A theory cropped up suggesting wear causes FPS drops. (
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Wear)
Entirely possible it is completely wrong. However, got me thinking about clothing behavior.
Clothes rot over time. I'll notice their Xpig tail socksX rarely when looking at dwarves' inventories, ensuring they have proper gear for profession/military. ATM they claim clothes but don't change, cluttering their rooms unless they have storage furniture. This is the extent of my first hand knowledge of the system. I'd play around with it but I don't have a mature fort right now as I just abandoned my megaproject first try.
I'm big into the idea of a textile industry though, and brainstormed a few ideas up while checking out the FPS drop bug report.
The theory is that the game checks for clothes rot very often. I could see it dropping FPS if you have to check 5,000 articles of clothing and monitor/adjust their rot. Here's the ideas anyway.
Clothing Wear- Instead of rotting over time, clothes suffer wear at the end of combat rounds and job completion according to the job and the article's material strength.
- Different jobs wear clothing differently. Some don't wear clothes, like pulling levers, while mining, smithing and hauling have high wear.
- Dwarves get mild happy/unhappy thoughts from clothing wear of varying frequency, based on personality (neurosis/narcissism) and rank (haulers shouldn't care as much as nobles).
- Abandonment of worn clothing if possessed of an adequate replacement, so the public can handle it (designate public cabinets/chests as trash or donation bin?) Nobles should have more stringent abandoning conditions.
- Clothing recycling, like object melting, to take care of tattered old gear
- Orders settings to automate the replacement/recycling system, e.g. Autoloom all abandoned clothes
Clothing Use/Behavior- Bazaar events every season with price cuts and bargains so dwarves have a set time to prioritize tasks involving updating/buying new outfits. Mandates in anticipation of these events could give more life to mandate system.
- Donation bins for poor dwarves to rummage through if clothing is an issue.
- Dwarves buy clothing dwarftelligently, e.g. sturdier gear for industrious dwarves, highest value gear for nobles, etc.
- Profession-specific clothing, e.g. Suspenders, belts, boots and overalls for physical workers. Gardeners' gloves/haulers' work gloves, Mining cowls with built-in lamps for miners, Forge aprons and mitts for smiths protect clothing layered beneath. Welder's masks and goggles. Glasses and loupes for engineers and bookkeepers. Dyed robes, crowns and scepters worn by kings. Really you could take any profession and apply the concepts of safety, comfort and value and you'll come up with ideas for articles of clothing.
- Guilds meet with mayor and request mandate if shortage of profession-specific clothing
- Supply/demand affecting things like material value would be cool, so you could see for instance lamb's wool more highly valued than gold if you have a cold fort and no way to supply warm clothing, or giant cave spider silk clothes being cheap if you've been exploiting your GCS farm. Must apply a bit of ingenuity to keep the strain off CPU though. Maybe it happens similar to liaison meetings with price modifiers set only during bazaar events.
- Style choices -- Ideally the game takes into account their preferences, creating unique style choices, e.g. a king that likes overalls would mandate and wear gem encrusted =<<=giant cave spider silk overalls=>>=. The mandate could also set seasonal trends if he mandated many be made.
With these implementations, we'd have a fairly lifelike textile industry.
Busy, poor dwarves will be wearing beat up and undecorated gear, which seems true to life of peasantry, especially for physically demanding jobs like hauling.
The more prestigious crafts-caste workers will have the appropriate articles of clothing for their profession, lending them dignity and character befit of their job and rank.
Kings and other nobles will wear lavish clothing and set trends for the fortress, yet all dwarves will have ways of expressing themselves through their preferences.
It would even be possible to see a hauler wearing nice clothes from a few seasons ago if a noble decided to donate old clothes after entertaining the latest trends.
What are your thoughts?