I ended up sticking mostly with topics that relate to current developments and the dev page to make this doable. That means omitting a lot of questions, but there are simply too many to answer now in a reasonable time period. I'm already unable to reply to posts in the suggestion forum (I am still reading them, though I'm behind as usual), so I can't encourage cross-posting here and won't be able to reply to "read this thread -- what do you think?" posts. Ideally I'd get to everything, but it's impossible now.
In many games mounts are basically motorbikes with legs, will mounts in DF, especially badly trained or with a low riding skill, be treated more realistically as separate agents that you just give commands? This is especially important with intelligent ones, which should probably be handled more like your companions than like a warhorse.
Yeah, I think all commands will be transferred by whatever means, with the ability to break down at any stage. So if your mount is trained to respond to physical or verbal commands, and the horse can't receive the command or you can't send it, then you'd be in bad shape. Now, if everything is in good shape, I doubt this will be any different from regular movement though, to keep things straightforward (aside from the velocity changes and whatever else comes from just being in a mount relationship). Even a mount with intelligence on par with the adventurer should just respond to movement key presses in a normal situation, but they should probably be able to resist unreasonable commands more effectively unless there's some special condition in play ensuring loyalty. Practically, this will likely mean that all mounts will just behave as extensions of the player for a while, until the first caveats are added later on.
Will the addition of different travel rates like walk, jog, canter, run, etc. be available to all entities or will it only be applied to mounts? If it is available to all entities do you have plans to make dwarves in fortress mode choose to move at different paces during work or only in response to threats?
I doubt the travel rates would be restricted to mounts, but I'm not sure how they'd relate to DF jobs. Perhaps that's a good personality/etc. effect.
Amphibious mounts may decide to swim, drowning their riders while continuing their invasion path. Considering you don't want mounts to be unthinking 'motorbikes with legs', will this be perfectly acceptable behaviour if the mount is badly trained?
I think the rider drowning part is probably a little extreme the way it works now. The riders should try to preserve themselves both before and after the trouble happens, and the presumably well-trained mounts they currently use should avoid the water if that's called for. The current behavior is an oversight.
Will the zones mentioned for combat also be used for other things? For example, random creture generation of stuff along the lines of shimeras and mermaids could have more use of swapping zones between species than bodyparts maybe.
Will all kinds of creatures have the same zones, or will that be something defined in the RAWs?
I'm not sure if the combat zones will be appropriate for centaurs etc. or not. A centaur-making procedure might require additional information. The combat zones might end up being very loose, because I don't want to have very many of them and I want them to be presentable in a more or less uniform way when you have to make combat decisions.
I think it is likely the zones will start in the raws, perhaps like the humanoid body positions etc.
Considering that the goblins snatch a lot of non-carnivorous folk, have you considered adding in slave-run farming villages for the goblins?
They don't snatch any strict herbivores, so the most simple option is just to force their captives to eat hunted meat as the goblins will themselves. This wouldn't be practical if the captive numbers got way out of control as they do now, but I don't expect that to last in the new system.
When you do implement [diplomacy/war], how is that going to change fortress mode? Is there going to be an option during world gen to stop when a controllable civ is at war? I know we'll be able to start wars ourselves, but will diplomatic events be happening in the background as we play, so we'll get notifications of peace treaties and new conflicts and whatnot during the course of the game? In that vein, if we start a war with the humans will that effect the entire Dwarven Civ or just our Fortress?
I'm open to more world-gen stop conditions, once it matters. The impact of your decisions should be widespread, and when wars start independent of your actions, you'll still have to deal with it. I'm not sure how the information will be conveyed to you (if it's not still instant like it is now on the civ screen). Now that there are extra people kicking around in the world, if anybody cares about you I'd imagine they'd send somebody specifically, or you'd pick it up from the next caravan, diplomat or immigrant that knows.
are you saying that dwarfs may emigrate to the sprawl if fortress housing prices are too high? More broadly, what are your plans for emigration during fortress mode in general?
If fortress housing prices are too high for everybody, they should be lowered. If they are too high just for few dwarves, then yeah, if an affected dwarf has some way/place to survive out in the world and nothing keeping them in the fort then they should leave. In general, a dwarf seeing better opportunity or lack of death elsewhere should go when practical -- some of your initial dwarves especially might feel more bound by loyalty, depending on the start scenario. A start scenario oriented around a temple or something might see many of the dwarves refusing to leave under any circumstances. Overall, the emigration mechanics shouldn't have them squirting out of your fort at the drop of a hat, since it would often be a hard journey with an uncertain future, but you should have to work a bit to keep them.
Anyone know the details about what kind of structure toady will put in? Will there be barn houses,mills, and stables and such? Also, will villagers actually harvest the crops, store them, then eat them ? In general, will villagers have needs (like food and drink) and a schedule by which they live? I think this would enable you to put in mills and barns and wheat silos and stuff while giving them real purpose. We could cause all kinds of mischief then, like sabotaging their food production lines. This would then have real consequences.
As the dev page develops, we'll get more and more of these things. Right now, there's really nothing going on. The main point is the get entity pops and site structures together, and the rest is meant to be sorted as we give the adventurer new things to do with their own sites and so on. Once the site resource stuff from Trader is in, then yeah, we'd have groups far more vulnerable to trouble. There are lots of different food sources, so you'd have to work to screw them up, but I imagine total destruction of food stores in the winter should be pretty bad. If you actually sit in the village and mess with people all year... then I dunno. If it's not something the super-rudimentary AI can spot, I guess you'd watch them starve or abandon the site or turn to a life of crime and stuff as those things are added. At first they'd probably just starve on the spot while still trying to work.
Also what about citys near bigger lakes and rivers? Will they get channels and screw-pumps for watering the fields or for drainage of swamps and marshes for farmland? Little one-tile boats for fishing? Aqueducts for dwarves?
I haven't even done basic town maps yet, so I'm not really sure how any of this is going to manifest.
Will there be herding/fishing based civs too?
Yeah. The herding civs will be more practical when I get to the livestock stuff for the adventurer (and it will be required to some extent). Not sure about how adv mode fishing will work, so I'm not sure how the civs will work there either. There are lots of options.
Could [demons] change how and where sites are created/expanded/abandoned and alike?
They should -- right now they just add their position structure and start extra wars. I think we might not see much here until more things are happening with wars like fortifications and so on, where demons would likely have larger aspirations and more knowledge than goblins. There should be lots of little things though. As the personality of a bandit leader, say, will eventually be reflected more and more in the overall lifestyle/appearance/tactics/etc. of the bandits, a demon overlord could have a drastic effect on goblin society through the same mechanics with little to no extra work.
Is weapon length taken into account in combat, and if not, will it ever be?
Does the weight of a weapon affect the velocity of the strike or recovery time/frequency of attacks? Will a weak dwarf swing an artifact platinum mace with the same velocity as one of adamantine?
I'm not sure if we'll ever get multi-tile effects from things like pikes, but the attack moves and opportunities and so on will likely consider length, as should the combat zones (for getting head attacks on things like giants, etc).
The weight of the weapon influences the velocity a lot, yeah, though I'd defer to whatever bug reports as to the overall effect there. The velocity itself was working as of my latest combat revision.
In the thief section of the devlist, there's a few bits about tracking your appearance for bounties and being wanted for your crime(s) and whatnot. If you find someone with a similar enough appearance, would it be possible for the crime(s) to be blamed on that person?
Yeah, though an innocent person that lives in the location is likely to be able to avoid that kind of suspicion most of the time. Another stranger would be subject to the same torment as you, but you'd have to get them there without becoming involved yourself. That would be a pretty straightforward way to implement it. Beyond that, doing something like looking at the more distinct features/hair/clothing in the site might allow you to frame locals, but there are things to consider there, and it's a bit difficult without having every person completely specified at all times.
Toady how are you going to balance out techniques with weapon wielders that use a person's physical body (and other less then full strength attacks)? In real life a body attack doesn't deal anywhere close to as much damage as a weapon strike but there are often opportunities where it is advantageous.
This is a purpose of the opportunity numbers. Randomly, and perhaps augmented by your skills/choices or however, you'd have turns where a kick becomes a highly favored move with massive bonuses. This wouldn't make the move effective beyond its maximum natural power, but a hard, accurate shot in DF is generally formidable. In cases where the opponent is impervious to the move, you'd probably want to pass on it and wait for good opportunities with your other moves if you have better ones, unless it had a good side effect that could give you an opportunity to escape.
Any plans to make farming more difficult?
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? Will trading be able to wholly replace a dwarven fortress food industry at home?
Will the new villages result in greater amounts of farmland required to feed individuals? If so, will there be "farmers caravans" that come to the fortress with food you can buy?
Nothing specific beyond the new dev page has been settled. I think having dwarves outside the fortress yet associated to the fortress might end up being the focus of food production for established forts, so it might often come down to surviving the first years, and you shouldn't just be able to blast out the necessary food with a random plot you plunk down somewhere. In a more isolated fort (settled on a glacier in the middle of nowhere, say), with no outside dwarves, it should be more work to support 100 dwarves. The new balance in adventure mode would require, say, 60 or so of them to be fairly dedicated underground food-workers, though the ratio hasn't been established for underground agriculture yet. A large dwarven fortress-city with expansive aboveground and underground offscreen settlements probably won't have a lot of food production onscreen, and you'd be engaged with near-constant trade/taxes/etc. with your offscreen buddies. There would need to be conversions between edible offscreen/onscreen resources, because in adventure mode you'd got people eating hundreds of items a year and in dwarf mode it is 8 or whoever. I don't like the feel of dwarf taking a barrel full of plump helmets to eat per sitting, or even referring to the food in those terms, but there's weirdness any way you do it, I think.
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?
I think it'll be necessary for large cities that are inhabited by people that need to eat a normal amount or else starve in some weeks. Goblins might not fall in that category. A human capital would likely only be supportable with farming, though I'd consider any real world counter-examples from the right period. What were the biggest fishing/hunting-fed settlements back then (that didn't also get a lot food from crops and livestock -- theirs or otherwise)? Does the answer change much if livestock is included but not crops?
[when] crops can actually be differentiated significantly, how many crops would you start allowing? Instead of having a dozen plants everywhere (and one for each of Good, Evil, and Savage), can we get tropical-jungle-on-silty-loam-specific fruits where it's possible for one fort to see an entirely different set of crops for its whole existence than another fort?
Sure, I'd prefer to have more. I'm not sure what the underground distinctions are going to be though.
Will we have country bumpkins coming in from offmap needing health care or to buy items at the fortress stores?
Will the villagers sometimes detect raiding parties and warn of them coming?
The more interactions the better really, though we'll likely start with food. The timescale issue is going to be a little strange when dealing with armies on the world map moving around -- by the time they get to your outskirts, I'm not sure how much warning you'd have, so I can't commit to anything there, but it's certainly a reasonable thing.
So will there be a way to harvest crops from these new fields? Will taking from them make the owners hostile if you are caught?
I see that the new farms look like shrubs. Will we be able to gather[p] those shrubs? Because that seems a little overkill, because it can feed 200 dwarves each year if they regrow.
You likely won't be able to found a dwarf fortress in the human villages, but yeah, they are just plants. Once you can grab plants in adv mode, they will be available, although whatever farming changes go in will likely make them not as useful a lot of the time.
Judging by the shear amount of farmland for those villages posted in the screenshots does this imply any farming changes like making things take longer to grow?
I'll most likely be matching plants up roughly with whatever real-world analogs there are for the humans when I get to the actual farming updates. I'm not sure about dwarven crops.
Will historical events be able to affect a subset of a population? For instance, a megabeast attack that kills one tenth of a village's residents. Would this affect the individual histories of population members we meet?
Will portions of a population be able to emigrate to another site? Ideally this would towns with immigrants, whose history could be traced back to another location via an immigration wave event.
Finally, will the family members of people we meet have histories themselves, including the possibility of their death? I'll be honest with you here, I'm mostly just hoping to find a farmboy orphaned and displaced by a dragon attack and bring him along on my quest to kill the foul creature.
Not yet, but that's the idea. Any historical event affecting a population should be reflected in how it creates the population's individual members, but it'll have to be a gradual process.
I live in an area between Bresse plain, the soil being roughly speaking clay, and Jura mountain, the soil being limestone. I learned in school that the villages of Bresse and Jura have very different shapes, because of the capacity of the soil to retain water. Limestone being unable to retain water, the Jura villages are very tight and dense around the scarce watering places, while the Bresse villages have homesteads scattered in a very large area because you can find ponds anywhere. Did you consider using that kind of rule for the villages morphology? That could be simple, by just relying on the soil type, or even be based on the actual water layout, with this layout depending on the soil type, although that would probably be more complex to implement.
Yeah, I've thought about it, and it'll probably end up happening, but I haven't done anything yet. It should probably wait for whatever soil information related to farming that there's going to be, but I guess I could just use aquifers and streams earlier. They don't even have wells yet though. Regions that are higher up will have less stream water in general, and the stream flows will reflect that (not that that matters much yet), though I don't have anything with karst features or whatever else with limestone that can get away from surface water entirely.
Plains civs have farms now from what I gather. I assume goblins will have hunting sheds or livestock pens or something like that for meat gathering, elves will have...elf stuff. Will modders be able to pick and choose which kind of structures are available to a civ? For example replacing the majority of a [CARNIVORE] race's farms with hunting lodges or animal pens or something? Like reducing farms to 5%, hunting lodges up to 35%, livestock pens to 35%, woodcutting outposts to 15%... and so on and so fourth?
Right now you can just set the permitted jobs. I'm not sure how percentages would work -- there's going to be a lot of influence from the available resources, so allocations that specific might not end up being workable, although I guess in an ideal location it might be able to rely on them.
And yeah, the lakes/ponds are weird. Any chance you'll get rid of them, Toady?
Are there any plans to remove the "brook tile" hack and replace it with sloped banks and less than 7/7 water?
They have been around from the beginning, and I never got around to the local variations in the landscape that I'd need to get a better distribution of differently-sized small features. We might see something on this with underbrush (which is up in the first category on the dev page with the other things I've been working on), since I wanted to mix tree/brush density up within a given world map square, though soil information might have to come first for that to be satisfying. Another obstacle is having new moist tiles or tiles with some water without having them having floors on a different Z level. Brooks are currently handled that way. I don't like the idea of having 3/7 water a Z level down, although a lot of the streams should probably connect up with the aquifer. This would make fewer places inhabitable by digging creatures unless the stream were smoothly lowered a bit, but I'm not for turning them into rivers with less water in them since that introduces problems with connecting rivers (would all 3/7 rivers connect to 7/7 rivers in waterfalls? Otherwise you'd have reverse waterfalls, or you'd have to introduce a 4/7 ground square, which feels like a can of worms) and people walking across a brook should not be in a separate Z level with respect to projectiles/LOS, etc. People swimming on the surface of a river should probably also be vulnerable to archers, but having an ankle-high brook hide you is worse.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page (Read 1610646 times)