Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Zorromorph]

All ideas and feedback are welcomed. 

Synopsis

Mortality is my attempt to bring some sensibility and realism into the development of dwarven citizens, and in general to the fortress economy as a whole.  It's an idea I've had in the back of my head for a long time, but it seems most of the things necessary are now feasible.  I have always thought that realism IS fun(though not always !FUN!), rather than it being a choice between fun and realism.  DF is fantastic when it comes to weird combat-related chaos that can happen, and there are many ways to screw up your fortress. 

For the skilled overseer though, very little will go wrong internally.  I find it interesting that the answer to the conundrum "this is too easy now" seems always to be something like the Fortress Defense Mod.  Such things are very good and add a lot to the game, but it's only part of the experience.  In Mortality, you will not be a legendary anything in a matter of months or a couple of years, valuable dwarves will drop dead for unpreventable or even unknown reasons, and basic civilian life in general will be much more realistically hazardous as will fashioning your band of misfits into a productive society. 

If you are not running away, screaming in terror yet, Mortality just might be for you. 

Timeframe

I hope to have something with the major concepts in worth playing by the time the new version is out and (relatively speaking) stable. 

Implemented

Just a few basic things so far:

** No artifacts or moods.  No, you cannot become a legendary stonecrafter instantly after creating a microline violin that menaces with spikes of marble.  I don't care how cool you think it is.  Not gonna happen.  No insta-legendaries.  Deal with it. 
** Orientation adjusted to allow for more marriages:  same-sex attraction is rare and marriages non-existent, while dwarves are more prone to marry.  This is needed because ...
** Population cap limited to outlaw migrants.  Exponential growth to a large population within a few years is ridiculous.  There is no 'jump-start mode' here.  You need to grow the old fashioned way:  earn it.  Practice your marriage !SCIENCE! and get your dwarves reproducing.  Baby cap will be tweaked as time goes on, but a dwarven society should grow fairly slowly, probably as many babies as adults at the max. 


TO-DO LIST

** Adjust skill rates so that for a reasonably talented dwarf, improving from no skill to Master in any skill will take approximately a decade as is realistic.  Legendary will take longer of course.
** Multiple castes with different innate abilities to learn.  I.e., 'leaders' for the noble track with superior social skills, skilled laborers for mining/woodcutting/growing, unskilled laborers for general-purpose hauling duty, military caste for combat roles, artisans for various crafting skills, smiths with abilities in those professions, etc.  A lot of balancing will be needed in terms of the number of castes, birth rates, and so forth. 
** Food changes along the lines of what various harder food mods have done.  Virtually everything will not be edible raw but require cleaning of some kind, crop growing times will probably change, and so on so that a significant part of the population must involve itself in food production. 
** Similar, but less drastic, changes to a number of other industries. 

Wishlist

** Industrial accidents.  All work will carry some risk.  More dangerous types(mining, woodcutting, smithing) moreso. 
** Infanty mortality.  I don't know of any way to accomplish this, but a significant percentage of newborns shouldn't last the first year.
** Humans option with different racial strengths:  larger families and population growth, better masons, inferior miners as compared to dwarves, etc.  . 

More will be added, this is just a starter post to give the flavor, let people respond if they choose, etc. 

[Putnam]

Imma quickly go over the todo:

1. Skill points required to get a skill are quadratic, at a rate of 50x²+50x, where x is the skill level you want. This allows for easy math to determine how long it's going to take to get to a certain level. If they took a month to get to novice from 0 skill, it'll take them 106 years to get to legendary. I guess you want to go for about 3 days to get to novice from base.

2. I've never really liked skill castes, personally, but that's for misc. reasons. Primarily because the game will probably eventually get to the point where such things will only make the game harder in ways that are irreconcilable, given the way labor will probably eventually work.

Wishlist:

1. Masterwork does this with weird cluster stones that do shit to your miners. I don't really like it because it's not something that can be managed well, but again, my opinion.
2. I don't know of any way to accomplish this either, unless you're willing to go with DFHack.
3. Mining isn't really moddable except for skill rates and what can be mined, so I'm guessing you're talking about skillrates there.

[Bearskie]

Sounds depressing. I like it

Since you're unsure about the newborn thing, you could use castes, like 1 in xxx dwarves born will be horribly mutated/stillborn dwarves. Unfortunately, there's the niggling problem that your migrants may show up as one of them.

[Meph]

How are you getting rid of moods?

[AceSV]

How are you getting rid of moods?

You can turn that off with the LNP.  At least there's a button to enable/disable Artifacts.  I've never pressed it. 



I would suggest some syndrome-carrying vermin.  Maybe have them leave some kind of secretion so that they can get syndromes on your food.  I'm not sure exactly how syndrome transference works. 

[Meph]

Oh yeah, the init option. Forget that I asked.

[Zorromorph]

Skill points required to get a skill are quadratic, at a rate of 50x2+50x, where x is the skill level you want. This allows for easy math to determine how long it's going to take to get to a certain level.

Thanks for this!   I did not know of this formula and it will speed the testing process considerably.  However, it does not seem to take into account that higher-skilled dwarves do things not just better but faster(i.e, a Proficient carpenter makes more beds, not just better ones, compared to an unskilled one), so merely calculation skill points would not be entirely accurate in this case if I am understanding what you are saying correctly. 

the game will probably eventually get to the point where such things will only make the game harder in ways that are irreconcilable

Many things might happen, certainly.  If the labor changes you allude to here are made, perhaps I will adopt a different approach.  Or perhaps parts of the mod will become irrelevant, I don't know.  I'll cross that bridge -- I mean, deconstruct that bridge while standing on it and fall 78 z-levels into a magma river -- when I come to it I guess.

Sounds depressing. I like it

Few places other than DF would result in such a comment making perfect sense . 

you could use castes, like 1 in xxx dwarves born will be horribly mutated/stillborn dwarves. Unfortunately, there's the niggling problem that your migrants may show up as one of them.

Possible certainly, but in my opinion this would probably be a mistake.  Sort of a cure worse than the disease sort of thing.  I'd probably set a slightly lower than desired baby cap(so that some children are simply not born w/smaller families) rather than go this route.  I definitely don't want to get to the point where I'm making the game harder or annoying soley for the point of making it harder/annoying.  My goal, which I hopefully will stick to, is to make changes that enhance realism and don't have side effects that are worse than the reality they represent. 

I hope that makes sense. 

I would suggest some syndrome-carrying vermin.  Maybe have them leave some kind of secretion so that they can get syndromes on your food.  I'm not sure exactly how syndrome transference works. 

Interesting idea, I hadn't thought of that.  I don't know how transference works either to that degree, but I'll definitely put that in the hopper of ideas. 

Skill rates and working on the food changes, which will give me some needed practice with custom reactions and all that jazz, will be up next.  Those things I definitely know I can do and will get things moving in the desired direction. 

[IndigoFenix]

For infant/child mortality, you can create a caste that looks normal but has maxage set to 1:3.  This has the advantage of not affecting migrants, although it will be accompanied by the message that the child has died of old age...

Alternatively, if you want to be more realistic, you can implement a contagious disease that causes breathing problems.  Breathing problems are more dangerous to smaller creatures, so an illness that is a minor inconvenience to adults could be fatal in children.

[crazyabe]

P T W

[Zorromorph]

I have found that most skills, at least of those I've tested so far, improve about nine times as fast as I would like.  I've adjusted most of them(excepting social skills which I expect to be quite different) to be slowed down by that amount as an initial step, to be tweaked as I'm able to get to looking at more of them in detail. 

[Godlysockpuppet]

A dfhack script could be written that allows only legendary craftsdwarves to make artifacts. That way you get your artifact microline violin that menaces with spikes of ash, but without the insta skill gain.

[Zorromorph]

Interesting.  That's well beyond me at this point.  I know how to code but have never messed with dfhack, so that's something way down the road if I ever do try to do it. 

I have made a couple more decisions though.  It seems industrial accidents are out, I didn't realize how many workshops & reactions are hardcoded.  Unfortunate, but it is what it is.  I'll use the castes and the maxage ranges to approximate this;  the deaths will not actually be from 'old age' of course, but I think it's the best way I see to affect the proper effect. 

I have set up a few already to approximate the infant mortality issue.  Dwarves are hardier than humans and will have less of a problem with this, but it will still be significant.  There are four, with decreasing chances of an early death:  before 1 year of age, 1-2 years, 2-4 years, and 4-12.  Any that survive to adulthood will stick around for at least a few decades.  At this point I plan to have a few groupings of professions with similar danger levels(i.e, 'dangerous labor' like mining/woodcutting will be more dangerous than say, farming or pottery).  The number of different castes I do want to keep reasonably small for reasons of balance and playability, I haven't decided how many exactly I will use yet. 

[Bearskie]

You could make brand new workshops and reactions from scratch that serve identical purposes to the hardcoded ones, but it'd be a crapload of work. How will you achieve the early deaths based on age?

[Zorromorph]

I suppose I could, but I don't see how that would do much good since I can't remove the default workshops, can I?

Early deaths based on age are via the maxage token. 

[RickRollYou2]

I like the idea, but in my opinion additional industrial accidents aren't needed--dwarves as they are currently make plenty themselves. Besides, it might be a little too annoying--can you imagine trying to cut trees or mine with the current AI issues AND more accidents?

With proper equipment and operating procedures workplace accidents are usually kept to a minimum, however in DF we can't implement such things without changing the base code. Hence, if you still do want to implement industrial accidents, I suggest there be a way to negate or minimise such incidents too.