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[2074red2074]

When preparing carefully for an embark, there are certain exploits that can be used. For example, if you bring 21 units of booze instead of twenty, you get an extra barrel for free. You just have to dump it or forbid the other barrels to force your dorfs to drink the last unit. I propose that a change be made so that certain things be calculated so that the containers are added to the cost to remove this exploit.

[SixOfSpades]

While I agree with you, others won't. As the game stands now, players who don't wish to abuse the exploit have an easy way to do so--simply by choosing not to abuse it. Just carry your food & drink in multiples of 20, and you're fine, while those who actually WANT to go "Mwahahaha, I'm going to buy just 1 unit of meat from every type of animal there is" are still free to do so.

Personally, I don't want the containers added to the cost to remove the exploit--I want the containers added to the cost, PERIOD. More realism.

[dudlol]

Agree in a way, though more like this: containers are not included in the cost or with the item at all. In the case of alcohol you cannot purchase it without valid containers,  food and the like would come in stacks without barrels and possibly spoil sooner. If you had barrels available it would automatically put things in them till they are full in some pre designated order.

[GavJ]

As the game stands now, players who don't wish to abuse the exploit have an easy way to do so--simply by choosing not to abuse it.

Default gameplay should not include stupid tricks that don't make any sense and confer unreasonable advantages. It's a bug/oversight, pure and simple, and completely unrealistic. Thus, the sandbox defense does not apply like it does in other situations where two options are subjective or both reasonable alternatives.

Especially in this particular case, where somebody who wanted to cheat ALREADY has an existing alternative, even if barrel prices were added in. Advanced world gen already allows you to write in higher embark point allowances. So if you want extra barrels, give yourself (cost of barrels)*that many more embark points. Bam, cheating successful.

Is it more of a PITA? Sure. Cheating should be, because the default experience should always be privileged. It's not like you typed in console codes in Doom to NOT be in god mode...

[Dorf and Dumb]

Does it really matter?  You chop down one tree, build a carpenter shop, build a few barrels in what, a couple of game days?  Or if you don't have trees, same thing with rock pots.

[SixOfSpades]

It's a bug/oversight, pure and simple, and completely unrealistic. Thus, the sandbox defense does not apply like it does in other situations where two options are subjective or both reasonable alternatives.

Which is why I said that I did want the cost of the barrels added to the total. My main point was to draw the distinction between "The game would be better with this change", and "The game would be better with this change, because right now some people are playing it in a way that I don't like". Sorry if I failed to get that across.

Advanced world gen already allows you to write in higher embark point allowances.

Quite true, but that's locked with worldgen. So a player who finds a promising site, but then discovers that they need a lot of armor to fend off the first ambush party (that now finds you before your own kinsfolk do) has little alternative but to abuse stupid embark tricks.

I, personally, hope embarking goes through a LOT of changes before v1.0, but giving the player fewer options would not be one that I'd like to see.

[SixOfSpades]

My collected thoughts & opinions on how Embarking should work. Yeah, it's long.

• You pick your civilization before anything else. Before choosing, you can see how populous/prosperous each one is, who they're at war with, what materials & technologies they have access to, if their only deities are gods of trees, muck, & suicide, and similar background information.
• Depending on your chosen civ, the sitting monarch is likely to have specific demands of you; their reason for your establishing a fort in the first place. Examples might be
  a) holding a strategic location vital to the Mountainhome's defense, such as a mountain pass or isthmus,
  b) to be a source of resources to which your civ currently has limited or no access, such as tin, coal, alligator meat, sun berries, etc.,
  c) to establish a stronghold in a good position to attack enemy forces and lands, or similarly defend civilizations allied with your own,
  d) to reclaim a fort lost to invasion, rebellion, monstrous beasts, disease, insanity, or causes unknown,
  e) to build a trading outpost, whose main purpose is to be a convenient mercantile station for profitable dealings with other civilizations & races,
  f) to investigate strange, ethereal vibrations coming from deep underground, and determine their source, or maybe just
  g) to build a secure prison where the Mountainhome can send its undesirables while still getting some useful work out of them.
  Your monarch might list more than one "goal" of the fort, and if so you can pick one. This will give you a lot of additional embark points, from your royal sponsorship. Some demands might carry very specific areas where the fort MUST be built, like the aforementioned mountain pass, or a crossroads of major trade routes if you're building a mercantile fort. If the monarch does not have any specific reasons to establish a new colony, or they do and you simply decide not to choose any of them, you can still go 'freestyle' and strike out pioneering as always, but then you don't get those extra embark points.
• Then, you pick your site. Again, the monarch may have picked for you, or at least given you a number of general areas where coal (or whatever) is most likely to be found. The precision & accuracy of the Embark window depend on several factors. Most important is the location's distance from your Mountainhome, and the difficulty/danger of traversing that distance. If the spot was chosen for a defensive or entrepreneurial purpose, the site will be fully explored. If it's in enemy territory, it most likely won't be. Much will depend on the skill and religion of the dwarven surveyors sent to the site (randomly determined): They all can estimate mountain height & river location, spot surface volcanoes, tell rocks from soil, and identify precisely which metal ores are exposed at the surface. But depending on the level of their Beard-Powers and proximity to the Mountainhome, they can miscount or misidentify trees & other plants, not notice any local wildlife, mistake the daily weather for the region's overall climate, improperly gauge soil depth, or fail to notice (on a tile-by-tile basis) the presence of any surface ores at all, or the likelihood of an aquifer. They can even overlook the presence of (or overestimate the distance to) nearby settlements. But those concerns are all "Shallow". For "Deep" matters, the surveyors' religious backgrounds come into play--again randomly determined, those with greater faith to your civ's deities of minerals, metals, caverns and volcanoes are much more likely to detect things like layer stones, aquifers, ores, flux, magma, and candy (if those are even present--they might not be), as well as the probable location of the caverns themselves.
  All of this is visible in the embark screen: The totality of the surveyors' report, as well as the estimated accuracy & precision for the area under scrutiny. If you wish, you may send a dedicated research party to anywhere on the World Map, but this costs a lot of embark points--the cost increases with distance/difficulty/danger, and the number of dwarves you wish to send (they all have Legendary Beard Powers, but more dwarves = greater chance that they're devoted to the right gods). You can adjust the size of the area you want them to survey, and also the number of core samples you wish them to drill. This provides more information, with 100% accuracy, but marginally increases their time spent on-site, exposing them to danger: If their only member who worships your god of volcanoes gets eaten shortly after arrival, they'll only have been able to check a couple of tiles for the presence of deep magma. Once (what's left of) the party returns--which could easily take well over a year, depending on how far you sent them--THEN you can actually embark, or even send a second research team to a different area. Again, this costs more embark points, and if your monarch ordered you to do a job, the money from their sponsorship is probably gone by now, because they're wondering why the hell you're still sitting on your ass in the Mountainhome.
• Forget the Starting Seven, now you can embark with as many as 20 dwarves, or as few as just one. The population & prosperity of your Mountainhome determines the number of citizens who would be willing to come with you--comfortable dwarves are more willing to stay put, but if the city's wealthy enough to have attracted a siege recently, more people might be looking for a change. You must pick & choose your party from these volunteers. Your monarch might also "volunteer" a few dwarves for you, especially if you've accepted a mission. These could be useful soldiers to help assure your success, or just gutter trash the city would rather see the back of. (You don't have to include these conscripts if you don't want to, but if not, you'll be seeing them again in one of the early migrant waves.) On the whole, most of your prospective embark party will have strong traits of loyalty and thrill-seeking, naturally, and only modest levels of skill in fairly utilitarian professions--dwarves with multiple skills will usually have them in complementary fields, like Butcher-Tanner-Leatherworker. Larger Mountainhomes are more likely to have Master-level craftsdwarves, and selecting them comes at a price: They will expect to be treated according to their station--making your High Master Jeweler go ruin his delicate hands by swinging a pick all day or hauling rocks around is a very good way to cause a tantrum. You may also find surprisingly wealthy dwarves willing to emigrate, and they will offer to effectively buy their way into your starting lineup: Including them gives you substantially more embark points to spend on supplies, but upon arrival, they'll pretty much demand that you give them a noble's role (preferably mayor) & only the very cushiest of jobs to do. ANY dwarf, no matter what, can bring along their family. Depending on how numerous & extended those families are, and how attached the chosen dwarf is to them, will determine whether the relatives "staple" themselves into your embark, or just migrate later. (But at least some dwarves are unmarried orphans.)
  These volunteers are not entirely ready-made: During the week or so before you actually set off, you can ask each of them to practice a skill of your choice. How well they succeed at this depends on how motivated they are, and the profession itself (there's not exactly a wealth of opportunities to gain experience as a Surgeon at the drop of a hat), but the average dwarf can usually go from no-skill to Adequate, or add one level to an existing skill (to a maximum of Accomplished). If these new jobs require new tools (and most of them do), you'll need to spend embark points for them.
  
• Pack your bags! Gathering equipment for the expedition works much the same as before, but with the following changes:
  1) Embark points start at 1250, plus a modifier that you can set in the INIT file, plus a modifier from your civilization (could be positive or negative, depending on your civ's size & prosperity), plus some random variation.
  2) Quantities of food & drink are shown in comparison to the amount that your party is expected to consume on the journey.
  3) Depending on the length & harshness of the journey, livestock--even draft animals--can die en route. Bring spares.
  4) You have to spend embark points on the wagon, draft animals, and every bag & barrel required. The route you'll be taking is calculated, and you are notified accordingly: If you have to traverse mountains, you can't bring a wagon, you'll have to use yaks or mules, or go on foot, and you'll need lots of warm clothing as well. If you have to cross at least 1 shallow river, you'll need a more expensive amphibious wagon. Yes, it's Dwarf Fortress meets Oregon Trail. If you have to cross a deep river or open sea, a portion of your embark points cannot be spent: They are held in reserve, to pay the people who will ferry you across. If the journey is short, you can save money by using perishable food, otherwise it's the more expensive jerky, dry biscuit, and canned plump helmets.
  On the plus side, any dwarf who has the skills to do a job has the tools for that job as well (some of which you might already have paid for when training them): The Metalcrafter has his own anvil, the Ambusher her own crossbow, the Cook his own pans, cauldron, ladle & knives, the Engraver her own hammer, chisels & burins. Most workshops require at least a bare minimum complement of tools before you can even set them up, so if you don't "inherit" at least one set from a dwarf who already knows the trade, you have to either spend embark points on things like a set of "Bronze Carpentry tools", or have your Black/Weaponsmith forge those tools later. (The quality of the resulting tools affects the speed & quality of the items made with them, and the material of the tools determines what materials can be worked at all: Copper chisels cannot shape granite.)

And that's it! Isn't embarking a breeze?

[Adrian]

I agree with Spade's wall o' text above for as much of it as i have read.

[Dirst]

SixOfSpades, a lot of 2 and 4 and 5 are already planned in the "embark scenarios" path, up to an including the possibility of an "Oregon Trail" mini-game to get to the embark location.

For 1, having access to some information about your civilization would be really really nice.

There are very different opinions about point 3.  What information you get is always correct (with the possible exception of partial aquifers) but the level of detail seems off.  If you know there are multiple deep metals, why don't you know which ones?

A handful of detail levels would probably work better than presenting potentially false information to the player.  The first is a playability issue... it's frustrating to have your plans upended by faulty information.  The second is more technical... the game would need a way of randomly generating the same survey results for the same embark every time.

[senilking]

.

[SixOfSpades]

SixOfSpades, a lot of 2 and 4 and 5 are already planned in the "embark scenarios" path, up to an including the possibility of an "Oregon Trail" mini-game to get to the embark location.

Good to know! I'm of two minds about actually playing your way there, though . . . more realism, obviously, and it avoids the situation of embarking & discovering that the wagon is parked somewhere ridiculous, like atop a mountain peak or on a lake that's just about to thaw. But I'm not sure the game is ready to cope with all the things that can happen. What if you can't make it all the way to your destination, or you make enemies of half a dozen neutral civilizations on the way there? Will your monarch withdraw your charter, or even depose you? What if your ship gets blown off course, and wrecks nowhere near where you were trying to go, forcing you to drastically reevaluate your mission? What if you stumble on a good site en route, and decide to leave some of your dwarves there, to establish a settlement to supply both you & the Mountainhome with valuable resources? Could the game support roleplaying on this scale? I'll need to think about this some more.

There are very different opinions about point 3.  What information you get is always correct (with the possible exception of partial aquifers) but the level of detail seems off.  If you know there are multiple deep metals, why don't you know which ones? . . . A handful of detail levels would probably work better than presenting potentially false information to the player.

There's nothing wrong with differences of opinion. Personally, I just think it makes a ton of sense that your Mountainhome wouldn't have made it a priority to send highly meticulous surveying teams into the heart of a Terrifying Savage Scorching Desert at the other end of the continent, and so all they know about those lands is from the explorations (or even just hearsay) of other civilizations. So, naturally, the embark window would NOT be able to provide you with all the data, and yes, it should even be able to misinform you. But, as long as the embark window TELLS you roughly how complete your civ's knowledge of that area is, I think that's fair.
As for knowing which metals . . . there's no excuse for not knowing which surface metals. If the surveyors see the ore at ALL, they should know which ore it is. Core samples (only used by the specialized research geologists you sent to that specific site) are also 100% accurate about any ores that they find. But for things deeper than the core samples can reach, or for the basic surveyors & mappers to have any real underground knowledge at all, religion is the only way. If one of the surveyors is a fiercely devoted worshiper of your god of jewels, you should have a completely accurate report of what gems are in the area, and how plentiful & how deep they are in the area defined by your embark square. But if the survey crew contains only 1 casual worshipper of your god of metals, that god might find his lack of faith disturbing, and tell him only of the existence of "Deep metals," glossing over the fact that those metals are nickel & zinc. Or the surveyor might detect no deep metals at all, or even return a false positive. But, happily, the surveyor KNOWS that he's only a casual worshipper, and so when you're looking at the embark window, the estimated accuracy of what metals are on-site is displayed accordingly.
So, yes, it's possible to have your plans upended by faulty information. But as long as you're informed that the details are sketchy, it's pretty much your own fault for gambling on a long shot.

A handful of detail levels would probably work better than presenting potentially false information to the player.

Could you elaborate on this? How would your system work?
 

the game would need a way of randomly generating the same survey results for the same embark every time.

Not exactly, but you do have a point. After you've been through (my) steps 1 & 2, the game would have to remember what your civilization knows about the land . . . probably on a tile-by-tile basis in the Region window, if not Local. I think it would be better to calculate this on the fly, as you cursor over each area, rather than to do the entire World Map at once.
Canceling the embark at this stage could either Save the game (meaning, the knowledge/ignorance map that the program just generated), resulting in the same information when that same civ looks at that same area. Or it could simply backtrack you to Step 2 or 1, and choosing the same civ again could dynamically re-explore the map, possibly resulting in a more skilled & devout team of surveyors exploring your desired site. Either way, I doubt there would be a feasible path to prevent players from looking at a site with whatever civ happened to be next door to it . . . and then just remembering that information, before embarking as a member of the civilization that they really want.

Maybe leave a quickstart for people just wanting to jump in though.

Oh HELL yes. DF's learning curve is already sheer enough, there's no need to turn it into a loop-the-loop while juggling bowling balls. A simplified path would be something like . . .
Step 1) The civilization menu shows just the location, & relative wealth & population of each civ.
Step 2) The raison d'chateau menu gives more restrictive embark locations ("You must build the iron mine precisely here.")
Step 3) The game forces you to embark no more than a month's travel or so from the Mountainhome, so knowledge of the sites is always accurate.
Step 4) The monarch picks most of your starting team for you: 2/3rds are mandatory, 1/3rd are suggested & can be swapped out. The overall size of the embark team is still yours to control.
Step 5) The game intelligently picks your starting equipment (not buying any tools already owned by your dwarves, buying more weapons/armor if you're embarking near enemies, etc.), and skips the Oregon Trail mini-game . . . although it still calculates the route you would take to reach the site, and parks the wagon at the edge of the embark map, at the point where you would have arrived. Feel free to drive the wagon to wherever on the site that you wish / can, before unloading.

[GavJ]

You pick your civilization before anything else.

So, naturally, the embark window would NOT be able to provide you with all the data

The precision & accuracy of the Embark window depend on several factors.

Bleh, no.

1) Legends mode and/or simply having more than one fort in a world will destroy any attempt you might be making at obfuscating information at embark.
2) I don't EVER want to play a game without solid knowledge and control of my embark site, simply because the vast majority of sites in DF are super super boring, and I put a lot of thought into picking non-boring ones. More thought than any automated algorithm is ever going to match better than myself for my own preferences. Forcing me to would greatly lessen gameplay enjoyment.
3) What's the advantage to obfuscation? If you want a surprise, just close your eyes and mash some buttons, it's not that hard.

I WOULD potentially be okay with less filter information being displayed, but ONLY if worldgen were massively overhauled to be much much more geologically realistic to the point where you could accurately predict things based on actual geology yourself (as an option only, of course). Without something skill based like that, withholding any info will be frustrating only with no gameplay benefit. While also being almost technically impossible anyway due to legends, etc., as mentioned.

Depending on your chosen civ, the sitting monarch is likely to have specific demands of you

Fine, but there should also be several options of you not caring what the monarch thinks, such as fugitives, exiles, religious refugees, etc., or simply vanilla "monarch doesn't care about me particularly one way or the other" classic gameplay, as well.

Also, I'd want to have an option of it being the mountainhomes versus a splinter from a settlement (which population pool the dwarves are drawn from is chosen accordingly), so you could make a fort and then use that fort's dwarves to start a new fort, player empire = fun.

Forget the Starting Seven, now you can embark with as many as 20 dwarves, or as few as just one.

Yes definitely.

Quantities of food & drink are shown in comparison to the amount that your party is expected to consume on the journey.

Yes, longer journeys should consume more supplies. A simpler way of doing this would be to merely give you fewer embark points for further destinations, but your version is fine if Toady has time for more detail.

[SixOfSpades]

Well, maybe Fortress mode could have two subsets.
"Classic" would give you full knowledge of every possible site in the world, and allow you to instantly embark to any location, regardless of its distance from your parent civilization, and possibly 'reclaim' sites that never belonged to your people in the first place. Merchants appear at your map without calculating travel times from their points of origin, etc.
"Roleplay" would emphasize your origins with a particular civilization, give you a reason for the fort's existence, and restrict your knowledge of the world to just the information that the average dwarf of such a background would likely be able to access. Optional (or perhaps even mandatory) Adventurer-mode mini-game of just reaching the selected (or royally mandated) embark site.
Alternatively, there could just be settings in the INIT file or chosen at worldgen, determining the distance from the mountainhome at which the "surveyors" still have 100% accuracy, thus blurring the two extremes.

I don't EVER want to play a game without solid knowledge and control of my embark site, simply because the vast majority of sites in DF are super super boring, and I put a lot of thought into picking non-boring ones.

True. I'll generate a world, looking for ONE really interesting site with everything I need to create a dwarven paradise . . . and more often than not, I'll fail to find one. Placing restrictions that effectively limit my potential embark locations to only being within X distance of a civilization's Mountainhome (or other feasibly large settlement) would only exacerbate this problem. But that's only right; it's the tradeoff between convenience and realism. I really don't like the way that dwarves have godlike omniscience of things literally at the opposite end of the earth, and think nothing of establishing such a far-flung colony there. Personally, I would rather generate one world after another, than play a fort that I know shouldn't even exist in the first place. Of course, that's only an opinion, and I know that there will be times when I will say, "Screw realism, let's embark on an Evil glacier," and the very conditions which I suggested above will bite me on the ass. But, again, that's only right.
Maybe if, as you say, the geology of DF is tweaked to create more topographically "interesting" sites (waterfalls, caves, shallow magma, mesas, underground rivers, what-have-you), and the mineral composition is similarly altered so that most sites have a greater variety of naturally-occurring stones & ores, that would mean that the majority of dwarven civilizations have at least 1 promising embark site located relatively close by . . . which would seem to please both of us.

Legends mode and/or simply having more than one fort in a world will destroy any attempt you might be making at obfuscating information at embark.

Hardly. Just because the information exists doesn't mean anyone has to look at it.

. . . there should also be several options of you not caring what the monarch thinks, such as fugitives, exiles, religious refugees, etc.,

Yes. Also, "Find & kill a specific megabeast and take his lair for our own," "Roving bandit gang decides to establish a (semi-)permanent base," "Build/dig a path across this otherwise-impassable barrier, & collect a buttload of money from tolls," or "dig a concealed fortress with secret exit right inside an enemy (or neutral, or even your own) town, so we can take them by surprise at any moment."

Also, I'd want to have an option of it being the mountainhomes versus a splinter from a settlement (which population pool the dwarves are drawn from is chosen accordingly), so you could make a fort and then use that fort's dwarves to start a new fort, player empire = fun.

Nice.

[GavJ]

I really don't like the way that dwarves have godlike omniscience of things literally at the opposite end of the earth, and think nothing of establishing such a far-flung colony there.

1) Deduct embark points by distance.
2) Go check out the economics threads. Or maybe don't cause youll be missing for like 10 hours if you do. But basically, caravans can and should take into account distance and cost and would come less often or demand higher profits to show up if you're in the middle of nowhere.
3) Restricted choices of scenarios in difficult places. Evil glacier may only be valid to embark as refugees or fugitives or something with little home support and possibly even your own civ hunting for you. Or whatever you care to imagine for realism.

Maybe if, as you say, the geology of DF is tweaked to create more topographically "interesting" sites

No I meant like "Iron is mostly deposited in banding formations during realistic geological worldgen, when microbes begin producing excess oxygen that rusts free iron and deposits ores in layers, so if you look for that era of rock strata, you might be able to predict depth of iron roughly around it by applying knowledge as a player" etc., as a (very) hard but realistic mode. Or "this is a surface ultramafic plutonic intrusion that's exposed, so it's likely to be more iron rich than the country rock if you dig deep anywhere around it." I.e. real life plausible "deep iron" forecasting.

Or you could just imagine dwarves doing that sort of thing.

Hardly. Just because the information exists doesn't mean anyone has to look at it.

Uh, stop for a moment and consider this comment in relation to current embark rules...? Your main suggestion is hiding information, and you already have a button not to look at it (tab)...

[SixOfSpades]

1) Deduct embark points by distance.

Well, if we're shooting for full realism, making you spend more on specific items like more non-perishable food, extra livestock, and spare wagon wheels would seem to be the ideal end goal, but yes, your suggestion would make a nice, simple approximation.

3) Restricted choices of scenarios in difficult places. Evil glacier may only be valid to embark as refugees or fugitives or something with little home support and possibly even your own civ hunting for you.

I don't think it makes much sense to choose a scenario after the embark location. If the monarch banishes you, you simply shouldn't be allowed to choose a site within the territory of your (or allied) civilizations . . . if that pushes you onto a glacier, so be it.

"this is a surface ultramafic plutonic intrusion that's exposed, so it's likely to be more iron rich than the country rock if you dig deep anywhere around it." I.e. real life plausible "deep iron" forecasting.
. . . Or you could just imagine dwarves doing that sort of thing.

Dwarves shouldn't have the kind of scientific mindset we have today, and as earthquakes don't yet exist in DF, dwarves wouldn't know about plate tectonics, uplift, etc. They would know what metamorphic rocks are, but not why they are. Of course, they still learn from experience, so yes, a dwarf with sufficient Beard Powers might be able to predict deep strata based on surface extrusions . . . but more than likely, they would still ascribe that knowledge to their gods.

Hardly. Just because the information exists doesn't mean anyone has to look at it.

Uh, stop for a moment and consider this comment in relation to current embark rules...? Your main suggestion is hiding information, and you already have a button not to look at it (tab)...

Why the condescension? I think I've made it pretty clear which information I consider unrealistic, so why are you comparing Legends mode ("This monster, which you probably won't ever encounter because it lives half the world away from you, once smashed the third finger, left hand of a human in some settlement that you couldn't care less about") with the data viewable with the Tab key ("Hey, this is the civilization that YOU ARE FROM")? The main thrust of one of my major suggestions is not simply hiding information, but hiding information based on distance, difficulty, and hostility.