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[tps12]

What G-Flex said. It's an unfinished, in-development game, and that means that some people are going to adopt certain styles of play that make sense or are possible now that may not be so in the finished game. That's unfortunate for them, but it can't stand in the way of progress, and hopefully they can find another way to enjoy the game.

It's like the banning of the spitball in baseball. A lot of pitchers were legitimately upset by it, but ultimately they adapted and the game is better for it. Sometimes you can "make it an init option" (the designated hitter rule?), but too much of that becomes unmaintainable, as the number of possible configurations grows exponentially.

[G-Flex]

And I don't think that options are a cop-out at all. I think that they are  a valid way of ensuring that the largest percentage of a player base can be satisfied with a given outcome.

I've seen enough arguments about the development of various games to know that, yes, there is such a thing as too many options, and that "make it optional" is often used as an excuse for not actually making a decision or discussing the relative merits of something. Options are a big part of DF, yes, but obviously we can't treat "make it optional" as a valid solution to every development question. It's a possible solution, yes, but we can't just assume it's always the best choice. Like I said, in this case, I definitely think it's something to be considered.

[Footkerchief]

Is anyone else having difficulty getting rabbit corpses to be butchered, cause my butcher's workshop doesn't recognize it as a corpse or something.

It's been reported on the tracker, although it may not be a bug.

[tps12]

Code: [Select]

new creature tags
...
[LAYS_UNUSUAL_EGGS:<item tokens>]
 

Now this begs for modding.

"Filth" is already a material, right? So could someone mod dwarves to lay eggs made of filth, thus sneaking the controversial dwarven defecation feature in through the back door, as it were?

[Ledi]

Options are a big part of DF, yes, but obviously we can't treat "make it optional" as a valid solution to every development question. It's a possible solution, yes, but we can't just assume it's always the best choice. Like I said, in this case, I definitely think it's something to be considered.

That much I agree with. In my opinion bees, or say, grazing shouldn't be officially optional because options like that would just cause bloat. But the two hot contention topics drastically change more than the gameplay, they change the underlying current of the game, and force everyone to a much narrower band of play style (the aforementioned survivalist hardcore).

[NW_Kohaku]

I think this would be helped a little if the geology of the new version isn't so odd, though.

You know that home civilization that only has galena and sphlerite?  I'm not even sure how they have THAT much.  The entire mountain range they live on has no metals.  The entire mountain range.  Nothing, not iron, not coal, not even microcline, as far as I can tell.  It's just a giant mineral void.

That just shouldn't be possible.

I remember a thread on scarcity of resources, and they had a good link to this map.  Notice the whole "people mine in mountains" trend, where mountains, being formed either by volcanic activity (which has plenty of neat metals), or geological folding of techtonic plates, exposing coal and iron deposits tends to expose plenty of minable minerals.

We shouldn't be getting vague surveys saying "this is a mountain, maybe some metal might be somewhere inside", we should be getting a readout of how many overlapping veins there are, because there shouldn't be these giant desloate swaths of land with no metal whatsoever in them, and overlapping veins.

On top of that, yes, mountains generally tend to have some exposed minerals for anyone to see, so at the very least, before settling, we should have a clue as to at least one mineral in a mountain, just because it's on an exposed rock face.

[Torham]

"It's typically worth checking before you irrevocably commit yourself to spending the rest of your life mining that worthless ore vein." This reminds me of my visit to a 16 th century Hematite mining site last year. The foreman was showing us the tools of the trade and some exploration shatfs. He said that this one shaft was started by one bloke, he was working on it for 20 years, died and his son picked up the chisel and hammer and continued on the shaft. After ten more years they did eventually find a vein, but they had no way to tell if there ever will be anything there.

[agatharchides]

For all the nothing it is worth, I think the new metal system is good in theory but poorly or insufficiently implemented. I'm all for most metals being more scare, I never really liked the fact that I got metric tons of gold just digging out my base on every single map. Megaprojects should still be possible, just not pure gold ones. More information on the embark screen about the metals there and the metals of the civs would make it a lot less of a crap shoot and obviously we need a way to make traders bring a halfway reasonable amount of metal or metal goods.

[G-Flex]

Options are a big part of DF, yes, but obviously we can't treat "make it optional" as a valid solution to every development question. It's a possible solution, yes, but we can't just assume it's always the best choice. Like I said, in this case, I definitely think it's something to be considered.

That much I agree with. In my opinion bees, or say, grazing shouldn't be officially optional because options like that would just cause bloat. But the two hot contention topics drastically change more than the gameplay, they change the underlying current of the game, and force everyone to a much narrower band of play style (the aforementioned survivalist hardcore).

I disagree, because individual features like bees are the kinds of things that you can trivially mod out on your own and that won't affect gameplay a lot.

Things that drastically and fundamentally change the game are often least suitable for options, because it's that much more difficult for the game to support all options involved if they change the game that much.

[Taricus]

the heaver metals should be scarcer, like gold and platinum. iron isn't to rare.

[Jome]

The people who want info on where they embark shouldn't play this really. I like it better this way, and if you dont then here's an option for you. Play this one, or play another.
Just because you guys want something doesn't mean others do, and no, OPTIONALITY is not an option.

[Ledi]

For all the nothing it is worth, I think the new metal system is good in theory but poorly or insufficiently implemented. I'm all for most metals being more scare, I never really liked the fact that I got metric tons of gold just digging out my base on every single map. Megaprojects should still be possible, just not pure gold ones. More information on the embark screen about the metals there and the metals of the civs would make it a lot less of a crap shoot and obviously we need a way to make traders bring a halfway reasonable amount of metal or metal goods.

I think that sums it up quite nicely. I don't want - or need - to have valuable metals covering half of a 3x3 embark on every z-level, but I would like enough to be able to justify getting a magma forge set up, and enough variety to have a decent chance of fulfilling a demand. And I would definitely like to be able to tell what is in the embark that I spend days genning.

And G... I've already said we're not going to agree due to our playstyles being too different. I'm just going to drop it here and respond to the other posters instead.

[Kogut]

This is akin, in my opinion, to saying you should be able to "completely ignore" your dwarves having to eat or drink.

We can. I believe it's [Noeat] or somesuch added to the raws?  But we cannot tailor the view in embark or the amount of metal that is generated the same way (at least that I have discovered). So some official options to allow us to play according to our playstyles would be nice.

This. Worldgen option: ore_quantify.
Like volcanic activity, size of map etc.

[Dante]

in through the back door, as it were

[Ledi]

This is akin, in my opinion, to saying you should be able to "completely ignore" your dwarves having to eat or drink.

We can. I believe it's [Noeat] or somesuch added to the raws?  But we cannot tailor the view in embark or the amount of metal that is generated the same way (at least that I have discovered). So some official options to allow us to play according to our playstyles would be nice.

This. Worldgen option: ore_quantify.
Like volcanic activity, size of map etc.

That would be pretty much exactly what I was thinking of. It would also allow people who use smaller embark sizes (older computers etc) to not be crippled by that choice as they could up the ratio to about the same as someone whose computer can cope with a 7x7 embark.