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[Tamren]

Few ideas i thought up     , whenever i run into a problem or annoyance while playing it always gets me thinking. Most of the stuff is funny (diseased cow/deer catapult ammo) other stuff is just way too complicated for now but awesome (army level formations ala rome total war) and even less of it is applicable now. But this is one of them.

Right now, all workshops are simple 3X3 constructions. You pick up a boulder, drag it to where you want and DING, workshop!

Well that seems a bit too easy.

So instead of:
Stone --> a bit of fiddling = masons workshop
The formula would go:
Dwarves clear area -> build foundation -> gather components and tools -> worker assembles components and workshop is done.

1. Area cleared smoothed/paved/propped up with stilts.
The reason for this is pretty obvious, a stable and safe foundation is required for any kind of work. When you need an area cleared any dwarf can help. If the item removed has a stockpile then they will take priority over other jobs, otherwise the objects will be dumped in the nearest empty space.

If the workshop is built outdoors you need to prop it up onto something stable. Inside the cave on stone floor you simply need to smooth the floor. If it is in an area that regularly gets flooded, such as a mill beside the river then you will need to put it on a raised platform.

The materials usable for this are stone, wood, metal and maybe glass but it might be too fragile.

2. Workshop tools gathered or produced.
For most workshops all that is needed is a work surface and a couple tools. Some just need the tools.

The very first shop you will make is the masons shop. A mason needs nothing but a patch of empty space, a hammer and a chisel. A chair and table would make him happier but for now those are not needed.

From there you build the other workshops. A simple block of stone works for a table, an actual table works better but takes longer to build. As you create more workshops and work your way up the "tree" you should constantly upgrade the workshops with the best components you can produce.

Not all workshops can be made of crude components. A loom for example needs to be made by a carpenter before use.

The tools used at the workshop vary. A mason needs only a hammer and chisels. A carpenter needs a hammer, nails, a saw and various other components.

The main tools are seperate items and have a quality. THis includes hammers and hatchets, picks and woodcutting axes. Everything else is simply lumped into a bag of "masons tools" or "carpenters tools" these cover all the periferal knick knacks like chisels, files, drills and what have you. The whole bag of tools works for any job performed by that class and has 1 single quality. Craftdwarfs tools work for glassblowing, weaving and all the others for example.

Dwarves bring tools with them, unless they are used in combat they will never break so you probably wont need to replace them. Later on you will want to get your smiths to craft better tools. They are also a valuable trade good.

Note that when you start a new fortress, you bring along a full set of tools for ALL professions. If your party includes craftsmen they will also bring a set leaving you with extras, so dont panic.

If a dwarf is assigned to one specific workshop, he will leave his bag of tools there and only carry around his main tool. This lets him carry less, the tool can be used in combat but might break, combat is covered in another post that i havent finished writing yet.

Assembly:
Once you have everything ready to go, a worker of the proper job class shows up and puts all the components together.

When he is done, you have a functioning workshop. All of the above seems like a lot of work but now the fun starts!

Expansion:
With this system the workshop is modular. All the components and tools can be upgraded as needed by a built in menu. Better quality tools affect the products made and the mood of the dwarf using them. Later on, you will need a high enough tool quality in order to make other items of a certain quality.

All workshops count as seperate rooms in terms of value, if you smoothe or engrave the walls or floor it will add to the value of the room. When the nobles roll around they might demand that you create a workshop that is fancy enough to meet thier tastes, much like how they require personal rooms of a certain quality.

If you need to move the workshop it is not dissasembled. Instead it is packed up into a pile. Depending on how you made the foundation, the new area is prepared or the existing foundation is also packed up and moved to the new site. Once that is done all the components of the workshop are hauled over and work begins again. This is MUCH faster then the method we have now.

3X3 is needed for one single workstation. Instead of building custom stockpiles and seperate workshops, you can add onto the existing workshop and expand it.

You can do this twice. The workshop starts as a 3X3 space.
###
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###
The first expansion turns it into a 5X5 space. The actual workstation can be moved around inside the boundary.
#####
#####
#####
#####
#####
What this gives you is 16 empty spaces inside the workshop.

If left empty the worker can use these spaces to store items. With the added room it is much harder for a workshop to become cluttered. If the item produced fits into a bin or barrel, you can place one inside the workshop. What happens is the worker automatically puts the finished item into the container instead of leaving it sitting on the workstation. When the bin is full it is flagged for hauling so its better to have multiple containers on-site to keep production smooth.

Oh a small side note, for this to work you would need to be able to set stockpiles to only accept full containers. Even better put in the ability to reserve space within the stockpile for full containers. Far as i know this would not be hard to program.

You can use these empty spaces in multiple ways. Say this was a forge and you wanted metal production to be quick and efficient.

You designate 8 of those empty workshop squares to hold ore and fuel, this functions just like an ore stockpile that takes from all existing ore stockpiles, bins can be added if you wish. Now the furnace operator has everything he needs within hands reach.

The advantage over custom stockpiles is that these are permanent and saved into the workshop configuration. If you pack up the workshop and move it, these stockpiles go too.

They are also more customizable, a regular stockpile could be set to store both silver and copper for example, but you cannot control the amount of each without making seperate piles, just the overall maximum. With a workshop stockpile you could set it so that it stores 4 pieces of ore of every type. As soon as the furnace operator grabs one piece of ore, a hauler will be told to restock the box, this helps keep the production uninterrupted.

As well as stock piles you can also put in other furniture. As mentioned before, somewhere to sit will make the worker happy. You could also add a table to go with the chair and a pantry.

The pantry which i invented just now        is a small cabinet that holds up to 5 items of prepared food and 5 of drink. Ordinarily stockpiles with barrels work as well but a pantry only takes up one square of precious workshop space and can be set to only stock specific foods. A worker with his favorite snacks at hand is a happy one! and having booze close at hand is never a bad thing. Dwarves not actively working will head for the dining hall instead

Increased efficiency is not the only things you can do, there is still one expansion left. Instead of making it a solid 7x7 square which is structurally unsound. The expanded workshops instead takes the form of a 7x7 square notched on all corners.
X#####
#######
#######
#######
#######
#######
X#####
This really becomes interesting now, because with the expanded workshop you can fit up to 4 seperate work stations into the space available. 4 might be a bit much though. Anyway, with all the work centralized efficiency goes through the roof. Each workstation can be assigned to a seperate dwarf, orders can be given to a specific station, or to the entire workshop as a whole.

This also opens up the possibility of large scale projects that can only be accomplished by multiple workers under the same roof. Perhaps big siege engines or very complex mechanisms.

Speaking of siege engines, a single siege workshop workstation spans 5x5 tiles isntead of 3X3. When it gets expanded it gets a bit thicker and much longer like so:
#####
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to
X#####X#####
#############
#############
#############
#############
#############
X#####X#####
and again after that so that it spans 7X19 with notches to prevent collapse, this might seem overly large but again, this allows for multiple stations and catapult components are VERY big. You might want to have a single station in a fully expanded room simply to prevent it from getting cluttered super fast. Note that this room can be oriented vertically as well.

Oh and one thing i forgot to mention. Each type of workshop/furnace has a different floorplan, furnaces for example have one impassable square at the top, the furnace itself. When you are building workstations you can rotate them so that they are oriented however you wish.

Sound fun?    

This of course means a lot of extra effort, but it would be helpful in the extreme.

*edit: room layouts werent holding the proper shape, how do you guys do that? -_-

[ May 17, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[ May 17, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[ May 17, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[Katawa]

Souonds annoying, I'd rather just site another shop.

[Tubal_Cain]

You have some good ideas,  not sure how feasible they all are though.  I think tools for specific jobs has been mentioned before and  is a good idea.  Modular upgrading of workshops is a great idea.

[Silveron]

quote:
*edit: room layouts werent holding the proper shape, how do you guys do that? -_-

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[Veroule]

I think it would be nice to add the ability to stockpile materials directly in the workshop.  Perhaps as part of the Profile screen for workshops you could set a number of materials to be stockpiled in the shop.  They would count towards clutter in that shop, but would reduce how many stockpiles we have to have lining the hallways of the fortress.

Certain workshops wouldn't make much sense for this unless they included other things.  For example putting a cage directly into a butchers shop.

Sizing of a shop would also be cool, but I think it would have to be done right from the start.  Very recently I had a dwarf creating a lavish meal.  He grabbed 4 different stacks of quarry bush leaves for the meal, and those were big enough to make the shop badly cluttered.  Bigger shop would mean more items before it becomes cluttered.

[Tamren]

Those stilts i mentioned.

I just realized you could use them for more then foudnations.

If you made a raised platform on stilts to function as a road, it would not get flooded. Dwarves could walk happily on top and not get swept off to thier doom.

The only disadvantage is you cant engrave the floor, but who engraves the riverside anyway? Plus a masterwork road would make the dwarves happy enough as it is.

[nicholasneko]

with the idea of the growing workshops, why not do like they did with dungeon keeper? allow you to designate floor tiles as a type of room, if so many are linked together it forms a room, and then every so many squares added on (think how blocks go to roads) the room allows something new? mathematical formula to cut down on the programming, say so many squares and you can add another worker in the room at the same time, and for each so many squares you get this much storage space..

as well inroom storage would be quite nice, as well as being able to assign carriers to a room, so they keep it supplied with raw materials and keep taking the finished goods to the store room.

[ June 20, 2007: Message edited by: nicholasneko ]

[Markavian]

DK is such a great game. I loved expanding workshops to see what cool extra items would appear in the corners, and it was great seeing creatures gravitate towards tables / bookshelve's to do their tasks.

Dreamily enough, this would also be cool to see in DF, but I'm not too fussed. My main frustration with workshops at the moment is the 'fixed' layout of rooms, and the annoying way they block doorways and things... I'd be much happier if workshops could be placed like 'refuse piles', with a minimum area (3x3, 5x5) in order to operate, like DK works. The additional space could factor in to room 'plesantness', or 'efficiency', or work as a preference for certain dwarves. I.e. "perfectly square" rooms might please "neat and tidy" dwarves, where as 'fiddly / finnicky' rooms with lots of 1 tile corners might please "messy genius" dwarves, and give bonuses to production.

If there was such as thing as 'bonus production', it'd be useful to see this as a value when viewing a workshop. E.g. 'workshop stats' - "efficiency, temperature, location, plesantness, (clutter), inspiration"...

Example, nearby statues, or finely crafted tables/cabinets could add 'inspiration' to workshops.

Just thoughts. Thinking. Dreaming. What fun.

[Core Xii]

quote:Originally posted by Markavian:
<STRONG>DK is such a great game. Bla bla bla, bla bla. Yada bla bla, yada yada.</STRONG>

I completely agree. In fact, I would go into even such detail as to place down every component of a workshop individually in the designated area (oven, table, chair, etc.)

[nicholasneko]

thank you core ^.^ yes thats the idea they used in theme hospital, you made a room of X by Y size, then you were in a new menu, where you picked what you wanted in the room and where it would go, then and only then was the room finished.

[ June 20, 2007: Message edited by: nicholasneko ]

[Sean Mirrsen]

I've had this idea for some time. I'm not sure if it's the same (the base principle is, the details are not), so I'll post it here.

First question to self. What makes a workshop? It's not the area, it's only the tools. So, we need a system that will define "workshops" based entirely on the tools required.
Second question. How to make it so the system is applicable to the game in question? Well, I think it can be done in much the same way bedrooms are. There should be one "central" spot in the 'shop, one tool always used. It's a chisel for a mason, an anvil for a smith, a hatchet for a carpenter, and so on. From this "primary" tool, a room is extended. It will define the extents of the 'shop, just for task simplification. Then there are the secondary tools. Of course, without these "secondary" tools work might not be possible entirely (as with the smith's hammer), but for the sake of reuseability let them be that. These 'tools' are tables, racks, furnaces, anything else you can think of. They are not placed specifically within a workshop, they simply happen to exist. Now, once you specify a task for the workshop, the unit assigned for the task checks availability of 'secondary' tools, according to the list specified by the task. For 'mobile' tools, like hammers, it checks the entire stockpile. For stationary ones, it checks the designated area of the shop. Now, some of these tools, according to the task, would be absolutely required (you can't expect a smithy to work without a hammer), but some would be optional, with either speed, or quality diminishing if they are lacking. For example, a carpenter can make crude bolts and furniture with just a hatchet, but using a saw, a hammer, and some kind of sand paper (or whatever you'd expect him to use) would allow him to make better items, while using a table would speed up creation.
The job itself then would not consist of simply sitting in the shop, but a series of actions involving the available tools. The smith, while making a weapon, would first run with bars to the furnace, then take them to the anvil (preferably with tongs), them hammer then into shape, then cool the resulting weapon if a water bucket is present, then take it back to the furnace to heat it again, then back to the anvil for final strokes, then off to sharpen the thing. (at least that's how I see it. My knowledge of smithing consists entirely of experiments in Gothic and Dark Messiah)
Also, these 'secondary' tools could be used by several workshops at once. Not only by several identical workshops, as is often done with furnaces and forges, but several different ones - as could be with the said hammer that can be used by the mason, the carpenter, or the smith (the smiths can use a twohanded hammer for this purpose as well), or any chairs and tables that can be used for various purposes.

I'm not exactly sure about the feasibility of the idea, but that's all I got.

P.S. My 22nd BDay was yesterday.  

edit: now that I think of it, workshops with a 'mobile' primary tool could be set up with no initial materials...  although even the mason can't work without a stone workbench, so these won't be common, I guess..

[ June 21, 2007: Message edited by: Sean Mirrsen ]

[Zereth]

quote:Originally posted by Sean Mirrsen:
<STRONG>edit: now that I think of it, workshops with a 'mobile' primary tool could be set up with no initial materials...  although even the mason can't work without a stone workbench, so these won't be common, I guess..</STRONG>

Sure he can, he can sit on the floor. He won't work as well and/or fast, and he won't _like_ it, but all he needs is a hammer and chisel to start with, which he can use to make a stone table to do future work on. EDIT: Which I guess would mean the minimum size of a masonry workshop would be one tile, enough space for a dwarf to sit down with a rock and start chiseling.

You'd probably also want to be able to build, say, a tool rack and assing tools to it specifically, so that your master mason won't find that some engraver has grabbed one of his array of variously-sized and shaped chisels (which he needs to keep up the quality of his work) to go engrave a picture of dwarves and dwarves (the dwarves are playing volleyball with the dwarves) on the far side of the fortress, meaning he can't work on that marble statue your mayor wants.

[ June 21, 2007: Message edited by: Zereth ]

[Faces of Mu]

This is a really interesting discussion about how people visualise the workshops and their functions.

I really like the expandable workshop idea as if from some central feature like Sean said about bedrooms. I also agree with Katawa that the deconstruction and transport of workshops isn't necessary under the current system. Yet, the idea that workshop output quality is dependent on the features and quality of the workshop is nice.
I'd be concerned that introducing extra limitations on output based on these features would add a whole layer of micromanaging I don't really need right now (consider just how many jobs are queued that frustrate us right now, and how little we want gets done because we can't control the dwarves like we want to. Think, also, what playing would be like if item construction was divided into several smaller steps, all the more interruptable by needs such as eating, drinking and bum scratching!). However, it does make more sense and make it more realistic. I would love to see a novice mason churn out decent doors if he were working with a masterpiece obsidian chisel, and to be turning out doors one grade higher than rolling rocks if he were, say, chiselling with a rock (this would be extra special when magic is incorporated and tradesdwarfs create spontaneous magical artefacts because they used that hammer made from the weird glowing rock found deep within!).

I'm happy at the moment that workshops don't specify what is in them and that they can still operate because Grokaebmi Gfjsak is engraving with the only chisel on the other side of the fortress. And I'm also happy that Toady only needs to make a workshop LOOK like a workshop and that he doesn't need to spend the effort labelling and naming each of those 9 tiles we currently see.

Great speculations!

[ June 21, 2007: Message edited by: Faces of Mu ]

[Sean Mirrsen]

He doesn't, but I can clearly see, for example, the anvil and the furnace at the smithy, the barrels and weird devices at the brewery, and other such things. The tiles for displaying individual components in a workshop are already in place, only a system that would split them and re-form them together as custom workshops would be needed now. It's not possible currently, because it needs stack splitting, items of various completeness, and better job AI first.
Speaking of various completeness. Novice workers could be set to churn out pre-completed items, like rough sword blades, that master crafters would make into fine swords. It would kinda clutter the already hard-to-grasp industrial interface though..

[Tamren]

If we have fine enough control to make burrows im sure we could do workshops the same way. Problem is if it becomes too complicated it would just be annoying.

So say you tell your dwarves to make a masons shop. They will demand an empty 3X3 space. You build the space, they set up a working workshop. The effort needed ends there.

But if you want to have finer control over the whole thing, you can design and configure everything from the floor plan on down to whether or not you want elephants engraved on the head of every hammer, or pie instead.

That way, you do not HAVE to do everything by hand, but you can if you want to. Pre-defined workshop configurations would be pretty easy to make, and you could offer different sizes.