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[PresidentEvil]

One of my pet peeves is dwarves stopping vital jobs to buy shoes, throw parties, pet a nearby kitten, whatever. And I hate seeing them "on break," loitering without doing anything useful.

So, I propose we combine the two. Dwarves will go to parties and shops, collect their coins, and do their bitching at nobles when they are on break. They can also do this when they have absolutely nothing else to do.

What do you guys think?

[AlanL]

Definitely agreed, break is meant for doing things unrelated to work generally speaking.

[Tamren]

It would wok if the dwarves had a set schedual. The problem is all tasks are accomplished in sequence.

Dwarves will do stuff like: Cut wood, thirsty-go drink, cut more wood, take break, cut wood, hungry-go eat, cut wood, tired-go sleep. And so on. it gets especially annoying when dwarves have to walk halfway across the map to accomplish each step.

It would be nice if dwarves respected the day cycle but it would have to be slowed down somewhat for that to work. In which case dwarves go to bed around the same time, eat breakfast, work, if hungry have lunch-otherwise more work, work, dinner, free time, bed. Ect.

This would make other things more realistic, i have a very large dining hall with about 20 tables and chairs, but only the 4 tables closest to my food stockpile ever have dwarves using them. The extra capacity would be needed if there were set mealtimes.

[kuro_suna]

could dwarf have some sort of counter that keeps track of how much off time they have had including idle time, whenever they aren't working the counter increases and when they work it decreases until it hits zero
this way if they've been not working for a long time when they start working again they won't need as many breaks until the counter hits zero

this would be especially usefully for the military dwarfs since its really annoying when they've been off duty for a year and as soon as monsters show up and you put them on duty they need a drink and go to sleep

EDIT:
non-military dwarf can also try to keep some off-time points in reserve so they can complete a job by spending their off-time points instead of taking a break but when their done a job if their counter is less then 20 or so they take a break to get their counter back up before starting another job

[ September 08, 2007: Message edited by: kuro_suna ]

[ September 08, 2007: Message edited by: kuro_suna ]

[Bricktop]

I think it would be good if the dwarves all worked to the same schedule. like you say, it would mean that these large dining rooms that get created would be used properly. Also, possible Dwarves good get happy thoughts if they eat in a room with so many other eating dwarves eg "Urist Bunnyhop has been happy lately. He ate in a room with 50 dwarves lately."

[PTTG?]

This also gives some interesting complications to fortress design! For instance, while you wouldn't have your key military dwarves taking off and napping, at night they would all be asleep, meaning that you would need specific night watch dwarves in case of attack. Also, crowds of dwarves walking to and from their quarters may gum up traffic in some layouts, and regular traffic flow to and from homes may encourage designs bringing little burrows for specific crafts together, instead of the suburbs and central factories that are present now.

[Draco18s]

On the flip side, it would be annoying to have all your dwarves fall unconsious and halucinate at the same time: there are important tasks to be done!