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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items  (Read 3636919 times)

Belteshazzar

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7335 on: November 23, 2009, 06:07:55 pm »

Inca's...
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Blind Wolf

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7336 on: November 23, 2009, 06:12:19 pm »

But it should never get to the point where realism is added just for the sake of difficulty, or for realism's sake at the expense of fun. The fun factor is infinitely for important than how realistic the mining is.
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Zironic

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7337 on: November 23, 2009, 06:15:08 pm »

Well, if mining became too difficult then that would take a lot of fun out of the game. Imagine trying to dig into the mountain side, and not three tiles in the cave, your minors unionizes and demand higher wages.
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Footkerchief

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7338 on: November 23, 2009, 06:22:36 pm »

^^^ Haha, that's not even a bad idea.  The Miner's Guild complaining to the expedition leader that they need hazard pay.

But it should never get to the point where realism is added just for the sake of difficulty, or for realism's sake at the expense of fun. The fun factor is infinitely for important than how realistic the mining is.

I think it's important to distinguish realism-for-its-own-sake from realism that helps players relate to the game by presenting familiar concepts (hopefully we can agree that being able to relate to the game is an important part of "fun").  Realism is not the only way to achieve this, of course -- fantasy universes distinguish themselves from realistic universes by including concepts that are unrealistic but still familiar, and from each other by putting occasionally unique twists on those concepts.

Mining hazards are one such concept that happens to be realistic.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2009, 06:35:30 pm by Footkerchief »
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Askot Bokbondeler

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7339 on: November 23, 2009, 06:40:03 pm »

Well, if mining became too difficult then that would take a lot of fun out of the game. Imagine trying to dig into the mountain side, and not three tiles in the cave, your minors unionizes and demand higher wages.

is that a tipo or are we talking child labor in here?

JoshuaFH

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7340 on: November 23, 2009, 06:42:38 pm »

Well, if mining became too difficult then that would take a lot of fun out of the game. Imagine trying to dig into the mountain side, and not three tiles in the cave, your minors unionizes and demand higher wages.

is that a tipo or are we talking child labor in here?

Well, since dwarven children become part of the working class at age 13, I don't see why not.

Also, is dwarven time going to be tweaked with?
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Blind Wolf

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7341 on: November 23, 2009, 06:45:01 pm »

Haha. That guild leader better check his room for any suspicious levers.

^^^ Haha, that's not even a bad idea.  The Miner's Guild complaining to the expedition leader that they need hazard pay.

But it should never get to the point where realism is added just for the sake of difficulty, or for realism's sake at the expense of fun. The fun factor is infinitely for important than how realistic the mining is.

I think it's important to distinguish realism-for-its-own-sake from realism that helps players relate to the game (hopefully we can agree that being able to relate to the game is an important part of "fun") by presenting familiar concepts.  Realism is not the only way to achieve this, of course -- fantasy universes distinguish themselves from realistic universes by including concepts that are unrealistic but still familiar, and from each other by putting occasionally unique twists on those concepts.

Yes, we can agree on that. The problem isn't with cave collapse or with building cave supports for particularly large or deep caves. That would certainly be an interesting addition to mining. It's with bringing realism to the point where it reaches frustration. It's with making it so that it takes five years to dig out a respectable fortress for 30 dwarves, where you have to replace the miners' picks every month, and where you need four hundred units of wood to keep the entire place from collapsing. Though stone supports would probably help alleviate that for all but the deepest or most widely spaced rooms.
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Askot Bokbondeler

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7342 on: November 23, 2009, 06:53:21 pm »

Yes, we can agree on that. The problem isn't with cave collapse or with building cave supports for particularly large or deep caves. That would certainly be an interesting addition to mining. It's with bringing realism to the point where it reaches frustration. It's with making it so that it takes five years to dig out a respectable fortress for 30 dwarves, where you have to replace the miners' picks every month, and where you need four hundred units of wood to keep the entire place from collapsing. Though stone supports would probably help alleviate that for all but the deepest or most widely spaced rooms.

that sounds exactlly what i want from DF, also, i want my miner to reach adept miner skill after 10 years digging, and only hit legendary if you're lucky and he has an unnatural talent

JoshuaFH

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7343 on: November 23, 2009, 06:57:12 pm »

How about different races having different natural talents? Like dwarves just being naturally good at mining, and Elves at weaving and humans at whathaveyou? The natural talent in races would wouldn't make ALL members of that race talented in that field, but would definitely increase the likelihood of any given member being talented at that skill.
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zchris13

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7344 on: November 23, 2009, 07:01:31 pm »

Haha. That guild leader better check his room for any suspicious levers.
YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM THE UNION.
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Blind Wolf

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7345 on: November 23, 2009, 07:05:31 pm »

Askot: And I'm sure you're not the only one. Everyone wants something different from DF. But I don't think most players would find that very fun. Overall, I'm sure most people want more realism in mining, but not to that point.

chaoticjosh: That makes sense. I suppose that could factor into mining by making it so dwarves, at the basic level, are so experienced with mining that their tunnels need less supports for stability and/or they're more resistant to poisonous underground gasses than the other races etc. And it would scale up from there based on the miner's skills.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2009, 07:09:35 pm by Blind Wolf »
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Footkerchief

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7346 on: November 23, 2009, 07:27:03 pm »

Yes, we can agree on that. The problem isn't with cave collapse or with building cave supports for particularly large or deep caves. That would certainly be an interesting addition to mining. It's with bringing realism to the point where it reaches frustration. It's with making it so that it takes five years to dig out a respectable fortress for 30 dwarves, where you have to replace the miners' picks every month, and where you need four hundred units of wood to keep the entire place from collapsing. Though stone supports would probably help alleviate that for all but the deepest or most widely spaced rooms.

I should clarify that I'm not saying mining should be harder in every way in every situation.  Geologic diversity presents some natural tradeoffs, like sandstone being much easier to cut into than granite but also needing much more support (or so I'd speculate, I'm definitely not an expert).  Some rock doesn't require any support at all, at least for small and well-spaced tunnels.  Ideally, for players who want a forgiving mining experience, the game could help them find one -- but real dwarves would embrace the risk instead of scuttling around in cramped, dank caves like kobolds.

And yes, stone supports help a lot.  Leaving pillars of natural rock as supports is a time-honored technique.
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Blind Wolf

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7347 on: November 23, 2009, 07:36:29 pm »

I've taken to leaving stone supports in my tunnels for asthetic purposes, even though cave-ins are disabled for this version.

Geologic diversity would be nice addition to mining as well. It'd make mining operations much more interesting when you have to take the type of stone into account.

Yeah, I know you're not trying to make mining a headache. I just noticed the push for a more realistic mining experience, and cautioned against taking that line of thought too far.
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Shoku

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7348 on: November 23, 2009, 08:12:20 pm »

One issue I can see arising due to the split (though it is already somewhat present) is that training all the skills needed during adventure mode may start to get a bit tricky unless you artificially start using them at inappropriate times.

Well, are they really "needed" if they're not even getting used?

Wasn't a notion of skill synergy thrown in too ? Footkerchief, help us !

Yeah: "There were several minor skill-related alterations, but the main changes were the addition of a situational awareness skill that works with some of the new attributes to handle attack-from-behind/charge surprise/ambush detection rolls, and the use throughout of the melee combat skill for other misc. combat rolls that used to be handled by total skill (a "level" placeholder that's now scrapped entirely). The melee combat skill (and archery) are also currently used to handle weapon "skill synergies" -- that system will likely be changed to something with more branching structure during the Combat Arc, but this will do for now."

Toady also posted a few more details about the function and future of the "Melee Combat" skill:

There are also general skills for melee/ranged combat that pick up some of the slack that used to depend on "level" (counterstrikes, noticing charges, etc.).  Those just need to be handled with the new atts and so on, but there's also something to be said for keeping the new "melee combat" skill, as somebody that has been using a sword and fighting in real fights with it for fifteen years would be able to pick up a spear or a mace and have a real advantage over a completely inexperienced person, and not just because of atts.  As these skills are given names, the melee combat skill might fade out and be removed, but I'm not sure.  There's something to be said for having a skill tree like Armok 1 had, so that say as a simplified example effective_mace=max(mace,sword/3) or effective_mace=max(mace,melee) and that kind of thing, but I just haven't made a final decision on that (what I'm setting up now won't feel it too hard either way if I decide to change later, so I'm not that worried about it, but I'll still have to make up my mind one way or another in a day or two).
Kind of hard to trim this down for my point but if your sword skill adds to your mace skill (*I'm not sure if the above just substitutes sword/3 if it's higher than mace or adds them together,) then that first question of why we'd need to train up skills we weren't using kind of falls in on itself as being really obvious.

Crossbows are COOL!

Well there is a reason why King Richard the Lionheart wanted them outlawed.
When catapults are outlawed only outlaws will have catapults.

Yeah there are two reasons why I bring it up at odd times
1) I often argue with people who arn't there (Bad habit)
2) I am moody

Anyhow that is all I am going to say on that subject. There is probably more too it but I don't possess any further insight into myself, I could even be wrong.

As for Trees dropping multiple wood. Would you also suggest that wood grow more slowly?
I'd suggest that instead of hauling around a whole tree trunk they chop it up into several units of wood and maybe ever a few size categories. As making several hauling jobs at the site of a downed tree is probably not a good idea we could instead have the carpenter shop process the wood. Stripping off the branches that are too small to use for building could give a stack of material useful for wood crafts (maybe carving or basket weaving,) or that you could burn several units of for all of our burning things products.

The actual blocks of wood produced from a log would go to most of the other purposes we use wood for.
So basically I'm thinking the carpenter dwarf or lumber-jack-dwarf could be a bit more like a tree-butcher, especially because describing it that way should sound even worse to the elves.

*you might eve make wooden supports take considerably less wood than wooden walls to allow for more interesting bridge building- if we get to a point where lanes actually need supports ever so far to stay up.


I hope trees drop multiple units of wood in the coming update.  I find the fact that making above-ground housing out of big granite chunks is easier than construction with wood is a bit too unrealistic, even in heavily forested areas. 

I would point the blame for that particular unrealism at the fact that mining is way, way too easy, exhibiting few of the historical hazards of mining.  The rock doesn't shatter your tools, fall on you, collapse beneath you, suffocate you, poison you with dust, or incinerate you with explosive vapors.  It just yields meekly before the pick.  That's boring and not hardcore at all, even taking dwarves' nebulous talents into account.
To be fair it pretty much does fall on them and out from under them before players understand cave-ins and probably several times (or many,) after that when they forget about them.

But it should never get to the point where realism is added just for the sake of difficulty, or for realism's sake at the expense of fun. The fun factor is infinitely for important than how realistic the mining is.
Perhaps the game could include a smaller scale collapse that is common and likely to lightly bury nearby miners to the degree that other dwarves have to haul debris off of them so they can stand back up? It could even just work out that the wall they were mining crumbled onto them, and possibly walls next to it that weren't even designated for mining (though without the abilty to engrave constructed walls us OCD people would get rather pissed off about that.)

It's not like the rest of your dwarves are very busy when you first start mining out the fort so it would give them something to do until they've got shops to work in and food to grow/cook/brew.


As you dug deeper they could increase in severity to the point where you had to do a lot of reinforcement type stuff to keep it as just minor injury and "digging" them out instead of fatal collapses.

And the underground gas stuff could have similar mechanics.

Really I think this sort of thing would give more purpose to being good at mining than just "fast and makes more stone."

« Last Edit: November 23, 2009, 08:15:21 pm by Shoku »
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Blind Wolf

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Re: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items
« Reply #7349 on: November 23, 2009, 08:31:24 pm »

Having different types and severities of cave-ins would help, yes. In fact, it's not a bad idea at all.
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