I've noticed toady has handled the concepts of "undead" vs "has soul", but I can't seem to find a mention of exactly how said concepts were handled.
Would someone like to enlighten my curiosity?
I don't know how or if it's been handled yet for undead, but relevant questions are things like, does a zombie have memories and thoughts--or is it totally controlled by its master? If it doesn't have thoughts, then can it perceive things, or it the master controlling it like an extension of his body? Can a zombie have mental attributes without having memories? Stuff like that. I haven't seen anything about what got decide here.
I'm not going to make any involved decisions until I actually get to doing curses. I just needed to answer the question in some way to make the game playable. Right now, undead have no souls, but that's not canon. It's just an ease-of-use decision that aligns with the current behavior. Curses will likely have those questions answered in multiple ways.
'Plaster casts', a use for gypsum?
Yeah, that's right. Anhydrite too, I guess (depending on how fast it sucks up water, no idea), but I don't know what I'll actually end up doing. I don't want to mess around with flows over rocks that interact with water yet. I'm also not sure how much water will be involved in the use of plaster for casts... lots of jobs that should use water right now don't use water, and I don't see a reason to alter that right now if it makes things too annoying for me.
Does the new healthcare system mean that adventure mode characters can no longer heal just by Traveling off the site? And as Heph mentioned, will we then be able to seek out healers in Adventure mode settlements for this task? Will there even be any real changes to Adventure mode this time around?
Nah, I don't think it's quite ready for that -- before travel changes in nature, I want things like hunting and camping to be more solidified, as it'll determine the pace more. I'm not sure what sort of healing options will be in for adventurers, as it'll kind of trickle along after the dwarf mode changes. When you ask if there are any real changes to adventure mode, do you mean in any way at all? I guess that question is hard to answer, because "real" doesn't have a meaning attached. I think some things will feel quite different with combat, and the underground changes should yield many new stuffs.
So, health care. Will a hospital be designated from a bed, like the barracks is? Since unclaimed beds already function like hospitals.
Do we get to pick a chief doctor, or does one come like a noble? Do they get a medical corp like the Fortress Guard? Because it would be nice to see dwarves who are actually dedicated to healthcare and not just peasants with no other jobs enabled.
Will physicians need tools to get the job done (like woodcutters/miners)? Will there be dedicated dwarfs (besides current health care)/professions/nobles associated with healing?
I wonder if the Physician will have settings, like the bookkeeper? Like preferences for treating patients, including patient status and wound severity? So if you have a lot of people with broken limbs, but you need them working soon, you could set the guy to prioritize yellow injuries and leave the more costly and lengthy healing of red injuries for later.
The hospital is an initially building-less zone, but it claims any beds, tables, boxes and traction benches that are covered for hospital use.
The current idea is to allow the chief doctor to be appointed by you. The others are treated like any other profession -- I'm going with the historical model that surgeons/etc. didn't enjoy a special place in society for the time being, so you can just turn the professions off and on. However, I'm considering starting up a notion of "knowledge" as opposed to skill, so that picking some random guy to perform surgery through trial and error might not be the best idea. However, if I don't get to that, then it'll be just like starting up a new blacksmith from scratch (which is equally silly).
"Healthcare" is gone -- there are currently 7 new labor settings, 5 unit types, and 6 skills. I've grouped the entire vpl list into 15 sections to make it easier to mess with (I'm aware of further changes people want there, but I can't do it all now).
The chief doctor wouldn't be necessary but would allow you to get a good overview of your wounded dwarves (as the bookkeeper does with stocks). Other abilities will depend on how it plays out (things like prioritization or whatever).
As for tools, the default would be to handle it like other jobs, which would leave all these concerns about scalpel edges for later. The items surely coming in are things like splints, traction benches, plaster, plaster casts, and then the use of thread/cloth for sutures and bandages. I'm not going to handle restacking right now, but I might do amounts within a single object to handled the medical use of thread/cloth. That might save some headaches versus turning cloth into 10 or 100 bandage items to scatter around, although it implies headaches of its own. Not 100% clear yet. I might do surgical equipment, but it might be early. I kind of want to think about all the other jobs when I do that.
I'm more curious about the noncombative aspects of healthcare. Will dwarves get sick, terribly sick, and fatally ill? Will there be different kinds of doctors? How about a healing success rate? How long will treatment take and is it possible to conduct treatment over a course of time.
Aside from venom, there's nothing yet, and they don't really have any good treatments for venom. There are different kinds of doctors associated to the skills, but I'm not quite sure how that'll play out in a large fort. It'll really depend on the injury rate and types whether you ever need more than one. Some treatments like being placed on a traction bench or wearing a splint/crutch definitely take place over a course of time.
I'm interested to see if a dwarf with a broken arm will get a cast/sling or something, and then go back to work with, say, reduced production speed. Instead of the wound being completely unimpeding, or the dwarf just sulking around until it heals.
There's that annoying speed split that needs to happen first before I can do too much properly. Right now, a dwarf on crutches will likely be slower and therefore slower at everything. A dwarf with an arm in a cast might act at the regular speed unless I add specific provisions to increase job time, which I might not do.
Actually, a bigger question, is the healing of breaks/mangles (or whatever the wounds are now), still tied to the season change.
No, not at all. Every wound is tracked individually, and this includes exactly how far along it is, and all the times are run against healing rates for tissues in the creature definition.
Will Toady eventually add in wood weapons? Like the Poor Man's Mace?
Eventually, yeah. I think there's a dev thing for it. No idea when.
Is Toady going to do anything special with the elven wooden weapons for this release? Or are they just going to use base wood stats?
I don't think I'm prepared to do anything special. Yeah, this could very well change their effectiveness, especially during regular play where the world gen abstractions can't screw things up.
Toady, if you're making hospitals zones, for consistency sake, would you consider making ALL rooms zones? Especially now that you're allowing zones to flood fill.
This is a major interface issue-- inconsistency between different similar activities. All similar activities really should be performed the same way.
Dwarfu has gained a friend recently.
You can count me as a third supporter of interface consistency. A bedroom without a bed just becomes a place where a dwarf goes to sleep on the floor. If everything is a zone and zones are properly organized, there are fewer interfaces for new users to learn.
He he, it's not that I don't know. Making one room type do about what I think it should do is easier than upgrading a dozen room types, the use of which is not fully specified. The eventually idea may be to put all zones/rooms/workshops/stockpiles under the same umbrella (moreso than they are already -- internally they are all "buildings") and allow more customization and interactions between all of the different functionalities you've got in those frameworks, but it's premature. I'm not sure what I want yet, and there's a lot of game left to write. In any case, if you want another interface discussion, please start another thread for it. I don't want to get derailed. I think there's at least one suggestion thread for this concept.
So..my first question: The dwarves will be able to take care of the injured friendly units, after the health care system will get implemented?
Second question: What about injured pets/animals/friendly tamed beasts? Will it be possible to heal their wounds in the hospital?
On the first question, it's not any different than it is now. It would be a bit of a pain to allow neutral units to interject themselves into the dwarf framework. It'll come up later, but not for this release.
I haven't decided on the vet stuff... up to this point it has happened under the semi-magical "animal care" profession. That code is kind of gutted now, so I'll have to do something, but I'm not sure there will be any animal surgery.
So, regarding crutches. I wonder if permanently crippled dwarves will get canes, or lamed dwarves get peg legs.
Hopefully! I don't think I have canes up anywhere, but I have a bloat for prosthestics, so something will happen sometime. I'm not quite ready to take it on yet. Splints, casts and crutches (and bandages and sutures if those items are maintained after application) will be a stepping stone toward other add-ons.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items (Read 3670383 times)