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Author Topic: The broker should automatically go to the Depot when a caravan arrives.  (Read 625 times)

Orange-of-Cthulhu

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I feel the player should not have to have to do it manually, clicking on the Depot to make the broker go there.

When the broker arrives, the trade screen should just open automatically, so you didn't have to open it manually.

I think the least click intensive would be this:

- You set the Depot settings once in the beginning, and then you never have to click on the Depot again, unless you want to deconstruct it or change the settings.

- I would also like a setting in between the extremities "only one guy or everybody can trade". I thought myself it would be smarter to set 5 dwarves as brokers, because then you'd have a not completely unskilled broker, BUT he'd also arrive there fast and you would not have to wait for the broker finishing to sleep or drink. SO I think you should be able to just add any amount of speficic dwarves you want, why not have 3 brokers or 11 if you want to?

- When a caravan arrives, the game automatically opens the "which stuff to haul to the Depot"-screen so you can choose which goods / junk to send to the Depot.

- You should be able to mark items as "always haul all of this stuff to the Depot when a caravan comes", so you don't have to find XsockX or bronce crown or rock craft every time. You should be able to preset your standard merch, and you only have to change stuff if you have some new things to sell, or if you for some reason don't want to sell bronce crafts anymore, then you remove them from the list.

- When both caravan and broker are present and all the goods are hauled to the Depot, the trade screen opens automatically.

- On the trade screen, you should have an option to buy all items in a category. For instance "all fruits" or "all logs" or "all animals" or whatever. To economize the tedious licking on 20 kinds of vegetables, and just click "buy all the damn vegetables".

It minimizes the clicking and waiting. I myself find it, in the long run, intrusive the way the Depot works. It goes like this:

"I am in the middle of doing something important with finishing off the bedrooms. A caravan arrives. I need to zoom up to the Depot (1) and occupy myself with deciding which stuff to sell. I always sell all the rock crafts I made; 10 times a year I need to click on all the rock crafts produced. After that I need to remember where I was working on bed rooms. When I find the bed rooms, I am not sure if I remembered to call the broker, I return to the (2) Depot and check, yes I had done it. When the bedrooms are done, I return to the (3) Depot to trade, but the hauling isn't done. I do stuff and return to the (4) Depot again to trade, but the broker isn't there yet because he is sleeping. I don't really start anything as I know I wll get interrupted shortly, I often end up just doing nothing and waiting for the broker to get to the Depot, but the trading (5). Then I trade, and I always buy logs, fruits, vegetables, parcment, books, and every time I have to click on them and sometimes also select the number of fruits I want to buy. After the trading is done, I realize I might have forgotten to release the broker from the Depot, so I go back again to free him. (6)"

It becomes a bit of a chore with that Depot when you get 10 caravans a year. (You can get if you create contact to more civs.)

It's too bad really, because it is very cool with the trading and also that you can get many caravans, but all the tedious clicking is off-putting. It's fun once or twice that you forget to either call the broker or free him for the Depot so he stands there for months. And it's also fun the first times to go through the caravans list of wares, till you notice they're mostly the same. But after you've played a while, the whole process just becomes a chore.

I'd find it great if you could preset EVERYTHING so the tedium of doing all the clicking to get the standard load of bone crafts and rock crafts and worn clothes to the Depot 10 times a year. So the players actions are limited to the actually interesting part - if you buy some extra things apart from the usual stuff, and if you want to sell some extra stuff on top of the usual stuff.
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GumNut

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Not to detract from your suggestion of adding something like it to the base game, but if you play with dfhack there is a stockpile option to auto-trade everything in it which can make things easier for you in the meantime.
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