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[NJW2000]

Some players worry about running out of wood, especially on small embarks. Naturally, trees grow all the time, and wood may arrive from underground or the caravans. Nevertheless, some players may find themselves in a position where they experience a severe lack of wood.

Also, many players use fruit-gathering zones under trees, and are thus reluctant to cut down trees.

This seems a little ridiculous from a realism perspective as well. If you build a fortress in the middle of a gigantic forest, you should never run out of logs, even if you clear the area immediately around you.


So what I am proposing is that, much like military dwarves, you can send woodcutters off-site to chop down trees and bring back wood.

They would leave the embark, then return after gathering a certain amount of wood or chopping down a certain number of trees. How they would carry so much wood back is an issue; perhaps pack animals such as horses or llamas could be sent with them. Maybe an escort of military dwarves would also be necessary/possible.

Sorry if someone has already suggested this, or it is folded into another part of the development log. I just think it would help in terms of realism and how fun the game is.

[Wedolko]

Nevertheless, some players may find themselves in a position where they experience a severe lack of wood.

That sounds like a personal problem if you ask me

But I can't say I agree with this idea unless there is a high chance of woodcutters running into trouble, such as kidnapping, wild animals, death by bandits or goblin scouts, or even better sending them out could cause the next goblin siege to come a bit sooner if they run into scouts. Without some kind of high risk all it would do is serve as a cheap way to get infinite wood, so there needs that risk to make sure players do not want to do it unless they really, really need something to make coal out of.

[Witty]

How the heck do people run out of wood nowadays with the giant multi-tile trees? I guess my play style has just become too conservative as of late.

I have no qualms with the actual suggestion, but I feel the eventual hill and deep dwarves will help fix this "running out of trees in the middle of a forest" issue. Hill dwarves will be settling in far greater numbers around your fort and its biome. I'm sure they'll provide ample raw materials like wood for fortress protection/productions or whatever else they'd want.

[FantasticDorf]

Im in two minds about the idea.

One thing i can't ignore is that its a very cheap way of getting things, wood is a long term and trivial resource, underground mushroom trees constantly grow where you give them enough room. And it also detracts from future work in laying down saplings or collecting tree seeds.

On one hand i like the idea of dwarves going to get resources they know are nearby and simulating a world generation settlement in which rather than simply stagnate, the pull in all the resources in their adjacent tiles too, and hill dwarves seek to expand that network. I think there should be more activites like this defined by the jobs that they do in relation to the enviroments they are interacting with. (bagging sand from a local desert and hauling it back, fetching water from streams, sea fishing, miners digging mountains)

Im sure both it could be balanced in such a way that repeatedly doing this action puts yourself at risk (monsters etc), deforms the local landscape (eventually deplete the forest) or gives diminishing returns from that area, such as sending off miners to dig a mountain the next world tile nextdoor and bringing back less ores and rocks.

- If the dwarf is attacked, since they can only do this action 1 tile away adjacent to the embark, they will cancel the job & re-enter the map with a head start running before the monster follows after, a automatic kill order is put on the monster. They will also run back when sieges or megabeasts spot them.

- Dwarves from the fortress can only go out as far as hill dwarf settlements around them which when full is a 5x5 radius when tightly packed or more if trade attached hillocks are on different but in range distant tiles (not quite 'Civilisation ©'.)

- Set out worker task goals rather than expeditions via use of a manager, as such say that in the manager production screen you order workers to begin logging a forest and then select within range (with lots of little X's for things outside range) from a quick popup of the worldmap where you want them to do the job, the manager goes to his desk and puts out the edict to assign everyone who has the off-map labour to run to this location and bring back wood (or one person at a time with it on repeat)

I dont think making them part of a expedition would be a good use of the mechanic, hence why i added on talking about perhaps the manager doing it? Im not sure how you'd arrange local protection without dragging the threat back to the main map as a uninvited guest unless squads could do the same thing to just patrol/station around a area (elves send out patrols all the time in worldgen)