Print

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

[GlyphGryph]

they shouldn't make them of YOU, and in fact shouldn't even bother telling you, since Toady has stated mandates are independently ordered and aren't really part of "the will of the fortress". They should simply send the command to an appropriate workshop if one exists and the material is available. Maybe a little mention as an announcement like "Noble Urist Urungun has mandated a silver flask at blacksmith number 4" to help you keep track of the decidedly stupid outcomes that will likely follow, but it would still make more sense if they did it of their own initiative.

And it would be great when you go to make something from your metal stockpile and all the valuable metals are gone, and you notice that while you weren't paying attention one of your nobles confiscated all the fortresses metals to make a couple dozen flutes he now has filling the cabinets in his room.


Additional : If you have a higher ranked noble, you should be able to somehow reprimand lower ranked nobles for such actions, though with a possible negative impact on the higher ranked noble based on relationship and personality type - to the point where if they were friends and the higher ranked noble had little concern for authority, he wouldn't even do it.

[Derakon]

Automatic use of possibly-vital fortress supplies is a big no-no, at least as it currently stands. It tends to lead to "you lost because the computer said so" types of situations unless you're excessively paranoid.

Granted, the current mandate system has similar problems...

[Felblood]

It's going to take a deeper level change than that to make mandates balanced and intuitive. Currently, the ability to tell the nobles "no" is sometimes critical to survival.

Currently, the optimal solution to nobles that demand impossible things, is to never give them a police force, and then ignore them.

It makes the noble himself kind of unhappy, but his quarters and dining room generally have to be so awesome that it doesn't matter, unless he constantly asks for things you can't provide.

This is clearly an exploit, since not having a fortress guard to enforce his whims should tick him off, if his mandate is being ignored. However, until the nobles are a little smarter about what they request, I'll feel no remorse about using it. The fortress guard has no other real use, and the happiness hit for not having them is very minor.

Ignoring the nobles might seem "wrong" to you, but it's an alternative to locking them in their room, die of thirst, after all their friends forget about them, or simply dunking them in the lava.

[Dakk]

A rather easy and decent solution would be keeping mandates but making it so that the your mayor only asks about that pretty clear glass table he's been talking about for years if there's clear glass availiable. Nobles should make stupid demands from time to time, but possible demands only.

I've lost count of how many times my nobles asked for clear glass in a map with no sand.

[Felblood]

An easier option would be to simply turn the mandates into "Requests". If the mayor wants a clear glass table, he should be able to try to get one made/imported, but he shouldn't go having people hammered if it happens to be impossible.

The only reason he gets to do that is because the crime rates in DF are otherwise too low to keep the police as busy as they should be.

We shouldn't have to wait for proper crime, for this nonsense to stop.

[corvvs]

I have a different take on it.

The current system has both mandates AND requests/demands. Mandates are (or should be) things "for the good of the fort" -- Mayor McCheese mandates the construction of 7 spike traps for the front hallway. Requests are things for the nobles' personal use, which can be either wrought or imported -- "I would like an obsidian chest in my bedroom"

The only thing I would change about the mandate system is to make the nobles mandates depend on personality -- if the noble is corrupt, we get the current system, where essentially random items are mandated because the noble likes them, not because they serve any purpose. If the mandates really are (or are supposed to be) useful for the fort, then punishment is not unwarranted for refusal to do the work.

Requests on the other hand...

Requests should require quality. If a craftsdwarf is commissioned to make a statue comemmorating the wedding of the Count and Countess Consort and he screws it up (makes something with no or poor quality modifiers) then he gets jailed/hammered. If he refuses, it's hammer time.

I know this is going to be unpopular among the crowd here, but yeah, basically I think a corrupt noble should be heavy on the hammer.

The only problem I see currently is that even non-corrupt nobles mandate things that aren't needed. "The fort is in dire need of red spinel items!" The only purpose for that mandate would be for trade items, right? Of course as soon as you finish making them... "The Count has banned the export of red spinel items." Again, I'm NOT against that! I just think it should be an uncommon noble who does it, and it should depend on his personality.

[tsen]

As long as it makes sense within a defined framework, we're ok.

A good noble might demand sensible things while a corrupt noble might demand senseless things for himself and his cronies, but we should have some form of recourse other than "hey come into this big pipe-closet..."

[Felblood]

I'd like to qualify that corrupt nobles should only get hammer happy if they have a large fortress under them.

Even the corrupt value lives when they are a scarce resource, though not in a way that could be considered normal.

[corvvs]

That's true if they were nobles appointed from the existing fortress community. But currently we don't get that; we get appointees sent from the Mountainhomes. So they might easily look around and say "Look at all these slackers. You wouldn't see such wilful sloth at the King's court! We need to institute some good old-fashioned discipline here! I need somebody to make an example of..."

[ArPharazon]

I'd love nobles using up my items for their own dumb mandates, but presently it would make very little impact on my fortresses, which have a tradition of welcoming nobility with a jacuzzi filled with lava.

[Grendus]

Currently, the optimal solution to nobles that demand impossible things, is to never give them a police force, and then ignore them.

The optimal solution to nobles that demand impossible things is magma.

[Rowanas]

If you kill a noble with spikes, you lack dwarvishness
If you kill a noble with magma, you lack class
If you let a noble kill themselves, you have both.

[HammerHand]

If the noble is the one throwing the lever that causes the spikes and/or magma to end his or her pitiful life, does that count?  (Actually, I don't know any other way to make sure they die than to have them pull the lever)

[Rowanas]

Send them mad. Give everyone else better gear, better rooms, ignore the mandates, put their room in the rain etc. Eventually they'll throw themselves off a cliff, impale themselves on your elite champions or just wither and die.

[G-Flex]

I think noble mandates/demands should be linked to personality.

A friendly, reasonable noble should only demand things that are reasonable and appropriate.

If your noble is a complete out-of-touch jackass, then I can see him mandating stuff you don't have and then getting angry and not taking any excuses when you don't make it.

And I think demands should be a little more flexible, in the sense that a noble should be more liable to demand something infeasible than he is to mandate it. After all, a production mandate is essentially binding and punishable, whereas a demand is just something he'd like to have.


Of course, this doesn't count the problem that you should be able to trade for glass/sand/rough gems/etc regardless, which would solve a lot of mandate difficulties to start.