Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wallish]

We all know and love strange moods, but other than a legendary worker and masterpiece item, they don't really have any long term effects.  So, I propose an "inventions" system.

Basically, there would be a new item tag [INVENTION] that would prevent the item from appearing in workshop lists.  Let's say... longsword... or something.  So the player starts their fort and has Urist Metalsmith do all the weapon making, until suddenly Urist gets a strange mood.  After ensuring all materials are provided, Urist creates Smordifnorg, a legendary longsword!  The player is then given a message that Urist Metalsmith has invented a new weapon, the longsword (general message would be [dwarf name] has invented a new [item type], [item]).  The item is now available for construction in the associated workshop.

Now, not every strange mood would create a new item, and not every profession would have an invention.  But if the profession DID have an invention waiting then the next strange mood of that profession would invent the item (so you don't have to wait a long time for the item to show up).

If a long time (determined by the item?) goes by without the item being invented, the invention flag could be toggled and the item could start showing up in trade.  So you won't necessarily end up never having those items, you'll just have to wait a LONG time (at least several game years) for them.

[Jamuk]

Actually, why not make everything into inventions? Then during world gen have people invent stuff?  Every world has access to different items technology that way.  This would certainly give being able to change how long world generation runs important.

[korora]

I think it would be more dwarf-fortress-y to take a current item, randomly boost its stats, and give it a random name.  Essentially you'd have people making weapons in the style of the legendary weapon.

If you're going to make everything inventable (or as a corollary, make everything require inventing), though, you would need an avenue other than just moods.  Maybe workshops with inventable items could have "research" jobs.  Otherwise people will just re-gen, very annoyed, when nobody discovers smelting for 1000 years.

[Granite26]

Actually, I like the invention in world gen system. 

It really helps with creating unique cultures.  Have racial aptitudes towards techs maybe?  Each tech item has a class, basically the job skill it's associated with.  Elves are good at animals and farming, dwarves mining and crafts.  Humans get everything, but at a lower value.

I don't mind the idea of requiring strange moods in the game to get the new stuff in fortress mode either.

You'd also have to impliment stealing technology.

OTOH it would be neat to see the greenskins with a low tech cap having to steal stuff.  It would give them a reason to be 'evil'.  (Not smart enough to smith, can't farm real well, basically produce nothing the other civs want so they resort to thievery and stealling babies.)

Adventure mode advantages are that you'd end up wandering around to different parts of the world, where drastically different stuff is available, and all naturally.

In order to keep things from being too complicated, I think smithing would need to be always available, but the individual ores would need the tech to make them.  (brings in the concept of the bronze age, heh?)

Increases the interactions between fort and adv mode if you develop tech in a fort that becomes available in the civ, so you can buy it in the capitol.

[wallish]

In order to keep things from being too complicated, I think smithing would need to be always available, but the individual ores would need the tech to make them.  (brings in the concept of the bronze age, heh?)

That'd be interesting, but I think shifting everything towards the inventing system would be a mistake.

But to have different civs during worldgen latch onto local materials and really master the ability to use it would be great.  Instead of having various "levels" of workshops though, I think it would be better to put the material dependence on the dwarves.  You find iron and can only make basic iron crafts, then you get an immigrant who heard of your hematite find and moves to your fort.  Now you can make better quality iron weapons and armor.  Also, your material-skill-less dwarves would gradually begin to learn how to use the materials too, so you don't have to depend on an immigrant showing up.

I think that most of all, with both the invention and the material system, I would like to see actual apprenticeship situations.  Workshops should be able to hold two dwarves. The dwarf with the lower skill level is essentially the novice, the one who goes to fetch the material or carries it to the stockpile from the workshop.  The other dwarf, the master, stays in the workshop and works on materials.  When the two are in the shop at the same time, the novice's skill level begins to go up.

When the master leave the shop, the novice takes over and works on materials.  A master/teacher/instructor/whateveryouwanttocallit would be able to teach the novice/student/apprentice/etc up to his/her own skill level, but no higher.  A dwarf without a teacher can learn skills, but at a MUCH slower rate (slower even then the system we have now) while with a teacher the dwarfs learning would be accelerated (at the speed we have now, which is a pretty good speed).

That way you have the dwarf with the knowledge of iron teaching the other dwarf a knowledge of iron.  Longsword dwarf is teaching novice dwarf skills in that, etc.

[Techhead]

I hope no dwarf in my civilization ever invents soap.
EVER.

That said, basic tech should stay discovered by default. Agriculture, basic masonry & carpentry, wood and metal furnaces, most leather and textile items, decorations.
Would the invention system ever include certain craft goods?
It would be interesting if a civilization never produces drums or flutes, but instead makes harps, piccolos, & and trumpets.

[perilisk]

Might be interesting for providing civ variety in worldgen (especially flavor things, like regional clothing variants, domesticated crops/animals, instruments, weapon types).

The timeframe for fortress mode, along with the density of moods, makes it a little overpowered. One major discovery a year seems like a lot for those days, even for dwarves. Maybe if it was something where the dwarf understands it intuitively, but can't communicate it (ie, it's more about skill than knowledge), it would be okay -- basically a mood that lets a dwarf make an unlimited number of somewhat enhanced items. Actually, it would be even better for, say, humans, to give them a different flavor from dwarves while still retaining a similar mechanic.

[Joseph Miles]

Would the stuff be limited to that which is already in DF, or would they eventually be able to make stuff like automobiles and all that? Because it'd be weird to be in year like 4000 and still have just picks and wagons.

[Draco18s]

Would the invention system ever include certain craft goods?
It would be interesting if a civilization never produces drums or flutes, but instead makes harps, piccolos, & and trumpets.

They produce demons?!?

[Techhead]

Yes, they manufacture the dread "Typo demon"

[Mikademus]

I think it would be more dwarf-fortress-y to take a current item, randomly boost its stats, and give it a random name.  Essentially you'd have people making weapons in the style of the legendary weapon.

I like this idea. It could also work with the world-gen development idea in the sense that a civilisations are seeded with stereotypical items, which then develop through innovation. Then you'd both get variety and some rudimentary control (for stability of gameplay).

[Idiom]

The mother of invention is necessity, or completely random? I'd say a bit of both.

[Granite26]

The mother of invention is necessity, or completely random? I'd say a bit of both.

necesity is easy:  a culture is more likely to invent things it shares more tags in common with, including resident biome tags.  (AKA the bikini has the tropical tag, so the tahitians living in a tropical biome are more likely to invent it that the swedes)

[Slartibartfast]

Idea: Make inventions into a new type of mood, that will only happen to dwarves with legendary skill in the appropriate skill.
So it will take a legendary weaponsmith to invent a new weapon. And it would make sense that your fortress has a few inventions per decade, considering it has legendary dwarves and is the center of modern civilization.

It would also slow down the rate of inventions by quite a bit.

[qwertyuiopas]

I once mentioned this long ago, but if each potential invention could be given requirements that must be discovered first, it could evole into some form of a tech tree.


http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=5839.msg73664#msg73664

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=2851.0

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=3230.0

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=4177.0

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=5556.0