why can't you just put the rest of the world into fortress mode scale when using fortress mode? if it takes you a week to walk to the edge of a map it should take several months to travel to other forts or cities. so if you send out an army you could check travel reports while fiddling around with your fortress until they arrive.
Because that would essentially slow down the rest of the world. If caravans had to walk from the mountainhome to your fortress at the same speed as your dwarves, it might take decades or even centuries before they arrived.
Whenever damage is done to a dwarf is a bad trigger too, because that means whatever enemy you have is already in the fort, giving you no time to prepare, as well as a series of other problems.
In any case, enemies entering the map would either move at fortress mode speed until a mode change is triggered, so you can see them coming. Whenever they're at crisis mode speed, that means at least some of your dwarves are too.
Triggers: If "whenever a dwarf panics/sees an enemy" is a bad trigger, we need to scrap that idea.
Please elaborate. Enemy recognition is a rather specific requirement, and one that will have to be adressed sooner or later anyway.
Having messengers force slow-mode until they reach your guards is dumb; how do you define guards, and what if you're not protected by them and rather by, say, some kind of trap/s?
Anyone with some kind of official capacity would suffice. If you choose to bunker in and kill anyone that approaches with traps, that's a choice with consequences.
Can you not see issues with marking critters as unimportant at will?
It's an optional measure, not essential. Since it's completely under control of the player, I can't see what would cause problems for him: after all, he would forego the option to have precise controls.
And why is "dwarves handle time-sensitive issues" not a good way for fast responses to happen when most things that would require them autopause the game? And of course it's vague--there's at least a thousand situations it would apply to.
They have to recognize time-sensitive issues, they have to figure what is better in that specific situation, and given their walking speed, there's not that much more efficiency you can wring out of them. And if that was no problem, why wouldn't they always do things the more efficient way?
Games are not about forcing you to do stuff, they're about letting you do stuff within limits. By your logic, the best game would be an awesome but non-interactive one, whic isn't really a game at all.
Then yours would be an editor, nothing more. The player has to face some constraints, otherwise he would reach his goals as soon as he had formulated them. In any case, I'm not forcing the player to do anything, just as the current version of the game isn't forcing the player to do anything but to follow the calendar and timing rules used in the game. Tell me what I force the player to do.
If tere is the slightest difference between the modes, as far as anything goes, it will be abused. It's not like "minimising haling distances improves efficiency," or even "building this complicated device improves efficiency," but "oressing this button improves efficiency."
Disagree, there's no button to be pressed and there are no efficiency differences between modes.
I think that reaching the edge of the territory you control taking a week isn't too unreasonable, considering that you'd have to be pretty damn far away in DF for it to take a week. Dwarves aren't as slow as you all seem to think--a muner can dig many tiles a day, and I don't think it takes multiple days to build something in a workshop, barring huge haling distances.
They walk slowly. Too slow for soldiers, messengers and even traders. As said before, economic activity can be abstracted without much problems: the military and diplomatic manoeuvers are where the problems lie.
And one last question: Why is the slow mode needed? Couldn't we accelerate the working and consuming speeds a la the suggested fast modes and leave out all of the issues, obvious and not, which would occur with such a fundamental change to the Fortress Mode engine?
The fast modes, AFAI've seen, contain a mass of arbitrary production changes: that will make abuse inevitable, balancing becomes an enduring headache for each update, and it breaks suspension of disbelief much more than a mere time speed change for some dwarves in specific, predictable situations. In addition the game derives much of its charm from the fact that every craftsman has to walk a very specific path to a specific storeroom to pick up specific items. Lastly, fortress mode
already is a kind of fast mode, because it minimizes working/sleeping speeds to make time for dwarves walking around, and only shows a limited number of work/eat/sleep cycles instead of one for every day of the year.
edit: ninja'd by Andeerz
>This is a game of emergent behavior; little events earlier on can have profound, often unforeseen effects down the line
Then I wonder why you would abstract them further away?
>And I think it would be really silly to introduce such a break in continuity of movement... Combat would seem to me as if everyone except for the combatants are statues.
Pretty much, so their actions stay congruent with the calendar, their productivity remains the same the whole year, while the dwarves that need it get their fast action. They become combatants too when threatened and flee at fast speed.
>And how to define someone as a "combatant" or "time sensitive" or whatever in a way that doesn't seem clunky and kludged-in and possibly game-breaking seems impossible to me.
Anyone fighting or alarmed by the fighting. Seems straightforward and simple to me.
>when combat is occurring, (everything is) involved in combat in some way, shape, or form.
Most dwarves are inside a fortress, fighting usually happens at the fringes.
> What if such a stray arrow (or stray dwarf being hurled by a colossus) hit one of those non-combatants that is standing absolutely still
That civilian will most likely already be alarmed, since fighting happens nearby. In the rare situation that he's not, he'll become alarmed by being hit and will flee to safety if he can or cry for help.
>What happens when we are dealing with siege machinery which might someday be able to destroy constructions and walls?
I don't see any problems that will cause. These are hostiles, so they'll alarm people.
>Everyone would obey the same rules regardless of game speed or what is happening / My suggestion would require fundamental changes in code for only one thing
On the contrary I'd say, you specifically mention different speeds, hunger rates, ways of moving about and production rates for both rates. Essentially, making an entire new game mode. Whereas I would only change the amount of ticks in a calendar day, and not even for all dwarves.
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Taking reservations about in into account, I'd say that crisis mode should apply to any dwarf that's executing a military or diplomatic action.
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Topic: Rectifying Timescales Across Modes: Revisited (Read 1951 times)