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[Asmodeous]

This may have been mentioned in the past.

What I would like to see is allow an init setting that adjust the maximum immigrant wave size. Before anyone says anything, no, limiting the max number of dwarves does not relate to this at all. The two should be seperate. The solution for too many dwarves in too short of a period is not limiting the maximum number of dwarves.

Here's the issue, which is especially evident now with the underground: By digging your fort you quickly get inundated with dwarves due to the size of the immigrant waves maxing at around 25-30. This happens 4 times per year (once per season), so at a limit of 100 dwarves it takes about a year to hit the popcap.

I would like to have the ability to have a limit of 100-200 dwarves, but have them trickle in throughout the immigrant waves. Either one wave per year (instead of per season), or by being able to limit the waves to 5.

I would think that this should be something that should be able to be added into an init file or somesuch with relative (relative is an important word) ease so that those who want the dwarf flood can still get it, and those who want the game to run a bit slower paced can get it.

Right now the only option is to continually save and exit the game and adjust the pop cap when you want the next wave to come in, and this detracts from the gameplay obviously.

Thoughts?

[Earth Striker Lurin]

I like the idea.  The problem being if you accidentally crack the underground in your first season it's like:

"Urist McRetard just posted a blog about your fort on the undernet"

"it was super effective!!"


then WOOOOOOSH

every dwarf and their grandma wants to live with the cool kids...

[scira]

I like this idea, usually i just assign unwanted dwarfs to inspect the bottom of a bridge or something but a limiter would be nice.

On the flip side to this I think it would be good to be able to change the max number of immigrants as well. having (max pop.- current pop.) dwarfs suddenly appear at one wave would certainly be fun.

[Asmodeous]

I completely agree that the max should be some sort of arbitrary number (say 1000) that would force the max pop to be able to arrive in a single wave.

And yeah, we created the Naming Bridge™ as a stop-gap measure to dump them into magma/water they can't get out of/atomic particles, but it is really a tedious practice when just being able to say we only want 5/wave or 1 wave/year or 5/wave/year. . . Etc.

[NW_Kohaku]

OK, I'll just go ahead and put on the Footkerchief hat (hey look, the hat puffs its pipe, too!), and say that putting in the search term "immigration" pulled up 5 obvious results on the first page (of six) for suggestions of limiting immigration wave sizes, and another half dozen that were talking about "immigration officers", which may well have the same role, but I didn't feel like actually being DILLIGENT and reading stuff or copy-pasting all those urls or anything. 

Or in other words, yeah, this is common.  Of course, it's also theoretically very easy to program in, if Toady wanted, compared to a very large number of other requests that are constantly raining down.

One thing I'd say, however, is that I would be opposed to a "cap", and would prefer a multiplier, instead.  The way that immigration works now, the rate of immigrants is based upon a combination of wealth and how many dwarves die horrible, screaming deaths under your "care".  If the population cap were given a simple straight-up arbitrary limit of, say, 5 per year or season, you would get 5 pretty much every time unless you were really screwing something up and getting tantrum spirals that scare off everyone. 

I think it would be a much better way of handling things if generating enough wealth to start attracting a half dozen dwarves at a time was considered a goal, rather than a reason why non-legendaries are considered so cheap and easily replacable as to be executed by the dozen simply so that the player doesn't have to bother figuring out what to do with all the dwarves they have.

[Wyrm]

One thing I'd say, however, is that I would be opposed to a "cap", and would prefer a multiplier, instead.  The way that immigration works now, the rate of immigrants is based upon a combination of wealth and how many dwarves die horrible, screaming deaths under your "care".  If the population cap were given a simple straight-up arbitrary limit of, say, 5 per year or season, you would get 5 pretty much every time unless you were really screwing something up and getting tantrum spirals that scare off everyone.

Why do you assume that a cap will do that? It's fairly straightforward to have an immigrant wave scale such that 5 or what have you is the maximum wave size and not have to have an abysmal year to get less. You only get the full 5 if you have an excellent year, get 2 or 3 if you have a middling year, 1 if you have a terrible year, and 0 if you have an abysmal year. All you got to do is multiply the unadjusted wave by (USERMAX/NORMALMAX).

I think it would be a much better way of handling things if generating enough wealth to start attracting a half dozen dwarves at a time was considered a goal, rather than a reason why non-legendaries are considered so cheap and easily replacable as to be executed by the dozen simply so that the player doesn't have to bother figuring out what to do with all the dwarves they have.

That does sound like a good idea, but I fail to see why you can't have both. If 5 is your maximum immigrant wave size, then your goal is to get five immigrants a year.

[Executer]

Until yesterday, I'd never had a wave larger than 5 or 6 dwarves.  I was contemplating how small my immigration waves were at the time, and I got notice that immigrants had arrived.  Alright!  some fresh workers, I thought.  21 dwarves all with skills in fishing is what I got.

I was not pleased.

[Sfon]

Main problem right now is migration is brokenly huge. Wealth is actually a BAD thing, because migration starts somewhere around 'high' and goes up from there. I cannot be the only one who is often nervous about simply smoothing walls because the migration waves are already over 20 each by the end of year one or two. The other day I was shocked to see I only got one (1) migrant in the first migration wave, despite having a habit of not even making some items to sell until the first or second migration wave comes in.

How it should work, and how it seems to be intended to work, is you should have to intentionally work on your wealth in ways not related to basic survival/expansion to get large migration waves. If an init option is not put in, then hopefully this is just temporary to help people test and it'll be seriously toned down once the bugs get mostly under control.

Basic migration rule: So long as unusable artifacts like bracelets of gold menacing with spikes of platinum are considered a total disappointment by those who want migrants, default migration is brokenly large.

A good idea might be to only count processed goods in migration wealth. No plain rocks, even of gold, unless they've been traded away in which case they count for exported wealth. Perhaps also not rough walls and other things simply made of plain rock instead of bricks. Same for wood, etc. Would make sense, after all if the gold is just sitting around and not used/traded it stands to reason that word about it won't exactly spread like wildfire. Even if word did get out...

Urist McCrazy: "Well, nah. I don't have any o' this gold I speak of, nor do' the one who told me. But they got it all up sitting there in massive piles, an' used in a few hasty-built walls and workshops. Massive piles of neglected gold I tell ye."
Urist McUrist: "Bah, ye done been none to careful about which wild mushrooms ye been eatin' again, I reckon. Here, a good cup 'o hot brandy'll help flush 'em outta yer system and sober ye back up a bit. If there be any truth to it, they just got lucky with a vein that'll run dry before any o' us could get there. Only heyseed humans and nancy elves do so little diggin' a whole town o' them ain't likely to hit a vein o' somethin' once or twice."

[Sinned]

I would also love an option in the init that makes it possible to set a maximum of immigrants per wave.

Or maybe an option when talking to the liason that makes it possible to limit the size of the next wave (or just telling him that the fortress can't support more dwarfs for the coming season(s)).

[AngleWyrm]

I'de also like to see migration waves limited to one family of 1~5 migrants. Simply scale the 24max down to 5max.

Migrants are not precious enough for a resource. Adding to the labor pool should be something desired, because there's never enough dwarves to get it all done. Instead we have people killing off their own dwarves because there's too many.

[Farthing]

I feel that the way it is currently set up is quite adequate. While yes, you can get a bunch of dwarves, you can also get nothing or a very small number. Further, when you do get those dwarves that you don't know what to do with, you have plenty of opportunity to throw them in a fire experiment with a large population. You can recruit them into a fighting force, expand your fort, build more workshops, or just send them *cough* "hunting". If they have skills you don't need then give them skills you do and let them work on it. If you've run out of mining, construction, crafting, cooking, and other stuff to do, just build some pumps and set them all to "pump operator" to keep them happy and build some stats. Or if you're not the happy-go-lucky type, lock them in a room and see how long it takes for them to break.

One of the coolest things about Dwarf Fortress compared to similar games is how very few limits there are. Take advantage of it =].