Print

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

[nenjin]

So the biggest hole in game play I've found, as a new player, is trading goods you didn't make.

I've yet to be forced, other than in the first year, to NEED to produce goods for trading. I'm overflowing with (narrow *.*) (giant *.*) and (small *.*) goods taken from goblins.

I typically have 100+ pieces valued at less than 100, 20 to 30 pieces valued at over 700, and 10 or so valued at over 1,000.

And the goblins...they just never stop bringing their best duds to the fight.

I never pay attention to trader requests because....why bother? They're going to take it, and they're gong to like it.

"What's that? Need booze and meat for the Mountainhome? Here, have some (narrow cave spider silk socks) instead. Yes, I was very glad to do business with you too."

So trading seems like kind of bust except for the value of doing it "right" because it's fun for you. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it would help make trading a more tactical/strategic activity of your fortress if you didn't have so much free wealth to fall back on.

It would also help people (like me) shift inventory. When the trader comes, I always flag the foreign items farthest away from the depot for trading. Most of my trader time therefore is about forcing all my dwarves to move goods they've been ignoring all year.

The end result is that my stockpiles fill up with hundreds of items I've been making to skill up. And then it takes me two seasons for trading it all away to make space....and my ultimate reason is space management, not profit. And I get a distinctly sick feeling when I let the trader make 400% profit because I need to get rid of crap.

So, some suggestions and considerations-

-Limit how much gobbos bring with them. This one probably won't fly. DF likes the super realism of every guy out there has stuff and is usually fully dressed. Like most other RPGs though, this leads to inflation and the devaluation of pretty much everything in game, ala Morrowind and Oblivion.

-Add a modifier for [FOREIGN] goods that slashes their value up to 50% or more. If your dwarves were actively stealing or pillaging someone else for goods, I could see [FOREIGN] flagged items deserving their full value. But as it is, your dwarves are basically bottom feeding and the Mountainhome et. al just gobble it up.

-Devalue any item that was gained through combat. Blood/vomit tags already do this, severely, and I think the [COMBAT_USED] tag could do the same thing, just by a smaller amount. (Say, a 25% reduction in base value.)

I think this is the best solution however

-Add caravan preferences and limits to what goods they want to take. Caravans already have a weight limitation, why do they not also have preferences? And I don't mean that seeing wood products make elves shed a single tear. That's a start, but it's more a prohibitive thing than an actual economic consideration.

In real life, if you try to offload a bunch of crap on a merchant, at some point they go "Hey, I can't sell all this shit! No deal!" Caravans should behave the same way. They should be willing to take unlimited amounts of the goods they requested last season. They should only be willing to take a certain amount of any other good based on: a) how valuable it is to them at that time and b) how much of the item you are currently offering.

With these changes, planning a true export economy for your fortress would actually matter. As it is, you're mostly concerned with your fortress' internal economy, and the export economy usually just helps supplement it. (Food, booze, raw materials.)

Thoughts?

The cut off for a lot of this is something that would need to be tested. But, short of buying masterwork goods from the trader (and who the hell honestly does that?) if you're putting up 5k (20k when I'm feeling saucy) worth of trades with objects you didn't actually make...that's too much.

(And as an aside....I almost never worry about iron for the same reason. Goblins provide me, on a yearly basis, all the iron I could possibly need.)

[jseah]

-Limit how much gobbos bring with them. This one probably won't fly. DF likes the super realism of every guy out there has stuff and is usually fully dressed. Like most other RPGs though, this leads to inflation and the devaluation of pretty much everything in game, ala Morrowind and Oblivion.

I think the way to do it is to have the Dark Tower supply the goblins.  If the Dark tower they come from runs out of stuff, then they don't have stuff.  If they run low on goblins, they don't attack. 

Would need players to be really patient about goblin seiges, since those would come about once per generation. 

[nenjin]

Yeah, there's a fine line between challenging a fortress and starving it...but with so many natural resources, and so many ways to turn them into items of value....there's never really an excuse for not having trading wealth. Even a dabbling stonecrafter can net you a few hundred in trade if you get him working for a whole year.

I like the idea of Goblins being supplied by their own fortress...but that might be additional calculations that actually result in less entertainment.

Also...should dwarves (humans or elves) really pay top dollar for items they can't wear? It's like, can they shred silk clothing back into silk cloth? Because we can't.

Or maybe they'll just trade it to someone else....but economic logic dictates if they're doing that, they gouge you on the price so they can turn a higher profit. I really don't think they'd be selling those (spider silk shoes) to others at a cost of 1,500....

"Top quality goods here. Only one previous owner died while wearing these!"

[BurnedToast]

I'm pretty sure this will all be looked at and improved with the caravan arc. I think most people agree that while the current system technically works the balance of it all is broken pretty badly.

In the meantime, you can mod goblins not to bring clothes - delete them all from the goblin civ in one of the raw files, entity_default.txt IIRC (I leave loincloths in so they are not totally naked). You can also mod caravans to have more space by adding a zero or two to the carry capacity of wagons and pack animals (forget which file this is in). More space = they bring more things to trade plus it's easier to ship all that crap off the map.

[nenjin]

Do you end up with woosier goblins attacking you though? Basic clothing makes up a lot of armor value.

I could just choose to not sell the clothing I suppose....but it does make trading convenient when three pieces of clothing is all I need for everything I buy.

[HatfieldCW]

Values definitely need to be rebalanced.  I'd like to see loot lose a lot of its face value, but be useful somehow.  Maybe a way to convert those socks and pants into bolts of low-quality cave spider silk cloth, or to burn leather and cloth items into ash for soapmaking, and then export finished goods made by your own dwarfs that aren't covered with goblin blood and pierced with -hoary marmot bone bolts-.

I'm hoping the caravan arc allows values to be weighted significantly per civ, so humans will buy goblin armor, but only as scrap metal, so they'll pay half an iron bar's value, minus the value of one bar of charcoal, for a pair of narrow chainmail leggings.  Of course, metal recycling efficiency could probably stand to be adjusted, but that's a whole other thread.

Specifically relating to goblin clothing, this issue could tie handily in with the corpses-as-containers idea.  One of the big reasons we deal with all these clothes is that they spawn in a tidy pile under the dead gobbo as soon as his airborne body strikes that tree and explodes in gore.  If you had the option to toss them--still clothed--into the magma/chasm/atom smasher, then post-ambush cleanup would be streamlined considerably.  Or even have clothing rot away when the corpse wearing them decomposes in the refuse stockpile.

[kaypy]

Or maybe they'll just trade it to someone else....but economic logic dictates if they're doing that, they gouge you on the price so they can turn a higher profit. I really don't think they'd be selling those (spider silk shoes) to others at a cost of 1,500....

Have you had an economy up and running? You wind up with Exotic Clothing Shops, from which your dwarves will gleefully purchase goblin clothing. This will then be strewn over their rooms until no free space remains in which to strew.

Given such insanity, I can't see any reason why the traders aren't making a healthy profit 8-)

[darkflagrance]

The decomposition of clothing could remain at its current rate for clothing indoors, but for clothing abandoned outdoors, or left on exposed corpses at the mercy of the elements, it should deteriorate at the same rate it does while worn. Then after a couple of years the stuff would be gone completely, as opposed to now where a ton of silk loincloths on my map mark where their owners died twenty years ago, after all this time having acquired only one level of decay.

[nenjin]

Was kind of surprised there were no inferiority tags on equipment other puke and blood. I suppose "wear" and "cheap good" tags are probably a future idea.

[PhilbertFlange]

-Add caravan preferences and limits to what goods they want to take. Caravans already have a weight limitation, why do they not also have preferences? And I don't mean that seeing wood products make elves shed a single tear. That's a start, but it's more a prohibitive thing than an actual economic consideration.

In real life, if you try to offload a bunch of crap on a merchant, at some point they go "Hey, I can't sell all this shit! No deal!" Caravans should behave the same way. They should be willing to take unlimited amounts of the goods they requested last season. They should only be willing to take a certain amount of any other good based on: a) how valuable it is to them at that time and b) how much of the item you are currently offering.

With these changes, planning a true export economy for your fortress would actually matter. As it is, you're mostly concerned with your fortress' internal economy, and the export economy usually just helps supplement it. (Food, booze, raw materials.)

If this is the case, you would need a way to go and check what's being asked for from each of the traders (humans and dwarves for now) to ensure you're making the correct objects for trade. Right now you get a one time screen with a list of what they want and how much they'll pay for it. Another screen accessible from the trade depot would work. Hit "h" to see what the humans want for next year, and "d" for what the dwarves want next year.

[Sutremaine]

If this is the case, you would need a way to go and check what's being asked for from each of the traders (humans and dwarves for now) to ensure you're making the correct objects for trade.

We've got one.

c - select civ - keep pressing Tab key.

The problem with stripping goblins of everything but their loincloths is that they die of cold very easily. If I can be bothered I just take away their ability to use GCS silk, which cuts down nicely on the value of abandonded clothing. The kobolds can take it all for all I care.

[Funk]

if clothing that is left out side roted away in 1-2 years then the need to get rid of it will be less

[nenjin]

c - select civ - keep pressing Tab key.

Yeah, it took me a while to find this as well. I still make notes because I can, at glance, list the three or four most wanted things, instead of scrolling through those lists.

[Grendus]

I like caravans only taking limited numbers of non-requested goods, and I like clothing slowly wearing out when left outside as though it was worn. I like clothing losing value from vomit/mud/blood stains. In general, I like it.

I like to run a varied economy just for fun - sell orcinite steel trinkets, full sets of dwarf clothing, bins of totems and bone ammo, etc. Currently it would be easier to just sell bins of obsidian or flux crafts, it produces absurd amounts of wealth. I like it.

[PhilbertFlange]

If this is the case, you would need a way to go and check what's being asked for from each of the traders (humans and dwarves for now) to ensure you're making the correct objects for trade.

We've got one.

c - select civ - keep pressing Tab key.

The problem with stripping goblins of everything but their loincloths is that they die of cold very easily. If I can be bothered I just take away their ability to use GCS silk, which cuts down nicely on the value of abandonded clothing. The kobolds can take it all for all I care.

Looks like I have something to post on the "recent *facepalms*" thread.