Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[H]

I've heard some argue that we shouldn't be allowed to request engravings of specific things because it is too much like mind control.  I agree with this to an extent.  However, there are a number of elements in the game that amount to almost the same thing, for example the ability to tell dwarfs exactly what to furnish a room with and where to place it.  I think the game would play more smoothly if there was a consistent level of control over the dwarfs in all tasks.  (For example: you should only be able to control the metal a door is made out of if you can control the stone it is made out of.)

For the sake of simplicity we can divide the possible levels into three broad categories:

Micro-managing boss: This is currently what we have with most tasks - you can give your dwarfs extremely precise instructions and expect them to follow them exactly.  (you, legendary craftsdwarf, make me a bin out of copper (by setting who can work at the shop))  If that is what we want then we should, for the sake of consistency, get control over what stone things are made out of, what an engraver carves, and a decorator decorates (you there, carve me some carp).  Personally I don't like this level of control because it usually is more work than it is worth.  For example, I generally order things through the manager screen because I find messing with individual workshops to be pretty tiresome, especially when you have to go through several sub lists, like at the forge.

Town mayor (or a good boss): Manages by setting goals, leaves details of the implementation up to the workers.  For example, under such a level of control you might designate an area as a room of a specific type and then instruct your dwarfs to furnish it to a certain level of opulence.  The dwarfs themselves would then determine what to furnish the room with and where to place it, generating jobs to make items if needed.  A large room would get more beds / tables and chairs than a small one would.  Similarity, you would tell a dwarf to join the military; he or she would pick their own weapon and armor based on availability, personal preferences, and the composition of the existing military.  A request to make some armor would result in an available artisan producing a full suit; the type being determined by available materials, personal preferences, and skill (only the better dwarfs would attempt a suit of plate armor).  So for most tasks this is a bit more abstract than we currently have.  Also the need to order the production of intermediate goods (such as potash) would probably vanish.

King: Manages by setting long-term objectives.  This is probably not a good option for DF, but it's good to have in mind as an extreme.  In such a control scheme you would set, for example, the percentage of labor and resources that should go to the military, and dwarfs would manage themselves accordingly.  This would probably leave the player with too little to do.

Thoughts?

[Rakeela]

But it'd be hard to make my rooms 'pretty' if I were just playing as a town mayor!  The dwarves don't have my fine level of aesthetic sensibilities. 

[H]

Doesn't it upset you then that your pretty room may end up with ugly engravings?  I suspect that it's simply a matter of custom; we are used to not being able to control the engravings so we have simply learned to tolerate their randomness; some even see it as good thing because it can produce interesting and funny results. On the other hand, maybe your sensibilities are best; what's really important is being able to make the fortress you want down to the last detail.  If so all the more reason to consistently go with option #1 so that you can have all your chairs decorated with diamonds, tables with rubies, and walls engraved only with dogs on fire (at least that's my ideal ).

[Rakeela]

I like the randomness of the engravings, most of all when I tell the engravers to decorate their own rooms/tombs/etc.  I had one engraver who engraved his bedroom with all sorts of nightmare images, and in his tomb?  Flowers, trees, and a picture of himself engraving.

If I could have any control over engravers, I'd prefer bounded control.  I wouldn't want to order every last thing, but I'd probably ask that the same historical images not be repeated incessantly.  Yes, we're all very happy that Bomrek Windgrasp strangled Glubsichrock the kobold thief, thank you, but you didn't need to plaster half the dining room with that image.  Two or three repetitions of the same image would be a good limit.

[Silverionmox]

I don't think that specifically asking a particular blacksmith to make a fine pewter toy boat is mind control. It's useful too, since nobles demand stuff like that, and the player has to provide it.

There's no reason to include both ways to give commands. I assume that normally the broad brush will be used (make stone crafts. Decorate trade goods with common materials.), but occasionally the player might want to make work of a special object or room (legendary leatherworker, make a set of armor (minus one glove) out of cave crocodile leather for Obok who slew the beast. legendary gemsetter, use gold beryls to put in the eye sockets, you master engraver go put the scene in his tomb already, etc.). Or a player might want to have halls of history, and concentrate the historical engravings there, in a non-repetitive chronological order.

I would like to see that non-obedient dwarves ignore conventions when in dire need: when hungry, they'll eat forbidden food or break down walls if they're walled in somehow, or they would use forbidden doors when fleeing from an enemy.

[BirdoPrey]

Another approach I've thought of for engravings is 'context sensitive' engravings. For example, if you designate a room as a tomb for someone and then tell them to engrave the tomb, all the engravings will be of various events from the dwarf's life. Not sure how this would work in public dining halls... maybe scenes of epic battles? Perhaps if there's no real context to draw from the content of the engravings would depend more on the engraver's personality. Make it more desirable to choose a highly creative dwarf as your engraver!

[Pilsu]

I don't really follow the logic in the commissioning specific engravings being mind control. You must work with really fickle artists

[Fossaman]

What if there was a way to set a 'theme' for an area that determined a specific subset of engraving types to be used? Designate the dining hall with a 'food' theme, and you'll get pictures of dwarves and cheese, dwarves eating, plump helmets, sweet pods, barrels, etc. This way you can put nightmarish engravings in the rooms of nobles on purpose, and happy fun engravings on the walls of your goblin death chamber, if that's what floats your boat.

[H]

2 points:

1- Let's not obsess over engravings here; that's been done to death in other threads.  If it's not on the common suggestions list it should be.
2- "Mind control" is merely a figurative term to refer to extreme micro-management.  It is an allusion, in part, to: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=21498.msg356607#msg356607

[Rysith]

The problem with town mayor, as described, is that often some things require specific properties, which the dwarves may not "know" about beforehand. Look at all of the issues around bauxite mechanisms, for example, and the popularity of the all-stone-economic mods.

Suppose that you decide that you really like one of your dwarves, and see that they like copper. Under the town mayor model, how can you order a copper cabinet made and put in their room?

Suppose that you want to make a magma pumping tower for Fun. How do you make sure that the pipes, corkscrews, and blocks are made of iron, rather than the more valuable steel or more available glass, and then make sure that the iron components are assembled into the pumps?

Suppose that your blacksmith just went fey and produced an artifact steel armor stand. You want to put it in the dining room. How can you do that with the town mayor model?

Is designating specific shapes of rooms to be done too mind controlly for the town mayor? How would megaprojects fare if it is? How would designating specific furniture be if it wasn't?

Town mayor might be a nice "mode" to have, when you don't really care how things end up. I still thinks that being able to order specific things when required is needed. I also don't see what is so mind-controlly about ordering the production of high-quality copper bins for the nobles (or low-quality copper bins for the peasants and training). If I were a town mayor I could easily see ordering that copper bins be crafted by a skill artisan.

I think I agree, though, that mandating specific decorations is overkill. I'd temper that by saying that I'd like to see the decoration/engraving process become a bit less random, to solve issues with the same image being repeated everywhere. One possible solution would be to assign each potential engraving subject an importance (per dwarf, maybe?) and have that decrease with each engraving of it. Nobody wants to be known for carving the 346th depiction of the death of a kobold thief.

[Pilsu]

You only get one chance to engrave your dining room, I'd prefer if I got to pick the image

I see nothing wrong with optional micro management. Sure random decor is simple but it's really frustrating if you're trying to make something cool for once, like carve your civ symbol at the entrance or fashion something appropriate on the king's throne with platinum. Randomness has it's uses but I don't see why it should be forced on me

[stoned funeral]

I personally can totally get behind the Town Mayor concept. It's the dwarven way to do it. Seriously, get out of these dwarves beards a little and just let the fortress grow organically with it's quirks and surprises. Isn't that how DF handles the "storyline & plot" aspects anyway? It's all about the emergent story, not copying and pasting the same grid of bedrooms/workshops/dining room every game and wondering why you're getting bored. My ideal dwarf fortress is not planned, but grows.

Of course, there are good reasons for being able to micro when you want, and people are right to bring them up. All I'm trying to say is it's easier to paint the big picture, then adjust and add to it, than to draw the entire thing pixel by pixel.

You only get one chance to engrave your dining room, I'd prefer if I got to pick the image

I agree that you should be able to give very specific orders, mandates if you will. I would just personally leave them to do what they want. Here's my take on the whole thing: we the gamers are playing voyeur/invisible architect to our fortress, but it's essentially in the hands of the individual dwarves. I think the game loses a lot of it's charm when we depersonalize the individual dwarves, and force them to do exactly what we want the way we want it. It makes them just extensions of us, impersonal tools, rather than Urist McCamel, male legendary engraver famed for his inspired and beautiful depictions of one humped camels in the throes of passion like no dwarf has ever seen. I love the idea of a game that is a window into its own idiosyncratic world, like a chaotic dwarfquarium with soul.

_{please be reading this toady, and if you are, let me know if you at least understand what I'm getting at...it'd give me so much more confidence in the future of the game and make it easier to do my part to make sure it arrives...}

[Silverionmox]

It's all about the emergent story, not copying and pasting the same grid of bedrooms/workshops/dining room every game and wondering why you're getting bored. [...] All I'm trying to say is it's easier to paint the big picture, then adjust and add to it, than to draw the entire thing pixel by pixel.

You need to be able to micromanage if you want to adjust to it. I never build the same fortress twice, but I think it's incredibly important to be able to dedicate a room or an item to commemorate something that happened. Otherwise it will just fade back into the random noise it came from, and that is just as bad as making every fortress a sterile clone of one particular ideal type. If Lorbam the dabbling swordsdwarf becomes surrounded but still slays six goblins on her own with a -iron short sword-, then I want to be able to give her a masterwork steel sword with pictures of six goblins on it, made with their own bone, and her favourite gem in the pommel if that strikes my fancy. If I rescure a dwarf from starvation, I'm gonna engrave his dining room with the first thing he eats then. If I think a particular part of the mountain resembles a lobster, I should be able to name it Lobsterpeak and line the entrance with engravings of lobsters. And so on.

How to achieve this? 
- The interface to do specific things can be cumbersome, since it shouldn't be used often. It should be able to override {forbidden} status, with a warning.
- There should be more general commands to facilitate random actions (such as: anyone can decorate trade goods with expendable materials).
- There should be categories for materials, to determine who can use what, for example to preserve gems and precious metals for your most skilled craftsdwarves, or bones of specific creatures - while still being able to stockpile them.
- We should assign items to dwarves rather than rooms. They can choose, pick it up and place it themselves. Placing specific furniture in specific places should normally be limited for common spaces or when we want to make a specific dwarf (un)happy.

[Squirrelloid]

Not that I mind random engravings, but if i did get to pick I know exactly what I'd do...

Engraving: The Infinite Mirror
Engraved on the floor is a masterful image of Urist McArtsy by Urist McArtsy.  Urist McArtsy is engraving.  The artwork relates to the masterful engraving "The Infinite Mirror" created by Urist McArtsy in the early spring of 1055, which relates to the masterful engraving "The Infinite Mirror" created by Urist McArtsy in the early spring of 1055, which relates to the masterful engraving "The Infinite Mirror" created by....

That would be an awesome hallway.

Or possibly a series of masterwork engravings each relating to the engraving just prior to it.

[Granite26]

You bring up a good point.  Some things shouldn't enter the cultural ephemera of the fortress for a few years