Print

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

[DanielLC]

Comparative advantage refers to the ability of a person or a country to produce a particular good or service at a lower marginal cost and opportunity cost than another person or country.

Currently, it's quite profitable to sit in your fort and make crafts. The thing is, dwarves can do that anywhere. There are things you can do that they can't. That's why you went all that way to build the fort. You should be using your access to ore, magma, and chasms to make money.

In short, the profit on ore, metal, glass, extracts, cave spider silk, giant cave spider silk, and other things you need to be in a fortress to make should be significantly more than on anything else.

Also, given how cheap wood is, magma wouldn't really be all that valuable. Either make it cheaper or make it so even using magma isn't profitable (so glass and obsidian wouldn't be profitable).

[Pilsu]

While I agree that obsidian really shouldn't be valuable and that cave spider and especially phantom spider silk are sorely underpriced, I'm really not sure what making other goods worthless would accomplish

[jamoecw]

why not wait until toady makes the world economics?  wouldn't that pretty much do everything that you ask?

[Neonivek]

While I agree that obsidian really shouldn't be valuable and that cave spider and especially phantom spider silk are sorely underpriced, I'm really not sure what making other goods worthless would accomplish

It is underpriced because the Goblins for little-no reason found a way to mass produce it.

Which is sad but it is how economics work.

[Granite26]

why not wait until toady makes the world economics?  wouldn't that pretty much do everything that you ask?

There's so much to be done with economics, half-assed solutions don't make sense.  Viva la Caravan Arc!!!

[Rowanas]

indeed. I look forward to mass producing crafts until the market for them belongs to me, and then cutting off supply for a season or two and making vast profits when the market is better.

[Grendus]

indeed. I look forward to mass producing crafts until the market for them belongs to me, and then cutting off supply for a season or two and making vast profits when the market is better.

I hope that someday Toady comes up with a good reason why the humans would want 50,000 low quality mudstone mugs. Seriously.

Prices of a good should go down with how many you sell, and dwarves should actually use some of the crafts. Dwarves should get unhappy if they don't have a mug (and depending on how much money they have after the economy is activated, they should get unhappy thoughts without having a valuable mug). Child dwarves should become menaces that slow up work and randomly pull levers unless you give them toys to play with. Dwarves who like music should practice and play instruments in their spare time. Wealthy dwarves should accumulate crafts in their homes and put them on display. And that's just for starters.

All goods should have a real, practical value, and should depreciate based on how flooded the market is with them. This would encourage fortresses to use more industries and amp up the economic difficulty in DF.

As a side note, dwarves should eat more. Eating twice a season, they skip out on 88 meals that the average RL human does. Granted it's fantasy, but it's also allowing dwarves to pretty much ignore the massive farming populations that comprise most of human history.

[jamoecw]

As a side note, dwarves should eat more. Eating twice a season, they skip out on 88 meals that the average RL human does. Granted it's fantasy, but it's also allowing dwarves to pretty much ignore the massive farming populations that comprise most of human history.

the easiest way to do this (without having dwarfs eating constantly) would be to simply have dwarfs eat say 10 times what they eat now in one sitting.  having them eat 90 meals in one season would be a little too much since a season is so short in df.

maybe have them eat 1 unit per skill level that they have in one sitting (so an unskilled peasant would eat much less than one who is legendary+5 in say mining, and one who is legendary+5 in both mining and woodcutting would eat even more).  that way the required amount of food ramps up with how good your dwarfs are.

[Granite26]

You guys should read through the time scale difficulties thread...

[Grendus]

You guys should read through the time scale difficulties thread...

Read it, it's good. The problem with food consumption isn't so much one of time as it is with farming difficulty. Farming is hard. Up until recent times it took large tracts of land and large portions of a population. Sieges were dangerous not because of the risk of invaders killing you but because they cut you off from your farmland. Dwarves don't need to spend more time eating (on the contrary, I ran the math. If it takes two days for a dwarf to eat and he eats once every 90 days, he's spending, on average, the same amount of time eating that a human does just in one chunk) they need to eat more food per meal. Assuming the foods they select are right next to each other and they carry all the food they plan to eat in one setting - so instead of ten trips to get food they grab 4 Plump Helmets, 3 cat biscuits, and 3 Wild Strawberries - this adds minimal amounts of time to the actual eating, only increasing the value of multiple planters.

Dwarves don't need to spend more time eating, they need to eat more in one session.

[Neonivek]

It was also likely why "Noble battles" even happened (Where the populous was relatively unharmed) because SURE you can take that land with your huge army. If you don't have the farmers and townsfolk to process that food then your army will put further pressure on the hinterland.

[Pilsu]

Is it just me or does just about every thread derail into farming issues?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Get rid of the unrealistic Grower skill. Think about it, it solves everything