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[WordsandChaos]

sure, but even an ikea table should last longer than most forts.  Should crappy furniture wear out after 5 years?  Is there a point to that?

I'd rather the economy have a purpose - like some sort of actual economic driver - beyond just constantly replacing junk.

Yeah, sure. Have it last ten years minimum untouched or something. Other factors will naturally eat away at, for instance, a wooden table unless stunningly well preserved. However, unless we want to go simulating woodworm or termites or whatever, abstracting that sort of thing into an extensive time of decay serves as well as anything else. Yeah, the economy should serve more of a purpose, but replacing junk is a big part of any economy. It's not about replacing junk being the purpose, but about junk being part of the functionality to ensure the purpose continues to exist. Look at how replacing junk has effected production in the modern world: We have junk built into everything. Planned Obsolescence, wherein things are deliberately built to break after a certain amount of time, or to become obsolete, is actually an interestingly integral part of the western economy. You have to keep currency circulating, and the fact that things inevitably need replacing is one of the basic ways of ensuring that those things are replaced and the currency/trade continues.

And yeah dwarves should break more things or enemies break more things etc. But as a further example take weaponry and armour - a weapon can be built in year one, go through a hundred battles, and remain just as useful in year 1050. Naturally an increasing number of each item will be generated/produced/leading to everything becoming valueless. The economy inevitably breaks because nothing can break. If the weapons could all break, or wear down, then they would need replacing, thus causing demand and keeping the economy moving. Same thing goes for tables, chairs, furniture or anything else - they just see less drastic use so they're less of a useful example.

[Urist Tilaturist]

sure, but even an ikea table should last longer than most forts.  Should crappy furniture wear out after 5 years?  Is there a point to that?

I'd rather the economy have a purpose - like some sort of actual economic driver - beyond just constantly replacing junk.

Yes, absolutely. Tables, even bad ones, should not wear out automatically in a few years, but dwarves should certainly damage them from time to time (look at the furniture in a school as evidence of what will happen to many of the chairs).

[puke]

mmm, school chairs.  bent tubular pot metal with spot-welds, and wood laminates riveted on...

So, consider the modern world.  Post industrial countries have negative population growth.  Industrialized countries have slowing population growth.  Wars are drastically diminishing in scale when compared to 100 years ago.

Traditional drivers are population growth, and conquest.  Also, the desire for goods that are not available in your local market. 

Planned obsolescence may not be an exclusively modern phenomenon, but it is pretty close.

I'm all for things getting broken in fires or tantrums or invasion or general combat spillover -- more masterwork defacement is always fun.  but I think the economy can find better sources than this.  Isn't this the point of the dynamic world?  Isn't this the point of tracking the production of goods in every town through all of worldgen?

I imagine part of the economy will be a greater demand for things that your culture can not produce, or that are not available in your biome.  Greater value might be placed on things not available in any of the biomes your entire civ has access to

I imagine another part may be driven by population growth -- if towns are expanding nearby, they may need textiles or tools.  You might get a contract to quarry blocks, or cut timber in bulk.  Maybe to produce bulk lots of charcoal, or even salt.

I imagine that conflict may be a driver.  Armor and weapons and foodstuffs could be in demand when nearby civs are at war.

A rich neighbor may want luxury goods, a neighbor with a bad cropp year might pay a high price for seeds.  When the mountain homes or one of their protectorates have a need, they may demand tribute or assistance from you.  They may even demand soldiers, or skilled laborers.

As your fortress its self becomes more wealthy, residents may begin to value more luxury goods... Prices of rooms may fluctuate based on demand and based on means, such that immigrants and unskilled workers are priced out of quality accommodations, and have to resort to the barracks.

Also, I expect that the same random "Item A is valued at 60% next visit, and Item B is valued at 115%" kinds of things will serve as a placeholder for all of the above, until such time as it is actually implemented.

Replacing broken tables and worn out toy mini forges... This just isn't interesting.

[Delioth]

sure, but even an ikea table should last longer than most forts.  Should crappy furniture wear out after 5 years?  Is there a point to that?

I'd rather the economy have a purpose - like some sort of actual economic driver - beyond just constantly replacing junk.

Yes, absolutely. Tables, even bad ones, should not wear out automatically in a few years, but dwarves should certainly damage them from time to time (look at the furniture in a school as evidence of what will happen to many of the chairs).

Yes, I like this. And knowing Toady, it'll be as complex as it should- every use of a table gives it a trivial amount of 'wear', and dwarves with reckless personalities give more wear, calmer personalities give slightly less. Tables in personal dining rooms are affected differently from tables in taverns, &c. Repairs/refurbishing/scrapping could be functional depending on how damaged the piece was, with the option of burning/crushing it to nonexistence being an option if it's that bad. (repairs/scrapping being especially useful for weapons, as they should wear down pretty quickly with use.)

Maybe rust will become a thing, too.

*snip*

Replacing broken tables and worn out toy mini forges... This just isn't interesting.

However it is a part that would bring extra realism and another dimension to fortress management - and could easily be automated; "I want a table here!" and when the table there wears out, a new one is put in its place, with preferences toward tables of similar value to the one that is worn. Just keep a few extra tables and you should be fine for a while. I expect it would also be nigh- impossible to actually wear out an iron or steel table, and harvesting goblinite is a trivial matter when your blender/military/drowning chamber/Stupid Dwarf Trick is functioning.

[WordsandChaos]

I imagine another part may be driven by population growth -- if towns are expanding nearby, they may need textiles or tools.  You might get a contract to quarry blocks, or cut timber in bulk.  Maybe to produce bulk lots of charcoal, or even salt.

I imagine that conflict may be a driver.  Armor and weapons and foodstuffs could be in demand when nearby civs are at war.

A rich neighbor may want luxury goods, a neighbor with a bad cropp year might pay a high price for seeds.  When the mountain homes or one of their protectorates have a need, they may demand tribute or assistance from you.  They may even demand soldiers, or skilled laborers.

As your fortress its self becomes more wealthy, residents may begin to value more luxury goods... Prices of rooms may fluctuate based on demand and based on means, such that immigrants and unskilled workers are priced out of quality accommodations, and have to resort to the barracks.

I agree completely. As I said, I'm not saying that replacing mini forges should be the extent of the system. But taking one of your examples:

Civ A wants swords because it's at war with Civ B. You produce and sell those swords to Civ A. All of those swords find an owner (theoretically/abstracted/whatever). And none of them are ever worn, damaged, or broken. Then that market is glutted. Straight away. Civ B, C, and D all follow suit. They come to you for whatever resources they need. You provide those resources. And then all you have is surplus. Because nothing needs to be replaced. As a result the economy breaks.

What I'm saying is that all of those interesting impactors on any local/global economy are instantly rendered null if all produce is static and exists infinitely, merely taking up increasing amounts of space. All of the original factors, like a war or a famine, or a lack of production in one area, grind to a halt once the amount to balance the necessity has been reached. I used modern obsolescence as an example because while it is a modern phenomenon, it adequately demonstrates the way in which the need to continually replace produce is what drives an economy. 

[Urist Tilaturist]

A possible cause of damage to furniture could be dwarves wearing armour or clothing "menacing with spikes" of a material harder than the furniture. Menacing spikes are not often very sensible and should cause some damage to objects which they encounter.

[Urist McShire]

I think what is going to need to be implemented, to make an economy work, would have to be item degradation - across all things. Furniture, weapons and armour, jewellery, crafts. Not just clothing. Supply and demand drives an economy and when nothing can break nothing needs to be replaced.

This is why 99% of game economies fail: because items can't decay. They can be repaired to full repeatedly and suffer no setbacks for it. So the whole demand structure stagnates. I think a lot of gamers fear a system like that - because all of a sudden their legendary eternal bludgeon of claustrophobia suddenly has a life span. And they go ape. I think the DF community has the balls to take that in their stride, however. Personally I think item decay/damage is a good thing, and if you want to make an open world economy work reasonably well, you need to have things that need replacing to give currency a reason to circulate.

Star Citizen's doing that, and everyone's onboard with it. Super excited for SC!

[puke]

This must be why Project Entropy is so popular ...

Actually, it still exists.  So it must be doing something right.

[Wooster]

That you would trust negotiation to dwarves shows either a strong trust in dwarves or a lack of care about prices.

It's not about trusting negotiations to dwarves, it's about the player's role as strategic director. As player, I don't dig up the crops, I don't make the tables, I don't construct the walls, I don't smelt the metals, I don't weave the cloth, I don't cut the gems -- and I shouldn't negotiate the prices. I tell the dwarves to do all those things. In the way I envisage the game, at least, the player's role, vis-a-vis trade, is to appoint the best negotiator as broker so that the dwarves get the best prices [1], to determine what things the fortress wants to buy and sell, and to decide whether the "best price", as the dwarves have negotiated it, is good enough to proceed.

[1] To be quite honest, and recognising this comment is drifting off-topic, I think even this is overpowered. I'd prefer a system where the Mayor appoints those civic roles, and may end up appointing sub-standard cronies rather than strictly the best-qualified candidate. The flip-side of such a system would need to be some clearer means of influencing who ends up as Mayor or how the Mayor makes those choices: we always need levers to pull in order to influence events, otherwise DF would stop being a game.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Maybe that's why dwarves make things to last (i.e., rock tables and such).  See "On the Nature of Dwarves."

[Jellehpheesh]

I don't think item durability would have a large effect on trading at all. It would have gameplay signifigance, sure, but most items are produced in the fortress and the local economy wouldn't be affected unless you bought the finished goods directly (which you shouldn't) or if you bought more raw materials, which wouldn't have much of an impact on the game.
Other Civs could easily be made to experience an increased demand for certain goods every few years to simulate item degradation, but actually modelling durability loss would be nigh impossible, as items that leave the map edge are effectively nonexistant.

[Kamamura]

Proper economy, that would be something... with everything related implemented:

Urist McMarketAnalyst: "Sir, I have a reason to believe that there is a goblin siege imminent."
Baron McDuff: (admiring a new schist statue installed into his room) "How so?"
Urist McMarketAnalyst: "The goblinite market has crashed, and futures for splints and crutches are rising sharply. Also crossbow bolts are at a premium."

[puke]

Proper economy, that would be something... with everything related implemented:

Urist McMarketAnalyst: "Sir, I have a reason to believe that there is a goblin siege imminent."
Baron McDuff: (admiring a new schist statue installed into his room) "How so?"
Urist McMarketAnalyst: "The goblinite market has crashed, and futures for splints and crutches are rising sharply. Also crossbow bolts are at a premium."

This should be in the design document.  This exact quote should be... what?  They don't have the Power Goals anymore, how does it work now?

[Urist Tilaturist]

I don't think item durability would have a large effect on trading at all. It would have gameplay signifigance, sure, but most items are produced in the fortress and the local economy wouldn't be affected unless you bought the finished goods directly (which you shouldn't) or if you bought more raw materials, which wouldn't have much of an impact on the game.
Other Civs could easily be made to experience an increased demand for certain goods every few years to simulate item degradation, but actually modelling durability loss would be nigh impossible, as items that leave the map edge are effectively nonexistant.

Importing finished goods would make more sense if dwarves wanted certain goods which could not be produced in the fort, like mahogany wood in polar regions.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Proper economy, that would be something... with everything related implemented:

Urist McMarketAnalyst: "Sir, I have a reason to believe that there is a goblin siege imminent."
Baron McDuff: (admiring a new schist statue installed into his room) "How so?"
Urist McMarketAnalyst: "The goblinite market has crashed, and futures for splints and crutches are rising sharply. Also crossbow bolts are at a premium."

This should be in the design document.  This exact quote should be... what?  They don't have the Power Goals anymore, how does it work now?

I believe Toady said practically everything in the old dev goals are still planned, just that they won't be doing them using the whole arc structure thing.