Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Aquillion]

Also:  While not comfortable, sleeping in a chair is preferable to sleeping on the ground. Dwarves could do that if there's no other option available.  Obviously, it wouldn't make them happy; but it wouldn't make them as unhappy as sleeping on the floor, either.

[mickel]

Dwarves seem a bit stupid about how they use furniture sometimes. I've seen them sit on tables and eat...

I'm all for more bed types. I think I've suggested hammocks to death. I'd also like to see more elaborate bed types, for the pansy nobles. How about a stone frame with wooden slats for the bottom? And for the fakirs, stone beds which menace with spikes of steel!

(We don't have fakirs? Why haven't I been informed of this?)

[qalnor]

quote:Originally posted by mickel:
<STRONG>Dwarves seem a bit stupid about how they use furniture sometimes. I've seen them sit on tables and eat...
</STRONG>

How is it stupid to sit on a table and eat?

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by DamnedChoir:
<STRONG>Personally, though, I've slept on a marble bed. The frame was heavy marble with lovely pillars, then two HUGE thick mattresses sat onto the frame with big blankets and pillows, it was comfortable.</STRONG>

Reminds me, back in the 2D version I had a mason go fey and make a marble bed.

[AlanL]

When I think of purely stone beds, I think of sand being used as padding. It wouldn't be very convenient, but I would imagine if the grain was fine enough it would actually be not that bad. Then again, I've never tried it.

[Lightman]

I don't know if anyone thinks stone beds are "blasphemy". Why would they? The dwarves live in stone fortresses. The main thing, I think, is that it sounds weird and uncomfortable. It doesn't sound like it would be a good solution. It's like sleeping on the floor and would basically be the same as sleeping without a proper bed, so it would generate a bad thought.

Why not have several types of bedding, though? There have been some good suggestions: bedrolls, blankets, haystacks, wooden beds, hammocks, etc.

[Captain Failmore]

My solution to the bedding issue would be a whole new bedding production chain.

CLOTH BEDDING -

Requires:
1x Any Cloth

Value: Dirt Cheap

Under my amazing new but likely already suggested or otherwise thought of bedding system, this would be the most basic of beds. It would be little more than a large, flat bag stuffed with plant fiber. Think of it as a sleeping bag in a way. It's not especially comfortable, but it's just fine for your average dwarf.

STONE BED -

Requires:
1x Any Cloth
1x Any Stone

Value: Low

Slightly better than just bedding on the ground only in that it gets your sleeping dwarves up off of the ground. As you can see, there's still cloth used. That's because it's basically an elevated stone-slab frame with bedding laid on it. Nothing special, though if it were made of an attractive variety of stone it might look nice in the room of one of your dwarves.

WOODEN BED -

Requires:
1x Any Cloth
1x Any Wood

Value:
Moderate

Another step up from stone, we find wood. A wood-frame bed understandably has a bit more give to it than a stone slab or sheet rock, and thus offers greater comfort. A four-post wooden frame also presumably looks a bit better than a slightly elevated platform made out of rock, meaning that the bed itself is more attractive, warranting a higher value in trade along with the comfort factor.

METAL BED -

Requires:
1x Any Cloth
1x Any Metal
1x Any Fuel (Unless produced at a magma forge)

Value:
Low to Extravagant

Last we have the trusty metal-frame bed. This would offer a lot of the perks of a wooden bed in addition to being very pretty if made out of a valuable metal. Alternatively, you could just start churning out bronze beds to provide your fortress moderate-quality bedding without having to cut trees or import wood. I'd imagine things like golden or platinum beds would be reserved for nobles and total snobs though.

This system makes it possible for bedding to be produced from pretty much anything provided that you have cloth to make the bedding from and a material to stick it on. It makes trees a bit less valuable since you no longer actually need wood, but if wooden beds were thought of more fondly than crude common-metal beds and stone beds, there'd still be an incentive to use them in order to boost the value of a bedroom. (Or if you built onto an aquifer and are at a loss for stone.)

No one building material should be deemed one hundred percent necessary in this game, really. Just because we might prefer to use a certain building material doesn't mean we should have to - or always be able to. That's just how things work. If I'm stuck in some horrible place where trees can't grow and all I have is dirt, rocks, and plants I can thresh fiber from, I'm going to find a way to make a bed work there. That's just how things work. I don't think the game would suffer at all from abundant bedding, personally.

[mickel]

quote:Originally posted by qalnor:
<STRONG>

How is it stupid to sit on a table and eat?</STRONG>

Have you tried it? It's extremely uncomfortable, even when compared to sitting on the floor and eating (except people don't walk over you, which is a very real hazard in DF)... Given a table but no chairs, I'd stand and eat with the food on the table, or, given that there were chairs, I'd use one of them.

It could be worse though. They could have sat on the table and eaten floor that was either on a chair or on the floor.

[Darbuk.Ubildolush]

I would point out that many of the positions you're stating are very ethnocentric.  Not a bad thing, just to be expected.  Many cultures sit on the floor to eat, though they often have matching tables.

[MagicGuigz]

I would point out that many of the positions you're stating are very ethnocentric.  Not a bad thing, just to be expected.  Many cultures sit on the floor to eat, though they often have matching tables.

As a programmer and an anthropology undergrad, this is not a matter of culture, this is an issue with consistency.  If eating on the floor usually gives them an unhappy thought, there is no reason for them not to use the table when there is one (especially since there is no such thing as a subgroup culture in DF).

[Darbuk.Ubildolush]

I concede your point. I hadn't considered that off-hand.

[Firehound]

I like the Ideas mentioned for the bedding chain, since it makes a little more sense then that they are just sleeping on a wooden slab or a rock slab.

However, I suggest Hammocks, like stated earlier, should be added in. Hammocks should require that they are placed between two objects a dwarf can't pass through(Statues, trees, walls, fortifications, not doors) If the conditions cease to exist, the Hammock deconstructs itself.

[AngleWyrm]

To those who would complain that a stone bed is uncomfortable: Try sleeping on a bed made entirely out of wood! Ok, so whatever makes a wood bed comfortable can make a stone bed comfortable.

Two words: Principal Ingredient

[Draco18s]

To those who would complain that a stone bed is uncomfortable: Try sleeping on a bed made entirely out of wood!

That can actually be made quite comfortable.  Start with a frame, then add some cane, which is reasonably flexible and sturdy.  Add a wood pillow, or if you're feeling exotic--and a little lenient on our definition of "wood"--make a pillow stuffed with bamboo (I have two, I love them, softest damned things ever, but without being overly poofy--though I should repuff them, they're getting a little condensed).  Voila, 100% pure wood beds (though you still might want a blanket).

[Darbuk.Ubildolush]

To those who would complain that a stone bed is uncomfortable: Try sleeping on a bed made entirely out of wood!

That can actually be made quite comfortable.  Start with a frame, then add some cane, which is reasonably flexible and sturdy.  Add a wood pillow, or if you're feeling exotic--and a little lenient on our definition of "wood"--make a pillow stuffed with bamboo (I have two, I love them, softest damned things ever, but without being overly poofy--though I should repuff them, they're getting a little condensed).  Voila, 100% pure wood beds (though you still might want a blanket).

I've just started posting here in these forums, and this whole comment made me laugh.   Not in a 'haha that's horrible' kind of way, but in a 'that's a rather ingenius answer' way.  Nicely done.  Though I really want to see beds (Well, everything really) more complex in general.