Print

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

Sounds great, I'd really like this!

I don't see why not.

Meh, not interested.

My family was devoured by elves and now I have a Freudian hatred of natural beauty. (non-vote)

[Dorfimedes]

So, I had an idea to create a little 1-tile farm plot in my manager's office to give him something to do when he's idle and I realized something was missing from the game. Flowers! Pots! Flowers in pots!

Basically, the plant pot could be built as furniture and the dwarf tasked with doing it would fill it up with any nearby soil, plant the appropriate seed in it and place it in the room. The plant would not only increase the value of the room based off the pot materials/quality and the value of the plant, but the owner of the room and dwarves just passing by would get happy thoughts from admiring it, just as they would with other furniture. There aren't really any flowers in the game, but the farmable plants might have some aesthetic value. The plant probably shouldn't be harvestable since that just kills the plant, currently. Flowers could possibly grow in the wilderness and be designated to be picked in a way similar to shrubs.

[weenog]

If this was human fortress, I could see it.  To a dwarf, I think this sounds too much like elf talk for comfort.

[NW_Kohaku]

Replace "flower" with "decorative fungi of different colors", and we're in business. 

I can see a dwarf growing fungi like some sort of bonzai tree. 

Anyway, this sort of thing goes in the same general class of ideas as the "dwarven hobbies" and the Class Warfare thread.  Before it makes sense, we need to have a better concept of dwarven leisure time and luxury goods, because they don't need those things now. 

[weenog]

It's not "flower" specifically that gets me.  It's throwing aside a total indifference to nature, for no tangible benefit.

[Dorfimedes]

If this was human fortress, I could see it.  To a dwarf, I think this sounds too much like elf talk for comfort.

Not my dwarves! They're, well, they're not hippies but they don't fit the stereotype either. I guess you could say they're outdoorsy?

Replace "flower" with "decorative fungi of different colors", and we're in business. 

I can see a dwarf growing fungi like some sort of bonzai tree. 

Anyway, this sort of thing goes in the same general class of ideas as the "dwarven hobbies" and the Class Warfare thread.  Before it makes sense, we need to have a better concept of dwarven leisure time and luxury goods, because they don't need those things now. 

Hmm, that makes more sense, now that I think on it, I hadn't even considered the issue of sunlight. Pretty shrooms would make a good underground counterpart to flowers, I think. If lighting is ever implemented the bioluminescent ones could make the surrounding area glow. And yeah, I thought that too, dwarves just kind of stare at the floor when they aren't talking. Maybe they could get some additional happy thoughts just from having time to themselves and getting to practice their hobbies, so the introverted dwarves could still get happy thoughts from idling.

[weenog]

Hey, my dwarves are all about animal training any time I can reasonably manage it.  But they're raising meals and disposable heroes, not something pretty and useless.  Pretty useless.    I don't like the suggestion but that seems insulting if taken in the wrong spirit.

[Dorfimedes]

Hey, my dwarves are all about animal training any time I can reasonably manage it.  But they're raising meals and disposable heroes, not something pretty and useless.  Pretty useless.    I don't like the suggestion but that seems insulting if taken in the wrong spirit.

Nah, I think you got a good point. Within the game's current framework, plants would mostly only be useful for adding to the value of a room. And I can't really say whether dwarves should care for plants. There's three ways to go about that, you could let the player try to interpret the many ambiguities of the game, let world gen decide some things (like, your dwarves could be total monsters in one world) and Tarn or Zach deciding on some canon. I don't know what direction they'll go in. But you know, you've got your hippy forts and your spartan-like ones, I don't see the harm in letting the player assume a conduct for how they'll play or trying to characterize their civilization at this point. That's already a pretty popular route, just going off of the Let's Plays.

[weenog]

Well sure, options are good, even if they're not appealing to many of the players they'll be interesting to some.  But I'd call this option a low priority.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, sort of the original point of the Class Warfare stuff was to make dwarves want to buy "nice things" of various sorts.  This, in turn, would justify most of the decorative items or various items that make dwarven life not quite as spartan, like having dwarves that pay more to drink their booze from a golden beer stein that menace with spikes of pig tail. 

The thing is, you need to build an entire system into the game for dwarves to want these goods and then rebuild the internal fortress economy in order to have dwarves that want to buy nice things make any sense.  And dwarves demanding nice things is required before putting nice things into the game is to make any sense. 

As such, the whole Class Warfare thing was a giant, convoluted way to introduce things like porcelain and advanced decorative glazes and enameled goods and mushroom sculpture gardens and the like into the game via economics and social stratification and the Personality Rewrite.  ...It's kind of amazing how convoluted the concept became, really.

[Dorfimedes]

Well, sort of the original point of the Class Warfare stuff was to make dwarves want to buy "nice things" of various sorts.  This, in turn, would justify most of the decorative items or various items that make dwarven life not quite as spartan, like having dwarves that pay more to drink their booze from a golden beer stein that menace with spikes of pig tail. 

The thing is, you need to build an entire system into the game for dwarves to want these goods and then rebuild the internal fortress economy in order to have dwarves that want to buy nice things make any sense.  And dwarves demanding nice things is required before putting nice things into the game is to make any sense. 

As such, the whole Class Warfare thing was a giant, convoluted way to introduce things like porcelain and advanced decorative glazes and enameled goods and mushroom sculpture gardens and the like into the game via economics and social stratification and the Personality Rewrite.  ...It's kind of amazing how convoluted the concept became, really.

I think I know what you're getting at, yeah. Basically what the late-game mountainhome economy should have been. I didn't check out the thread before, but I've been craving a proper capitalist fort since I started playing DF. It has very strong appeal to me, so you've got my vote on the eternal suggestions.

Well sure, options are good, even if they're not appealing to many of the players they'll be interesting to some.  But I'd call this option a low priority.

Quite true, I made the thread mainly because of how simple the concept is. If it were put into an "arc" though, it would probably work best with Kohaku's ideas. If/when elf retreats are overhauled, we'll definitely want some attention to things of this sort, it only seems proper.

And, well, you know... Flowers! What kind of sick deities took part in the creation of a world with no flowers? Stonesense's flower sprites are so pretty...

[NW_Kohaku]

Flowers are planned, as part of the farming overhaul that is to come eventually.  At the same time that we can grow trees and orchards on farms, toady intends to give us farmable flowers.

Aside from being pretty, different sorts of flowers come with their own natural pesticides, so there are farming uses for flowers, as well.  Since some flowers can repel certain insects or release pheromones that attract the predators of pest insects, they can be used to protect food crops from specific types of pests.  That's all part of the crazy interconnected ecosystem advanced farming techniques from the Improved Farming thread, though. 

[UHaulDwarf]

If it was things like rosemary or thyme or other plantstuf that makes foods taste better, I would be all for it.