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[Pilsu]

Let's try this again.


The basic bed unit should be the cloth bedding, not the frame of the bed. Beds would consist of 3 parts; the bedding, the mattress and the frame. They would be constructed like wells and traps, allowing you to skip placing a mattress and/or the frame if you so choose. The happy thought from sleeping would be severely affected by the composition of the bed, capping it at a lower level if a piece of the bed is missing. A bedroom can hardly be called royal if you're sleeping on the floor! Additionally, the discomfort of sleeping on a rough surface would be eliminated by the mattress, not the act of sleeping in a bed instead of the ground

• _{The frame could be constructed of any material, including stone}
• _{The mattress would be filled with straw and feathers. Water might be an option for leather ones}

Engraving should be trained by actually engraving pictures onto things such as stone mugs and of course, walls and floors. Smoothing shouldn't grant XP for it


Clothes should be handled more realistically

• _{Leather clothes should wear much slower than cloth ones. Slightly worn clothes shouldn't bother dwarves with appropriate personalities}
• _{Anyone assigned to farming should grab a pair of leather boots. Leather gloves should be taken by anyone assigned to hauling and other heavy labor. Foragers, Hunters and Woodcutters would wear hoods, protecting them from the bad thought caused by rain}
• _{Temperature should control the amounts of clothes worn. For instance, cloth gloves and hats would only be worn when it's cold outside}
• _{Shoes should always be made out of leather}
• _{Soldiers should not wear skirts and generally cumbersome clothing. Leather gauntlets need to be added into the game}

Decoration should be less generic. Instead of another batch of spikes, a cabinet might instead have troll bone handles, brass hinges and patterns in gold. A crossbow might have an ivory handle, a glass table might have iron legs, a sword might have a ruby as a pommel stone with a leather finish on the grip and a helmet would have patterns in bronze. Hanging rings and spikes just don't cut it


Bolts and arrows would be made out of bronze, wood or reeds and tipped with different materials. Bone and rock tips wouldn't be reusable but metal ones would be. Shafts wouldn't shatter as readily and ranged weapon mechanics would need to be fixed to lower the requirement for ammo to more reasonable levels

• _{Bows and crossbows should be relegated to wood- and bonecrafting. Bowyer as a separate labor is really frivolous}
• _{Bows should not be usable in melee or merely perform extremely poorly}
• _{Crossbow butts could either be used as flimsy clubs or the launcher fitted with a separate bayonet. Bayonets would use the dagger skill}
• _{A sidearm or a bayonet should be required for proper self-defense in close range. Naturally unnecessary if your troops are screened properly}

Weapons in general could use a little work

• _{Dagger class weapons should deal piercing damage}
• _{Rock swords don't fit the theme of the game seeing as how obscure they are. We should have spears and perhaps axes instead. Such crude weapons should be quite flimsy, making them desperation options instead of something that makes bronze useless}

Damage scaling is out of whack. Best way to make lower end weapons a bit more useful would be to add diminishing returns to quality modifiers. Seeing as poor quality items are a sensible and common suggestion, that should be featured as well. "Superior" as a denotation of quality seems really out of place and isn't very descriptive so I'm going to do away with it entirely.

Damage modifiers would be as such:

• Poor x0.7
• -Adequate- x1.0
• +Well-crafted+ x1.4
• *Finely-crafted* x1.6
• ≡Exceptional≡ x1.8
• ☼Masterful☼ x2.0

This way poorly crafted equipment is just that, far below "well-crafted" while the best of the best isn't overwhelmingly superior. Naturally, NPCs equipment needs to be of higher quality lest they be crippled by this. Preferably, generated equipment's quality would be determined by the civilization's level of craftsmanship, not some arbitrary -armor- tag in the raws. It would need to be moddable however and somewhat sustainable despite random factors

While at this point it's difficult to predict the effect of quality modifiers on the new physics based combat, the desired ratio of change in effectiveness per quality level remains the same

Obsidian due to it's nature would scale differently towards the end to facilitate it's natural sharpness. Only very well worked obsidian would be any match for steel. Or bronze for that matter


Work value and speed need to be adjusted

• _{Cave spider silk should be slightly more valuable than plant based fabrics or wool. A lot more so for phantom spider silk. Risks in silk collection would need to be involved as balance, creating a need for antivenom}
• _{Obsidian should not be ridiculously valuable compared to other stone. It's value should be lowered to 2. Rocks in general should be able to be polished for use as gemstones if the rock is suitable for the purpose}
• _{Labor should be much slower, requiring larger scale production to buy out caravans. Best way to slow it down would be to apply diminishing returns to speed bonuses conferred by skill}
• _{Price multipliers caused by quality levels need to be curbed severely. Material and food costs should be severely inflated. Good worksmanship should be required for importing of materials to be profitable}

If Toady insists that menial labor have skill levels associated with it, they shouldn't be so extensive. Personally I'd just remove skills like milling and growing seeing they have little connection to real life and do nothing but make the work ludicrously quick for no reason. The moniker 'Peasant' is misleading as is. Anyway, working on the assumption that the associated skills are necessary, I'd reduce the amount of ranks for the "lesser" skills

• _Dabbling
• _Novice
• _Adequate
• _Competent
• _Skilled
• _Adept
• _Master

Grand Master Millers or worse, Legendary Millers are pretty silly. There's only so much to learn here, most of the time nothing really. The smaller range of skill ranks would be applied for most labors without quality modifiers such as mining, woodcutting, woodburning etc


Also, Masonry would be split into Stoneworking and Masonry to keep building walls separate from building tables. Walls would be split into proper walls and makeshift palisades and the like. Fortified walls would require Architecture to build. Masonry and Architecture skills would come together to determine the HP of the wall

[smjjames]

The thing about beds seems a bit complicated, but I agree, we should be able to make them out of any material, be it stone, metal, or even glass. Although wood is still likely to be a choice for the first couple because they are quick to make and your starting dwarves will be happier sleeping in them, even if they are communual use beds.

[Pilsu]

Uhm, the point was that the mattress and the bedding were the important parts. The frame wouldn't do anything for the communal barracks

[Grendus]

I like the bed reworking, honestly, the current system seems screwy. You can't make a soft bed out of just wood, you need at least a matress and blankets if it's cold. Plus, beds can just as easily be made out of metal or even stone (though stone beds would be a pita to haul around).

I'd remove the stuffing idea though. None of the animals in the game beyond some hostiles have feathers, you can't fill a leather matress with water (dwarves lack the technology to waterproof large leather containers, and waterbeds have to be heated or they're freezing cold). I've always assumed that just like plants grow without fertilizer and dwarves never poo, some stuff goes on behind the scenes we don't see.




As for Pilsu's other suggestions: in order...

The engraving change I like. I would add that the value increase from engraving should be reduced, however block walls should be engravable while raw stone walls should not. Making stone blocks should take longer to compensate.

The clothing change I like. However, the leather system needs to be reworked, currently a kitten gives as much leather as a cow. The smallest butcherable animals like kittens and groundhogs should give one unit, while large animals like cows should give a lot more. This could be easily coded in by basing the amount of leather a skinnable animal gives on it's creature size in the raws.

As for the decoration changes - YES!!! I love it. It will take some time to implement, but I honestly think that being able to issue your dwarves, say, steel crossbows with ivory handles would add a lot of depth to the game.

The ammo suggestion was one I was thinking about suggesting. I like it. The damage bonus from flint and obsidian needs to be reduced though, considerably. Stone should be somewhere between copper and bronze, and should also include flint as a sharp stone. Arrows should also be re-stackable, or else quivers should have a maximum number of arrows in them and dwarves will fill the quiver until it's full (so 30 stacks of 1 Steel Arrow or 1 stack of 25 Steel Arrows).

There's another really good thread about non-metal weapons. Stone axes, spears, maces, and knives were very common in early days, they should be implemented. Wooden spears and clubs should also be implemented. Stone and wooden weapons should break very fast against iron or steel armor though, their main weakness is they're fragile.

Yes to cave spider silk value and danger, yes to phantom spider silk (and it should be tradeable), yes to obsidian value, yes to speed. Overall pretty good. I would add though that dwarves should buy and use crafts when the economy is started. Dwarves should want mugs to drink booze from, dwarves who like music should spend some of their spare time learning to play instruments, child dwarves should want toys, and dwarves should collect crafts when they have extra cash and wear them.

Masonry should stick with making furniture. Architecture, currently a weak skill, should be applied to making walls, and when walls are destructible architecture skill should contribute to their strength.

[Granite26]

regardless of anything else, good job putting a beautiful OP together

[Pilsu]

I'd remove the stuffing idea though. None of the animals in the game beyond some hostiles have feathers

That wouldn't be hard to change. They could also be used for fletching and flying game. Fauna is pretty limited as is

Straw will inevitably be a necessary addition too

you can't fill a leather matress with water (dwarves lack the technology to waterproof large leather containers, and waterbeds have to be heated or they're freezing cold)

They had goatskin waterbeds in 3600 B.C. Persia. Granted, it was probably pretty hot during the day. Not really worth adding to the game

The damage bonus from flint and obsidian needs to be reduced though, considerably. Stone should be somewhere between copper and bronze, and should also include flint as a sharp stone

Agreed. Then again, obsidian is quite sharp. Needing replacements is a downside in itself

The way I'd handle it, I'd tone down general bonuses from quality levels dramatically. Better yet, add diminishing returns to price and damage mods instead. That way no quality goods are crap as they should be while high end stuff isn't overwhelmingly superior.

• x1.5
• x1.7
• x1.8
• x1.9
• x2.0

Obsidian would scale better towards the end, making very well made obsidian arrowheads and weapons catch up to finer metals while the low end shaggy edges wouldn't be very effective, easily outclassed by metal. They'd still be flimsy but worth using

Updated the original post

yes to phantom spider silk (and it should be tradeable)

Well, you're gonna have to set up that fort yourself seeing where the bugs live

Masonry should stick with making furniture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry
The general idea was to separate wall building from making furniture. It's irritating trying to control who does what when they overlap

Masonry might have quality levels as well once walls actually have durability but for now it doesn't really need an associated skill

[tsen]

I agree with most of these changes, and my compliments on a well-formatted post.

Bedding: In the spirit of DF realism, I feel we should keep feathers/straw/etc. as filling and not abstract the step.  Especially since hopefully we'll eventually be able to use the straw to make thatched roofs and feathers for decoration and fletching. So A+!

Engraving I think smoothing stone should give small amounts of engraving XP but only to say, the Novice/Adequate level.

Clothing:
Nitpick:  Shoes can be made out of things other than leather, but I agree that in general shoes should be boots that are made of leather. Later on maybe wooden clogs, disposable cloth shoes for hospitals, etc.?
Idea: Cumbersome articles could be allowed but give penalties. Reason? Ceremonial guards! Have whichever nobles end up wanting guards demand a certain standard of appearance, i.e. value of the uniform. Strictly utilitarian items could actually lower the apparent value of a uniform.

Decoration: If we could 1. specify the decoration on an item and 2. decorations were fully moddable, I imagine we'd have a near-perfect system, since players could create their own lists, and I assume we'd end up with a mega-file from shared content. I was going to present a summary, but 20 min into it I realized this is getting too complicated for me to be writing at 5am after a 5 hour drive. More on this later.

Bows & Arrows: I agree completely, but would myself like to see subskills implemented so that Boyer and Fletcher were sub-skills of Woodworking.

Weapons: Agreed. If I may nitpick, having a damage-value-change from quality is probably moot once physics based combat is in, but it would be nice to see quality affect combat meta-stats. Things like sharpness, durability and balance are appropriate. Having a well-made sword deal twice the damage doesn't necessarily make sense.

Work Value and Speed: Could not possibly agree with you more.

Menial Labor: While I like the idea of a Legendary Miller, as it amuses me, I must agree that after a certain point you should hit a skill wall where you just can't get better at menial tasks and advancement becomes stat based. Although given the fantastic nature of the game, I would say that perhaps each skill could have a variety of flags which could be associated with it, and for example, Miller could have [ADV:5:2]  which softcaps skill advancement at "Skilled" and which exponentially increases (x^2  in this case) the XP needed for skillups past the 5th. I mean, theoretically in a fantasy world you could have a miller who really IS that good, but it should take a long, long, long time.

As for Stoneworking and Masonry: Yes, yes, as thousand times yes. And for backwards compatibility, might as well add Masonry in as a skill. It does take skill to some extent. Masonry might have been primarily menial labor in the Middle Ages, but they had teams being supervised by skilled professionals working under the direction of an architect. Unless dwarves are all literate and have high reading comprehension, I doubt they can just say "oh, there's the blueprint, righto" and start throwing bricks together.

Speaking of bricks, mud + straw = adobe and mud + straw + oven = baked bricks. If the weather was clear and hot I guess they could also be sun-dried. Most of this would be for modders though.

[Felblood]

Dang. Did all this need to be in one thread? Some of these are bound to get short shrift, if you do it like this. I know if has more traction on the front page, but there's more to consider than just that. Here goes:

I have mixed feelings about the bedding thing. Most bedding would be filled with cotton, wool, straw feathers, or any one of a dozen things that don't exist, in game. Perhaps this should wait for sheep shearing and duck plucking, since if it's going in, it might as well be a version that doesn't suffer from the same sort of abstraction you are trying to remove.

Unframed beds should have some sort of serious drawback for dwarves that aren't tough, but maybe could train endurance. I would go so far as to propose a skill for sleeping in awkward positions and conditions, but I think that's going too far.

===

Once again, I firmly oppose a total smoothing/engraving split. They should probably be separate labors, but cutting rock faces smooth, and cutting pictures into rock faces are similar enough to merit being joined. See also, fish dissector.

Engraving should tax a number of stats that mere smoothing doesn't touch, though. Creativity and aesthetic sense, just to start. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize that a smoothed wall should be flat, but a masterful engraving should require inspiration and thought.

As to the coin thing. Engraving metal isn't the same as cutting stone, at all. If the skill were named differently, would this even come up at all?

==

As to rock swords: I actually like them. They really give you a chance to break out of generic faux Europe and make the fortress your own.

My first fortress to stave off an attack was on a treeless desert volcano, with bone armors and obsidian swords, and I wouldn't trade that experience for all the steel plated legions ever trained.

This was before I discovered the wiki; that versatility is important to keeping DF accessible.

==

I wouldn't mind seeing fletching be it's own skill, and more synergy with woodcrafting.

[Pilsu]

I have mixed feelings about the bedding thing. Most bedding would be filled with cotton, wool, straw feathers, or any one of a dozen things that don't exist, in game. Perhaps this should wait for sheep shearing and duck plucking, since if it's going in, it might as well be a version that doesn't suffer from the same sort of abstraction you are trying to remove.

Butcher bird, receive feathers. It's not that hard

Once again, I firmly oppose a total smoothing/engraving split. They should probably be separate labors, but cutting rock faces smooth, and cutting pictures into rock faces are similar enough to merit being joined. See also, fish dissector.

Engraving should tax a number of stats that mere smoothing doesn't touch, though. Creativity and aesthetic sense, just to start. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize that a smoothed wall should be flat, but a masterful engraving should require inspiration and thought.

This was about granting XP. Smoothing rock will not teach you to engrave masterful pictures any more than having imagination and aesthetic affinity automatically teaches you to draw. It's a practiced skill like any other. Deal with it, smoothing walls until you're a master engraver is blatant exploiting

As to rock swords: I actually like them. They really give you a chance to break out of generic faux Europe and make the fortress your own.

Adding the most obscure stone weapon you can find does not make the game "culturally diverse"

My first fortress to stave off an attack was on a treeless desert volcano, with bone armors and obsidian swords, and I wouldn't trade that experience for all the steel plated legions ever trained.

Bone armor is pretty stupid in itself but I'm hoping Toady's new materials will render it ineffective and brittle naturally


Woodcrafting synergy was covered in the material skill thread. Fletching should be it's own skill, don't think it'd overlap with anything

[Felblood]

Once again, I firmly oppose a total smoothing/engraving split. They should probably be separate labors, but cutting rock faces smooth, and cutting pictures into rock faces are similar enough to merit being joined. See also, fish dissector.

Engraving should tax a number of stats that mere smoothing doesn't touch, though. Creativity and aesthetic sense, just to start. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize that a smoothed wall should be flat, but a masterful engraving should require inspiration and thought.

This was about granting XP. Smoothing rock will not teach you to engrave masterful pictures any more than having imagination and aesthetic affinity automatically teaches you to draw. It's a practiced skill like any other. Deal with it, smoothing walls until you're a master engraver is blatant exploiting[/quote]

I agree that there is a problem here. I simply feel that your proposed solution is a step in the wrong direction. Maybe we just have very different ideas about what it means to smooth walls.

As to rock swords: I actually like them. They really give you a chance to break out of generic faux Europe and make the fortress your own.

Adding the most obscure stone weapon you can find does not make the game "culturally diverse"[/quote]

Who said anything about culture? They just make the game more diverse, by providing an alternate route to steel grade swords. They should definitely be less powerful, especially against armor, and weapon degradation should fix a lot of the problems with them(besides that they are way too fast to produce, once you mine the rock), but they aren't going away. "Deal with it."

My first fortress to stave off an attack was on a treeless desert volcano, with bone armors and obsidian swords, and I wouldn't trade that experience for all the steel plated legions ever trained.

Bone armor is pretty stupid in itself but I'm hoping Toady's new materials will render it ineffective and brittle naturally

Bone armor is already so bad that you only use it if you have nothing else, does it really need more nerf, beyond the obvious item degradation fix?

It's actually a tragedy that bone armor is as bad as it is. You can't honestly deny the awesome factor of bone armor. There comes a time when you have to make a concession to awesomeness. Maybe, someday the magic arc will restore bone armor to it's rightful place of glory.

Woodcrafting synergy was covered in the material skill thread. Fletching should be it's own skill, don't think it'd overlap with anything

I meant more synergy between woodcrafting and bowmaking, sorry that that wasn't as clear as it should have been.

Wait, this proposal assumes that your other proposal is implemented, exactly as described? Should I re-read it in full before examining these ideas, to make sure I'm on the same page?

[Pilsu]

The specifics aren't important, it's just one way of adding synergy between carpentry and carving. The first post plainly states I'd get rid of bowyers entirely, it's a pointless skill

The problem I have with stone swords is the fact that they're so out of place. Doesn't help other stone weapons aren't featured for some inexplicable reason. That and you don't actually need to work the stone well for them to match steel, any retarded mongrel can make a steel-grade sword out of some obsidian pebbles without any practice. That's just wrong

Armor made of cow bone falls flat on it's face when it comes to the rule of cool. Bone theme certainly works but the bones themselves are rather useless as armor and look silly for the most part. The new materials will make some bones useful however, meaning kitten bone armor is worthless whereas troll bone might actually do something

[Granite26]

Cloth Shoes are slippers, so they're valid.  Perhaps they shouldn't be as good as leather though.

I agree about the value of goods.  There should be an oportunity cost to a poorly crafted good.  I'd like to see a better curve on skill: quick to get up to producing no quality, hard to get past.  Caravan profits of more than 10% would also help this.

It's possible that menial labor could be a skill that doesn't affect the job.  You don't get better at carrying stuff, but the skill ranks up and you get strength for it. 

You know that a lot of your suggestions are just complaining that the relevant systems aren't deep enough, right?  There are raws and skills arcs that should be coming up that might resolve some of this, or at least would be the appropriate place to make the deep, expansive changes you're talking about.

[Chthonic]

I like the gloves and boots.  Maybe a dwarf laborer who doesn't have the appropriate PPE for his job might suffer damage to his hands?

[forsaken1111]

Engraving should be trained by actually engraving pictures onto things such as stone mugs and of course, walls and floors. Smoothing shouldn't grant XP for it

I disagree with this. Smoothing stone out to an aesthetically pleasing flat plane isn't all that easy, as stone tends to flake and chip and shatter. It would take some skill to make honestly smooth walls from natural stone, and a lot of time.

[Granite26]

Engraving should be trained by actually engraving pictures onto things such as stone mugs and of course, walls and floors. Smoothing shouldn't grant XP for it

I disagree with this. Smoothing stone out to an aesthetically pleasing flat plane isn't all that easy, as stone tends to flake and chip and shatter. It would take some skill to make honestly smooth walls from natural stone, and a lot of time.

Do you think smoothing and engraving uses the same skill set?