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[Malrin]

Hello guys, sorry if this has been discussed before or Toady said something important about it, but I'd like to share my biggest complaint with Dwarf Fortress:

You have to pick the perfect site, and stick with it.

Whenever I want to make a fortress, I have to get a site that is small as possible to reduce lags, yet I want to have the option of HFS-ing, having a magma forge, having flux stone, having a bottomless pit, etc. This means I have to keep generating worlds over and over and over until I get the perfect fortress, but then I end up losing it to an orc siege, tantrum spiral, or I just get bored of the design of my fortress.

If I get bored with my sprawling, industrial 150+ dwarf fortress (Or if it's missing something I want) I have to discard the whole thing and start again with a wagon and 7 dwarves.

Also, I am not as interested to what's happening to the world outside my fortress because I keep creating more worlds just for the good fort locations. I don't explore fortresses in adventure mode because I only have 1 fortress per world, which usually hasn't even been abandoned yet.

Could we have a system where the entire fortress population (and all their supplies) could migrate to a different zone? I think this would enhance all areas of dwarf fortress. Examples:

• You could leave your fortress behind and it could be explored later on, or your population could migrate back to it later, only to find that goblins have taken up residence! (Or you could prepare a well defended fortress to fall back to if your people are threatened. Helm's deep, anyone?)
• This migration system would mean that there are plenty of abandoned fortresses in a single world to explore in adventure mode.
• So your fortress has flourished in this serene biome, and you've got a huge band of battle-hardened warriors with nothing to do? Migrate to an evil biome and rip the place up. (Or find yourself a HFS.)
• If you want to build a mega-structure but you don't want to do it in an existing fort, you won't have to start over and wait for migrants to come, build up the infrastructure to support them, train them into masons/carpenters/metalworkers, and then finally build the damn thing.
• You will have limitless resources. If you actually manage to use up all the metals, you can just migrate to a different area and get more. I restrain from using Adamantine because once it's out, it's out. (Unless I use the free Adamantine reaction) Also you won't be stuck if your map has no Bauxite or Flux and you want a magma-fueled steel industry, and your parent civilization doesn't have it either. We wouldn't have to worry about running out of creatures that don't respawn.
• There would be more roleplay and community game possibilities. We could have a migrating native tribe of dwarves, or colonists, or a band of vikings that attack villages, or a secret order of exceptional mason cultists that travel the globe to build giant stone monuments to Armok.
• If you picked an area that was suitable with a small population, but after a few migrant waves it has become a lagfest, then you have the option of migrating to a smaller area.
• I like hijacking towns of other civilizations, but they rarely have interesting features surrounding them, so the only purpose of my fortress is to build up my population and live alongside them. A tedious yet fruitless effort. If I could migrate to the town and live there for a few years and then leave to find an underground river when I get bored, it would be much better. (Also you could use the siege weapons to actually siege the kobold towers or human towns.)
• More time will be spent in a single world, so it's history will be richer. Also you could brag about having a civilization that lasted 300 years without spending all that time in one fortress.
• Children would be more useful, as they mature in 12 years, and I've had fortresses that lost their novelty before 12 years had passed, so the children were little more than a liability and a lever-puller.
• If your fortress is built on an aquifer or another annoying feature, you won't have to choose between putting up with it or starting all over again.

But then how would this be implemented so it is practical, fun, and not horribly unrealistic?

I think we should be able to build wagons. We can build a bunch of wagons beforehand, then when the time comes to embark, the player would activate the embark option, then the dwarves will start loading the wagons and readying the animals. When prepared, and the embark button is pushed again, the convoy will leave the map. The player can then pick a nearby location (because we shouldn't be able to move all the way across the world in one go.) Then start building a fort. (or camp, or tribal village.)

Or we could set it up so 5-15 dwarves migrate to the new location to set up basic lodgings, and they will receive a lot of migrants from the old fortress until there is none left.

I'm very new to modding and I'm still grasping the workings of the game, so I don't know if this idea is feasible to implement into Dwarf Fortress in the near future.

What are your thoughts? Ideas? Improvements?

Edit:

Added Mass migration to the Eternal Suggestion voting thingy. Go to http://www.bay12games.com/forum/eternal_voting.php#vote115 and search for "Mass migration."

[Talanic]

I tend to have problems similar to the ones you describe; genning worlds and discaring them if they don't have the site I'm looking for.  I'm not sure that mass migrations are a suitable response to this, but as such things have occasionally happened in real history (usually when there was darn good reason) I suppose Toady might institute something.

[Shaostoul]

IIRC people complain about any migration wave over even just 10. So I think it may be a bad idea, unless you possibly get a warning, so you can get prepared for it. The idea is cool, but a lot of people may dislike a lot of migrants or starting dwarfs.

[Warlord255]

The "perfect site" problems should be solved once the new underground is in, I'd hope; if nothing else, magma will be readily available.

[Pilsu]

Being able to have more than 1 feature per mountain range would help. Chasms and rivers running through regions would also help. I don't much care for the stupid zigzag or the chasm fingers. Chasms tend to be pretty narrow too, having wide gaping maws would be more fun

Improving trading, adding offsite mining and logging camps etc would go a long way in removing the ridiculous requirements for viable sites. Mass migrations for no reason don't make any sense, it's better to cut the problem from the other end

[Malrin]

I decided on mass migrations because it seems to solve most (if not all) of the problems listed in my original post, but it is lacking in realism and can cause conflicts with certain play-styles.

Having underground features will help towards getting the "perfect site," and will provide near-infinite resources.

The lag issues could be helped by having adjustable boundaries, so you could make your 6x6 fort into a 4x4 fort if your population grows like crazy.

I dunno if anyone else has biome A.D.D. like me, but I don't like being confined to one or two of them, I'd like to switch to whatever biome suits my needs. One day I want to do some crazy shit in a freezing zone, but my current fort is in a warm climate. Back to the world gen!

Mass migrations would also help if you really want something that is not shown in the embark screen, such as hordes of werewolves or unicorns. Imagine getting your fortress up and running and seeing none after 5-10 years. (IIRC, the game randomly gens creatures in your map but takes evil and savagery into account, but you could still end up in a terrifying biome with no werewolves)

Mass migrations for no reason don't make any sense, it's better to cut the problem from the other end

I'm not sure that mass migrations are a suitable response to this, but as such things have occasionally happened in real history (usually when there was darn good reason)

I would consider the lack of an awesome magma pipe to be a huge threat to the fortress, enough to warrant a mass migration. Such nay-saying is what the humans used, and look what little they've accomplished!

More seriously though, I would like a solution that makes the fortresses MUCH more flexible once they are established. I would like to do something about the lag coming from the zone size, I would like to play next to the ocean and have some mountain features, I would like to stop discarding functional yet boring fortresses and starting over.

Perhaps we could have a system where you could take half of your population to another location, essentially expanding your civilization by branching off from your previous fortress. This would alleviate the need to start over from scratch and is more realistic, but I still like the mass migration idea. (I'm a very industrious player who uses brute force a lot, so I've never seen migrants as a bad thing)

I am eager to see what Toady has put in the next update to help these problems, but I love the idea of a mass migration.

[jfs]

IIRC people complain about any migration wave over even just 10. So I think it may be a bad idea, unless you possibly get a warning, so you can get prepared for it. The idea is cool, but a lot of people may dislike a lot of migrants or starting dwarfs.

This is not about getting huge immigrant waves incoming. This is about making your already settled dwarves pack up their stuff and leave for a new site. "Leave this site and settle somewhere else using the same dwarves."

[KenboCalrissian]

So, sort of like how you can save an embark template, except this is actually saving your dwarf population so you can import them to another site?  This sounds like a cool idea that could have great application for story purposes.

The first concern I see has been hinted at in a previous post, namely that at start of game you probably don't have the resources to support a full population supposing you saved a colony of 100 dwarves to record.  But then, why not leave it to player's choice how many you bring?  You could only bring a fraction of the population if you wanted.  You can't bring dead dwarves, so embarking with a number of dwarves too large for you to support upon embark could pose a threat to losing one of your favored dwarves to starvation or thirst.  So in a way, it's self-balancing.

The next concern is realism.  Your selected dwarves can't just magically appear at any new site you pick - suppose your new site is an island?  How'd your imported dwarves get there?  I'm confident some day we'll have boats, so it's less a matter of if it's possible and more a matter of how long it took for them to get there and what happened in the world during that time.  If you take them to an island, you might also have available the boat they sailed in on.

[Malrin]

The first concern I see has been hinted at in a previous post, namely that at start of game you probably don't have the resources to support a full population supposing you saved a colony of 100 dwarves to record.  But then, why not leave it to player's choice how many you bring?  You could only bring a fraction of the population if you wanted.  You can't bring dead dwarves, so embarking with a number of dwarves too large for you to support upon embark could pose a threat to losing one of your favored dwarves to starvation or thirst.  So in a way, it's self-balancing.

We'd have to have a system for saving the supplies as well, so we could pack many more barrels of alcohol and food to support the dwarves once they arrive.

Also I'd want it to be more than an embark profile, I'd want everything saved. The game will keep track of the quality and material of every item saved, all the artifacts, the thoughts of all the dwarves, etc.

Of course, there should be a system for deciding what to bring and what to leave. Perhaps we should assign items to a wagon or mark them for keeping.

The next concern is realism.  Your selected dwarves can't just magically appear at any new site you pick - suppose your new site is an island?  How'd your imported dwarves get there?  I'm confident some day we'll have boats, so it's less a matter of if it's possible and more a matter of how long it took for them to get there and what happened in the world during that time.  If you take them to an island, you might also have available the boat they sailed in on.

Dude, that would be awesome.

Urist McMayor's log, page 15:

"At long last, the ocean! After travelling for miles with the hundred and fifty dwarves of The Shields of Battering, we've reached the water.

Construction has started on the fleet of ships to ferry us to the island that will become our home, we've started clear-cutting the nearby forest despite complaints from our elven neighbors, and we should be finished by the end of the month."

Page 18:

"Damn I hate sailing, time to get drunk. <the remainder of the page is covered in vomit>"

Think of the possibilities.


Edit:

Added Mass migration to the Eternal Suggestion voting thingy. Go to http://www.bay12games.com/forum/eternal_voting.php#vote115 and search for "Mass migration."

[jfs]

How about if you built a new kind of building, the Emigration Depot. First you can build a number of wagons at it, then you have to assign enough pulling animals for the wagons, then load up the wagons similar to how you perform caravan trading, and finally assign the dwarves for the expedition.

Now, extending this much further: Building the emigration depot should only become possible once you have reached some level of nobles, and only after those nobles actually make a mandate or demand an expedition to form a new outpost.

After the expedition sets out, you enter something similar to Travel mode in Adventurer mode, where you command your wagons to travel across the world. Assuming you brought enough soldiers, most wildlife and perhaps highway raider fights would be done automatically without interrupting you as player, but some events may require you to go into full view mode and command dwarves and wagons in detail.
When you find a site to settle, you leave the travelling mode and enter detail mode, where you can command the wagons to a final site, pick the size of the outpost's site, and then you're back to the well-known state of a newly founded fortress.