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[PatrikLundell]

Proposal: Introduction of an Observation Board of fortress conditions as part of making DF more accessible (I would have used either of the words Notice or Alert if those words didn't already have other uses).

The Observations Board would contain notices of conditions in the fortress that the (new) player might want to address, e.g. coded as Low/Medium/High urgency.

Examples of things that might show up:
- No Tavern/Temple/Library (Low)
- Low food/drinks supply (Medium)
- No Hospital (Low, elevated when someone is in critical need for hospital care [a bug report with this condition prompted this suggestion])
- Low Bucket supply (Low, elevated when "No bucket" cancellation spam is currently generated, preferably with the spamming suppressed)
- No Well (Low, but Medium if there are no other water sources, and High if there are also hospitalized inhabitants)
- Starving/Thirsting/Sleep deprived inhabitants (DFHack provides a warning for at least the two first cases).
:

Each entry of on the board would be expandable from a single line entry into a description of the consequences. No Tavern could e.g. be described along the lines of:
"A Tavern provides a place for citizens and visitors to relax and Socialize. Lack of Socializing will cause stress for fortress inhabitants over the long term, and most kinds of visitors will not visit fortresses without a Tavern..." It would also mention tavern keepers, rooms for residents, and how to create a Tavern.

It would be useful if players could suppress entries (so those not wanting to have a Tavern could remove the display of that Observation), as well as unsuppress them (e.g. a "show all", so you can toggle the suppression setting).

I foresee a significant problem with an implementation of this suggestion, though: the list of Observations that would be worthy of being added to the board is huge, so there would invariably be complaints about conditions that are not included.

[therahedwig]

I like this idea!

I wonder if it might be an idea that once you have different fortress groups they'll start adding things to the board too, like 'the cult of the volcano requests a temple of their own' and then the importance is calculated by... adding up the total skill level of all the dwarves and adding up the skill level of all the dwarves that are part of the cult and having the latter as a percentage of the former... Or something like that.

Or maybe the board could kinda be organized on the pyramid of needs, so a 'no drinking supplies' todo with a list of suggestions, or a 'no food production' item, and then 'no sleeping quarters', 'no military', 'no tavern/temple/library'...

[PatrikLundell]

I think guild/group/external force production requests would fit into such a board.

I'm not sure if there's any useful way to organize the list, though. Lack of a source of water isn't important until someone gets injured if booze is available (and until booze production requires water, in which case it becomes critical from the start), so I'd probably use a primary sort key of urgency and a secondary key of the order in which they're entered onto the board rather than try to spend effort on trying to come up with something intelligent.

[Pillbo]

Good idea, I'd add things like "X# of dwarves have no bedrooms".

[Superdorf]

This sounds like a fine supplement to the Steam release. In the meantime, though, might it be possible to code this as a 3rd-party utility? It'd fit in nicely with the current Lazy Noob Pack.

[PatrikLundell]

I believe it should be possible to make a DFHack plugin that has at least some of the functionality, and it's probably possible to make it as a script as well. You're certainly free to try!