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[Cruxador]

EDIT: Oh, and about the villages, are they really supposed to be as close together as they are here? It seems rather... claustrophobic.

The area that most folks would consider a village occupies only those small areas like the one labeled "structures" and parallel such zones. If you keep that scale in mind, they're not really overly close.

[Neonivek]

I think that forcing players to either put up a very large amount of space and effort for their food or forcing them to rely upon their sattelite villages is pretty much what is going to come... I mean, why else would we care about having to protect villages of dwarves in the surrounding land if we didn't need any of the crops they produce?

I agree, I just don't think that is happening or at least I don't think that is a conclusion we can come up on with what little info we got so far.

Also another reason to protect surrouding land could be numberous outside of just food production. I look for the days of pre-emptive strikes.

[Kilo24]

I think that forcing players to either put up a very large amount of space and effort for their food or forcing them to rely upon their sattelite villages is pretty much what is going to come... I mean, why else would we care about having to protect villages of dwarves in the surrounding land if we didn't need any of the crops they produce?

There's drafting villagers for armies to send abroad, defending them to keep the reputation of the fortress intact, and also not letting your civilization be nearly wiped out.

I still am worried about making an elaborate farming system a necessity for new players to learn (and for more experienced players to set up for every fort.)  Systems like that make it so I can't help but imagine that most of the failed fortresses littering the ideal world Toady has in his slogan of "Losing is fun" won't be from goblin invasions or dwarven revolutions, but rather because "Mayor Urist couldn't figure out how to farm, so everyone starved" or "a single troll killed everyone because the leader couldn't figure out how to build a military."  I know most such systems can be disabled in the .ini or raws, but new players shouldn't be expected to do that.

I guess that leads to a few questions for Toady:
How important will farming be, both for a NPC settlement and for a fortress?  Will it be a flat-out necessity for large cities/fortresses, or can hunting and/or fishing in a reasonably wildlife-heavy place be sufficient? 


Will trading be able to wholly replace a dwarven fortress food industry at home?


How difficult do you want farming (and feeding a fortress in general) to be, both for an experienced player trying to get everything working and for a new player learning the ropes?

[Athmos]

Actually, way back in 2D time, getting enough food to pass your first winter and start your fortress proper was the first challenge a newcomer had to overcome. I think it would actually be cool to have to work and think a bit about basic subsistence again.

[Tormy]

Actually, way back in 2D time, getting enough food to pass your first winter and start your fortress proper was the first challenge a newcomer had to overcome. I think it would actually be cool to have to work and think a bit about basic subsistence again.

I absolutely agree. Farming & getting food is way too easy now. 

[[Note: While we are at it [I am talking about the 2D version]....Am I the only one who liked the old cave-in system? ]]

So 2 quick questions:

Any plans to make farming more difficult?

Any plans to bring back the old cave-in system? It wasn't perfect [2D version], but it was somewhat realistic at least.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

it was simple when there were only one level, but with several z leves it no longer makes sense and couldn't be implemented as simply

[Tormy]

it was simple when there were only one level, but with several z leves it no longer makes sense and couldn't be implemented as simply

Well yeah, that is true....but something should be done about it later on, because the current "system" [errr...actually we don't have any] is absolutely unrealistic.

[tps12]

Toady talked about those sort of cave-ins in the penultimate podcast: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_8_transcript.html (search for "quite"). The gist was that doing it realistically would be cool but difficult, and it's not clear how to present structural stability information to the player.

[Quatch]

You can find our suggestions on how to present structural information (a spoken pre-req for realistic caveins) in this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54761

More discussion is welcome!

[tfaal]

EDIT: Oh, and about the villages, are they really supposed to be as close together as they are here? It seems rather... claustrophobic.

The area that most folks would consider a village occupies only those small areas like the one labeled "structures" and parallel such zones. If you keep that scale in mind, they're not really overly close.

I think my main issue was that I was missing the scale of the whole location; I was assuming the bridges and roads to be around three tiles wide, when in fact they are considerably larger. I'm still not sure I completely understand the size of it. It would be nice to have a high resolution version of that image, so we could see the individual tiles.

[NW_Kohaku]

I still am worried about making an elaborate farming system a necessity for new players to learn (and for more experienced players to set up for every fort.)  Systems like that make it so I can't help but imagine that most of the failed fortresses littering the ideal world Toady has in his slogan of "Losing is fun" won't be from goblin invasions or dwarven revolutions, but rather because "Mayor Urist couldn't figure out how to farm, so everyone starved" or "a single troll killed everyone because the leader couldn't figure out how to build a military."  I know most such systems can be disabled in the .ini or raws, but new players shouldn't be expected to do that.

People keep saying this as if it's a bad thing.  Here, I keep hearing people say how much they enjoy playing this game because it's "hard", but when one of the most absurdly easy things in the game finally looks like it might be updated, everyone's going all Helen Lovejoy, and yelling "Oh! Won't SOMEBODY think of the newbies?!"  Why can't the people who enjoy having to design a complex infrastructure have it?  This game isn't even nearly as hard as the Sierra Citybuilder games right now, it's just that it's less forgiving of mistakes when you DO screw up, anyway.  And frankly, whenever people are asked about why they enjoy DF, it's because of its realism and complexity... so why do people keep getting so gunshy whenever the complexity might actually be improved?

Honestly, I'd like to see the game force you to scramble to feed your people, but if we get a system where it's possible for dwarves who honestly wouldn't know silt from sand, then you can just bring fisherdwarves and herbalists and plenty of food stocks and hope you can just trade your way to all your food needs, then that's perfectly fine, and it ensures that there's no real reason other than utter negligence for a player to starve.

And if this means that many players lose a fortress before they can figure out how to adequately prepare to feed their people, so be it.  They'll learn from their mistakes, and be better players for it.  It's the ability to overcome a challenge that defines a game, after all.

[DalGren]

Kohaku, I have been reading about the farming plans you encourage and I admit I like the stuff. However... I think there should exist a relatively hassle-free way to set a farm, even if less yield/worse crops/etc, and allow the complex stuff for good crops or special ones. That way you get the best of both worlds, from say...potatoes (random example, it might not be appropriate) being almost as easy to set as the current farming (emphasis on "almost"), and more nutritious/better yield ones requiring to put some work, and awesome special ones (like those gem yielding crops you mentioned in this or other thread) requiring even more care and preparation.
If it's balanced towards how complex you want it, then I welcome it with open arms. If it's more complex, I want to be able to obtain big "rewards" for taking care of it, or just be allowed to sort of half-ass if I want (at the risk of happiness drops or non-optimal food yields, but enough to keep Urist from starving).
A proper interface should be proposed as well as the mechanics change. If we all think about it beforehand, it might get implemented in the optimal way (and using less of Toady's valuable neurons), making the complexity easy to use (note "to use", as in interfacing with it) so it doesn't feel like homework, would make it welcomed by many possible detractors.
I am personally looking forward for fruit trees and stuff like that. I find the problem with farming is to have almost cloned crops that do mostly the same things saving for name. Give me a system that allows great things and I'll be farming to the point of obsession. Fruits, berries, legumes, with varying market values, functions, and possibilities...something worth the potential effort (as in more than "the required effort") will make farming a solid metagame. 100 identical I-can-use-any-of-them-in-the-same-context crops are a no-no. And I damn love that idea of the gem-bearing crops.

Suddenly thinking of crop functions...it can be interesting to allow certain vegetal lifeforms to be grown as a crop. From small vegetal-based creatures to "tree people"... Weaponized farming? Maybe some sort of crop that can be used as actual weapon or in the weapon industry...or poisonous crops that can be used to mass-coat weapons in poison. Giving farming more roles than food and textile industry can make it a really useful thing to spend time into.

[NW_Kohaku]

I think there should exist a relatively hassle-free way to set a farm, even if less yield/worse crops/etc, and allow the complex stuff for good crops or special ones. That way you get the best of both worlds, from say...potatoes (random example, it might not be appropriate) being almost as easy to set as the current farming (emphasis on "almost"), and more nutritious/better yield ones requiring to put some work, and awesome special ones (like those gem yielding crops you mentioned in this or other thread) requiring even more care and preparation.

Problem with that is... what's "Better", exactly? 

Look at what we have right now... You have two crops, sweet pods and quarry bushes, that produce five times as much food as any other crop.  Yes, maybe there's something out there like sun berries that have more value in booze form, but if most people are just going to grow food to make their fortress not starve, then you want sweet pods and quarry bushes plus some plump helmets during the winter that you can brew for booze.  Maybe you'll dabble a little with other crops - why not, it's basically just as easy to farm 10x10 tiles as it is to farm 5x10 tiles.  Get a little diversity in the booze.  But you don't need aboveground crops at all, most of which are utterly inferior in every way to other crops, including almost every underground crop.  (Why grow prickle berries when strawberries are exactly the same, except where it's better, and why grow strawberries when you could be growing sweet pods, which are significantly more valuable and produce 5 times the food?)

So, then, if we make some crop that is so easy to grow that you can grow it continuously without having to care about upkeep... why would you ever bother learning the system? 

It's not an advantage to spend all this time making a system just to shove it in the background and never let anyone enjoy it.  It needs to be as much a part of the game as the fluid system or the military system is.

[MaDeR Levap]

Guys, you read too much from this screenshot. For me, Toady currently try to have much interesting look of regions in adventure mode. Just that.

In other words, these gigantic farms will be for show only and currently nothing will change for dwarves in fortress mode farm-wise.

[Jiri Petru]

Kohaku: there are two kinds of difficulty.

• First, there is a difficulty where the player understands the game, knows what he is supposed to do, yet it's hard to accomplish the goals. This is the difficulty we want.
• Second, there is a difficulty where the player loses because he can't bloody understand the game and doesn't know what the hell is he supposed to do. This is the difficulty we don't want. Yet, this is the difficulty Dwarf Fortress now seems to be leaning towards. The game is actually ridiculously easy once you figure out the System. Figuring the system is the hard part. Exactly the opposite of what it should be!

The same goes for farming. Farming should be extremely easy to figure out! The difficulty should stem from extraordinary circumstances such as sieges, floods or grasshoppers. The player should always know what to do in terms of controls! Choosing the proper response, that's the challenge. Not knowing about the possibility of response isn't a challenge, it's bad design!!!

EDIT: Oh, and about the villages, are they really supposed to be as close together as they are here? It seems rather... claustrophobic.

You are an American, right?

No offense meant. It's just here in Europe we have villages every two kilometers or so. In medieval, there used to be much more of them! Heck, when I biked through the whole of Poland last year, I've noticed there was a farm every 100 meters or so! We biked through ~600 kilometers of land and each night it was very, very difficult to find a spot that could not be seen from a nearby house.

Medieval landscape was extreme. The inhabited parts had a very high population density – no forests, only houses and farms. The wilderness was very virgin and untamed. Much unlike today.