Not to mention that not all crops are good for a scythe. About the only way I can see Wild Strawberries being harvested with a scythe is if the farmer builds a super-complicated mechanical scythe that runs on lava and the screams of impaled kittens.
Back in the general direction of the topic, it's not that abstraction is a good thing or that non-abstraction is a bad thing. It's not that having more jobs need tools is a bad thing. It's just that DF is also supposed to be a
game. As such, by definition there comes a point where the details start to get in the way of playing. Hell, most of the really cool and fun stuff you can do in the game, like megaprojects and drowning chambers, stop being possible if the simulation goes too far.
In my mind, DF has never really been about abstraction that much, we dont have generic "food", there are countless types of rock that dont really do anything, and dwarves are dressed down to the individual sock (with its own individual level of wear).
In large part, we really do more or less have generic food. Of the 21 crops:
7 grow year round and can be eaten raw, brewed, or cooked
3 grow year round and can only be milled into dye
2 grow year round and can be brewed or milled into cooking ingredients
On top of that,
2 can be brewed and turned into thread
A third crop can be brewed or milled into cooking ingredients, and another can be brewed and milled or processed into cooking ingredients
So really, we're basically down to just 9 truly different crops.
Having countless types of rock that don't do anything goes against your point. We don't have to worry about which one makes the most stable walls or which one will erode more quickly: rock is rock is rock.
Cups, toys, and instruments are like crops: they do pretty much the same thing, no matter what they're called.
Dwarves are dressed down to the individual sock, but how much difference does it really make what
kind of sock they're wearing?
These are all things that might as well still be abstracted because we don't have to worry about the nitty-gritty details. If you want to plant something that can be milled or brewed, you just pick one of the three (or four, if you count sweet pods). You don't have to worry about whether Longland Beer is more nutritious than Whip Wine, or whether Dwarven Flour will go bad sooner than Longland Flour, you just plant one.
Ideally what I'd like to have in DF is much more complexity with regards to equipment. most of what DF is, is dwarves doing jobs, but the mechanics of these jobs are quite generic right now, bring raw materials to workshop, ?, job magically complete.
It may not sound like it, but I'm all for more complexity. That's half the point of the game. Much of the potential complexity isn't even implemented in stuff that already exists (such as the crops I mentioned), and I would like to see such things as there being a real difference between Wild Strawberries and Rat Weed.
I'm just worried about the other half of the game's point: the fact that it's a game. By definition, the fact that it's a game means that at some point, nitty-gritty details will get in the way of gameplay.
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Topic: Tools and Equipment (Read 11001 times)