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Yes...about time.

7 (53.8%)

Yes, however bins are good enough for now.

6 (46.2%)

No.....cuz I'm silly.

0 (0%)

No, I magma face leetis nobles b4 they randa kill mah legi craftis, I hate elves and war grizzly, my forts don't last long enuf to makest threadz, an I exploit the ai to allow my beardling free access to teh mapz with channels and atom smashas

0 (0%)

I have no Oppinion/Mind/Brain/Sanity/ect, and therefore am unqaulified to give and intelligent and accurate answer at this time.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 13

Voting closed: March 20, 2014, 06:17:27 pm

[ColdOneK]

I know everyone has heard it before, but too damn bad, I've seen a thread from 2008 with the same headache

I'd like improved trade selection -
In the trade screen there are 4 windows.
Top windows are item type - and when selected through item type, it can further branch out
Example -
Finished Goods
               -Crafts
                     -Wood Crafts
                                -Wood Scepters
                                -Wood Rings
                                -Wood Crowns
                                -Wood Figurines
                                -Wood Mugs
                     -Stone Crafts
                     -Metal Crafts
                     -Bone Crafts
                     -Shell Crafts
                     -Glass Crafts
               -Clothing
                    -Leather Clothing
                    -Silk Clothing
                    -Yarn Clothing
                    -Worn Clothing
               -Medical
               -Ect
Cloth
               -silk
               -yarn
               -plant fibre
Shift+Enter selects a group
Enter expands a group

The top window covers general group selections
The bottom window is the same interface that is currently used, to allow specific selection

I don't want to go through and read hundreds of different items, to not piss off elves with wood, not piss off nobles with mandates, not piss off me with clothing, and not piss off my chief medical dwarf with crutches and splints
Group selection would also make it where you can be absolutely friggin  certain you want all 5 of that stack of FEEESH!!! And the game stops consistently questioning your genius plan to buy out all of the plump helmets - Yes I want all - you sure you want 5/5? YES
I want all of the cougar's brain meat - you sure you want 5/5? YES DAMNIT!!
I want all of the cow intestinal sweet bread syrup - you sure you want 5/5? Maybe not....No wait, fck off gimme that damn juicy deliciousness!

Edit: Serious bonus points for adding an option to not sell bins
Edit 2: More bonus points for marking items banned from exporting in the group selection window. Like "NO SELL SCEPTER - SCEPTER MINE" quote from the last moments of the dwarven count Urist Leadbrain - would make the finished goods group a slightly purple color - and then further investigation finds that scepter groups of all materials are purple
Edit 3: Added poll for the giggles.

[Nathail]

A convenient, easy-to-use UI in Dwarf Fortress?! This is madness!

In a more serious vein, I think this counts as polish, something for Toady to do later on when more of the core game is fleshed out. I mean, I'd be happy if it did get implemented, but there are other things I want more immediately, like Adventure Mode survivalism or halfway sensible dwarves.

[Dirst]

A convenient, easy-to-use UI in Dwarf Fortress?! This is madness!

In a more serious vein, I think this counts as polish, something for Toady to do later on when more of the core game is fleshed out. I mean, I'd be happy if it did get implemented, but there are other things I want more immediately, like Adventure Mode survivalism or halfway sensible dwarves.

Halfway sensible dwarves?! This is madness! 

[Waparius]

IMO trade should be completely revamped. I've said this elsewhere, but the main thing is it should swap around from being a completely manual thing to something more under the control of the broker and individual dwarves. Once your settlement gets to the right size you should be able to set import and export quotas with only the occasional manual transaction going on; trade for larger fortresses should be less about the seasonal caravan and more about a constant stream of merchants to some kind of marketplace zone. Dwarves should be able to make their own purchases if they have the spare money or trade goods. Trade should involve everything from merchants' caravans to farmers with carts to the odd grave-robber trying to flog a cursed amulet.

 It should be possible to arrange for specialised caravans to show up at your fort, with an entire wagonload of, say, tin, trading for a load of fine pottery (and that should depend on worldgen-created trade routes and whatever's coming out of nearby settlements).

 Agriculture should be really difficult, to the point that unless you build your fortress very carefully you should be reliant on hill dwarves and deep settlements to feed your fortress, so sieges mean something.

You should be able to hire out militiadwarves as caravan guards, and hire mercenaries for your militia.


But yeah, the main one is more autonomous trade.

[ColdOneK]

@Nathalail
Hence why "bins are good enough for now" is a possible option lol
However, I generally wind up on embarks where I'd really prefer to not sell bins - like arctic/terrifying - I like the adorable skeletal critters...to freeze
Adventure mode survivalism is "I want bolts to not be super effective against absolutely everything" - don't go to camps...or sewers....sneak everywhere
Halfway Sensible dwarves is "I want job priorities" This is a planned feature, but how the dwarves take jobs needs to be redone before it can work -- if I'd read http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html correctly.

@ Waparius
A large amount of that is far-ish future stuff.
There had been a dwarven economy in a prior release, but apparently it was broken.
I'm interested in a newer version(preferably working) of that, witch would go on to allow a lot of the things your talking about.
Also going around as an adventurer -  makes me think that the current carravan + single trade depot thing is flat out temporary.

However, in the short term, this problem has persisted since 2008, and since it is such low priority, I'd definitely welcome group trade improvements.
I'm not a coder by trade, but is seems like it shouldn't be hard to run a script a single time on items brought to the depot. It could count them and sort them at the same time.
Then using some of previous code, like the job selection code to set up menus - I'm guessing, as a non coder, that 45min is about how long it should take to implement...and test

[wobbly]

@Nathalail
Hence why "bins are good enough for now" is a possible option lol
However, I generally wind up on embarks where I'd really prefer to not sell bins - like arctic/terrifying - I like the adorable skeletal critters...to freeze

I'm pretty sure you can actually sell the contents of a bin without selling the bin by individually selecting items on the trade menu (which is a pain but works) - apologises if I'm misremembering but I'm pretty sure I've done it before. I think it's only barrels of liquid where you can't keep the container, which kind of does make sense (unless the trader want's to pour booze from your barrels in to his).

[Manveru Taurënér]

@Nathalail
Hence why "bins are good enough for now" is a possible option lol
However, I generally wind up on embarks where I'd really prefer to not sell bins - like arctic/terrifying - I like the adorable skeletal critters...to freeze

I'm pretty sure you can actually sell the contents of a bin without selling the bin by individually selecting items on the trade menu (which is a pain but works) - apologises if I'm misremembering but I'm pretty sure I've done it before. I think it's only barrels of liquid where you can't keep the container, which kind of does make sense (unless the trader want's to pour booze from your barrels in to his).

Indeed. One thing that is annoying though is not being able to sell bags of seeds etc without selling the barrels : /

[ColdOneK]

Hilariously I'm somehow unaware how one would go about selecting items without selecting bins...
Not like I have the experience of selecting around several hundreds, even thousands of items per trade, so as to give the merchants required profit of roughly 50%

But then again maybe I am.
Bins, in my forts, generally serve to reduce stockpile sizes, and decrease the time it takes to haul items to the depots.
w/out the use of bins, such trades would only be possible by using metal based crafts witch are a waste
or there would be nowhere enough time to get the required amount of goods to the depot on time

I generally buy all metal bars - cloth - leather - plants - fish - wood - and w/e the hell else I feel like in trades.
This brings my checkout totals to around 23k in mature forts - gems are too much of a pain in the ass, so I only tend to use raw green glass exclusively, as I can produce it in vast quantities.
23k checkout means I need to go through and manually choose hundreds of items to make it up to around 34.5k, or the trader usually won't accept, irregardless of broker levels
It's a pain in the ass and excessively time consuming

Not to mention manually removing clothing that I've produced, splints and crutches I don't care to reproduce, varifying material for elvish trades, backpacks, quivers, flasks, ect
meaning I have to go through and manually check every single item - making it more time consuming then it already is

The fix is exceedingly simple as I've outlined.
As I've stated before, I'm not a programmer, but I believe it would be easy to implement and one could take similar code from elsewhere.
Namely the current job selection system that noone uses. When in the job selection, pressing "enter" on something like farming, crafts, metalsmithing, ect - expand the menu - to furnace operating, black smithing, weapon smithing, armor smithing, metal crafting
enter in the expanded menu select an item

"shift+enter" over a category - selects the category as a whole.

how hard would it be to adapt this code to the trading menu?

In my opinion, the whole trading, and much of the crafting systems, need to be replaced as dwarf fortress evolves. However, improvements take time, changing systems take time, I'm more than satisfied with the current speed at witch Dwarf Fortress as a whole is progressing. It's definitely something I'm looking forward to.
Thats not even counting the fact that trading is a very low priority change. Other systems are far more interesting to see take place. Improved economy, religion mattering, the army system, the world around you not being completely frozen since world gen ended....plenty more exciting things.

That said, this would make the current system less excessively time consuming. Witch would improve the experience. Less wasting time with traders, and more accidentally having fort implosions because you used the wrong dwarf to apply fortifications to the magma forge channel is damn good thing in my book.

[Dirst]

Hilariously I'm somehow unaware how one would go about selecting items without selecting bins...
Not like I have the experience of selecting around several hundreds, even thousands of items per trade, so as to give the merchants required profit of roughly 50%

But then again maybe I am.
Bins, in my forts, generally serve to reduce stockpile sizes, and decrease the time it takes to haul items to the depots.
w/out the use of bins, such trades would only be possible by using metal based crafts witch are a waste
or there would be nowhere enough time to get the required amount of goods to the depot on time

I generally buy all metal bars - cloth - leather - plants - fish - wood - and w/e the hell else I feel like in trades.
This brings my checkout totals to around 23k in mature forts - gems are too much of a pain in the ass, so I only tend to use raw green glass exclusively, as I can produce it in vast quantities.
23k checkout means I need to go through and manually choose hundreds of items to make it up to around 34.5k, or the trader usually won't accept, irregardless of broker levels
It's a pain in the ass and excessively time consuming

Not to mention manually removing clothing that I've produced, splints and crutches I don't care to reproduce, varifying material for elvish trades, backpacks, quivers, flasks, ect
meaning I have to go through and manually check every single item - making it more time consuming then it already is

The fix is exceedingly simple as I've outlined.
As I've stated before, I'm not a programmer, but I believe it would be easy to implement and one could take similar code from elsewhere.
Namely the current job selection system that noone uses. When in the job selection, pressing "enter" on something like farming, crafts, metalsmithing, ect - expand the menu - to furnace operating, black smithing, weapon smithing, armor smithing, metal crafting
enter in the expanded menu select an item

"shift+enter" over a category - selects the category as a whole.

how hard would it be to adapt this code to the trading menu?

In my opinion, the whole trading, and much of the crafting systems, need to be replaced as dwarf fortress evolves. However, improvements take time, changing systems take time, I'm more than satisfied with the current speed at witch Dwarf Fortress as a whole is progressing. It's definitely something I'm looking forward to.
Thats not even counting the fact that trading is a very low priority change. Other systems are far more interesting to see take place. Improved economy, religion mattering, the army system, the world around you not being completely frozen since world gen ended....plenty more exciting things.

That said, this would make the current system less excessively time consuming. Witch would improve the experience. Less wasting time with traders, and more accidentally having fort implosions because you used the wrong dwarf to apply fortifications to the magma forge channel is damn good thing in my book.

Your broker gets skill each trade, so you're better off making lots of smaller trades.  It also makes the merchant happier which can affect the prices you see.  So I start out buying a couple logs (worth 6) for some cheap rock craft (worth 10) and work my way up the value chain as the merchant gets happier.  Not sure if it makes a huge difference in how much I pay, but it does skill up the broker nicely for next time.

[ColdOneK]

By the time I start making trades worth 23k, I have two brokers with at least master level.

[Dirst]

By the time I start making trades worth 23k, I have two brokers with at least master level.

That would make the order of trades a bit less important

[ColdOneK]

It doesn't make it less time consuming.
A broker with no skill is unpheasable for trades with mature forts.

The point of this suggestion is to adapt code in use in the job selection menu to the trade screen to severely expedite the process.

[mosshadow]

I like this, its hard to scroll down so many pages just looking for say steel to melt down