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[therahedwig]

So, because 'when is the economy going to return?' is a very often asked FotF question, I am just going to collect all the quotes relating to what is blocking the economy here, so that we'll notice when the economy is actually going to return. I originally wanted to order these by topic, but I couldn't decide how exactly, so they're just by (ISO style formatted) date now. I stopped looking backward around 2011, because that's when the initial caravan arc was being done(and when everyone was still young and optimistic).

Spoiler: 2009 (click to show/hide)

2009 August 6 - DF Talk 1 - http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html (Courtsey of Footkeychief - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4777552;topicseen#msg4777552)

Toady:   [...] I'm all for dwarves being proactive, especially on their free time where they might just now be sitting on break or doing parties where they don't do anything and just stand around.

[...]

Toady:   I think adventure mode is going to have ... it's mostly going to be locals and people visiting for market days, as well as some travellers and people hanging out that you can perhaps hire. Whereas dwarf mode it's going to be more particular for dwarf mode at first, especially when you've got diplomats and merchants showing up as they do now. If they're going to stay for a while then they might need to eat and drink so you'll have to take care of them a little bit, and if they're going to stay a while - I mean how often do dwarves sleep - if they're going to stay a whole season you might need to put them up in a room. But there will be locals there. It depends on how soon we get back to a local economy inside the fortress, but it's basically making meeting halls more interesting for your dwarves at the very start, with the dwarves going in and instead of just claiming a room for parties or going on a break and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing they can take you up on the amenities you set up for them in your meeting halls, or dining room. It's kind of like a meeting hall and a dining room, those things might all get mushed together, and you'll have your dwarves go there, they'll be able to drink and play with little games and use their musical instruments ...
Menendez:   (banjo backing)
Toady:   ... and I don't if the kids show up at the bars and use their toys ... We want to get toys and instruments in but I'm not sure the toys ... like their little mini-forges, I don't know if you go to the bar for that, maybe you do if you're a dwarf.
Capntastic:   What sort of things will you be able to place, like amenities wise, and how much will dwarves care if the inn is not well stocked, what penalties could that incur.
Toady:   I don't even know if ... Tavern-wise, it's not like your own dwarves are going to stay at your inn, that'd be kind of cruel wouldn't it, if the seven dwarves arrive and they make an inn and then they have to stay at their own inn, but for your dwarves it's basically the same as it is now, they just need to be supported drink wise, they need to have good food, and they need to chat with their friends to bolster them up a bit, and if there's specific pleasures that come out of playing music and listening to people tell stories and that kind of thing - I don't know about dwarven dancing - and then playing with different types of games, which we'll talk about in a bit I'm sure. Those kinds of things for dwarves, it's really just an extension of the current mechanics and getting them to ... Right now if they go to a party, if they're talking to people and making friends that makes them happy but the party should be really more of a release than that for the dwarves, especially if they've got a lot of their minds that they need to have cancelled out, then they should have lots of different funny specific happy things to do there.

Spoiler: 2011 (click to show/hide)

2011 March 24 - http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_12_transcript.html (Courtesy of Footkerchief - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4096981#msg4096981)

Toady:   I think adventure mode is going to have ... it's mostly going to be locals and people visiting for market days, as well as some travellers and people hanging out that you can perhaps hire. Whereas dwarf mode it's going to be more particular for dwarf mode at first, especially when you've got diplomats and merchants showing up as they do now. If they're going to stay for a while then they might need to eat and drink so you'll have to take care of them a little bit, and if they're going to stay a while - I mean how often do dwarves sleep - if they're going to stay a whole season you might need to put them up in a room. But there will be locals there. It depends on how soon we get back to a local economy inside the fortress, but it's basically making meeting halls more interesting for your dwarves at the very start, with the dwarves going in and instead of just claiming a room for parties or going on a break and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing they can take you up on the amenities you set up for them in your meeting halls, or dining room. It's kind of like a meeting hall and a dining room, those things might all get mushed together, and you'll have your dwarves go there, they'll be able to drink and play with little games and use their musical instruments ...

[...]

Capntastic:   What sort of things will you be able to place, like amenities wise, and how much will dwarves care if the inn is not well stocked, what penalties could that incur.
Toady:   I don't even know if ... Tavern-wise, it's not like your own dwarves are going to stay at your inn, that'd be kind of cruel wouldn't it, if the seven dwarves arrive and they make an inn and then they have to stay at their own inn, but for your dwarves it's basically the same as it is now, they just need to be supported drink wise, they need to have good food, and they need to chat with their friends to bolster them up a bit, and if there's specific pleasures that come out of playing music and listening to people tell stories and that kind of thing - I don't know about dwarven dancing - and then playing with different types of games, which we'll talk about in a bit I'm sure. Those kinds of things for dwarves, it's really just an extension of the current mechanics and getting them to ... Right now if they go to a party, if they're talking to people and making friends that makes them happy but the party should be really more of a release than that for the dwarves, especially if they've got a lot of their minds that they need to have cancelled out, then they should have lots of different funny specific happy things to do there. So that kind of thing for them in particular, just dwarves from your fortress coming in, it's really just going to be an activation of music and like I said story telling. I don't know if there's going to be a particular service industry, like people serving drinks to your own dwarves, if they just go to the stockpile and grab some stuff, they don't pay for it or anything, just hang out and it's just an extension of the meeting hall/dining hall concept for them. Where it gets more interesting is when you involve people that aren't economically a part of your fortress, then you've got people that you'll actually be able to charge for drinks, charge for staying, if you want to: it might not be something you want to do to a diplomat, but it might the dwarven way of doing things. I haven't quite decided about that particular one. But you've also got merchants coming in, and depending on the location of your fortress you might also have travellers showing up or bandits showing up. There's nothing that says that the bandits don't hang out at a dwarven tavern and then move on, because there's plenty of them just lingering around, and also if you build your fortress out in the wilds they're more likely to be the closest people. This might be the time when we start making adventurer type people and mercenary type people move around a little bit and in that case you'd have some additional visitors there as well. I know in the first release which is going to predate the tavern release there's going to be people moving between towns and villages, going to markets and so on, and depending on the location of your fortress you could bump into some people's associated movements like that, although jamming your fortress in between the villages and towns ... that's a little tight. It'd be kind of funny, but it's a strange location for a dwarf fortress.

[...]

Toady:   So you'd have this hub where you'd set up your services and link up rooms, it would probably just use regular bedrooms, so we don't have to change it that much for your inn rooms, and link them up to the main meeting all, and at the meeting hall you'd also be able to set up your prices and specifically what things you want going on at your inn, and perhaps you'd also - like with the workshop profiles - be able to attach the particular people you want to hang out there. So basically we wanted to set up the hub in those buildings and not deviate too much from what we've got now. There's obviously going to have to be a new kind of screen or options menu for the new stuff but it should all come right off of that screen. When you get into this economic stuff there's also this desire to jump into, 'I want my guest list with their winnings tab and how many drinks they've bought' and if for some reason you set up two inns you could have charts saying how well they're doing. I don't know how much we want to jump into Theme Park type of stuff, but it's reasonable ... Like, if you decide to start your fortress and you just set up this giant gambling hall and you attach some stockpiles filled with all kinds of stuff that's brought in and it becomes a big part of your fortress and basically booze is your main export straight to people into their stomachs and then they export it out of their bodies when they walk off the map or whatever, and that's your main source of income, then it would be reasonable to have tracking information for that kind of thing. But if it's just a small little place you use to make your diplomats and merchants more happy and more likely to have good trade agreements and that kind of thing then it doesn't need to be something that's in your face all the time. We're certainly not planning to have it at the end of the year pop up your earnings; that's not what we're going for, I don't want to scare people into thinking we're doing something completely off base and stupid with the game.

2011 September 22 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2629820;topicseen#msg2629820

With adventurer sites, are we going to see people building their own homes/shops/farms/etc? Or is it going to end up like fortress mode, where the player designates everything and then the people go and do the work?

If they do end up building their own stuff, will that eventually be an option in fortress mode? It'd be interesting, especially as the fortress gets larger and the player is focused more on world/army stuff, to be able to give your dwarves a lot more autonomy.

I'm not sure on the specifics, but we're aiming for it not to be like fortress mode, since we have that.  Ideally, it would feel like you fill whatever role you actually fill.  So if it's your place to order somebody to do something, you can do it, but that doesn't mean they have to do it.  We'll have to concede ground to game stuff, but that's the idea.  Since you start from nothing, presumably, they could end up with more freedom than the preexisting sites, since things need to be built.  I'm not sure about fortress mode either.  We had just started on that back in the beginning, with the shops, where they'd pick the type of shop and buy inventories for them and then sell them (however that's supposed to work with the whatever the economy was).  It's something to think about with the upcoming taverns there.  Should they be able to set those up, or do their own room furniture?  There are styles of play that will undoubtedly conflict there.

2011 December 10 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2822444;topicseen#msg2822444

The villages are sort of mindless producers right now, and that lets their associated town use more of a bottom up approach where it can afford to screw up without worrying as much about basic survival -- at least at a minimum population level.  It doesn't mandate anything at the world level -- the world could end up devoid of certain types of goods if nobody has occasion to make them.  Food is reliable enough now that the system isn't completely disasterous, but I'm sure there's already all sorts of silliness, and I don't have a problem slapping some weird global behavior on there to fix things (the unnaturally clunky supply/demand stuff counts perhaps in some way, though it isn't the same as a forced global agreement).

Spoiler: 2013 (click to show/hide)

2013 June 08 - (Courtsey of Knight Otu http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4304531;topicseen#msg4304531)

Yeah, yeah, at least in that way ... I think there will be places for your dwarves to also have direct impact, but when it comes to military stuff, and certain trade things, you're going to have to act through intermediate sites just because of the sheer numbers behind it. The deep sites are ... they act in a similar fashion for underground business, but they're also ... we haven't really planned that exactly how strange they're going to be, but they supplement your food, that kind of thing, if you don't want to farm, you can trade with them.
...
But I'm sure that the deep dwarves will become more exotic if anything to distinguish them from the hill dwarves, because right now they're quite similar in economy, in the sense they're kind of food-drunky type of things. Because we could make them into ... If they became just like forts and were all about mining and crafting ... you would become mediocre in all things, except for like your ability to charge tolls to people that want to go outside, something that would be kind of stupid as a sole function. So we're thinking that the deep sites could kind of be a farm league for mediocre craftsman and then you could get some better ones from there and you would be like the majors in terms of what's going on in your fortress. But we'll have to see how it plays out. I'm sure we'll come up with some good things once we've got the deep sites and hill dwarf sites actually linked to your fortress, so they're not linked right now. So right now they're pretty blah-blah sites with their plump helmet fields and little delved out living arrangements and so on, they're kind of like a village, right now, those deeper sites.

2013 December 29 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4868401;topicseen#msg4868401

    Will villages "bicker" for actual reasons such as competing land/resource claims in this release or will feuds of some sort simply be generated with no real reason behind them? I would ask the same thing about the reasons behind Orc occupations of villages/towns.  I suppose delving into this might get into some of the old Army Arc stuff where entities were supposed to start to actually caring about stuff.

There are disputes over various real-world things, but since we don't have an active economy or people going about actual jobs with actual resources, it can't be anything but faked right now.  I suppose the matter of holding territory and having power over people now is real in a sense, since they draw soldiers from actual pools of people and controlling more sites makes one more effective at that, so you can take that as a reason for their actions.

[...]

Can the AI loot sites?

There aren't any objects to loot yet.  Just as the tribute is "abstract", anything like looting has to wait for all the economy stuff to come to fruition.  The part from the 2/8 devlog that Footkerchief quoted with demons pillaging dwarven capitals was the world gen backstory -- once you get into play, everything involving items doesn't matter.  Items move around in world gen with trade, though I'm not sure if even the pillaging at that time is abstract or not.  The tribute is.

Spoiler: 2014 (click to show/hide)

2014 February 27 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg5044807;topicseen#msg5044807

    To what extent do you know, when you code something, that it is only a placeholder for the 'real' code to come later on down the line? What percentage of the game do you think will have to be rewritten, so far?

    If your civ starts with no access to, say, native copper, but you build a fort that does, will the civ then have access after retirement? Would it be necessary to actually mine it, or to sell it? Would surface plants become available in trade or for embark for that civ?

It happens quite often, though a lot of the release delays come from trying to not have it happen all the time.  I have no idea about percentages.  Footkerchief posted a healthy list of placeholder features.  I'm also not sure how to categorize 'real' -- 1.0?  There are always ideas to improve things, but it's good to push them down the line sometimes.  DF is an amorphous blobby critter.

I haven't gotten into the economy.  Right now it doesn't try to update entity information, but once sites start producing resources after world gen, it'll be crucial to handle that sort of thing.

2014 April 01 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg5140546;topicseen#msg5140546

What happens to stolen items once the bandits/you leave the map? Can they be tracked and reclaimed? Can the items end up outside the bandits' possession (in shops or camps, for example)?

Also, what qualifies as a "valuable" item for stealing?

Everything is tracked as far as inventory goes, so you can go get stuff back even if it is offloaded, but it starts to lose the thread after that.  The economy/caravan stuff will help with that somewhat, but I imagine it'll be difficult to deal with all of the orphaned items, especially the less interesting ones.  I'm trying to remember what they stole...  certain item types above a certain numeric value threshold perhaps.

2014 November 13 - http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_22_transcript.html#22.5 (Courtesy of Knight Otu - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140544.msg5889205;topicseen#msg5889205)

Threetoe:     So the next question is from Matthew, and he asks, "Is there any chance of seeing a return of the dwarven economy any time soon?"
Toady:     The things that we're working on with the start scenarios, as we may have mentioned before, are linked in to adding information about property and laws. That should get us positioned to really put that stuff back in. We had problems with not having the armies moving around made it impossible to do caravans properly. And we didn't really have any good information on who owned what and that kind of thing. So we've been working on it framework-wise all this time, and hopefully, once the start scenarios are complete, we'll be in a good position to make decisions about where we are with that. Whether it's going to be working straight in on trading stuff or continuing to come at it obliquely.

Spoiler: 2015 (click to show/hide)

2015 October 31 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140544.msg6583653;topicseen#msg6583653

Will there be salt evaporation ponds in order to harvest and export salt? This could be cool for coastal fortresses -or towns- to be able to send their production in the inland regions.

With specific industries, it's hard to say when or what is going to happen, since I don't yet have a timeline for the way through that.  The production side of the economy will see the existing industries become more active post-w.g. (there's already some w.g. stuff, though it's mostly invisible) before new ones are added most likely, and then we'll see how work areas develop etc.  How new fort industries are added as we go is anybody's guess.

[...]

    How do adventure mode taverns function? Are booze stockpiles managed in some way, or do they just regenerate while the adventurer is off-site? Do npc dwarves drink, dance, fight and sing without nudging from adventurers? Do they drink too much and die all over the world while the adventurer isn't around?

We aren't diving into the w.g. stockpiles in any serious way yet, and there's no post-w.g. production, so we're just doing a replenish on map gen for now.  Once we have post-w.g. production and consumption of the resource stockpiles in whatever the first economy release will be, then doing more realistic stocking of the tavern will be on the table hopefully as part of a coherent system.

Everybody intelligent in the tavern who is so inclined does all the new stuff without nudging, when they are in play.  They don't drink and die all over the world though.  They visit taverns all over the world, but it doesn't try to simulate specifics in any way yet.

2015 July 02 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140544.msg6345218;topicseen#msg6345218

    [regarding fort becoming dwarfless] Will the game notice the difference? I realize the answer is probably no for the upcoming release, since it's a very peripheral feature and not a normal use case anyway. But this relates to the idea of the world perceiving player intentions, which is, unless I'm mistaken, the biggest purpose of fortress start scenarios. Will those likely have the possibility to change during play? This also seems like it could related to army arc stuff once your active fort is treated more like a normal site for the purposes of wars and you (presumably, if I understand intended future design intentions correctly) can use nobles for politicking.

    And not related to that, but also a start-scenario thing: Do you have any plans yet about adding social strata beyond noble/common, such as slaves? I got to thinking of that in connection with visitors and the "Explicit standing of different citizens vs. civilization authorities" note, but it seems like it would be pretty necessary for the prison colonies in general, and could be useful depending on how fulfilling of an implementation you want with religious sites, which would arguably have hierarchy based in faith and might have relevant religious precepts, and the mining companies and military citadels which would probably be differently organized compared to the relatively anarchic situation we've got now.

Yeah, the idea of embark scenarios is not to limit the game, but to make it more interesting by better understanding the situation that caused your dwarves to embark in the first place.  Although some aspects of a given scenario might take a while to change or require specific mechanics that we won't get to in the initial release, it's all going to be built out of the same sorts of bits and pieces that bump against each other in the rest of the game, so it shouldn't be static.

Knight Otu mentioned that setting up an idea of status was a specific goal of that release.  We haven't established a specific set of goal statuses or anything yet (and I'm not sure it'll even be set up like that), but the noble/common distinction isn't even the main target (and it already exists more than any other distinction in the game by virtue of the position/land holder mechanics).  We have the criminal stuff and the economy and religions and guilds and all that we're looking forward to, and we don't yet have a fitting backbone for any of it.  There are already slaves in the game (with the gobs and some humans), but they don't do anything and aren't thought about in any particular way.  I imagine that'll just be something we'll have to figure out with the rest of it.
[...]

With the scenarios/law/property update, might we possibly see the return of the economy?

It won't be specifically in that release, but one of the central points of that release is to make it possible to implement an economy robustly.  Then we'll have to decide whether it is time.  There are a few other things we might want beforehand.  Specifically, understanding the various industries and their processes and sites a bit better, and water transport, both of which might blow up any economic work if we don't have a handle on them first.  Hard to say, though -- we need to think about which option is best, in whatever terms (the game, the code, etc).  It might go the other way (real resources, production and caravans/trade first), or a completely different direction.  The embark scenario framework is going to be somewhat disruptive, and we might not know until partway through that update which way it'll go...  we'll have lot to choose from.

2015 August 01  - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140544.msg6415242;topicseen#msg6415242

[several questions about marriage, 'cuz there's gays in DF now.]

There's nothing like that with marriage in the next version.  We might see different systems when we get to the law/custom framework stuff, but it's unclear which directions we'll be going there -- the main concerns will be practical property stuff as it relates to hill dwarves and the economy and so forth, as well as the religious enhancements.  The religious analogues to philosophers and cults and all that are up for those embark scenarios and as we continue along.  Schisms and other trouble will happen at some point (it's in our internal religion notes, anyway).

2015 September 29  - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140544.msg6528473;topicseen#msg6528473

Toady is the fortress mode economy ever going to return? if so how and if not why?

We were hoping to do a bit this time, but it didn't turn out that way.  It's hard to do it justice without some more information, and we're going to be setting up a lot of the framework in the release after the artifact release.  After that release, we'll have outlying dependent sites, status, customs, property, law and all sorts of useful stuff.  Then we'll have to see where we branch -- we could get right into production and caravans and agriculture, or we might go somewhere else.  The framework is meant to handle the economy, the justice system, and more nuanced diplomacy -- many avenues will open at once.  That's three big pushes down the line, so it would be pointless to speculate more.

Spoiler: 2017 (click to show/hide)

2017 April 02 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=159164.msg7410016;topicseen#msg7410016

    - How long will it take for squads to "find" artifacts, people or any other thing you asked apart from the journey time ? Can it take days, weeks, or months ? Is there a limit of time after which they will turn around ?
    for example, searching for someone in a big goblin city can be really long if you have to visit every lair and avoid patrols

    - Does the type of equipments and general stats for the squad will have impact on their strength/resistance outside of the fortress ?
    I don't want to send my full adamantine legendary axe fighters if they are about to die in a place I won't be able to have their stuff back...(and especially if they don't do better than a copper dabbler warrior)

    - If a squad is destroyed, what will happen in regard to their stuff ? Will you see adamantine items put somewhere in the economy, or taken by our enemy as a war trophy, or in the next caravan ?

Right now there isn't additional time added to missions for searching.  It was one of the things we were thinking of using to extend times a bit, since they are a little fast for nearby targets.  If it's only a few days, it hardly matters though, and it just temporarily sidesteps the larger issue (which might not have a good solution).

Yeah, equipment matters.  But that doesn't mean you get their stuff back, it just means you are less likely to lose it in the first place.  Bodies drop where they die, but the game has been only partially reliable in reproducing bodies up to this point, and some of the battlefield tracking isn't written yet.  There could still be some more progress here when I get to non-artifact raid loot for your dwarves (it might also work the other way, though there isn't currently a way for sites to store it well, which is a larger economy-related issue).

Spoiler: 2018 (click to show/hide)

2018 December 01 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.1230

With dwarfs stealing money, does that bring us at all closer to having an economy back?

With people suffering from gambling problems now, does that mean you might just tackle the tavern games without having to wait for the economy to be reintroduced?

"at all closer" is like "ever", he he he.  We are in fact, closer, as the historical figures all have little 'accounts' they are working with, so whether they are opening a new merchant company warehouse or are running up an abstract gambling debt, the histories should be broadly consistent about what their state/level of distress is.  This doesn't mean it makes sense as an economy, or that it even represents a currency.

Ha ha ha, if you wanna see a 2020 release we can tackle tavern games.  I mean, don't respond to that, I know some people would want to see them anyway, including me, but I am showing restraint, as much as somebody that just added merchant companies and guilds for the villain release is showing restraint.

Spoiler: 2019 (click to show/hide)

2019 Februari 01 - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=169696.msg7924237#msg7924237

All adventurer-type people from world gen can upgrade their equipment now, *if* they run into some accounted-for money, which most often but not exclusively happens with mercenaries.  I haven't extended the system beyond that yet (aside from, say, the ability to start a merchant company, which also requires starting money.)  There might be a bit more before release, since the villains haven't started spending on hideouts/strongholds yet.

Yeah, there's a new 'account' number that abstractly keeps track of what kind of money/power/debt/favors etc. a person can pull.  This'll be fleshed out as we add more systems, but, as with the fort mode trading and existing partial worldgen economy, we can do a few this-or-thats economically when the need arises.  We're still hoping to get to a proper economy at some point after the property/status/etc. release (some portion of an economy is implicit in that release, with the larger scale trade/production stuff more depending on whether or not we remain sufficiently obsessed with boats.)

To a larger possible point, it wooould be cool if you could hire them.  The trade depot broker does already track the currency value of goods, and there are those coins and everything; just because the proper economy is turned off doesn't mean there isn't already trading.  We're still considering this.  It would be funny if that were the only practical use for fort mode coins for a while, having a dwarf messenger hauling a pile of them off-screen with a job request (unless mercenaries do jobs on credit and you settle up later with a representative; at this point, *if* we get to this, it'll be whatever's easier to program.)  You could see every gold vein as a number of contracts, in coins per tile, if they aren't willing to take your golden figurines.

Artifacts:  Villains do this.  We'd wanted the mercenaries interested in weapons to do so as well, according to the type.  But generally, the account-enabled organizations like mercenaries and merchant companies don't make such investments or take such treasures at the entity-level (they do at the personal level.)  It would make sense, and to the extent the villains are involved and part of company leadership, it'll feel like it sometimes, but there's still more to do.

Feel free to add quotes, or to recycle this post in the future. Please don't turn this thread into an armchair discussion of different economic models. You can go with those to the suggestions forum.

[Loud Whispers]

ptw the Footkerchief of DF economy quotes

[Ekaton]

Proper economy, that would really make the world alive. A very informative topic, thanks!

[Eschar]

Proper economy, that would really make the world alive.

Yes, from what I hear the economy didn't work well last time.

Please don't turn this thread into an armchair discussion of different economic models.

Because: you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!

[therahedwig]

Well, it isn't just about making the world truly alive. The thief and trader roles (and general villainy) just cannot function without the type of resource management we call economy. I mean, it makes no sense to be a thief if stealing stuff has no true use to it. For that matter, this would trickle down into fort mode as well, it'd actually make buying out the whole caravan a feat instead of something to do with a legendary cook

But, right now, it seems that we will not have an extra economy arc or something, but rather they're doing a bit of economic work each cycle and each cycle we get closer to a working economy.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

I think the issue last time was largely the attempt to jump into a complex economy too early in the game's development. Trying to run before learning to walk, if you will.

[thvaz]

Yeah, economy is the giant elephant in the room for quite some time. It is a difficult problem to tackle, but an essential one, and Toady avoids it like the plague.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yeah, economy is the giant elephant in the room for quite some time. It is a difficult problem to tackle, but an essential one, and Toady avoids it like the plague.

Yeah. "Avoiding it" by clearly outlining exactly where it is in the schedule (after Ships and Moving Fortress Parts having thought about what made more sense, boats before economy or economy before boats).

The schedule may change of course. There's a glowing pit at the bottom of this unscheduled rabbit hole labelled Economy which Toady's dangerously close to...

[thvaz]

Yeah, economy is the giant elephant in the room for quite some time. It is a difficult problem to tackle, but an essential one, and Toady avoids it like the plague.

Yeah. "Avoiding it" by clearly outlining exactly where it is in the schedule (after Ships and Moving Fortress Parts having thought about what made more sense, boats before economy or economy before boats).

The schedule may change of course. There's a glowing pit at the bottom of this unscheduled rabbit hole labelled Economy which Toady's dangerously close to...

The economy was once called the caravan Arc. It was supposed to come before the army arc back in the day. It doesnt really need to wait the myth update but it looks like it will. So, more 4-5 years without it.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yeah, economy is the giant elephant in the room for quite some time. It is a difficult problem to tackle, but an essential one, and Toady avoids it like the plague.

Yeah. "Avoiding it" by clearly outlining exactly where it is in the schedule (after Ships and Moving Fortress Parts having thought about what made more sense, boats before economy or economy before boats).

The schedule may change of course. There's a glowing pit at the bottom of this unscheduled rabbit hole labelled Economy which Toady's dangerously close to...

The economy was once called the caravan Arc. It was supposed to come before the army arc back in the day. It doesnt really need to wait the myth update but it looks like it will. So, more 4-5 years without it.

Quite a bit longer I think. Moving Fortress parts is the third major rewrite arc planned (in the current dev notes schedule) after Myth and Starting Scenarios. And both of those are big enough to see a few major releases each.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

I mean, like thvaz said, it's definitely essential so it's safe to assume that Toady won't put it off forever. But yeah, it's tough to predict when he'll decide to give it another go, especially since it remains one of the most difficult hurdles to clear. By no means impossible, though.

[Death Dragon]

Should probably be said here that with the latest devlog and FotF, Toady made it so that historical figures can use the money in their "accounts" to upgrade their equipment (also increasing upkeep costs), which is currently mostly used by mercenaries, and he is considering giving players the option to pay mercenaries in fort mode using minted coins.
This update is taking some surprisingly big steps towards the economy.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html#2019-01-30
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=169696.msg7924237#msg7924237

[therahedwig]

Thanks for reminding me to update

Also, lol@villains probably having to spend money on their hideouts. There's just something very funny to me about the practical issues DF npcs have to deal with.