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[Footkerchief]

...
Your equipment is complete, you shove all your military items into the Abstractor Logistics Chest where they get remembered as "300 Exceptional Steel Axes", "300 Superior Steel Chainmails", "300 Finely-crafted Bronze High Boots" and so on. Again, decorations are forgotten or maybe they'll be kept in some abstracted way like 'they are all decorated with goblin bone' and the game will decide whether that means spikes, hanging rings or an image when the player asks to look closely at the item again.
...

Just wanted to say I really like your ideas and hope the game ends up looking something like that, but is this kind of abstraction necessary? I thought one of the goals of the caravan arc was to track individual items after they exit your fortress. (Or is that still the case? I haven't been paying attention as much in recent months. Footkerchief?)

The caravan arc is still slated to track individual items, yes:

With the trade upgrades, will items you trade away ever return? For example, could you sell a masterwork steel sword to a human caravan, have that civ get angry with you, and have a soldier using that sword attack you?

This is the eventual idea, however, it might not happen until they are pulling armies from the entity populations.  So if not the next major release, then the one after that.  It could be that armies are still generated but draw items from the stockpiles for the next release in a sort of hybrid approach, but I'm not sure how it is going to end up.

[monk12]

Did I just read that the detail of vomit is going to increase to the point that we can see the carrots plump helmets in the spew?

AWESOME

[dennislp3]

LOL yeah the detail of vomi has me a bit perplexed....but im not complaining!

[Rexfelum]

Wait.

. . .
Right now it uses your fullness counter, which is related to when you last ate, as well as an auxiliary counter that is supposed to simulate fluids or something.  Ideally this will take care of itself when we have things like . . .

Wait.

. . . an auxiliary counter that is supposed to simulate fluids or something.  . . .

He doesn't know what it is.  He just knows it makes you vomit.

--Rexfelum

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Wait.

. . .
Right now it uses your fullness counter, which is related to when you last ate, as well as an auxiliary counter that is supposed to simulate fluids or something.  Ideally this will take care of itself when we have things like . . .

Wait.

. . . an auxiliary counter that is supposed to simulate fluids or something.  . . .

He doesn't know what it is.  He just knows it makes you vomit.

--Rexfelum

The magic of Dwarf Fortress. It's so complex, even the Daddy/Developer/Programmer doesn't know what half of the stuff does.

[Cruxador]

Wait.

. . .
Right now it uses your fullness counter, which is related to when you last ate, as well as an auxiliary counter that is supposed to simulate fluids or something.  Ideally this will take care of itself when we have things like . . .

Wait.

. . . an auxiliary counter that is supposed to simulate fluids or something.  . . .

He doesn't know what it is.  He just knows it makes you vomit.

--Rexfelum

The magic of Dwarf Fortress. It's so complex, even the Daddy/Developer/Programmer doesn't know what half of the stuff does.

The problem with that statement is that it doesn't necesarily imply any huge complexity, just inadequate commenting.

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Fair point. I was trying, however, to paint it in an optimistic/complimentary light.

[mendonca]

I don't know what the bulletin board does.  There's that dev page thing about inquiring regarding supply/demand situations, which is probably going to have some partial implementation in this release.  Other than that, you'll be able to move stuff around and make ends meet, first release, though there still aren't a lot of ends.  And yeah, the situation might end up complicated and a bit untidy for you.

Thanks for dignifying my pseudo-question with an answer! Complicated and untidy works for me.

The bulletin board in Elite 2 was one of the options you got at any space station / starport. This listed postings from randomly generated people / charities / organisations who wanted things. Options included:
- I will buy robots / nerve gas etc. at a premium price.
- Anybody want to go and kill someone for me?
- Work for the military! Earn money and Glory!
- Give money to charity!

It was a viable option at some systems for offloading high demand goods to individuals at a premium price, rather than just offloading them at the stockmarket.

I don't know if it's viable to include something like this, perhaps a noteboard adjacent to the town trading depot, or even if it would add to gameplay. Wanted posters stuck to the town noteboard would be cool, though. Especially when you see your own description there.

[Psieye]

...
Your equipment is complete, you shove all your military items into the Abstractor Logistics Chest where they get remembered as "300 Exceptional Steel Axes", "300 Superior Steel Chainmails", "300 Finely-crafted Bronze High Boots" and so on. Again, decorations are forgotten or maybe they'll be kept in some abstracted way like 'they are all decorated with goblin bone' and the game will decide whether that means spikes, hanging rings or an image when the player asks to look closely at the item again.
...

Just wanted to say I really like your ideas and hope the game ends up looking something like that, but is this kind of abstraction necessary? I thought one of the goals of the caravan arc was to track individual items after they exit your fortress. (Or is that still the case? I haven't been paying attention as much in recent months. Footkerchief?)

Toady did say that tracking individual items after they exit the fortress is the ideal but whether he'll need to abstract a bit to comprompise with reality is uncertain at this point. I guess with a few thousand items in the Logistics Chest this is still feasible but what of a fort that has shipped out 100,000 prepared meals over the course of several years?

[Lord Shonus]

I don't know what the bulletin board does.  There's that dev page thing about inquiring regarding supply/demand situations, which is probably going to have some partial implementation in this release.  Other than that, you'll be able to move stuff around and make ends meet, first release, though there still aren't a lot of ends.  And yeah, the situation might end up complicated and a bit untidy for you.

Thanks for dignifying my pseudo-question with an answer! Complicated and untidy works for me.

The bulletin board in Elite 2 was one of the options you got at any space station / starport. This listed postings from randomly generated people / charities / organisations who wanted things. Options included:
- I will buy robots / nerve gas etc. at a premium price.
- Anybody want to go and kill someone for me?
- Work for the military! Earn money and Glory!
- Give money to charity!

It was a viable option at some systems for offloading high demand goods to individuals at a premium price, rather than just offloading them at the stockmarket.

I don't know if it's viable to include something like this, perhaps a noteboard adjacent to the town trading depot, or even if it would add to gameplay. Wanted posters stuck to the town noteboard would be cool, though. Especially when you see your own description there.

In Elite 3, the BB also gave special missions that didn't fit the standard model.

[Footkerchief]

Toady did say that tracking individual items after they exit the fortress is the ideal but whether he'll need to abstract a bit to comprompise with reality is uncertain at this point. I guess with a few thousand items in the Logistics Chest this is still feasible but what of a fort that has shipped out 100,000 prepared meals over the course of several years?

Those items are all tracked already, or at least they used to be.  Back in 40d it was possible to find caravans hanging out in human towns, full of fortress-made glassware etc., although they usually got slaughtered as soon as you saw them, due to civ allegiance bugs.

The bigger hazard for item tracking is probably the even larger numbers of world gen items.  That will get abstracted, no doubt.

[Areyar]

Instead of a bullitin board, I'd rather the player has to search out these persons who would pay extra in person.

So the easy way to make money is to
-goto the Depot of a site which has a deficit on the type of stuff you got.
but to make more money:
-talk to people and hope someone offers more.
-talk to people at location X, get a contract to deliver A goods of type B, material C and minimal quality D to location Y in Z days time.

(A compass marker for special locations/persons while on-site, would be appreciated by the way.)

[LoSboccacc]

Instead of a bullitin board, I'd rather the player has to search out these persons who would pay extra in person.

So the easy way to make money is to
-goto the Depot of a site which has a deficit on the type of stuff you got.
but to make more money:
-talk to people and hope someone offers more.
-talk to people at location X, get a contract to deliver A goods of type B, material C and minimal quality D to location Y in Z days time.

(A compass marker for special locations/persons while on-site, would be appreciated by the way.)

or, shady dealers could approach players before they reach the city.

it could also be another class of night creature feeding on people suffer, that propose you to sell all your food to it at a premium price so that the city would remain in dire despair. or another competing civ. or a lawyer.

they could use the same intercept code that ambushes uses.

[Quatch]

=============
||"You feel uneasy"||
=============

...

Lawyer: Howdy!

[Psieye]

Instead of a bullitin board, I'd rather the player has to search out these persons who would pay extra in person.

So the easy way to make money is to
-goto the Depot of a site which has a deficit on the type of stuff you got.
but to make more money:
-talk to people and hope someone offers more.
-talk to people at location X, get a contract to deliver A goods of type B, material C and minimal quality D to location Y in Z days time.

(A compass marker for special locations/persons while on-site, would be appreciated by the way.)

or, shady dealers could approach players before they reach the city.

it could also be another class of night creature feeding on people suffer, that propose you to sell all your food to it at a premium price so that the city would remain in dire despair. or another competing civ. or a lawyer.

they could use the same intercept code that ambushes uses.

Or conmen who give you fake currency or shoddy goods in exchange, which you'd need some suitable merchant skill (be it Observer or Negotiation) to spot beforehand.

Then imagine coming across foreign mandates too - "No Importing of bronze items!" Which then invites a black market. Yeah - lotttttttttttttts can be done with the caravan arc depending on what Toady wants to do and to what depth.