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[Stadfradt]

Well, you can edit keybindings yourself....

OMG! Thank you so much! I literally had no clue about that. ^_^

[Pillbo]

v-menu does put names on the screen. They're right above all the options.

I think they mean to label the units on the play screen like this:



I personally would really like an option to toggle names on screen.

[JesterHell696]

On the issue of large migrant waves I thought for a while that potential migrants should be beholden to the petition system, the player/overseer should be able to evaluate migrant groups and migrant groups themselves should be more coherent with themselves, by which I mean families travelling and moving together rather then single family dwarf moving to a fort with no family and then being sad that they have no family in the fort, or families petitioning to migrate to the fort as a family, no taking that legendary weaponsmith but not her 5 kids and fisher dwarf husband.

Immediate family do travel together. And in case the migrant wave isn't big enough, they show up in later waves. The only times they don't is when they're busy being kidnapped or in noble positions elsewhere. (And maybe mercenaries, but that's fairly new). And you have to banish them all in one group if one of them becomes troublesome.

They do but they don't, at least no how I mean it/think of it, they are a part of the "migrant wave" and that is how their travel is recorded rather then them being recorded as travelling with family, its why that over flow issue where "in case the migrant wave isn't big enough, they show up in later waves" exists, I think migrant waves need to be broken up into pieces, instead of a migrant wave of 20 dwarves you should get a migrant wave of a family of 7, a family of 5, a few of couples (4), and a few of singles (4).

Each sub group should be treated as its own separate entity not just a general "Migrant Wave 4" and that information should be presented to the player, rather then getting a simple "Migrants" announcement you would instead get a report and a petition, the report would tell your migrant wave consists of a family of 7, a family of 5, a couple of couples (4), and a few of singles (4) and each of their petitions should be handled as separate groups, so each family get it own petition that is for that family as a whole, turning away lots of migrant should be almost a big of an immigration killer as killing migrants.

When the game is checking for migrants it should figure out how many, so let say 20, then it starts creating the migrant wave, generates/finds histfig couple, two wives = 2 dwarves, then it gens/finds histfig family of 5 = 2+5=7, gens/finds histfig single 1 = 1+7=8 another couple 7+2=10, a family of 7 = 7+9=17, then it gens/finds histfig a family of 6, but since the family of 6 can't fit its gens/finds histfig again and gets another single 17+1=18, two more gens/finds histfig two more singles.

The idea is that if the whole family can't fit in the migrant wave the whole family waits for the next wave to make them waves more "coherent" by keeping the families within the waves coherent, now there are instances of one member of the family travelling to setup shop in the new city/town/village what have you but that should be accounted for in the petitioning process.

If someone migrates to setup shop for the rest of their family to follow that should be listed in their petition and their non-present family that has to be promised acceptance since they're also petitioning on the behalf of the family that will follow them should act as a "soft" pop cap which is to say that the game points out the conflict if you go to accept another migrant petitioner that would make the promised acceptance impossible as it would go over the hard pop cap, basically allow the player to break that promised acceptance but warn them of it.


Now actually going into all the details of why they are migrating to your fortress is best left for the starting scenarios when fortress will finally have a reason for being but making migrant waves more coherent and transparent to the player is what I am suggesting, petitions for migrant to actually gain citizenship at the fortress and for families to petition as families rather then as individuals, rather then hitting them with 50 seemingly random dwarves with no reason or explanation having it be presented to the player as a few of large families along with the some smaller ones and a few singles.

"A wave of fifty migrants have come, the 5th migrant wave to your fortress consists of a few large families, some smaller families and a few singles, you best prepare to receive their citizenship petitions."

"This is a large family of seven, the family consists of a husband, wife, eldest daughter, eldest son, second eldest daughter, youngest daughter, youngest son, They are petitioning for citizenship in your fortress."

With the option to review the family member from the petition screen maybe some sort of interview system like with villain investigations, you could choose to interview the whole family or just one or even none of them, just don't get upset when someone turns out to be a spy or vampire because you couldn't be bothered to interview them.

Instead of "migrant wave has come" its "migrant wave 5 had a few large families and a couple of smaller ones along with a few singles", DF'd goal is telling stories and ensuring those stories are presented to the newbs in an easily accessible way is what this is about, the idea of petitioning families as families gives the player control and presents the dwarfs as beings with families and dreams of their own which helps to sell no direct control as a feature.

It is like how I think embark screen should be redone to be more like adventure mode starting screen, you choose your starting civ, your starting site, choose your dwarves professions, the game "grabs/generates" dwarf with those professions from the starting site, you "prepare carefully" with each dwarf having the standard 10 skill/levels max 5, some starting personal "adventure mode" wealth and after the "pets and mounts" screen is the standard embark group inventory selection, then you pick an embark location based upon your civilisations knowledge, but that is part of the starting scenarios work and way more suggestion-y and less newb help.

[PatrikLundell]

I don't think this thread is for design solutions, but if migrants would be changed to petition at some point (after the current petitions have been fleshed out to provide some information to base a decision on), it would make more sense for them to send applications, rather than trek into the center of a horror infested nightmare only to be turned away at the door.

[delphonso]

Likewise, a wall of information on multiple migrants is a lot less inviting to new players than them just wandering in and you dealing with it. Honestly, I don't see many real problems with the migrant system as is. It's one of the least difficult to understand parts of the game.

[Stadfradt]

Likewise, a wall of information on multiple migrants is a lot less inviting to new players than them just wandering in and you dealing with it.

Yep.
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[feelotraveller]

Fully in agreement with this

Likewise, a wall of information on multiple migrants is a lot less inviting to new players than them just wandering in and you dealing with it.

although migrants petitioning is an interesting idea.

However I beg to differ on this

Honestly, I don't see many real problems with the migrant system as is. It's one of the least difficult to understand parts of the game.

since the problem is not one of understanding.  It is one of immersion and lore from a player perspective. (And game psychology from a developer perspective.)

An example: in my last 44 fort without tweaking d_init I had the following pattern of immigration-
* 7 dwarfs (embark crew)
* 3 dwarfs
* 8 dwarfs
Which is pretty standard and bang on average for first winter - 18 dwarfs, although memory provides figures from 10 to 24 but that's all fine.

Second year first wave 63 dwarfs.  So my fort goes from 18 to 81.  I have literally bugger all chance of getting to know 63 dwarfs all at once, maybe three or four of them since they have really good and wanted skills, maybe another couple because of their relationships or they do something notable in the fort.  And then another 3ish months pass and I get 83 dwarfs and the whole chance of getting to know any dwarf dimishes by about half again.  (Sure going forward that year the third wave was only 30 something dwarfs but early in year 3 my fort already hits the default pop cap and I 'know' about 30 dwarfs, at best.)

That's the immersion break, and although my numbers might be somewhat higher than an average noob every week I read more or less same complaint from new players - omg 30 dwarfs just came, how the hell do I deal with them (meaning there are too many to fit into the narrative all at once).  Answers can be given to the techical management question but that's not the real problem, the underlying issue is the abrupt break in the game flow, and that's the sort of felt rather than thought reason that leads to people abandoning the game.

But there is also the lore break - why the hell are all these dwarfs beelining for a mud shack in the middle of nowhere, or worse being created from thin air (generated) to fill the need for... what precisely.

So while the mechanism of migration is fine (in my opinion) the actual working/weighting of it is well out of whack.

[kaijyuu]

Aside from the first two migrant waves, perhaps the liason should have options for letting you request or deny additional migrants for the next year.

[Erendir]

5. Make the manager more useful. Think about this for a sec.: I'm effectively the Lord High Expeditionary Master leading my plebs to build a new colony. I set out the bedrooms, make production decisions, design the fortress, hire & fire, etc. A good manager would keep me apprised of the state of my dwarves along with options that might help. "Boss, Urist McFleabag is pretty depressed. He likes ducks, free one up for adoption, or put him in the kitchen because he likes cooking," or "Boss, you need keep an eye on our seed stocks. You need get your quern a-workin'." I'm off-the-charts ADD even when I'm medicated, and even when my eyes aren't watering from trying to read the individual description screen, I can't remember the first "becomes distracted" by the time I'm on the third. Also, redesign that screen to be more readable.

funny thing: with minor modification to announcements.txt - add D_D to REGULAR_CONVERSATION and CONFLICT_CONVERSATION - you can actually see stuff like "I had a drink without using a goblet.  That's very annoying.", "There aren't enough chairs.  It's annoying.", "I slept without a proper room.  This is so embarrassing..." and so on.

I.e. it's already part of the game, just not in the default config, because, annoyingly, it fills the reports screen with spam ("I finished up some work" and such). It's possible to have a dfhack-script to deal with it (I wrote a prototype).

[Schmaven]

But there is also the lore break - why the hell are all these dwarfs beelining for a mud shack in the middle of nowhere, or worse being created from thin air (generated) to fill the need for... what precisely.

So while the mechanism of migration is fine (in my opinion) the actual working/weighting of it is well out of whack.

It sort of depends on the play style a bit too.  If a noob like me has many dwarves die to wildlife every season, high migrant numbers are needed to stay alive. 

I suppose limiting migrant wave size to be somewhat proportional to fortress population might be helpful?  And then allow for manually adjusting migrant parameters in advanced settings for the non-noobs.  Or, if the constructed wealth of the fort were some indication of its ability to support populations of a proportional size, migrant waves could go up and down toward a rough target population size?  There are many ways it could be changed really.

Either way, it is a true test of memory to get to know all your dwarves in a 200 population fort.  I just pick a few to pay attention to as individuals, and the rest I look at from a fortress story perspective rather than an individual dwarf perspective - only reading their descriptions after they are involved in something interesting.

[Stadfradt]

Second year first wave 63 dwarfs.  So my fort goes from 18 to 81.
...omg 30 dwarfs just came, how the hell do I deal with them (meaning there are too many to fit into the narrative all at once). 

noob here. Narrative shmarrative. I'm prepped with thirty bedrooms; I got food, booze, militia captains sorted; I kinda think I've got a handle on who's doing what, where, when, and why...and suddenly dwarves are sleeping everywhere, I'm out of booze, we're on a starvation diet.........

If it weren't for Kruggsmash I would have quit playing within the first couple weeks. Because I did not know that migrants could be expelled! Absent Kruggsmash's zombie-tundra nightmare fort, I would not have known I could reject migrants, and I would have quit playing.

'Ya know how when you first make a meeting area under the i-zones menu, and it gives you a warning about whatever...(I forget)...there's no reason there can't be a pop-up with the first migrant that says they can be booted toot-sweet.

Look, I hate migrants as much as the next guy. But they're part of the game. Migrants showing up to the Colonies didn't come with resumes, and history is full of stories of people leaving home and heading out to find their way in the world. Gold-Rush prospectors didn't petition for residency. When Greeky McGreeksalot left Greece to find adventure in Alexandria, he just stuffed his spare toga* in a bag and hopped the first ship that would take him. Just knowing that they can be vetted and rejected changes the whole thing entirely. If I'm the Lord High Expeditionary Master and some dorf a la doofus shows up with "animal caretaker" as his only "skill," I can send him and his reefer to go "find themselves" among the elves. Problem solved. That fact makes it a very different game -- in my case it becomes a game where my crappy computer and my ADD can repeatedly try to create the perfect micro-fort without getting bogged down in paperwork and single-digit FPS.

Changing the random insanity of migrant waves will have a pretty big impact on the game. And given the state of communication, rumor, and politics in a medieval fantasy world built around establishing a colony, the current migrant system actually fits perfectly with the overall narrative of the game. I'm just glad the game doesn't include a People's Crusade, the Black Death, and Genghis H. Khan.

IMHO, YMMV, caveat lector, and all that jazz.


*I have no idea what ancient Greeks wore.

[delphonso]

Stadfradt put my point perhaps into better words. The migrants seem to fit the game as it is.

I fear this thread is becoming pretty dense with feature suggestions rather than fixes which can be easily and quickly implemented to make the game accessible (or at least, moreso) to the upcoming wave of new players via Steam and itch.io. A simple notification that says Migrants have arrived (they can be expelled via this or that menu) would at least give people something to type into the wiki, and give players more information on what their options are. I expect most players go to the wiki and see pop cap limitations and go that route instead. Unaware totally of other ways to handle it.

This is, of course, just how I see the game: Losing is fun, in so far as you think you can do better next time. DF is an easy game to be successful in, though the options and solutions are often complex and hard to find. The barrier to entry for new players then, is just how much they can figure out at first glance and whether they can change up their strategy for next time.

Yep.
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You're definitely not wrong there. It'd be nice to have batch labors enabled or something. That said, I would guess new players rather turn on labors as they see jobs not being done, and pull from the pile of labor in the tavern.

[feelotraveller]

I expect most players go to the wiki and see pop cap limitations and go that route instead. Unaware totally of other ways to handle it.

Yeah, there are a bunch of workarounds, but that just says to me that the underlying problem has never been addressed.

First it was gas drowning chambers or atom smashing, next it was getting the border control pop cap to restrict migrants, then it was exile to the gulag hillocks.  That fact that players have - repeatedly - creatively used other features as solutions (final or otherwise) to the overabundance of migrants just shows that there is a continuing problem.  One that each new player will run into.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I expect most players go to the wiki and see pop cap limitations and go that route instead. Unaware totally of other ways to handle it.

Yeah, there are a bunch of workarounds, but that just says to me that the underlying problem has never been addressed.

First it was gas drowning chambers or atom smashing, next it was getting the border control pop cap to restrict migrants, then it was exile to the gulag hillocks.  That fact that players have - repeatedly - creatively used other features as solutions (final or otherwise) to the overabundance of migrants just shows that there is a continuing problem.  One that each new player will run into.

People with the specific issue of not wanting an overabundance of migrants but also not wanting to set the pop cap in the options menu low, are yes, finding solutions to deal with it which we all get to read about.

Those who just play the game (or set the pop cap at a level they're happy with), don't post about it because they don't need to. So you don't hear about them.

[PatrikLundell]

I expect most players go to the wiki and see pop cap limitations and go that route instead. Unaware totally of other ways to handle it.

Yeah, there are a bunch of workarounds, but that just says to me that the underlying problem has never been addressed.

First it was gas drowning chambers or atom smashing, next it was getting the border control pop cap to restrict migrants, then it was exile to the gulag hillocks.  That fact that players have - repeatedly - creatively used other features as solutions (final or otherwise) to the overabundance of migrants just shows that there is a continuing problem.  One that each new player will run into.

People with the specific issue of not wanting an overabundance of migrants but also not wanting to set the pop cap in the options menu low, are yes, finding solutions to deal with it which we all get to read about.

Those who just play the game (or set the pop cap at a level they're happy with), don't post about it because they don't need to. So you don't hear about them.

Your point has merit, but still, the problem most people who feel the need for workarounds have isn't that they have a pop cap that's too high, but that it's reached far too quickly. Personally I don't have a problem with migrant wave sizes anymore because I know how to manage it using a gradually increasing pop cap, but that's not something a newbie would think of as the first thing to do (cherry picking by exile/murder can either be a kind of solution to the same problem, or it can be a matter of the player being picky with who they want to let in (rather than have them do on-the-job training), and the method itself doesn't really say which of those it is).