Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6

Author Topic: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?  (Read 13247 times)

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile

Is it just me, or is there no obvious reason why anything higher would ever be necessary?  Are people out there setting manager orders for exactly 113 beds, where either 110 or 120 would destroy the fort, and stocks precise to 3 significant digits are essential?  What's the point?  Especially since early on, it ties up a valuable founding dwarf's time otherwise for no good reason.
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

miauw62

  • Bay Watcher
  • Every time you get ahead / it's just another hit
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2012, 02:54:12 am »

Well...
Is there a reason why we smash babies into the ground after a fall from 10z-levels?
Logged

Quote from: NW_Kohaku
they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the raving confessions of a mass murdering cannibal from a recipe to bake a pie.
Knowing Belgium, everyone will vote for themselves out of mistrust for anyone else, and some kind of weird direct democracy coalition will need to be formed from 11 million or so individuals.

geoduck

  • Bay Watcher
  • mollusk
    • View Profile
    • Geoduck's Page
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2012, 02:58:18 am »

It doesn't have to be one of the founders. I wait until the second wave arrives and try to pick out the most otherwise-useless arrival to be the bookkeeper.
Logged
Geoduck's graphic set: simple and compact!

SRD

  • Bay Watcher
  • Who the hell do you think I think you are?
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2012, 03:06:10 am »

Trains up their book-keeping skill, making them count things faster.
Logged
Quote from: LoneTophat
EDIT: HOW DO I STOP THE BLEEDING!
SUPEREDIT: Nevermind. Bled to death ._.

Count Dorku

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sounds Fun
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2012, 03:07:19 am »

I find that having a precise count of how much everything there is in my fort gratifies my OCD tendencies. Something about "2000?" stocks just irks me in ways I can't explain.
Logged
"when in doubt, Magma"

Miners are diggin out nicely, everything will go right, i hope. hell, what am i even saying? this is dwarf fortress. it wont go right.

Deathworks

  • Bay Watcher
  • There be no fortress without its feline rulers!
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2012, 03:27:48 am »

Hello!

Well, the detailed listing in the stocks menu are only available if your precision is higher than the number of items in question. So, if you want to check on the details of things that you have in large amounts - stones, wood, yet-to-be-melten goblinite, having the precise figures may give you a major advantage when trying to evaluate your current situation.

With clothing now again being active, this may even become more important as the clothes worn and claimed by the dwarves are also affecting the precise numbers.

Yours,
Deathworks

P.S.: IIRC, you can zoom to individual items via the detailed stock list. This may be useful if you have designated all goblinite you have found for melting but still find something in the detailed stock list which is not designated (maybe a goblin ambusher who got sliced and diced by a weapon trap you have all but forgotten, or who drowned in a drainable channel).
Logged

Jingles

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2012, 03:54:44 am »

You need precision in order to manipulate object states through the z menu.  It makes making a building of Bauxite blocks a lot easier for instance if you forbid all building materials except bauxite blocks.  Unless you like scrolling through countless amounts of logs, blocks, bars, babies, and whatever else may be used to make a wall or floor. each and every time an additional section needs designating.

kaijyuu

  • Bay Watcher
  • Hrm...
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #7 on: April 04, 2012, 03:58:23 am »

Idlers: 67

Turning precision to max lowers that number to 66.
Logged
Quote from: Chesterton
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. But the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action.

EmperorJon

  • Bay Watcher
  • Still waiting...
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #8 on: April 04, 2012, 05:34:05 am »

Logs. About 1000? What are they. I dunno. Oak? Maybe the odd tower cap?

I want to know exactly what I have in my fort...

Bars... er... 1000000. No idea what they are though. Never mind, MAKE ME STEEL ARMOUR.
Sorry sir, can't do that, all we can find is a million bars of potash! Yeah.
Logged
I think it's the way towns develop now. In the beginning, people move into a town. Then they start producing tables, which results in more and more tables. Soon tables represent a significant portion of the population, they start lobbying for new laws and regulations, putting people to greater and greater disadvantage...
Link for full quote. 'tis mighty funny.

Himmelblau

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #9 on: April 04, 2012, 05:54:52 am »

I couldn't stand not being able to forbid/unforbid, melt and zoom into objects from stock menu. I usually have a bookkeeper in the starting seven, but he multiclasses in various jobs until I get enough migrants and make him work full-time.
Logged
Dwarf Fortress- where a sudden mist that causes you to bleed from every orifice and drop dead is one of the better outcomes.

Rose

  • Bay Watcher
  • Resident Elf
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #10 on: April 04, 2012, 05:56:47 am »

MY CDO DEMANDS ORDER AND EXACTNESS!
Logged

caddybear

  • Bay Watcher
  • Elf Supporter
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #11 on: April 04, 2012, 06:05:36 am »

Appointing a bookkeeper and making him a small office is the first thing I do. Call me crazy, but I like knowing exactly how much in trouble we actually are.
Logged
And then did ARMOK say, the east is the holiest of directions, and thou shouldst not stand there lest thou be strucketh down by my holiest of beards. And then did the dorfs did say, we shall build from the west, for more do we fear the beard of ARMOK than the strike of the elephant.

MrWiggles

  • Bay Watcher
  • Doubt Everything
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #12 on: April 04, 2012, 06:14:30 am »

Same here. Book Keeper get set at the highest precision as soon as the game starts.

There no real penalty for doing it, and as stated in the previous post it makes the stock screen more powerful. 
Logged
Doesn't like running from bears = clearly isn't an Eastern European
I'm Making a Mush! Navitas: City Limits ~ Inspired by Dresden Files and SCP.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=113699.msg3470055#msg3470055
http://www.tf2items.com/id/MisterWigggles666#

Loud Whispers

  • Bay Watcher
  • They said we have to aim higher, so we dug deeper.
    • View Profile
    • I APPLAUD YOU SIRRAH
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #13 on: April 04, 2012, 07:16:19 am »

Stock screen manipulation, allows me to set all the stones for dumping, captured goblinite for processing and if the buggers offend me, forbid all the booze.

Broseph Stalin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Dabbling Surgeon, Proficient Butcher.
    • View Profile
Re: What is the point to anything more than low bookeeping precision?
« Reply #14 on: April 04, 2012, 08:10:06 am »

If you've ever built a good sized project or make all your stone stuff out of marble you know how annoying it can be to scroll through building materials hundreds of times or end up with maybe one in ten tables made out of marble. Mass forbidding, mass dumping, material selection, when you're dealing with huge numbers you need percision.
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6