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[puke]

I didnt see another thread, so I thought I'd start one about the trade connection maps that Three Toe posted on 3-Dec.

I think it is particularly interesting when isolated areas occur, one of the maps has a pair of human towns (forts?) and their surrounding farms trading with one another, but otherwise too distant from other civs for trade.  It would be a great adventure mode prospect bringing caravans to and from these places to leverage unique profit opportunities.

Also, I notice that dwarf civs are often unconnected, and frequently have trade mediated through a single human empire.  In addition to selecting a jucy embark location, it may soon become important to check out trade routes and poke around a little in adventure mode to determine what sorts of areas are politically and economically beneficial to embark in.

Hopefully foreshadowing, but more likely just a lack of pathing in this alpha-stage, i see that trade is happening across bodies of water.  could boats be on the way in the near future?

lastly, some of the color coding suggests that goblin civs can be connected for trade.  I wonder if we'll be seeing this in fortress mode, or if we'll be seeing human civs bringing goblin goods for trade.

putting all this together, It might be interesting to build a fortress in an important location -- perhaps on an island between continents, or on a land bridge, or just in a spot that connects otherwise unconnected civs -- and to make all of your income brokering trade between different civilizations. 

[Mel_Vixen]

Again devblog stuff gets mostly discussed in the FotF Thread. Toady has also addressed some of the stuff there in the last round of answering questions It can be found here. Discussions welcome additional Questions in (Lime) green.

[Untelligent]

The lines are all straight and just abstractions and don't necessarily mean that's the paths the caravans could take, they just show the potential for trade relations.

Relevant Toadyquote on boats from back on december 5th:

Toady, as 31.19 will be the Caravan Arc, does that mean we'll get boats too? 

I notice some of the trade routes go over water. Will there be some kind of sea travel anytime soon?

so,   if there are path over water and if there are no actual ship travelling   and ports and such, can we assume caravans are abstracted away from the   world map? if that's the case, isn't there no caravan raiding in   adventure mode? (apart from abstracted away caravan raiding, that is)

Yeah,   it's not the whole caravan arc, unless you want to wait many months.    I'm just going to try to pull together something coherent and get it   up, but even that is going to take time.  There aren't going to be any   moving boats this time.  It's quite possible there won't be any other   boats.  The potential routes over water might not be used.  Once play   starts, it is very likely only going to use actual (land) merchants   moving things around, and you'll always be able to raid those.  There   could be special boats, but it seems like the kind of thing that it is   easy not to have time for.

TLDR version: Boats COULD go in the next version. It'll likely come down to how much they'd delay the release if Toady were to put them in. In any case, my estimation on this is that the first incarnation of boats will simply be using water routes for worldgen trading, the second incarnation will be abstract post-worldgen trading across water, and the third incarnation will be abstract player movement across water. By abstract I mean teleporting.

Worldgen trading across water is likely to be the only of those three we'll see in the next version, and it's possible we might not even get that.

[Capntastic]

This, as with all new things, has a vast disparity between being 'in' the game and 'interactable'.   Time will make them more fun.

[Max White]

Well, we can not embark over a site, so there might be a simple solution.

If civilizations (Humans in particular) built next to oceans, they could construct docks, and ships/boats next to them as buildings. They would never really move. While on a boat in adventure mode you could only quick travel around.

This way Toady doesn't need to deal with anything big and complex moving around, and we get ships!

[Capntastic]

No actually half-assed quick low-content additions like that are terrible, as Toady would have to go back and change them and add real boats at some point.   Window dressing isn't that important.

[Max White]

Well it would allow for travel over water in adventure mode, keep a certain level of realism, and further more THE DWARVEN ECONOMY. Place holder systems are all over the place. You could say the the idea of puddles of blood are a bad idea as is, because later on toady will make all things have depth, yet is that a puddle of elf blood I see on my floor?

Toady is a great programmer, but he doesn't have to get everything perfect on the first iteration.

[Untelligent]

No actually half-assed quick low-content additions like that are terrible, as Toady would have to go back and change them and add real boats at some point.   Window dressing isn't that important.

Weellll, the devlist DOES say that the first time ports and boats are going in they'll just be used to teleport to other ports.

[Capntastic]

No actually half-assed quick low-content additions like that are terrible, as Toady would have to go back and change them and add real boats at some point.   Window dressing isn't that important.

Weellll, the devlist DOES say that the first time ports and boats are going in they'll just be used to teleport to other ports.

That doesn't mean I agree it's a quality use of effort or time.   Being able to teleport to an island is less cool than being able to actually have functioning ships and rafts, etc.

[Max White]

Yes, it is less cool, but A LOT more feasible. Feasibility is more important that functionality on primitive iterations during project development. It allows for a basic structure that can be added onto, then improved later. Magikal boats may not be very cool, but things like navel war fair during worldgen, piracy, and things washing up on beaches are all cool, and all, to a certain extent, implementable with the proposed system, while allowing for quick growth into the ideal model.

[Capntastic]

I'd rather have a release where Toady spends a month implementing, say, semi-realistic intensive gathering and herbalism techniques right away than a week spent on "Pick herb y/n" menus, and then a month in the future where he makes it good.  An esoteric example, of course, but the point is that there's currently little point in even being able to teleport to other 'docks'.  I'd rather have a journey than a destination.

[Max White]

Well sorry to say, but you are stuck with pick herbs (y/n) for now (specifically I think it goes 'd' then 'g', but I could be wrong. Its hard to remember key bindings when not in game for some reason) due to the fact that, from what I believe, Toady is happy to give us a simple version of herb picking, simply so that we can brew the herbs, allowing fr a brewing system as well.

Neither the herb gathering, nor the brewing system are perfect, but it allows for [ALCOHOL] dwarfs, so the idea goes "Make many simple systems, that together form a much larger, more complex system, then improve these simple units", rather then just "Everything must work to full capacity from release, and anything dependent on these systems must wait!"

Further more, although making two systems IS slower then making only one flawless one, with a prototype the second system is faster to implement. For example, if we wanted ships to move during world gen, then in both the proposed system and the ideal system are identical, so if making the prototype system took 2 units of time, and making the perfect system took 6 units of time, then the prototype could reduce development time by a unit. These are arbitrary numbers, but you get the idea.

In good project management, it in unwise to try and get it right first iteration. Small systems that support each other are how its done, this has been trailed and tested in business conditions many times, and it works.

[Capntastic]

I'm talking about the abandoned stepchild, Adventure Mode.    Being able to teleport between docks is pointless when the world is as homogenized as it currently is.  Things like the night creatures and similar are starting to flesh worlds out, but we're still very far from having reasons to travel, much less a need for methods like that.   I'd rather have content that causes the player to want to do things like travel or raise a group to kill a monster than just the capability of doing so.   In adventure mode, currently, you can certainly go around killing kings and lawgivers, but there's no reason or response to that.   Once the world can reward, or punish, or even shrug at your actions, then suddenly things become meaningful.

[Max White]

I'm sorry, but what part of the last few updates lave adventure mode to be abandoned? Night creatures, human forts and farmlands, making actions without workshop, we fortress mode players are getting jealousness. 

Any way, it depends on how you gen your worlds. I really like small islands, but with current methods that means that
A) In adventure mode in stuck on a small land mass and kill all mega beasts there quickly.
B) In fortress mode I don't have access to all races.
C) I end up genning single large land masses to solve these problems.

As such, even a place holder would solve these problems and let me go island hopping like it was 2003! But like I said, with even a place holder system, there are things that could be implemented to improve adventure mode that use boat rides, such as when you get to travel the lands as a merchant, wouldn't you like to be able to travel to distant shores to see what they have to sell then?

[Capntastic]

Night creatures, human forts and farmlands, making actions without workshop, we fortress mode players are getting jealousness. 

Could be fleshed out more [more to hunting them, different modus operandi], could be fleshed out more [they're just static buildings with no function], you can make sharp rocks and butchered animals and little else, etc.

It's the first Adventure mode heavy update set in years- and it's not even a full game yet; you have no reason to be jealous.