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[daggaz]

Well the game already has a good system of price modifiers for additional item improvements, it's just not used very well and it's not balanced at all either internally or with respect to external economic mechanisms.   So definitely, I agree 100% that a simple rock mechanism that takes one boulder to produce should maybe not be worth as much as a dyed rope reed sock that requires all kinds of production steps  to manufacture. 

Ooooorrrrr perhaps, mechanisms being as intrinsically useful as they are, should require far more time to produce (and be subject to failure oh noooo think of all the fun  ) and keep a hefty price tag accordingly. 

Either way, you shouldnt be able to spam either mechanisms or socks, which is the point of this initial suggestion to balance the game economy. 

[SixOfSpades]

Mechanisms shouldn't be able to be made of stone at ALL, in my opinion. They should be made from metal only, and not the softer metals like lead or gold. The extra steps of smelting and forging/machining make it more comparable to the work of making a sock, and I wouldn't worry about the price difference because a (completed & installed) mechanism is far more important than a simple sock.

[daggaz]

Ive thought the same thing as it would sort out a number of issues for that particular item, ease of access vs power, etc.     Regarding the OP, however, there are still any other number of items that can be used to easily swamp the system, hence, the OP.

...is far more important than a simple sock

Heresey! Release the magma crabs!

[SixOfSpades]

Ive thought the same thing as it would sort out a number of issues for that particular item, ease of access vs power, etc.     Regarding the OP, however, there are still any other number of items that can be used to easily swamp the system, hence, the OP.

Yes, there are multiple clear abuses: melting down coins to get infinite metal, selling trap-component weapons, water reactors, quantum stockpiles, etc. But the problem with objecting to those abuses is that they're all voluntary, they only happen if the player himself decides to use that exploit, so blaming the game for that is somewhat missing the mark. Granted, I agree that those abuses should be brought down to reality--which Toady is actually doing, or he wouldn't have made changes like no longer being able to use training axes to cut down trees. I assume that making numerical changes (like bringing down the price of a mechanism) just doesn't hold his interest like the broad, sweeping changes of myth & magic. But I feel confident that these changes will come eventually. Maybe he's waiting for us to suggest more believable values.

But you DO have a point about exploits that the player can't control, that they are forced to do, things like "bare rock + sprinkling of water = rich topsoil", or how ridiculously overproductive farms are, or how dry sand = plants = thousands of gallons of booze. Combine this with the staggeringly unwieldy migrant waves (another thing the player can't really control), and your OP is quite valid. Many things about DF are turned up to eleven, and there really should be a way for the player to bring that down.

 . . . which is why this forum exists in the first place, to provide constructive feedback on an unfinished game. All of your concerns are valid, and all these grievances have been aired before, and we must assume that they will all be taken care of eventually. One day, we will no longer be able to dump a bucket of water on solid marble and watch a plump helmet grow out of it . . . but we WILL be able to gather up some silty loam dug out of one level, load it into a wheelbarrow, and dump it out again into a channel 8 z-levels down, and (a couple of weeks later) see a young plump helmet grow out of THAT. One day, trading caravans will turn up their noses at our bins upon bins of stone & bone crafts, and ask for raw lumber and metal bars instead, because that's what their demand is for, back at home. One day, we will be able to negotiate with the outpost liaison, asking for more Macedwarves as migrants, and fewer Fishery Workers. One day, we will melt down a metal object to get . . . exactly as much metal as was put into it. One day, tattered clothes will be truly worthless . . . for everything except the furnace, or the compost pile. And so on.

Your best / most original idea was the concept of sinks. You should explore that more, it fully deserves its own thread. I'll contribute.

[a mechanism]...is far more important than a simple sock

Heresey! Release the magma crabs!

Yes, sir! I have pulled the lever that releases the magma crabs!

[daggaz]

Oh I wasnt talking about exploits at all, that is a seperate issue (and one that should be easily resolved eventually).   I am talking about fundamental balance, for example a 2x2 garden plot with a legendary grower and fertilizer can produce an UNDWARVENLY amount of food.  The whole system is rife with examples like this, and they all contribute to minimizing challenge and maximizing tedium and clutter. 

As for sinks, its a fundamental game-design concept and hardly my idea.  And they already exist in the game as mentioned.  But you can quickly see that in a game without significant sinks, where you sit on a mountain of resources, and you can multiply those resources... you will quickly drown in resources.  The game is out of balance, in this respect. 

[Sarmatian123]

When I first played DF, I was expecting fun building'n'survival game. Like very cheese in graphics version of Empyrion or Arch. DF's survival elements are hard to find, unless you embark on dangerous biome and break all caves and hell wide open to surface, all while digging for lava, all in first year. I even lifted same questions. Why there is such overproduction. Why relentless waves of refugees. Why there is no sink for produced goods. Then it hit me. It wasn't THAT game. It is adventure. Therefore from start there are two options to play a world. As first person adventure or as settlement manager adventure.

Furthermore our ancestors in feudal times had same issues. Where to sell the food I am over producing? Where send ores I mine? To whom sell the manufactured goods I craft? There was no transportation network. People with their needs would come to you and ask to produce something for them first, giving you some other goods in trade. Roads were just downbeat paths by pack animals and people frequenting them. Rivers were ice for 1/4th of year and so seas too. Only when merchant and royal towns started growing to large metropolises and more and more people migrated there, then not only new manufactured merchandise was produced in them for everyone consumption, but also market was created where over produced food, crafts, raw materials from country side could be sold finally. So the only unrealistic in the game is the merchant caravan sink for goods. You can sell so many wheelbarrows and cups first years to merchants, it is mind-bending. From sound economic point of view there should be put limits on amount of items of each type, which can be purchased by merchants. Limits linking to total population of civilization at least. So this will actually remove one of the sinks leaving just lava or atom smasher for them. Just don't destroy master quality items... Not too many that is lol

There are many unrealistic solutions, which removal from DF would hit on fps of overage game. If there is more realism to be put into game, then I hope sincerely optimization of game will catch up first. Not last.

How about enabling schooling in crafts in library? How about enabling "training" for a profession in a workshop without goods produced? If there is some balance we can obtain through existing mechanics of the game, then those 2 just could be the it.

Of course migrant wave would feel more natural, if we could put limits on them inside of game instead of init.txt file. Also getting recruits instead of just mere refugees, though more expensive, but it could be added to supplement of refugee waves mechanic. After all sometimes other settlements of civilization get destroyed or there is some wild population of you civilization out there too, so maybe they want to settle finally. However recruiting already can happen with visitors. Enlarging it to other civilizations' diplomatic options through recruitment, maybe would make sense too. It is not like you can refuse to take in your own civilization settlers. Right? The limit here for now is your cpu, but if game would be well fps optimized then only size of embark would limit this cap.

[GoblinCookie]

But wouldn't that mean I'd have a mountain of wares I'm unable to remove beyond Atom Smashing? I'd correct you by saying the price of such crafts would merely diminish as a product of supply & demand. I should never be denied to sell good because you think it'd make the game more fun. It'd only be acceptable for very specific reasons; Elves & wood.

In regards to all this surplus talk, I would like to agree that the farm-plot yields or time-per-yield needs to be balanced as a result of over-production. (I.e. 1x7 plot feeds fortress. Unrealistic.)
In regards to all this surplus talk, I'd prefer clothing wasn't a "needs to be replaced every 6 months chore", as it's not a fun game mechanic. I'd prefer at least annually, preferably bi-annually or more. In my head (not necessarily yours) that's more realistic, but also in my head, I'm not being burdened with another chore. We could simulate the need to use toilets, the need for regular clothing, the need for snacks to provided, the need for nutrition levels to be maintained by specified varied diets alternating as the biology of the Dwarf changes due to age & environment, the need to have Dwarrows apply for jobs instead of being assigned - including an interview process & references, etc. but beyond the coding, is that really fun to the average player?

Would it more fun for the player if we just got given a pile of weapons by magic and then given a load of goblins to kill?  What is more fun, the game as an intricate economic and societal simulation, or the game as a simplified battle simulation. 

Your premise is faulty and certainly not "the truth".  Furthermore, you never lay out WHY you need to have these things.  You just claim it..  I mean, "the caravan is there so you can buy it out" doesn't adress what happens to game play when you can buy it out for nothing.  When you do address surplus crafts vs food, you actually are agreeing with one of my primary arguments in the OP and contradicting yourself: things are not in true surplus if you have to make major sacrifices to achieve that level of production.  Food in particular, however, is a joke to use in your example because as production stands now, it is impossible to ever starve in this game unless you make multiple critical errors. 

Now you want "realistic" production of 1 dwarf giving 10s of stonecrafts per year.  Lets take the average and say 50.  One dwarf.  Well, thats not going to put a dent in your ability to produce food, ever.  And is more than enough to buy things comfortably from a caravan.  Two dwarves is 100 items..  how long does it take before you can put two dwarves to one task in this game.  You can do this from embark in fact, but more realistically you can do this already from the very first migration.  Well now you have free surplus, which means you reduce challenge with no risk or cost, which means its a no-brainer decision.  No-brainer decisions are anethma to game-design fundamentals.  They remove fun, they remove challenge, and they make the player feel, correctly, that their decisions arent really that important, removing their immersion in the game play.  Being able to buy the entire caravan this way just compounds this issue.  It's not optimal at all, from a game-design standpoint.  It's horrible.

On a "realistic" level, taking into account that the simulation does attempt to model certain aspects of reality with one degree of accuracy or another, why should your caravan trade for any of your easily produced stone crafts?  If you can do it that, easily, so can they.  Or if they cant, well all their dwarven neighbors can, so the price in a realistic economic model would tank.  Easily produced items are worth nothing unless there is a real trade imbalance.  Maybe if we wanted to address this level of detail, we could allow for civilizations that prefer specific and random rare materials.  Now you have to find that stuff, which is cost related, and if you have to be lucky enough to have it on your map as well, which if you dont cheat, is a level of random luck as well.  So cost is higher and supply is pinched, so demand can naturally be higher and the player is rewarded for their investment.  But that's higher level stuff, and still can be overwhelmed if you have dwarves chucking out not just crafts, but hundreds of other items simultaneously.

The most erroneous idea is that the game will get stuck in a cycle of no surplus to invest in capital.  You are sitting on a literal MOUNTAIN of capital.  The only thing you need to do is invest resources (a single dwarf's time to mine) to recover the capital.  It doesn't decay, there is no rent or upkeep, as it stands now.  The game likely needs some more sinks, but even then these are going to work on fortress items (and dwarves) directly, and not the mountain of gems and metal under your feet.  All a player has to do is save, and build, and by building, multiply the advantage of recovered capital.  Thats the game (inside the sanbox).  Right now, that is not a challenge by any means. 

The hardest thing about DF, by a long shot, is learning the interface and all of the possible commands and interactions. 

The idea is in the end is to implement the economy so that the caravan will demand something that is actually in demand somewhere in return for their goods.  In a world where there a mountain of stone crafts, they will simply refuse to take them as their market value is now less than the cost of moving them back to wherever the caravan came from. 

The thing you are not getting is that the more people there are the more surplus value, in reverse the fewer people there are the less surplus value.  Provided the surplus value is not simply divided up among the individuals but is invested in things which are of benefit to a greater number of individuals than the individuals that produced it, it is very much the case both in real-life and in the game that the greater number of people there are the better off everybody else.  The problem that initially we need a considerable amount of surplus value in order to be able to create all the 'fixed capital' of our fortress, which means carving out the dining hall, the workshops, the temples, the libraries, the inns and so on. 

Once those things are built, they are built, meaning we need not invest any more surplus value in producing such things.  At the same time our population has gone up, so we now have a whole load more surplus value but given we have built everything we need less surplus value than we did before.  That inherently means that the game is hardest at the beginning when there is the greatest number of things requiring investment but the lowest amount of surplus value to invest, meaning we actually have economize in the early game. 

Now reducing production means there is less surplus value overall.  This won't change the situation in the later game because we are just eating into the surplus that we have too much of at that point anyway.  At the beginning however the player, especially a less skilled newbie player will get stuck because in order to move ahead in the game they will need to invest surplus in expanding their fortress and it's capital, but they will instead find themselves spending all their time not starving to death.  We don't want a situation where only the most skilled players can actually in 20 years time arrive at something like a complete fortress, the unskilled starve to death and everybody else remains in perpetual poverty. 

You describe my idea as erroneous but then go on to describe how it actually works!  Yes have to invest resources (a single dwarves time to mine) in order to recover the capital, well a single dwarves time to mine IS surplus value.  If there is no surplus value, what that means is that everything we do is done to meet to needs of the actual dwarves doing to actual work, this means in effect that we have use every single dwarf we have in order to collect enough food and other resources in order that our dwarves can meet their needs.  If there is no surplus value our dwarves spend every waking hour farming, hunting, fishing, herding, making clothes, collecting water, brewing drinks and so on.  If there is a single dwarf that can collect the 'capital from heaven' that is on the map then there is surplus value. 

[KittyTac]

Yea, if you want mindless carnage, that's what the arena is for.

[Encrtia]

Would it more fun for the player if we just got given a pile of weapons by magic and then given a load of goblins to kill?  What is more fun, the game as an intricate economic and societal simulation, or the game as a simplified battle simulation. 

I missed your point. Re-iterating, mine was that the idea of a caravan ceasing to take my goods, whilst possessing 50k+ items, means I'm unable to remove said items through in-game means. One could dump 20k masterworks intro lava to drive a Dwarf crazy, but that's not a logical, practical, realistic or even remotely normal thing to do. In addition, it doesn't make sense that a caravan would outright refuse to purchase luxury goods. See my previous post for more waffles on that.

In addition, I outlined in the quoted post, my opinion on surplus food being something that needs addressing (SixOfSpades' post covers the future of that nicely), and less micro-managing on 2.2k unique items that need to be re-built every 6 months to a year.  I.e. full clothing for 200 Dwarrows consisting of 2 socks, 2 shoes, trousers, shirt, robe, cloak, hat & 2 gloves. That's no longer a game, but a chore around the house. Chores aren't fun If you believe for one second that a chore is a fun economic simulation, we're at an impasse beyond words & you needn't reply.

However, could you please explain how being given weapons to kill goblins came into that? I didn't state a reduction in the intricate economic or societal game-play, nor did I suggest Dwarf Fortress should focus on simplified battles. You merely provided an astonishingly wild straw man, effectively glancing over my words without even knowing what I typed.

[GoblinCookie]

I missed your point. Re-iterating, mine was that the idea of a caravan ceasing to take my goods, whilst possessing 50k+ items, means I'm unable to remove said items through in-game means. One could dump 20k masterworks intro lava to drive a Dwarf crazy, but that's not a logical, practical, realistic or even remotely normal thing to do. In addition, it doesn't make sense that a caravan would outright refuse to purchase luxury goods. See my previous post for more waffles on that.

In addition, I outlined in the quoted post, my opinion on surplus food being something that needs addressing (SixOfSpades' post covers the future of that nicely), and less micro-managing on 2.2k unique items that need to be re-built every 6 months to a year.  I.e. full clothing for 200 Dwarrows consisting of 2 socks, 2 shoes, trousers, shirt, robe, cloak, hat & 2 gloves. That's no longer a game, but a chore around the house. Chores aren't fun If you believe for one second that a chore is a fun economic simulation, we're at an impasse beyond words & you needn't reply.

However, could you please explain how being given weapons to kill goblins came into that? I didn't state a reduction in the intricate economic or societal game-play, nor did I suggest Dwarf Fortress should focus on simplified battles. You merely provided an astonishingly wild straw man, effectively glancing over my words without even knowing what I typed.

I was actually making a point rather than claiming anything about what you were proposing.  There are pitfalls to asking questions like "is it fun?" when we are talking about making mechanics deliberately unrealistic.  My 'straw man' was not intended to be a representation your position, it is intended as an absurd response to the question you were asking.

We end up with a situation where the devs have to decide what part of the game is 'most fun' to the majority of players, in my example that happens to be killing goblins because there are lots of bloodthirsty players about the place.  All other mechanics end up being stripped down, because everything that distracts from the players killing goblins is considered less fun than killing goblins.  When we say, realism be damned what is fun this is where we end up. 

It does not have to be killing goblins, it can be anything at all and the situation still applies.  But in actual fact when you think about it, stripping down all other considerations to maximum simplicity in order to focus on killing goblins is basically what most fantasy themed computer games actually do.

[Encrtia]

Without getting into it: you've missed the point. Chore still aren't fun, & no one suggested simplicity beyond you.

Over complexity is counter productive.

[daggaz]

The Caravan should definitely act as a near-infinite sink for excess goods, rather than forcing the player to do exploitive things to remove items like quantum-stockpiles->atom smashing (both are behaviors that I would remove from the game).  Its just you shouldn't get much at all for doing that, and obviously weight limits would still apply.   And it would still be the most optimal situation if you simply didn't need to do that for large parts of the game, because you rarely accumulated that much surplus.  It's just surplus surplus at that point.  Totally pointless and harmful to the game balance. 

Currently I drive a few hard bargains to skill up broker because I am compulsive even tho it does not matter in the slightest.  Then I trade too many items for whatever else I might need or want, because I start to get tired of the extremely cluttered and tedius interface-menu for trading and im not worried about my bank-balance in the slightest.  And finally i just drop the rest of my inventory on him for a sock or something simply because I want it out of my trade depot and maybe they will bring me some interesting animals the next time if I'm generous?  Who knows so many hidden mechanics in this game.   Surplus surplus. 

[Sarmatian123]

Without getting into it: you've missed the point. Chore still aren't fun, & no one suggested simplicity beyond you.

Over complexity is counter productive.

Automation is the key then.

1. Economic system does that.
2. Bureaucracy does the same.
3. Machinery does that too.

Question is if Toady was thinking about letting players to define their own automation tasks? When I am assigning piece by piece master quality armor parts on 100 militia Dwarves in my 110 Dwarves fortress, then it becomes a sort of chore and no macro can save me from it. There is no quality of item setting for uniforms. Even if Dwarves prefer something I rather have not them train in sub-quality armor, then get attached to it, name it and then to push this deal over edge... have it put into list of my artifacts? ARG! Already too many master quality leather and willow shields there to my taste. Those shields are throw-away, are they not? They will break after few uses, won't they?

[KittyTac]

Without getting into it: you've missed the point. Chore still aren't fun, & no one suggested simplicity beyond you.

Over complexity is counter productive.

Automation is the key then.

1. Economic system does that.
2. Bureaucracy does the same.
3. Machinery does that too.

Question is if Toady was thinking about letting players to define their own automation tasks? When I am assigning piece by piece master quality armor parts on 100 militia Dwarves in my 110 Dwarves fortress, then it becomes a sort of chore and no macro can save me from it. There is no quality of item setting for uniforms. Even if Dwarves prefer something I rather have not them train in sub-quality armor, then get attached to it, name it and then to push this deal over edge... have it put into list of my artifacts? ARG! Already too many master quality leather and willow shields there to my taste. Those shields are throw-away, are they not? They will break after few uses, won't they?

Shields do not break currently. So those shields are of use.

[Encrtia]

Without getting into it: you've missed the point. Chore still aren't fun, & no one suggested simplicity beyond you.

Over complexity is counter productive.

Automation is the key then.

1. Economic system does that.
2. Bureaucracy does the same.
3. Machinery does that too.

Question is if Toady was thinking about letting players to define their own automation tasks? When I am assigning piece by piece master quality armor parts on 100 militia Dwarves in my 110 Dwarves fortress, then it becomes a sort of chore and no macro can save me from it. There is no quality of item setting for uniforms. Even if Dwarves prefer something I rather have not them train in sub-quality armor, then get attached to it, name it and then to push this deal over edge... have it put into list of my artifacts? ARG! Already too many master quality leather and willow shields there to my taste. Those shields are throw-away, are they not? They will break after few uses, won't they?

Automation would be effective, & viable. I have zero interest in games such as Factorio, but the idea of manual work eventually becoming automatic is plausible when in an interesting setting.
This ensures that the early game is manageable, but also the end game without over-complexity driving the game into the ground with chores. I would possibly support this alongside over-complexity after deciding on individual cases.