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[k9wazere]

I guess I should start with an apology. Last time I posted here I wasn't in a happy place - it didn't end well and Toady killed the thread. To anyone who was there: sorry about that.

Moving on...

I'm not going to post this in the suggestions forum because it isn't a new feature suggestion. It's also not supposed to be a list of bugs. Just little things that I believe are minor tweaks that (for me) would make a huge difference to enjoyment. In no particular order:

Hauling bins and barrels: I'd like to be able to turn this off. I liked the KISS approach of the old system. The new hauling leads to many bad things, including job cancellations and (more) dwarven suicide. Even were the logic improved I'd still want to disable bin/barrel hauling, globally.

Announcements: I'd like to have a per workshop/building option (just one) to turn all cancellation announcements off. Thus I could go to my plump helmet farm and disable announcements, therefore avoiding (temporarily) missing plump helmet spam. Other workshops would still generate their announcements.

Military: Dwarves should prioritise their military uniform over civilian clothing, even with the 'replace clothing' option disabled. There's not really a good argument for choosing a cloth cap over a steel helm in any situation. Esp when no one else can use that steel helm now...

Military: Dwarves should prioritise manual (unscheduled) orders over 'pick-up equipment'. This means all orders issued via the 'squads' menu. I don't want my Legendary siege-breaker stopping to pick up a freshly forged breastplate in the middle of a siege, because it's slightly better decorated than what he's wearing. My move/attack order should over-ride pick-up equipment, I think.

Military: Training in large groups is a big issue for many of us. Having to train squads of two to three isn't ideal. Danger rooms/ shafts of enlightenment not withstanding (personally I don't use them).

Animals: Being able to see gender when assigning to pens/pastures/cages. Esp for baby animals, who are all just "kitten" or "baby llama" regardless of gender. This is quite a big deal. I'd like my male cats to patrol the food stockpile and keep females locked up (I'm just that misogynistic).

Lists: more use of colour coding. The 'units -> animals' screen has nice colour coding for animals by type. This isn't used in the 'stocks -> animals' screen or the 'assign creature' screen for a pen/pasture/cage. Would be nice if they were all colour coded.

Labour defined for 'clean trap'. This job is always given to my Legendary crafts-dwarves because they have hauling disabled. Should probably be in 'engineering' somewhere, and thus able to be turned off.

More variety in immigrant skill levels: most immigrants are 'Great' in 1-2 skills, Novice-Competent in a few others. Almost no unskilled migrants using default world-gen options. I actually prefer unskilled migrants. Otherwise it's too easy to start churning out masterwork this, masterwork that...

More configurable announcements in Announcements.txt (so you can add pauses!):
*Issued a mandate
*Has grown to become a... (nuisance)
*Merchants about to leave
*Season change
*Work order complete

Repeatable work orders (ie the work order re-queues itself upon completion). Mostly for food/drink, and coupled with the 'disable workshop cancellation announcements' mentioned above, for more automated industry.

Pet neutering! This would be a great use for the 'Animal Care' labour I think. No more kittens for you, Fluffy. That's more of a new feature suggestion come to think of it. I guess I could assign all my cats to a 1x1 pasture and let nature take its course, but that does sound a bit cruel.

Undead/reanimation: I love evil biomes, and play almost exclusively in/around them. However an embark where all tiles allow reanimation currently isn't much fun. A lot of the problem is how quickly things reanimate, and infinite reanimation. Not sure if pulping is in DF2014?

Dorfs dropping clothing everywhere. Esp outside. They obviously didn't think much of that sock when they idly tossed it away whilst hauling some wood. But now it's suddenly important enough to want to store during a massive goblin siege? Even with all dwarves having cabinets they still randomly drop their clothing all over the place. Can they instead haul their unwanted crap to a stockpile *before* pickup up the new shiny thing they want?

Dwarf skulls made of paper. Any fist-fight/thrown plump helmet becomes routinely lethal. Major cause of tantrum spirals, as you just can't have a decent non-lethal punch-up. I don't even know if this is a bug or just a peculiarity of the system? I'm not going to stop my dwarves having fights, if that's what they want. But I'd like them to show more restraint if not berserking. Also continuing to attack an unconscious dorf during a tantrum is just plain unsportsdwarf like.

In case this sounds like a complaint - it isn't. I'm really looking forward to DF2014 and beyond.

[Witty]

Announcements: You can adjust the level of job cancellation announcements that are shown

Large group military training is supposed to have gotten tweaked for DF2014

You can already set a job to repeat....

Undead/reanimation: Pulping is indeed coming in DF2014

And Dwarf tissue skulls are supposed to be fixed in DF2014 as well.

[k9wazere]

Announcements: You can adjust the level of job cancellation announcements that are shown

Large group military training is supposed to have gotten tweaked for DF2014

You can already set a job to repeat....

Undead/reanimation: Pulping is indeed coming in DF2014

And Dwarf tissue skulls are supposed to be fixed in DF2014 as well.

Cool

About the job repeat thing - do you mean via the job manager? Because if you do a repeat at a workshop, it will be cancelled and stop repeating the moment you don't have enough x to make y.

With a repeatable job via the job manager screen, you would just keep making y forever, even if there was a pause when you didn't have enough x.

With being able to cancel selected workshop cancel messages, you could essentially tell the game to "keep making y, as often as you have components to do so. But don't bother telling me when you don't."

[fricy]

About the job repeat thing - do you mean via the job manager? Because if you do a repeat at a workshop, it will be cancelled and stop repeating the moment you don't have enough x to make y.

With a repeatable job via the job manager screen, you would just keep making y forever, even if there was a pause when you didn't have enough x.

With being able to cancel selected workshop cancel messages, you could essentially tell the game to "keep making y, as often as you have components to do so. But don't bother telling me when you don't."

Have you tried workflow? I know a lot of people hate it when the response is that it can be done with modding, but personally I'd prefer Toady not to waste time on features that are already implemented as a 3rd party add-on.

Animals: Being able to see gender when assigning to pens/pastures/cages. Esp for baby animals, who are all just "kitten" or "baby llama" regardless of gender. This is quite a big deal. I'd like my male cats to patrol the food stockpile and keep females locked up (I'm just that misogynistic).

Same answer, falconne's zone plugin can do this, and more.

[slothen]

bins and barrels are already adjustable in the stockpile settings

[MeMyselfAndI]

bins and barrels are already adjustable in the stockpile settings

Hauling bins and barrels: [...] Even were the logic improved I'd still want to disable bin/barrel hauling, globally.

Emphasis added.

[Bwint]

My only big suggestion is the military assignment screen - you should be able to search for specific dwarves rather than paging through a list of all the dwarves in the fortress. Also, if the text in the military screen filled the window properly, that would be nice too.

[k9wazere]

Same answer, falconne's zone plugin can do this, and more.

I haven't used any mods for DF. I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure I agree with you. For instance a mod might be discontinued and then may not be compatible with a future release.

Compared to the complexity of some of the coding Toady must be doing, a simple thing like colour coding menus and showing unit gender would be beyond trivial, don't you think?

[Witty]

Same answer, falconne's zone plugin can do this, and more.

I haven't used any mods for DF. I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure I agree with you. For instance a mod might be discontinued and then may not be compatible with a future release.

Compared to the complexity of some of the coding Toady must be doing, a simple thing like colour coding menus and showing unit gender would be beyond trivial, don't you think?

Mods or utilities that are no longer developed by their original maintainers often have someone else to take their place. It happened with the therapist iirc. And mods do break every release, sure, but they are updated pretty quickly.

And the difficulty it takes to make the menus easier to mange isn't what stops toady from adding them. Toady is focusing on adding features now, first and foremost. If you want a nicer UI now rather than a decade from now, I'd highly recommend you start looking into the various community made plugins and such.

[fricy]

Same answer, falconne's zone plugin can do this, and more.

I haven't used any mods for DF. I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure I agree with you. For instance a mod might be discontinued and then may not be compatible with a future release.

Compared to the complexity of some of the coding Toady must be doing, a simple thing like colour coding menus and showing unit gender would be beyond trivial, don't you think?

Yeah. Then there's a thing that you, and the community thinks important, and there's another thing that Toady deems important. And they don't align. Sad, but true.
Contrary to what I said before, I'd like if Toady worked on features that help the usability of DF NOW, fix the bugs, and fix the UI so we don't need 3rd party addons, but it's not how it is. He declared multiple times that the UI and the graphics are not his priorities, so we can go around and post the same problems every two months or so, or fix it for ourselves...or ask the dfhack team to fix it for us.

And true, mods break, get abandoned, get picked up again, get abandoned again, etc, but that's why Peredexiserrant and I spend our time and try to put together what the community develops into a single download, so most of the players (it's not for everyone, I know...) can access these improvements without hunting the forums for broken mods.. I won't force you to try the starter packs, or download dfhack and hunt for uptodate plugins/scripts, only pointing out that some of these problems have a solution now, and you don't have to wait another 20 years for Toady to start working on them. Because I doubt this thread will push him in that direction, not after I have read the same suggestions in yet another incarnation.

[k9wazere]

@Fricy: I didn't know that Toady was categorically not interested in any UI work or the like. That's fair enough, I guess. A shame because I'm not asking for a graphical bells-and-whistles UI or anything involving a crap-load of work.

I don't use mods partly because I'm stubborn and partly because I'm a purist. Sure, that's my bad. But mods also introduce their own crash bugs (and non-crash bugs), and may even change aspects of gameplay. They also require a lot of research and configuration (normally).

That said, if DFHack is completely stable (vanilla DF does not crash for me, ever), and can be used in a way which doesn't mod gameplay, -and- there's a good guide somewhere to making it work... then what the heck, I might as well give it a try.

@NullForce: not making any demands. Not sure why you'd think that. Not even trying to gather support for anything I've posted. I'm under no illusions that anyone owes me anything.

I only wanted to highlight what I think is fact: a number of -small- changes could make this game much more accessible.

And I think after re-reading his post, fricy was not disagreeing. Just letting me know that there is little to no chance of Toady making any UI changes. So I will look into mods like DFHack after all. Lastly, I have nothing but respect for Toady given the enormous complexity of the game and the fact that it has been created with only two people, and one programmer. We probably all agree on this.

[NullForceOmega]

I'm not trying to be a dick, but the community has no say in what Toady chooses to work on, unless he specifically asks us what we would like to see.  Toady is offering us the opportunity to play his game for free, we really don't have any right to demand anything of him in return.

[EvilBob22]

A lot has already been mentioned -- including the futility of a list like this -- so I won't re-hash those points, but my two cents:

Military: Dwarves should prioritise manual (unscheduled) orders over 'pick-up equipment'. This means all orders issued via the 'squads' menu. I don't want my Legendary siege-breaker stopping to pick up a freshly forged breastplate in the middle of a siege, because it's slightly better decorated than what he's wearing. My move/attack order should over-ride pick-up equipment, I think.

I actually disagree with this one.  Either I need some new troops to join the fray, and I want them to grab a weapon on the way there, or they are existing troops (with "replace clothing" set) and the pick-up equipment is not applicable to them and doesn't slow them down.

Military: Training in large groups is a big issue for many of us. Having to train squads of two to three isn't ideal. Danger rooms/ shafts of enlightenment not withstanding (personally I don't use them).

Even without waiting for DF2014, there is a work-around: Change the order for a squad for one month to train with 2 members.  Then, add a second order to train with 2 members for the same month -- you'll see both on the screen for that month -- keep going until you have 5 sets of orders there.  (C)opy that month, and (P)aste it into the other months and you have an effective training schedule for up to 10 units in a squad.

Lists: more use of colour coding. The 'units -> animals' screen has nice colour coding for animals by type. This isn't used in the 'stocks -> animals' screen or the 'assign creature' screen for a pen/pasture/cage. Would be nice if they were all colour coded.

I agree, but keep in mind that the units -> animals screen has seen a recent overhaul.  I would expect that color-coded screens will become more common as time goes on.  (Note: I'm in America, so my screens are "color-coded" rather than "colour-coded" )

More configurable announcements in Announcements.txt (so you can add pauses!):
*Issued a mandate
*Has grown to become a... (nuisance)
*Merchants about to leave
*Season change
*Work order complete

I have mine set to save on season change, and to pause on save, I don't know if that would help you or not (it does take a little while to save, and it sucks down the disk space).  Another that might help is soundsense.  I haven't used it in a while, but I never missed an issued mandate when I did (it says something along the lines of "We need more of these!").

Let me add one more too:
*New mayor is elected

Dorfs dropping clothing everywhere. Esp outside. They obviously didn't think much of that sock when they idly tossed it away whilst hauling some wood. But now it's suddenly important enough to want to store during a massive goblin siege? Even with all dwarves having cabinets they still randomly drop their clothing all over the place. Can they instead haul their unwanted crap to a stockpile *before* pickup up the new shiny thing they want?

Yeah, I use "cleanowned scattered" in dfhack whenever I notice clothes lying around.  It works, but is manual and less than ideal.

[NullForceOmega]

k9wazere, my comment was less about your suggestions, and more about the statement regarding the community you have currently edited out, I just wanted to reinforce the point that we have no say here, and we can't change Toady's mind about his priorities.
Actually, I think your suggestion for slight tweaks to the existing system looks very well thought out.

[k9wazere]

@EvilBob: dorfs with 'replace clothing' set will still choose to pick up new equipment if it's an upgrade (freshly forged, traded for, or dropped on the battlefield). The only time they'll ignore an upgrade is if they can see a hostile creature. Or they're unconscious (quite common in my military).

In my next fort, I plan to use 'equip specific item' for all combat-ready squads so I can control precisely when they choose to upgrade their kit.