Walled off dwarves require micromanagement or you stand to lose a legendary dwarf. Not fun. This is a game.
Large scale lack of food (which would not necessarily be accurately represented on the main stocks page) or booze (which in fairness would be), and water (which is not at all) can kill a fort, even if detected, if say you happen to find something more interesting to do with your fort and don't get hip in time. You can't keep a constant production of booze going (though farming ought to keep you automatically fed), so you have to micromanage. Not fun.
As for the ease of use of the health screen that maybe so. I only necro'ed this thread because I got thinking about the problem in general. My recent fort, I managed to keep strapped down well enough that this never became a problem. I remember the Health screen going dwarf by dwarf like Units; if you can page through that's fine, but by your logic why don't we remove announcements when dwarves can't complete a task? Or do away with the manager position entirely? Just page through the units screen to find out what a dwarf isn't getting their job done, then page through stocks/buildings to find out why? Search your meeting rooms/pastures to find the exact animal you want butchered or trained? Check your FPS or Units/Other screen every ten minutes to see if you're being beseiged?
There is already code in place that do what I've described for other aspects of the game. I agree there are workarounds for starvation/dehydration, but there are equivalent workarounds for other areas of the game as well, but ALSO more efficient ways of handling them. The lack of a heads-up assist from the computer seems more like oversight when viewed against the way even picky, big-picture-pointless (who cares which non-descript bedroom goes to the novice fisherdwarf?) aspects of the game are handled.
The game doesn't end when the weaponsmith runs out of steel, or a bridge opens and cuts off a burial job. It does when you don't check the health of every dwarf through the health screen, then tab to each H or T to make sure he's not just fetching food or booze to make sure you aren't about to lose a legendary miner/mason/loitering other let alone have a fort-wide situation (not) brewing. But you don't get an alert for the big stuff. The only real argument against this would be additional CPU load, but as someone pointed out, it takes quite a long time for a dwarf to starve/dehydrate, so the checks need only run once every month or so.
In short: this house believes there are significant differences between Dwarf Fortress and Tamagotchi, and the more and larger those differences the better. I think I've explained my position about as well as I can so rather than getting into a tl;dr back and forth that keeps other people from reading the whole thread and weighing in, I think I'm going to let the prosecution rest, at least from my end.
**edit** to respond to the responses below, without spamming the thread (I am a hypocrite):
maluraq:
"Okay, I see what you're doing, and I know better by now than to try arguing against the sort of post that includes many discrete falsehoods wrapped in a wall of text, hoping some are missed thanks to sheer volume and can be pointed at as having been accepted, later. Instead, I'll just ask you to prove it. Each statement of hard fact please, starting with "You can't keep a constant production of booze going"."
I do tend to run at the mouth (keyboard) but I want to express my position and the reasons behind it clearly and completely. Glib oneliners are fine for joke threads, but we're talking about game changes.
I'd actually prefer you to mention what you consider to be falsehoods. If they are such, then I'm playing the game wrong, and I'd be glad for some pointers.
As to the impossiblitiy of keeping a constant stream of booze coming, simple. The dwarves produce booze at a certain rate, and consume it at another. If those two are not *exactly* matched, the booze will run out, or your stills will cease production once the raw materials become unavailable. If you are trying to ramp production to meet demand, you don't have a problem. If your brewers outstrip demand, you have to file away a mental note to return to the stills at a later date to restart production, whether you request more barrels from your carpenters, or allow them to be drunk out. Either way, a few other emergencies (FB, MB, siege, ambush) can easily divert your attention until things have passed a tipping point. Now that migrants tend to be historical (and related) you only need a few to die of thirst before you get things running again before you have a tantrum spiral which dooms the fort. Again, you are alerted to less game-breaking events, I don't see why food/booze level should be excluded.
GreatWyrmGold:
"3. Is it worth Toady's time to do this, as opposed to other features or bugfuxes?...
Spoiler: Rant (click to show/hide)
Anyone arguing that, since someone else doesn't think their suggestion doesn't neccesarily meet all three (usually the third) requirements, that person must also think that other, vaguely similar features should be removed is being ridiculous. Putting aside that, a lot of the time, it's the 3rd point being argued against, it implies that those features have as much weight as whatever you're suggesting. Take the guy above me--byrnsey. Sure, running out of steel won't kill your fort, and starvation/dehydration will, but A. you'd have to be blind to not notice the little brown or blue arrows that blink over your dwarves when they get hungry or thirsty once everyone's that way, and 2. unannounced sieges kill you faster than unannounced famines ever could. To say nothing of the fact that siege announcements are already in the game, and so removing them would waste Toady's time, rather than saving it like not adding this (yet) would."
I'm using removing existing features as a rhetorical device. It may be a false equivalency, but then I'm not actually advoacting that. I can't say whether it's worth Toady's time, that's why it's a suggestion, not a demand/order. If he says it won't happen, I have no choice but to play around it. Or find another game. And anyway, that's toady's decision, not yours or mine. DF is still Alpha, which means fan input is still theoretically welcome.
I actually have missed the blue arrows, because I was busy putting down a defense breach which never got near my food stockpiles, but did tie me up badly enough to focus my energies. The idea is, any event which can cause the end of the fort, should be brought to the attention of the DF player. I think that's fair. Maybe I've misunderstood the game.
Author
Topic: "I'm Hungry!" (Read 2938 times)