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Author Topic: What turns you off about DF?  (Read 313026 times)

Iban

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1275 on: February 07, 2010, 04:15:03 pm »

I dislike that certain tasks are completed so quickly (most especially:  mining).
The only reason I modified Dwarves to have speed:0 is so I do not need to wait a fortnight to begin working on anything. And that's not even considering you want them to work even slower.
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Darkphyre

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1276 on: February 07, 2010, 04:20:29 pm »

Quote
and I dislike that certain tasks are completed so quickly

....wat?
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riznar

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1277 on: February 07, 2010, 06:28:52 pm »

Quote
and I dislike that certain tasks are completed so quickly

....wat?

Some people desire things to be as boring as real life
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Iban

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1278 on: February 07, 2010, 07:33:00 pm »

Quote
and I dislike that certain tasks are completed so quickly

....wat?

Some people desire things to be as boring as real life
Yeah, I agree that rocking chairs should take a dwarf a month to chip together.
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Andir

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1279 on: February 08, 2010, 12:50:54 pm »

Quote
and I dislike that certain tasks are completed so quickly

....wat?

Some people desire things to be as boring as real life
Yeah, I agree that rocking chairs should take a dwarf a month to chip together.
You have to wonder when a miner can clear a solid rock room in the same amount of time it takes to make a fine meal.
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"Having faith" that the bridge will not fall, implies that the bridge itself isn't that trustworthy. It's not that different from "I pray that the bridge will hold my weight."

zwei

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1280 on: February 08, 2010, 03:08:34 pm »

The fact that resources are so limited - and acquisition of resources through trade is extremely difficult.  I don't mind a huge chunk of stone being required to make a wall, or even a stone chair.  But when a giant heap of marble produces only one stone earring, then the game's simplification has been taken too far.

It's too expensive, resource-wise, to train certain skills, but skills increase so rapidly that people can be come masters of their craft after less than a year.

I dislike losing access to resources because of lack of skill (example:  mining), and I dislike that certain tasks are completed so quickly (most especially:  mining).

Yes, there are basically two types of resources:

Infinite
Finite

Infinite resources are just going to accumulate over time. You always have ready source of raw materials. This means several things:

1) You can overproduce on grand scale You have infinite raw material at your disposal, and you can buy out whole caravans with them over and over again.

2) Since you have free material, you can train every single peasant to be legendary on them. This means that your skilled workers are quite easily replaceable.

You can have as many legendary weavers/dyers/threshers/clothiers as you want. Theese industrues work as perpetum mobile engine basically: no input, huge output.

This is especially pronounced when you can train your dwarf on items that are essentially having no quality but are quite usefull: Bonecarvers for example can obtain legendary by creating bone bolts (bone bolts being always usefull regardless of quality).

This of course contrasts with:

Finite resources. They will eventually run out and/or have rate of acquisition capped harshly. They, of course have some implications too:

1) You will run out of them eventually. There is little you can do to get more raw materials.

2) Training is expensive. Skilled laborer is irreplaceable.

For example: Smoothing. You will eventually run out of stone to smooth, and to engrave. If you loose engraver, you will have to smooth certain amount of tiles too get new one to state where you can give him skill-requiring job (engraving) - roughly two fully dug 2x2 zlevels.

This, as you can imagine, leads to problems if loose several engravers in succession. Eventually you run out of room to train in and it is game over - no more materpiece engravings for you, ever.

Mining works like this too: It is even harsher since most maps have very limited soil z-layers to train miners without destroying stone, when you are done with them, every lost miner means that you are going to loose ~100 stones as he trains.

Even if you can import, you are going to obtain materials much slower than your dwarves die of old age.

---

If you would try clothesmaking industry you will see the other coin: You simply stop caring about resources and you are going to be annoyed by masterpiece spam from weaver/dyer/tailor.

Eventually, moment will come when you will simply stop caring and just stuff everything you can onto caravans to get rid of that damn stuff, having caravans leave with profits measured in hunderds of thousands.

Ballance is simply off.

Urist McDepravity

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1281 on: February 08, 2010, 05:17:42 pm »

Mining works like this too: It is even harsher since most maps have very limited soil z-layers to train miners without destroying stone, when you are done with them, every lost miner means that you are going to loose ~100 stones as he trains.
This makes me wonder. Did anyone EVER run out of free stone?
Most players bother with how to get rid of it, not to 'save' it, utilizing atom-smashers, catapults, magma, etc.
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Innominate

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1282 on: February 08, 2010, 07:20:28 pm »

Mining works like this too: It is even harsher since most maps have very limited soil z-layers to train miners without destroying stone, when you are done with them, every lost miner means that you are going to loose ~100 stones as he trains.
This makes me wonder. Did anyone EVER run out of free stone?
Most players bother with how to get rid of it, not to 'save' it, utilizing atom-smashers, catapults, magma, etc.
I imagine that a long-running fort on a small embark would run out, especially if the area was relatively flat and lacked underground features. In such a situation (particularly if you have half a dozen soil layers/aquifers like my current fort), you never make stone crafts. Even wood crafts are more useful, as I can at least grow trees.
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Fikes

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1283 on: February 08, 2010, 08:39:34 pm »

I wish DF was MORE simplified.

I had a Great Project planned, basiaclly a huge dwarf standing over the entrance to my fort. I really really wanted to make him have a pipe that smoked with combined lava and water but didn't even get close.

I wanted him to be colored with blue shoes and pig tail shirt and all that... anyways...

every story I'd dig through a list of 500 stone types that meant nothing other than a name. NOTHING. If I wanted to use wood I'd dig through 20 wood types that meant nothing other than a name.

Why? Why not just have "Disguishious tree" "Tropical tree" or "iginoius stone" or what ever.

In theory it seems awesome, in pratice it seems silly.

Also still need click and drag mouse support. No more "enter, shift + right, shift + right, down, down, down, enter" to make a simple hallway.

Rockphed

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1284 on: February 08, 2010, 10:51:30 pm »

Also still need click and drag mouse support. No more "enter, shift + right, shift + right, down, down, down, enter" to make a simple hallway.

Depending on the size of the DF window and the size of the desired designation, that could be simplified to "right click, enter, right click, enter," to designate a rectangle with corners where the right clicks happened.  On the other hand, for designating the entire map, shift + direction is much more effective(as it moves 10 every time it is pressed as opposed to the ~ 7 every time the cursor is moved to the edge of the screen.)
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Only vaguely. Made of the same substance and put to the same use, but a bit like comparing a castle and a doublewide trailer.

zwei

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1285 on: February 09, 2010, 02:29:17 am »

Mining works like this too: It is even harsher since most maps have very limited soil z-layers to train miners without destroying stone, when you are done with them, every lost miner means that you are going to loose ~100 stones as he trains.
This makes me wonder. Did anyone EVER run out of free stone?
Most players bother with how to get rid of it, not to 'save' it, utilizing atom-smashers, catapults, magma, etc.
I imagine that a long-running fort on a small embark would run out, especially if the area was relatively flat and lacked underground features. In such a situation (particularly if you have half a dozen soil layers/aquifers like my current fort), you never make stone crafts. Even wood crafts are more useful, as I can at least grow trees.

Indeed, you can easily run out of stones on 2x2 map or on 1x1 mano fortress embark. Flat, no-magma map. Quite constrained resource-wise.

Flaede

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1286 on: February 09, 2010, 02:33:31 am »

Mining works like this too: It is even harsher since most maps have very limited soil z-layers to train miners without destroying stone, when you are done with them, every lost miner means that you are going to loose ~100 stones as he trains.
This makes me wonder. Did anyone EVER run out of free stone?
Most players bother with how to get rid of it, not to 'save' it, utilizing atom-smashers, catapults, magma, etc.
I imagine that a long-running fort on a small embark would run out, especially if the area was relatively flat and lacked underground features. In such a situation (particularly if you have half a dozen soil layers/aquifers like my current fort), you never make stone crafts. Even wood crafts are more useful, as I can at least grow trees.
Indeed, you can easily run out of stones on 2x2 map or on 1x1 mano fortress embark. Flat, no-magma map. Quite constrained resource-wise.

I quite agree. This is why I always embark where there's magma. Obsidian Farming really can be as important as all the other farming.
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Toady typically doesn't do things by half measures.  As evidenced by turning "make hauling work better" into "implement mine carts with physics".
There are many issues with this statement.
[/quote]

Solara

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1287 on: February 09, 2010, 02:42:31 am »

This makes me wonder. Did anyone EVER run out of free stone?
Most players bother with how to get rid of it, not to 'save' it, utilizing atom-smashers, catapults, magma, etc.

I've never run out of stone entirely (aquifer maps don't count) but there are times when a certain type of stone is rare. On my current map I'm trying to build a castle out of alunite and even after compromising with wooden floors there's a chance I may run out.

Which reminds me, the main thing turning me off of DF right now is the fact that you can't build walls on top of floors. I'm having to set up tons of little rooms and it is absolutely maddening.
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Muz

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1288 on: February 09, 2010, 02:43:04 am »

A good friend told me that he wants to learn to play DF, but he gave up because of all the micromanagement. Just saying.
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Innominate

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Re: What turns you off about DF?
« Reply #1289 on: February 09, 2010, 05:26:39 am »

This makes me wonder. Did anyone EVER run out of free stone?
Most players bother with how to get rid of it, not to 'save' it, utilizing atom-smashers, catapults, magma, etc.

I've never run out of stone entirely (aquifer maps don't count) but there are times when a certain type of stone is rare. On my current map I'm trying to build a castle out of alunite and even after compromising with wooden floors there's a chance I may run out.

Which reminds me, the main thing turning me off of DF right now is the fact that you can't build walls on top of floors. I'm having to set up tons of little rooms and it is absolutely maddening.
One thing that *might* help - it helped me build a fort over the ocean. If you build a bridge over the floor you can deconstruct the floor through the bridge. This conserves stone, trains your architect (a tiny bit), and is just generally cool. Interestingly, you can even get rid of the "anchor" floor for a raising bridge, with no consequences.

A fun thing I learned during that process is that you have to be very careful, as it isn't always apparent what will cause a cave-in. But, since you have a bridge under you, it's a relatively harmless dust cloud most of the time.

Although when you're above dangling precariously above an ocean filled with skeletal whales, relatively harmless is still pretty damaging.
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