While everyone and their money are sat waiting around for this, why not take the time to visit Toady?
I do still need to do that.
Also, instead of saying how much you want to throw money at the developers, post your expectations and hopes for what the game will turn out to be.
Because it'd be
long.CameraI agree about being able to see inside things, but I'd like a bit more freedom than that. The ability to make individual blocks or different axes than the z-one ghostly or invisible would be nice. Note that if there's any kind of ore or whatever in there, this might have to be limited in some fashion.
CreaturesI'd like something other than those yellow things. I think they're a bit ugly, but even if they weren't, variety is nice. Customization would be even nicer, possibly including dying/altering your minions on the fly.
I'd love if you could apply little items and titles to them. The former may already be planned, the latter is useless but probably relatively simple. You could have a little baron with a crown, cape, and scepter! Or a little mook hat to differentiate your unarmed, unarmored builders from your unarmed, unarmored cannon fodder. Or just keep track of that one guy who survived a trip off the edge.
I'd like RPGish elements, though to be honest those would be difficult to apply without ruining something. I suppose saying that I'd like the
option of RPGish elements would be more accurate, so if you don't want DF-style issues with a lone swordsman butchering everything that comes after you or miners moving no slower while mining than while running over open ground, you can avoid that.
Items and MaterialsI'd love something a bit more freeform than the usual This Is A Pick, The Recipe Is This stuff. That's probably hoping for a lot, though, so I'd just settle for your basic material/item matrix like most crafting games.
I would really like more materials than just rocks and wood, obviously. I wouldn't even mind if most of them (precious metals, gems) were completely worthless beyond giving your guys fancy hats or encrusting their shields with rubies. In fact, I'm going to just officially add "worthless but shiny materials" to the list.
Part of me also wants quality levels or similar, but part of me thinks that'd be a bad idea. Mainly because when there's quality levels, that usually just translates into "anything below The Best is crap, and used only for the ten minutes it takes you to acquire The Best." A slightly more organic/less "capoutandstop" system might solve that.
Editing and GenerationI want random terrain (and ideally random EVERYTHING) generators, and extensive editing tools. Not a lot to say here other than GIVE ME EVERYTHING.
I'm hoping theres monster forts that you have to siege, While stopping the monsters from overthrowing your fort, And I hope that monsters will be able to actually be able to build and repair structures. It'd be fun to go back into your main fortress making extra defences and pactching holes then going back and seeing they have a whole new fort.
This too. In fact, now I'm going to add NPC villages and trading partners and other things that are probably waaaay too ambitious for what they would add.
I hope the game has a fairly persistent world where new challenges come to face your fort and you can keep expanding on what you've already done. Having a way to move the islands or regenerate the islands around your own would be nice. Being able to take your fort into multiplayer and attack a friends would be really cool.
I suppose levels could work nicely too with something akin to Dungeon Keeper, I have always liked persistence in building games, though.
I'll add my approval to some sort of persistence/importing features.