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[KtarraMoon]

You may know already about other various suggestions based on this scheme. But, how about Embark level Creature soul engineering?

Basic Idea: Right now we have random Dwarfs. We can assign skills to them. There are Souls in the game. How would you like to edit the souls of the Dwarf so that they have the proper attributes necessary for the proper skills? For example, a soul enginered miner type, forester type, leader type, etc.

Implementation: Right now we are able to assign skills in the embark for the dwarfs and get the tools and other neccessary equipment for the journey. We also have a set number of points which right now are alterable. Here is a possible manner of implementation:

• Split the points into 3 seperate pools: Item Points, Skill Points and Soul Points.
• Keep the option of randomized Creatures but have an option to do something like "Prepare for the journey carefully with soul altering of starting selection".
• In Soul Altering mode, all attributes are altered using the Soul Points system. This includes:
  
  • free items: Name, age, sex, religion, Hair style and grooming standards, Height, Weight, etc.
  • pointed items: All Body and Soul attributes as listed in the Attribute section of the wiki. Includes: Strength, Toughness, Agility, etc.
  All Creatures, when in Soul altering mode, start with Generic attributes, the medians of their species.  You can decrease attributes below Median for more points, and as you increase attributes, points in the pool decrease proportunatly.
  
  • Skill points are assigned the same way in a seperate pool as well as item points in their seperate pools. Basic pool points can be altered in the Embark and characters can be added or subtracted for a certain number of Item points, say 500, and Soul points can be increased or decreased as neccessary, say 500 soul points per character, 250 Skill points per character, and basic Item point amount for starting amounts. Of course, all points must be limited in order to prevent an absolute killing spree of maximum attribute, maximum skill creatures.
  TL;DL: The proposal is basically a character building system similar to D&D with Soul alteration of the playable socities in the game.
  
  If seconded and thirded, I will add this to the Voting list for the Community to vote upon.
  
  Thanks for reading.

[Bohandas]

This is a VERY good idea. Seconded.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, there's been suggestions regarding being able to re-roll your dwarves for quite a while, now. 

But there are some things I have to ask about:

Why is it called "soul points" when it's used to affect physical and mental/soul attributes alike?  Wouldn't it be better to call it "attribute points"?

I also would like to know what argument there is for having separate pools of points for spending on equipment and skills.  Currently, with one common currency, you have something of a strategic decision to make regarding skill point purchases, since the more equipment you bring, the less points for skills you can have - it's asking you to pick your real priorities, having some start-up skills, or having some start-up equipment.

Why not purchase attributes with the same points we purchase skills and equipment with, already?

Also, why would we want to take away the random attributes we have right now? 

Having some negative traits that are randomly rolled up, and having to take a look at what dwarves you have, and do a little HumanDwarven Resources to fit the right people to the right jobs is part of the game.

Giving players some chance to re-roll their dwarves without having to go through the whole embark location menu again, or giving them an ability to give their dwarves a different haircut would be welcomed, but I'm not sure I want default generic average dwarves - the whole point of that stuff being procedurally generated in the first place was to make them have highs and lows that I didn't pick myself.

[Reelyanoob]

A related idea would be to have a selection pool of dwarves from which you pick 7 candidates. Dwarves from abandoned fortresses should repopulate the selection pool, but cost extra based on their skills.

[Capntastic]

A related idea would be to have a selection pool of dwarves from which you pick 7 candidates. Dwarves from abandoned fortresses should repopulate the selection pool, but cost extra based on their skills.

This is cooler, and doesn't involve godly levels of micromanaging-control over already-existing world entities.

[Jeoshua]

I already do this with hacks.  I like that their soul points are distributed randomly already, but it would be nice to be able to tweak them.

Personalities should not be settable tho... although I would like to reroll some of the paranoid, lazy dwarves I've been handed before.

[blizzerd]

creating dwarfs out of thin air sucks

make a pool of dwarfs that want to migrate in that area add in abandoned forts populations

also add in that highly skilled dwarves cost more points then others

[Dutchling]

creating dwarfs out of thin air sucks

make a pool of dwarfs that want to migrate in that area add in abandoned forts populations

also add in that highly skilled dwarves cost more points then others

seconded

[Jeoshua]

I've been running into alot of problems in worldgen populations, and there is only one real explanation.

Somewhere in Toady's code is a funciton that is going screwy.

CreateDwarfFromNothing()

It's called when you make an adventurer.  It's called for your starting seven.   It's called for migrants.  It makes it literally impossible to make a realistically growing civilization.  I had a Wizard civ that was restricted to 1 wizard maximum.  You know what happened? More were created.

All those bandits you see in adventurer mode didn't decide, one day, to do some ill advised act and become enemies of the state.  They were created as baddies from the start.

In general, this could be fixed up by taking that CreateDwarfFromNothing() function and make it TakeDwarfFromPopulation()

[KtarraMoon]

Like I said in the begining, the random option would still be available so you would not have to micro-manage the attributes of the Dwarves. (via a series of Init options. [SOUL_ALTER_BASIC:YES,NO],[SOUL_ALTER_ATTRIBUTE:YES,NO],[SOUL_ALTER_PERSONALITY:YES,NO], etc.)

The different pools would allow simulation of "the haves" vs "the have nots." A wealthy civ with excelent education and a great spirutal accumen would be different from a poor civ with below average education and bad spirtual accumen. Of course the base points would be alterable in the initial Creature specifications and then could be further altered by factors in the World Generation system to make things fair. Example: min points and max points in the Creature specs then points would be added and subtracted by various amounts based on the pluses and minuses of individual civs. ie: Better than/less than average rulers, war/peace options etc. It could also be manually overridden in world gen as the regular point system is now.

I called them "Soul Points" because that is what we are technically doing: altering the souls of the creatures to fit our needs.

[NW_Kohaku]

Like I said in the begining, the random option would still be available so you would not have to micro-manage the attributes of the Dwarves. (via a series of Init options. [SOUL_ALTER_BASIC:YES,NO],[SOUL_ALTER_ATTRIBUTE:YES,NO],[SOUL_ALTER_PERSONALITY:YES,NO], etc.)

The different pools would allow simulation of "the haves" vs "the have nots." A wealthy civ with excelent education and a great spirutal accumen would be different from a poor civ with below average education and bad spirtual accumen. Of course the base points would be alterable in the initial Creature specifications and then could be further altered by factors in the World Generation system to make things fair. Example: min points and max points in the Creature specs then points would be added and subtracted by various amounts based on the pluses and minuses of individual civs. ie: Better than/less than average rulers, war/peace options etc. It could also be manually overridden in world gen as the regular point system is now.

I called them "Soul Points" because that is what we are technically doing: altering the souls of the creatures to fit our needs.

But they're altering the BODIES of the dwarves, unless you want to count the physical appearance or physical health of a dwarf a part of its "soul".  (I certainly don't think the color of my hair has much to do with my soul...)

Also, all of a sudden, you seem to be talking about modding the entire civilizatoin your fortress comes from, as though you add and subtract points out of the stregnth of the entire civ's population arbitrarily at the time you decide to embark...

Shouldn't these sorts of traits have had some sort of impact during Worldgen?  If an entire civ was poor, but strong, wouldn't that have been an important part of their history?  After all, "poor" isn't something that arises out of nothing, it's a status inflicted by what resources the civ had at their disposal.  If a mountainhome was situated on top of an iron and gold mine, and trades valuable steel and gold throughout worldgen, why is it "poor but strong" all of a sudden?

Also, frankly, some nations are bigger and more powerful than others, and it's usually not because their citizens are weaker and lazier and stupider than poorer civilizations.  There's some balance in that players are given arbitrarily small amounts of equipment and limited skill levels, since those are the points that the player directly impacts, but there's no reason to make every civilization always have the same arbitrary amount of power at the end of worldgen. 

[Bohandas]

there's no reason to make every civilization always have the same arbitrary amount of power at the end of worldgen.

Seconded

[GreatWyrmGold]

This is incredibly complicated, potentially time-consuming, and will only be useful in rare circumstances and/or by experienced players.
Yet I am for it. Odd.

there's no reason to make every civilization always have the same arbitrary amount of power at the end of worldgen.

Seconded

Thirded.

[KtarraMoon]

What you say is true about not making every civ have the same power at the end of worldgen.

This is I was talking about the factors affecting points during worldgen. Everyone gets a base amount of points as defined in the raws, a base amount. They could be overritten in the worldgen params. Then, their history over time in worldgen would increase or decrease points based on merits/flaws according to individual civics on a civ by civ basis. Civics will be like Ethics with several factors including War/Peace, general populace education, Ruler education, spirtuality, religion, etc. They will be handled like the Phys_Att_Range factors in the creature_standard raw, with Humans being the basic rulestick.

This is an example:

• the civ could have a bad millitary or social history. Mabye they were too warlike for the other civs to trust them enough to trade with. After all, if you constantly backstab the people that are surrounding you, you would never be trusted enough to trade fairly with. A massive army would be a major threat to other civs so they would be weak in the trust aspect thus reducing points in the Item pool.
• Rulers that that have an emphasis on all having an education may increase Skill points.
• A well established religion would increase Attribute/Soul Points.

These are examples of what I was saying.

[kylefiredemon]

What you say is true about not making every civ have the same power at the end of worldgen.

This is I was talking about the factors affecting points during worldgen. Everyone gets a base amount of points as defined in the raws, a base amount. They could be overritten in the worldgen params. Then, their history over time in worldgen would increase or decrease points based on merits/flaws according to individual civics on a civ by civ basis. Civics will be like Ethics with several factors including War/Peace, general populace education, Ruler education, spirtuality, religion, etc. They will be handled like the Phys_Att_Range factors in the creature_standard raw, with Humans being the basic rulestick.

This is an example:

• the civ could have a bad millitary or social history. Mabye they were too warlike for the other civs to trust them enough to trade with. After all, if you constantly backstab the people that are surrounding you, you would never be trusted enough to trade fairly with. A massive army would be a major threat to other civs so they would be weak in the trust aspect thus reducing points in the Item pool.
• Rulers that that have an emphasis on all having an education may increase Skill points.
• A well established religion would increase Attribute/Soul Points.

These are examples of what I was saying.

We could also have a nation with a powerful economy, thus being able to supply more item points.