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[Inarius]

Can someone summarize the main ideas from these 20 pages, and greenlit them for Toady & Threetoes ? I'm feeling nothing more will be said anymore on this topic.
I would do it gladly but i'm not fully fluent..so maybe i would do some misinterpretations.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Can someone summarize the main ideas from these 20 pages, and greenlit them for Toady & Threetoes ? I'm feeling nothing more will be said anymore on this topic.
I would do it gladly but i'm not fully fluent..so maybe i would do some misinterpretations.

Surely that's what Zach's going to do anyway?
It's his thread.

[MrMagolor]

More site search filters. Namely, being able to filter the presence of various stone layers, as well as being able to search for trees. Especially the former, as it's very frustrating when you embark on a flux + shallow/deep metal location with no sedimentary = no iron, steel, or Coke.

so including the dfhack embark assistant

The reason embark assistant was written as part of the external tool suite DFHack was a demand from (mostly experienced) players to find ideal embark sites according to their wishes. What newbies need is probably a newbie filter with few or no options, rather than a bewildering array of options for things they know little about. If the search filter for (slightly more) experienced players was updates as well, it would be great, but I'm not sure that would rank among the highest priorities for tasks to be dealt with before the Premium release. I'm sure there would be complaints if the newbie filter always found steel prerequisites while the normal one didn't allow you that precision (including bug reports), though.

Good point, but I am sure that a trees filter would still be nice.

[PatrikLundell]

I must be dense or something, because I fail to see why there's a desire for a tree filter. Trees are everywhere (and new mature all the time, with the start at 3 years from embark) except:
- Mountain
- Glacier
- Lake
- Ocean
and can, very rarely, be missing from deserts/badlands. In addition to that, evil biomes can have a % of the vegetation (including trees) being dead, and it seems that this percentage may be 100% when dead spreads from necro/demon activity (and dead saplings won't mature...).
Thus, you have to get out of your way to avoid trees.

If you want lots of trees at embark, go for forests of any kind (over time any tree supporting embark will get completely junglified unless you vigorously and actively prune the embark: the biomes may have different rates, but the end state is the same).

[Riemann]

I've been playing for a very long time. Honestly, I had the most fun with the 2d version. It was vastly more approachable as a new player. I think there are good lessons to be learned by looking back to that era. What I am listing here are things that I still find confusing or difficult as an expert that I *guess* would also affect a new player. So I'm not including bugs / problems that I think don't crop up until someone is already hooked on the game (eg: FPS death, clothing industry, siege weapons, the stress and needs system).

First though, I don't think strange moods are a problem and why that is might be useful to think about in prioritizing work. There is at least some indication in the UI of what the dwarf needs. There is a reasonable amount of time in which the player can try to meet those needs. If it goes wrong only one dwarf is affected rather than setting off a full fort death spiral. If it goes right you get something cool as a reward. The reward is important! It's not enough to just avoid a penalty (or work around a bug) as opposed to actually getting a reward.

* Generally agree about everything said with regards to consolidating and streamlining controls. Especially around stairs and ramps.

* Site selection. Almost every site you started in the 2d version was fully playable. I'm not saying throw away the amazing worldgen and the ability for ADVANCED players to start in locations that drastically limit their options. But for new players (and even advanced ones who don't want to spend literally hours genning worlds and running DFHack embark assistant) you need a premade world with specially selected interesting sites ready to go.

* Agree with slowing down the pace of migrants. In addition to the reasons listed, the current pace of migrants means I only ever get to "know" and care about my first 7 dwarves. Everyone else just blurs together.

* Controlling military dwarves. Especially those with ranged weapons. And even more so any mechanics that let them phase through walls or fortifications (dodging etc...). Pretty much everything said so far about marksdwarves.

* Agree with previous thoughts about improved defaults in various menus.

* If there are still any calculations based on total fort value (are there?) then fixing the value of prepared food becomes a "noob critial" issue. Because prepared meals are worth so much they overvalue early unprepared forts that have a cook.

* Get rid of differences between "natural" stone and constructed walls. Or at least make it clear what those differences are.

* I'm still not sure what the options in the military schedule screen really do (especially around training) and I've been playing for ages. No idea what a noob would think.

* How to set up a good uniform for military dwarves. The df wiki on uniforms seems complete and authoritative and also totally useless as a guide on what to actually do.

* Agree about problems with bins.

* Permanent depletion of fish / game without any way to restrict your hunters and fishers to ease up a bit on them.

* Woodcutters killing themselves and others cutting down trees (maybe fine on occasion for an unskilled woodcutter but way too often right now)

* Need a cleaning order / designation to remove mud and such.

[Riemann]

Also, please please please spend some time fixing bugs and improving existing features. Maybe doing so would just kill the enjoyment of dev for this game and so isn't possible. But the prospect of another round of features layered on top of the existing ones doesn't make me excited to play more DF it just makes me depressed that the game will become even less playable.

[Robsoie]

Bugs and fps death are sure complete fun killers (well there are some bugs that actually enhance the fun, remember the carps of 0.28.x).

Something i re experienced recently and that while not being a bug is falling right into the fun killer category : reclaiming a player fortress you lost to something is a complete pain.
Every items are spread all over the map and without using external tools like dfhack , you spend actual hours of absolutely non-gameplay waiting for the starting 7 (or a few more if you get an early migrant wave) dwarves to finally put back all those items in the stockpiles they were stored in originally.

I'm not sure how this unfun part could be avoided without pointing people to having to use external tools,  the most obvious possibility would be to keep the items where they were instead of randomly spreading them all over the map when a player fortress is reclaimed. Another possible solution is to use what used to be in 0.28x : a reclaim army instead of only 7 dwarves.
This process would speed up a lot this unfun part as it sure takes a lot less time to clean a map with 50+ dwarves than with 7.

[Pvt. Pirate]

* Need a cleaning order / designation to remove mud and such.

yes. need a way to revert mud covered stone floors back into stone floors to prevent plants from growing.

[Hyndis]

* Need a cleaning order / designation to remove mud and such.

yes. need a way to revert mud covered stone floors back into stone floors to prevent plants from growing.

You can do this, albeit indirectly.

Construct a floor over the muddy stone floor. Then remove the constructed floor. This resets the stone back to a clean, rough stone state. This also removes engravings, so if you want to reset a floor engraving you can construct and deconstruct a floor over that tile.

[PatrikLundell]

* Need a cleaning order / designation to remove mud and such.

yes. need a way to revert mud covered stone floors back into stone floors to prevent plants from growing.

You can do this, albeit indirectly.

Construct a floor over the muddy stone floor. Then remove the constructed floor. This resets the stone back to a clean, rough stone state. This also removes engravings, so if you want to reset a floor engraving you can construct and deconstruct a floor over that tile.

When it works at it should, yes, but it's currently bugged (at least in 0.44.12), so some of what should have turned back to stone turns into soil instead.

[Hyndis]

When it works at it should, yes, but it's currently bugged (at least in 0.44.12), so some of what should have turned back to stone turns into soil instead.

Ahh, yes. That happens when a plant grows and is removed. A removed plant changes a muddy stone tile into soil. Forgot about that one.

I suppose you could always use DFHack's tiletypes utility, though tools such as DFHack and Therapist are both crutches that fix/add things that desperately need to be in the main game.

I refuse to play the game without Therapist. It is impossible to manage any more than about 25 dwarves using the default jobs interface.

Rimworld's pawn labor interface is basically perfect, in my opinion. Therapist is basically the same thing as this, but done as an external memory hack rather than inbuilt utility.

[Inarius]

I agree. I don't use any external tools even tiles, but I can't play with Therapist.
It's in my opinion the same issue with Military screen : the lack of simple synthetic graphical tools.

[Pvt. Pirate]

* Need a cleaning order / designation to remove mud and such.

yes. need a way to revert mud covered stone floors back into stone floors to prevent plants from growing.

You can do this, albeit indirectly.

Construct a floor over the muddy stone floor. Then remove the constructed floor. This resets the stone back to a clean, rough stone state. This also removes engravings, so if you want to reset a floor engraving you can construct and deconstruct a floor over that tile.

When it works at it should, yes, but it's currently bugged (at least in 0.44.12), so some of what should have turned back to stone turns into soil instead.

it's also almost impossible to reset your flooding chamber and not have trees grow everywhere in there and you can't have ramps/stairs everywhere to prevent plant growth.

[clinodev]

it's also almost impossible to reset your flooding chamber and not have trees grow everywhere in there and you can't have ramps/stairs everywhere to prevent plant growth.

Trees and plants will also not grow in stockpiles, even stockpiles that are set to take no goods. It's probably a bug, but it's handy.

[Naryar]

Alright, a bit of feedback from me.

As stated previously, as much as new features are great and I am really excited for the myth arc, bugfixing also needs to be given priority.

Fort Mode

-Feels like a cap on migration wave size would be helpful. Maybe with a default of ten ? I'm a fairly experienced player, been playing since 40d (though intermittently) and I still have trouble with huge migration waves. A new player's frustration could be bigger.

-Getting your dwarves to equip armor properly is still broken and quite frustrating even as an experienced player. It's either no clothing and armor only, or a mishmash of armor and clothing that doesn't really protect much.

-Marksdwarves are basically completely useless right now unless you restrict their pathing because their AI is suicidal and counterintuitive. Also there are still ammo equip bugs that cause trouble.

-Every military dwarf is basically on Leeroy Jenkins mode right now. They don't understand "station". They will throw themselves at threats that overpower them (and die) simply because they were first on the scene. Some basic AI tactics (Aggressive, Neutral, Defensive or such, like in most RTS games) would help.

-A better ingame tutorial. Right now, the game has completely outgrown the ingame tutorial.

-Better UI for building walls and such. It's quite repetitive after some time when you're making walls or towers. Letting mouse "paint" walls or even other building designations would be nice.

-Some better filters for embarking on a fort. Separate ores in weapons-grade, precious metals and other metals, maybe ? Or by different types of rock layers as suggested. Though the issue is that newbies won't make the difference between those without some explanation.

-Conflict bugs needs to be fixed. When there is a major fight going on and dwarves die, the rest of the fortress will cancel what they're doing and attack the hostiles en masse - even if they are civilians, or even if it should be a really bad idea. This can kill a fortress pretty badly. Almost killed one of mine lately.

Adventure Mode

-Adventure mode's discussion options may be a bit too overwhelming for a newbie. I know they were for me. Maybe put in some more menus ?

-Being in an area with people means a lot of discussion spam, and not only it is distracting in general, but it's somewhat annoying to follow a discussion you are having with a single NPC through lots of other unrelated discussion.

-It feels like rivers freeze too often and/or too quickly. I did lost one adventurer to being encased in ice by swimming in a river. Also, it would be helpful to be able to gather ice from a frozen river to melt with a campfire (like you can do with snow). When I'm outside in the wilds, I'm not sure where to go to find an unfrozen river to drink from.