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[FatedTemp]

So why are my Dwarves even making this fort of theirs? I mean it's very nice an' all that but … what's the purpose?

What I would like to see is missions or tasks from the Mountain Home for the first few years of a fort. It would be interesting if you had a random set of tasks grouped by difficulty that you had to complete. Such as sending 30 logs back with the trade caravan (as well as your actual trade goods) or 10 figurines. After completing a mission a harder one would become active (maybe with a couple of seasons break first) perhaps 15 steel axes or a gem encrusted chair over a certain value.

You could get rewards for completing missions on time and possibly trade penalties for taking too long. After finishing a number of missions for the Mountain Home they would feel the outpost has paid for the cost of setting it up and is free to pursue it's own wealth, possibly once a baron arrives.

It would mean the Dwarves have a solid reason for setting up the outpost (greed) and maybe as the game's capabilities expand you could have different types of missions such as building up a suitable defence force, defending against a Goblin raid and eventually leading an attack on the Goblins.
There could be other types of forts too, trade, military expansion, maybe population expansion where you're required to provide homes for a large influx of worthless peasants.

Of course this being Dwarf Fortress you could decide to ignore the missions and put up with slightly sullied relations with the Mountain Homes or even just turn it off with an init setting.

(I know there was an old suggestion of something similar but it wasn't quite the same and that thread was dead.)

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, aside from the previous thread, there's this from the devpage:

Fortress Starting Scenarios

• Starting scenarios giving a back story for your fortress, often related to current world situation
• Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this
• Ability to bring extra dwarves along depending on scenario
• Entity populations surrounding your fortress in appropriate environments, both above and below ground
• Ability to move dwarves in and out of surroundings
• Relationship with surrounding dwarves
• Ability to trade/demand food in depot or similar place with surrounding dwarves
• Changes to caravans/diplomatic relationships based on starting scenario

That said, yes, there is something different about there being a backstory mission and actual "send 50 copper mugs to the Mountainhome" missions...

But really, that sounds more like adding in more Mandates to the game, from someone you can't even force to have an Unfortunate Accident with.  I do not see this as being a popular change.  I would certainly find it more annoying than improvement.

I would rather wait for Army Arc 2 to come out, and give us some limited control over the rest of the lands near the fortress, thus giving us a reason to want to interact with the outside world (because we can see the actual positive or negative consequences of our action or inaction), and expand that with the Caravan Arc and a matching update to the economic model of the world than to simply add more mandates for players to fill.

[Rowanas]

All that Pharaoh/Emperor (old Sierra games) "send X produce to Y before Z" annoys me.

[NW_Kohaku]

All that Pharaoh/Emperor (old Sierra games) "send X produce to Y before Z" annoys me.

Yes, same here.  They always came at annoying times, even if it was as simple as pressing the "Just take it and shut up!" button, the mere fact that it distracted me was just upsetting.

[Pilsu]

You'll probably have to deal with taxation eventually.

[thijser]

Well starting with some kind of mission would be good. However this should be well choosen. It should make sense that they send you there with a specific reason. If for example you are on/in a mountain they should not ask for wood. However if you go to a forest with many layers of soil then maybe those metals should not be asked of you (as your civ has them themself). Futhermore the actuall cost of an expedision is fairly low. Usually they give you about some 1000 embarck points which will probably be worth some 5000(?) urist.

Based on this however it could be that these missions are based on biodome, nearby civs, their relationships and the economy of your own civ(+the others).
If for example there is a lot of war they might think of you as a military fort. The biodomes could be used to choose what kind of products they expect from you. This should however probably be combined with an economic (caravan) ark.

So basicaly this is when done properly a great addition and when done poorly it will decrease gameplay experience.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, you pay fair market value for the goods you bring along on embark, it's just rare for there to be so many goods that don't have a quality value.  (Of course, they apparently are training a whole lot of rank newbies to have some basic skills before sending them out, so maybe your dwarves crafted this stuff themselves, and that's why they have "Adequate Blacksmithing".)

That means the only real cost to the mountainhome is the training they give the starting seven (as migrants show they OBVIOUSLY have random dwarves to spare on potentially profitable ventures), and sending off 5 barrels full of booze, and about 50 units of food is chump change for a well-established fort.  You typically take along a few lumps of copper and tin, an anvil, and a few dozen logs, but none of those are major hits to a well-established fort, although major forestry operations might strain resources somewhat.

So basically, yeah, we're talking 1,500 db's of value... which your starting seven can make back with their first 10 flux statues, or a couple of serrated discs.

Also, what with there now being more dwarves who are just random countrymen, not specifically part of the mountainhome itself, it's plausable that your starting 7 could in fact be homesteaders or lumberdwarves who were out on a farm who decided this surface crap was for the elves, and wanted to make their own fortress by putting up their own money (not very much of it is necessary, after all), and simply told the Mountainhome where they were going as an afterthought.

[thijser]

However usually when you set up a colony or outpost or whatever you don't do it because you want to earn back what you paid for it. Usually you want to make a profit or get a military advantage. I think this should be displayed in some way. Currently a dwarven civilasation seems to exist around forts that work without any interaction but apperently there are multiple civilasations which doesn't make sense.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, again, I'm just going to wait and see what Toady actually tosses down the pipe before I start working on how to improve it.

We might start getting the ability to actually start writing our own scripts, as it were, so that we can set up our own scenarios based on specific trigger conditions.  It would also be much more helpful in many of the mods if we could write our own scenarios, such as the Fallout mod being able to write out their scenarios in the terms of the Fallout universe.

(Dwarf. Dwarf never changes.)

Also, when we have an ever-expanding influence upon the nearby lands, setting up potential satellite farming communities, destroying goblin towers, building roads that allow for grater travel and trade, we'll have a much better incentive to care about the mountainhome because we can actually see consequences for our actions than if we simply had to hit the "send 50 copper mugs" button every year to avoid a -10 happy response from the mountainhome.

[FatedTemp]

One of the reasons I'd like to see something along these lines is that the early part of a fortress is pretty same-y. Apart from occasional kobold thieves or hungry animals (both depending on location) there's not much to slow you down as you set up some farms, build some workshops, churn out 10,000 stone mugs and buy everything from the traders.

Later on in a forts life you have goblin ambushes and sieges, uninvited guests and horrors from the deep. Plus the increased noble mandates and the (broken) economy.

I'd like to see some challenges in the earlier years of a fort too, at the moment it's extremely easy unless you deliberately handicap yourself (hermit challenges and so on). I think having to divert some dwarf-time and resources to pleasing the Mountain Homes could provide some extra difficulty and maybe you won't be quite so ready when the first goblin attacks come so they wouldn't be such a walkover.

If for example you are on/in a mountain they should not ask for wood.

The game should already know what kind of rocks, gems and wood is available for your embark location so having contextual mandates shouldn't be a problem. And even for goods you don't have naturally you can trade with other civilizations. Also having to supply something like soap would mean you need to set up a soap economy much earlier than you might normally, making forts a bit different early on depending on what challenges you have to meet.


As for the cost of an expedition, the 'points' you start with don't seem like a good indicator of the costs of preparing a group of dwarves with equipment, supplies, animals and a wagon. Bare in mind that the food you 'purchase' is what you arrive with, anything consumed on the journey, the wagon and work animal are not included, nor are the costs of the dwarves themselves, just their skills, they aren't even getting paid for their work.

You'll probably have to deal with taxation eventually.

Taxation doesn't seem like much of an issue seeing as your forts all end up becoming the capital, plus we don't even know if these dwarves have a completely feudal system; the baronies and duchies may not collect or pay tax. The economy we've seen didn't include tax, just wages, goods and rent.

"send 50 copper mugs" button every year to avoid a -10 happy response from the mountainhome.

Pretty much everything in DF now is an 'x' or 'y' lowers or raises 'a' or 'b', with the hope that one day it'll have more of an impact. Now development is moving in new directions we'll see more of those interesting things added. And more diverse challenges and game play options would be good.

[iron_general]

It might be rather interesting if you could embark from and established fortress of your own (whiich could act as a metropolis). 7 dorfs (or perhaps more) could embark (with whatever of your stores you should chose to give them) to a different location in the same would. The two societies could interact, trade, exploit(mandate) each other etc. while under that control of the player, Perhaps directly or with some sort of AI template. This could allow empire building or wars (besiege the goblins for once).

[NW_Kohaku]

It might be rather interesting if you could embark from and established fortress of your own (whiich could act as a metropolis). 7 dorfs (or perhaps more) could embark (with whatever of your stores you should chose to give them) to a different location in the same would. The two societies could interact, trade, exploit(mandate) each other etc. while under that control of the player, Perhaps directly or with some sort of AI template. This could allow empire building or wars (besiege the goblins for once).

"Beseiging the goblins for once" is actually part of Toady's plans...

But the thing is that if you quit a fortress in the current and forseeable future versions, then they are "abandoned", and your dwarves roam the countryside, because Toady hasn't yet figured out how to model an automated working fortress.  (Instead the worldgen dwarves just dig a big ugly pit, and sit outside it forever.)  You can currently certainly make many forts in the same world, but you can't have your forts interact with one another, because there is no way to automate control of a fort.

[Jayce]

Maybe there could be terrain challeges,reach a certain level in your fortress then you have to make a fortress in even more difficult terrain.Say start in temperate and work up surviving in roasting desert or icy glacier.

[Joakim]

I like the idea of taxation, but certainly not the way Pharaoh did it. They should be more predictable and flexible.

I'd say you should be taxed based on a percentage of the wealth in the fortress. So a taxman arrives, appraises your wealth and then declares that you owe the Mountainhome 5000 dwarfbucks in taxes. What goods you send is completely up to you. However the prices offered would vary depending on the needs of the Mountainhome, similar to how trading agreements work. The given price of stone mugs would lower after awhile...
There are some issues here, like what to do if 90% of your wealth is artifacts. But then again, what does the Mountainhome think of having the greatest artifact in the land in some backwater outpost?

In a feudal society, you wouldn' pay taxes after you get a Baron. Instead you have to provide the Mountainhome with soldiers when called for. These soldiers might come home as heroes, wounded, fat with loot or not at all. Maybe sometimes raids are organized which have a very high profit to risk ratio, while other campaigns might be of the last stand variety. Will you honor your oath of fealty?

[Atanamis]

Maybe sometimes raids are organized which have a very high profit to risk ratio, while other campaigns might be of the last stand variety. Will you honor your oath of fealty?

That depends, if I don't will the king send an army to attack me, and if so can they dig?