I think they prefer that over any other activity in fact.

I know it's all been said before, but jeez.  The amount of intense micromanaging it takes to get your fort to accomplish basic tasks is a bit absurd.  I don't think you could program the job priorities any more inefficiently if you tried.  I wouldn't be surprised that, if after all these years, it turned out that Toady accidentally used a "<" sign instead of a ">" sign in some logic equation.  It's all in absolutely reverse order.