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Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees  (Read 11667 times)

GoblinCookie

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #15 on: February 04, 2018, 08:26:42 am »

In the early game migrants literally are useless, there is hardly anything that needs hauling in my forts early on because the miners and crafters are low skilled, so everything takes much longer.  You get swamped with massive migration waves whilst still trying to set up a basic fortress.  If migration waves were much smaller, or started happening later in the fortress' life, this angst probably wouldn't exist in the forum.  To suggest that players frustrated by this game mechanic are racists is naive, or you are simply a troll (an internet troll, not a DF troll).

The game mechanics do not actually exist, so nobody is complaining about them.  Nothing stops you from doing more stuff resulting in more for your migrants to do, they are only useless because you do not do anything with them. 
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Lord_lemonpie

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #16 on: February 04, 2018, 09:16:35 am »

Honestly, this isn't some sort of ethical simulation of real life. A fortress can't run without migrants, and residents do exactly what they're coming to do. They're not migrating, they're just working abroad.

I find it odd you complain about this, yet not about the actual unspeakable horrors hardcoded within the game, such as oppression, genocide and slavery, let alone the unspeakable horrors the players can inflict themselves.

The residency mechanic could indeed use some tweaking, but on purely mechanical grounds, not because it doesn't suit the political or ethical views of people. A lot of things in the game are as far from my political views as they could be, yet I still enjoy it greatly.
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #17 on: February 04, 2018, 02:40:02 pm »

Honestly, this isn't some sort of ethical simulation of real life. A fortress can't run without migrants, and residents do exactly what they're coming to do. They're not migrating, they're just working abroad.

I find it odd you complain about this, yet not about the actual unspeakable horrors hardcoded within the game, such as oppression, genocide and slavery, let alone the unspeakable horrors the players can inflict themselves.

The residency mechanic could indeed use some tweaking, but on purely mechanical grounds, not because it doesn't suit the political or ethical views of people. A lot of things in the game are as far from my political views as they could be, yet I still enjoy it greatly.

To be honest I find this thread odd, it seems to have been written by a person who either has only the most rudimentary understanding of the game or is just being a troll.
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xaldin

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #18 on: February 04, 2018, 02:44:57 pm »


To be honest I find this thread odd, it seems to have been written by a person who either has only the most rudimentary understanding of the game or is just being a troll.

Or someone who never has been desperate for dwarves and only got 2 in the first migration waves. Seriously, I stay at 0 idlers, please show up I have 10x tasks to dwarf ratio here. It's happened to me for the last several games and I'm really tired of it. Please send me your dwarves. I don't care if they're potash makers, I will on the job train.
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el Indio

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #19 on: February 04, 2018, 05:12:50 pm »

The game mechanics do not actually exist, so nobody is complaining about them.  Nothing stops you from doing more stuff resulting in more for your migrants to do, they are only useless because you do not do anything with them.

Massive migration waves don't exist?  I only make goods the fortress requires, any additional items bring me closer to FPS death.  But I need 80 dwarfs to get goblins to attack, so most migrants are indeed useless, I don't need that many but the game mechanics require that I must have them.  And don't say game mechanics don't exist, migration waves and minimum population size to access game features are game mechanics.
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Eschar

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #20 on: February 04, 2018, 10:26:01 pm »

DF is its own world, created by Tarn and Adam. Political effects desired for our own world should not be forced onto a world where they are extraneous, merely for the sake of reinforcing them in the minds of DF players. DF should remain inviolate.
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KittyTac

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #21 on: February 04, 2018, 10:32:37 pm »

The game mechanics do not actually exist, so nobody is complaining about them.  Nothing stops you from doing more stuff resulting in more for your migrants to do, they are only useless because you do not do anything with them.

Massive migration waves don't exist?  I only make goods the fortress requires, any additional items bring me closer to FPS death.  But I need 80 dwarfs to get goblins to attack, so most migrants are indeed useless, I don't need that many but the game mechanics require that I must have them.  And don't say game mechanics don't exist, migration waves and minimum population size to access game features are game mechanics.

You can change the siege trigger in one of the init files.
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funkydwarf

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #22 on: February 04, 2018, 10:38:45 pm »

lol. I must be doing it wrong cause I love huge migration waves. Every migrant is a gift, I am at 0 idlers always and there is always plenty of work to do. You can have a no skill miner mine and they get better faster and stuff gets dug. Smooth your whole fortress, then let the good ones engrave. If anything, this game teaches labor is the basis of an economy. Thats pretty anti-right wouldnt you say?
« Last Edit: February 05, 2018, 01:42:17 am by funkydwarf »
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Vivalas

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #23 on: February 04, 2018, 11:27:32 pm »

On the subject of migrant waves, I find larger waves annoying because it is a lot of work even with utilities like labor manager ot DF therapist to find a place for them all, so I prefer smaller waves that take less time away from whatever I was doing before hand, which can be life-or-death if I was working on something that required precise timing (like digging into a magma tube) when a migrant wave comes.

That's about the only annoyance I've had with migrants though. As others have said, there is almost always a job you can find for a dwarf, even if just as a test subject for your medical residency program
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #24 on: February 05, 2018, 02:51:34 pm »

Massive migration waves don't exist?  I only make goods the fortress requires, any additional items bring me closer to FPS death.  But I need 80 dwarfs to get goblins to attack, so most migrants are indeed useless, I don't need that many but the game mechanics require that I must have them.  And don't say game mechanics don't exist, migration waves and minimum population size to access game features are game mechanics.

I am interested in what you mean by 'needing that many'.  If you want to play with a smaller ending fortress you reduce the population cap, if you want to access features that are population locked you mod the entity files or world-gen settings that control those things but still he says they are depicted badly.  How can they be depicted badly when unless you have been playing the game for a very long time everyone in the game is a migrant?

Massive migration waves don't cause any problems is what I was saying.  This is why I think the OP is a troll, since the migrants in the game are depicted the same as everyone else (who in most cases is also a migrant). 

DF is its own world, created by Tarn and Adam. Political effects desired for our own world should not be forced onto a world where they are extraneous, merely for the sake of reinforcing them in the minds of DF players. DF should remain inviolate.

You seem to be living under the illusion that there is such a thing as the a-political.
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el Indio

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #25 on: February 05, 2018, 05:24:00 pm »

I am interested in what you mean by 'needing that many'.  If you want to play with a smaller ending fortress you reduce the population cap, if you want to access features that are population locked you mod the entity files or world-gen settings that control those things but still he says they are depicted badly.  How can they be depicted badly when unless you have been playing the game for a very long time everyone in the game is a migrant?

Massive migration waves don't cause any problems is what I was saying.  This is why I think the OP is a troll, since the migrants in the game are depicted the same as everyone else (who in most cases is also a migrant). 

I didn't know that population required for sieges could be changed.  I do change the pop cap.  I played the game about 5 years ago (0.31/0.34), I only just started again with the release of 0.44.  Back then there was a lot of angst on the forums about the size of migration waves, it wasn't uncommon to receive more than 40 dwarfs at a time.  I thought the negative representation OP was on about was from the forum. 

As for not needing that many dwarfs, the more there are the lower the FPS, usually.  So that it why massive migration waves cause problems, along with assigning labours for them all.  In previous versions large populations would also lead to epic tantrum spirals, but this doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
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Bumber

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #26 on: February 06, 2018, 01:28:09 am »

AFAIK, players only hate migrant waves for the burden of setting up labors and living space.
To a lesser extent they are annoyed by fishery workers in a desert fort, but these are quickly repurposed.

The real menaces are book-stealing visitor scholars. IDK if that's been fully fixed.
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #27 on: February 06, 2018, 10:02:02 am »

I didn't know that population required for sieges could be changed.  I do change the pop cap.  I played the game about 5 years ago (0.31/0.34), I only just started again with the release of 0.44.  Back then there was a lot of angst on the forums about the size of migration waves, it wasn't uncommon to receive more than 40 dwarfs at a time.  I thought the negative representation OP was on about was from the forum. 

As for not needing that many dwarfs, the more there are the lower the FPS, usually.  So that it why massive migration waves cause problems, along with assigning labours for them all.  In previous versions large populations would also lead to epic tantrum spirals, but this doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

The population required for sieges to arrive is written in the entity file of the entity you are doing the invading.  The population cap is written in the ini file.  The population/wealth caps for megabeasts to attack is written in the world-gen settings. 

At the moment the migrant waves respond to fortress wealth, this means that migrants are never a problem because you can always afford to accommodate them if they arrive.  Once capital requirements are more patchy, migrants could become a problem, in that if we needed say saws to make beds then migrants could be a problem because the number of our saws would not instantly increase as our population does. 
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SmileyMan

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #28 on: February 06, 2018, 10:37:34 am »

Joke------------------>
                    you

At least I hope it is a joke.
Jokes were outlawed three years ago.
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Bortness

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' Negative Representation of Migrants and Refugees
« Reply #29 on: February 06, 2018, 03:55:22 pm »

For what it's worth, re: keeping things apolitical -

A couple days ago after many go-arounds over several days about inserting politics into DF migrant discussions, which seems to be GoblinCookie's passion, I caught, quoted, and commented strongly on a blindingly hypocritical post of his which was absolutely bleeding with hatred and judgmentalism against people who have different political views than his.  The things he wrote were really quite hideous, to be honest.

The next day the entire set of quotes and replies was gone, deleted from the boards.  And now he's back, baiting more people with garbage political nonsense that has no place in a DF discussion.

Don't bother getting baited by his trashy replies.  If you are ever able to find his hypocrisies and illustrate them using his own words, he'll simply complain to the admins and get the discussion memory-holed.

And then he'll come right back and continue flinging feces around the room.
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