Print

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

[Ekaton]

I thought of a system that may work to create a base for economy in any system that’s generated. This way, items spawning in the game would make sense regionally and globally.

1. On world’s creation the game generates mineral scarcity, and presumably already has a ratio of metal-bearing ores.
2. The game periodically checks mining sites in the world, and tries to determine what metals can be mined at each site. These metals will later determine what items made in this part of the world are usually made of, and possibly coinage (a lot of gold mines would reduce gold scarcity and cause gold coins to be replaced by something rarer, like platinum).
3. The game tries to use the most common and at the same time durable metals for tools, weapons and armour. Rarer materials will be used less often, priority given to coins and luxuries - this would significantly limit the number of golden or platinum armours in the game. The scarcer a metal is in the game, the higher priority is given to its usage as a coinage instead of other things.
4. Mining skill should be race/civ dependent, which would also significantly impact production.
5. As the metal distribution and the ability of different civs to mine may vary, prices may be significantly different in different regions. This would allow some basic trading.
6. Access to durable metals + prolonged peace would mean that a civ can make durable tools, which should affect
 growth, item production and agriculture. This is probably a long-term thing though.

This way items existing in the game would make sense and this could ensure some basic economy. I’m not sure how hard it would be to code something like that, but it seems reasonably accurate while not being overwhelmingly complex.

[PatrikLundell]

DF doesn't really have an economy currently. The one that's there is disabled by default because it was considered not to work sufficiently well. Work on an economy is intended to be performed in a middling DF future (i.e. hopefully within the latter half of a decade).

However, I agree availability and suitability are reasonable grounds for the usage of metals and other resources (although the number of gold and platinum armors and weapons won't be changed significantly, given that those are artifact metals only for these classes of items).

The game currently determines the resources available to each site government (although volume isn't calculated, nor is consumption, so there's no support for mines getting depleted). This is used to determine the metals available for armor and weapons, I believe (may also show up in adventure mode, but I don't know about that mode), while civ level resources are determined statically based on what's available to the founding site's government, and is currently not updated to reflect expansion to additional sites. This determines which goods their caravans may bring, as well as the materials available for items for your starting 7. Note that I may be wrong about whether site governments actually make use of their resources, or whether the civ one is used throughout, in which case the site government level one may remain unused, but I think goblin invaders have different materials depending on which site the raid comes from (troop availability definitely depends on the site: a civ having blizzard men and ogres does not send those on all raids).

There's also a civ level component to availability: only dwarves have access to the steel making technology, and so are the only ones with access to steel. A current deficiency in the system is that alloy availability is not dependent on whether the base resources are actually available, so dwarves always have access to steel and bronze (and other alloys), even if they may lack e.g. iron and copper.

Kobolds are currently fudged, and so may actually wield steel knives (although you can consider those to have been stolen from dwarven civs, if you want).

[Pancakes]

...
There's also a civ level component to availability: only dwarves have access to the steel making technology, and so are the only ones with access to steel. A current deficiency in the system is that alloy availability is not dependent on whether the base resources are actually available, so dwarves always have access to steel and bronze (and other alloys), even if they may lack e.g. iron and copper.

Kobolds are currently fudged, and so may actually wield steel knives (although you can consider those to have been stolen from dwarven civs, if you want).

I believe that humans also have some quirks in regards to material availability as well. I think that if a human civ conquers a dwarven civ, they gain access to steel, permanently. Is this still true?

[Shonai_Dweller]

...
There's also a civ level component to availability: only dwarves have access to the steel making technology, and so are the only ones with access to steel. A current deficiency in the system is that alloy availability is not dependent on whether the base resources are actually available, so dwarves always have access to steel and bronze (and other alloys), even if they may lack e.g. iron and copper.

Kobolds are currently fudged, and so may actually wield steel knives (although you can consider those to have been stolen from dwarven civs, if you want).

I believe that humans also have some quirks in regards to material availability as well. I think that if a human civ conquers a dwarven civ, they gain access to steel, permanently. Is this still true?

That doesn't sound like a quirk. Seems like a good reason to conquer a dwarven civ. Haven't seen it actually happen ever though.