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[Dirst]

They do... all your dwarves bring their own clothes, for one, no matter what. And presumably some portion of the allowed embark points would be their own contribution to their survival.
And the miners and woodcutters also DO bring their tools with them on the default embark setup. They only stop bringing them if you make a custom profile and force them not to.

Those tools are purchased from the embark points pool.  Adding mining skill to another Dwarf doesn't automatically add another pick to the equipment.

Things like spare clothes and puzzleboxes is assuming things about life in the mountainhomes that just might not be true. You see it as a luxury "they have all game features provided" paradise. I see it usually more like a bare minimum crappy slumtown, where everybody is huddling in empty rooms with barely sufficient rations, etc., with the AI being as incompetent as it is -- you are their brilliant new administrator, not the other way around.

Notice, for example, that no dwarves ever arrive with positive or negative thoughts from the mountainhomes, even though we know they can keep thoughts between forts if they are your own forts. It's a bland, spartan place, just good enough to avoid misery and tantrum spirals, that's it.

The lack of thoughts about the Mountainhome is an artifact of worldgen abstraction.  This may or may not get fixed soon, but it's just as well that migrants start out more or less neutral.  Especially if a happiness rewrite takes own-history into account... skilled migrants are almost certainly taking a step down in living standards if they arrive in the first few years of a fort.

Early migrants (including the Starting Seven) ought to be skewed toward personality traits making them "pioneers" and/or "outcasts."  As the fort's living standards improve, more urbane Dwarves might start showing up.

[GavJ]

Those tools are purchased from the embark points pool.

So? Nowhere does it say the embark pool comes entirely from the government.

Example:
"Announcement! The mountainhomes is proudly willing to finance no fewer than 800 embark points for this expedition! Intrepid dwarves who embark on it are also encouraged to put forth their own possessions and savings to help ensure their success."

And then, on average, each dwarf has personal net worth of around 180 embark points perhaps, so the total you get to work with is 1,280. 800 from the mountainhome government, and 480 from the dwarves on the expedition.

If and when you decide to bring more booze instead of a pick, or whatever, you can imagine that it's simply a matter of one of the dwarves selling their pick and buying booze before leaving.

Early migrants (including the Starting Seven) ought to be skewed toward personality traits making them "pioneers" and/or "outcasts."  As the fort's living standards improve, more urbane Dwarves might start showing up.

Assuming additional things about dwarven society that we have no way of knowing. Mainly here, you are assuming that choice of dwarves to go on expeditions is voluntary. Versus, for example, chosen by fiat of a council or the monarch or an overseer. "I don't care if our only excess armorer is a pioneering sort. He's our only excess armorer. He's going." etc.

[Veliq]

Those tools are purchased from the embark points pool.  Adding mining skill to another Dwarf doesn't automatically add another pick to the equipment.

And adding mining skill doesn't automatically mean you own a pick.  Even at the best we can start with, you're still only Proficient in a skill.  Many people are proficient in skills that they don't own the tools to practice that skill in the real world today.  Most of those tools are provided by your employer.

Deliver pizzas or newspapers?  Do you own a high quality, or, well, any quality bag that you personally use to make those deliveries?
Run a cash register?  Is that your POS device?  Or is provided for you?  Your computer at work, or school as the case may be, those tools belong to your employers, even the pens you use to write with.

Unless you are at the very LEAST, proficient, in your field, you wouldn't own the tools.  Just be proficient enough to use them without puting your eye out.  Usually...


My personal opinion is that there is nothing wrong with the embark system, especially since you can give yourself more points, and after you've played for a while you'll find it's not *quite* as difficult to start with just a pick and make a thriving fortress.  The social idea however... concerning your dwarves having relatives makes a good amount of sense. 

Also, carrying one's favorite mug with you across umpteen thousands of leagues to get to this god forsaken hell hole that you end up in wouldn't be as popular an idea as time went on.  Perhaps, as the game suggests, these were merely the supplies you have left. 
-Your mug broke when you didn't put it up at night and the stray hunting dog decided to knock it off the barrel you clumsily, drunkenly, left it on.
-Your pick broke when you decided to use it to pry the wheel out from the mud four hundred leagues back when you were traveling through the terrifying swampland haunted by spirits.  You, being only dabbling in skill didn't realize it shouldn't be used as a lever, and were kinda focusing on getting the hell on to the 'Promised Land.'
-Your prized golden puzzle box that your rich daddy gave you 'for your trip'?  You traded that to an elf two months back for some fur mocassins, which you ended up tearing three weeks later due to them not being sized for your feet.  But your feet were warm for those three weeks...
-The packed ham and cheese and bread... never had a chance.
-The Finest barrel of scotch you had stored up?  Opened before you ever left as celebration.  The less you bring the less your carry right?
-That bloke next to you?  He was wearing cuffs on his feet for the first three towns you prudently avoided.


DFHack lets you easily set the embark points and # of dwarves you begin with if you want to go that route.  Do it, we all have, or will if we continue to play.  Just to try things out.

[Dirst]

Those tools are purchased from the embark points pool.

So? Nowhere does it say the embark pool comes entirely from the government.

Example:
"Announcement! The mountainhomes is proudly willing to finance no fewer than 800 embark points for this expedition! Intrepid dwarves who embark on it are also encouraged to put forth their own possessions and savings to help ensure their success."

And then, on average, each dwarf has personal net worth of around 180 embark points perhaps, so the total you get to work with is 1,280. 800 from the mountainhome government, and 480 from the dwarves on the expedition.

If and when you decide to bring more booze instead of a pick, or whatever, you can imagine that it's simply a matter of one of the dwarves selling their pick and buying booze before leaving.

Remember that this is a game.  The OP was offended that skills and equipment seem to be fungible since they pull from the same pool.  I think the system we have is a perfectly valid way to play-balance things without constraining the player into a certain # of equipment points and a certain # of skill points.

Early migrants (including the Starting Seven) ought to be skewed toward personality traits making them "pioneers" and/or "outcasts."  As the fort's living standards improve, more urbane Dwarves might start showing up.

Assuming additional things about dwarven society that we have no way of knowing. Mainly here, you are assuming that choice of dwarves to go on expeditions is voluntary. Versus, for example, chosen by fiat of a council or the monarch or an overseer. "I don't care if our only excess armorer is a pioneering sort. He's our only excess armorer. He's going." etc.

If the Dwarves aren't getting negative thoughts from being "on duty" just from being at the fort, then it's reasonable to assume they are at the fort more-or-less willingly.  At the moment, personality doesn't enter into the decision to migrate, but it makes sense for it to factor in at some point (alongside relationships).

This doesn't even get into the possibilities of promoting migration to the fort.  One could try to aim for certain traits by promoting the fort in certain ways.

For example, if you want gullible people: "Come to Greenland!  It's a great place to live!  And don't go to Iceland, it's terrible there... you want to move to Greenland!"

[GavJ]

Remember that this is a game.  The OP was offended that skills and equipment seem to be fungible since they pull from the same pool.  I think the system we have is a perfectly valid way to play-balance things without constraining the player into a certain # of equipment points and a certain # of skill points.

Actually, the relative costs of equipment versus skills are entirely moddable already. If you want skills to be half as expensive compared to equipment, just go in and change the [MATERIAL_VALUE] tags of everything to numbers twice the size of what they are already in the raws, and you'll get the ratio you want.

The only exceptions are trivial things like the value of potash or glazed pots (which should absolutely be in the raws and not be exceptions, though, I'd be with you on that one).

If the Dwarves aren't getting negative thoughts from being "on duty" just from being at the fort, then it's reasonable to assume they are at the fort more-or-less willingly.  At the moment, personality doesn't enter into the decision to migrate, but it makes sense for it to factor in at some point (alongside relationships).

This doesn't even get into the possibilities of promoting migration to the fort.  One could try to aim for certain traits by promoting the fort in certain ways.

For example, if you want gullible people: "Come to Greenland!  It's a great place to live!  And don't go to Iceland, it's terrible there... you want to move to Greenland!"

Fair enough. Drawing certain personalities would be cool, but we should probably wait to see what the update in a day or two is regarding personalities and how much they actually matter.