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[Granite26]

I thought I'd stop by to note a few things.

3. This will eventually be in the RAWs.

Will it?

[Captain Mayday]

This is at least what I've been led to believe. Crop growth times are already in the raws, the GROWDUR tag is the number of ticks it takes.

[PTTG??]

The logistics AI would be horrendus to write with the current demand to detail, but if the player base would allow a little abstraction...

That's not the players, man, that's Toady One himself. He's not going to abstract anything, my friend.

I think there's something important to take away from this thread, and that is that travel time needs to decrease relative to production time; in some cases, a job should last long enough to take breaks within it and come back to the same project.

[Sowelu]

In The Sims 2, depending on where you place your dining room and kitchen, it can take longer to order a pizza than to make an elaborate dinner.  Of course calling the pizza place takes time, but WALKING TO THE FRONT DOOR takes long enough that it can't be ignored in large houses.

Similarly, going upstairs and coming back down can frequently waste literally half an hour just from walking, in a reasonably normal house.

I hate travel time in games.

[praguepride]

Maybe it's just a perception. Take the "hauling 101" tab.

Mining = minutes
Hauling stone = days/months.

Maybe that's because that one stone boulder is really a representation of an entire X by X by X chunk of rock. Maybe that one hauling task is really just a  summary of dozens or hundreds of smaller tasks done one by one. Instead of having a wall break up into 100 stones, it just consolidates them into one lump view.

[Neonivek]

Similarly, going upstairs and coming back down can frequently waste literally half an hour just from walking, in a reasonably normal house

Well two things

A) It is more of a logical problem when compared to real life then a problem in the gameplay.

But

B) Deselect taking the pizza... then run to the front door... THEN take the pizza. (If you have teleportation powers all the better). Even in a HUGE house she should be there soon.

[Impaler[WrG]]

If the game is measured in ticks and a season is 1008 ticks that makes a year 4032 ticks and if that year is 365 days a day is almost exactly 11 ticks long and an hour is roughly half a tick.  Dwarfs have a movement speed of 900 according to the Wiki and they move once every 10 'turns' by which I assume they mean ticks, quite slow indeed. 

If a year was doubled to 8064 ticks and the calendar was reduced to 100 days (why not its a Fantasy after all) that would give us 80 ticks per day, and hour would be 3 1/3 ticks.  If a dwarfs speed was increased to 700 (the current Speed of the tree-lovers who certainly don't zip across the screen in a blur) they would move every 8 ticks and all together be effectively move 10 times as far in a day.  Speeds of 600 or 500 don't sound unreasonable to me.

That might be a big improvement in the ability to get a job done or go some ware before needing to eat or sleep but its still not sufficient to implement a day/night cycle lasting several minutes in real-time complete with the expected day/night behaviors.  That's probably not possible but a year of 20 days might be viable as that would (assuming the double length year) give 403 ticks about 40% of a current season.  According to the Wiki a Dwarf sleeps once every about every 6 weeks which is 465 ticks a very close match with the suggested day length.  Dwarfs also currently Eat once every 504 (half season) ticks and drink every 252 ticks (quarter season) according to the wiki.

[Vattic]

Making the year longer, to accommodate more events, would require more events for years to accommodate. Because so much of the game is currently bound to the calender (especially invasions, migration and trade), the balance ramifications of this change are vast, and would require careful planning and extensive testing.

Indeed, it has always bothered me how things like invasions work like clockwork, no supprise attacks except ambushes. Luckily the next update should fix some of this, with armies, caravans and migrants moving on the world map. Invasions will most likely still work like clockwork as uninterrupted journey time from an enemy civ to your site is a constant and the same applies to friendly civs and trading caravans but I don't see why migration needs to work this way, it doesn't in real life.

Migration should occur when enough members of a certain civ want to move to yours and form a party with enough combined cash to buy supplies and guards for the journey really. I'd like to see hired guards with migrants who only stay a little while or perhaps they sometimes like your fort enough to stay for good.

[Captain Mayday]

If the game is measured in ticks and a season is 1008 ticks that makes a year 4032 ticks and if that year is 365 days a day is almost exactly 11 ticks long and an hour is roughly half a tick.  Dwarfs have a movement speed of 900 according to the Wiki and they move once every 10 'turns' by which I assume they mean ticks, quite slow indeed. 

If a year was doubled to 8064 ticks and the calendar was reduced to 100 days (why not its a Fantasy after all) that would give us 80 ticks per day, and hour would be 3 1/3 ticks.  If a dwarfs speed was increased to 700 (the current Speed of the tree-lovers who certainly don't zip across the screen in a blur) they would move every 8 ticks and all together be effectively move 10 times as far in a day.  Speeds of 600 or 500 don't sound unreasonable to me.

That might be a big improvement in the ability to get a job done or go some ware before needing to eat or sleep but its still not sufficient to implement a day/night cycle lasting several minutes in real-time complete with the expected day/night behaviors.  That's probably not possible but a year of 20 days might be viable as that would (assuming the double length year) give 403 ticks about 40% of a current season.  According to the Wiki a Dwarf sleeps once every about every 6 weeks which is 465 ticks a very close match with the suggested day length.  Dwarfs also currently Eat once every 504 (half season) ticks and drink every 252 ticks (quarter season) according to the wiki.

This does not address the base issue. Since increasing a dwarf's speed will decrease the time it takes to make or do stuff as well as just travelling. Tasks NEED to have their tick requirement altered to account for this. IF this were able to be done, we could certainly make some interesting worlds.

[profit]

I have to admit... Lowering the number of days in a year and increasing the number of ticks in the day does appeal to me greatly.

It would make the dwarfs feel much more lifelike and far more realistic in their behavior.

Do you think we could have 36 day years?

We could have every month broken up into Early month Mid Month and Late month and have that represented as a day.

So.. Day 1 would be Early January(Or its Dwarf month equivalent), and day 36 would be Late December. 

This would allow our dwarves to get more done every day, while still allowing dwarven children to become adults, in the players lifetime.   And in the future if a day/Night cycle is ever implemented (Not that I want or need one just if for some reason Toady did)  It would be possible without being nonsensical.

[Captain Mayday]

I have to admit... Lowering the number of days in a year and increasing the number of ticks in the day does appeal to me greatly.

It would make the dwarfs feel much more lifelike and far more realistic in their behavior.

Do you think we could have 36 day years?

We could have every month broken up into Early month Mid Month and Late month and have that represented as a day.

So.. Day 1 would be Early January(Or its Dwarf month equivalent), and day 36 would be Late December. 

This would allow our dwarves to get more done every day, while still allowing dwarven children to become adults, in the players lifetime.   And in the future if a day/Night cycle is ever implemented (Not that I want or need one just if for some reason Toady did)  It would be possible without being nonsensical.

The best option is, of course, to make it moddable. Personally, I prefer epic games, so my timescale would be very... extended. There is absolutely no need to make it a hardcoded decision.

[Pilsu]

Shorter years result in shorter lifespans, bear that in mind. Not to mention how nonsensical short years would be. If anything, years should be longer and the game should allow you to interact with all the civs of a given race. As for kids, they should just do some work and becoming the so called adults should be a little slower. Really, 12 year olds marrying is a bit screwed up even for the time period. Night cycle could be handled on a month/week basis. Nights should be longish and meaningful, otherwise by the time the surprise attack is at your gates, it'll be morning already

[Skid]

For the average real survival time of a dwarf in any fort, marrying at 12 seems almost reasonable. 

I'd agree with making movement speed faster and work completion slower.  Some way to change or toggle the FPS cap in game would be great too.

[Soralin]

I definitely think that days should be made longer, and that all of the actual tasks should be made to take a lot longer.  Mining should be a big undertaking that takes time, especially longer time for harder rocks and such.  Digging out a giant city underground shouldn't be something you can easily do with just a single dwarf over a short period of time.  It should be more like having to carve out something small at first, and slowly expand later with a team of dwarves working.  As well as crafting taking a much longer time, rather than turning out suits of armor like a factory.  Making walking speeds a bit faster if possible would help out as well.  And of course anything that allowed for increased speed, path caching, multiple processor support, etc. would help.

Much longer days could also be very nice once a few more features get in.  Allow for an actual day/night cycle, lighting effects making it darker at night, perhaps even dawn/dusk, etc.  even temperature differences, water freezing over at night in colder areas when it gets closer to winter.  A scorching desert where workers have to go out at night because the day is too hot to work or go outside, etc.  Having schedules for day and night times.

The years might end up quite a lot longer, but they could always be shortened, if necessary, make each season a month long or such.  In other words, pick a good length for a day, pick a good length for a year or a season, and make the number of days/season to match.

[Captain Mayday]

I guess that, yeah, it boils down to having more to do in a given day. At this stage, though, you already have far more to haul than anything. Also, nobody else finds it curious that planting takes considerable time for a newb farmer?