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[Granite26]

I know at least some of this has been covered elsewhere, but I didn't see anything active, and wanted to put up my take.

Better Nobles

Part of the interface improvements will (hopefully) be adding new ways of accounting for your fortress information.  These improvements will be extremely useful in the late game, but not so much early on.  Coincidentally, this is when the nobles show up.  It would make them a lot more welcome if the nobles arrival and presence corresponded to increased functionality in the logistics screens

Prospector, Surveyor, Assayer
•   Ability to zoom to unmined rock of different types
 o     Useful if you are tracking veins, zoom to a vein of something
•   Ability to track unmined rock of different types
 o     Obviously (Fey Mood) dwarves know what’s out there.  Why can’t we see a list of what’s in the walls?
•   Ability to ‘see’ through a single layer of rock to the layer behind it
 o     This could be an assay task similar to wall smoothing
•   Ability to find major deposits by soil sample.
 o     Maybe get a report on a point based on the relative nearness of a few types of minerals (Adamantine and Gems should be exempt.)

Ranch Manager
•   Designated ranch areas where animals want to be?
•   Automated butchering options
 o     Kill a male animal at random every so often type stuff

Sergeant of the Artillery   
•   Automated Siege Weaponry commands in one place(enable a callout, battery fire, etc)

King
•   Feudal Society:  If the king ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy
 o     Having the king around should make the dwarves basically happier
 o     Having a happy king should make the dwarves basically happier
           >Urist was complimented by the king recently
 o     Additional trade options (receive tribute maybe?)
 o     Better Immigrants?

Bard
•       Adds happy thoughts to people around him
•       Philosopher could do the same, or even take complaints

Guild Leaders
•       Increase base pay for the job-guilds they represent

Adding a good list of potential nobles could also help differentiate the various races (elves get bards, but dwarves don't, etc).  The core of this one is: Nobles should be an acheivement and a boon.

[Derakon]

Just thinking about the surveyor/prospector, here's one thought. A new job, "take core sample". The dwarf would head to some random wall, and start drilling a small hole in it to find out what's beyond it. The drilled walls wouldn't look different in the UI (and wouldn't damage engravings). There'd be a limited range to the mapping - not more than 10 squares, say - but it'd be a pretty quick job, since there's so much stuff to map out and it'd have to be more useful than just mining.

[Granite26]

That's kind of what I was thinking.  The advantage would not only be that it was faster than mining, but that it would be less destructive, and potentially 'automatic'.  If there's no destruction, why not just have your little assayer guys running all over the place doing this?  It would double your knowledge of the map pretty quick, enable you to dig less for exploration making cave-ins less likely (when they come back) Walls could ask to be assayed in the same way that stone asks to be moved to a pile.

It's not a huge advantage, but it's enough to put up with the occasional platinum chest request.

[Jamuk]

Those are great ideas, and would probably help lower the amount of noblecide that is committed.  Anything to make them actually helpful.  For example, the manager actually makes managing harder... because before the manager appears you can still use the management window, and they don't need to be verified.  It'd be more realistic if they went around to the dwarf that was at the top of the list and got them to start working even if they are on break or something.  It wouldn't make  it too amazingly beneficial, but having someone to order the only dwarf you have of a specific profession to stop having a break would be nice.

A possible benefit to using a setup like you suggested would be that if a noble doesn't do very much, like if the prospector isn't ordered to prospect anything for a few years, maybe they might not make as many requests.
If the rancher's designate ranch area thing isn't used, he will just sit around and won't bother you.  That is the main reason people hate nobles, they order you around and don't help at all.

[ June 10, 2008: Message edited by: Jamuk ]

[ShadowDragon8685]

Which is why I so, so love to engineer deathtraps for the finnicky bastards.

[Neonivek]

Alright let me look.. being my 5th

Prospector, Surveyor, Assayer
-I am highly against the idea of Nobles where ordinary Dwarves can do the job.
--These arn't humans... Id think any Dwarven Miner worth his grain of salt would be able to do this job on their own.

Ranch Manager
-Falls under my "No mundane Nobles"... Any "Animal Caretaker" should be able deal with keeping animals in ranch areas... and any Butcher should be able to handle autobutchering... even if not the Hoardmaster should

Sergent of the Artillery
-This is just a Noble Seige opperator with special abilities that any siege opperator should be able to do.

Skipping the rest

While I do agree that Nobles should be useful... I don't want to appoint any of them in areas where I feel ordinary dwarves should be able to do the very same job. (Yes... I am against the Dungeon Master)

This makes me very biased in almost any Noble discussion

[ June 11, 2008: Message edited by: Neonivek ]

[Align]

The King getting tribute made me think of something: shouldn't the King demand a vault to store his items in rather than mere chests or cabinets? Vaults could be defined from built chests.

[Granite26]

quote:Originally posted by Neonivek:
<STRONG>Alright let me look.. being my 5th

While I do agree that Nobles should be useful... I don't want to appoint any of them in areas where I feel ordinary dwarves should be able to do the very same job. (Yes... I am against the Dungeon Master)

This makes me very biased in almost any Noble discussion

[ June 11, 2008: Message edited by: Neonivek ]</STRONG>

Fair enough.  It's seemed to me that Noble in a DF context means less feudal leader and more shift foreman anyway.  I like the idea of a core samples being a basic skill, but I would like to see more... officials(?) that give you extra management power over the grunt workers in their zone of control.

[Granite26]

Psychologist:
Enables thought aggregation and listens to complaints full time.

Thought aggregation would be a list of the thoughts, and how many people have them.  This falls into the 10 dwarves are easy to manage one by one, but 100's are not.  Anyway, imagine a screen where you can see each thought with a number of dwarves that have it, and the 'tab' switch to get the list (similar to the stocks screen, I guess).  It would be a good way to track if, for instance, you had a bunch of dwarves sleeping poorly, or not in beds, or thirsty, or any number of other problems.  I imagine this screen as having the dwarves color coded by happiness levels.

[Jetman123]

I think dwarven psychology would involve light hammers and corkscrews, and a lot of screaming and skull fractures.

[Granite26]

Dwarven psychology is all priests councelling the faithful and giving them 'holy water'...

Well, less priests and more holy water.  Dwarves can't get through the working day without it, doncha know?