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[Calessa Lynn Orphiel]

I just can't kill dwarves.
I can't.
I care for them, and I believe that the only proper way for a dwarf to die is in battle, honorably, taking half a dozen goblins down with him.

I make exceptions for nobles, but purely annoying me is no excuse. They need to cause the death of an innocent dwarf before I'll pull the lever.

God, I'm a pussy. xD

Nice to know I'm not the only one ...

[1138]

I don't get it...why is everyone arguing with a troll?

[Golgath]

Ah, but that is up to the GAME DESIGNER. He creates the world, I just play it. I don't change it to make it easier, I just play it. If you changed it so that dwarves dug entire z-levels in one second and made it so that there were no cave-ins, and then claimed that you were playing dwarf fortress as it should be played and that you had succeeded in mining out a whole map, doesn't it at least diminish the achievement?

Even if the thing that they were doing INSTEAD made much LESS sense in the context?

Even if one doesn't change the Init options at all, there's still a population cap.  The game is designed with a population cap.  How is it cheating to lower it?

Also, in a 'real situation', FPS wouldn't be a concern, so a higher population would be less of a problem.  And telling people to leave would be an option.

Getting enough food and such to keep a large population healthy and happy isn't that hard, anyway.  The primary reasons I can think of to use a lower population cap are storytelling (which is imaginative) or FPS (which is a hardware limitation).

If you want to kill off dwarves for no reason and call it 'logical' or 'non-cheating' (personally I'd call it much more akin to cheating than setting a pop cap), go ahead. But it's stupid to say other people should do the same if it makes the game less enjoyable.

The game designer deliberately gave us a population cap option.  'Nuff said on that point.

I don't use pop caps personally but I would like to say that it is not practical or reasonable to say that people who use them are unimaginative. 

An imaginative person does not necessarily (in fact, rarely) does only those things that are imaginative (who makes the determination, anyway?).  The use of a pop cap says nothing about the imagination of the person in question.  Really, the implication of the title is that you are superior in some way for not using a cap.  Arrogance does not foster pleasant conversation.

Sorry about all the quotes, but I felt it was a good way to sum up the latest in the thread, and should help people realize this whole thing needs no further discussing.  Obviously, 'Pie' has no interest in thought out debate and more so in forcing his way of playing on other people, and the majority of the previous posters telling him it is a bad idea seems to have had little effect.

This thread has a lot of potential to turn into something nasty, and should probably be locked.

Also, after I decided to eat up so much time typing this, someone goes and sums it up into a single sentence...

I don't get it...why is everyone arguing with a troll?

[MC Dirty]

If you changed it so that dwarves dug entire z-levels in one second and made it so that there were no cave-ins, and then claimed that you were playing dwarf fortress as it should be played and that you had succeeded in mining out a whole map, doesn't it at least diminish the achievement?

Of course, it does, but that's not the point. We don't have a contest here, your fort should not be used as some sort of penis extension, so it's completely unimportant. If someone talks big about his fortress when he changed the game in this way, that's another story.
But someone can set a pop cap and built giant megaconstructions, flooding devices, complex traps or make your dwarves play games. It happens a lot. Are these people without imagination? Just because they set a pop cap?
"Of course, imaginative things are just fine, but you set a pop cap! You have no imagination!" What kind of argument is that?
I'll tell you!
It's a ridiculous one!

About pop caps and immigrants: I don't use a pop cap. Yet. I don't have a problem with immigrants at the moment, but I just don't have enough time to carve out, smooth and engrave their bedrooms. But I have two really nice dining rooms, so it doesn't matter.

[axus]

Couple things,  I'm glad the thread title was changed.  The first post did ask for our opinions, if we agreed or disagreed, so it's not unexpected or unwelcomed that criticism came in.  I think the OP wanted to encourage others to experience some interesting things that he'd experienced, nothing wrong with that, though the original title was insulting.  Sometimes people don't realize how their words affect other people.

I set popcap to 150, but my computer is average and I don't mind minor slowdowns... if I were using old computer, I'd definitely use popcap of like 30 or something.  For some stories a high popcap is good, for others a low one is good.  Probably it would be more accurate to say "People who always use the same popcap have no imagination", though still just as insulting.

The thread title is a personal attack against many players, one of whom is Blacken; criticism would perhaps be better directed at the OP before Blacken?

My post was, more than anything, a joke intended for those who edit Wikipedia on a regular basis, but not solely that; I was asking people to be nice to the OP.

[John Johnston]

My brain has been churning over slowly and this is my guess as to why larger populations may run faster in some instances:

Consider a large fort with 20 dwarfs.  The "dwarf density" is 20 dwarfs / area of the fort tiles.  Now consider a fort with 200 dwarfs; the dwarf density is 10 times higher.  The odds of there being a dwarf near to any given point (if a task comes up) are 10 times better, so things may get done quicker.  Presumably the number and layout of meeting rooms, dining halls and bedrooms have a strong influence.  I'm guessing a fort with a large number of statue gardens spread all over would be quicker, although again it depends on the type of jobs being generated...  hmm.

If we assume that a certain number of farming dwarves are required to support a fort of any ordinary size - say five dedicated farmer/cook/brewers/whatever to feed 200 dwarfs - then any surplus population can be idle most of the time - using next to zero processor power, and essentially do nothing but increase the chances of there being a nearby dwarf.

I don't know in detail of course how the pathfinding works but my guess is that when a job is generated, the machine does a quick check to find the nearest free dwarf - based on direct distance without taking obstacles into account - and then sees if it can pathfind from that dwarf to the target, and if it fails tries the next dwarf, etc.

'course I could be talking out my arse.  Anyone?

[Lord Dullard]

My brain has been churning over slowly and this is my guess as to why larger populations may run faster in some instances:

There is no situation in which a 200-dwarf fort would run faster than a 20-dwarf fort. Period.

If you designed a super-efficient fortress somehow with no running water, no magma, and 10 tile wide hallways then MAYBE that fortress would run faster than ANOTHER fortress with all of these things and only 20 dwarves. But I doubt it. And this would not be an instance of the same fort running faster with 200 than with 20, just two different forts with different amounts of FPS-eating features.

[Mirefrost00]

Whenever there's a wave of cannon fodder I pick out the few useful ones like armoursmiths and draft the rest. These others live in an outside baracks and their food and drink is thrown out to them.
They live outside sparring and patrolling and battling anything dangerous.
If one of them raises himself up by a show of particular valor like beating a colosus to death with it's own arm then he is accepted into the fort proper.

None of the dwarfs who matter meet the migrants until they earn entry to the fort so they can all die and none will care.

I like this idea a lot.  I'll be implementing it immediately in my fortress.  Thanks!

I just can't kill dwarves.
I can't.
I care for them, and I believe that the only proper way for a dwarf to die is in battle, honorably, taking half a dozen goblins down with him.

I do agree with you more, though.  And I'd consider that being noble (NOT in the demanding, aggravating way), not a wuss.  There is much room for honor even in the realm of video games.  For instance, my friend playing Armored Core with me and flying above my head with a grenade launcher for the entire match could learn a thing or two about honorable combat....  It's not cheating, but it is dishonorable, methinks.

[Pie]

Ah, but that is up to the GAME DESIGNER. He creates the world, I just play it. I don't change it to make it easier, I just play it. If you changed it so that dwarves dug entire z-levels in one second and made it so that there were no cave-ins, and then claimed that you were playing dwarf fortress as it should be played and that you had succeeded in mining out a whole map, doesn't it at least diminish the achievement?

Even if the thing that they were doing INSTEAD made much LESS sense in the context?

Even if one doesn't change the Init options at all, there's still a population cap.  The game is designed with a population cap.  How is it cheating to lower it?

Also, in a 'real situation', FPS wouldn't be a concern, so a higher population would be less of a problem.  And telling people to leave would be an option.

Getting enough food and such to keep a large population healthy and happy isn't that hard, anyway.  The primary reasons I can think of to use a lower population cap are storytelling (which is imaginative) or FPS (which is a hardware limitation).

If you want to kill off dwarves for no reason and call it 'logical' or 'non-cheating' (personally I'd call it much more akin to cheating than setting a pop cap), go ahead. But it's stupid to say other people should do the same if it makes the game less enjoyable.

The game designer deliberately gave us a population cap option.  'Nuff said on that point.

I don't use pop caps personally but I would like to say that it is not practical or reasonable to say that people who use them are unimaginative. 

An imaginative person does not necessarily (in fact, rarely) does only those things that are imaginative (who makes the determination, anyway?).  The use of a pop cap says nothing about the imagination of the person in question.  Really, the implication of the title is that you are superior in some way for not using a cap.  Arrogance does not foster pleasant conversation.

Sorry about all the quotes, but I felt it was a good way to sum up the latest in the thread, and should help people realize this whole thing needs no further discussing.  Obviously, 'Pie' has no interest in thought out debate and more so in forcing his way of playing on other people, and the majority of the previous posters telling him it is a bad idea seems to have had little effect.

This thread has a lot of potential to turn into something nasty, and should probably be locked.

Also, after I decided to eat up so much time typing this, someone goes and sums it up into a single sentence...

I don't get it...why is everyone arguing with a troll?

Who is the one who is not interested in thought out debate? I do believe my side of the debate was thought out. I also believe that the main reason people are attacking me is because I insulted them, and thus argue against that rather than debating the issue. Oh, and the majority of posters have not told me that what I did was a bad idea, they have attempted to justify their own way of doing things.
It also appears that I AM THE ONLY ONE ON THE PLANET WHO THINKS POP-CAPS UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS ARE STUPID. Unimaginative. Boring. Yes, it does need to be qualified. At various points during the debate I have stated that if the person is capping for story, it does not indicate a lack of imagination. Also, in the case of FPS, why set the cap? Why NOT kill them off?
Also, as an answer to the question of why people are arguing with me, it may have something to do with some of my points being valid/invalid. And I like how I am considered a troll after a single comment...
And do you not see the hypocrisy in criticising me of "forcing my way of playing on other people" and then IN THE SAME SENTENCE stating that I should change the way I play because other people say it is a bad idea?
I hope to see a more thought out response. And then perhaps we can get back on topic.

[Neoskel]

I didn't read the discussion, but i must say that i agree with the original post.

Anything that happened in this thread in the interim is not my concern, but i think that changing game features like the pop cap isn't a solution, just a cop out.

[Pie]

I didn't read the discussion, but i must say that i agree with the original post.

Anything that happened in this thread in the interim is not my concern, but i think that changing game features like the pop cap isn't a solution, just a cop out.

Thank you, my good sir, for talking about the issue, rather than my presentation of it.

Also, I do believe that you and I are in the minority, from the responses received thus far.

[Tormy]

I don't get it...why is everyone arguing with a troll?

Hm..you know after reading through this topic again...I just realized that the whole topic makes no sense at all.

[Lord Dullard]

I myself don't turn the popcap 'off' - I leave the pop cap in place, and my fortress has had 250 dwarves for quite a long time. I DO turn pregnancies off after I hit 250 because otherwise FPS issues become unbearable.

What I think is just incredibly silly about the OP's suggestion is that dwarves somehow designing elaborate DEATH systems to kill their BRETHREN is somehow more sensible than adjusting a pop cap in the init. Yeah.. I'm sure Toady intended for the dwarven civilization to kill off hundreds of their settlers for absolutely no reason.

Uh.. what?

My problem isn't with the OP's solution to the problem, which is perfectly fine if that's how s/he likes to play. Whatever, do what makes you happy. My problem is with them then going on to say that it makes more sense somehow than a simple init file adjustment.

Stupid.

[Tormy]

Whatever, do what makes you happy.

Exactly, this is an absolutely pointless discussion what we have here in this topic. People are arguing about nothing basically...

[Earthquake Damage]

long post

He's got a point.

Well, I'm stuffed.  The rest of you can enjoy your pie.