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[Bricks]

Probably the best point I've seen on here, Pjoo.  I'm not sure that heavy metal poisoning or genetic diseases are in any way fair to the player, but poisons and infectious disease are obviously going to be included.  I guess there are two ways to address this - you can treat the disease, or you can treat the symptoms.  The latter is much easier to build a game around, even though it isn't a realistic long-term solution.  I really don't like the idea of having a sick ward, waiting around for a surgeon to hit a fey mood so he can figure out how to cure a disease using cat leather and microcline.  Any sort of cure would just seem like garbage, unless you hardcoded the cure, or, you made some very tight restrictions about what cured the disease.  Like a spider bite needs spider antivenin, and the chicken pox needs chicken nuggets.  You say that having the dwarves "know" the cure is unrealistic, but so is any sort of research they would do.  Essentially they'd either stand around for a fixed period of time at a desk until they "knew" the cure, or they would run around the fortress to find new things to rub on their sick patients.

[Pjoo]

you can treat the disease, or you can treat the symptoms.

Well, you diagnose the patient based on symptoms and then treat the disease if you want to get rid of it, cause pain pills to treat headache caused by brain tumor is stupid.

  Any sort of cure would just seem like garbage, unless you hardcoded the cure, or, you made some very tight restrictions about what cured the disease.  Like a spider bite needs spider antivenin, and the chicken pox needs chicken nuggets.

Maybe not hardcoded cures, but coded anyways. Anti-venom against venoms, made from the venom. Chickweed cream, yarrow or vinegar for chicken pox, dunno if the nuggets work. Aloe vera on burns, many herbs that relieve chronic pain, such as opium and cannabis. Also many herbs that can be used as anti-depressants and Garlic can be used as antibiotic, and so on.

You say that having the dwarves "know" the cure is unrealistic, but so is any sort of research they would do.  Essentially they'd either stand around for a fixed period of time at a desk until they "knew" the cure, or they would run around the fortress to find new things to rub on their sick patients.

Well, without chemistry, it sure is hard to come up with some medicines, but expirementing helps! It might be common knowledge that anti-venom a works against venom a, but diagnosing venom a requires medical research on the symptoms or the causes of the venom a. So instead of just letting people to die to venom a, you let unicorn bite goblin and study the effects of unicorn venom on goblins, etc.

[blue sam3]

Well, for all of those that have been complaining that the whole 'research X for Y time to discover Z' thing is gamey, how about a more general system, whereby your dwarves experiment in various areas, and if you're lucky, they come up with something that works (for instance, they're mixing some metals together, produce some worthless piles of garbage, then at some point, they try mixing copper, tin & bismuth, and come up with the idea of bismuth bronze. They don't even have to be dedicated researchers, just metalsmiths trying things out between making other things.

[jaked122]

well, there is a slot for mechanical computers pre 1400s, and in fact it was about 1600 years before the cutoff, but it was not programmable... wait the computers that players have made in dwarf fortress worked the same way, but 10000 times larger.

[jaked122]

If you accept "Discoveries by implementation", then it is possible that they might reduce FPS hell somewhat.

That is: One might be able to make some of these things "non-flows" and thus requiring a lot less detailed modeling on the 1/7th-of-a-square-of-water level.

Congratulations: you've made  a four-story structure that takes in a square of water, keeps a constant mist in these sixteen tiles, and returns exactly one square of water to this exit square. Now it is a -building- that does exactly the same thing. (With rules that can break the building - like magma flowing through, etc.) Next time you want a mist generator, it shows up under "Your Designs" (or whatever) as "My cool thing #1" and just demands the appropriate materials and skills for an identical design.

A swath of the interesting things that -can- be done with the available tools are just crushed by the FPS cost. If you could designate a random cubical area as "a construction" and pre-calculate all the effects of replacing all the subcomponents by a single object... I'd think that would have the potential of completely avoiding explicitly adding anything verboten while still being quite useful and improving speed to boot.

well... it is possible that a player could have an 'analyze system' designation for what technology he wants, I guess... that is complicated, but not as complicated as having to navigate a billion systems previously analysed automatically by the game, that would take fun out, and make far overcomplicated machines that take entire maps to build.

[neek]

To take a tangent...

Perhaps instead of technologies being researched (a la Civilization), it would make more sense if certain "advancements" were accidental or incidental, but out of the player's control? That is, a dwarf can enter into a secretive mood, and in addition to his artifact, he can contribute a small bonus to the community (+10% quality in crafting X). Reclaiming a site, once you rediscover the artifact, you suddenly "gain" the knowledge. These advancements should be restricted to one job (Masonry e.g.) and one task (Crafts, e.g.).

It might be possible that a Legendary dwarf can have a "stroke of genius." This chance should be infintessimaly small, so as not to create fortresses where they ADVANCE EVERY FIELD KNOWN TO MAN ON A LONG ENOUGH TIMELINE. Multiple effects shouldn't stack, or should return less on each additional advancement.

This could generate a custom descriptor: "This is a masterwork wooden barrel. It is sealed with resin as is the method of the Urists of Uristing," or, "This is a well-crafted bone bolt. It has spiral grooves, as is the style of Urists of Uristing." Or, "This is a fine glass vial. It has bubbles and swirls of color, as is the style of...", you get the idea.

Some of these advancements could require an extra item per 10 items made (tracked much the same that melting down an item is tracked, per workshop), and wouldn't spam a message if you don't have it--they just use it if they have it. These additional ingredients should be non-essential items, things that you wouldn't expect.

This might provide greater immersion: Your dwarves might develop their own style, while imported items will have other styles because of the advancements they made. It doesn't give the player a linear progression to work with, nor can it break the timeline that we're dealing with, or cause frustration (OH NOES I HAVE TO RESEARCH GLASS-BLOWING BEFORE I CAN COLLECT SAND!?!?)

[blue sam3]

Now that sounds like a good idea.

[Granite26]

neek:

I like a lot of that.  Maybe not as the entirety, because it fails to capture drastic technical differences.

I mentioned in another thread:  Artifacts as prototypes of new techs become even more interesting when the civ in question doesn't actually get the tech at the end of the process.  You end up with neat apocryphal techs like damascus steel, bagdad batteries, that buried greek thing, the aelophile, a philosopher's stone... stuff that does stuff and uses the tech but doesn't necessarily give you the tech at the end of it.  1000 years later, the artifact is just a finely crafted example of primitive tech, but today, it's a magic item that's irreplicable.

[neek]

I hope something like that is already in the devlogs.

I like your idea, Granite, that "high tech" or "out of scope" tech to be artifacts only--a mechanic building a masterwork water clock, requiring you then to figure out how to set it up. Might be a multi-tile furniture, and then you play around with how to get it to accept water into it. But at the end, there is no reason why core Dwarf Fortress should be limited out of the box, requiring a greater devotion of time to accomplish what can already be accomplished (I mean, let's be honest, DF is a pretty huge timesink.)

Smaller technological advances should give a boon to your general output and style of your fortress, but shouldn't "unlock" features that are readily available in previous releases. I'm very wary of how expansive this idea can be, though--could you provide more DF-oriented examples?

[Granite26]

I'm still stuck in the mindset that the same language used to say how dwarves are different (technologically) from humans should be used to describe how dwarves today are different (technologically) from yesterday.

I also like the idea of technological advancement being used to create different play worlds in the same way the wars in worldgen do.

I'm actually uninterested in how the tech level would advance in the scope of a single fortress.  (which is why minor steps that don't DO anything sound good)

Beyond that, I'm not sure how to answer your questions.  Examples of what, exactly?  Damascus Steel might be the artifact version of 'highly carbonated steel' (or whatever), rating in at 10% better than normal steel, but once the amount created (say, 30 units?) by the mood is gone, you can't make more.  Any number of silly engines could be created as artifacts... (objects that create various amounts of power without needing wind or water).  They could actually be done without a rewrite, and if the numbers are right, wouldn't be unbalancing.  Say a mysterious machine that takes fuel and produces enough power to run a single pump for X turns.