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[kilakan]

try dig deeper's orcs, their the only things I've ever lost a siege too... damn lock-picking, trap avoiding, pain resisting bastards.

[Durin]

try dig deeper's orcs, their the only things I've ever lost a siege too... damn lock-picking, trap avoiding, pain resisting bastards.

Waiting for the new arc to get much deeper into warfare.  Pounding hapless Goblins is currently one of the few victories I can claim!

Back on topic, Things that are common sense should eventually become default settings.  For example, marksdwarves should automagically use bone or wood arrows for practice, and switch to the best when going out to do battle.  You should only have to set it specifically to use wood, bone, etc if you WANT to take the cheap stuff out to battle.

If you want dwarves to be able to use both chain and plate, create a setting that is chain and plate.  do not force people to do this little dance of setting them to chain, hoping they have all switched, then chainge to plate, hoping they are not wearing too many clothes underneath to prevent it.

Clothes just in general are a read drag currently.  I imaging this has been brought up.  I know making sure lost items are picked up is something folks have made mention of in the past.

Please don't get me wrong.  Game is AWESOME!  Keep up the good work.

[Footkerchief]

^^^ You'll be able to tell them to use wood/bone ammo for training in the next version.  Also, the entire military equipment system is getting replaced due to concerns like that one.

[jamoecw]

since we are talking about gobs vs. dwarves, i do have to say that out of 100+ seiges (not ambushes mind you) three have met or exceeded my dwarves' kill count.  two because dwarves held doors open legendary axe goblins, and one do to socks.  all are basically glitches that are fixed or going to be fixed in the next release.  i don't build much in the way of traps, and the ones i do build are custom ones that can't be disabled via trap avoidance.

Apparently dwarves are more dangerous to dwarves than pretty much everything else.

they don't even have to kill each other to be a danger to each other, they can help others kill them or simply commit suicide.  of course most cases i am aware of will be gone in a few months.

[darkflagrance]

try dig deeper's orcs, their the only things I've ever lost a siege too... damn lock-picking, trap avoiding, pain resisting bastards.

Ha, today I was playing Dig Deeper, trying as desperately as possibly to rig up my windmills to a pumps to clear out the flooded lower levels of my fortress, when an Orc siege of 50+ orcs descended upon me. Luckily I had precautions: the passageway leading to the surface had a narrow corridor, with not one, but TWO doors! I pulled all my dwarves back behind the doors and locked them both, thereby ganking the orc pathfinding in the cheesiest way possible.

In other words, enemy pathfinding could use improvement. Doesn't turn me off, but would turn many others off.

In other news, they broke in through the trade depot and committed bloody slaughter anyway under the cover of smoke produced by a flaming artifact that was impossible to find because artifacts don't list their flaming status and burn infinitely.

Hope this isn't too off-topic, but I did list legitimate concerns in there.

[Solarn]

Without reading any of the thread: the ASCII graphics and the UI are actually two of my favourite things about the game. All the graphical tilesets I've seen just look wrong to me and I found the UI easy enough to understand once I poked around a bit. It has all the important screens easily accessible. Any better-looking UI would actually be harder to use or understand.

What bothers me about this game is the incredible stupidity of dwarves. And I'm not talking about the fire problem either. The way they handle pathfinding, job queues, contact with other creatures and just about anything else is horrible.

[Jiri Petru]

I'm terrified by the ammount of micromanagement required to play DF. What's worse, it seems the situation is getting worse with each update. I can only guess how will the next version work, but I suppose the hospital setup, burrows setup, army equipment and deployment, etc. adds more micromanagement to the game.

Don't take me wrong. I love that I can set things like individual weapons, safe zones, etc. But I shouldn't be required to. There should always be a default option that works without the need of player intervention.

Take military, for example. Right now, when I draft a dwarf, I must set his weapon and armor preferences manually. That is micromanagement. It would be better if the game automatically equipped him with someting (depending on material, item quality and personal preferences). I should only set the weapons manually if I want to do something special, I shouldn't be required to do that.

Or a different thing - labour settings. In the current version, dwarves have only one job by default. I recently tried to play the 2D version and was surprised that the dwarves always came with all the jobs in a single group enabled. That actually worked better - the fortress worked and I had no idlers even if I didn't change the settings. With a whole group enabled, the dwarf could easily find something to do. If I wanted to specialize my dwarves, I could open the labour preferences and change them - but I wasn't required to (and in the end, I didn't change most of my dwarves... while in the new version, I tend to change all of them). Newer versions have this the other way around, which feels kinda contraproductive and makes the game needlesly more complicated.

These were just two examples, but they illustrate my worries about the user-unfriendliness, which seems to be getting worse.

EDIT: The 2D version as a whole feels more streamlined and user friendly.

[Solarn]

I was always under the impression that DF was never supposed to be a simple game. The user wasn't meant to have the option of not caring about any particular detail. That's why it's, in my opinion, a level above the dull commercial strategy and management games. If you only want to care about building placement and battle tactics, then why don't you get Age of Empires or something like that?

What I want is the ability to stop micromanaging at some point. Let's say that I've set up some burrows, all of them self-reliant with food and booze and producing something valuable, and with specific inter-burrow hauling set up as well. At that point, I want to be able to leave those burrows alone unless I want to change something or something drastic happens (like a dwarf essential to production dies or something), except for maybe an occassional reaffirming of orders or to set the exact amount of production. Of course, that would require better dwarven AI and more detailed management options, which means more micromanagement at first, but with the payoff of being able to stop micromanaging that particular area in the future.

[Footkerchief]

I'm terrified by the ammount of micromanagement required to play DF. What's worse, it seems the situation is getting worse with each update. I can only guess how will the next version work [...]

Take military, for example. Right now, when I draft a dwarf, I must set his weapon and armor preferences manually. That is micromanagement. It would be better if the game automatically equipped him with someting (depending on material, item quality and personal preferences). I should only set the weapons manually if I want to do something special, I shouldn't be required to do that.

You don't often have to guess about how the next version will work, because Toady maintains a thorough dev log.  In particular, setting custom individual equipment is now a special case, not a requirement.  Toady isn't just gutting all existing squad code for the hell of it -- it's obvious that the current implementation sucks hard.

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

06/22/2009: Beds, racks, stands, boxes/chests and cabinets can now be assigned to squad positions. This is optional. So if you want to lay out your dwarves a certain way, you can, or you can risk letting the computer try if you don't want to fiddle with it. You can make barracks from boxes and cabinets now. For boxes, this would mainly be for training ammunition storage near an archery target, and there's not much of a reason for barracks cabinets now, though it might come up depending on how armor eventually gets sorted. Archery ranges now accept squad assignments. With furniture sorted out, I can move on to the meat of equipment selection.

06/25/2009: You can establish uniforms for your soldiers now. The main idea was to let you easily set a bunch of dwarves to the same armor type, but if you want to set up a uniform with midnight blue silk hoods, steel axes, leather boots, absolutely nothing else, and then apply it to every squad, that's between you and your conscience. The dwarves should shuffle their regular clothes off to squad-assigned cabinets if there are conflicts/restrictions, but you can also just have them put on some armor over their regular clothes as usual. It would still be annoying to get those hoods dyed correctly, but it would be a little easier to do with a burrow and a few custom stockpiles anyway.

There are various ways to tweak the equipment settings for individuals within a squad, and it all goes by the squad position and not the individual dwarf, though you can let a dwarf choose to use their favored melee weapon if ones available, if you don't care what they use. You can also assign specific individual items to squad positions. This mostly matters for artifacts, or if you are just really particular about equipment or some piece of new equipment. Setting an individual item will stop periodic upgrades for that piece of equipment, once I get those in.

Some of these commands/upgrades will be enabled/facilitated by an appointee in larger forts, but as long as you've got that dwarf working in their office it shouldn't be noticeably restrictive. This appointee currently sits around doing nothing, but that should be up soon.

07/12/2009: I finished the automatic portion of barracks equipment assignment to squad positions, to complement the manual settings. The racks are shared by the squad positions (since they currently store 5 weapons each), and it should handle dual-weapon (or more for mods) assignments properly.

I'm currently working on their notion of what clothing dwarves want to wear in such a way that they should want to snatch up clothing lost during wrestling and so on a little more eagerly, and so they can move in and out of uniform using their squad cabinets and so on. I also need to make sure the newly-arrived immigrant dwarves don't suddenly throw their clothes on the ground and that kind of thing, since there's a new layer of thinking that needs to be respected. Once this is handled, they'll be able to use their training equipment correctly, or put away their regular weapons for unarmed training, and I can get started on the actual training update, which is the bulk of what's left for squads.

07/16/2009: Soldiers are now divided up and assigned to their squad's scheduled orders such as patrols/training and so on according to hunger, thirst, etc. as well as preference settings and to match staffing minimums set in the schedule, and they know what equipment they should use. It'll periodically swap out soldiers to try to keep all of the month's schedule items staffed without interruptions. If it is unable to find replacements, soldiers will staff positions until they are starving (which shouldn't happen if you don't order them all to be someplace). In any case, now they just need to run out and grab their assigned equipment and start following their orders.

That's just an at-a-glance sampling of some of the incoming changes that aim to both reduce the need for micromanaging and to increase the player's ability to micromanage effectively when desired.

[Jiri Petru]

Footkerchief, thanks for the quote. I read the devlog regularly but I tend to forget stuff.

I was always under the impression that DF was never supposed to be a simple game. The user wasn't meant to have the option of not caring about any particular detail. That's why it's, in my opinion, a level above the dull commercial strategy and management games. If you only want to care about building placement and battle tactics, then why don't you get Age of Empires or something like that?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to make the game simpler. It's just some aspects get tedious, while not adding anything to the gameplay. Another guessxample could be the upcoming healthcare stuff. Digging rooms, building hospitals, choosing the main physician, that is gameplay, fun. But ordering more wooden crutches"in the carpenter's shop every time my crutch stock is depleted isn't gameplay, it's boring micromanagement. That's why I hope the crutches, etc. would be handled automatically, not manually. The same could be said about tools, more diverse items and other stuff that is coming someday. (I hate ordering clothings, BTW, and would kill to have automated clothier's workshop.)

Again, it's just an example of my greater hate of micromanagement, no need to prove me it won't actually be like that.

[Rockphed]

Footkerchief, thanks for the quote. I read the devlog regularly but I tend to forget stuff.

I was always under the impression that DF was never supposed to be a simple game. The user wasn't meant to have the option of not caring about any particular detail. That's why it's, in my opinion, a level above the dull commercial strategy and management games. If you only want to care about building placement and battle tactics, then why don't you get Age of Empires or something like that?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to make the game simpler. It's just some aspects get tedious, while not adding anything to the gameplay. Another guessxample could be the upcoming healthcare stuff. Digging rooms, building hospitals, choosing the main physician, that is gameplay, fun. But ordering more wooden crutches"in the carpenter's shop every time my crutch stock is depleted isn't gameplay, it's boring micromanagement. That's why I hope the crutches, etc. would be handled automatically, not manually. The same could be said about tools, more diverse items and other stuff that is coming someday. (I hate ordering clothings, BTW, and would kill to have automated clothier's workshop.)

Again, it's just an example of my greater hate of micromanagement, no need to prove me it won't actually be like that.

Personally, if the information is in a easily accessible location, then I find it better to have the micromanagement than having to figure out what settings will get the results I want.

Take food for an example.  It is incredibly easy to find out how much drink is lying around, though edible food is a bit harder to determine.  If the number of crutches in storage is listed on the main medical page, that will make the decision of when to make more easier.  Also, I have found the built in manager very useful for adding jobs to lists.

[G-Flex]

Of course, there are still ways micromanagement can be avoided that aren't harmful at all. People have mentioned things like standing production orders and workshop automation before, and I like that.

[jamoecw]

some of the micro management issues that have been mentioned could be greatly mitigated via a standing production orders with some sort of default.  the labor issue can be solved by using something like a standing production order but for labor, so if you fall short of X number of Y workers (carpenters or what ever) to enable Y job for X idle dwarfs.  if you have some sort of default such as 1 carpenter per carpenter workshop (well the equivalent when all workshops are dynamic), then you'd never have to deal with it, even though you probably should.  the other thing mentioned was the military thing, which i believe is wrong.  there is a default military package for a dwarf when you draft him, i always change it since it is usually wrestler or something else i don't want.  i am pretty sure it is based off of what weapon he already has (wreslter for none, axe dwarf for axes, etc.).

[Solarn]

Footkerchief, thanks for the quote. I read the devlog regularly but I tend to forget stuff.

I was always under the impression that DF was never supposed to be a simple game. The user wasn't meant to have the option of not caring about any particular detail. That's why it's, in my opinion, a level above the dull commercial strategy and management games. If you only want to care about building placement and battle tactics, then why don't you get Age of Empires or something like that?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to make the game simpler. It's just some aspects get tedious, while not adding anything to the gameplay. Another guessxample could be the upcoming healthcare stuff. Digging rooms, building hospitals, choosing the main physician, that is gameplay, fun. But ordering more wooden crutches"in the carpenter's shop every time my crutch stock is depleted isn't gameplay, it's boring micromanagement. That's why I hope the crutches, etc. would be handled automatically, not manually. The same could be said about tools, more diverse items and other stuff that is coming someday. (I hate ordering clothings, BTW, and would kill to have automated clothier's workshop.)

Again, it's just an example of my greater hate of micromanagement, no need to prove me it won't actually be like that.

But then, see, the carpenter's workshop would be clogged down by automated crutch orders and nobody would get those sorely needed beds done for the new immigrants. Or the hospital would only order one crutch at a time, meaning that every single broken-legged or disabled dwarf would have to wait months for his crutch. Not to mention the other disabled dwarves queuing up behind him, slowing health care to a crawl. All of these options leading quickly to tantrum spirals.

See, you have to micromanage, otherwise you'd lose your fort pretty quickly. I even turn off existing micromanagement-easing options, like auto-collection of webs and auto-weaving of thread because the first leads to dwarven deaths at the pincers of a GCS and the second leads to my weaver (who is usually the same person as my thresher for the first few immigrant waves until I get a dedicated weaver) not being able to do anything else.

[atomfullerene]

I'd like to have the option to set a workshop to make automatically requested items, and then assign one of my underused dwarfs to it.  But it's not always what you want.  Still, it would be neat if, say, when you had a workshop set up to generate beds as needed, you could place beds and the workshop would build them and send them to the indicated location.