Hello everyone !
I do not post much here (even if I've been lurking here and playing DF for years), but the current issues of dwarf working themselves to death gave me an idea about how to solve it, and I actually think it's a good idea...
So here I submit it to the forum wisdom and possible consideration by The Great Toad who watches over us all through any standard internet connection.
Warning : English is not my first language, and I'm very aware my grammar could possibly hurt many an innocent reader. Please don't hesitate to point at corrections I should make to this post to bring it up to an acceptable quality of English.
In 40d and previous versions, our beloved dwarfs had a sometime irritating tendency to stick to their own agenda, and went for a drink, a nap or a party in the middle of whatever they where doing, which sometime had dire consequences when all your military were busy escorting the squad leader to the booze stockpile where he was drinking himself silly while the goblins despoiled your fortress.
Now we have the opposite issue, where our soldiery risk death of thirst, hunger or exhaustion more than combat, and some of our citizens may quite literally work themselves to the brinks of death.
Of course, this is quite annoying too.
I think that the best way to avoid both type of issues would be to have a "threshold" setting available, possibly in the Z menu, that could be set to indicate how industrious or lazy your dwarfs should behave, from "perpetual holiday" (or something equivalent), where your dwarf only work if they positively want to, that you could use to celebrate "foundation day" by throwing huge parties, to "dictatorial", where your dwarfs are expected to work themselves to death.
I will try to illustrate this idea with an hypothetical representation of dwarfs needs/desire on a 0-10 scale. Let's imagine a thirst scale on that guide.
- 0 : your dwarfs just drank a second ago, and isn't thirsty at all.
- 2 : the dwarf could appreciate a good ale but really does not need it. Would only get more booze if partying.
- 4 : let's say he think about drinking, and would go fetch some booze in a 40d setting.
- 6 : the thirsty tag appears, your dwarf get a bad thought if it get there.
- 8 : the dehydrated tag appears, and your dwarf gets a second unhappy thought.
- 9 : the dwarf will disobey and drink to save is life unless his personality traits makes him really very obedient.
- 10 : Death by dehydration
A similar scale could be devised for hunger, tiredness, and whatever dwarven desire could exist now or later (throwing parties, seeing friends/family, getting a drug fix, slaughtering some kittens, etc).
Then, you could set a mobilization setting that would go (for illustration purpose) on a similar scale, from 0 where your dwarfs party all day and do whatever their personality make them inclined to do, to 10 where every dwarf is expected to work or fight to death. If your mobilization level is set to 5, dwarf reaching the 5th level of thirst, exhaustion or hunger would drop their work, go for a drink, a nap or a snack, and then return to work.
Of course, there could be some happy thoughts associated with living in a lax fortress, and unhappy thoughts associated with living in a very strict and dictatorial environment.
Personality trait could adjust those values : Maybe a very industrious dwarf would continue working until he reaches level 6 while only 5 was required, but maybe he shouldn't get an unhappy thought for it. Or maybe he should still get one, for ranting about all those who don't work as much as him, as he would maybe assume the other (comparative) laziness are what is making him work until he become really thirsty.
For very strict settings, maybe the guards (and sheriff, hammerer) could enforce the order and punish lazy dwarf with prison sentence.
One can think of many additional game mechanisms that could be implemented around such a feature. For example, in a prolonged lax environment (level 3 or below), your dwarf could get regular happy thoughts from it, until they become accustomed to it and get a unhappy thought from time to time if you suddenly up the mobilization level, even to a reasonable threshold. Dwarfs who lived in harsh political setting for prolonged time (say, threshold at 7 or more) would get regular unhappy thought from it, etc.
Maybe nobles, guild masters or other entities could want the mobilization level to be set at some value or others, which would add some additional importance to it.
Another possibility could be to have separate threshold for global population, military (independently of the settings for duty), maybe guild members if and when guilds come back.
Anyway, I think the core mechanism (having a single global threshold setting that would determine how lax or obedient the population is) is probably not very hard to implement. After all, there are already thresholds in the game to manage such things, that make a dwarf decide when he should go to sleep, or have a drink, or throw a party.
Even just a minimalistic implementation would certainly help with the current issues, without giving the player an unrealistic complete control over the little buggers or something similar.
Then it shouldn't be too hard to add some of the additional features (interaction with the law, interaction with dwarf personality, habituation to lax setting, etc) if people likes them later. I would be nice to be able to let your dwarfs live more or less comfortably, but mobilize the population when required, for example during a siege, because you need to complete the new farming district before the winter when the duke absolutely want to have his royal tomb completed before anyone dare take a sip from the booze stockpile.
What would you think of such a mechanism ? What would you think could make it more interesting, and would you like to see such a feature implemented ?
I have made an entry for this suggestion in the eternal suggestion list,
here.