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[Mur]

After playing DF for a bit I saw a few things that was annoying

Standardised key usage: I find that the game keeps changing which keys do what between UKMH  -= -+ /* there are too many options, for any list the /* or -+ should be used and not -= because they are too far from the keypad.

Easy plots: I find that the UKMH for plotting is quite bad, from ANY fps now a days standard moment is done like UJHK making it much easier to control

Selector position: I find that the selector moves back to the middle of the screen after getting out of a selection and it will be nice to move from one command to the next keeping the selector in the same play. Example: If I go K to look at something to the right and ESC to get out to dig the selector that K was on is now in the middle of the screen.

Less micromanagement: Let dwarfs do simple tasks without telling them, like cutting down wood when stockpile is low.

Lack of information: It is quite hard to get into DF if you don't know how to play. I needed to constantly go back to the wiki / youtube to figure out how things work and even then I was lost on some stuff. Even more so I don't have information I need about fortress needs, like how much food do I actually have? how much booze? what do I do with that trapped critter and where is it?

priority stockpiles : I would like to have smaller stockpiles near the jobs that use the material so they don't need to wander as far to do a task but I find these piles don't get filled as much, it would be nice to be able to tell someone to move items to a high priory stockpile when they have free time. (move seeds to a custom seed pile from a food pile, carry wood near a carpenter etc)

Other than that the game is pretty fun and it will be nice to be a bit more streamlined so that its challenging and not just annoying at times.

[Zesty]

Less micromanagement: When I create a room it would be nice to have dwarfs just claim an empty room if you set it to be free so you don't need to assist every dwarf a room. Let dwarfs do simple tasks without telling them, like cutting down wood when stockpile is low.

First of all, Dwarves already claim free bedrooms (as long as you set it as a room). They tend to claim it by themselves when they need to sleep and nothing else is available.

As for the wood example, just imagine woodcutters running outside during a siege because THEY MUST HAVE WOOD NOW. Besides, what would you do if everything was automatic?

[Mur]

First of all, Dwarves already claim free bedrooms (as long as you set it as a room). They tend to claim it by themselves when they need to sleep and nothing else is available.

As for the wood example, just imagine woodcutters running outside during a siege because THEY MUST HAVE WOOD NOW. Besides, what would you do if everything was automatic?

good to know about the room.

Well when events like ambushes and sieges happen automation like automatic woodcutting could be disabled, I am not asking for everything to be automatic but you should not have to detail everything (do you have to tell your dwarves to move refuse? no because its simple)

[sockless]

I seem to remember that Goblin Camp has a setting where you can set a minimum amount of logs to have lying around. When it goes below the set amount, they will cut down trees from your woodcutting zone, which you can manually set.

[sockless]

Also, you can easily tell how much food you have by pressing z. You can also access stocks from the z-menu, but you need the bookkeeper noble (make sure you set the accuracy to highest when you assign one). From stocks, if you press tab, you can select and zoom onto specific items.

Priority stockpiles can sort of be done with burrows, it has also been suggested before, so has standing production orders.

[The Strangla]

I agree quite a lot that there is too much micromanagement required to make DF a great game for me.

I think the game would be more enjoyable for people that have an interest in the game but might be time poor if there were the option of templates within the game to give the option that game events would require less intervention.  The game can retain the option of zero templates for people who get their kicks out of building a fortress to custom specs.

The wood cutting is a good example.  What I really want to know is that for a given area of forest and a given number of woodcutters at work I'll have a supply of wood that is a) less than b) more than or c) just right for my needs based on workshops/production etc.  To be honest I don't really care enough to have to select the trees that I want said woodcutters to chop down.  That might be a nifty feature for those who need that bed to be ash to complement the bedroom decor. But for me it's overkill.

A similar example is mining out the terrain.  What I would like to be able to do is tell my miners how much of an area I would like mined, in three dimensions ideally.  I'd like to be able to set ratios for the work, so room sizes and connectors would be automatically opened up based on total number of fort meeting rooms/dining rooms etc, but then ratios for workshop sized rooms, storerooms, pantries, barracks/armouries/bedrooms.  The enjoyment of fortress design only lasts so long when the work itself is actually like work.  I wouldn't particularly mind the randomised and potentially inefficient designs that my dwarfs came up with if it involved me setting the parameters, the area to be mined, the type of work (domestic / defence / exploration / minerals) and templates made a decent hash of instructing the miners to go and finish it off.

I could continue but I understand that the micro- element of fortress design is what makes it so interesting to a lot of people.  But to me, I really don't have sufficient time to want to immerse myself in that design aspect - at a micro level - what I would look for is to know that if I have industry space mined out, resources being collected, and workers on hand, that the dwarves will make stuff.  Or, domestic space/furtniture etc.  Dwarves will make themselves places to live. etc.

[Vercingetorix]

The only real micromanagement is with labors; by and large, it really isn't all that hard to manage your dwarves ans supplies with cursory examination of your stockpiles and buildings, especially later on; I usually have DF run in the background most of the time while focusing primarily on seasonal tasks, defense and projects.

That being said, mining can get pretty tedious without using utilities; I would like to see a zone feature that mines of a chunk of a layer according to the pattern you specify (e.g. a grid, blocks, lines) and if you want to customize it you can do so manually.

[tolkafox]

Here.

Look through it.
Do eet.

Quickfort and it's utilities help a lot with digging, although I've stopped using them now that I can designate my fortress to be dug out in 10-20 minutes. It used to take me an hour or two :/