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[Waparius]

So far the level of bureacracy doesn't much increase after the Manager starts confirming work orders. Meeting halls also have very little value, outside of a spot to cram all your loose animals and a place for idle dwarves to become less useful by throwing parties.

I suggest that after the fortress reaches a certain population, dwarves no longer head straight to the workshop every morning. Instead, they first go to the meeting hall to check the noticeboard.

The noticeboard is a piece of furniture that can be built at the Carpenter's Workshop (Or at the Mason's Workshop, in which case it's called a Blackboard), and functions to communicate work orders to dwarves.

Once the manager has updated work orders, idle dwarves update the noticeboard in much the same way that dwarves pull levers and harvest plants. Once the board is updated, any dwarves who go to that meeting hall will head to work as normal. If there are no orders, idle dwarves will (eventually) check the workshops themselves, and then begin throwing parties, complaining, and whatnot.


Once guilds have been introduced, then guild dwarves will head to their guildhall instead of the main hall for similar instructions.


IMO this would improve the sense of the fort's development as a community and give dwarves more to do. Making "Messenger" into a particular job may be a bit much, but it would certainly help to make things flow more naturally as the game progressed.

[thijser]

What about emergancies? And when does for example a minor check the board? After each job completed? After he had a moment of no jobness? After sleeping?

[Waparius]

What about emergancies? And when does for example a minor check the board? After each job completed? After he had a moment of no jobness? After sleeping?

Miners can probably do without this just as they can do without the manager. In terms of emergencies, perhaps an order or mechanism that sounds an alarm, getting all dwarves to the meeting hall?

[Kurouma]

I think something like this would be a good idea. As it is, the level of micromanagement required to run the fortress decreases pretty smoothly as your population expands, as it should. It's like zooming out from The Sims level to maybe Pharaoh or Caesar level. But it doesn't go far enough.

One of the things that does really bug me mid/late game is labour assignments. We shouldn't have to download third party programs just to manage who does what in the fortress. It gets tedious when you have around 80+ people, especially if their primary skill (their icon) is different from what you have them assigned to.

So I suggest a similar process to the noticeboard: once you get a guild, jobs from that profession become privatised. You designate them to be done, and then the guild (if they have a guild office designated or something) employs someone to do them for you, probably someone with high skill.

Maybe this ties in with the dwarven economy when it returns; instead of being assigned labours, everyone becomes available for employment in any field. When there are lots of one profession's jobs to do, lots of dwarfs have opportunity for employment in that field. Maybe you don't have enough skilled workers to fill them all, so base salaries increase with demand. If you have hardly any jobs queued up from a profession, then all but the highest skilled get laid off and have to look elsewhere, maybe becoming haulers, maybe getting jobs filling in vacancies in a trade with lots of job openings (but getting paid less because they'd be Dabbling).

Maybe each guild should charge interested dwarfs a bit of cash in return for some basic training in that trade.

Then your large fortress always has exactly as many workers in each trade as required, without you having to micromanage each dwarf's labours. Provided you have the population to supply all the work, of course. The manager should give you an idea of the unemployment rate too.

Obviously the player should get to dictate a minimum skill level for guilds to hire, again through the manager. And just to give completeness, the option to manually change labours on a dwarf has to stay in as well.

I think something like this would make managing larger fortresses much more bearable and fun. Time freed up to focus on ruling, not on frankly tedious labour micromanagement.


Edit: added breaks to remove BIG WALL OF TEXT

[The Merchant Of Menace]

That would be especially good as it would open the gateway to autonomous forts, and to full control of raiding/sieging parties.

[TheyTarget]

This would be really good to add into adventure mode, once you get the ability to start making places.

[Kurouma]

That would be especially good as it would open the gateway to autonomous forts, and to full control of raiding/sieging parties.

Yeah, I can imagine the day where this allows a player to continue to increase the scale of the game as their fort gets larger, eventually zooming out to a Civilization level game.

[Waparius]

Another option that would aid in reducing micromanagement and automating forts is to allow Guildmasters to auto-assign work orders, perhaps by periodically meeting with nobles.

[The Merchant Of Menace]

At this rate of going DF will soon be Spore. Start off with an adventurer, build a fort, build a civ, Move onto next world.

[Neyvn]

At this rate of going DF will soon be Spore. Start off with an adventurer, build a fort, build a civ, Move onto next world.

But I doubt it would SUCK as bad as Spore did, And I HAVEN'T even played Spore...

[Murphy]

So I suggest a similar process to the noticeboard: once you get a guild, jobs from that profession become privatised. You designate them to be done, and then the guild (if they have a guild office designated or something) employs someone to do them for you, probably someone with high skill.

The guilds should offer some means to train new members then.
What if I have a legendary mason and want to train another one?
If I order 1000 blocks, 800 of them will be made by the first legendary, and the other 200 will be distributed among 10-20 others. Not good.

[Neyvn]

So I suggest a similar process to the noticeboard: once you get a guild, jobs from that profession become privatised. You designate them to be done, and then the guild (if they have a guild office designated or something) employs someone to do them for you, probably someone with high skill.

The guilds should offer some means to train new members then.
What if I have a legendary mason and want to train another one?
If I order 1000 blocks, 800 of them will be made by the first legendary, and the other 200 will be distributed among 10-20 others. Not good.

Easy to control that with Burrows...
Put the Legendary one in a workshop that is making Statues or something that requires High Quality. Or heck just go into the Workshop's profile and lower the allowed skill levels for the ones making blocks. The Legendary Mason won't go there then...

[Kurouma]

So I suggest a similar process to the noticeboard: once you get a guild, jobs from that profession become privatised. You designate them to be done, and then the guild (if they have a guild office designated or something) employs someone to do them for you, probably someone with high skill.

The guilds should offer some means to train new members then.
What if I have a legendary mason and want to train another one?
If I order 1000 blocks, 800 of them will be made by the first legendary, and the other 200 will be distributed among 10-20 others. Not good.

Check my original post

Maybe each guild should charge interested dwarfs a bit of cash in return for some basic training in that trade.

Here you go. Can be extended past basic training.

[sweitx]

I agree, it would be nice to have a mechanism for automatic labor assignment.
Maybe a new noble position called the guild-master (basically, the coordinator of all other labor guild).  Under which you can set a certain requirement for how many (absolute or percentage) of the population has a certain job active (for example, maintain 10% of population as farmer).

[Sunken]

The guilds should offer some means to train new members then.
What if I have a legendary mason and want to train another one?
If I order 1000 blocks, 800 of them will be made by the first legendary, and the other 200 will be distributed among 10-20 others. Not good.

Weren't guilds largely organised specifically so as to keep the number of masters as low as possible..? Minimize competition, that sort of thing? (Not that historical correctness and gameplay are always in accord...)