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Author Topic: Dwarf Management  (Read 1003 times)

konzill

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Dwarf Management
« on: October 06, 2010, 06:50:40 pm »

The biggest obstical in playing Dwarf fortress for me would have to be:

Managing dwarves is the biggest challenge. The minimum I that I think is necesary (in order of priority)

1) Alphabetical sorting on all the lists. Please the current random order is very annoying and hard to work with.
2) A way to cycle through all dwarves in the fort easily. IE the screen for a dwarf having a previous dwarf / next dwarf keys that simply move up and down the list of all citizens
3) A dwarf summary that shows assigned labors and skill levels at the same time. so I can make decisions about a particular dwarf without having to dig in and out.
4) A master labors list that shows which dwarves are assigned to each labor (and how many relevant workshops exist).
5) Ability to sort the Unit list in different ways. Hide deceased etc.


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USEC_OFFICER

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2010, 08:38:43 pm »

1) Alphabetical sorting on all the lists. Please the current random order is very annoying and hard to work with.

It's random? Because to me, it looks like it is sorted by their skills. (Miners with miners, woodcutter/boywers with woodcutter/boywers etc.)
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rephikul

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2010, 06:37:34 am »

1) Alphabetical sorting on all the lists. Please the current random order is very annoying and hard to work with.

It's random? Because to me, it looks like it is sorted by their skills. (Miners with miners, woodcutter/boywers with woodcutter/boywers etc.)
Not skill, built-in profession altho that's essentially highest skill. Get DF Therapist and get over with.
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Lord Vetinari

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #3 on: October 07, 2010, 07:33:56 am »

The biggest obstical in playing Dwarf fortress for me would have to be:

Managing dwarves is the biggest challenge. The minimum I that I think is necesary (in order of priority)

1) Alphabetical sorting on all the lists. Please the current random order is very annoying and hard to work with.
2) A way to cycle through all dwarves in the fort easily. IE the screen for a dwarf having a previous dwarf / next dwarf keys that simply move up and down the list of all citizens
3) A dwarf summary that shows assigned labors and skill levels at the same time. so I can make decisions about a particular dwarf without having to dig in and out.
4) A master labors list that shows which dwarves are assigned to each labor (and how many relevant workshops exist).
5) Ability to sort the Unit list in different ways. Hide deceased etc.

There's an external utility, Dwarf Therapist (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=66525.0), for most of those thing, and there's a suggestion topic (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53113.0) to integrate it in the game.
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jei

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #4 on: October 07, 2010, 07:46:10 am »

The biggest obstical in playing Dwarf fortress for me would have to be:

Managing dwarves is the biggest challenge. The minimum I that I think is necesary (in order of priority)

1) Alphabetical sorting on all the lists. Please the current random order is very annoying and hard to work with.
2) A way to cycle through all dwarves in the fort easily. IE the screen for a dwarf having a previous dwarf / next dwarf keys that simply move up and down the list of all citizens
3) A dwarf summary that shows assigned labors and skill levels at the same time. so I can make decisions about a particular dwarf without having to dig in and out.
4) A master labors list that shows which dwarves are assigned to each labor (and how many relevant workshops exist).
5) Ability to sort the Unit list in different ways. Hide deceased etc.

You simply do not understand. It is the prime directive and zenith of design concepts in DF to maximize all the necessary micromanagement work for all purposes. This includes the randomization of all the lists. Though Toady has yet to implement the random changing of the random orders of all the lists to make it more labor intensive, but he's done a pretty good job in the military system and the interface. All you want could be done easily with a simple database interface for the dorfs, but this goes counter to reinventing everything and doing it yourself, which is the prime driver in DF development. Random names with longer randomly appearing nicknames also goes a long way to making things more labor intensive and cumbersome as you need to remember all the dorf names and new randomly appearing names by heart to be able to properly optimize your system. Maximum work and maximal complexity are teh goals here. Not to mention randomly implemented bugs and features that work or don't work depending on version so you need to work around them in your gameplay. This is all so Aspergers can finally get a real workout for their brains and a way to relax, besides cracking PGP-prime algorithms in their heads.

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Engraved on the monitor is an exceptionally designed image of FPS in Dwarf Fortress and it's multicore support by Toady. Toady is raising the multicore. The artwork relates to the masterful multicore support by Toady for the Dwarf Fortress in midwinter of 2010. Toady is surrounded by dwarves. The dwarves are rejoicing.

aepurniet

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2010, 12:40:33 pm »

You simply do not understand...

dude, you have a very (s)elfish attitude. where does your sense of entitlement come from? personally if i was toady i would ban your IP from all websites bay12 related.
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darkflagrance

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #6 on: October 07, 2010, 09:49:18 pm »

You simply do not understand...

dude, you have a very (s)elfish attitude. where does your sense of entitlement come from? personally if i was toady i would ban your IP from all websites bay12 related.

Clearly he was being sarcastic  :P
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zwei

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #7 on: October 08, 2010, 02:22:20 am »

You simply do not understand...

dude, you have a very (s)elfish attitude. where does your sense of entitlement come from? personally if i was toady i would ban your IP from all websites bay12 related.

Clearly he was being sarcastic  :P

And now that we are over that, lets talk again about random list:

Yeah, it is random. To be more precise, it rarely corresponds to what dwarves really: Immigrant master fisherdwarf that you assigned as tanner will take a long time to get brown. Unlucky mood will make your smelter go right into blue crafter category.

And your draftees will we all over the list when in civilians state untill they decay to brown-planter list. And, of course, new peasants will quickly go brown too.

Not to mention that if you combine jobs, i.e. make your mechanic also spare-time woodcutter, you end up with yellow rather than red dwarf.

Not that it really hurts anything, but it trully is pain to find something specific in majority of lists, units being blessed by fact that you actually have external tool to help you.

konzill

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #8 on: October 11, 2010, 06:43:31 pm »


There's an external utility, Dwarf Therapist (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=66525.0), for most of those thing, and there's a suggestion topic (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53113.0) to integrate it in the game.

I'm aware of Dwarf Therapist. However I have several objections to it. Most boiling down to the its an overly large spreadsheet and while better then nothing does not make a particularly good, or fun interface.

The problems being that there are simply too many dwarves and skills to fit on the one screen (maybe its just me but reading rotated labels is hard, and two letter abbreviations will be even worse).

What I described is quite heavily based on how I used to Manage cities when playing various versions of Civilization. Open the city screen (In this case Dwarf Screen) and see what they are up to. then page through all the cities using next until I was back where I started.

But then again in my opinion having to toggle individual skills on and off is too micro for me. I would much rather be able to set what profession I want a dwarf to follow and have labors toggled on and off as necessary. It would be good to be able to sat a profession stack of say. Mason / Miner (so that Urst focues on Mason jobs when available and falls back to mining jobs. when no masonry is required.  This basically boils down to Job Priorities with Templates (which have been suggested on that thread).

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jei

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Re: Dwarf Management
« Reply #9 on: October 11, 2010, 09:23:27 pm »

You simply do not understand...

dude, you have a very (s)elfish attitude. where does your sense of entitlement come from? personally if i was toady i would ban your IP from all websites bay12 related.

And if I was Toady, I would get off the pot and put multicore support on top priority, then wonder where all the whiners dissappeared and what to do with all the cash. 8)


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Engraved on the monitor is an exceptionally designed image of FPS in Dwarf Fortress and it's multicore support by Toady. Toady is raising the multicore. The artwork relates to the masterful multicore support by Toady for the Dwarf Fortress in midwinter of 2010. Toady is surrounded by dwarves. The dwarves are rejoicing.