Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NW_Kohaku]

It is nice to dream. I'd love to see this all happen, but Toady will be old, gray, and have a 10 foot long beard by the time it comes to pass.

Relatively speaking, this should be fairly easy to code.

Creating a more complex decision algorithm isn't nearly as difficult as creating the framework for dwarves to make decisions and pathfind and know how to operate workshops or machines or any of the other things dwarves already do.

This just asks the dwarf to roll a die against a chart of the things he or she is tasked with doing, needs to do, or wants to do, weighted by the severity and necessity of the action, and shaped by their personality traits and view of the society they are in.  (I.E. how badly do they need to eat versus how much of a workaholic they are?)

...

Look at that, another post that was going to be a brief sharing of my thoughts turned into a wall of text    I'm having too much fun with this thread.

Something I understand entirely too well.  (Have you seen my latest work?  I'm still only about half done with writing the whole proposal.)

I can understand the notion of having a hard barrier you have to accept to walk through, and think that such a thing can be beneficial. 

The problem I see is that I don't want it to be a sudden leap in resolution.  I don't want you to have a fortress that is running fine one instant, and then suddenly has dwarves rebelling against the powers that be for a lack of amenities the instant you push a single button.  I want to boil the frog slowly as the heat only gradually goes up, so that they don't particularly notice any sudden spike in the difficulty, just that it is getting more difficult.

As for "hardcoded", I would point out that all positions of nobility are now in the raws.  This would have to be raw-ified as a matter of course.

I think that to an extent, a creation of a merchant class/guild representatives/enough children being born, you can have enough dwarves with jobs that don't demand their full time, as well, that are valuable enough to keep around, anyway.  Some sort of commodity trader dwarf that can get money or valuables shipped in on demand so long as you keep him fat and happy, or children that need something constructive to do with their time, lest they start playing pranks.

Something like children accumulating in a fortress becoming a problem is a fairly good example of how something could be less based upon hitting specific milestones - a few children that just follow their mothers around are no problem.  When they start getting numerous enough to get into little groups and then when those groups turn into gangs, then they start becoming a problem.  They're more interested in the kids their own age than following their parents around anymore when there are more of them, and social cliques to get into or fail to get into.  Now you have to give their idle hands something to do, lest they become the HFS's playthings.

[EnDSchultz]

The problem I see is that I don't want it to be a sudden leap in resolution.  I don't want you to have a fortress that is running fine one instant, and then suddenly has dwarves rebelling against the powers that be for a lack of amenities the instant you push a single button.  I want to boil the frog slowly as the heat only gradually goes up, so that they don't particularly notice any sudden spike in the difficulty, just that it is getting more difficult.

Maybe you can make your fortress relatively isolated from the rest of Dwarfdom, so even if it is a stinking pit of filth and poverty, it's all your Dorfs have ever known so they won't even know of all the fancy luxury goods and smooth floors and big rooms with statues and all the cushy amenities of upscale Dwarven society!

[NW_Kohaku]

Maybe you can make your fortress relatively isolated from the rest of Dwarfdom, so even if it is a stinking pit of filth and poverty, it's all your Dorfs have ever known so they won't even know of all the fancy luxury goods and smooth floors and big rooms with statues and all the cushy amenities of upscale Dwarven society!

That doesn't happen in the typical fortress, where births are rare, and fortresses don't last long enough for the children to grow up.  Most dwarves are migrants.  They'll know what it was like back there, they just came from there two years ago.

It's only in "generation forts" that sort of thing applies.

Still, there's a sort of Maslow's Hierarchy thing that springs up - even if you never give them an idea of what it's like "on the outside", then they still have desires for things like comfort and better foods and social interaction.

[parlor_tricks]

I like thinking of having a cool transition from survivalists->outpost->City, emerge organically.
In the initial stages the dwarfs are focused, controlled and tight knit. As populations start going up, spontaneous organization occurs between people with enough time to do stuff. So industrious dwarves don't party, and gain skills by “tinkering” in unused workshops instead. Get enough skilled dwarves and they will decide to form a guild. Guilds can then manage your mandates and also would plug into the economy if it gets turned on.

Perhaps you could have a guild form once you have 3-5 people with the same caste/work group in your fortress. This way you can get a curve naturally which depends on the success and growth of your fort, which also mimics organization in real society.

(Guilds could also demand Guild Halls which would have their own workshops and storage space, where they make superior quality goods on a regular basis and train people faster.)

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, guilds were part of the game in old versions, before I actually played the game, so I can't really say much about them besides what I can get from the wiki's page on .23 nobles.  However, from what I can read of that, aside from the fact that you could get up to 38 nobles in your fort at once (!!!), they often either only activated certain aspects of your interface, like the bookkeeping or activating trade with humans, but many of them were just "Hey! You crafted 50 axes! I'm the noble in charge of liking axes.  I like Axes! Welcome to Whereverfortress! I like axes!"

Apparently, people want their return, with some more functionality, though, because it's really up there in the ESV.

Anyway, I did some bits on clans as social structure (as a way of dancing around outright guilds but still having social groups, although this would be based upon family structure) back in the Class Warfare thread that sparked this thread as a spin-off.  Clans also make the whole social concept more rigid and complicated the bigger the fort becomes, as you're now dealing with social structure based upon who you are related to, not just what you can do.  The more members of an extended family arrive, the more political clout they can have when they band together, or when their clan allies with other clans.  Basically, the larger the clumps of related dwarves there are, the more they have influence over the fortress's internal politics.

[NW_Kohaku]

Just to put this quote someplace where I'll remember where to find it in the dwarfbot thread:

are you saying that dwarfs may emigrate to the sprawl if fortress housing prices are too high? More broadly, what are your plans for emigration during fortress mode in general?

If fortress housing prices are too high for everybody, they should be lowered.  If they are too high just for few dwarves, then yeah, if an affected dwarf has some way/place to survive out in the world and nothing keeping them in the fort then they should leave.  In general, a dwarf seeing better opportunity or lack of death elsewhere should go when practical -- some of your initial dwarves especially might feel more bound by loyalty, depending on the start scenario.  A start scenario oriented around a temple or something might see many of the dwarves refusing to leave under any circumstances.  Overall, the emigration mechanics shouldn't have them squirting out of your fort at the drop of a hat, since it would often be a hard journey with an uncertain future, but you should have to work a bit to keep them.

[TolyK]

this thread?
i remember it!
yeah, i wanted to get that quote somewhere too...