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[NW_Kohaku]

I've also been thinking about dwarven independence quite a bit, recently, because of this post:

I like the idea.  It's a lot of work, but something of this nature will be flat-out necessary for a competent social model for DF.

It would make sense if a dwarf assigned to nothing but drudgery hauling for all eternity would decide that he wants to make something of himself, and decides to go buy a stone out of the stockpiles, make a workshop, and start a career for himself as a craftsdwarf.  It would also, however, fundementally break player control over the fortress, and turn it into a game of herding cats.  (And players currently enjoy herding cats only as far as the nearest magma pipe.)

I think you could get a working system out of this.  Only let the dwarves choose their own activities if they otherwise would be idle (and give them a minor happiness boost for doing so.)  If an intelligent prioritization was managed, we might be able to get a fortress running automatically without any need for player intervention (something I'd love to have happen, since it would lessen what the player flat-out *needed* to do and also would make implementing automation of NPC sites and abandoned fortresses much easier.)  If there was an intelligent supply-and-demand economy model, the raising prices of scarce resources would influence dwarves who weren't apathetic about money into producing those scarce materials (like, say, a once-a-year check to switch careers, taking into account current skills.)

Basically, I'd like to know how long a leash you would let your dwarves have, as players...

I've already started talking about dwarves that can furnish their own rooms.  If they built their own workshops, capitalist style, and you basically just "zoned" for industry or commerce, and dwarves were more autonomous in what they did, would you be more content to sit back and watch the ant farm, or demand more control?

[nuker w]

BURN THE CAPITALISTS! Bahahahaha...... Yea, I like it alot my self but it would need an init file and it would be one of the very un-important updates as such.

[NW_Kohaku]

Un-important updates, huh?

Funny how people have accused this of being everywhere from inconsequential to "completely upsetting everything, and rewritting the whole game".

Is there something I'm not being clear enough about, here?  I'd be happy to explain parts that make people confused.

[nuker w]

I've also been thinking about dwarven independence quite a bit, recently, because of this post:

I like the idea.  It's a lot of work, but something of this nature will be flat-out necessary for a competent social model for DF.

It would make sense if a dwarf assigned to nothing but drudgery hauling for all eternity would decide that he wants to make something of himself, and decides to go buy a stone out of the stockpiles, make a workshop, and start a career for himself as a craftsdwarf.  It would also, however, fundementally break player control over the fortress, and turn it into a game of herding cats.  (And players currently enjoy herding cats only as far as the nearest magma pipe.)

I think you could get a working system out of this.  Only let the dwarves choose their own activities if they otherwise would be idle (and give them a minor happiness boost for doing so.)  If an intelligent prioritization was managed, we might be able to get a fortress running automatically without any need for player intervention (something I'd love to have happen, since it would lessen what the player flat-out *needed* to do and also would make implementing automation of NPC sites and abandoned fortresses much easier.)  If there was an intelligent supply-and-demand economy model, the raising prices of scarce resources would influence dwarves who weren't apathetic about money into producing those scarce materials (like, say, a once-a-year check to switch careers, taking into account current skills.)

Basically, I'd like to know how long a leash you would let your dwarves have, as players...

I've already started talking about dwarves that can furnish their own rooms.  If they built their own workshops, capitalist style, and you basically just "zoned" for industry or commerce, and dwarves were more autonomous in what they did, would you be more content to sit back and watch the ant farm, or demand more control?

I meant THIS specifacly. Jeez, dont go out and start getting angry at me for liking what your saying, beside one part which I think isint as important as other parts.

[NW_Kohaku]

I meant THIS specifacly. Jeez, dont go out and start getting angry at me for liking what your saying, beside one part which I think isint as important as other parts.

Sorry if I gave that impression, but I'm not angry with you at all.  I just thought it somewhat amusing that there is so much in the eye of the beholder that one part or another involves too much or not very dramatic changes.  (And I was thinking that if there is that much that is a matter of perception, that maybe it means something is too vague.)

As for the zoning for commerce part, that was simply an example of "loosening the leash", something else we could do, for example, is simply not assign labors to dwarves, and just have job requests which dwarves fill based upon what job they want to perform that day.  If dwarves own their own workshops, that would be significantly changed by what they own. 

It could even be a model where dwarves own the resources they harvest or create, and you have to "buy" it from them with fortress funds, and they can simply start setting up their own industries based on their own preferences, and you just post "contracts" to buy certain amounts of products or materials, and let the dwarves do the rest as they see fit, while paying them in money that presumably must be taxed of them.

That would be SIGNIFICANTLY slipping their leash, to the point where dwarves are total free spirits that you have very little direct control over.  I'm asking for a matter of degree players would want their dwarves to become autonomous.

[Kilo24]

Basically, I'd like to know how long a leash you would let your dwarves have, as players...

I've already started talking about dwarves that can furnish their own rooms.  If they built their own workshops, capitalist style, and you basically just "zoned" for industry or commerce, and dwarves were more autonomous in what they did, would you be more content to sit back and watch the ant farm, or demand more control?

Well, I was kind of reluctant to go into it on this thread because it's a significant yet fairly separate system from the topic, but I'll try it.

Getting dwarves to place workshops was a bit beyond what I had in mind (though I hadn't thought of zoning.)  More like they'd enable tasks and do jobs automatically if they didn't have any player-mandated work for the last month or so, and if they got said player-mandated work they would finish what they were doing and then do the player task automatically.  It would certainly be a better way to spend the time rather than endlessly partying.

One major problem with it would be letting them choose their own materials, and thereby wasting all the steel or adamantium on little metal figurines.  Adding a similar marker to all resources like the economic versus non-economic stone could help, and/or the Eternal Suggestions standing orders request could also include some limitations on using materials (such as only allowing dwarves to use materials that you had 100 or more of in the stockpiles.

I could foresee it being an init option, or maybe a toggleable function of a dwarf noble once the population hits 50 or so.  It could be a pretty big help in large fortresses  in order to not need to worry about finding sustainable work for 100+ dwarves.  And it would dramatically enhance the ant-farm nature of DF (like this topic's suggestion would too.)

It would also provide a much-improved default behavioral model to AI-controlled fortresses when you visit them in Adventure mode, and the job prioritizations could be coded in such a way that that would be useful to run for fortresses/towns that were not actively being monitored (just abstract out all the movement required to do the job.)

To return a bit closer to the OT, the comments about class mobility in medieval societies are a bit fuzzier than "lots of mobility" and "no mobility" (not that anyone was making quite those claims.)  Wealth could get you far, but there are several laws like the sumptuary laws, some of which were intended to stop wealthy people from dressing themselves up like royalty (limiting purple-dyed clothes for example.) And there are also noble marriages to secure wealth for an otherwise impoverished noble.
Wealth is a facet of the class determination, but I'd prefer to see a system that weighted wealth and other factors based on the society's ethics in order to determine class.  (Wealth's effect on status should probably also be measured logarithmically, not linearly.)
It would also be fitting to not have discrete classes but to rather have a continuum determined by the weighted sum of those factors.  Whether or not two dwarves considered themselves "equal class" would be defined as the difference being small enough.  How much royal blood and reputation would be other societal ethics, and the differences between status could be generalized to be a large factor in whether orders are followed or not, if they can commandeer stuff rather than paying for it, and other matters where status would be important  (the privileges of the King, of nobles over peasants, and of legendary dwarves/heroes could be therefore handled with the same code.)

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, I ask this about how much autonomy you would be willing to give your dwarves because, frankly, the idea that wresting control from the player, and giving it to dwarven autonomy is the main limiter on what I can do in making this suggestion. 

As for the zoning for commerce part, that was simply an example of "loosening the leash", something else we could do, for example, is simply not assign labors to dwarves, and just have job requests which dwarves fill based upon what job they want to perform that day.  If dwarves own their own workshops, that would be significantly changed by what they own. 

It could even be a model where dwarves own the resources they harvest or create, and you have to "buy" it from them with fortress funds, and they can simply start setting up their own industries based on their own preferences, and you just post "contracts" to buy certain amounts of products or materials, and let the dwarves do the rest as they see fit, while paying them in money that presumably must be taxed of them.

That would be SIGNIFICANTLY slipping their leash, to the point where dwarves are total free spirits that you have very little direct control over.  I'm asking for a matter of degree players would want their dwarves to become autonomous.

If dwarves were all suddenly total capitalists, like in that last post I made, and you had only indirect incintive-based control over dwarven actions, and the little idiots basically were on their own, aside from how much you manipulate their mining habits, or make public works projects, and zoning ordinances, then the system itself has to become much smarter, which means I have to start thinking through many more of these things.

But this would also make the entire class system much less a function of "this dwarf is poor because the player never enabled any labors on this dwarf", and much more a function of "this dwarf is poor because he tends to be lazy, or he was poorly educated, or he was the victim of a workplace accident, poor healthcare, and a lack of a social safety net, or he is struggling against some form of institutional disadvantage."

When we are talking about sumptuary laws, I think it's actually a point for the sort of thing I am talking about - the nobles were actually so scared that the middle class would rise up not in anger, but in wealth that they would be able to effectively replicate the noble's lifestyle, and eliminate the gulf that they wanted between the classes on their own.

(Sumptuary laws included the likes of forcing laborers to eat less refined foods, because laborers were less refined, and their foods should match, while nobles were more sophisticated, and as such, required more sophisticated foods, which is why their multi-course meals were actually a dietary necessity.)

Of course, at the same time, notions of dwarven delicateness, even among nobles, still sounds like so much elf talk, so it's perfectly fine to have a more dwarven social system.  The question then becomes "what is a dwarfy social system"?  Do I get to arm-wrestle you for advancement in rank?  I put up one's skill as a craftsman (in terms of skill rank) as a means of advancment, such that the most skilled craftsmen would be among the highest social rankers, aside from nobles.  How much does making an artifact help, or do we go by number of masterworks created?  etc.

[Kilo24]

Well, I ask this about how much autonomy you would be willing to give your dwarves because, frankly, the idea that wresting control from the player, and giving it to dwarven autonomy is the main limiter on what I can do in making this suggestion. 

I'm aware of that, and don't like shifting it around too much.  Allowing autonomy only for idlers means that they wouldn't be doing anything that got in the way of the player giving orders as currently happens.

It can also be a nice way to test those behaviors for use in AI towns, because Toady will need something like them to make NPCs actually do stuff in Adventure mode.

It could also make personalities actually have an effect in the game...

When we are talking about sumptuary laws, I think it's actually a point for the sort of thing I am talking about - the nobles were actually so scared that the middle class would rise up not in anger, but in wealth that they would be able to effectively replicate the noble's lifestyle, and eliminate the gulf that they wanted between the classes on their own.

Absolutely. 

...and I can't think of anything else to say about that.

[James.Denholm]

I really, really like this idea. True, it'll be difficult to decide on a level of automation that will still allow player control - Indeed, I would think this would end up requiring a re-think of the exact level of control that a player has - But that might not be a bad thing. Indeed, I often find myself thinking about the poor level of class separation in Dwarf Fortress as it currently stands, and most of my pie-in-the-sky fortress ideas involve some sort of manual class system (Miners live like Kings! Farmers live in gender-separated dorms!).

Also, posting to follow.

[NW_Kohaku]

It can also be a nice way to test those behaviors for use in AI towns, because Toady will need something like them to make NPCs actually do stuff in Adventure mode.

Which reminds me, I need to post my suggestion for making modular cities in the raws so that you can design worldgen-created cities for any custom race.  (Although I've been putting that off for until after I finish refining the liquids model in Volume and Mass.)

I'm aware of that, and don't like shifting it around too much.  Allowing autonomy only for idlers means that they wouldn't be doing anything that got in the way of the player giving orders as currently happens.

The more I think about it, though, the more I start to like it, as it would help several of the things I want to push for in DF.  The problem with it, though, is that dwarves generally need to be smarter overall for it to work, and that you need to have some sort of player control over how a dwarf thinks that might possibly be raw-editable.

[NW_Kohaku]

A recent spat of "make daycare for kids" got me realizing I left this aspect of life out of my original proposal, and so I decided to make a little adjustment for how my new scheme would be able to adjust the potential purpose of a dwarfy daycare.

Children Are Our Future - The Orwellian Mind Control Scheme

Dwarven child-care centers!  (Wait, wait, this one's diffirent from the others!)  (OK, maybe nenjin was close to this one...) Anyway, rather than having a system where we can force the early assimilation of dwarven children into our workforce as willing two-year-old drones (plenty of time to hit Legendary when they're adults), we can instead use dwarven childcare as our way of impressing certain values upon our dwarves' children, altering their preferences, their traits, possibly even getting a chance to alter their (currently set at birth) baseline attributes, so that they have higher maximum attribute caps (which are double your baseline attribute). 

We could be able to expose children to different environments to get children used to those environments and living conditions, so, for example, children near plenty of flies (who put the school next to the refuse stockpile?!) will likely not develop aversions to flies.  They can be stratified by the class of their parents (and their parents may demand their children recieve education appropriate for their class), to help children develop class-appropriate affinities for different objects, materials, leisure activities, and other likes. 

We can also use teachers/caretakers who are given certain stories or games to push onto the children in their care to enforce certain personality traits, and can heavily douse children in the form of propoganda you feel best for controlling your happy little populace, ensuring more loyalist patriotic adults later on.

We could also potentially give children religion, or make them more secular/humanistic, as long as the parents aren't looking too closesly (or you don't mind the hit to their happiness for your evangelizing upon their helpless children) as that is now supposed to have actual impact in-game.

[nbonaparte]

I like a lot of this, and think it would make a great late-development goal, but I think that, for instance, having multiple classes of school or entirely different decorations (as opposed to different qualities on the same type) for different social classes makes it hard for the player to manage. the solution is automation, but I don't think players are fond of too much of that either. At the very least, this would be great to see in NPC settlements, but I think it's hard to get it to a good balance in fortress mode.

[NW_Kohaku]

I like a lot of this, and think it would make a great late-development goal, but I think that, for instance, having multiple classes of school or entirely different decorations (as opposed to different qualities on the same type) for different social classes makes it hard for the player to manage. the solution is automation, but I don't think players are fond of too much of that either. At the very least, this would be great to see in NPC settlements, but I think it's hard to get it to a good balance in fortress mode.

One wouldn't need a different school for every class.  Actually, nobles might just have "nannies" that they demand for their children, and you could stuff most of the lower classes into the same school, with only a better school for the middle or higher classes, when you actually develop them.  So I'd only see two or three being required, and even then, when it's in the "mature fortress" stage, when you've got time to work with things like this.

(Of course, in order to work with all these social changes, migrants need to be cut to a trickle from the current flood.)

I do think it would be amusing to give players the ability to manipulate dwarven personalities, tastes, and desires, however, especially if we then give dwarves more "autonomy" to choose their destinies based upon their manipulated tastes and desires.  It's one of those things that are added complexity only for those who really want them.

[nbonaparte]

I like a lot of this, and think it would make a great late-development goal, but I think that, for instance, having multiple classes of school or entirely different decorations (as opposed to different qualities on the same type) for different social classes makes it hard for the player to manage. the solution is automation, but I don't think players are fond of too much of that either. At the very least, this would be great to see in NPC settlements, but I think it's hard to get it to a good balance in fortress mode.

One wouldn't need a different school for every class.  Actually, nobles might just have "nannies" that they demand for their children, and you could stuff most of the lower classes into the same school, with only a better school for the middle or higher classes, when you actually develop them.  So I'd only see two or three being required, and even then, when it's in the "mature fortress" stage, when you've got time to work with things like this.

(Of course, in order to work with all these social changes, migrants need to be cut to a trickle from the current flood.)

I do think it would be amusing to give players the ability to manipulate dwarven personalities, tastes, and desires, however, especially if we then give dwarves more "autonomy" to choose their destinies based upon their manipulated tastes and desires.  It's one of those things that are added complexity only for those who really want them.

the schools were an example, but I can see how that would be fairly simple.

I heartily agree that migrants need to be reduced. I can't be arsed to build beds for those 20 new dwarves, much less more in-depth stuff.

On the third not, maybe, but it may not be in the style of DF. For instance, Runesmith. Other than a debugging tool and for use in stories, it's generally frowned upon as cheating. I mean, occasionally, I'll make superdwarves if I'm just there for the megaproject, but not for the kind of play that's in the spirit of DF. the player isn't supposed to be a god.

[NW_Kohaku]

On the third not, maybe, but it may not be in the style of DF. For instance, Runesmith. Other than a debugging tool and for use in stories, it's generally frowned upon as cheating. I mean, occasionally, I'll make superdwarves if I'm just there for the megaproject, but not for the kind of play that's in the spirit of DF. the player isn't supposed to be a god.

I'm sorry, I'm not getting this reference... what are you comparing Runesmith to?