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[voliol]

Archers really need a tutorial. They really do actually Just Work if you get them right. Watching my guys right now pewpew at the archery targets with wooden training bolts before skipping off to learn about dodging. Just earlier they were in an enclosed space shooting bad guys with steel bolts through their fortifications. Beautiful.  And all automated, no micromanagement at all except to switch them to siege alert when needed.

I mean, sure they don't know any tactics themselves besides "charge and club with crossbow". But that's more of a missing feature than a bug.

I believe you when you say you can get marksdwarves to work reliably under the conditions you've prepared for. However, the amount of work required to cover all loopholes the morons can slip through to fail to work are just far too many, un- (or counter-)intuitive for it to succeed with a reasonable consistency unless you've polished your setup to a spotless shine, which is very far from where newbies are.
The single change that would probably make the most change would be to somehow prevent X-bow dorfs from suicidal charges, but I don't know how much work that would take (adding a general squad tactical option of "hold your ground" that would be enabled on pure X-bow squads by default [or all missile troops individually] would help a lot in that respect [and would be useful for melee troops as well, although you'd inevitably get bug reports of "my militia just stands there while the gobbos kill them with missiles", and "the gobbos attack one of my militia members, but the others just look and don't help"], but again, that would require development time.
A good set of instructions on how to set things up with spoiler type expansions containing explanations of why would probably help a lot for those who found and bothered to use those instructions.

With a squad tactic option of holding ground/attacking, ranged squads should simply default to holding ground, and melee squads to attacking. Could probably be a simple toggle accessible from the squad screen, or wherever considering the militia screen is probably getting reworked.

[feelotraveller]

I'm fully in favor of restricting migrant waves to cut out the enormous waves. However, a mechanical application of percentage causes issues at both ends of the scale:
- 50% for the first few waves can be too little, in particular for dead civs that would be guaranteed to get a max pop of 15 (at most 3 in the first wave and 5 in the second and last wave with a 50% limit). Too small a number here leads to a slow start with each dorf having to wear many hats to cover all job types needed.
- 50% of a 200 pop fortress is probably too much for most people to consider reasonable.
Thus, if mechanical limits were to be applied, I'd rather have something like:
- The limit is the MAXIMUM number allowed for a wave. Any number less than or equal to this, including 0, can happen for various reasons (just a clarification, as it isn't a change from the current situation when the pop cap is used to provide a limit).
- A is the lower bound for the limit
- B is the upper bound for the limit
- C is X% of the fortress' current population.
- The limit is A if C < A
- The limit is B if C > B
- The limit is C if C is in between A and B
- A, B, and X would all be parameters that could be tuned by the player. The default setting might be A = 10, X = 30, B = 30.
With these values A would be the limit up to a pop of 33, X taking over to gradually allow for larger waves up to a pop of 100, where B takes over.
(I'd set A and B to 10, which matches how I currently change the pop cap to restrict waves).
Starting Scenarios may well include ones that either ignore these restrictions or default them to values deemed appropriate to the scenario, but as far as I currently can see (which admittedly isn't very far) it's quite possible this control mechanism could be retained with Starting Scenarios.
In some distant future you could very well have "events" that disrupts the expected behavior, such a the fall of a nearby settlement leading to a spontaneous influx of refugees.

Doors: Role playing is a very valid reason for doing things that aren't necessary technically.

I think a simpler solution is just to introduce a MAX_MIGRANT_CAP (in d_init) and set it to something reasonable as a default (say 10?).  That way newer players don't experience the season 2 glut and veteran players who like the old behaviour can aim for larger numbers (say for quickly conjuring a large military or mega-project workforce).

One of the features I presume Toady/Threetoe would like to preserve is the impact of factors like fortress wealth on the size of migrant waves.  So the proper solution would be to correctly balance the current calculation for the number of migrants, but I really don't expect that to happen any time soon since it is more development time heavy and almost certain to need further rebalancing down the track.  Your proposal would break the development -> numbers link entirely, whereas the above simple solution would just mask it under default conditions.

But yeah, as I said earlier, to me this the standout long-standing design fault with the game.

[DG]

but I really don't expect that to happen any time soon since it is more development time heavy and almost certain to need further rebalancing down the track.

Changes to migrant waves could be looked at with starting scenarios, which is one of the things that is in the mix to be in the sooner rather than later pile.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

but I really don't expect that to happen any time soon since it is more development time heavy and almost certain to need further rebalancing down the track.

Changes to migrant waves could be looked at with starting scenarios, which is one of the things that is in the mix to be in the sooner rather than later pile.

True, but those are still quite aways off relatively speaking. I mean, they're listed for after mythgen which has already been pretty severely delayed in its own right.

[feelotraveller]

But after the Steam release, presumably?  (I take it that these are the 'noobs' we are meant to be saving... at least mainly...)

Point of the suggestion is that it is extremely easy to implement - one additional value saved, and one line of code tacked onto the existing base - if migrants > max_migrant_cap then migrants = max_migrant_cap.  Previous code for migrant numbers is left untouched.  And as easy to remove once we get to starting scenarios in a year... or a decade. 

[Tilmar13]

I don't have the time to read through what everyone else has proposed or commented on, but I would just say a few things:

1- Werebeasts aren't a big issue. All you need to do is close the door, so to speak. Even in my noob days, I don't think I ever had a fortress fall to a werebeast. Water pressure and channeling on the other hand are much more deadly.
2- I feel like many sources of !FUN! have been slowly disappearing from the game, and that could just be because I've gotten better at playing the game, but I feel that !FUN! from megabeasts, forgotten beasts, and invasions seem to appear less often and less intensely than it used to, and the wildlife is much easier to handle than it was in the days when the carp ruled land and sea.
3- Stress needs some fixing. Being caught in the rain shouldn't change personalities and erase the past year's worth of positive thoughts.
4- Whips are overpowered.
5- Meal quality not improving dwarf moods
6- The military
7- Beekeeping, Soapmaking, Papermaking and a few other niche industries are often worthless and both counterintuitive and very troublesome to set up.
8- Fishing is a death sentence

As time has gone on, with each new version I find fewer forts fall to !FUN! and more fall to boredom and the stress of being in the rain and the outdoors. While as a beginner I would have loved tutorials, now I am glad that I didn't really have access to in-game tutorials. Taking the time to look through ALL the menus is what got me from noob to "I kinda know what I'm doing" DF has taught me a lot about ecology, geology, metallurgy, and many other subjects besides both real and fictional that I wouldn't have learned if not for pouring through wikis.

[Beer Beard]

were-creatures were such a problem for new players

It obviously ruined a lot of peoples fun.

But losing is fun, isn't it?
Not only can a beginner sell holey socks to a caravan and purchase the entire list of goods? Still not casually enough for Steam?
Dig a couple of pieces of ore, make a serrated disk or minecart and, again, buy the whole caravan?
This is what REALLY ruining the fun.
Such flaws depreciate my actions to accumulate wealth as dwarf.
And now you say (a month ago, in fact, I missed) that the werewolf threat is "too threatening"?
Seriously guys do something with the economic balance, please. Werewolves kill the entire fortress only if you are not familiar with them. But so it can be said about clowns, and about forgotten beasts, and about everything else.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

were-creatures were such a problem for new players

It obviously ruined a lot of peoples fun.

But losing is fun, isn't it?

You didn't bother to read the rest of the thread, did you?

[wierd]

Simple, easy suggestion:


Menu toggle (in addition to, not in place of the invaders YES/NO in the init file!) that can turn off "Not fun things!", or a flag to specify "Not accepting migrants now".


It would make troubleshooting game issues more complicated (more stuff to check), but it would also allow quick (no need to save, quit, edit, restart) disabling of invaders and migrants.
Perhaps as an advanced session options menu item or something? (Add weather, temperature, and pals?)

[Criperum]

I believe any source of SUDDEN and UNPREDICATABLE fun should be presented one by one with a warning (in some sort of tutorial or sequence of tutorials). Don't forget to mention that those warnings are in tutorial only and in real game they'll be really sudden.

Fun including:
- beasts
- seiges
- injuries
- infections
- clothing shortage
- vermins (not really big fun can be skipped)
- massacre fist fights in taverns
- stress
- miasma
- inevitable madness of strange moods
- beatings to death on production order failure
- etc.

[Bumber]

1- Werebeasts aren't a big issue. All you need to do is close the door, so to speak. Even in my noob days, I don't think I ever had a fortress fall to a werebeast. Water pressure and channeling on the other hand are much more deadly.

You've got to learn how to close the door first. Changing the pop requirement for them to show up gives noobs more time to learn.

4- Whips are overpowered.

They were nerfed a while back. Are they really still overpowered?

[PatrikLundell]

:

4- Whips are overpowered.

They were nerfed a while back. Are they really still overpowered?

Even if whips are overpowered (I don't know), it's definitely not a newbie saving issue to balance them.

Tilmar13 7: Soap making is useful for infection prevention and good thoughts, bee keeping is good for providing mead (for drinks preferences satisfaction), and paper making is good for library support (although it's a lot easier to buy materials from caravans if available). I agree all of them are somewhat complicated to deal with (both soap making and honey extraction stall due to bucket reliance, and I think it's the same with milk of lime [I usually use papyrus for paper, which is a much easier process than producing vellum], and there's no way to get dorfs to alternate between the bucket using job and then job that empties the bucket). However, none of them are essential to a fortress, and none of them are in the "must get up early" category, so they're not really newbie territory (which newbies ought to be informed of).

[StolenScience]

I'm something of a semi-noob. I've orbited around the game for years, mainly listening to other people's stories, but occasionally fire up a fort every now and then. My forts never last long enough to get attacked by anything and I think I've only hit metal once because I just keep losing interest in playing due to frustration with the dwarves themselves or vital mechanics that I only relearn after its too late.

The specific vital mechanic I'm talking about is stairs. Why are there three kinds of stairs? Upstairs seem non-functional if I don't immediately revisit the wiki, downstairs exist solely for the purpose of getting my mining Dwarves stuck in a ditch for the next 15 minutes while I figure out why I can't use the mining fix the stairs and need the builders to create up/downstairs. I have never touched ramps because I don't feel like learning what feels like a redundant mechanic when I could just make a much easier to create a staircase. As long as I remember that up/downstairs won't get my dwarves stuck, I never touch "Up" or "Down" stairs again because they're both essentially newb traps.

Now, maybe I'm being a little harsh on the stairs, but that's because I'm being given the choice of learning how virtual stairs work or learning why Dwarves aren't doing the thing I assigned them to do. That second one's not really a problem for me since I'll look it up and get an answer pretty fast, but new Steam users who don't know the game's reputation are probably going to put in as much work figuring out their Dwarves as I have learning about ramps.

Specifically: Why won't Dwarves do this job? The game doesn't tell you that they need to be assigned to it (And I tend to just use Dwarf Therapist once I realize because in-game I can't assign Dwarves to do the thing until I do another 3rd party search).

Why is my Dwarf stuck 2 Z-levels up a tree? They'll climb up but refuse to climb down unless I build a set of stairs for them. I get that they're running away from A wild bird danger, but this is the dumbest way for them to get away from a threat if they have no intention of climbing down without a rescue. It'd be funny or even cute if they would just climb down on their own (With the risk of injury/death based on their climbing skill) but as is it's just annoying to deal with.

Which reminds me, at the same time 2 dwarves and a cat were stuck up a tree, 1 dwarf and a cat was stuck in hole I was digging to for a little project (Mountain biome, wanted to mitigate Miasma by putting a hole above the butcher's shop, ran into an aquifer and had to give up on that spot). If I was a really new player, I'd have let them all rot because they'll climb a tree and let themselves die there, but they won't climb out of a hole even if there's no other way out.

I did figure it out. Maybe if I gave them more time, they'd have gotten out of the tree/hole on their own. But with a new player mindset, how long should they be expected to wait for their Dwarves to get themselves out of a situation like this on their own?

Lastly, the military's everything. I've never touched it because I never understand what I'm supposed to be looking at, might as well just turtle and only open up for caravans.




Now, aside from the problems on the noob end, for me personally the game just seems to be getting increasingly boring. There's no real reason to keep pushing through because a late-game fortress sounds like it's either FPS death or tirelessly trying to keep your dwarves sane. Personally, I got interested in the game because of the !FUN!. Dwarven Daycare (Impossible and useless now); Breeding War Animals (The things are more likely to panic during an invasion than attack from the videos I've seen); Designing Grand Halls (Useless, the dumb Dwarves won't go near each other to socialize unless you force them into a narrow space); Grand Fighting Arenas (At least this one was never really possible since Dwarves can't tell the difference between an actual threat and a hostile captive that can't get to them).

What I'm getting at here is that the game is becoming increasingly restrictive with what you can and can't do, because Dwarves don't like things that are peacefully grandiose in scale or anything resembling violence. You build a compact space, you babysit every individual's sanity, and maybe build a cool zoo; that seems to be the destiny of every Dwarf Fortress that doesn't face FPS death because anything less will cause a cancer of red arrows.

But maybe I don't know what I'm talking about for late-game, I've only reached midgame once before getting bored and tapping out. Everything just feels like it's becoming more restrictive because Dwarves can't take care of their own mental health, and they can't tolerate any amount of violence without extreme desensitization beforehand.


Anyway, I don't want to sound like I'm just complaining, the game's deeper systems are partly why I keep coming back. It's just that the Dwarves themselves are so, so god damn stupid. Add their stupidity to the stress system and their inability to de-stress on their own, it just becomes hard to find the fun part if you aren't well versed in the game's mechanics enough to know what you can and can't with your Dwarves so you can at least work on building projects.

[wierd]

(Why 3 kinds of stairs)

Stairs create a passable tile, even if the dirt has not been dug!!
The degree of passage is defined by the stair type.

Up stair only permits passage up (through an undug tile).
Down stair only permits down (through an undug tile)
Up/Down allows both up and down (through undug tiles)

What do I mean by undug tile?

OK, suppose you have a "dirt" tile floor, but the floor below has been dug out, and shows a dirt floor.  This qualifies for "undug", because without the stair being present, you cannot get from the layer with the dirt floor to the dug cavern layer below; there is a barrier of the dirt floor in the way!!

If, however, you install a "Downstair" on that dirt tile, and an "up stair" on the dug cavern floor below, LIKE MAGIC, dwarves can path through the now covered up dirt floor layer! 

However, if you build a stair in the Z level above the downstair (EG, a surface construction up 1z), dwarves cannot pass UP.  Only DOWN.
Likewise, if you build a stair below the upstair on the cavern floor, dwarves cannot pass through the upstair into the floor below. It only goes UP.

Up/Down stairs penetrate these floors both directions.

Try it yourself-- Useful for fast surface access without digging a channel that permanently makes a hole! Destroy one of the stairs, and it becomes impermeable again!  Also works for fluids!


Dwarf up a tree:

This is known buggy.  Dwarf runs up the tree, but then lacks sufficient climb skill to get down again.

[PatrikLundell]

@StolenScience (&wierd): The "stuck in a location and starve to death because climbing is not an option" was addressed a number of releases ago. This has lead to a new problem of dorfs digging a chute feels like they need to eat/drink/sleep and climb out of the hole and nobody will climb down to continue the task because dorfs aren't pathing to jobs sites that requires climbing (detours can still trigger climbing, though). If there are still issues with dorfs (and others, such as invaders) stuck up in trees unable to climb down you ought to check the bug tracker to see if there is an open bug report on it (I believe junglification of caverns still trap critters entering the upper reaches of cavern trees regularly).

I agree stairs are tricky to get a handle on, and it doesn't exactly help that dug stairs and built stairs are similar, but not quite the same (and the UI uses different key mappings in the different menus).

Organized spectator blood shedding goes contrary to dwarven ethics (as opposed to real life humans), so such activities will impact dorfs negatively to a greater or lesser extent depending on the individual dorfs and the overall stress balancing. Once non dwarven fortresses become a thing, it would be reasonable to allow for civs with matching preferences (e.g. current goblins) to arrange these kind of events.

DF gets boring fast if you don't find a way to amuse yourself (a common trait among sandbox games). Examples of things that can amuse (different) people are:
- Megaprojects
- Explore new mechanics (mine carts, pump stacks, overly complicated invader killer devices, etc.)
- Tame the caverns, and, as the end of that approach, the HFS.
- Challenging embarks (glaciers, no water anywhere, thralling clouds, etc.)
- Dwarf Fortress Home Decorator. Build the fortress with matching colors, masterful designs, etc. Just ignore that the dorfs themselves are incapable of appreciate much of it.
- Dorf Satisfaction Maximizer. Design each dorf's bedroom (and other rooms) with furniture of favorite materials/colors and, optionally, engravings of (hopefully) favored scenes (even if the dorfs seem to be incapable of appreciate the contents of engravings).
- Battle Hell. Impose more or less severe restrictions on what kind of defensive measures you use and have your militia fight off invaders in surface battles. This is probably quite a difficult challenge currently, not because of the living enemies, but the garbage they're reduced to.

Embarking on any of these ventures probably means you've past the newbie stage (although modes game mechanics investigations, such as stair and channeling, have to be performed early).