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[JT]

That would be fun.

Better make it five alligators, though, for good measure.

[Tinkzorg]

damn Toady always keeping the dwarf man down

[Toady One]

If they stood taller, they wouldn't be so low.

[Lap]

I'm all for the outside river. Outside should be greater yield higher danger and inside should be lower yield but safer. Makes sense with no sun  .

[Tinkzorg]

I've got no problem with the outside river being more dangerous. I tend to consider everything ground level as temporary until I have enough of a presence within the mountain to move all my operations there.

Is there a way to remove a channel once it has been placed, though?

[Toady One]

That'll come in with re-wall, whenever that is.

[Sheep]

What about letting us literally farm from the outside river, for example, using stones to set up the "walls" of an outdoor farm area, and then flood it as needed.  Just make the "walls" crossable and what not.  It certainly seems feasible (and a bit more realistic - are we to assume that all of these plants grow inside in the dark with only the presence of mud?) and could ease a lot of the probems with the early game food gamble, since hunting right off the bat can turn into a nightmare.

[Toady One]

Dwarves could set up a whole town outside, but that isn't so much the focus right now, compared to dwarfage.  There's a mid-term goal of having a village spring up on an adjacent world map square when you get a Count, then things could start to mix a bit.  Hill dwarves.     Working outdoors.  Like...  animals.

[LordNagash]

"Hill Dwarves. We don't need that scum!"

[Gedsaro]

Then cage em and make some "pets" of them for your true dwarves!

[JT]

I'm curious -- wouldn't it make more sense for the dwarves to move a tile alongside the mountain and make little "suburb"-type villages?  That way, they'd still be dwarves, and they wouldn't be subject to such scorn from the Mountainhomes.

[edit]Looking over this, I might not be completely clear.  I mean move a world tile along the mountain face, such that they dig a new cave complex in the adjacent "sector" of the map.

[ August 18, 2006: Message edited by: JT ]

[tvsian]

Well, I just found a nice little hazard with bringing water in from the outside.  Both my miners were digging the channel, and one of them decided to run along the channel as it filled up, drowning.

So I've been working my one remaning miner to the bone, as nobody's able to retrieve the corpse (which has since rotted away, leaving his pick and other equipment in the middle of the channel).

I was half hoping his stuff would wash into the farm when I flooded it, but no such luck.  

[Toady One]

It could make sense either way, depending on the meaning of mountain living, as a privilege or a typical state of affairs, which might be a function of how fertile the mountains actually are, since cave farming is sort of silly in and of itself.  If the 50 start sites are chosen with some sort of dwarfish knowledge of the likely life/river within, then mountain suburbs might be less frequent, if a nearby map square outside is more fertile and the mountain fortress itself can't support them.  It wouldn't be ideal, but it's their lot.  All of that said, we were more just thinking of having a (draftable) hill-class of dwarves that live sprawled away from those in the mountain, with the best artisans and pioneer-types maintaining their privilege as well (though they answer to the nobles and fulfill demands).  The adjacent map square could be anything though, so there are various problems.  There was a bloat hanging around for connecting through the mountain a distance by digging off the top and bottom of the map.  If they start colonizing adjacent mountain patches, it might fit with that, as a form of short/shallow distance rather than long/deep distance travel.

[Sheep]

Building on the idea of dwarf villages in nearby map squares, what about literally making the colony you run in the game a dwarf fortress - for example, relegating food production, craftsmaking and the like to the villagers (in a hands off sort of way - let them do their thing "behind the scenes" and off screen), but still keeping the player involved by having the player deliver raw materials for them to use.  Obviously, you'd still want in-house (or in-fortress) weapon/armor production and the like, but it could be interesting as an extension to "Dwarf Fortress" mode rather than "Dwarf Colony" mode should the game ever get going in that direction.  This could give the Dwarf Fortress mode of a play a bit more of an action oriented focus, and could even be a way to relieve immigration problems - if immigrants go to the outside village rather than your fortress itself, you could then request that villagers be sent in to join the fortress population when you need them rather than being forced to support more immigrants right off the bat.

It would certainly be interesting to have the option of running a military outpost versus a the current colony style outpost.

But then again this is me just dragging it all off topic  

[ August 18, 2006: Message edited by: Sheep ]