DF2014 Talk:Topic

We aren't even half way there

There are around 130 innovations/topics/technologies listed so far. Toady says there are around 300.

Techniques for researching:

• Turn entire Fortress into scholars
• Monitor what they discuss / ponder every few minutes
• Record the innovation name and description (Press j when highlighting the dwarf in the unit list to see the description)
• Might be best to do this in several worlds generated with longer histories

I also went through Legends mode and sorted through a crap load of books (under artifacts), but this way doesn't always give you the innovation name. And it's a pain.

Any other suggestions? Brightgalrs (talk) 16:18, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Writing books in adv mode is also a good way to do it. Untrustedlife (talk) 17:07, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Didn't think of that. Very nice.Brightgalrs (talk) 17:21, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Ah, having not played fortress mode in the new release, I didn't realize that there were official names for the topics. I just thought the name was supposed to briefly describe the topic. I will remove the names from all the topics I have added. One good thing about using legends mode is that you know for certain which field a topic is a part of, since it says stuff like, "In 88, Sut became a philosopher in Hawktwinkle." "In the early summer of 91, Sut independently discovered discourse on medical ethics." That could have conceivably been a medical science innovation, but obviously since Sut was a philosopher, it is a philosophy inovation. --Figwat (talk) 05:57, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Lots of knowledge flags have been added to df-structures recently. I don't know how the names were found or how reliable the information is, but it might be a good starting point for the full list of topics. --FortressBuilder (talk) 15:57, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Used this list to complete the list in the article. Some of the names are probably wrong, however.Brightgalrs (talk) 06:22, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Maybe we could look for the correct strings in the exe file? Version 0.42.06 seems to have them around offset 0xB72AA0. FortressBuilder (talk) 12:07, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

In response to you most recent edit: Some of the topic names in the article are carried-over from before the revamp. The terminology used for the flags is different from what appears in the game.Brightgalrs (talk) 17:50, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

@Brightgalrs that section on value agendas you deleted needs to come back books on value agendas were a feature toady made a big deal about .

(They were formatted as nuances/nature/worthlessness/value of "belief" (belief being any personality attribute, nature, truth, cunning etc.) Untrustedlife (talk) 03:00, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I had a feeling that dwarfs could write value-pushing books, but not philosophize about them. I think it's fine how it is now though, added to the bottom of the philosophy section. Brightgalrs (talk) 20:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Reminders

• Record both the name and description
• The description should be all words after "The topic being discussed concerns..." or whatever it is.
• Try to sort the innovation in the right section of this article
• If it isn't obvious which it fits under (or it seems fits under multiple) just put it in the "unsorted" section
• More research will be done when Dwarf Therapist is updated
  • In particular, monitoring dwarf's skill gain to pinpoint the correct branch(s) a topic should be sorted under.

Brightgalrs (talk) 16:27, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Names of Innovations

Apparently there are different names the innovations/topics/technologies are called in different fortresses. Example:

The Screw	The construction and use of the screw
Screws within Reason	The construction and use of the screw

Are they the same?

Do we keep both / combine them / try to find a more common name? Another example of how it is currently handled on the page:

Gear Mechanics Gears

The reasons why gears are effective

Ashameron (talk) 11:19, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Are you sure "Screws within Reason" is not a title of a book or something? Brightgalrs (talk) 06:22, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Who deleted the section in the philosophy section on value agendas, ? that is important, it should be brought back. Toady has even talked about it, that bit needs to be brought back, nature of nuances of etc were in the same section for a reason. Untrustedlife (talk) 02:58, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Skill gain

So, I've noticed that specific topics use specific skills when they're being pondered about. I've thus added a new column with whatever skillgain tests I can make. There are some things we can sort of guess, for example, I guess most of the logic topics in philosophy use logician, and most of the form topics in history use record keeper, but I'll be good and actually fiddle my dwarves into pondering about the topic first before I make assumptions :< Therahedwig (talk) 19:11, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Doneish, can't get the propositional logic topic to appear though :( Therahedwig (talk) 22:06, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

New Info From Toady

I copy pasted Toady's comments on breakthroughs/discoveries from here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf//index.php?topic=169696.msg8071983#msg8071983 I haven't worked out the full implications of Toady's comment yet, it might require some SCIENCE? Anyway, I figured I would get it on the page for now and then come back to it when there has been more work figuring out the implications of this information. I think, for example, this comment implies that we can estimate the average total number of 1-2 day cycles that are required for a breakthrough for level 1/2/3/4 topics. It also implies that breakthroughs come faster if you can get particular Dwarfs to each focus on particular topics, as opposed to all Scholars working on a single topic at once or Scholars repeatedly changing topics. Scruiser (talk) 15:34, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I added some back of the envelope calculations to provide a rough estimate of time to make a breakthrough, and I ran into an ambiguity in Toady's description of the process. Does the 2% chance of switching topic only start after more than 0 "dice" have been rolled on the chance to make a breakthrough? In my current calculations I assumed so, but if not, then that means that unskilled Dwarfs will switch topics much more often than they make breakthroughs. I haven't done any long forts focused on long term research in order to find out, but if anyone has this seems like something they would notice... Scruiser (talk) 21:07, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I realized I had misread how Toadys comments and reworked the example calculations for breakthrough time. I used the following matlab code to come up with the estimate of 8.54 additional cycles on average to get breakthrough credit:

  odds_of_finishing_at_ith_cycle(51)=0;
  odds_of_finishing_at_ith_cycle(1)=0;
  expected_value=0;
  for i=1:50
     odds_of_finishing_at_ith_cycle(i+1)=(.02*i)*(1-sum(odds_of_finishing_at_ith_cycle(1:i)));
     expected_value=expected_value+odds_of_finishing_at_ith_cycle(i+1)*i;
  end

Scruiser (talk) 02:18, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I roughly confirmed the 58.54 number using dfHack and keeping track of the times pondered until the number reset and then recording the last number observed+1. Scruiser (talk) 19:52, 18 January 2020 (UTC)