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DF40d

Df2010

[KFK]

I am not saying that those who have encountered deaths because of the system are doing something wrong, but there seems to be a great difference between our experiences, which may very well be due to a bug (like the fishing bug which is not consistent across players and worlds or the deadly rain bug).

Deathworks

In my case, it's definitely a playing style issue. I'm used to seeing those arrows as a hazard signal: there's no booze and/or a water supply isn't available for some reason. Now it doesn't necessarily mean anything, but learning to tune it out has it's own problems. I want my hazard signal back.

Then there's the fact that a large fortress simply has too many dwarfs for me to consider making sure everyone is well rested, fed before assigning a job. The idea of assigning priorities might be a good fix, but given the cringe-worthy military interface, I would want a very  VERY simple system, requiring an absolute minimum of keystrokes. For instance, I'd make the old priority the default for all jobs, then when deciding on (b)uilding or (d)esignated tasks I could press Shift+Enter to make them priority (uses the new method). For workshops, use (a)dd for regular tasks, and (A)dd for priority tasks.

So while I'm not ruling out bugs, I can chalk off my experience to playing style.

[FunkyWaltDogg]

While I'd prefer a little more control (perhaps a three- or five-stage scale for prioritizing needs against work, with the current system at one end and 40d at the other), I greatly prefer the new "work ethic" to the old, and I can barely believe that 40d is currently winning in the poll.  Sure you have to watch your dwarves and your designations a little more closely, but you can actually get work far away from your fort center done in a reasonable timeframe now.  You can cancel jobs to give them a break; there was absolutely no way to make them work harder in 40d.

[Ledi]

I think that a sliding-bar system through the manager noble would be a good way to keep everyone happy. Maybe the bars could be "Hunger Threshold" "Thirst Threshold" and "Tiredness Threshold" (all working independently). The higher the threshold, the worst the situation must become for the dwarf to stop working.

For example, if a dwarf doesn't have the best living arrangements or needs a boost in happiness, the three thresholds are set to minimum, meaning that he will go to get food or drink or have a break whenever he feels like it and not gain further unhappy thoughts (better mood but less timely productivity).

Setting the sliders to mid-range would mean that the dwarf would not stop working until they were somewhat thirsty, hungry or tired. (average mood, average timely productivity)

For the workaholics who don't mind unhappy thoughts in their fort, the sliders could be maxed out and dwarfs would work until they were starving - not to death, but just to urgent need (lower mood, but most timely productivity).

The three different sliders would allow for customisation from user to user - someone might think it's more dwarfy to allow workers to drink whenever they want but not sleep until they're ready to drop or ravenous, while someone might want to limit munchie and booze breaks but allow rests whenever the dwarf feels tired.

Just my 2 copper ore.

[Dave Mongoose]

I greatly prefer the new "work ethic" to the old, and I can barely believe that 40d is currently winning in the poll.  Sure you have to watch your dwarves and your designations a little more closely, but you can actually get work far away from your fort center done in a reasonable timeframe now.  You can cancel jobs to give them a break; there was absolutely no way to make them work harder in 40d.

In 40d you could put a temporary food stockpile and some beds near your work site and they will eat/drink/rest there and go back to work.

In the new version you can do the same, but they will ignore it and work on even if they are hungry or thirsty or tired if doing a repeating workshop job or mining consecutive squares. This adds a skill penalty and a negative thought. If you've got a few dwarves mining and a handful of workshops on repeat, you need to constantly be suspending jobs and temporarily removing designations just to keep them happy and working at full strength.

I am a bit confused about the claim that a brewer died of dehydration while next to a ready barrel. Dwarves will abort jobs when they themselves get into a critical status

It is not a 'claim', it's what happened: I was short on booze so I ordered brew drink on repeat. My brewer (who was thirsty when he started) brewed enough drink to fix the shortage (several 'brew drink's-worth, at least), but did not abort and died in the workshop (still brewing).

The new system has dwarves check their status when they are looking for a job to do. For individual jobs this is quite frequently, but if they can go straight onto the next job (if it's mining an adjacent square, or a job in the same workshop) then they don't do the check and they will work until hungry, thirsty and drowsy (suspending or cancelling their job is enough to make them react to needs).
Once a need gets to critical (starving, dehydrated or exhausted) an extra check is forced and they will (usually!) respond to it. I think the problem with my brewer was that at the point when he made the 'extra check', there was no drink available so he kept working.

My main complaint is that, for example: if I designate a platinum vein for my Legendary Miner to dig out, I don't expect to lose half the ore because didn't stop to eat. It's micromanaging enough to disable mining on the non-legendaries (or use burrows to keep them away) - I don't want to have to watch him constantly for the down arrow and then undesignate everything so he'll realise he's half asleep, or hungry, or thirsty, or some combination of the three.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Dave Mongoose: Thank you for elaborating on what happened to you. When I called it a claim, I only had a vague memory about a general statement about that brewer, so I was unsure where to place it and thus chose the neutral claim. I did not mean to attack you, but I also wanted to express that I have not encountered anything like that myself.

And this brings me to another worrisome aspect: This kind of thing doesn't happen to me. Right now, my dwarves are digging away at really large areas, I have never had any problems with them dying of thirst or hunger or anything. Let me illustrate this with a current view of my fortress' lower level:

http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/poi-23439-adiggingwewillgo

This is the middle section of the three layers where my dwarves started digging, you can see more excavations below that and above that. All the digging designations were made in a single go, and I never de-activated any dwarf from digging so they rest, except for deactivating the expedition so she can send away the pesky liaison and twice the broker so she can trade for more alcohol (my important nobles usually get mining so they don't run into any dangerous wildlife while cutting wood).

My dwarves have been digging at that for a few years now, and I have had no single dwarf die from participating in that digging.

Thus, my experience does not confirm your observation, so you may be suffering from a bug there, or something else.

EDIT: Note that this fortress has only 12 dwarves and not all have mining activated, so I have 0 to 4 dwarves digging at any point of time.

Deathworks

[Ilmoran]

Hi!

Dave Mongoose: Thank you for elaborating on what happened to you. When I called it a claim, I only had a vague memory about a general statement about that brewer, so I was unsure where to place it and thus chose the neutral claim. I did not mean to attack you, but I also wanted to express that I have not encountered anything like that myself.

And this brings me to another worrisome aspect: This kind of thing doesn't happen to me. Right now, my dwarves are digging away at really large areas, I have never had any problems with them dying of thirst or hunger or anything. Let me illustrate this with a current view of my fortress' lower level:

http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/poi-23439-adiggingwewillgo

This is the middle section of the three layers where my dwarves started digging, you can see more excavations below that and above that. All the digging designations were made in a single go, and I never de-activated any dwarf from digging so they rest, except for deactivating the expedition so she can send away the pesky liaison and twice the broker so she can trade for more alcohol (my important nobles usually get mining so they don't run into any dangerous wildlife while cutting wood).

My dwarves have been digging at that for a few years now, and I have had no single dwarf die from participating in that digging.

Thus, my experience does not confirm your observation, so you may be suffering from a bug there, or something else.

EDIT: Note that this fortress has only 12 dwarves and not all have mining activated, so I have 0 to 4 dwarves digging at any point of time.

Deathworks

Most likely, other dwarves were claiming his booze supply for their own drinking before the brewer could claim it.  The reason you haven't had anyone die is because when they realize they need to get food/drink, they have it available.  But if you check your miners, I bet everyone one of them has complained of hunger, thirsty, and exhaustion (or whatever the complaint for missing sleep is).  Furthermore, since dwarves slow down (a LOT) when tired/hungry/thirsty, your project is probably going slower than it would have if they went to eat/drink/sleep as soon as they were hungry/thirsty/tired.  I've watched my 3 legendary miners going, and when one of them gets hungry/thirsty/tired, the others basically run laps around him.  At that point, I disable his mining (and any other jobs he might try to pick up) so that he heads to the stockpile/his bed.

That said, I would like something in between the old and new systems.  First, as someone has said, for jobs in series (mining, repeat workshop orders, etc), the dwarves should be able to stop between repetitions to go eat/drink/sleep.  Second, and this might be better as an "Orders" option, I would like dwarves, upon finishing food/drink/nap, to check to see if either of their other needs is close to needing to be satisfied, and if so, do it.  This will lead to long breaks, but it will prevent the issue of taking a long walk to a stockpile, eatting, taking the long walk back to the mine, digging a square, and then going "I'm thirsty!" and walking all the way back to the stockpile.

One-off jobs like construction buildings sould probably have a higher priority, so that your works dont get a beer instead of walling off the caverns.
Making the manager able to issue "This is important" status to tasks/jobs would be nice too.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Yes, I am aware of the unhappy thoughts. I have stated before that I am willing to put up with that. My latest post was only because of the confusion about the death of that brewer and the resulting comments that you need to turn off jobs so that your dwarves eat and drink.

I do agree that the current system is slightly too aggressive, but I consider that a fine-tuning issue and do not think that the 40d system was inherently better.

Deathworks

[lordnincompoop]

Thus far I prefer the df2010 version. I have not had any dwareves succumb to overwork yet.

[zwei]

I do not really appreciate dwarves starving themselves to unhappines (and possibly death!) when there is no reason for that.

I would like "priority" system where dwarf figures out priority of task judging by how many untasked items of kind he is producting are there in fortress.

Zero items would mean working even aggresivelly than now
Under ten would be aggresive like now
Under hundred would be d40 system.
Over hundred would be leisure style.

Advanced version could take number of idle dwarves able to complete this tasks into account so that miner simply takes break when he knows that some other miner can continue instead of him, his economy status so tha rich dwarf would be more likely to skip job he does not feel like doing while poor one would put in extra time.

AI Assessing whether or not that wall being build is important would be more tricky, but for basic produce-item workshop tasks this would work quite nice.

[AtomicPaperclip]

I don't like seeing 50 idlers in my meeting area that are hungry and thirsty and not doing anything. I do like that they actually finish jobs like linking mechanisms.

[alpha]

Old way was better and not broken. No need to fix what works fine. I don't see any reason why this was changed :? :/

[PTTG??]

My personal feeling is that dwarves just need to know when to starve and when to slack off a bit.
 
Generally, I'd prefer a dwarf with a continuous task, such as mining, woodcutting, fishing, or crafting items set to "repeat" or other automatic tasks, take it easy, going to eat before they get hungry at all.
 
Dwarves with one-shot tasks or ones that shouldn't be interrupted- like normal crafting, mechanics, and health care, should finish up the list or task first, then eat.
 
One issue worth noting that isn't covered by this is that a dwarf can end up with stagered hunger, tiredness, and sleepiness, so they first go eat, then walk over to some mine some place, dig one tile, then decide they need a drink...
 
If units where smart enough to consolidate such upkeep task, this wouldn't be a problem.

[keda]

Some priority based system would be nice to have. Depending on how soon you want a job finished you could have 2 keys to press which increases or decreases the priority of that job. If one job has higher priority than another, that one will be picked first. Above a certain limit dwarves will ignore their need to drink/eat to finish it like in 2010 system and above a second limit dwarves will even stop eating and drinking or sleeping to do it (at the expense of some unhappy thought.)

[KFK]

I don't see any reason why this was changed :? :/

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Heck, nearly half of the people voting in the poll prefer the new system. I don't like it myself, but there's definitely something to be said for it. Depending on how complex prioritization is, it may be a simple matter of exposing a variable to the init file, or may require Toady to fine-tune the system a little.

[mnjiman]

I thought this was normally that they would thirst all the time.. even though i did find it odd.
I guess ill give my entire fortress a break...


after the Lava fall of death is complete.