Blurring the lines between management and unit AI: NOW ON ESV!
another post i made got me thinking about unit management handling in fortress mode. currently the player pretty much micro manages all the units, with the exception of nobles, and maybe 1 or 2 other special cases. and this suggestion in no way nullifies the need for a dorf foreman like capability built in to the core DF. we still need to be able to effectively manage our workforce, especially in the early/mid game. what i am proposing is more for late game.
first an example, thought up and hinted at in another post, but fleshed out a bit here.
Uris McEntrepreneur is a crafts dorf in a bustling 150 dorf community. a few shops were built a moth or so ago, and urist now wants to try his hand at shop keeping. so he raids his bank account that he built up carving bone bolts and buys a shop and a few items. at first (like now) he spends little time there, but he does manage to make money on his investment. gradually he spends more and more time tending his shop, and less and less time crafting bone bolts. eventually urist decides he doe not want to craft bone bolts anymore, that he makes enough dorfola tending his shop to make him happy, and he does not give a damn about the hunters that are dieing because they are out of ammo and using their bone crossbows as impromptu hammers, and urist changes class to the merchant noble. as a merchant urist can now buy trade goods from the fortress to stock his store, and sell to visiting trade caravans. he must still rent his room, pay for food, and also a room to manage his shop from, but he is, like all the nobility, free from other fortress responsibility. he is free to use the trade depot to trade for trinkets from caravans, and perhaps even hire part time lackey to tend his store while he attends parties. after a while urist decides he does not want to pay full price for fortress goods anymore. he decides to purchase a workshop, and only buy raw materials from the fortress. in this case urist goes into the totem making business, and starts buying up all the sculls that are cluttering up the butcher shops. he works furiously as his own dorf for the rest of his life, a free and successful dorf. until he makes a bad purchase from a caravan, looses all his money, his shop and his rooms, and is forced to return to the linse churning out bone bolts for his bread and butter.
my question is, do you think this is a feasible idea? in a large fortress would you be willing to accept a small percentage of dorfs going off permanently (or semi permanently, depending on their success) and doing their own thing? of course there will have to be controls on what they can and cannot do, and what they can and cannot take. right now its seems a little ad hock, but that is understandable, since the economy has not really been fleshed out. here are a few ideas as to what can be throw in as far as controls go:
1. dorfs don't get to go into the free market unless they own a shop. this will give you at least rudimentary controls as to how many and who gets to participate. this should probably also include the ability for the player to "buy back" a store if a critical dorf tries his hand at shopkeeping.
2. dorfs don't get to grab goods willy-nilly. fortress goods must be marked "free to trade" or something to tell dorfs that those goods, while still able to be used by the fortress proper, are available for purchase buy private enterprise. this includes both raw mats and finished goods.
3. dorfs need the ability to rent rooms, like they already do for bedrooms, to handle anything they need to do. workshops can either be rented by the month, by the job, or not at all, depending on how the player sets them, same goes for offices and other rooms.
4. the player needs the ability to buy back owned items. this way if a merchant buys that one item from the caravan that you need you can still get it. it will also help with the owned-sock-blocking-the-gate problem. buy it back and dump it.
5. dorfs should probably not have unlimited funds anymore. nobility should be paid from the rent collected and items sold. player actions should probably still be paid out of an infinite "fortress reserve" though.
6. free market dorfs need the ability to ask for things, such as storage space (or maybe just keep it all at the shop, raw mats and all) workshops to buy or rent, nicer rooms if none are available, materials to purchase etc. basically a way to communicate what they want from the player. maybe like a mandate system, but with the only negative a bad thought.
7. dorfs should also be able to negotiate with the liaison for goods they want, such as mats that you either do not have or do not make available. this may or may not be shown to the player, but it would be cool if you could go someplace and look. "urist requested shells from the human liaison cause the fortress master is a bastard and is hording them all for moody dorfs"
8. dorfs should be able to temporarily hire other dorfs to do work for them, such as commissioning goods to be made for their store, from raw mats they already own. they would pay the other dorf to do this, possibly with a tax that goes to the nobility. dorfs available for hire could be marked with the dorf manager, so that really important dorfs time is not taken up making glass trinkets for the free market, and instead continue to pump out glass blocks for the tower of doom.
of course all this needs to tie in with a revamped economy, but that is another discussion entirely.
what do you all think?
edit: title
Author
Topic: controling the free market (Read 3214 times)