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[GoblinCookie]

There are some actual mechanics attached to that token actually, slow learners not only have a decline in skill learning rate as you describe, but are innately by game design, unable to work jobs without third party exploitative programs like dwarf therapist, have animal-like commitment rituals that do not require marriage and in previous versions posess no sentient emotions, with only such given later on part of what looks like a accident with recessive code.

• Giving a race a particular level of skill like a gremlin's [NATURAL_SKILL:SNEAK:3] will let you enable it from your labour selection list for reference being more towards what i meant, which is especially useful if you want to tip a specially made race towards a role, as sneaking is synonymous with the hunting job.

Blind cave ogres lost much of their luster as a threat when they became passive around the beginning of the tavern arc, as per code regressions adding onto their state and pacifying previously brualistic [LARGE_PREDATOR] semi-intelligents like them. Terrifying animal like predators who were intelligent "enough" to get better at combat skills the more notoriously proficient they became if not just threatening with size & aggression anyway.

I think there might be some confusion as to the situation as it presently is in the game which is not how it was in the past, it may well be that in the old intelligent creature AI [SLOW LEARNER] had other functions.  As it currently stands the [SLOW_LEARNER] tag does not do anything except slow down the learning rate of creatures.  Said creatures can only work at things like hauling and other things that are always on by default *if* they are pets, but it is not by design since it applies equally to regular intelligent creatures that don't have the tag. 

The problem here is that they are defined as pets, as a result of a bug in the game the game interface automatically assumes that pet creatures cannot work and tells you explicitly that they cannot even though they can (it actually lies to the player).  Other parts of the code however enable pets working and the creatures work according to an actual labour list, the one that owing to the interface cannot actually be modified.  About the skills though, the game actually gives skills to creatures that [CAN_LEARN] so they are called things like carpenter or bone carver, but despite this the labours in question are never activated.  This might not however be the case for wild creatures that are tamed on the map though.

If you take a third-party program like DFTherapist that bypasses the interface then you can make pet creatures work, this is because they are in fact using the same work AI as everything else is.  There is no design to this situation and no specific tags involved, it is simply a bug that is rather similar to how predators cannot be intelligent.  The original AI was replaced by a new AI, but the tokens are tied in to the old AI scripts which are now absent causing the intended function not to work.  For unintelligent creatures the old AI is still in use, hence the old tokens still work as well at making them hostile. 

Id argue its never such stopped a development in DF similarly to date with other things that can slow the program down like a cap on the amount of objects in the game besides certain fixed DF elements like population (you're free to make enough stone bracelets until your computer breaks), and it would be assumptive to speculate a fixed resolution rather than remain open minded. Toady can code the parameters as much as they could probably easy code a unlimited amount of effects tied to the cost of the action which is a resuming theme of "cast until you drop dead or X consequence" we see in both press talks & mentioned in the FoTF.

I am assuming that the devs are not complete idiots and they have learned from any previous mistakes.  Summoning is presumably going to be governed by the AI, so the devs are not going to be able to say, "well you could make millions of this until your computer breaks but that would be stupid".

If the action has a cost, then in effect there is a limit on the number of summons isn't there?  What we are not going to be seeing, unless the devs are stupid is summoning creatures that stick around forever that cost nothing to summon.  As I said, there is no magic involved in the procedural generator of magic .  Unless the devs are stupid then they will not program the game to ever produce the above mentioned situation.

[FantasticDorf]

Id argue its never such stopped a development in DF similarly to date with other things that can slow the program down like a cap on the amount of objects in the game besides certain fixed DF elements like population (you're free to make enough stone bracelets until your computer breaks), and it would be assumptive to speculate a fixed resolution rather than remain open minded. Toady can code the parameters as much as they could probably easy code a unlimited amount of effects tied to the cost of the action which is a resuming theme of "cast until you drop dead or X consequence" we see in both press talks & mentioned in the FoTF.

I am assuming that the devs are not complete idiots and they have learned from any previous mistakes.  Summoning is presumably going to be governed by the AI, so the devs are not going to be able to say, "well you could make millions of this until your computer breaks but that would be stupid".

If the action has a cost, then in effect there is a limit on the number of summons isn't there?  What we are not going to be seeing, unless the devs are stupid is summoning creatures that stick around forever that cost nothing to summon.  As I said, there is no magic involved in the procedural generator of magic .  Unless the devs are stupid then they will not program the game to ever produce the above mentioned situation.

Well there's the matter of how consequential using the magic is (do you just lose your memory? rather than losing anything essential to your vitality/become corrupted in some way?) and the player & ai being put in charge also being able to summon by those same rules. I don't mark Toady and Tarn stupid at all, i think that is a regrettable statement for you to make against them as much as alternative you might say that it isn't perhaps practical to make unlimited minions but it will turn out how it turns out.

Like i said before, its never stopped them from players making enough game objects to destroy their computer and really the player is personally responsible for their intentional use of the game, the player deciding to summon X amount of minions over their capacity is entirely their own decision versus the AI doing it as a unintentional consequence which might warrant change via mantis report complaint but inerhently we wont know how until we reach that point which is still a long way off.

[GoblinCookie]

Well there's the matter of how consequential using the magic is (do you just lose your memory? rather than losing anything essential to your vitality/become corrupted in some way?) and the player & ai being put in charge also being able to summon by those same rules. I don't mark Toady and Tarn stupid at all, i think that is a regrettable statement for you to make against them as much as alternative you might say that it isn't perhaps practical to make unlimited minions but it will turn out how it turns out.

This is not a dev-worship forum, we are not here to pretend that the devs are perfect beings and if they have ever put something in the game it most definitely should have been in the game.  Again it is not a question of "how it works out", if the devs are smart then they will make sure that limitless summons is never going to happen and it won't happen unless they actually program it in a possibility.  If they make it happen then it is more likely to be the result of dev-stupidity (I didn't think of that possibility) rather than any intent on their part to have that in the game. 

Like i said before, its never stopped them from players making enough game objects to destroy their computer and really the player is personally responsible for their intentional use of the game, the player deciding to summon X amount of minions over their capacity is entirely their own decision versus the AI doing it as a unintentional consequence which might warrant change via mantis report complaint but inerhently we wont know how until we reach that point which is still a long way off.

The comparison is a false one because the AI does not produce enough objects automatically to destroy the game, the player has to go out of their way to make enough objects to destroy the game.  When it starts to matter (the economy) then if the devs are smart they will make sure that the AI does not autonomously produce a game breaking number of objects, even if they player still can. 

If there is a meaningful price, then this effectively limits the number of summons to a degree that is determined by the scarcity of the resource in question, things like memory loss and corruption are still costs in this fashion.  If we make a world where it is only possible for the player to go over the summons limitation but the AI never does this, it is still very problematic.

The reaso is that we are talking about something that has military application.  If the AI is limited by the devs so that it can only summon 100 gibberlings and the player manages to break the limitation to summon 2000 gibberlings, the player will destroy the AI effortlessly.  Of course the ability to get away with summoning 2000 gibberlings is itself really restricted by the resources of their computer hardware, meaning we end up with a situation where the player's ability to effortlessly overrun the world is entirely determined by whether they have spent the money to upgrade their computer hardware to support the limitless summons exploit. 

[FantasticDorf]

This is not a dev-worship forum, we are not here to pretend that the devs are perfect beings and if they have ever put something in the game it most definitely should have been in the game.  Again it is not a question of "how it works out", if the devs are smart then they will make sure that limitless summons is never going to happen and it won't happen unless they actually program it in a possibility.  If they make it happen then it is more likely to be the result of dev-stupidity (I didn't think of that possibility) rather than any intent on their part to have that in the game.

- When it starts to matter (the economy) then if the devs are smart they will make sure that the AI does not autonomously produce a game breaking number of objects, even if they player still can. 

Of course not but i do think that you are being unnessecarily disrespectful though over something that is figurative and would be a good idea to tone it down just a little, im not denying your points that it would be a bad idea to do so but you need to be more tactful in not outright attacking Toady and Tarn at a available interval for less than really justifiable reasons of "they shouldn't be stupid" or "if they were smart" in such a aggressively put way.

I personally see it that Toady & Tarn values the freedom for emergent code which is pretty much at the heart of DF so would naturally lean towards open ended systems.

Like i said before, its never stopped them from players making enough game objects to destroy their computer and really the player is personally responsible for their intentional use of the game, the player deciding to summon X amount of minions over their capacity is entirely their own decision versus the AI doing it as a unintentional consequence which might warrant change via mantis report complaint but inerhently we wont know how until we reach that point which is still a long way off.

The comparison is a false one because the AI does not produce enough objects automatically to destroy the game, the player has to go out of their way to make enough objects to destroy the game. ~snip this bit~

If there is a meaningful price, then this effectively limits the number of summons to a degree that is determined by the scarcity of the resource in question, things like memory loss and corruption are still costs in this fashion.  If we make a world where it is only possible for the player to go over the summons limitation but the AI never does this, it is still very problematic.

The reaso is that we are talking about something that has military application.  If the AI is limited by the devs so that it can only summon 100 gibberlings and the player manages to break the limitation to summon 2000 gibberlings, the player will destroy the AI effortlessly.  Of course the ability to get away with summoning 2000 gibberlings is itself really restricted by the resources of their computer hardware, meaning we end up with a situation where the player's ability to effortlessly overrun the world is entirely determined by whether they have spent the money to upgrade their computer hardware to support the limitless summons exploit.

The development is a slow process anyway, if DF can jump from 32bit to 64bit and atleast 3 or more versions of windows (i forget i wasn't around in DF early days) compared to the first edition of DF then im sure the computer market can adapt for the turn of the next decade while development is still rolling onto the myth arc fingers crossed and keep up.

[GoblinCookie]

Of course not but i do think that you are being unnessecarily disrespectful though over something that is figurative and would be a good idea to tone it down just a little, im not denying your points that it would be a bad idea to do so but you need to be more tactful in not outright attacking Toady and Tarn at a available interval for less than really justifiable reasons of "they shouldn't be stupid" or "if they were smart" in such a aggressively put way.

I personally see it that Toady & Tarn values the freedom for emergent code which is pretty much at the heart of DF so would naturally lean towards open ended systems.

I don't need to be ultra-tactful, it is not my job here.  Some things are stupid/not-smart and if they happen\happened it is more likely to be a manifestation of a bug it is to be part of the grand vision of the devs, that is all I was saying; no insults there. 

At present the dwarf fortress is pretty much entirely predictable, we know pretty much exactly what a dwarf fortress world will look like, it is really only ever the same story with randomly different geographical details. The idea of myth gen seems to be largely to put an end to this situation, so that our worlds are no longer all essentially the same; except that this will in effect amount to replacing 1 basic world with about 8.  The problem here is that there a lot more ways something can go wrong than there are for them to go right, a lot of combos will simply not work mechanically and so will have to be kept from happening.  It is also not a good idea to have worlds which while mechanically sound are basically unplayable; also a lot of this falls in the grey zone between playability and mechanics, by which I mean the AI not being able to understand the otherwise mechanically functional situation and have the scripts to deal with it (so it adopts maladaptive strategies in that situation). 

As regards summons there are number of basic functional possibilities.

• Summons are essentially free, exist for a limited amount of time and one summoner can only summon a limited number.
• Summons have a definite cost, exist for a limited amount of a time and one summoner can only summon a limited number.
• Summons are essentially free, exist forever and one summoner can only summon a limited number.
• Summons are essentially free, exist for a limited amount of a time and one summoner can summon as many as he likes.
• Summons have a definite cost, exist forever and one summoner can summon as many as he likes.
• There is no summoning of creatures.

The key problem here is that within those boxes we have a whole problem of making sure that the cost is not something that is so abundant that it cannot reasonably be accumulated in essentially unlimited quantities in certain places, things like sand or water.  The safe thing for the devs to do is simply take the second option, so there are no permanent summons and one caster can only have a limited number in existence at a given time, that way if someone manages to get around one of the conditions there are still other conditions in place. 

The development is a slow process anyway, if DF can jump from 32bit to 64bit and atleast 3 or more versions of windows (i forget i wasn't around in DF early days) compared to the first edition of DF then im sure the computer market can adapt for the turn of the next decade while development is still rolling onto the myth arc fingers crossed and keep up.

Unlimited is unlimited, it does not really matter how powerful the computers get.

[NullForceOmega]

You don't have a job here GoblinCookie, this isn't your forum and you don't have any sort of control here, so why not act like the guest you are and have some basic courtesy.

[GoblinCookie]

You don't have a job here GoblinCookie, this isn't your forum and you don't have any sort of control here, so why not act like the guest you are and have some basic courtesy.

I could ask the same about you.

[NullForceOmega]

That would be a reasonable assertion if I had done any of the things that you have in this thread.  I mean, your first post here is a non-sequitur that contributes exactly nothing to the discussion at all.  All I'm asking for is that you discuss reasonably without using inflammatory language.  You can make every point that you have brought up here without ever using the terms 'stupid', 'idiot', or any other form of derogatory remark.  Also, you've been here for four years already and you still don't seem to grasp that the 'devs' are not a team of programmers, but is in fact a single man who is pursuing this game/simulator as his magnum opus, while also having to maintain and moderate this forum.

I think FantasticDorf's basic suggestion has merit, though it does need some refinement as to how it could be implemented.  Whether or not the possibility for 'infinite summons' is real within the game is debatable, but handling for such subordinate units is something that needs to be addressed.

[KittyTac]

Yeah, GC, one more remark and I'm telling on you.

[GoblinCookie]

That would be a reasonable assertion if I had done any of the things that you have in this thread.  I mean, your first post here is a non-sequitur that contributes exactly nothing to the discussion at all.  All I'm asking for is that you discuss reasonably without using inflammatory language.  You can make every point that you have brought up here without ever using the terms 'stupid', 'idiot', or any other form of derogatory remark.  Also, you've been here for four years already and you still don't seem to grasp that the 'devs' are not a team of programmers, but is in fact a single man who is pursuing this game/simulator as his magnum opus, while also having to maintain and moderate this forum.

I think FantasticDorf's basic suggestion has merit, though it does need some refinement as to how it could be implemented.  Whether or not the possibility for 'infinite summons' is real within the game is debatable, but handling for such subordinate units is something that needs to be addressed.

You are acting like you are a moderator when you are not.  You are acting like you own this forum, exactly what you accused me of doing.

Yeah, GC, one more remark and I'm telling on you.

Is this some kind of kiddie playground?

[NullForceOmega]

Bay 12 members moderating themselves and being polite to each other is why the ban list isn't dozens of times longer.  Calling for someone to reconsider the way they present their argument is hardly moderating, but if it makes you feel better to call it that by all means go ahead.

On further reflection of mechanisms for dealing with 'minions', or otherwise transient groups like mercenaries, maybe what is needed is a disbanding mechanism of some sort.  Something that causes a group to cease to exist like in world gen or disbanding a military squad (there may be something similar in adventure mode for groups but I'm not up on all the changes to adventure mode in the last two releases.)  An additional check could be performed for 'summoned' or otherwise temporary units that removes them from play; or not, could make for interesting emergent behavior if summoned beings have a chance to persist after dissolution of their group or death of their summoner.

I'm not sure what to do about the zombie apocalypse problem though.  First there probably need to be some better limits on what counts as being possible to re-animate, as currently it gets rather silly with all the bits and pieces being usable.  Maybe it would be better if eventually they decayed normally?

[FantasticDorf]

Thanks i appreciate it, already in adventuremode or most off map wandering, units that disband or break off which recently i have seen inside a mantis issue report recently (which is funny actually, a dwarf went stark raving mad and held up his party wandering the wilderness for 33 years alone) in which they will become little asterisk *

Acting on your feedback, yes disbandment needs polishing like the dwarf example above to actually recognise when the active duty stops and not when units with a purpose (like the companions who get caught over rivers or drag behind sometimes return to your group later) to be their own agents, in fortress mode with very few places to run outside of your square box it usually means that as soon as you've disbanded the soldiers have abandoned military duty to return to civilian zones or are caught fighting.

- A disbandment 'buffer' of units perhaps to work outside of squads? "Hold U to collect all loose units" and put them implicitly under the command of the highest ranking military official given that our current militia command structure is rigid for when it actually collapses.

Construction of zombies is also a very good note besides the possible lack of limitations of summoning them, if its not just magic holding together a bag of bones like a meaty puppet which really tied into my own ideas of magical disbandment where summoners effectively cut ties causing the effect to dissipate, or something structurally sound that can't be turned off once its been let loose.

[GoblinCookie]

Bay 12 members moderating themselves and being polite to each other is why the ban list isn't dozens of times longer.  Calling for someone to reconsider the way they present their argument is hardly moderating, but if it makes you feel better to call it that by all means go ahead.

I had already gone over that stuff with FantasticDorf; but since you do not seem to be spoiling for a fight afterall, I think we should end the discussion about this topic at this point. 

On further reflection of mechanisms for dealing with 'minions', or otherwise transient groups like mercenaries, maybe what is needed is a disbanding mechanism of some sort.  Something that causes a group to cease to exist like in world gen or disbanding a military squad (there may be something similar in adventure mode for groups but I'm not up on all the changes to adventure mode in the last two releases.)  An additional check could be performed for 'summoned' or otherwise temporary units that removes them from play; or not, could make for interesting emergent behavior if summoned beings have a chance to persist after dissolution of their group or death of their summoner.

I'm not sure what to do about the zombie apocalypse problem though.  First there probably need to be some better limits on what counts as being possible to re-animate, as currently it gets rather silly with all the bits and pieces being usable.  Maybe it would be better if eventually they decayed normally?

I think we need a disbanding mechanism for squads in general, it fits rather under the whole range of interface improvements though, of which the game would benefit from the introduction of a great number.

Summons in squads however should be mass-unsummoned using a different but similar mechanism to disbandment.  The reason is that the player may wish to disband an existing squad but then transfer the summons into another squad or form a new squad.

Construction of zombies is also a very good note besides the possible lack of limitations of summoning them, if its not just magic holding together a bag of bones like a meaty puppet which really tied into my own ideas of magical disbandment where summoners effectively cut ties causing the effect to dissipate, or something structurally sound that can't be turned off once its been let loose.

Unlike regular summons, undead have the extra element that they are inherently limited by the available supply of corpses.  The problem as already noted is that zombies unlike regular summons are able to produce more of the 'material' and the more zombies you have to more effectively you are able to do this.  This leads to the zombie apocalypse problem already noted, a necromancer can summon a few zombies, kill a load of people, turn them into zombies, kill even more zombies, make even more zombies and so on, until he is the invincible supreme dictator over everyone.  Unlike with unlimited summons however there is no problem with the zombie apocalypse inherently, it makes for a cool fantasy story and used quite often by fantasy authors as a plot. 

The problem is the AI does not inherently know about the zombie apocalypse.  The AI has to know that when some necromancer in some gods-forsaken backwater goes on the rampage, a sufficiently large part of the wider world has to be able to unite to form an army sufficiently large to crush said necromancer even though he is presently rather little and irrelevant.  This in turn leads the problem of making this mechanism not so effective that it ensures that zombie apocalypse can never succeed, hence there is never any reason for the player to take any notice of the thread nor have to do anything to save the world. 

The main issue with undead in general is how are they 'powered'.  Does the necromancer 'feed' the undead constantly with some kind of magical energy, if that is the case it essentially follows that there is a limit to the number of undead any given necromancer can control based either on his magical power or the resources available, which helps to reign in the zombie apocalypse in itself.  Do they 'feed' on some kind of ambient magical energy latent to the environment, if that is the case then undead work out rather like living creatures, a given area can only support a given number of undead which puts them potentially on a more even footing with the living.  Do the undead rather feed on themselves, so fatter people make better zombies  , this effectively ensures that undead have a time limit although given that the zombie only ever has to use energy to move to carry out it's masters instruction and does not need to run any of the internal processes it would probably be a while before they ran out of power, so the zombie apocalypse is very much on. 

The other issue is how are they preserved against decay and how effective this is.  Unless some magic or science is used to keep the corpses from rotting away, undead are pretty much just a type of summon that will be used in a supporting role to living troops or other summons in order to say win a particular battle.  Other that in permanently sub-zero environments and completely desiccated environments; in both cases environments in which nobody will even live anyway undead are not a viable society at all on this model.  This connected to the energy problem as well, it is quite likely the preservation process would require energy as well, which would mean that it becomes more expensive for an undead to exist in say a tropical rainforest than it it an artic area or a desert, according to the above mentioned models.  Additionally there are scientific means of preservation that necromancers could employ to reduce the amount of magic needed to keep their undead from rotting away, things like mummification.