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[Sutremaine]

the real apex should be hard to reach, say 20 years of constant craftworking.

I'd say five years, given how long the average fortress lasts.

[NW_Kohaku]

the real apex should be hard to reach, say 20 years of constant craftworking.

I'd say five years, given how long the average fortress lasts.

That's only because there's nothing to do once you have established a fortress and made it solid and sustainable, besides maybe have a megaproject.

I have to agree with the prevailing theme going here in the last several posts. I'd really like to see the options for differentiating basic accommodations versus nice accommodations increase. Bedding would be as good a place as any to start. I like the idea that a piece of leather, cloth, or fur should be the default starting bed. (speaking of which, we need furs in the game).
I think that the idea that a highly skilled laborer like a jeweler would only show up when wealth starts to rise is an extremely valid one, and that expectations of dwarves should be related to their station, job, and the overall wealth of the fortress. (some of which is already in the game)

I'm a player who tends to focus more on the civilian stuff than military stuff as well, so I'd be completely in favor of this as it would add more late game challenges in that area.

I was thinking about the whole concept and I came to the conclusion the core issue is motivation. Why should I want to improve, advance and promote my fortress? At this point, all I get is annoying nobles. But with coming and leaving workers, I suddenly have to worry about the standing and reputation of my outpost, in order to be able to do high-level stuff.

You're touching on one of the really big problems I see in DF as it currently stands - the lack of any sort of game beyond the initial outpost stage, and the inability to make a fortress into a city, in spite of supposedly having the population and clout to make your fort a mountainhome. 

I really need to go back and expand on the idea (it's been a year), but this is what the Class Warfare thread is about.

[Deepblade]

I like the idea of having actual beds instead of just having soft wood for our dwarves to sleep on. It just lets to show the dwarves you like that you care that much more about them then all those filthy Fish Dissectors.

[sockless]

In my constant battle to have rooms reinvented as zones, I am once again going to apply it to this thread.

One of the problems with getting rid of the current system is that it would be really hard to make a bedroom as you need to define it from a bed, so here's my model:

Bedrooms are defined similar to how hospital zones are.
After defining a bedroom zone, we would then go into a screen where we can set where we want the sleeping area and other objects. We would then be able to set in the screen what we want in the sleeping area, or set it to the best possible. A similar thing would happen for cabinets etc., so we would be able to set the cabinet as "rock cabinet" and any sort of rock cabinet would be used.
It would then be possible to save the settings, so that when defining bedrooms we would be able to just define a single bedroom and copy+paste it for all the rest, similar to how the military screen does orders, except it would be done in the rooms screen.

Kotaku, you haven't brought up the point here about how there's no incentive not to have the best, as you so fastidiously argued on the thread about incorperating workshop zones, tools and machines.

[Sutremaine]

That's only because there's nothing to do once you have established a fortress and made it solid and sustainable, besides maybe have a megaproject.

True I guess. But Toady would have to put a heck of a lot into the late game to fill 20 years.

[harborpirate]

That's only because there's nothing to do once you have established a fortress and made it solid and sustainable, besides maybe have a megaproject.

True I guess. But Toady would have to put a heck of a lot into the late game to fill 20 years.

I think it just hasn't been a focus up to this point. Many more basic things were more obviously missing; like the progression of stuff you run into as you dig deeper, or the ability of the fort to interact with the world around it.

Given how clever the rest of the game is, procedural events to make the game a bit tougher on you from a non-military standpoint doesn't seem like it will be that hard of a hill to climb once it gets a bit more attention.

I completely agree with bedrooms as zones. That method of assigning space will help move the game forward in a lot of respects specifically because it doesn't rely on a particular object staying there to define it, and thus over time is more malleable. It removes useless distinctions as well (i.e. bedroom/barracks/dormitory).

[Gloster]

I really need to go back and expand on the idea (it's been a year), but this is what the Class Warfare thread is about.

Yeah, that is pretty close to what I think, with a slightly different emphasis.


As for the fortress lifetime and dwarven experience curve - these things are intertwined. Like Kohaku said, forts don't last too many years because there isn't all that much to do past a certain point. Had there been something to do (like training your own legend), one would be more inclined to continue working on one outpost instead of starting over again. (We are still playing DF; so it's not that we are bored with the game, we become bored with a concrete session, once there is nothing to do.)
Plus, you would be able to get great workers - from the outside, if your fortress is good enough.
And here comes the item quality in again - if you can set up a legendary masterwork golden dining room in year 3, where are you going to go from there?

My opinion is that the apex should really be much more distant.

[NW_Kohaku]

Kotaku, you haven't brought up the point here about how there's no incentive not to have the best, as you so fastidiously argued on the thread about incorperating workshop zones, tools and machines.

Not that we aren't nursing a grudge, right?

I think Gloster's idea of having mattresses and beds is a decent one, although I don't think we need as many "stages" as he has it.

Just having a fabric/leather "mattress" or "blanket" as stage one and having a bed with a frame and a mattress as a stage two is probably sufficient.  Maybe having a third stage with extra fabrics and some feathers thrown in for comforters as a fancy bed would also work.  It is unclear whether he wants to have mattresses built in one stage and frames in another and then combined in a separate step or just built all in one go, but generally, I would say that the less steps the player has to manage, the better.

The difference between Gloster's idea and your workshop idea is that there IS an actual difference in the amount of material it takes to make an upgraded bed (cloth vs. cloth and wood/metal/stone vs. maybe even more cloth plus feathers and wood/metal/stone) but there is no particular increase in tedium for the player to punch through menus.

With Gloster's idea, you can just hit a "make improved bed" button and set it to repeat, and punch out plenty of these items - the work is on the dwarves.  With your idea, players have to micromanage various aspects of workshops and babysit which tools get used - the work is on the player.

I explained this all in full and concrete detail in your thread.  I said which specific portions of your idea were problematic, and how, specifically, they could be improved. I wasn't just "out to get you", I was making perfectly clear what the specific points of contention were. That idea has nothing at all to do with this idea, and there is neither reason for you to bear this grudge, nor to bring it into unrelated threads.  If you want to keep making that argument, make it in its original thread.

[harborpirate]

Kotaku, you haven't brought up the point here about how there's no incentive not to have the best, as you so fastidiously argued on the thread about incorperating workshop zones, tools and machines.

I think Gloster's idea of having mattresses and beds is a decent one, although I don't think we need as many "stages" as he has it.

Just having a fabric/leather "mattress" or "blanket" as stage one and having a bed with a frame and a mattress as a stage two is probably sufficient.  Maybe having a third stage with extra fabrics and some feathers thrown in for comforters as a fancy bed would also work.  It is unclear whether he wants to have mattresses built in one stage and frames in another and then combined in a separate step or just built all in one go, but generally, I would say that the less steps the player has to manage, the better.

I agree that three steps would be sufficient. The key would be giving the player a lot of choices on what bits go into those three steps, to increase the differentiation in object styles and values. This would rely on the ability to restrict materials used in a workshop/workshop zone to really be effective. It wouldn't matter how that was implemented - I'd be in favor of a change over to workshop zones and then only allow dwarves using that workshop zone to use items that have been placed [in stockpiles] inside that zone unless they run out or they're in a mood.

[NW_Kohaku]

I agree that three steps would be sufficient. The key would be giving the player a lot of choices on what bits go into those three steps, to increase the differentiation in object styles and values. This would rely on the ability to restrict materials used in a workshop/workshop zone to really be effective. It wouldn't matter how that was implemented - I'd be in favor of a change over to workshop zones and then only allow dwarves using that workshop zone to use items that have been placed [in stockpiles] inside that zone unless they run out or they're in a mood.

You don't need to do that, you just need four reactions:

• Build sleeping bag
• Build common bed
• Build luxurious bed
• Build bed frame (this may be duplicate jobs based upon materials)

Each of those just requires different amounts of materials.

The only reason you would even want a "build bed frame" type of job is to segregate out the carpentry or metalsmithing jobs from the clothier/weaver job of making the mattress. 

Workshop zone stuff is all for another thread, and is irrelevant to this.

[harborpirate]

I meant more in the variety of materials you could choose. With the initial item, its easy, is the blanket made out of cloth, leather, or fur? The game handles that well now. What it doesn't seem to handle well is something like: Does this particular obsidian bed frame get a cloth blanket or a silk one, a down pillow or straw pillow? etc.

[Gloster]

I don't think I can take credit for the frame/mattress idea; someone posted it before and I just expanded on it.

I was actually thinking in terms of "build a sleeping spot" under the build menu, which would likely replace the build bed option. It would probably expand into several sub-categories (just like build workshop->build ashery) - something like the aforementioned rugs/hammock/cot/mattress/bed and you would subsequently choose the specific materials to assemble it.

Build rug heap - needs 1 cloth or fur, choose material and quality
...
Build bed - needs 1 frame, 1 mattress, 1 pillow, 1 blanket/duvet, 1 sheet

Then it gets constructed and works in the same way beds do now. How about that?