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[chucks]

Some kids just have an innate ability to be really creepy or weird that many adults happily try so very hard to achieve.

[Craftling]

The lever would be big and heavy, so the kids wouldnt be able to pull it. Something like"Urist mcChild tries to pull the lever" would be acceptable.

[Dwaref]

Right next to my old kindergarden, we had a canal. A near-stagnant, murky thing.

Inside, we had a play kitchen.
Basically it was a set of cupboards containing hard plastic cutlery, cups and plates. Tables, chairs, all that.
We even had a tap and a sink, but the faucets were removed and sealed with thick screws.

One day i concluded that i could make the tap work by opening the screws. Said and done, i grabbed a hard-plastic knife and went to bend em up.

PWOOSH, pressurized canal-water began shooting out uncontrollably into the sink, spraying all around reaching up to the roof. I guess it was canal-water, it was opaque and brown and smelled awful.

Anyway, the area was quickly evacuated by paniced caretakers, and i went home soon thereafter.

A couple days later, i'm bored and decide to do it again. I go there to realize that there are no longer screws there, but BOLTS. They probably had to call in a plumber to fix that on the spot.


Have the kids pull the lever. Feel free to be able to install security measures, but have them pull the lever.

[SirHoneyBadger]

This is a masterfully made steel lever: It menaces with spikes of child-proof plastic, training wheels, and poison safety stickers. On the lever is engraved images of dwarfs and kids. The kids are terrorizing the dwarfs. On the lever is engraved an image of a dwarf and kids. The kids are surrounding the dwarf. The kids are taunting the dwarf. The kids are throwing things at the dwarf. The dwarf is weeping. On the lever is engraved an image of a kid and a lever. The kid is pulling the lever. In the background, a Fortress is melting.

[LegoLord]

Dwaref:  You would have been beat heavily for doing things no where near that bad if you lived in the time frame DF comes from.  You wouldn't even think of doing things like that.

[chucks]

Dwaref:  You would have been beat heavily for doing things no where near that bad if you lived in the time frame DF comes from.  You wouldn't even think of doing things like that.

Hell, you would have been beat severely for doing things no where near that bad if you grew up the household that I grew up iin.

[Dwaref]

I still did it, and i didnt know any better.
I say kids pull levers if they don't grow up with innate nervous damage, permanent negative thoughts, and crippling personalities. So they never do anything at any time out of their own volition.

I might have needed some reprimanding, since i WAS going back to repeat the event later. But even a stern talking-to wouldn't have prevented this incident beforehand. Nothing would, unless my curiosity and zest for life was broken down beforehand. Talking to them, you can tell kids things all you want, but wether they 'get' you is another thing.
I'm sure some parent somewhere has been able to have an open relationship with their child, maintaining curiosity and spontaneability, while still instilling values and making themselves understood.

That sounds like a new profession. Hell, they could be used to help tantruming dwarves, and holding meetings with.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I think there should be some kind of child-proofing devices available to us, if this becomes a possibility. I don't mind if it does, providing we're provided with effective safety-measures.

Just chaining up and padlocking the lever should be enough to work. Kids might unscrew bolts, but they shouldn't be able to pick locks (even if it's judged to be more realistic).

With really dire emergency levers of disastrous impact, I might not even bother with locks. I'd either chain them up to the walls, so that multiple chains would have to be broken to manipulate the lever, or simply wall the lever off completely behind brick and masonry, with a trap set to fill the space with sand, or better yet, broken glass and axle-grease, and never tell the kids about it or where it even is, or--probably--both.

[LegoLord]

Child curiosity to such an extent is not a challenge.  If we can do something about it, it's just a matter of pressing the same buttons with each new fort to place the same preventative measures in order for each lever.  If we can't do anything about it, then it's like a random failure, just with the only thing you did having been making a structure held by a support or make a magma death trap instead of making an item and losing material.

I honestly don't see what this will add to the game aside from an "ooh, look, child sim!" feel at the cost of annoyance.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I don't think it's always a problem to be doing a little extra work (even if it's slightly tedious repetition) when the payoff is to have things make sense, as opposed to not bothering to because the game lets it slide.

Sure, it's an extra t to cross, but how many death-levers do you have in a typical Fortress? One?

If you're not wise enough to take some precautions in a rare case such as that, then you deserve to have some kid come along and drop your ass in the magma.

The game shouldn't always be responsible for covering your laziness, and death levers aren't the time to be lazy, anyway.

[Derakon]

Agreed with LegoLord. There needs to be something of interest to add to the gameplay for it to be worthwhile. Think about it from a new player's perspective: they're just figuring out mechanisms; they've probably destroyed a few fortresses in the process. They finally get a setup where they have an unpressurized cistern for their well several Z-levels below the river, that they can refill if needed. Life goes on...then six months later they start getting "Dwarf cancels sleep: dangerous terrain" spam, take a look at their fortress, and the entire lower half is unrecoverable. Whoops. There goes another newbie.

Fundamentally, new game features need to add interesting choices to the game. This suggestion basically gives you the following choice: Either you
 * Kill all of your children, or
 * Risk letting children randomly destroy your fortress, or
 * Install the childproofing system on every fortress-critical lever you set up (which is all of them).

I don't think most of the players are going to be interested in the first two options, so they'll be doing the third one instead. Every. Single. Time. So it's not really a choice at all, is it? So why have it in the game?

Now, what I would support would be the creation of playrooms, which you could fill with whatever furniture, workshops, etc, you like, and children could spend time in there interacting with the "toys" you've provided. Basically, anything in the playroom could generate a task from one of the set allowed for it, and only children could accept the task. So you put a block in there, and the child might make a wall out of it, or a floor, or a fortification (let's assume that the children are smart enough to not wall themselves in, for now) -- and, after being built, the child could tear it down. Or you put an anvil in there, and they pretend to make swords and buckets and so on. And if you really felt the need to hook up that "play" lever to something real, then by all means, who am I to stop you?

[LegoLord]

I normally have several potential death levers.  Irrigation levers, traps, waterfall stuff, etc.

It's better to abstract something out than put it in and have it merely be a tedious extra task.  I want to play my game, not waste time with the boring task of setting up that which would be necessary to keep kids away from all my levers.

It's like the moogle in single player mode of Final Fantasy:  the Crystal Chronicles.  This moogle would carry the object protecting you from the deadly atmosphere.  In hot places, you would have to find a moogle house where you would spend a half hour to a whole hour trimming off the fur so it wouldn't overheat so quickly and slow you down.  Tedious, annoying, and adds nothing to the game.  Shame, since otherwise it's one of the best games I've ever played.

[Dwaref]

Invaders should also want to look for the self-destruct levers. Some critters already pull levers.

If you're going to have dangerous levers around, i advocate that you will have to spend some time proofing them, just as you have to build the levers themselves.
I mean, you could just have the objects affected from a menu, like how you order stuff from a workshop as well.

It could be like black and white, where you have a 'hand' and can just pick up invaders, squish them and drop them into the refuse pit.
We could have a cheat menu, able to spawn dwarves and squares of magma above invaders.
WHY DON'T WE?

Really, because DF is a 'reality sim'. With fantasy elements.
I you stop elaborating on child qualities, they are doomed to be the drones they currently are!
DF does not want that.

Sure things are a hassle sometimes, reality is like that. Designating a bajillion workshops used to be work, same goes for mining/woodcutting etc. Same goes for designating each and every dwarf's labor preference. Sorting through stocks to dump low-quality leather gear made from a billion types of leather. Making cabinets and moving workshops around until you get a masterwork one that's made out of obsidian, and is masterworkedly decorated with specific gems, detailing donkeys.

A lot of this could be made easier. Designing a lever with a lock on it should be able to be done before any component is made. Just tell the game you want one, create a log on items needed, and then set them to be automatically crafted and assembled, as if from the manager menu.
Requesting a masterwork obsidian cabinet with specific decorations would be AAAWESOME!

Right now, the interface of DF is either repetitive and stupid, or fully stupidly automated. All this can be improved for the better, and i don't think we should exclude features because of it.
It's not like the stuff we're building WILL GO IN the game like right away, so instead i advocate that we keep an open mind for 'what we want to see' in-game, rather than "what we currently don't want"(based on the current game).

Some time back, i almost went ahead to write a framework for a radically different DF, which would still be the same game! People seem to often have issues with things, that are only problems since they build upon an 'unseen, never questioned' base.
To me DF is a quest, an intangible thing! It's not what it is in terms of what it exists as, it is what the ideal of it to be is!
My point is that DF will ever-evolve. Therefore we need to see it from a holistic perspective, and not let our minds take root in aspects of it.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, in this case, you're preventing the destruction of your entire Fortress from not only the predations of the kids, but also disgruntled adults, potential saboteurs, accidents, etc.

So I think it's something of a more pertinent issue than giving your moogle a haircut...

[Dwaref]

Fundamentally, new game features need to add interesting choices to the game. ... So it's not really a choice at all, is it? So why have it in the game?

Why should a feature implicate a choice? Having a feature of dwarf alcoholism isn't a choice.
They need them drinks, or go useless. Features should be there for 'completeness'.

Having a curious child flood your carelessly designed fort should evoke a 'oh shit, oh no!'-moment, and a deep realization of the game's depth, rather than a 'oh fruit RAAARGH! Stupid scripted carp!'-moment, where you rage at the game's surface.
You're not building a nice fortress using drones, really. You're helping living creatures build a society.