@Urist_Macnme: Unless you're an extreme purist non "cheater", there are two good ways to do away with corpses.
- Throw them into a deep pit, deep enough that they won't be seen from above. This can be done either by minecart dumping (techincally a quantum stockpile), or dumping (tying up the dumping feature for this purpose). I use the minecart one, with an atom smasher at the bottom to get rid of "items" for FPS reasons.
- Throw them into a deep pit with magma at the bottom, using either of the two methods in the previous option. Make it deep enough that you won't kill your dorfs with magma mist.
@armads: Mass/area forbid/claim (d-b-f/d-b-c) is essential to handle battle clutter, but not intuitive, nor something you ought to have to do manually.
@Gigaz: Civilian alerts is THE way to pull the civilians to the bunker. However, the morons won't drop the boulders they were hauling towards the building site, and so carry the precious boulder with them (away from its destination) when "fleeing".
The way to get kids to stay put is to permanetly assign them to a kid burrow that includes all the essential stockpiles, etc. Release when reaching maturity. At least that's my method.
Various issues assumed by me to be confusing to newbies (or middling players, for some of them): Not sorted in any particular order.
- Inside/outside/light/dark: The concepts themselves are essentially hidden, but their counter intuitive consequences are not.
- Building a "house" on the surface does nothing to protect dorfs from heat/cold.
- Plants grow just fine even when you block the sun and rain out with a roof.
- Putting up a roof will not restore "subterranean" properties such as temperature protection or the ability to grow subsurface crops.
- Why can't you build a wall close to the map edge on the surface, but you can in the caverns?
- Mud: How do you get rid of mud from accidental leaks [I don't think there's a good way at all], and why does puddles of water leave huge layers of mud behind in the first place? Muddying for planting is a really niche activity these days. Removing muddying and replacing it with a dedicated mud generation activity for the niche use ought to be considered.
- Windmills: I think I've managed to handle the tricky building correctly, but I still don't get any power. The latitude dependent concept is an interesting theoretical one, but painful in practice. You have to look at the wiki to find out what the latitudes are (once you know about the problem at all), and then try to figure out which latitude your embark is on. I'd scrap the whole mess for the time being and just constantly provide the higher (but still rather low) power level everywhere.
- Water and water pressure: Almost incomprehensible. Walls of water (reclaimed fortresses), holes in the water (ballista bolt cavern lake tree removal), U bend pressure reduction, with potential failure to get any flow at all unless a ripple is created, diagonal depressurizing. Water wheels that don't provide any power even though logically water is flowing (and conversely, flow induced into stationary water).
- Murky pool magic: Why are murky pools filled by rain, but my ponds fail to catch anything at all?
- Civilian alerts (and burrows in general): "I ensured my civilians are all safe by painting the burrow on only the safe paths, but they ignore that and still walk into harms way." It takes explanations (possibly multiple times) to get the message across that burrows only control start and end points NOT paths (and the associated concept that burrows can be made up of discrete segments but still serve their purpose if the paths between the segments are suitable).
- Distinctions between refuse and corpse stockpiles (and, as mentioned by others, the whole stockpile division is a mess). Oldtimers still fail to understand that there was a change in the system, and it makes no sense at all that Uncle Fester who was raised by a necro in the corpse stockpile and subsequently put down now belongs to the refuse stockpile (and somehow is not scary). The inability to bury his is a pure bug, though.
- What's the difference between "armor" and "clothing" in stockpiles [as far as I understand they cover exactly the same set of items, so the answer would be "none", and the reason for there to be two of them to be "historical reasons"]? Can hopefully be cleared up with a stockpile restructuring in the awfully full Premium arc.
- Meal quality serves no purpose except for trade value purposes. Extremely confusing and counter intuitive. Either scrap the concept completely until it's time to implement recipes, or restore some purpose to it.
- Minecarts and minecart logic is a whole science in itself. However, I think the near term approach ought to be to make sure players are informed it IS and advanced area so newbies are discourged from engaging in it, or at least realize it will take a fair bit of reading/video watching/experimenting to get it to work to some degree.
- Help! My fortress seems to have gotten some strange disease with differently colored splotches all over the place!: The spore release concept would do well with some kind of "read this" hint when the first spores are released, possibly by an addition to the existing cavern discovery message (the game is already paused automatically and a text displayed). This is complicated somewhat by the existence of "muddy caverns", where a similar kind of hint might refer to an explanation of what those are.
- My dorfs rush off to fish, but just continue to fish rather than clean their catches: Taking care of food ought to have a higher priority than hauling in new food for rotting/miasma generation. Thus, a fisher/fish cleaner ought to proceed to clean the catch before going out again unless someone else took up the cleaning task, food/refuse haulers ought to prioritize hauling of food that risks being destroyed over hauling of food already stockpiled and refuse, decomposing refuse over non decomposing (such as bones).
- Dorfs killing themselves and each other by caving in the floor. I think this one takes education, information, and propaganda to make players understand that dorfs have no inherent understanding of OHS or cooperation, and that's just the way things are: the overseer has to micro manage potentially dangerous mining/dismantling operations (unless Toady is struck by genius and manages to get them to behave sensibly for at least some tasks).
- Visiting and petitioning monster killers: Sounds great, apart from them not working in any useful fashion. Spending the first ½-1 year socializing/praying etc. to make up for a life's worth of missing those activities, followed by a brief excursion down to the cavern immediately aborted by a need to get a drink. Eventually going down again (all the while the bugger is a risk to the fortress by the open access to the cavern), hack up something small to lure refuse haulers to carry away the bits, and then getting hacked up itself my something, luring corpse haulers to rush to be hacked up by whatever killed the monster killer.
- Visiting and petitioning mercs: Random characters with no attribute suitability, no mental suitability, and no skills above that of random migrants. Unless fixed, they run a big risk of becoming armed and dangerous nut jobs due to needs that can't be met by residents.
- Performers assigned to taverns: They don't work in any fashion that can be expected. They don't perform more than random patrons, but the do server booze (or shove it down patrons' throats).
Visitor residency interview satires:
The Bard, Ms O'Human
- Mayor: So you want to join the fortress as a resident bard, Ms O'Human?
- Bard: ... um ... yes ... that's right.
- Mayor: So, how old are you?
- Bard: ... um, that's in my CV.
- Mayor: What's your maritial status?
- Bard: ... um, that's in my CV.
- Mayor: How good are you at poetry.
- Bard: ... um, that's in my CV.
- Mayor: Where do you come from?
- Bard: ... um, that's in my CV.
- Mayor: OK, I see where this is going. May I have a look at your CV, please?
- Bard: ... um, no, not until you've approved my application.
- Mayor: OK, welcome to the fortress. The tavern has free rooms available for residents.
The mayor looks at Ms O'Human's CV:
She's 80 years old. She suffers from crippling shyness, hates crowds, and disdains merrymaking.
She's incredibly strong, amazingly dextrous, and fearless in the face of danger, but can't carry a tune and has an iffy memory.
If the mayor had had access to the Legendary Archives, he would have seen that Ms O'Human gave up a life long occupation as a cabbage farmer two weeks ago to embark on a career as a bard.
Mayor: An incredible find. Assuming she doesn't die of old age too soon, she'll be an excellent recruit for our Human Surface Combat squads in two years.
--------------------------
The Performance Troupe (The Mystery Box):
- Mayor: So, Mr Pointyear, you want to seek residence for your performance troupe, The Mystery Box.
- Mr Poityear: Yes, that's correct.
- Mayor: How many members does the troupe have?
- Mr Pointyear: Well, that's really a trade secret, although I assume the Mystery Archives has snooped that out.
- Mayor: How many of the members did you bring with you?
- Mr. Pointyear: Didn't you pay attention to the Unit's Others screen? You should have been able to cross reference that against the Announcement screen to realize the ones not announced belong to our troupe.
- Mayor: Do you have any goblin spies in your troupe?
- Mr. Pointyear: That's a trade secret, I'm afraid.
- Mayor: Do you have anything to say to convince me we should approve your application?
- Mr. Pointyear: No, I'm afraid all of it are trade secrets. Of course, once you approve of the application the approved applicants' CVs become available to you.
- Mayor: I'm sorry, but I have to decline your application.
During the next goblin siege the invaders bypassed all the traps in the western entrance...
If the mayor had had access to The Legendary Archives, he'd found the troupe included 3 goblin civ members among the troupe members present (all of whom report every trap they travel over to Goblin Civ CIA immediately on map exit), 5 absent members that have been settled in various places to be with their master for the last 10-200 years, as well as 5 members that weren't present for unknown reasons. Over the next 5 years, 3 of the members that hadn't been present when the application was made visited the fortress as either troupe member or as announced individual visitors.
If the mayor had accepted the application, the performance troupe members had become residents, which would have changed the goblin civ members' affiliation. However, performance troupe members visiting the fortress later would get struck by schizophreia on embark entry, and get a feeling they probably belonged to the fortress, but at the same time not. They'd hover around the embark edge until either claimed by insanity or killed by invaders or wildlife.
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Topic: *We need your help to save the noobs!* (Read 98518 times)