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[teloft]

With 1 ... It would also be cool if the technologies would be skewed towards a civilizations particular affinity and the circumstances around them.

I think this is cool, it would make each world more unique, I can imagen a dwarf that did not know how to mine, and would live above ground.

I live in a small settelment where knowlege can come and go, for example shipbuilding, we live on a island and there used to be a shipbuilding knowlege here for over 1000 years, but there are no trees for shipbuilding here, so we had to travel to norway to build the ships and travel back with the ships.  we made the fastest ships of the time, 500 years ago the shipbuilding knowlege was lost, and did not come again until 200 years later, but some of the masterfull knowlege of building thees fast ships had bin lost forever, or just until now that we are discovering what it was that made the ships of the past go so much faster than normal ships. (it has something to do with lowering of the resistance of the whater by forsing air to mix with the wather in front of the ship). Ok the point is that it would be realy cool if knowlege could be lost, so a dwarf has the knowlege, and if he is dead, the knowlege is also dead, that is if noone studied under him.

[Omega2]

Lovely discussion, everybody. 


My only beef with restricting knowledge and technology is that Dwarf Fortress, having no definite endgame goal at the present moment, is a very nice sandbox where players can come up with their own challenges. Adding such a limiting factor as no mining or no blacksmithing feels wrong. You already have to pray that magma vent is near the surface and that the underground river isn't clogged with deadly fish, now hoping your civilization knows how to smelt stuff pushes it a bit too far for me. Let the players say "okay, I'm gonna get through this fortress without ANY masonry!" and do it themselves. 

I wouldn't mind a longer path before becoming a no-modifier Mason or Blacksmith, though. With failures and very long production times while dabbling, and less failures and slightly less production time while novice. Only after reaching "no label" that production times normalize and there is no more wasted material.

[vanarbulax]

Lovely discussion, everybody. 


My only beef with restricting knowledge and technology is that Dwarf Fortress, having no definite endgame goal at the present moment, is a very nice sandbox where players can come up with their own challenges. Adding such a limiting factor as no mining or no blacksmithing feels wrong.

That's why I think it should be an option during world gen.

[Spud]

Lovely discussion, everybody. 


My only beef with restricting knowledge and technology is that Dwarf Fortress, having no definite endgame goal at the present moment, is a very nice sandbox where players can come up with their own challenges. Adding such a limiting factor as no mining or no blacksmithing feels wrong.

Well, we shouldn't limit knowledge. Im pretty sure if you tell someone to do ANYTHING that is realtivley simple (mining, blacksmithing etc) they could do it. Not well, but how did anything get made the first time if not for someone just trying to make it from a vision or summit.

What we should do is have failed objects. Make a bad thought associated with them. For instance.
"Urist McSwordforger" has failed to make a iron short sword recently, instead he made a crudley bent peice of metal. What happens is we get some sort of wasted metal that must be remelted, and give poor urist a bad thought along the lines of "Urist Mcswordforger failed to complete his job properly recently". This could be used for any dwarf who is dabbling etc and fails a job.

I know i get upset if i mess up making something.

[Feodoric]

What we should do is have failed objects. Make a bad thought associated with them. For instance.
"Urist McSwordforger" has failed to make a iron short sword recently, instead he made a crudley bent peice of metal. What happens is we get some sort of wasted metal that must be remelted, and give poor urist a bad thought along the lines of "Urist Mcswordforger failed to complete his job properly recently". This could be used for any dwarf who is dabbling etc and fails a job.

I know i get upset if i mess up making something.

This would give another reason to have some sort of master/apprentice relationship. Apprentice gets minor bad thoughts from being terrible at his job, but then walks by the master and receives "Urist ApprenticeSmith has been complimented on his progress recently"

[irmo]

Well, we shouldn't limit knowledge. Im pretty sure if you tell someone to do ANYTHING that is realtivley simple (mining, blacksmithing etc) they could do it. Not well, but how did anything get made the first time if not for someone just trying to make it from a vision or summit.

It would be interesting to restrict skills along the lines of the "apprenticeship" idea that's been kicking around here, but more abstractly: you can't do a job at all unless someone in the fortress is at least Novice level in the skill. That doesn't have to be the dwarf who's doing the job; you can enable Carpentry on your random immigrant and he'll start at Dabbling and work his way up. But there has to be a carpenter around.

This makes immigrants useful for the variety of skills they bring (which traditionally has been a pretty dubious benefit, since most of the skills are of limited use and migrants have low skill levels) and gives the fortress a clear progression from the bare-essential skill set of the founders toward a more complete economy, without any "tech tree" nonsense.

[death_cookie]

It would be interesting to restrict skills along the lines of the "apprenticeship" idea that's been kicking around here, but more abstractly: you can't do a job at all unless someone in the fortress is at least Novice level in the skill. That doesn't have to be the dwarf who's doing the job; you can enable Carpentry on your random immigrant and he'll start at Dabbling and work his way up. But there has to be a carpenter around.

Instead of disallowing the dwarf from doing the job, allow it, but make XP acquisition extremely slow, so a non-apprenticed dwarf will take forever to go from Dabbling to Novice. Putting this together with the 'shoddy' level of craftsmanship for low-skilled dwarves, as well as the possibility of wasting materials, or catastrophic failures, and you have a pretty good combination, I think. It doesn't limit gameplay, but stresses the importance of skills.

If you want, you can make it so raising any levels beyond that of any other dwarf in the fortress is always slower.

[Veroule]

For the orginal post: I liked your number 3 idea.  In terms of tree cutting I doubt burrows would actually handle it.  What I do is designate a region of trees immediately around the wagon to be cut right after arrival.  When I see my tree cutter go idle I then spend a few moments to see what the wildlife is really like.  If it doesn't look dangerous I will designate all tree to be cut, otherwise I do a slightly wider area.  After the map is clear cut once it usually doesn't take that long to maintain it every year.  From my tactical description you can see it really isn't needed for an experienced player, but it would make things easier for a new player.  Of course then we would need to have more clutter added to turn it off.


On to thoughts of experience and such:
First you are playing in a world where the dwarves already have an established civilization.  Masteripiece items have been made before and all your dwarves have seen some of them.  Metal is not uncommon, and neither is armor.  There are no new concepts here and no real technologies to be learned.  There is only the personal skill of the dwarves.

The current system models personal skill quite well.  I think it would be nice to have either a "crude" quality or a scrap item produced.  If I am counting on having a door made at the masons workshop I would want to order another made when a new mason prdocues scrap.  By this statement I think scrap, and wasting materials is a fine thing; but just reset the job instead of considering it completed.  A scrap item did not fill the job order, so the job still needs to be done  The dwarf should still gain experience though.

As person that would qualify for accomplished or great in my profession I can say that I still occosasionally reduce an item I am working on to scrap instead of producing what I want.  It is quite rare, but still happens.  I would suggest that if such scrapping was implemented then it should have a chance to occur all the way up to grand master.

On learning from other dwarves: well we really need a whole new topic to design a way to tell dwarves that they are assigned to Tekkud, and should help him.  Then we need to cover just what that help would be while still letting them learn from him.

[irmo]

Instead of disallowing the dwarf from doing the job, allow it, but make XP acquisition extremely slow, so a non-apprenticed dwarf will take forever to go from Dabbling to Novice. Putting this together with the 'shoddy' level of craftsmanship for low-skilled dwarves, as well as the possibility of wasting materials, or catastrophic failures, and you have a pretty good combination, I think. It doesn't limit gameplay, but stresses the importance of skills.

Limiting gameplay is the point. It's not limited much, since any skill that's really critical (Miner, Mason, Carpenter, etc.) can be put on one of your starting dwarves, which is what everyone does now. (Or more than one, for safety.)

I'm starting to tire of the attitude that the player should never have to work around any kind of restriction. "Well, instead of not being able to make glass without sand, maybe you should make it really slowly." "I don't like that dwarves have to eat. They should just go on break more often if they don't get fed." All of these proposals discourage creative solutions to problems, because you can do anything if you're willing to spend enough time watching the dwarves grind away at tasks.

Restrictions make the game interesting.

[Neonivek]

"I'm starting to tire of the attitude that the player should never have to work around any kind of restriction. "Well, instead of not being able to make glass without sand, maybe you should make it really slowly." "I don't like that dwarves have to eat. They should just go on break more often if they don't get fed." All of these proposals discourage creative solutions to problems, because you can do anything if you're willing to spend enough time watching the dwarves grind away at tasks"

Irmo did you ever know that your my hero?

Though it does go one step further where people will disagree with things that make the game interesting but also harder even if it won't downright kill them. (I don't think I need to make an example)

[Omega2]

Restrictions make the game interesting.

And that's why the players create their own restrictions. By playing on glaciers/magma-less deserts, terrifying locations right besides a goblin tower, using only the "default" embark setting, refusing to use traps and/or Marksdwarves, and taking up challenges.

But the more restrictions you add, the less possible ways to play the game there are and the more you punish the player for a bad decision or just plain bad luck. DF is already pretty harsh when dealing out punishment, specially because of the steep learning curve and tantrum spirals. If you lose your only mason early in the game in a wood-less environment, and no one else can learn the skill, you pretty much lose the game (or at the very least is forced to go through three seasons without any workshops or extra booze). And even considering the motto of the game, that kind of loss is not fun. It's right up there with NetHack's Yet Another Annoying Death (YAAD).

[Granite26]

Though it does go one step further where people will disagree with things that make the game interesting but also harder even if it won't downright kill them. (I don't think I need to make an example)

Agreed

[irmo]

And that's why the players create their own restrictions.

I knew this was coming.

By playing on glaciers/magma-less deserts, terrifying locations right besides a goblin tower, using only the "default" embark setting, refusing to use traps and/or Marksdwarves, and taking up challenges. But the more restrictions you add, the less possible ways to play the game there are and the more you punish the player for a bad decision or just plain bad luck.

Whereas completely unrestricted gameplay offers millions of ways to play, all of them equally effective and therefore equally boring. Bad decisions should be punished. That's part of the reward for making good decisions.

DF is already pretty harsh when dealing out punishment, specially because of the steep learning curve

Oh, come on. The "steep learning curve" is mostly intimidation by the interface. This complaint might have had some truth back (1) before the wiki documented pretty much everything and (2) when setting up initial farming was tricky.

and tantrum spirals. If you lose your only mason early in the game in a wood-less environment, and no one else can learn the skill, you pretty much lose the game (or at the very least is forced to go through three seasons without any workshops or extra booze). And even considering the motto of the game, that kind of loss is not fun. It's right up there with NetHack's Yet Another Annoying Death (YAAD).

Well then, don't start with only one mason. For Armok's sake, it's an expedition to the frontier. Do you want anyone in the group to be irreplaceable? If the skill point cost is prohibitive, you can start with one mason, and then immediately train someone else up to Novice to be your backup mason--a little riskier, but not much. And if you lose your mason, you can still build workshops out of wood. See? You have restrictions, you work around them.

Nethack YAADs are generally things that kill you before you have a chance to react. DF gives you plenty of time to react, and plenty of options.

[Jamuk]

Quote

    By playing on glaciers/magma-less deserts, terrifying locations right besides a goblin tower, using only the "default" embark setting, refusing to use traps and/or Marksdwarves, and taking up challenges. But the more restrictions you add, the less possible ways to play the game there are and the more you punish the player for a bad decision or just plain bad luck.


Whereas completely unrestricted gameplay offers millions of ways to play, all of them equally effective and therefore equally boring. Bad decisions should be punished. That's part of the reward for making good decisions.

How does this work? Having silly restrictions like not being able to do something your own way only makes it harder to learn, and prevents you from finding your own, unique way of playing.  You have to learn as you go, in unrestrictive gameplay you just learn by trying the wrong way and seeing it doesn't work well.  The best games work with less restrictive gameplay in my opinion because they are easy to learn but hard to master.  In those games, it isn't about just learning how to play, it is about learning the BEST way to play.

[Neonivek]

As it is right now... 90% of Dwarf Fortress difficulty comes from how difficult it is to do everything if you know what your doing.

If you don't know what your doing the difficulty is 50% annoyances and 40% how difficult it is to do anything
-Shell and Silk moods
-Getting ambushed for the first time without a military
-Aquifier Bravery (Despite game warnings... Lets face it... We all tried our hands at it)
-Learning that Dwarf Fortress is REALLY a Simulation... so you actually need to find water