Why would we buy new stuff if it activated permanent demands from our dwarves, for a one time thought? Best be careful who you appoint broker, then.
That is why it would probably be a good idea to introduce a happy thought for eating new food stuffs, buying/acquiring new types of food is a way to keep your dwarves happy without it being a need (since new food stuffs will of course run out). Dwarves get a happy thought for eating foods which they have not eaten already, generated dwarves are assumed to have already eaten all the foods in the foods list of their own culture. So you buy new types of foodstuff and your dwarves will get happy thoughts for eating a new food the first time, irrespective of whether they like that food type, as long as they do not have very low curiosity that is.
For now, but agriculture will be reworked and recipes are coming eventually. Needs aren't supposed to be that difficult to meet. Pray to deity is as simple as building a temple. Drinking is as simple as having booze. There are ones just for talking to people or viewing art. IMO, we don't need an entire economy based upon a single need.
The whole economy needs to exist, if everybody can be kept happy simply by being given any kind of prepared food then we will never see long distance trading in food ever realistically occurring. Your solution means complete self-sufficiency in food is pretty much going to be the rule, if we were to add in recipes then the recipes will realistically be based upon the presently available foods to a given culture, so no trade there; if we make recipes require unavailable foods then we are back to where we started with unmeetable food needs.
Bumber is correct, there's no reason why needs should be absurdly difficult and micromanagement-heavy to fulfill. They are needs, not wants.
If you are relying on micromanagement to meet your dwarves needs then you are simply not playing the game properly. You buy everything that you do not produce yourself already or have a vast stockpile of and then a lot of dwarves are going to be happy; no need to go through every dwarves individual bio to figure out what every single dwarf needs; except at the beginning when your group is small enough to do this and you are also too poor to buy up the caravan. You do not need to keep track of the individual food needs of all your dwarves any more than a grocery store needs to keep track of the food needs of it's individual customers; the trick is to maintain stocks and have as big a variety as possible.
Yay, you've reduced it from the completely unmanageable 1000 food types down to a "mere" functionally unmanageable 200 food types.
Even if needs called for difficulty, and they don't, micromanagement isn't difficulty, it's just not fun.
Why do you hate fun?
The problem is not the number of food types, it is fact that not all food types are even obtainable; 200 or 1000 is irrelevant.
We already have arbitrary luxury goods. I was talking about a system to actually give them a purpose. A system that isn't based upon perverting the needs system for something it was never designed to handle, for reasons nobody but you seems to see.
Having arbitrary luxury goods is simply not what we want to have. We want what is a luxury to be determined dynamically by the world economy without us having to define in the raws what is considered a luxury.
Actually, I have read it, and understand it and its implications, apparently better than you do. (As does, seemingly everyone else in this thread.) That's why I'm stuck here having to repeatedly explain to you that you're trying to propose a solution to something that isn't a problem.
I would rather you actually read what you are proposing carefully and read the absurd contradictions in it.
If a single person writes something that is full of obvious and absurd contradictions, then it is far more likely that the contradictions are due to your misunderstanding of what is being written than what the person writing is actually trying to convey; granted the writing may not have been written very well to start with.
Once again, this is a terrible idea.
NEEDS SHOULD NOT BE SECRET. They are needs. They are things players have to provide. You should not make something the player has to do secret, and hide it from the player.
If you want to have a want that is secret, that applies a bonus above and beyond what is needed, that would be one thing, but this is a need. This is something you have to provide.
Need I remind you that trading isn't always possible? Some forts go through long periods of sieges, even permanent ones, although this is due to bugs. You're saying that players shouldn't have a choice, they have to import every single food that is tradable, all the time. Doing that, even by your own standard, isn't "difficult", it's just "tedious" when it isn't "impossible". In fact, "just take one of everything" takes even less thought and planning on the part of the player than trying to fill one of every "flavor category", which was what you were trying to oppose.
What you are proposing is like saying that, to use D&D for an example, there will be a room in every dungeon that can only be opened by a single completely blindly randomly chosen item off the chart of stuff in the "equipment" section of the Player's Handbook. There are no hints, no clever puzzle, just carry 7 tons of equipment with you at all times no matter where you go, and spend far less time actually adventuring or having fun since you're going to be forced to order minions and teamsters carrying all your bec de corbins and hide armors around. Because you think that's where the "challenge" of the game should come from.
Okay, I see the problem here is I have been wroting needs when what I really meant is likes. The needs are there as at present, certain dwarves have the NEED for fine meals which is met by being given a food with one of the ingredients that they LIKE. What I am proposing is that we continue randomly determine the initial likes of a dwarf as at present, but compare the needs to a newly introduced list of culturally available foods which is separate from the random likes of a given dwarf; the same list can of course determine recipes, hence killing two birds with one stone.
If a like appears on the culturally available list then nothing happens, things work at present. If a like appears does not appear on the list then the initial randomly generated like is hidden and a new food like is chosen from the list, if possible from the same item category, so if you like one type of fish then the replacement will be a different type of fish. If the dwarf should end up consuming their hidden like then it is revealed, both to the player and to the dwarf; so both can act accordingly, with the player knowing what foods to provide that dwarf and the dwarf now seeking that food out from the stockpiles.
Revealing food needs is actually beneficial since the more likes are revealed the easier it is to meet the needs of the dwarf, since as the original replacement food like remains in play they now have more food likes, any of which will meet their singular food need; the more likes the dwarf has, the easier it is to meet their food need. To add a food to the cultural food list so that it will be revealed in all dwarves automatically if it was randomly selected and new dwarves can select it as a replacement foodstuff for their randomly selected non-culturally available food like. Again, it is beneficial (in the short-term) for the player to reveal food likes or add new culturally available foods because it means their dwarves end up with a greater number of food likes although this does not filter down to new generations of dwarves.
The more food likes there are, the easier the game is. To sort the micromanagement out we increase the number of food likes per dwarf from 1-2 (at present) to say 2-8 (or such), this means that there will be fewer dwarves having unmet food needs using the scattershot approach which avoids micromanagement. For the remainder the problem is basically one of interface, we give the player the ability to zero in on the few dwarves who have very unmet food needs so the player can manually sort the problem out. Ideally most dwarves will be kept happy by the scattershot approach of buying up everything available that is not locally being produced, but the few can be zeroed in on by the player in order to make special arrangements to acquire at least one of the foods on the list with the traders or with the internal food producing dwarves to meet that demand.
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Topic: Food need preferences now too strong (Read 17840 times)