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[MrWiggles]

Highly skilled migrants need some negative side to balance them. They should demand high quality rooms, and maybe they could refuse to work without their favorite booze, or something.

This type of thing, I think is best left up to the reimplentation of Guilds. And that'll be a Guild demand, or a guild qualification.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Personally, I'd like death to affect the number of migrants more than it does now. I can drown 50-75% of my migrant wave (that is, 50-75% of my migrant wave can drown) without impacting the number of migrants I subsequently receive.

On a side note, my fortresses often make fortunes trading slightly damp clothing. *shiftyeyes* No connection.

[Artanis00]

On the subject of possibly requesting certain skills in immigrants, it strikes me that the caravan or liaison wouldn't want to do this for free, and would take a modest fee for this service.

It has already been suggested that highly skilled dwarves would prefer more developed fortresses... unless some boon were provided to entice them to your fortress (an advance bonus, if you will), and some token to their current home to make the loss of such a dwarf more palatable.

What I think is possibly missing here is that the fortress would be able to essentially shop for immigrants, but not produce them. As long as the liaison is finding appropriate immigrants for you, would it not be possible for him to find appropriate immigrants for other forts?

A whole industry could exist here, training up certain kinds of professions, then allowing them to emigrate--pending a fee from the destination fortress, of course. Gather dwarves skilled in teaching (pre-req: teaching applies to skills beyond military), optimize for time to a target skill level, and you have essentially a boarding trade school. Your main imports are immigrants (balance initial skill against cost to maintain), and any supplies you don't produce on-site, your main exports are trained dwarves, and anything they've made learning.

[SixOfSpades]

As long as the liaison is finding appropriate immigrants for you, would it not be possible for him to find appropriate immigrants for other forts?

Add the option to bribe the liason to take along schmucks that you both know are useless (Adequate Glassmaker, anyone?), and I think you've got it.

[drilltooth]

soo, not so much the capital, as a college town, with a side of manufacturing.. could work!

[Artanis00]

As long as the liaison is finding appropriate immigrants for you, would it not be possible for him to find appropriate immigrants for other forts?

Add the option to bribe the liason to take along schmucks that you both know are useless (Adequate Glassmaker, anyone?), and I think you've got it.

Why bribe? Take the time to train the guy (assuming sand on the map), and the liaison pays you to let him leave.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Migrants have always been ridiculous.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reduce the number of migrants to manageable levels. Or, far better yet, how about an 'Iron Man' (or more appropo 'Sane Man') option that precludes receiving migrants?

I'd much rather build my Fortress up from the original 7.

Seriously, this is the number one thing I dislike about DF in it's current state.

I've tried starving them, drowning them, throwing mobs of migrants at goblin hordes, sending them out to hunt giant eagles with nothing but a dirty left sock to defend themselves with, everything I could think of, to stem the beardy tide of unwashed hobos streaming into my lands like little alchoholic locusts. The extermination of which, I must admit, had a certain entertainment value...

But now, all that gets me is unmanageable amounts of ghosts! Unkillable, tantrum-spiral-inducing ghosts.
It's maddening, and it makes even losing the game less Fun. 

[Kogut]

http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html searched for "migran"

Toady: "(...)You get a lot of migrants yourself, but in those fortresses that don't get a lot of migrants, or especially when migrants start changing over to something that actually has to migrate and come to your fortress then you might find that there are more other types of critters visiting. It doesn't mean you need to keep them, it doesn't mean you need to even welcome them, and if you don't have a tavern established you might not have to worry about this stuff, because I can definitely see the side of people that just want to have their dwarves without dealing with all this riffraff. So it's something that's only going to happen if you really encourage it to happen for the most part, although there are things like refugee crises that already happen in the game, but the guys just kind of go off into the wilderness and then re-establish sites in world generation, but if world generation is over they're just hanging out, and those situations might be thrust onto your fortress."

So it is planned, maybe even during Caravan arc (years 2011-2020/2030)

[SirHoneyBadger]

http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html searched for "migran"

So it's something that's only going to happen if you really encourage it to happen for the most part, although there are things like refugee crises that already happen in the game, but the guys just kind of go off into the wilderness and then re-establish sites in world generation, but if world generation is over they're just hanging out, and those situations might be thrust onto your fortress."

That does sound promising...My last (really fun and interesting) Fortress got swamped first by migrants, and then by goblins, and after that, by a succession of both, and the ghosts of both, causing an otherwise successful Fortress to fail. I didn't mind the loss, but the grotesque attrition became rather frustrating.

[nil]

maybe they could refuse to work without their favorite booze, or something.

Migrants that are surplus, and therefore out-of-work and under-pampered, should just leave.

[Buttery_Mess]

Migrants produce a consistent threat to your fortress. Without them, there'd scarcely be a reason to open your gates... and then your fort would be unassailable. Do you really want that? It makes the game considerably less challenging. The migrant waves force you to design a fortress that's quickly accessible from multiple angles to friends, with the capacity to be turned deadly to foes, in order to safeguard the arrival of new dwarfses.

Granted, migration waves can be ridiculous and unwelcome. As the game stands, though, they are somewhat necessary.

[SirHoneyBadger]

It makes no sense that hordes of migrants should be the greatest threat a Fortress ever faces--which is the current state of the game, from the very beginning of that game. In no way is that necessary. There are endless other factors that could make your Fortress vulnerable, none of which would require shoehorning a game mechanic into the game, that is entirely unreasonable, unbelievable, and unwanted, and which has very little potential of ever adding any depth or enjoyment to the game.

Hordes of shabby, penniless dwarf refugees, auspiciously allied with you...vs hordes of well-armed and experienced goblin soldiers? I feel very strongly that the goblins should be a greater threat, when they show up on your doorstep...However, as it stands, migrants are not only a big problem for your Fortress, they're an even more enormous issue, in terms of simple game mechanics, and ease-of-use. They're a management nightmare, that overshadows any logistics of war.

There are just better ways to accomplish your stated goal.

[Kogut]

In modded game (more enemies) migrants are wanted and invasions are a serious threat (in a game without exploits).

[King DZA]

I never knew people thought of migrants as threats at all. A minor irritation at certain times, perhaps...

[Buttery_Mess]

You need to open your gates for immigrants otherwise they will either starve or be waylaid by goblins and, either way, killed. Then they will rise as ghosts if you don't go out and haul their bodies to coffins, or slab them. Slabbing ghost dwarves becomes unmanageable after a few migration waves. So, you really do need to look after those new dwarfses, otherwise the ghosts will FPS death your fort.

Hmm. When you put it that way, the immigrants do seem like a design failure; or in some obtuse way, a design success that's dependent on a design failure.