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[GreatWyrmGold]

I got an idea to make a mod to make life easier for noobs to DF. I want to make most things easier, but not take away any all challenge. Probably, I'll increase dwarves' stats, make critters need to graze less, take out the scariest critters, increase farming returns, and stuff like that. Can anyone help me with ideas?

[Halnoth]

hmm,

Give all stone the flux tag, all soil the clay and sand tag. Delete aquifers.

[Talanic]

I'd say that's pretty much the entirely wrong approach.  Instead of making all stones flux and  all soils sand and clay, I'd say delete stone/soil types that AREN'T flux, sand or clay.  That'll make most places much more newb-friendly but won't make them have a "whuh!?" moment when they play a different version and find that granite doesn't make steel.

Increasing the frequency of metals by doing things like making magnetite have the same appearance stats as, say, alunite would also be helpful.

Making goblins and/or kobolds appear later would probably also give newbs breathing room.

Increasing learning rate for dwarves, or making all dwarves start with military skills.

[Trapezohedron]

Give the dwarves higher learning skill rates, remove PET_EXOTIC tags, mod mandates to be (almost) non existent, give dwarves [NATURAL_SKILL:XXXX:X] where XXXX is every single existing skill and X is the skill level, and a custom worldgen with higher embark points and ores.

Well, I'm not sure about [NATURAL_SKILL] as it may make the game too cheaty.

[Artanis00]

I'm partial to an idea that's been floated around before: consolidate all distinct types of objects/resources into a single generic form.

For example: Embark in a forest overgrown with tree and shrub (which can be cut down for wood and gathered for berry, respectively) on a wagon pulled by two large animals. Dig into a mountain side composed of soil, stone, flux stone, and possibly veins of metal ore and pockets of gem. Find patches of sand to gather for glassmaking material. Set up farms of shrub and mushroom, and brew into berry alcohol and mushroom alcohol and stored in stockpiles guarded from vermin by small animals. Trade with traders. Fight off sieges and ambushes of invaders. Smelt metal ore into metal to make metal swords and metal armor. Butcher animals for large animal meat, leather, and bone, or small animal meat, leather, and bone. Dig deep enough and strike spires of deep metal, etc., etc.

There might be some rough spots where things are hard-coded. For example, it'd be ideal to make wood into fuel instead of charcoal, but I can't remember if that can be done.

May result in some interesting 'likes' sections on the dwarves: "Urist McSimple likes small animals, large animal leather, and gem for it's sparkles."

[EmperorJon]

Sigh... that's the entirely wrong approach. There's a very large difference between making it easier, and making it so that when they play the real game they've got no idea what's going on. Plus, a DF where everything was 'Rock', 'Animal', etc. would be boring as shit.

[Rumrusher]

Sigh... that's the entirely wrong approach. There's a very large difference between making it easier, and making it so that when they play the real game they've got no idea what's going on. Plus, a DF where everything was 'Rock', 'Animal', etc. would be boring as shit.

hey the price to pay when you making it easier... wait isn't there a lazy noob pack isn't that DF easy mode?

[jellsprout]

Making the goblins attack later, have the iron ores and bituminous coal appearing in all the layer types and removing aquifiers should probably be enough. You can go further by weakening the goblins, making the dwarves stronger and giving the dwarves a [NOEMOTION] tag and removing the [CREATURE_TAG] tag. This won't change the core gameplay too much while still making the game easier.

[Darvi]

Eh, easy mode? Only preschool kids*shot*

[profit]

I have an "easy" mode, it simply allows you to take a ton with you on embark and has some things pre-selected.

It is called simple fortress and you can find it in the link on my signature. 

As an added bonus, no core gameplay elements are changed so you can take all the time you need to learn the game, but the actual game is the same.

[kotekzot]

Sigh... that's the entirely wrong approach. There's a very large difference between making it easier, and making it so that when they play the real game they've got no idea what's going on. Plus, a DF where everything was 'Rock', 'Animal', etc. would be boring as shit.

hey the price to pay when you making it easier... wait isn't there a lazy noob pack isn't that DF easy mode?

No, it's DF sane install mode.

[kragnoth]

I'd say a few you could do:

1.Remove alcohol dependance from the dwarf tag
2.Remove mandates
3. Add No_eat no_drink to dwarfs
(if you add no_drink, you need to remove alcohol dependance)
4.Toggle off aquifers
5.Add a speed tag to dwarfs that is lower than their normal one.
6.Increase learning rates
7.Increase stats


The biggest ones to add for ease of use though I'd think are Aquifers, food/drink, speed and mandates.  Note though, if you remove drinking they won't really be able to learn how to play properly.  So I'd say maybe remove the need to eat, but leave in drinking/alcohol dependance so the player still needs to learn how to make farms/stills.


Or you could go my route, and make the dwarfs out of iron, have four arms, and not breathe/eat/drink.  I like to think of these dwarfs as 4 armed soulless automatons of doom.

[Artanis00]

Sigh... that's the entirely wrong approach. There's a very large difference between making it easier, and making it so that when they play the real game they've got no idea what's going on. Plus, a DF where everything was 'Rock', 'Animal', etc. would be boring as shit.

Well, yeah, the depth of the game is necessarily restricted for this. However, with only one type of every resource (and in self-descriptive, simplified, generic form), a new player can learn the mechanics of the game more easily.

Here's my reasoning: Vanilla bombards players with choices, and the vast majority of those are cosmetic choices regarding items, and this can distract from learning how to play the game. Take the Prepare Carefully option for embarking: in vanilla, there are hundreds (thousands?) of items to choose from, and four versions of each type of livestock (male adult, female adult, male child, female child), and skills. Skill are functional, and we can't simplify them, but there are way too many livestock options, as well as several foods per animal. There is no functional difference between all these options except price.

Once in a fort, stockpiles get the same simplification, and further more many decisions can be made in abstract where in vanilla the player is given multitudes of specifics.

Now, the transition from this simplified view of the game to vanilla might indeed be startling. I won't argue that won't happen. It would actually be best if detail could be layered on during the game, but that would require Toady to build that as a feature*.

What isn't important is showing off the depth of the game immediately. Sure it looks impressive, but as long as the UI is crap, it actually distracts from the task of learning how the game works. If that distraction can be minimized by reducing detail, then the player can focus more on learning the UI, and can delay appreciating the detail until the mechanics are learned.

* That would be a great feature to apply some more differences between races, not just for making the learning curve shallower. I doubt every member of the other races should be able to identify and recall the name of a chunk of rock they just glanced at like dwarves do.

[Talanic]

Many of those reasons are the same as why I suggest not modding existing options, but eliminating ones that are of low value to the player.  Get rid of chert, schist, quartzite, etc., most kinds of wood and animal, and reduce it to the point that no matter where they embark, it'll be semi-heavenly for their dwarves.  Guaranteed flux stone (not called 'flux stone', just a world comprised largely of marble), iron, clay and sand.  Goblins that won't attack until they have 80 dwarves.  Etc.

[Rumrusher]

make them bronze colossus?