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[Shonai_Dweller]

Nobles could be dealt with by not enabling the injustice system before 0.47.01 (but possibly not in a time before my time), which is exactly what I did. Now I've now modded away their mandate spewing in the raws (as I believe I mentioned above), but both of these are work arounds for what I consider to be design flaws (and it's no excuse that flaws and bugs persist for decades so players have had to invent ways to deal with them).

Except......that's always been the case. For 14 years. Have you not noticed? This isn't something new. You can mod around some bugs, including the ones you're ranting about, great. Or you can just play something else. Nobody forces you to play a computer game, nobody forced you to give money to Toady to continue to develop it.

If you don't enjoy Dwarf Fortress, why play it at all? Negativity, and "oh Toady's so irresponsible making a free game that pushes boundaries I'm not interested in and doesn't fix the bugs I want him to fix" is just pointless. Fix the game, enjoy it, suggest how to fix the game, maybe it'll get fixed. Go for a walk (when no-one's about) instead. Feel better.

Honestly not sure what you're trying to prove with this thread. You're not a new player, "fooled by the hype" and feeling the need to call out the forum fanboys. Dwarf Fortress has never been in a bugless state. Ever. Despite nostalgia goggles for bygone versions (all available to play for free and wonder what people ever saw in them).

[DrCyano]

I love the rant!

I haven't opened my fortresses up to visitors yet in DF 0.47.xx, but I plan to. Glad to see what I have to look forward to deal with when I do.

Mandates haven't usually been a pain for me, even in fortresses without access to metal, but I usually don't assign a hammerer (dungeon master?) until I hit the population cap (I had a bad experience long ago with a hammerer who went berserk insane in less than a year because I didn't have any chains, so I bowed to never assign this noble position until a fortress was basically finished). I do wish mandates would pause the game with a message like artifact creation does.

[Fleeting Frames]

@Shonai_Dweller: PatrikLundell already answered that question on last page here in last paragraph.

(whivh will get them in a cage and you can steal your artefact back.)

Hm, curious: What's your strat for this, given one can't dump the artifact?

[gchristopher]

+1 to supporting the right to rant, and I haven't even really played 47.04 yet. There's nothing wrong with having an extra strong reaction sometimes, especially labeled up front as a [rant] and with actual content that would count as constructive feedback instead of a rant in most internet communities! Just shows you care about the game.

ensure people stop turtling and to ensure that even a fort with a legendary adamantine clad military will keep having new challenges.

I consider turtling to be a legitimate tactic,

Also +1, thanks. Defense by ridiculous megaproject that is as dangerous to civilians as to invaders has been much more fun to me than micromanaging the psychological and hauling fallout of military combat. That play style means some level of turtling. I usually only train up fancy militaries as a way to add some variety or to make surface/cavern undead cleanup safer. (Since only a few things, like forgotten beasts, can path very far anymore.)

I have the same fear of digging invaders: they get better while my tools to deal with them remain the same

Another +1. It's hard to imagine adding digging invaders to the current game being workable, even if you get around the easier problems of fixing FPS loss by making tunnel backfill possible, and making it so stone isn't a limited resource. That doesn't even begin to address the universe of effectively unfixable problems with flooding or cave collapses, or having to construct some kind of spherical defenses against all directions.

Back on topic, my current plan for trying 47.04 is to turtle my main fortress completely and build a hermetically separated guest fortress as bait for random villainy. That's not too far off from defending against a sticky thralling dust with contaminant spread turned on. (Another favorite place to embark, and one of my most fun disasters was watching an entire military turn to thralls just from coming into proximity with the infected. They didn't even get many attacks in, just the contaminant spread got them. Okay, that was off-topic again. I've been inside by myself for two months.)

If you don't enjoy Dwarf Fortress, why play it at all? Negativity, and "oh Toady's so irresponsible making a free game that pushes boundaries I'm not interested in and doesn't fix the bugs I want him to fix" is just pointless.

I know you just care intensely about the game and the developer and want to defend it, but this doesn't read as that flavor of negative to me. I don't see anyone here threatening to cancel their Patreon or making personal attacks on the developers outside of expressing some frustration with a game mechanic, which is a bit of a time honored tradition as well. (Looking at You, Giant Mosquitoes that ate my embarks before their spawn population was adjusted.)

So please be careful any time you're straying into "if you don't like it, then go away" rhetorical territory. I know it's difficult, but try to de-escalate away from the "you [X]" phrases and stick to the game discussion in impersonal terms. (Uh, I just completely broke that rule by writing this. Well, crap, uh, imagine this was written by someone with better communication skills than me.)

We're all better for everyone being here and I trust that we've got a [VALUES_HONEST_FEEDBACK] cultural trait even when it's hard questions where nobody expects quick or easy answers.

[Bumber]

You can prevent nobles from issuing mandates by causing the noble to fail one of these criteria:

Isn't caged
Isn't incapacitated (unconscious, webbed, or paralyzed)
Isn't nauseated, winded, stunned, dizzy, or feverish
Isn't bleeding

Cave spider venom seems to be the easiest way to accomplish this, leaving them permanently dizzy but still able to perform tasks like having their shoulder cried on.

[Lozzymandias]

Losing artifacts is as "fun" as losing dorfs. It's not the losses themselves that bugs me, but the utter lack of means with which to at least attempt to thwart them. If a loss resulted in an opportunity to chase the artifact it would be good. As it is, it's less fun than when various critters steal your step ladders (which is merely annoying). There is no "intrigue" in "yes, X stole it and left the map with it. Don't worry. X will be back to steal other artifacts until killed or contained outside of the injustice system".

You have no control over the nobles that inherit positions somewhere else and starts spewing mandates as soon as the game is unpaused.

I've got lockable doors at the inner ends of my entrance tunnels, but the outer ends are controlled by those slow drawbridge lever pulls (and with normal luck it will kill a citizen who happens to be passing through). You can't have doors at the outer end unless you plan to replace all of them after every gobbo siege (as well as the necro experiment sieges).

Pat it reads to me like somehow the thief is managing to leave your site with the artefact before a crime report is lodged, which is neither inevitable nor unpreventable. You just need some witnesses on the artifact always and a reasonably long walk from the tavern/library combined with a museum to the inner doors. Then you get a report, and you can work out where the thief (who still has it) is and redirect him with doors and hatches till your captain can catch up. It's fiddly but I haven't lost an artefact in years

[Sarmatian123]

It can also be noted that Toady is notorious for leaving half baked "temporary" measures behind (see e.g. the petition screen, which is completely devoid of most of the relevant info, including the most commonly used name of the petitioner). Sure, the new development style might result in an improvement of feature quality from "barely functional" to "functional".

Fixing issues, bugs and balancing feels like stepping in one spot for no obvious gain for programmer. Like there is no progress done. I think this gets Toady depressed. I wouldn't call this bug collection "barely functional", as any longer played Adventure Mode or Dwarf Fortress becomes bugged in the end beyond play-ability. For some it's lag. For others' obsessive animal spawns. And for some others, issues with the map itself like faulty zoning on largest embarks. However this extensive testing is provided by our community. Unfortunately Toady spends 2-3 months yearly or every 2 years on fixing some issues and adding still missing or still in half-baked form (automation of kitchen, archaic farming, many plants still bugged) features. Way, way too little time. Many playable betas improve just play-ability, adding new features once for a while. Here Toady is promising to do same with steam release. He will need to have 2 version of game being developed side by side. There are tools helping with version integration and testing though. Professional ones like old but still functional Jenkins server, which does it on auto or some online like GIT repositories, where people need to do it manually. I hope Toady will ask some professional programmer to help him out with this part of organizing version control and testing.

[...] have random (important) dorfs mutilated over retroactive export bans when you FINALLY had a break to get rid of that pile of (non metal) junk with a caravan.

Yeah. This retro-activity on export bans is particularly bothersome. I think Toady stored fixing this issue for economic release during some next decade. So just make quantum stockpile for master quality mandated items in the mayor and noble room and ignore it for a while. There is always atom smasher and suicide squad for too naughty mayor/noble.

There is lots of minor issues, which I bet will not get fixed or get any overhaul. The thing that is causing crash could be something serious though. I reported for years now about different issues causing DF crashes to desktop, repeatably, and provided saves and some of them never were even checked up or considered as "need to fix it". One programmer will struggle to write code, when team of 8-12 programmers organizing their work in 2(or 3) weeks scrum, will be far more motivated by each other's progress and produce results in more organized and frequent manner. Imagine what a game programming studio with 100 programmers could do for DF in just 1 or 2 years. We would need 2 Toadies to labor for 100 years each to get the same result. That makes me thinking, this move to steam and Toady getting finally some professional help in programming is the right step in the right direction. I hope Toady manages to carry it out and accepts finally, that he can not do it only by himself. And the steam will provide him with the funding of course.