Print

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

[Draco18s]

That statement is flawed because that undermines the point and purpose of a burrow. Toady has stated that he thought burrows to be ill-named, but the name will do for now. The idea behind burrows was to allow you to constrain you dwarves to a select area so they could not path outside of it. If you do not assign dwarves to a burrow, it is useless.

The question is:

Do farmers not assigned to the "farm" burrow farm the farm burrow?  If not, why not?

(I do however, see your logic)

[Silverionmox]

The burrow approach would not make it any less confusing. In fact, it raises even more questions. Right now farms function in a way that designates a plot to be tilled and upkept. How is that any different than the proposed burrow idea? The only difference is that instead of (b)uilding a farm, you designate it as a burrow and then all of your farmers can never leave that area because that's how burrows work.

The differences: farm plots are "buildings", that are very inflexible in their shape, can't build on boulders that happen to be in the way, and can't be expanded without demolishing and rebuilding, nuking any existing crop. Burrows are zones that can be expanded or made smaller at will, in any shape and at every passable place. That makes them much better suited as a tool to organize labours in a larger area.

Any unassigned dwarf can work in any burrow. Only if you want to restrict them to certain burrows they are restricted to the burrows you assign them to, which is everywhere you want them to be.

Changing the farms to a burrow designation does absolutely nothing and changes absolutely nothing. Farms still need to be designated, still need to be tilled, and still need to be upkept. It would be far more simple to move farms into the (d)esignate menu and leave the options the way they are for the (b)uilding. Then require re-tilling every season. Bingo, farming is now more set-it-and-forget-it without having to fiddle around with burrows and assigning dwarves to them.

Burrows are much easier and more flexible to be designated. The other stuff is dwarf work, so of no importance for the player. Why would you want to make another designation when the perfect tool to mark an area permanently already exists? Designations are used to assign one task, once. Farming areas are more permanent, and subject to change as your fortress develops.

Also, a further reason to not see any merit in the burrow idea is that this would invalidate setting farming labors. Setting the labors on your dwarves makes them do farm work. Why would I want to not only need them set to do farm work, but then also assign them to a burrow?

Again, they'll do the work if not assigned to a burrow. If you were going to assign them to a burrow anyway it doesn't matter because you'll assign them to a burrow that is or contains the farm burrow. Lastly, burrows can overlap - I already assign everyone to the big safe main fortress burrow as a matter of course, and control who can go outside.

With a farm (d)esignation, you can assign a lever to be the "irrigation switch" so your dwarves can irrigate en-masse or you can simply leave them to muddy the fields by hand with buckets and water from wherever you have them getting water from. Furthermore, a designation would convey all of the fun balancing we want. We could implement growing areas for certain plants as well as water requirements (as dwarves would moisten the plants if required) and mud requirements. In farming designated areas, mud would never be cleaned up and any tile within that area would be considered fair game for planting.

All this applies just as easily to burrows. The difference is that burrows can be easily expanded or retracted, and already have a display system: designations don't have that.

Burrows are designed to give your dwarves areas they are and aren't allowed to go in in an attempt to streamline your workforce and eliminate them going to a meeting place a zillion tiles away. They are not designed to replace (d)esignations.

Organizing your workforce is exactly what farming burrows would do. Again, burrows don't forbid dwarves that are not assigned to them.

Personally, I think most rooms (bedrooms, offices, barracks, dining, hospital) should be set via the (d)esignation menu. You then can look at them and see what furniture they require, how many pieces of that furniture are in the area, and which dwarf or dwarves the area is assigned to. Ideally this would let you make one big bedroom (bunkhouse) for your military dwarves. You could assign all of them (lets say 6. I like 6.) to the room and, if you hadn't furnished it yet, the display would let you know you have 0 of 6 required beds for the dwarves assigned and, if they request furnishings, 0 of 6 chests and 0 of 6 cabinets for the dwarves assigned.

I agree that the rooms - including workshops - ought to be defined as a room first, and then their function can be declared. They can collect their furniture and tools based on their function later.
It's also possible to put the farm controls as a function of rooms.

Zones mean that "This stuff is here. Use this stuff instead of stuff that isn't in this place." Like a pool/pond/cistern is a "drinking zone" or, as I call it, a "water zone". This means that water is here and tells your dwarves that you prefer them to get water from there over, say, the lake infested with skeletal fishmen. This can be used for sand, water, or even things you might do regularly like chopping wood or gathering plants.

Ideally, farming would be a designated area that would mean whatever you want it to. Lets say you designate an aboveground area for farming and it has boulders, trees, and shrubs in it. It should automatically designate those boulders for smoothing, the shrubs for gathering, and the trees for shopping. Then it should tell the dwarves to till the entire area if it's soil or muddy it if it isn't. I think, later on, it could be a good idea to allow dwarves to make gravel out of stone (so they are gravel floors) and then grind it with a millstone to make fine gravel, then mix it with mud to make soil that they can then use to cover stone tiles.

All these functions could be added in the burrows. They're more flexible and display better than either zones or designations (and designations are one-use one-task tools.. burrows are permanent). Alternatively, farming functions could also work as room functions.

[Zombie]

It is pointless, to me, to argue that a burrow is better because it can be resized. You are still adding needless functions to complicate something that does not need complicating. Burrows are meant to organize your workforce, not assign tasks. Toady could implement designations that you can (r)esize. All a designation is is an order. A farm designation would be a standing order, meaning "do this and do it again and again until I say otherwise or the fortress floods with magma because I hate you all." It would be a logical thing to add resizing and moving commands to it.

If designations can be expanded to handle rooms (like hospital zones being redefined as a designation) then I don't see the problem with revamping the entire designation menu somewhat. I already think the good ol' d menu could use categories and a (r)oom category could easily expand into a burrow-esque menu with various choices for room functions. A (d)ig category could easily hold the ramping, channeling (such as it is now), and mining functions.

The point here is that while similar functions are a big, huge bonus and standing orders (like designated "cut trees here" areas that you could move or resize on the fly) are similarly awesome, we do not need to complicate an existing function that is, mainly, intended to make your dwarves keep their hands out of that proverbial cookie jar. Instead, we could revamp an existing function to implement the really damn good ideas already presented in the burrow system, mainly having very flexible areas that we want something to happen in.

Again:
Burrows = Districts. Where dwarves do stuff.
Designations = Work Areas. What dwarves do there.
Zones = Materials Access. What dwarves should use.

I think with this very basic idea in place, the functions can each retain some sense of "This does this very well" without having to be cluttered with various other options that makes it that much more confusing for newbies. This isn't just something for us; it is also for new players. The interface needs to be more accessible and less confusing.

[Silverionmox]

And why bother to add permanent designations while other tools exist that can do just that? Developing the extra interface and code for permanent designations, while a perfectly serviceable alternative exists, that seems to be overcomplicating things. Also the  designations from the (d) menu are just a convenient tool to issue orders to a lot of items, not space; also, they are all just once, not permanent. All permanent spatial orders are now attributed to either zones or burrows.

So I see it eventually develop into this:

Burrows: permanent orders coupled to (larger) spaces (eg. executing jobs there, having access to resources there, "keep this area safe", "keep this area clean",... etc.)
Rooms: functional spaces (eg. private rooms, dormitories, hospitals, workshops, dining rooms, prisons, stockpiles,...)
Designations: issue single, one-time orders to items, possibly more at a time or in a larger space
(and Notes for point-based commands, for the sake of completeness)

The current zone functions can be added to the burrows (a major simplification). They're both about controlling access, so they really belong together.

As for farming orders, I would place them in burrows because burrows just require open squares to be defined in, while rooms are more picky (rightly so, their walls matter for their functions, which can't be said for burrows); and we'll need permanent farming orders like "cut all trees that grow in this area" or "remove all rocks and boulders in this area". Burrows can overlap, so you won't need to assign farmers to every 4*4 patch fo plump helmets if that seems a problem.

[Atanamis]

I'd actually like to see all three pulled into one interface, so that you select an area and define it as a room, a burrow, or another designated space. Figuring out all the different ways to select a space at present is just silly. Of course, a room should be able to be designated from any single point to fill the enclosed area, and warn about any missing requirements to function as designated.

[Zombie]

Burrows: permanent orders coupled to (larger) spaces (eg. executing jobs there, having access to resources there, "keep this area safe", "keep this area clean",... etc.)
Rooms: functional spaces (eg. private rooms, dormitories, hospitals, workshops, dining rooms, prisons, stockpiles,...)
Designations: issue single, one-time orders to items, possibly more at a time or in a larger space
(and Notes for point-based commands, for the sake of completeness)

You seem to ignore that the very purpose of a burrow is to control where your dwarves go, not what they do. It's tedious to have to make several different farm burrows and then set your legendary farmers to one or a few and set the rest to the rest. Much easier to make two burrows. One for legendaries and one for the rest and define them around the work areas (designations).

I do agree with the three categories, though, even if I completely disagree with the definitions for burrows and designations. The point of burrows, as I keep saying, is to let the player define where they want dwarves to go. If you want to keep the rabble out of the treasury, you make it out of their burrow. This has nothing to do with orders whatsoever. Changing the function of burrows will put this main, highly useful function in jeopardy and I don't see the merit when we can just leave a "burrow" as meaning what it means. Follow me down this post and let's see where we get to, though, as I don't think I've given enough exposition on my stance.

I'd actually like to see all three pulled into one interface, so that you select an area and define it as a room, a burrow, or another designated space. Figuring out all the different ways to select a space at present is just silly. Of course, a room should be able to be designated from any single point to fill the enclosed area, and warn about any missing requirements to function as designated.

YES. YES YES YES. Thank you for bringing this up. When I read this, I searched my posts to see if I already said this as I thought I did! I didn't! I'm obviously a very silly person when I drink a lot of coffee.

This, I think, is (or should be) the ultimate goal with these three systems. We should have an interface like the burrow interface that we can use to set, resize, or move all of these things. Then, depending on what we set (Burrow, work order (AKA designation), room, or zone) we can go in and modify the settings. Rooms should have a building-view (q, I believe) display that lets you see what furniture they use and how much of it is in that area. They should also allow you to assign dwarves for that area to "belong" to and tell you the furniture requests/requirements based on population. Zones and work orders usually would have no settings, except for a Farm work order, or something similar, (or room, if you think it belongs there) which would allow you to q it to set crops, rotations, how often it should be tilled and fertilized, etc, etc. Burrows would still function as they normally do.

Keep in mind I support the spirit of that original idea. Re-sizable farms that the dwarves then till, muddy, plant, water, etc automatically based on labors would be wonderful. I just don't think sticking it in "burrows" would be doing either feature a good turn. Burrows are fine. They perform their task admirably and many other features can benefit from the interface they use. The solution is to make a common interface for these things, then. Not merge things all crazy-style into one gigantoblob where you press a button and suddenly you're deciding if you want to make a farm, a burrow, or a sandwich, all of which are different enough things to add to confusion. A common interface is good, but farms don't need to be an option in the burrow settings. They need to be their own separate entity away from burrows and, I think, rooms.

[Silverionmox]

You just define the plots as burrows - like you would have to with permanent designations - and define a general burrow on top of the whole farming area, all plots included. If you don't want to let your farmers run loose, you just assign them to that farming burrow that includes all plots. It has the additional advantage that you can issue orders like "keep this clean of weeds" etc. on the whole farming burrow instead of having to do it for all plots separately, if they were designations.

You seem to ignore that the very purpose of a burrow is to control where your dwarves go, not what they do.

You have misunderstood burrows. Burrows do control what dwarves do. They still go outside their burrow: the only thing that is different is that they do not do jobs outside their burrows. That is all. This causes them not to walk outside their burrow in general, but burrows do no control where dwarves go, only which jobs they get.

YES. YES YES YES. Thank you for bringing this up. When I read this, I searched my posts to see if I already said this as I thought I did! I didn't! I'm obviously a very silly person when I drink a lot of coffee.

Come on, you don't support adding farm functions to burrows "because it would put this main, highly useful function in jeopardy", but you do support combining all functions in one tool? That's inconsistent.

They need to be their own separate entity away from burrows and, I think, rooms.

Oh, you just agree completely, except that you want the different functions to be accessible separately in the main menu rather then as a menu within the burrow function. Couldn't you say so?

[NW_Kohaku]

Alright, sorry, I didn't particularly read the last 5 pages since I argued here last, and I've been away for a couple months, so I may have missed some Toady announcement on the subject, but from the looks of things, we are going to (eventually) get what we want, as this is now waaaaay down near the bottom of the Dev page:

*Soil moisture tracking and ability to moisten soil (buckets or other irrigation)
*Soil nutrient requirements for plants and nutrient tracking to the extent the farming interface can provide decent feedback for you, fertilizers can reflect this
*Harvestable flowers and fruit growing on plants, ability to plant trees
*Weeds
*More pests

(I am a little worried about "soil nutrient requirements", though, as that doesn't necessarily imply the kind of depth or detail that would enable crop rotations, which is what I really wanted to lobby for.)

Something else from the Improved Mechanics section (also looking forward to that!), however, grabbed my attention:

*Large pipe sections -- walk on them or crawl inside them, allow passage for fluids

OK, maybe it would require small pipe sections, but basically, if you have a pipe filled with water, all you really need to do is jab a few holes in it, and bingo, instant sprinkler system.  Add in some kind of dwarf-controllable shut-off valve, and you could theoretically have the dwarves themselves become capable of periodically watering the crops.

This could potentially be a solution to the little impasse Silverionmox and I had earlier about my distrust of having full-fledged channels whose water levels must be manually monitered earlier on.

If we have a valve, however, I would hope that either the sprinler system be based upon the dwarf actually manually holding the valve open, as otherwise, when Urist McStupid decides he's hungry, and leaves to go for a dog intestine sandwich break, he'd leave the fortress to be flooded by the irrigation system.

[cameron]

about all the arguments about using burrows is there any reason why zones wouldn't work as they seem more intended for that sort of thing then burrows are

[Silverionmox]

NW_Kohaku:

I more or less assumed the presence of a kind of valve that would would automatically only let water through until a certain level was reached. It's a common suggestion in mechanic threads. Also, either we stick with the binary moist/not moist wetness system, and then water height would be irrelevant; or we get a system where distance from the water body determines wetness and then you just fill your channel and plant appropriate crops at the appropriate distance. So either way it'll be manageable - even without valves.

cameron:

Zones can work, but burrows are superior (interface, display, flexibility, correcting and adapting) in every way to zones. So I'd just move the zone options as options to burrows and forget about zones.

[NW_Kohaku]

I more or less assumed the presence of a kind of valve that would would automatically only let water through until a certain level was reached. It's a common suggestion in mechanic threads. Also, either we stick with the binary moist/not moist wetness system, and then water height would be irrelevant; or we get a system where distance from the water body determines wetness and then you just fill your channel and plant appropriate crops at the appropriate distance. So either way it'll be manageable - even without valves.

Valves would give you the ability to set dwarves to automatically control the system.  Thus, you can simply "fire and forget" the pipes, as dwarves could adjust water levels themselves, according to the needs of different plants. (You, yourself, were advocating for plants that require different amounts of water.) Plus, I dislike the notion of actually channeling out irrigation ditches, and having a set number of tiles be watered from it without soil being water-permeable in any other way.

If we have overhead pipes, which could water tiles directly below or to the sides of the pipes without taking up the actual farming tiles, we could avoid that problem.

Besides which, if we are going to have that bucket-watering system, there can't be a binary "wet" "not wet" system, as there would need to be some kind of counter for when it stopped being wet anymore... and when you have that counter, you no longer have it being binary.

If we are getting nutrient levels, soil moisture should be simple enough, as well - it's just another "nutrient" we need to manage, which dwarves themselves should be capable of looking after.

[Silverionmox]

Valves would give you the ability to set dwarves to automatically control the system.  Thus, you can simply "fire and forget" the pipes, as dwarves could adjust water levels themselves, according to the needs of different plants. (You, yourself, were advocating for plants that require different amounts of water.) Plus, I dislike the notion of actually channeling out irrigation ditches, and having a set number of tiles be watered from it without soil being water-permeable in any other way.

Sluices in ditches would function in the same way, while being more low-tech. Not only dwarves would irrigate, after all (and even dwarves don't set up a complete plumbing system in the first year). I also mentioned a way to make soil being able to be moistened by rivers as well as aquifers (depending on depth and/or distance of the source).

Besides which, if we are going to have that bucket-watering system, there can't be a binary "wet" "not wet" system, as there would need to be some kind of counter for when it stopped being wet anymore... and when you have that counter, you no longer have it being binary.

Oh, I rather dislike the soaking wet/bone dry situation as well.

If we are getting nutrient levels, soil moisture should be simple enough, as well - it's just another "nutrient" we need to manage, which dwarves themselves should be capable of looking after.

A simple integer would suffice, 0-7 (I used that scale for all nutrients in my system).

[NW_Kohaku]

Sluices in ditches would function in the same way, while being more low-tech. Not only dwarves would irrigate, after all (and even dwarves don't set up a complete plumbing system in the first year). I also mentioned a way to make soil being able to be moistened by rivers as well as aquifers (depending on depth and/or distance of the source).

Sluices in ditches, if I recall correctly, were what I was suggesting before, except that I wanted ditches to not be full Z-level channels, which was the main point of contention between our competing views.

A simple integer would suffice, 0-7 (I used that scale for all nutrients in my system).

Small integers would only suffice if there was a set period of deincrementation, and every crop consumed or restored exact, small-integer amounts of nutrients.  Honestly, I see little reason not to use larger integers, especially since Toady is fairly unlikely to let us see exact numbers, anyway, outside of the DF Hack-based tools we already need to be able to read any useful information already.  Larger integers would also allow for gradual deincrimentation of soil nutrients and moisture, which would better lend itself to having dwarven farmers tend them occasionally, rather than simply preparing once for a planting, then ignoring them until it was ready to harvest.

[Solace]

I don't think farming is too easy as much as it isn't scaled. You start out with no farm, eventually you get a farm, no more farming troubles. The problem with just making farms harder to get (or maintain) is that you're way more dependent on traders bringing you food, or getting totally screwed over by a 40-migrant wave and everyone starving.

Although I do agree with making farming more complex and tightly simulated, solving the difficulty I think is a slightly different matter.
First, to make it harder to scale up your farm for more and more dwarves, you could have the larger farms and food supplies trigger the spawning of more and more dangerous vermin; say, each farm plot or X stored food would have a y chance of spawning a Z vermin, once every quarter season or so. First you've got a few things that just try to eat your food, later you have a lot of things that want to eat your food, and some that might try to eat your dwarves! (At least without being proactive about them.)
I also think that there should be different kinds of crops to handle certain needs of your dwarves. You could have a low-yield plant that does not ever need irrigation (if planted in loam) to help you not die in your initial year(s), but later on it could be considered a weed, due to it's low yield (or happiness-value), while still causing more vermin to spawn. Variously better plants could require seasonal irrigation or what have you.

[Silverionmox]

Sluices in ditches, if I recall correctly, were what I was suggesting before, except that I wanted ditches to not be full Z-level channels, which was the main point of contention between our competing views.

Ah yes, the point was dedicated shallow irrigation channels, or not. Let's call it a matter of taste.

Small integers would only suffice if there was a set period of deincrementation, and every crop consumed or restored exact, small-integer amounts of nutrients.  Honestly, I see little reason not to use larger integers, especially since Toady is fairly unlikely to let us see exact numbers, anyway, outside of the DF Hack-based tools we already need to be able to read any useful information already.  Larger integers would also allow for gradual deincrimentation of soil nutrients and moisture, which would better lend itself to having dwarven farmers tend them occasionally, rather than simply preparing once for a planting, then ignoring them until it was ready to harvest.

I completely agree and I'd like larger numbers, but I'm restraining myself because memory space for the map seems to be a limited resource, if not for the memory then for the processing of it all and ultimately FPS. But that's a technical matter, and a simple model can always be given more precise numbers in any case.

Solace:

Farming becoming more difficult because the demands on farming change as your fortress grows, that's an excellent balancing method. Tweaking the productivity is trivial - for each plant relative to the others, or with one master value for agricultural productivity. Labour and skill requirements would also play a role: later on as you start lacking labour, you might want to have highly skilled craftsmen, and trade your high-quality trinkets with the peasant villages off-map for basic food... rather than dedicating 1/3 of your workforce (and fps) to growing food. The stuff you do grow at home are special herbs, fresh produce or dyes that might require special skill, are unsuitable to be traded or require a lot of fertilization respectively. Or they might have strategic importance and hence be worth the trouble.