Print

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

[Libash_Thunderhead]

... is cooked fish going to stay edible through the merchants' trip back to their home settlement, or even to the next town?

Broker: Do no worry, it has 60 percentage of alcohol and 10 percentage of salt. It will survive next few decades.
Merchant: Sounds good. OK, let me try a little bit...

Urist McMerchant has been found dead: dehydrated.

[Loci]

how, exactly, is cooked fish going to stay edible through the merchants' trip back to their home settlement, or even to the next town?

Drying, smoking, salting, pickling, sugaring, jellying, lye, canning, jugging, fermentation, freezing, or irradiation, though we can safely rule out the last two as being past the cut-off date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_preservation

[karhell]

Alternatively, the merchants are just buying themselves a snack for the way back.

[mirrizin]

My opinion on exploits is that if you don't like them, don't use them. Some of us prefer not to spend the entire game obsessing over the scarcity of plump helmets.

Some players like to have a manageable game far as military strategy because they have other goals in mind. I think I'd rather have a comparatively safe game that you can mod to make more challenging than a high challenge game that has to be modded down if you want to play it with less pressure.

Though that's an interesting enough thought that I think it'll become its own thread....

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

And besides, there are many cooked meals (like breads, meats) that can last for months.

[mirrizin]

And would this challenge at more fun to the game, or just tedium?

[letsdance]

And would this challenge at more fun to the game, or just tedium?

increased challenge is very likely to increase the FUN!

[gchristopher]

I think it's legitimate to want to improve gameplay consistency, but you really have to be careful with how you choose what should be "fixed."

For example, Quantum Stockpiles:

It's hard to consider quantum stockpiles an "exploit." I just dropped a sock less than three feet away from another sock, already on my floor. Behold! A quantum stockpile! (And time to clean the living room.) Really, it's just a pile of stuff.

What's the alternative? Dropping a sock means it levitates one z-level above the single sock sitting on the floor below it? Somehow have objects displace each other sideways? 

In current practice, quantum stockpiles are the salvation of forts, because they help you limit open pathable space, which many contend is the #1 FPS killer.

Maybe in the far, far, optimized future, you might want to "fix" that "exploit," but right now that's such a detrimental idea that it shouldn't even be under consideration. (Same with atom-smashing, as others have pointed out. Right now, it's indispensable.)


More murky would be things like the Water Reactor and Impulse Ramp:

These are clearly counterintuitive and silly. But they accomplish goals that don't have reasonable alternatives in-game currently, especially the impulse ramp.

Should we take away something that opened up entire fields of dwarfputing, trap design, automated crazy Fun dangerous hauling options, and all the other creative uses that all the players here have found, just because it's counterintuitive and silly? It's pretty easy to classify it as an "exploit," but is it really a bad thing?

Why destroy all the fun that so many players have been having without first creating some reasonable alternatives?


It's definitely worth keeping a focus on things that might be really worth tuning for improved gameplay. Probably improving the trading dynamic somehow is worth considering.


But if I had a say in what Toady was doing, I certainly wouldn't prioritize any of that over him continuing to develop toward his full vision of an everything-simulator that also happens to be a game. Following that, I'd encourage him to think about ideas for more interesting invaders/challenges to a fort. After that would be a serious attempt at profiling the game over time and trying to fight FPS death.

Then, way, way down the list, where one person really isn't going to reasonably get to it, would be looking at "exploits" that do me absolutely no harm if I choose to ignore them.

[SixOfSpades]

how, exactly, is cooked fish going to stay edible through the merchants' trip back to their home settlement, or even to the next town?

Drying, smoking, salting, pickling, sugaring, jellying, lye, canning, jugging, fermentation . . .

All of which are perfectly good methods for preserving foods, and all of which (with the obvious exception of fermentation) are entirely absent from DF. Currently, the only way to prevent food spoilage is for a dwarf to set down a stack of food, sternly point his finger at it, and firmly tell the food that it is not allowed to spoil because it is located in a "food stockpile", whatever that is.
Which, in itself, could be thought of as an exploit, because although dwarves would certainly know of & practice techniques like curing & twice-baking (and refrigeration, depending on the biome), the "food stockpile = magic" mechanic allows (and indeed practically forces) the automatic preservation of all foods for an infinite length of time.
Which, of course, plays into the whole idea of agriculture itself as an exploit, in that farming is so ridiculously overproductive that a single tile of farmland per dwarf is enough to sustain a thriving population indefinitely. But when you consider the current ease-of-gameplay safety measures like dwarves only eating once per month, it's pretty clear that Toady intends to give the food & agriculture systems a major overhaul at some point, and has left plenty of belt-tightening room for when he does so.

And would this challenge at more fun to the game, or just tedium?

That depends on whether or not the Manager's functions would extend to orders like "Maintain an inventory of between 10 and 25 (fish roasts) or (meat roasts) at all times", and "Increase stockpile of hardtack by 100 each year". If such housekeeping matters were not automatic and had to be attended to by the player each time, that would get old real fast. But if the Manager could indeed handle it, then it should add a good amount of fun, with dwarves getting happy thoughts from setting up the fort's first Kitchen & enjoying the first hot meal they've had in months . . . and unhappy thoughts from being last in line at the cafeteria, so there was no more chicken soup left & they had to gnaw on some month-old goat jerky instead. Realism! Immersion!

[Edward_Tohr]

how, exactly, is cooked fish going to stay edible through the merchants' trip back to their home settlement, or even to the next town?

freezing, or irradiation, though we can safely rule out the last two as being past the cut-off date.

Hey, with the new material specification orders, making ☼large stone pot☼s out of ice or pitchblende is easier.