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[DwarfStar]

There are already some kinds of failure. When you cut a gem and get a regular gem instead of a large one, I figure that's because the gem cutter slipped and broke the thing into smithereens. And inferior goods of any kind are a type of failure...I imagine a low quality mug as lopsided and slightly leaky. Then you have miners that can destroy the rock they're mining instead of cutting it out.

It would be lame to have materials completely lost due to failure. Metal crafts could be made and remade as many times as necessary to get them to come out usable. Hence, the time factor.

As for how dwarves can build bridges and similar engineering marvels with no chance of failure...well they're dwarves, it's what they do. But mainly, having these kinds of things fail would make it even more frustrating than it already can be to make your fortress the way you want it.

[LegoLord]

There are already some kinds of failure. When you cut a gem and get a regular gem instead of a large one, I figure that's because the gem cutter slipped and broke the thing into smithereens. And inferior goods of any kind are a type of failure...I imagine a low quality mug as lopsided and slightly leaky. Then you have miners that can destroy the rock they're mining instead of cutting it out.

It would be lame to have materials completely lost due to failure. Metal crafts could be made and remade as many times as necessary to get them to come out usable. Hence, the time factor.

As for how dwarves can build bridges and similar engineering marvels with no chance of failure...well they're dwarves, it's what they do. But mainly, having these kinds of things fail would make it even more frustrating than it already can be to make your fortress the way you want it.

This has already been stated several times, yet it is consistently ignored, even though it is reasonable and, frankly, true.

[Eagle]

Maybe certain types of constructions (like bridges) could have a windmill like "foundation" stat, and once Toady implements more realistic physics this would be affected by the skill of the building dwarf; the better the foundation, the more weight it can hold before breaking.

Also, I fully realize that there are counter arguments for the stuff i posted, i was just listing the things that i thought might be feasible, as well as not too game breaking. Yes, mostly everything in my list will slow the game down, but if it could be implemented effectively, then it might just work. I never said Toady should put this stuff in, i just tossed it out.

I still hold that we should have POW's work at carving blocks for us; and if any failure rates are introduced, there should be some "no fail" crafts useful for training dwarves up (bins might also be included in this category, making the training at least sorta useful).

[Pilsu]

If you insist on an industrious Mary Sue race that never botches anything, you could just turn it off yourself. Screwing up when you're just starting out makes perfect sense and many of us would like said feature


I'd like to remind people that dwarves are opposed to slavery so any slave labor would be a feature for other races. Personally I don't see slaves doing anything that's actually important but fair enough

[Glacies]

I think this would detract a bit too much from the fun of the game, personally.

[LegoLord]

"Have failures but make it so it can be turned off in the init.txt?"

It makes sense for a lot of things, but this?  That's just silly.

[Pilsu]

I don't know about that, you can already disable cave-ins for instance. That's far sillier than being able to disable a feature that quite a few people would find plain irritating despite any realism value

[LegoLord]

Completely destroyed materials seems fairly unrealistic.

[Yaddy1]

If Dwarves could fail the game would be much less fun...

[Footkerchief]

Completely destroyed materials seems fairly unrealistic.

I agree.  So maybe failed stone crafts could turn into gravel, which could be used for concrete or sling ammo.  Failed wood crafts could turn into wood chips, which could still be used for making ash and charcoal.  Metal crafts could just "restart" on failure, meaning that dabblers would take a long time to produce anything, or they could produce scrap metal that has to be melted back down into bars at the smelter (without the ridiculous 1/3 melting return rate, of course).

[Felblood]

Ooh. I do like being able to make ash from woodchips, to reduce waste, however it ends up getting handled.

[bjlong]

^^^ I agree--also, anything wooden should be able to turn into charcoal/ash. But that's for another topic.

Making DF obey conservation of mass would be thrilling... and tiresome, at the same time. Here, though, it's undoubtably a good thing. I don't think metal scrap should be sent back to the smelter. In fact, failure could probably be abstracted so that you just revert to bars, with the fuel consumed.

[LegoLord]

^^^ I agree--also, anything wooden should be able to turn into charcoal/ash. But that's for another topic.

Making DF obey conservation of mass would be thrilling... and tiresome, at the same time. Here, though, it's undoubtably a good thing. I don't think metal scrap should be sent back to the smelter. In fact, failure could probably be abstracted so that you just revert to bars, with the fuel consumed.

Which essentially serves only to make it take longer.  Hey, guess what?  The game already does that!  Maybe that's why legendaries work so fast, eh?

And I have to disagree with Footkerchief.  It's still turning the resource into an item that cannot be used for the original task, and it's still a result of a random failure, which is what people tend to be disagreeing with.

In real life, random failures at crafts are an annoyance.  This is a game.  It should not be annoying.

[bjlong]

Uh.

The fuel was used up. You'd have to use more fuel. Also, you're forgetting that novices take forever and still mess up--after learning a few hundred "crafting" skills at my job, I should know.

I think that failure won't be too much of an annoyance, especially with improved hauling, unless you're talking about making something out of something rare and valuable. Which would actually improve things, in my opinion. It puts some of the fear into telling your dwarf to make something expensive and rare. Those are always fun moments--the best triumph is one where you thought you might lose.

[LegoLord]

Uh.

The fuel was used up. You'd have to use more fuel. Also, you're forgetting that novices take forever and still mess up--after learning a few hundred "crafting" skills at my job, I should know.

[. . .] unless you're talking about making something out of something rare and valuable. Which would actually improve things, in my opinion

Not if you're using magma forges, and besides, one coke gets used regardless of how long the job takes.

And I was not actually talking about something rare and valuable, although I would hate it even more if I got something like adamantine, only to periodically lose the thread or raw stone.  Also, you only get one star sapphire or star ruby per map that has rubies and sapphires.  Risking the destruction of your only one of those just so you can use it just sounds annoying.