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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page  (Read 1551709 times)

G-Flex

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3705 on: February 17, 2011, 03:13:11 pm »

Because I'm bored, I've decided to sort of catalog some of the ways in which the new embark screen and mineral distributions (and other resource availability issues) are causing people problems or frustration, potential reasons for those issues, and possible solutions. This way, there's at least sort of a rundown in one location, as opposed to retyping various bits of it all over the place. This is sort of for everybody's benefit, including the people miffed by how things have changed, just to make it easier to think about these changes, what they mean, and how things might go in the near future.

  • Parent civilizations tend to be lacking in available resources. We have reports of lots of cases where dwarves can't even embark with iron or steel. This is possibly because of problems tracking site/civ resources, or possibly because civilizations are not smart about choosing where they expand and build new sites. In the latter case, civilizations should attempt to expand to locations containing resources they know they're missing; there's no excuse for dwarves going 150 years without finding some sources of iron and copper and building sites there. There's also no real excuse for your starting dwarves not knowing what's available from their civilization pre-embark, preferably when you choose your civ.
  • What minerals exist on your site is far too difficult to determine. It's understandable that we don't have or need the old layer count anymore. However, it would be both realistic (enough) and less frustrating for people if the major deposits on a site were identified, such as iron, or copper, or coal, as well as possibly (but less importantly) the general classification of rock (e.g. igneous extrusive, sedimentary) near the surface, as this is stuff that isn't unreasonable to know, and prevents people from scumming constantly just to embark on an iron vein. After all, wanting to found an iron-smithing or coal-mining fortress is completely valid, and there's no huge reason we shouldn't be able to have access to some of that information (after all, how does it make sense that we know that metal and flux exist somewhere, but not that the top layer of the place is sedimentary, or that the metal is iron?). For that matter, it would be nice to treat other valuable non-metal resources such as coal, sand, kaolinite, and whatever else is useful but not tracked here, as if they're worth mentioning.
  • Trade is not robust enough to supply the player with what he does not have. Evidently, the goal is for sites to have more of a signature to them and be less "all-purpose", e.g. less of the "everything is everywhere" approach and more focus on larger deposits of fewer resources, so that trade of those resources between sites matters. However, without the trade to back that up, players are left in sort of a sticky situation, having to rely on fairly unreliable and small caravans for major resources.
  • The world just plain doesn't have enough mineral wealth. This is somewhat speculative on my part since I'm relying on what other people are telling me and I'm not sure how much is known here, but it's possible that too much of the world is simply barren in terms of mineral wealth. If this is the case, it's no wonder that civs and fortresses are lacking in these things, but it would probably also be relatively simple to adjust compared to the other things mentioned here.
  • The relative scarcity of some resources is off. Probably owing to the lack of adjustments to how veins work (so this may be fixed soon), I have heard that extremely valuable and rare metals like platinum can constitute very, very large deposits. Now, large gold mines aren't that strange, I suppose, but for things that are meant to be rare to the point that you're lucky to ever find some, like aluminum and platinum, it's pretty important to make sure they're actually as rare as they should be. In fact, when veins get adjusted, it might be worth going over minerals in general and breaking away from the old vein/cluster system, so that we can have things like realistic coal mines/layers, extremely rare platinum, kimberlite pipes in volcanic areas, and whatever else is deemed fun/realistic/necessary.
  • Inertia. Players are used to having a lot of materials and their sites being self-sufficient. Moving away from this paradigm and towards a better long-term one is fine, but people are shaken up by this level of change, especially when they're stuck in this state of limbo where the change looks bad because it isn't complete enough to be as viable as what we had before. Obviously, the only solution to that at this point is to keep on trucking and get those other features in, or, if necessary, tone down the lack of minerals until the game has the infrastructure to support it better.

That's all I can think of at the moment. There's probably more, but that's all I have rattling around in my head right now.

I'm aware that at least some of this has been considered for far longer than this release has been out, but it's still worthwhile, I think, to examine what's going on just so it's more clear to everyone.


[edit]

Added two points and added a small bit about non-metal resources to the point about the embark screen/mineral randomness.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2011, 05:11:23 pm by G-Flex »
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thvaz

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3706 on: February 17, 2011, 03:31:10 pm »

Points 1 to 3 are fine. Point 4 may hurt the development plan(Feature releases with one-two week of bugfixing). People can always stick with 31.18 and wait the necessary features being implemented. But it's Toady call, not mine.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3707 on: February 17, 2011, 04:37:52 pm »

Because I'm bored, I've decided to sort of catalog some of the ways in which the new embark screen and mineral distributions (and other resource availability issues) are causing people problems or frustration, potential reasons for those issues, and possible solutions. This way, there's at least sort of a rundown in one location, as opposed to retyping various bits of it all over the place. This is sort of for everybody's benefit, including the people miffed by how things have changed, just to make it easier to think about these changes, what they mean, and how things might go in the near future.

5. I would addend that minerals seem too rare right now on a global scale. Using the site finder to look for areas with no metals, shallow or deep, reveals that on the maps I've looked, about 1/2 to 2/3s of the map have no mineral resources that the site finder can filter.  (Excluding flux and soil types as a mineral, as those are layers.)  Minerals in general need to be more common, so that there aren't massive swaths of land with absolutely no mineral wealth whatsoever, not even microcline.  Currently, players have to hunt for rare sites where minerals can be in confluence, but this shouldn't require genning multiple worlds to find the one world where iron and coal actually do exist near one another.

6.  On a related note, platinum seems about as common in the crust of the world as most other metals, now.  We need to have that percentage that the raws have for probability of each mineral actually hooked up to some function that determines how rare the materials are.

7.  Speaking of microcline, a means of searching for or at least seeing non-metal minerals would be nice.  This means being able to see the presence of kaoline for porcelain, sand for glass, and even microcline or certain gems.  We already see clay and metal, why not sand, gems, and minerals in veins that aren't metal ores?

Of course, these complaints all get rendered a little moot if there are going to be major changes to the way veins work in general (especially 6), but after the veins are 3d-ified, then these are important balance issues to keep to mind when duct taping the whole system together.
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Untelligent

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3708 on: February 17, 2011, 04:38:16 pm »

The main problem I have so far is that I can't tell if I have sedimentary or whatever rock on the embark screen now.

I suspect that in Release 2 on the development page the on-site minerals are going to get rebalanced, however.
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Mel_Vixen

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3709 on: February 17, 2011, 04:43:45 pm »

Point 2 on gflex list i think does not actually need big setlements to be moved. I would say if the dwarfs would open some mining outposts it would be enough to scratch this issue.
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G-Flex

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3710 on: February 17, 2011, 05:04:53 pm »

NW_Kohaku: For the sake of completeness, I'm going to incorporate a bit of what you said into my other post.
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thvaz

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3711 on: February 17, 2011, 05:11:54 pm »

Point 2 on gflex list i think does not actually need big setlements to be moved. I would say if the dwarfs would open some mining outposts it would be enough to scratch this issue.

Indeed.This would be a nice addition.
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G-Flex

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3712 on: February 17, 2011, 05:15:23 pm »

Yeah, the basic point is that regardless of the kind of site or activity used, civilizations should act more intelligently. Even if they only use the kinds of sites they have now, there's still no reason why dwarves (or any other race) shouldn't choose new sites based on what the resource-oriented benefits are instead of going centuries stuck in some sort of Copper Age. Of course, if minerals in general are too scarce, that doesn't help their case.
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Mantonio

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3713 on: February 17, 2011, 06:22:22 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Why is it understandable that we don't have a means of knowing what kind of rock / soil we'll be embarking on? Why do we not need to know anymore? I fail to see how that's a good thing, it just makes it arbitrarily harder for you to get your perfect fort.

[Rant in 3... 2... 1...]

In fact, this whole new system just straitjackets you. Before this metal-apocalypse you could survive and thrive anywhere. Now you HAVE to go to certain areas just to make sure you have some kind of metal to defend yourself with. Everywhere else, the only way you can possibly make it is if you completely wall yourself in. It's unnecessary and completely arbitrary to punish players this way. Now they're be no more sea forts, no more jungle forts of swamp towns, simply because the game decided to make the earth barren.

And even if you manage to find a decent site, that is the biome you want (an extraordinary feat in itself!) you're going to be screwed over by the fact that your civilisation doesn't have iron or steel (so no anvils), or doesn't have copper meaning you have to give up half your supplies just so you can fork over three times as many dwarfbucks get a few picks and an axe!

tl;dr, this whole new system is stupid, and I mad.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2011, 06:24:10 pm by Mantonio »
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G-Flex

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3714 on: February 17, 2011, 06:26:09 pm »

Why is it understandable that we don't have a means of knowing what kind of rock / soil we'll be embarking on? Why do we not need to know anymore? I fail to see how that's a good thing, it just makes it arbitrarily harder for you to get your perfect fort.

It's understandable that you won't know every single layer of the Earth's crust, and it matters less now that the game seems to be focused more on localized mineral deposits and less on what types of layers you have. It matters more that the game tells you that you have metal than, say, granite, because layers are no longer such a guaranteed predictor of mineral wealth like they were before.

Quote
In fact, this whole new system just straitjackets you. Before this metal-apocalypse you could survive and thrive anywhere. Now you HAVE to go to certain areas just to make sure you have some kind of metal to defend yourself with. Everywhere else, the only way you can possible make it is if you completely wall yourself in. It's unnecessary and completely arbitrary to punish players this way. Now they're be no more sea forts, no more jungle forts of swamp towns, simply because the game decided to make the earth barren.

If you'd care to read the post of my that you quoted, I went over multiple reasons why this is happening and what can be done to make it more reasonable and fun for the player.

Quote
And even if you manage to find a decent site, that is the biome you want (an extraordinary feat in itself!) you're going to be screwed over by the fact that your civilisation doesn't have iron or steel (so no anvils), or doesn't have copper meaning you have to give up half your supplies just so you can fork over three times as many dwarfbucks get a few picks and an axe.

tl;dr, this whole new system is stupid, and I mad.

Again, you start your post by quoting mine, but apparently didn't get much from it. Granted, there's no guarantee that much of this will change in the near future, which would be unfortunate, but none of your complains have to do with the "whole new system" being "stupid"; it's more like most of the "whole new system" isn't even implemented yet, and the order in which it's being implemented so far isn't very player-friendly.
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agatharchides

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3715 on: February 17, 2011, 06:29:40 pm »

I wouldn't dismiss ironless maps as indefensible. I defended many forts back in 40d without it, though that was when stonefall traps were more useful. Still, you can make weapons traps of wood and glass and use drowning chambers and such. I'm not really in favor of a system where every metal is present everywhere, yeah it is harder but it is also more fun, at least to me. That said, I agree this needs some better trade to balance it out. And I also tend to agree about the lack of information. Maybe if minerals on the map were less important it wouldn't matter so much, but still.
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Jiri Petru

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3716 on: February 17, 2011, 07:14:38 pm »

(not to the post above, but those above above):

Yeah... because having valuable minerals everywhere is how things should work in a simulation of "real" geography  ::)

I never understood this "want to have a perfect site on every world square" fetish. I love the way how minerals are rare now and I love that there are actually places with no mineral veins, because otherwise, they'd be no point in trading. Now only wait till civ sites are built on intelligent spots and trade gets improved and you have a perfect economy.

EDIT: Also, it makes each embark site more unique and makes the player accommodate their strategies, which is a good thing!
« Last Edit: February 17, 2011, 07:17:57 pm by Jiri Petru »
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G-Flex

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3717 on: February 17, 2011, 07:27:03 pm »

I never understood this "want to have a perfect site on every world square" fetish.

I think this point of view makes at least a little sense with DF in a state where nothing outside your fortress is at all relevant to you, but even then, I like my sites to have actual character to them, with their own (dis)advantages. At any rate, DF is getting more cosmopolitan in the sense that your fortress will start existing within a more meaningful global context, so it's going to make less and less sense to want perfect sites with everything on them.
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Mantonio

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3718 on: February 17, 2011, 07:27:23 pm »

Well, I've been put in my place. However, I will say this.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's understandable that you won't know every single layer of the Earth's crust, and it matters less now that the game seems to be focused more on localized mineral deposits and less on what types of layers you have. It matters more that the game tells you that you have metal than, say, granite, because layers are no longer such a guaranteed predictor of mineral wealth like they were before.

But the fact that you don't have an inkling of what kind of stone you're facing does hinder you. You said it yourself that it's silly that we don't even know the top layer of stone or soil. Plus - and my biggest gripe with it is here - it means you have to savescum over and over if you want a fort made of the stone you want. Not letting us know what type of stone or soil to expect adds nothing to the game, but detracts something.

(not to the post above, but those above above):

Yeah... because having valuable minerals everywhere is how things should work in a simulation of "real" geography  ::)

But what we've been given here is nothing like real geography. What we have now is like if in the whole of Europe, only France had any minerals in it. And you couldn't get any different metals from anywhere else in the world. That's what this is like.

All in all, I just think the ball has been dropped here. Like it's been said before, this reduced metal feature has been implemented before the trading framework needed to support it was implemented. Which means were worse off than before overall.
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G-Flex

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #3719 on: February 17, 2011, 07:29:32 pm »

But the fact that you don't have an inkling of what kind of stone you're facing does hinder you. You said it yourself that it's silly that we don't even know the top layer of stone or soil. Plus - and my biggest gripe with it is here - it means you have to savescum over and over if you want a fort made of the stone you want. Not letting us know what type of stone or soil to expect adds nothing to the game, but detracts something.

To clarify, I feel that the player should be told some information, just not all information, and that the detailed layer summary we had before isn't really as important or necessary. It would still be nice to see things like "there's sedimentary stone on top, and some nice coal deposits and sand".
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