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Author Topic: New item designation: %incomplete%  (Read 5921 times)

SixOfSpades

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New item designation: %incomplete%
« on: March 18, 2016, 03:21:44 am »

Quote
Weaponsmith- "Well, this sword blade is looking pretty good so far, but I'm too sleepy to be bothered with the hilt. I'll just go to bed, and finish this up tomorrow."
Mason- "The mayor wants some more marble statues, but I'm kinda new at this. I think I'll just chisel off the rough cuts & get the general shape down, but leave the detail work to somebody who's more experienced at sculpture than myself."
Clothier- "The Manager always orders 30 new dresses every new year. I think I'll start ahead of time, by cutting out the fabric, but I won't actually sew them together yet. That way, when the order drops, I'll have half of my work already done, so I'll get my 15 dresses made MUCH sooner than Vucar can finish her 15."
Cook- "I'm bored. We haven't prepared any food since Timber, and it's been so long that I think I'm starting to get rusty. I might as well blend together the dry ingredients for some . . . biscuits or something, and store that for future use. It's not like we're running low on flour."

I thought of this as part of my Innovations plan, but this seems too global & (potentially) useful to be locked behind a random Strange Mood. I suggest a new item tag, an %incomplete% tag. The dwarves quoted above would produce an %iron sword%, a %marble statue%, %pig tail fiber dress%, etc. Incomplete items could not be used / built / traded, and would have no quality & zero value. Stockpiles would need an extra option to accept / refuse incomplete items, and individual workshops could likewise be set to retain work in progress (the Weaponsmith above would like to see his sword stay right where he left it) or have it hauled off to storage (who knows when that %cave wheat biscuit% mix is going to get used). The Manager screen would have an option to set minimum / maximum quantities for each type (& material) of %incomplete% item allowed in the fort, although specific workshop commands and Manager orders would override this.

Why would %incomplete% items be useful?
1. The ability to suspend work in progress & automatically resume later would be great for letting dwarves attend to their needs & get right back to work. This would be much more important when/if working times are made more realistic (read: MUCH longer).
2. The quality of an item is determined by the dwarf who finishes the job, thus encouraging a mini-assembly line, where unskilled trainees do the prep-work before handing it off to their masters for the finishing touches.
3. The ability to stock up a reserve of prepared materials means 1) Busy work during slow periods, and 2) A head-start during rushes. Admittedly, this is a non-issue while the reaction working times are so short.
4. Dutiful dwarves should want to do work, even if they haven't been told to. If a dwarf has a preferred item, has the labor to make that item enabled, & is at least Rusty in that labor, then he should want to spontaneously make that item, especially if he's been No Job for a while. The advantages of having him make an %incomplete% item rather than a finished one are 1) If he's only an Adequate Metalcrafter, you don't have to worry about him wasting your valuable gold on making a -gold ring-, you can just pass it to your Legendary and still possibly get a ☼gold ring☼ out of it . . . and both dwarves get their skill rust held in check for a while. 2) If you don't like your dwarves making things that you didn't specifically order, the Managerial option to control all %incomplete% items is a built-in way to hold a damper on that behavior (or at least prevent unauthorized use of candy).

Thoughts?
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Insanegame27

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2016, 03:37:16 am »

I do like this suggestion very much. +1 and PTW
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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #2 on: March 18, 2016, 08:44:40 am »

Good idea there. I especially like how it is well thought out, and not a %suggestion%.
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TheBiggerFish

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2016, 01:35:19 pm »

Aye.

PTW.
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SixOfSpades

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #4 on: March 18, 2016, 08:36:31 pm »

I especially like how it is well thought out, and not a %suggestion%.
The irony here is that in staying up well past my bedtime in order to get the idea all written out & posted in 1 sitting, I failed to heed the very advice that I was suggesting my dwarves should be smart enough to follow.

I should note that there are plenty of items that it would NOT make sense to leave incomplete. There is no such thing as partially smelting metal, for instance--all you could achieve with such a process is wasting whatever time & fuel you put into it, as whoever comes along to finish the job is just going to have to take the ingot all the way up to proper melting temperature anyway. You couldn't have a %roast% for the same reason, plus the issue of food spoilage. Logic, realism, etc. I also doubt that anyone is clamoring for additional intermediate steps in already-long chains like the Soap and Clear Glass processes.

Pottery deserves a special mention, because it's a special case. Realistically, everything produced at a Pottery Studio would be %incomplete%, as the Potter has formed it & let it dry to leather-hardness prior to firing it at the Kiln. The %pottery% could not be used / built / traded, but it would have a quality, and some value dependent on that quality. It is also the only incomplete item (that I can think of) that could be decorated: with glazes, obviously, but also with fire-safe materials like gems and metals (respecting melting temp. vs. firing temp, of course). With pottery, it is the second dwarf's skill level that has no affect on the item's quality. Toady is surely already planning something along very much these same lines, this is just another way to think about it.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2016, 08:51:14 pm by SixOfSpades »
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Waparius

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2016, 08:00:09 am »

Depending on how it's framed it could be used to make workshop-rooms make more sense, too. If several dwarves are producing %items% then you'd want there to be room for them all to work on them. Certain types of tools may only work for producing incomplete items, or conversely only completed ones - you could have a potter's wheel and a kiln be separate pieces of furniture in the potter's workshop.

You could even have certain items go from incomplete to complete on their own over time, eg ageing wines and whiskeys, or even dying cloth. Now that I think about it, brewing in general would work that way.
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SixOfSpades

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2016, 10:55:54 am »

You could even have certain items go from incomplete to complete on their own over time, eg ageing wines and whiskeys, or even dying cloth. Now that I think about it, brewing in general would work that way.
I can't believe I missed that. Strong yes. Cheese, too.
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Trainzack

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2016, 12:09:31 pm »

I like this idea. PTW.

expwnent

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #8 on: March 19, 2016, 03:15:11 pm »

I'm undecided. Like you said, once jobs take much longer it makes sense to be able to stop and restart them but I'm not sure whether it makes sense to have a physical "partially completed object". Would the ingredients of a reaction be consumed immediately or only on completion? Does it make sense to cancel a partial reaction? What would the relative advantages and disadvantages be over allowing reactions to pause and resume?

I certainly don't want dwarves to spontaneously create items they like without being told.
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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2016, 11:07:18 pm »

Well, to answer your final statement, the auto creation of items is rather another suggestion entirely. This just mixes well with it.
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SixOfSpades

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #10 on: March 20, 2016, 01:13:29 pm »

I'm not sure whether it makes sense to have a physical "partially completed object". Would the ingredients of a reaction be consumed immediately or only on completion? Does it make sense to cancel a partial reaction?
Well, let's consider what baking bread would be like, once Toady gives the food system its intended overhaul.

1) Baker gathers all dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, optional flavorings*).
2) Baker gathers all perishable ingredients (milk, egg, yeast**, optional flavorings).
3) Baker mixes dry ingredients together.
4) Baker mixes in perishable ingredients.
5) Baker kneads the dough into a %cave wheat flour bread%.
6) The dough needs time to rise, the Baker won't be needed for an hour or so. During this time, he claims an Oven & loads it with charcoal (not coal).
7) Baker moves the %bread% into the Oven.
8 ) Baker sits & carefully watches the fire, to maintain its temperature***, as well as the bread once it's near to being done. Gains Wood Burner as well as Baker experience. If the Baker was smart (haha), he could multitask by Eating or Drinking during this step.
9) *«+cave wheat flour bread+»*

* Flavorings would count as decorations. Those that work well together, as well as with the nature of the base item (e.g., cinnamon & raisins), would raise the decoration quality, those that don't (maple syrup & reindeer cheese) would lower it.
** Yeast does have a shelf life, albeit a quite long one. It could plausibly be moved to the dry list.
*** We humans are SO SPOILED to be able to just turn a knob & walk away.

Anyway, having a %bread% object makes it easier to move it from the Kitchen to the Oven, or between different areas of the kitchen if we're using Workshop Zones. I don't see any advantage if all this took place in a single Bakery workshop, as either the workshop or the item could keep track of the time the dough has been rising / baking. [EDIT:] No, strike that. The advantage is that a good Baker will start a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th loaf while the 1st is rising. Rather than ask the Bakery workshop to keep track of all of their ages, each %bread% could just keep track of itself. Just as it wouldn't make sense for the Winery to keep track of the vintage of every single barrel of wine ever vinted there, we would write that on the barrels themselves. [/EDIT]
Reagents would be consumed as they are used: the dry ingredients would vanish from the workshop during step 3, the perishable ones in step 4, and I suppose the %cave wheat flour bread% reagent would first appear at the end of step 3. As for cancelling a partial reaction, it would only make sense prior to step 4: That would either give you a dry %bread% mix to be used later & some perishable ingredients to put away, or all the ingredients & no mix. Cancelling at step 4 or later would mean tossing the whole mess into the garbage.

Quote
What would the relative advantages and disadvantages be over allowing reactions to pause and resume?
The real advantage comes when dealing with multiple %items%, as with the Clothier above. By creating 15 %dresses% that can be stored in a nearby stockpile, the Clothier noticeably improves his turnaround time when the inevitable rush hits . . . while preventing his own skill rust during the slow season, and avoiding the lag caused by 14 suspended dress jobs cluttering up his workshop. With this example, the components of raw pig tail fabric would disappear just as the %pig tail dress% appears, and the construction of the dress could plausibly be cancelled at any point and resumed later, with only a small delay as the Clothier (perhaps even a completely different Clothier) pieced the parts together & remembered (or figured out) just how much more of the process was left to be done.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2016, 02:02:34 pm by SixOfSpades »
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MobRules

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #11 on: March 22, 2016, 06:50:08 am »

During this time, he claims an Oven & loads it with charcoal (not coal).
Why not coal? (My great-grandmother had a coal-fired stove when my grandmother was growing up, so they definitely were a thing.)
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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #12 on: March 22, 2016, 12:04:13 pm »

During this time, he claims an Oven & loads it with charcoal (not coal).
Why not coal? (My great-grandmother had a coal-fired stove when my grandmother was growing up, so they definitely were a thing.)
Maybe he just doesn't like elves?
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SixOfSpades

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #13 on: March 23, 2016, 12:12:15 am »

During this time, he claims an Oven & loads it with charcoal (not coal).
Why not coal? (My great-grandmother had a coal-fired stove when my grandmother was growing up, so they definitely were a thing.)
Hm. I've heard of coal stoves, but never coal ovens. Okay, one Wikipedia later, they were common in the 19th century. Still, wouldn't the coal smoke taint the taste of the food? (I know I'd definitely vote against magma ovens, at least unless it were made explicitly clear that there would be no vapor exchange between the lava & the food. Magma is dwarfy as hell, but it also has poisonous fumes.)

We really should be able to make cooking fires out of plain old wood, too, without needing to refine it into charcoal first.

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expwnent

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Re: New item designation: %incomplete%
« Reply #14 on: March 23, 2016, 12:44:35 pm »

I guess my main hesitation is with prepping reactions before they're ready to be completed. I certainly think in most cases it doesn't make sense but it could work sometimes.
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