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[Transcendant]

Damn, uh. Could you put that in an easy to read stat block or something?

[Truean]

Sure, I'm still not certain how the "table" function on this site works, but it'd be pretty simple:

Example 1:
Name: [West Town Fields (insert name here really)
Total: 47 (Food)
Mods: 5 (Farms 5/5 Slots)
Infra: 3
Fertil: 1.5
Ex Fa: 2 (d6)

You could spoiler it if you want. Not too much different from posting combat stats.

If you wanted you could just display the "Total:" part and keep the guts of it around but not front and center. Pros and cons to that as well. You could actually have an area that produced multiple resources, because the modular slots were filled with different things (some of the slots could be farms and the rest something else). You'd just run two equations side by side and simply desplay it with more columns (here just with commas, but somebody show me how the tables function works please):

Example 2: Let's say you have 4 of the 5 slots with farms and 1 of 5 with... a lumber mill?


Name: [West Town Fields (insert name here really)
Total: 38 (Food), 11 (Lumber)
Mods: 5 ((4/5) Farms, 1/5) Lumber Mills)
Infra: 3, 3
Fertil: 1.5, 15
Ex Fa: 2 (d6), 2 (d6)

(Note here, you've chosen to divide up 4/5 to food and 16 labor, and 1/5 up to lumber with 4 labor)
Food:
Y= 4(3) + 1.5(16) +2
Y= 12 + 24 + 2
Y= 38 Food produced per time period.

Lumber:
Y= 1(3) + 1.5(4) +2
Y= 3 + 6 + 2
Y= 11 Lumber Produced per time period.

Or, again, if you wanted to keep the guts of it off the display case:
Total: 38 (Food), 11 (Lumber)

Then again I might be making this too complex? I dunno.

Edit: Graphics?
This might actually work ok graphically. Have a map area with 5 boxes across the top. 4 of the boxes have "farm" icons; 1 has a "lumber mill" icon. Have 20 little people along the bottom or something. 16 are farmers holding pitch forks; 4 are lumberjacks holding axes....

[TheBiggerFish]

What table?

.	.
	.

Oh.

It's like tables in HTML.

[Truean]

Ok.

I do not understand html. Could you please do an example as a template for me to use? Perhaps:

1,2,3,
4,5,6,
7,8,9

But using this site's table function?
Thank you for your consideration.

[Arx]

[table]
[tr]
[td]1[/td]  [td]2[/td]  [td]3[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]4[/td]  [td]5[/td]  [td]6[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]7[/td]  [td]8[/td]  [td]9[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8	9

[table]

Initiates a table.

[tr]

Initiates a new row.

[td]

Initiates a new column.

[Truean]

Name:	West Town Fields
Total:	38 (Food)	11 (Lumber)
Mods:	(4/5) Farms	(1/5) Lumber Mills
Infra:	3	3
Fertil:	1.5	1.5
Ex Fa:	2 (d6)	2 (d6)

Or:

Name:	West Town Fields
Total:	38 (Food)	11 (Lumber)

Hum, seems odd without lines separating the columns and rows, but it kinda works I guess.

Thank you.

[Transcendant]

That might actually work. Especially if you spoiler it or whatever. Could do you that with other things?

[TheBiggerFish]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name:	West Town Fields
Total:	38 (Food)	11 (Lumber)
Mods:	(4/5) Farms	(1/5) Lumber Mills
Infra:	3	3
Fertil:	1.5	1.5
Ex Fa:	2 (d6)	2 (d6)

Testing.  I hope you don't mind if I copypasta the table Truean?

It works.

[Truean]

Ok.

Also, yes, you could do this with other things besides food and lumber. You have a simplified model of supply (production), but not demand.

This is creation; we haven't touched consumption:
How much food does a person eat in what amount of time.
Does eating more or certain food mean benefits for the person?
What can wood be used for and how much creates what?
Same question for stone, and other building materials.

Are there maintenance costs? (Personal being shelter, food, water, etc).

Perhaps we can address this in addition to production of other things.

[Truean]

Well one simple answer to many of the questions in the above post is:

Production and consumption use the same measurement. That is, things are produced in quantities they are used in a given time. Example:

A farm produces food measured in how many people the harvest will feed /time (probably a year).

Results may vary per resource, but it's made very practical, because it shows exactly what you can do with X of Y resources. It also allows for some variation in production from time to time without being so dense in math that you can't figure it out easily.

It works forwards and backwards. Farm feeds a number of people. A number of people are supported by a farm....
(You can group them all up, or you can do the individual variance by farm).

_______________________________________________________________________

It's harder with wood and stone and building material though. Same goes with crafting materials. It breaks down a bit when you have a material that can be used for multiple things..... What do you measure it in then, the number of finished product A or finished product B you get from collecting (ship's sails or clothing)?

The only way I see to remedy this is to make some standard unit of material; perhaps base it off something you can make out of it. Basically you would have cloth be made in units required to make clothing and multiple of those units would be used to make ship sails or something. Maybe you need 10 or 100 times as much cloth to make a ship's sail as to make a set of clothes?

Ultimately this calls for the equivalent of recipes or something. It's about a need based thing to show what you can do with what amount of resources. Some buildings are larger than others and so would use more building materials, etc.
____________________________________________________________________________

Once you work out the kinks it displays well, even, because it shows you exactly how many people you can feed based upon your food production, and perhaps what you can make based upon your other production.

This essentially answers the question "how many farms are needed to support X people?" Sure the answer may vary a little bit from year or season to season, but that's ok. That means that you want to slightly overbuild the number you have, because you'd want to have surplus to trade / store anyhow.

[Amperzand]

Another factor for farms is how many laborers it actually takes to run them. Even with a grown crop, two people can't really harvest enough food for 2000 in a reasonable time, at least not with manual labor.

[Sanctume]

Definitely interesting to read.

I'm not sure if to post here, or to Gaming Block, but I have a question how to define a DF game, that uses some input / suggestions from interested forumites. 

It's not a succession game, perhaps a community game.  Some light RP, but more focused on what to build next while building military. 

I have an embark idea, have a list of defined buildings, buildings for a set of labors or function.

I have The Hook, The Setting, The Plot, The System, and plan to use The Graphics / Visual from succession style edited screen shots (i.e. cropped, multi-images with some label texts).

I also started adding Rules as they come up in my trial play.  The rules are more self-imposed limitation, i.e. "No wine, but all other booze is acceptable." 

Are there similar type of forum games based on a DF fortress play?

I'm thinking my first few migrants will be NPCs.  Sheriff, Commander, Manager, Broker, Bookkeeper, Chief Doctor, Hammerrer. 

But what if players want to be those roles?  So perhaps I'll pick a more influential NPC, maybe the Sheriff runs this town, and go from there. 

Now I'm tempted to run the fort as how I usually do, build this, then this, then that. 

But what if I pose the question:  The Sheriff is tasked to start a new outpost and discovers no provisions except their weapons (pick, axe, crossbow), backpack, quivers, some ammo, and an anvil. 

What should we do?

This seems like too open ended, so perhaps narrow to a priority:
[1] Gather plants, Make a Still, Brew Booze.
[2] Make a Carpenter, build buckets, drink from murky pools.
[3] Dig for stone, build a mason, make an Armor Stand for a barracks and start military.

There are other things that can be done, but I have these list of buildings I think will make the town self-sufficient so I can focus on military. 

--
Another thing, how much to reveal?

The usual embark site biome, general map layout.  Do I reveal what neighbors?  How about other legends info: Civs, Deity?

--
Would this be under DF community games, or Other?

[Truean]

Forum section to place games in:
If running an actual software version of DF, then DF community games (It's a sort of "multiplayer" we've stitched together with people taking turns running a save game or something).

If not using the software and doing a forum post RPG game (perhaps with pictures or just test), then you probably want "Forum Games and Roleplaying."

I hope that helps, but I'm not sure it does. It almost seems like you want to mix and merge the two concepts?

The remainder of your post is actually dealing with the ultimate questions of the thread. Simply, we're not entirely sure and we're getting together to talk about those things. So, whatever else is true, you're in the right place for that. Welcome.

To summarize, you're looking for, player roles and characters, how players control them, what options to present players, how/when to reveal info, basically how to run a game like this. Again, welcome to the thread where we try to figure that stuff out, have a seat and stay a while. . Maybe we can figure that out.

____________________________________________________________________________

Another factor for farms is how many laborers it actually takes to run them. Even with a grown crop, two people can't really harvest enough food for 2000 in a reasonable time, at least not with manual labor.

Quite right. This may be solved with prerequisites and quotas. Much like a recipie, to harvest food you need things, like labor, and it can't happen without that. Then there are added things not strictly necessary but they do help quite a bit: farm tools. (adding positive modifiers).

Quotas are goals you have to meet in order to finish a task, including harvesting food. Quotas measure productivity; productivity is produced by labor; labor is modified by skills; people have skills..... .

Example (This is the simplified version):

Let's say you have an example farm field needing harvest.
The prerequisites are labor, storage/transport, and decent weather (not harvesting in the rain/snow etc),
The additionals are farming tools, and perhaps some infrastructure (work with me here for now).
The quota for labor is determined by how much food it produced, let's say .... 50 production is required. (for an example).

That production is produced by your people's labor.

You have Farmy McFarmerson, who surprise, is a farmer. His production is as follows:
He has ... +2 to strength, +4 skill in farming, and those farming tools add a +2 to his labor. Totaling +8

That means, all by himself it takes Farmy McFarmerson 6.25 turns (days, or whatever you're measuring time in) to harvest that one field. (50/8 = 6.25)

If only he had some help.... Let's say he does.

Handy McFieldhand has a +1 Strength and +1 skill in farming. He therefore adds a +2 production through his labor, boosting it from +8 to +10.
Thus, if Handy and Farmy work together, then finish the harvest in only 5 days (50/10) instead of 6.25.
This scales well. If two farmhands help, then you have +12, finishing in 4.2 days (50/12)
Three farmhands helping is +14, finishing in 3.57 days (50/14).
If you have 100 farmhands for (8 + 200 = 208) +208, then you finish in 0.24 days. Meaning, you could do about 4 of those fields a day....

Larger scale labor and production calculations can be improved by infrastructure (roads, canals, transit systems, etc etc) giving either a one time flat bonus, (+3 and that's it) or a bonus to each and every worker (+1 ... to all 100 farmhands for a total of +100). Or, you could have individual tools/items. Say you have 100 workers, but only 43 farming carts; each cart gives +1 for a total of +43, because that's how many carts you have.

Yet another way I've taught kids math....

Keep in mind, each of those people are going to have needs that need met: food, shelter, morale, etc. That's part of why all that food is being grown.

Basically you have a task with a quota bucket. (X/50, or however much production it costs). Fill that up with production and it gets done. The more production you dump into it in the less time, the faster it gets done. Trust me, it can be way more complex than this, but yeah....

Note, if you want to see one of the complicated systems....

[Transcendant]

Uh, how do you know how much labor is required per task and why is that one 50? Just for demonstration or?

[Truean]

You can either eyeball it, or you can use a formula, kinda like in the complicated version I linked to.

Consider the number of tasks and component parts that make up whatever it is you're trying to do/build:
1.) X amount of food and each one or unit made up of that stuff adds a little to the production quota.
2.) Circumstances, good or bad, add or subtract to the production quota (or give modifiers to the production from labor if you really want but na).
3.) Higher quality work has a higher production quota (and that higher quality may itself serve to give positive modifiers to whatever the item is used for).
3.) You could have lower quality work do the same.
4.) Basically take into account what benefits the item or task will give when accomplished/created (More care for more important things. Or are you crazy enough to rush when forging the king's crown, because I don't want to screw that job up).
5.) The more dangerous a job is, the more production will be required, because your smart workers will slow down/be more careful (or perhaps get hurt? Die? Again, by all means, go ahead and rush that incredibly dangerous task .... it might backfire and increase the chance for an accident or something. Don't rush around mechanical saw blades or who knows....).

You see how all of these things are essentially a version of the opposing rolls from the example of the complicated stuff I linked to? You can simplify it if you really want, but this way you factor in certain things and might want to try tasks to mitigate or eliminate those bad things effecting your production. It also gives you a reason to create higher quality items (You'll complete tasks faster, easier, better, etc with higher quality tools. Make them).

How complex do you want it. Eyeballing it means simple. Formula means more complex. Very detailed formula means very complex. Opposing roll probabilistic formulas mean incredibly complex....