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[numeral]

At the moment dwarfs don't require much, some food, some booze, a bed, and maybe not being outside in the rain too much is usually enough to keep dwarfs happy even if a loved one dies.

I was thinking that perhaps there should be an extension of the nobles screen(or perhaps it's own section but god knows the main section is bloated enough).
Every dwarf would be listed with a list of his permanent and temporary requirements sans nobles who are already listed in the nobles screen with their demands and mandates.
A dwarf's wishes would be:

A) NOT MANDATORY -- This is important to differentiate between a noble's demands and a dwarf's wishes. Any wish could be stricken down by you at any time, the only downside to this is a mild unhappy thought.

B) Fortress Dependant -- A dwarf living in an outpost will not request the same things a dwarf living in the mountainhome will request. As your fortress evolves from Outpost -> Barony -> County -> Duchy -> Mountainhome requests will become harder to fulfill and perhaps(if the code allows it) more elaborate.

C) Skill Dependant -- StoneCrafters won't ask for what Miners want and Miners won't ask for what Smiths want. Dwarfs might ask for a labor item such as a pick for a miner or an axe for a woodcutter or they may ask for items that they like(obsidian mug anyone?). The higher their highest skill the more they'll ask for different stuff.

D) Noble Dependant -- Nobles can strike down requests made by dwarfs they have grudges against or inversely can mandate/demand you fulfill a dwarf's request.

E) Military/Civilian Dependant -- Military dwarfs should probably have less requests and their requests should be solely to do their job better on account of how military dwarfs are spartan and usually only think of the next gobbo head to be chopped/crushed/minced.

These wishes could be dependent on a LOT of things, there's plenty of room to play around with this idea which is why I'm intentionally being vague. For instance Toady could make the requests harder to fulfill as you create more wealth or based on population.

Below I'll list an example. THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE, IT IS NOT WHAT THE FINAL PRODUCT SHOULD/WILL LOOK LIKE:

You set out with 7 dwarves, they don't want anything.

Your created wealth is up to 50,000 DB and you have 20 dwarfs, 1 is High Master in Mining and another is Grand Master in Stone Crafting.
The miner requests a meager room, the stone crafter requests an exceptional iron flask. You supply the miner with his room but refuse the stone crafter because you haven't set up a working smith's industry yet.

A Baron shows up, half of your 45 dwarf population request meager rooms(you only supplied one to your miner). A few dwarfs with Expert and Adept skills request items.

Your created and imported wealth goes over 250,000 DB, a few legendary dwarfs ask for modest bedrooms, your quirky legendary smith asks for a zoo. Half the population is yammering for odds and ends, you get annoyed and clear the whole list with the push of a button, your population is pissed off.

Your Baron is promoted to Count, your legendary brewer requests an exceptional microcline(in a perfect world the game checks what you have in stock) table, but unfortunately the Count has a grudge against said brewer and strikes down this request himself. The masses make their usual rounds of requests which you promptly ignore.

...
...
...

This continues until the king arrives, most of your population is in modest bedrooms, some have meager dining rooms and graves, a few dwarfs with 3+ legendary skills are in quarters with modest dining rooms and servant's burial chambers. You are flooded with requests, you hunt numeral down and shoot him.

[ragman le bon]

this

[Fourdots]

This ... is actually a really, really great idea.

Especially having the game check if the requests are doable. Nobles don't care, but normal dwarfs should be more aware of the state of the fortress.

Might even be possible to have them deal with requests themselves, if they got too fed up with waiting - a dwarf could seize a workshop, risking time in prison, and make himself a stone mug if he really wanted one and had been denied it for too long. Like a strange mood, only much, much less so - generating almost no value for the fortress, and much happiness for the dwarf (after all, he had to make it himself - though perhaps that could depend on mental characteristics), but fulfilling his request.

[G-Flex]

The general need here is pretty legitimate. Dwarves should care about their possessions, living arrangements, etc. in a relatively realistic way, by observing their surroundings, comparing what they own to what other people own, and so forth.

It might also help if dwarves have expectations based on their prior/current living arrangements. If you start off in an obsidian hillside, giving everyone extremely nice bedrooms from the start, they might not like it if you later downgrade them, even if you're downgrading them to something that's still reasonably nice, because they've come to expect certain living conditions. Personality can/should come into this too, of course. Immodest/uncooperative dwarves might want more things, self-conscious/selfish dwarves might care more about their stuff not being up to par with everyone else's, dwarves resistant to change might not care as much in general, and so on.


Folding this into the same type of system as the noble demands screen might be a hassle, though, especially at high population. I'm not sure what would be better, but if it's something you're doing effectively for every dwarf, maybe some macromanagement or automation is needed, or at least make it more of a "complaint" system, where you only hear about it if it can't be fulfilled by the dwarf himself and he cares enough to complain about it (although, considering personality traits, some dwarves might get a bad thought but refuse to complain, and others might even not care very much but complain anyway; there's no reason why dwarves can't be as meek or obnoxious as real people!).

[Toast024]

This is a good idea. However I feel there could be more to it. Such as long term wishes. A Dwarf could want something that takes a long time or allot of work. Such as getting married, or killing one hundred Elves. Dwarfs would feel more accomplished by these actions, and they have a more positive effect on the mood.

[G-Flex]

The thing about long-term goals is that they require a dwarf to have values (beyond what can be assumed from the civ's ethics and the dwarf's personality). The game would need to track not only the dwarf's personality, but what he really cares about, and what some of his opinions are about things.

Not that this isn't doable, but there would be underlying concerns there.

[The Doctor]

Damn this would be awesome.

[Kilo24]

I'd like to see this integrated with the economy and for you to be able to reserve raw materials and craftsdwarves for fulfilling wishes.

That way, instead of manually handling all the requests for all the dwarves in your 100 dwarf fortress, you can have your dwarves handle something like half the requests on their own.  The wishers would be able to commission the reserved dwarves for the item they want through pay the dwarf through the economy.  Rooms and wishes using resources that you want to conserve would be left entirely up to your jurisdiction as a result.

[zagibu]

Another possibility to make the whole thing manageable is to let wishes only sporadically form, but give them a greater impact on a dwarf's happiness. The "wishlist" screen should show dwarf name, profession, squad and wish description at a glance, without having to further descend into submenus. Also, chance of expressing a wish might depend on personality traits.

[Ilmoran]

Give the manager a role in this.  Have a setting which allows the manager to automatically authorize work orders to produce requests (perhaps with limits such as "Only if we have more than 25 of the required material in stock", or "materials for item cost less than 10 DB").  Then have a lower automation setting which requires you to access the manager screen to authorize requests (this would also be how you authorize request above the automation limits), and gives you information on requests which the system can't automate (Dwarf requests a Decent bedroom, and you don't have any such bedrooms currently available).

Automation via the manager could also be linked to the bookkeeper, where the manager can't authorize requests because the bookkeeper hasn't provided the relevant counts for the request.

[numeral]

I'd like to see this integrated with the economy and for you to be able to reserve raw materials and craftsdwarves for fulfilling wishes.

That way, instead of manually handling all the requests for all the dwarves in your 100 dwarf fortress, you can have your dwarves handle something like half the requests on their own.  The wishers would be able to commission the reserved dwarves for the item they want through pay the dwarf through the economy.  Rooms and wishes using resources that you want to conserve would be left entirely up to your jurisdiction as a result.

Give the manager a role in this.  Have a setting which allows the manager to automatically authorize work orders to produce requests (perhaps with limits such as "Only if we have more than 25 of the required material in stock", or "materials for item cost less than 10 DB").  Then have a lower automation setting which requires you to access the manager screen to authorize requests (this would also be how you authorize request above the automation limits), and gives you information on requests which the system can't automate (Dwarf requests a Decent bedroom, and you don't have any such bedrooms currently available).

Automation via the manager could also be linked to the bookkeeper, where the manager can't authorize requests because the bookkeeper hasn't provided the relevant counts for the request.

I like these ideas a lot and it seems more relevant to put the whole system under the manager screen than the noble screen.

[Atanamis]

Or if we don't have the ability to set detailed rules like Ilmoran suggested, perhaps just the ability to hit enter on each request to send it to the manager. I should be able to drill into any request to see how many of the needed items I have in stock, and whether I have the needed shops available. If the dwarf is a guild master, demands for the guild could also come through this interface, and affect the happiness of all guild members. Requests could be "extra workshop" or "personal workshop for XXX" or "steel pickaxes for all miners". Again, if violated it wouldn't be a crime (like with a mandate), but rather a cause for unhappiness.

I really like that the demands increase as the fortress grows, and would categorize things that are similar. There might be a line item for 20 dwarves wanting dwarven cheese, for example. By the time the request shows up, there would already be a minor unhappy thought, and another would be added if the request is refused. As a fortress grows, it should be harder to maintain happiness with a spartan lifestyle.

Seriously, add this to the eternal suggestion list and I'll move a vote over. I love this idea.

[Farmerbob]

  I really like this, but an idea to prevent too much player insanity - allow the dwarves to grant each others desires to some extent.

  Say you have a dwarf that likes granite, but he has an obsidian table.  Another dwarf has a granite table, and really doesn't care what their table is made of.  Based on social skills and the relationship with the other dwarf, maybe they choose to swap tables.

  Perhaps allow trade depots to be assignable to either caravan or internal use.  A depot that is set for internal use could be visited by dwarves about as frequently as sleeping (to prevent too much process time devoted to dwarves looking for items) and they could leave notes for each other about a simple request they want to have filled, and if another dwarf has such an item, they might seek each other out.  If the player can browse the desired items list, and see what items are desired by their dwarves (perhaps with a tooltip to indicate current happiness of the dwarves asking for items) they might be able to assign items from the fortress to make unhappy dwarves brighten up a bit.

  Perhaps it might also be interesting to allow workshops to be set so they toggle into "domestic production" mode.  This would allow crafters to use the "internal use" depot requests to provide new items, or replace items for other dwarves.  Replaced items would go to fortress stocks.  Dwarf crafters would only try to create what they actually can create.  A legendary macedwarf asking for a very high quality new steel mace to replace a good quality old one would likely be a bit unhappy if they were given a lump of steel on a stick created by a novice weaponsmith.  However if the macedwarf had no mace at all, they might be satisfied for the time being, and the next trip to the depot put in a request for a better mace, which might be created the next time around after the novice gets a bit of skill.  Dwarves supplied with an item would move it themselves, and take the old item back to the craft shop for redistribution to stocks no matter what their hauling duties are.

[Atanamis]

Being able to sort the request list by happiness of the requesting dwarf would be nice, to allow less happy dwarves to get priority. The one concern I would have on "internal use" workshops would be consumption of low quantity supplies, but an appropriate stockpile setting to protect rare items could alleviate this. As focus shifts to world events for larger fortresses, it would be nice to have the possibility of dwarves meeting one anothers needs without player involvement. Alternatively, we just keep the demands somewhat rare so the player isn't overwhelmed.

[Farmerbob]

  Perhaps allow color coding of items at the trading sessions as well, to let you know when an item is on one of your dwarf's wish-list at the internal trading depot?  Currently there is only internal and external production color coding - there's room for more, and color coding in the trade screen is already there.