Dwarf Fortress > DF Suggestions

Civil Service and Attributes

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qalnor:
I tried to see if this had been suggested previously a few different ways, and couldn't find anything, so I'm going to go ahead and suggest it. The first part of this is to hide dwarf attributes at the beginning of the game. You might be given some vague notion about how strong a dwarf is, or how agile, but it would be rather vague indeed and might even be party dependent upon the dwarf's impression of himself. Secondly, add an intelligence attribute, and add new attributes for each of the attributes which are the effective limits (either soft or hard, I like soft limits better in general but they are also more complicated to implement well) for that attribute for that dwarf. This is to say, if strength ranged from 1 to 20, and dwarves typically began the game with a strength of 3-5 with some few starting a little stronger or weaker, there would also be another number that represented how far that dwarf could hope to develop his strength before he would 'peak'. Next, base each dwarfly skill off of one or more of the attributes. Each skill should require N in each stat to acquire novicehood, and another number which would represent the point past which the dwarf can achieve full mastery in the skill. For example, hammerdwarfing might require a 5 strength to even reach novice status, but in order to become a hammermaster it might require a 15 strength. During the course of becoming a hammermaster, his strength would of course raise on its own, but if it stopped at some point because of his stat limit his training would be complete. In some cases you might have a skill which requires more than one skill. To become a novice blacksmith you might need a 5 strength to even get started but only a 1 intelligence stat; but to become a master you might only need a 10 strength but would require a 15 intelligence or somesuch. These limits would also allow you to make it fairly difficult to acquire certain skills early on in the game, because a dwarf would have to either be very lucky or train up to achieve the basic stats.Finally, we come to the idea I started with, which is adding a civil service noble position, who is a dwarf with an office containing at least two chairs and a desk. This dwarf evaluates the capabilities of other dwarves, and gives you an increasingly good idea of what they'd be good at. In the beginning you would just get a better idea of the dwarf's particular stats, but as your civil service dwarf (who would himself have to be one of your smarter dwarves, despite the fact that you would have no way of knowing which one would be smart enough yet) got better and better, you would get a clear notion of what evaluated dwarves would be best at, and whether they could achieve their maximum potential in any skill or if, perhaps, they should be sent off to the front lines be put on permanent haul+pump duty.Finally (and I think this has been mentioned in other contexts) corruption could be fun here as well. A dishonest civil service dwarf would give you a false impression of the skills of other dwarves based on how much he liked them or not, whereas an honest one would usually try to do good (but watch out if his child wants a job).

WillNZ:
Basically a "human resources" dwarf? Also hires motivational speakers and directs team-building exercises.I can see this as a late game thing. I assume that the seven-dwarves you begin with are hand-picked, and it would just be absurdly annoying to not know any of their capabilities.How about this: you set the task you need to find the best dwarf for, say, "hunting". The civil service dwarf interviews all candidates... that is, no job peasants. When the civil service dwarf finds the right candidate, he automatically  sets the dwarf's labour prefs so you do not have to do it. This would be IMMENSELY useful with further updates when personality traits will reflect behavior a lot more, and saves you a lot of looking at lists of personality profiles.

Lazer Bomb:
I think that whole idea is not really something in my tastes, because it would get annoying to not know what attributes my dwarves have. I also don't like the idea that there is a limit to the dwarves. In my games, I enjoy trying to get each of my dwarves to as high skill and attributes as I can.I also would not like having certain skills not available in the early game, because I like getting the more complex industries up earlier.The corruption idea is a good one, but I personaly would not like it.

qalnor:
quote:I can see this as a late game thing. I assume that the seven-dwarves you begin with are hand-picked, and it would just be absurdly annoying to not know any of their capabilities.Well, I was thinking about this. My inclination would be for those dwarves to be generated in the same way as normal dwarves, but for their stats to be shuffled to be optimized for the skill selections you make for them. So you would have 7 sets of stats, still hidden, and the game would just pick the best one for each dwarf. If there are ties then I don't know, maybe the dwarf higher on the list would get the more favorable stats.I guess I wouldn't even have a problem with knowing them from the beginning, I just kind of like the idea of really starting from something very close to nothing and maybe just having to deal with a few crapapples. quote:How about this: you set the task you need to find the best dwarf for, say, "hunting". The civil service dwarf interviews all candidates... that is, no job peasants. When the civil service dwarf finds the right candidate, he automatically sets the dwarf's labour prefs so you do not have to do it. This would be IMMENSELY useful with further updates when personality traits will reflect behavior a lot more, and saves you a lot of looking at lists of personality profilesThis is a pretty cool extension of it, yeah. Obviously I think players would want to be able to ultimately still do some tweaking themselves, but having a system like this would be pretty cool. To add another layer to it, you could mix the salary structure into it as well. Your dwarves might quit their current jobs if something new opens up and they think they might have room for more advancement in another field. They would then go to the civil service dwarf and apply along with everyone else. This would add even more fun to the corruption end of things, because a corrupt civil service administrator could actually take bribes in exchange for securing a dwarf a more favorable position. quote:and it would just be absurdly annoying to not know any of their capabilities.I want to hit this again really quick. There are some people who would think this would be annoying in general, and I think it should probably be a disableable feature. There is a risk of tediousness, but I think there is also a hope for people to have fun with it, because as it is right now any dwarf and every can be the best dwarf, but this would add a challenge to building up a really good and well managed population of workers, each having special and meaningful advantages and disadvantages.

WillNZ:
quote:This is a pretty cool extension of it, yeah. Obviously I think players would want to be able to ultimately still do some tweaking themselves, but having a system like this would be pretty cool.To add another layer to it, you could mix the salary structure into it as well. Your dwarves might quit their current jobs if something new opens up and they think they might have room for more advancement in another field. They would then go to the civil service dwarf and apply along with everyone else.  This is a very organic way to manage dwarves. Changing professions manually can be a huge hassle. If you are going to implement hidden traits, it's best to do it this way. I think as dwarves get more complicated and differentiated, a system like this is really mandatory. Plus, being able to manage professions from a single screen is just of awesome convenience.Before we get white-collar crime, there should be some way of detecting and punishing such miscreants.

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