User:Random832

Suggestions

I don't want the long list to make it seem like I'm some kind of big complainer - these are just ideas I had that might be nice.

Some of my comments are related to parts of the game (such as the economy) that I haven't reached or done yet, so I may be wrong on some of the details

• Req23, USE GROUNDING TO CURE TRAFFIC JAMS, Completed.

  What's this?

• Req26, SLEEPING THROUGH TANTRUMS, Completed: Tantrums/berserking are maintained while the dwarf sleeps. This is inappropriate. Berserk dwarves shouldn't even be able to sleep.

  Again, they can still pass out, right?

• Req100, COIN STORES

  How about allowing coins to be restacked (if they're not already)

• Req226, BUILDING ADMIRATION BUG, (Future): A metalsmith was able to admire "own furnace" even though ownership shouldn't apply to such buildings.
  • Why not?
• Req370, EATING IN STRANGE ROOMS
  • This is the bug where nobles eat in the chair in their office and complain about the lack of tables, right?

Doors (and hatches) and fluids suggestion

Doors shouldn't simply be made useless against fluids; but they should be balanced to make them worse than floodgates in many situations. My suggestion:

• Doors cannot be closed against flowing water
  • or take a very long time, longer than a floodgate for deep water say, 25*depth steps
  • If so, wooden doors have a small risk of breaking and rock doors have a smaller risk of breaking; also scales with depth
• Against standing water, it takes 10 steps per unit of water to close.
• If doors leak at all, they should do so slowly. It should be possible to make a watertight door.
  • maybe 1 unit per twenty steps per orthogonal adjacent unit
  • include diagonal if there are no orthogonals [rationale: a door into a reservoir shouldn't leak faster than a door in a channel, but this shouldn't be made exploitable.]
• A door with water adjacent on only some sides should be able to be opened immediately (as quickly as a door can be opened now)
• It should also be made possible to make a door that passes fluids freely like a grate (I'm mainly thinking hatches [to arrest falls] on tall stairways within water towers)
• Glass portals with fluids on the other side should be seen by the dwarf before opening (and they find another path / cancel the job now that they're aware the room they're headed to is flooded.)
• It should be possible to install a floodgate over a hole in the floor like a hatch; or have a new object (called a drain maybe?)

General fluids suggestions

• It should be possible to explicitly have grates/bars let fish/vermin through or not. Maybe grates block vermin and bars only block creatures?
• Water should flow more slowly through grates/bars/fortifications
• Constrictions (a new thing, or fortifications if the above is implemented, or leaky doors if that is implemented) should pass water more slowly at low pressures, more quickly at high pressures

Machinery suggestions

• Steam engine. Should be added before "zero-point energy" (water wheel generates 100 units; pump consumes 20) is fixed.
  • Fuel consumption proportional to the load. Allow burning wood or raw coal (or booze) since this doesn't need temperatures nearly as high as the smelter.
• A floor with a hole that machinery can pass power through but will support things. These should automatically spawn below windmills that have floors under them on old saves
• Gearboxes that can be disengaged while still supporting things (require a block)
• Water wheels should cause a pressure drop across them (proportional to the load)
• Pressure regulator - structure to allow water levels to be dropped to safely have a channel at a lower level with a source at a higher level. Right now IIRC this can be done with pumps, but it's more complicated (you need to drop it an extra level and then pump up to the level you want the water to have, and the pump has to be powered) and could be considered an exploit.

Magma suggestions

• Magma should cool down and leave stone (not obsidian, obsidian only forms when cooled quickly) - maybe leave granite if left to cool naturally. Some magma should leave basalt and not be usable for obsidian production.
  • Having magma sources generate heat and magma just retain it / lose it may offer a solution to REQ554 WALLS VERSUS MAGMA
• Water+Magma shouldn't always make obsidian (but should always make igneous rocks)
• Maybe Magma should track its composition to determine what rocks can be made. Melting objects changes its composition. (should melting metal objects give a percentage chance to yield low-quality ore? Magma in nature usually doesn't contain significant amounts of molten metal as far as I know, but if a contained quantity of magma melts a significant number of metal objects, arguably some portion (but not all, and not as much as if you'd melted the objects directly) of that metal should be recoverable.
• Speaking of molten metal; maybe that should be tracked as another fluid.
• Or, how do contaminants work? Would that mechanic be useful for this?
  • Finder should be able to find felsic magma specifically in order to guarantee the ability to create obsidian, since otherwise this is going to tick off some players
• Obsidian should be formed as solid walls that have to be mined out, not as stones.
• Provide an igneous magma-safe stone. Bauxite appears nowhere near volcanoes. This will become _much_ more important if you let magma melt walls.
• Most of these changes are going to seriously nerf magma (at least as something players can make use of) and tick off players who like it, so they should be configurable in init.txt

Miscellaneous suggestions

• A skilled fisherdwarf should be able to kill carp (&c). [Bloat356]
• Report temperature (in look, or maybe allow a temperature map with color coding)
• The entire trip should be taken into account when choosing materials; Including allowing dwarves to grab material that's further from the destination but on their way
• Preferential zones (distance is halved) to remove stone for use should be able to be set up. (ideally, these would automatically clear when empty of stone)
  • Should be possible to set up one in an area that's designated but not yet dug
• Allow a "flat view" where everything below uses the "one level below" view
  • ideally this should, or should have the option to, show exposed ore/gem/coal walls instead of the floors above them. maybe blink between the two?
• Show buildings and units one level below.
• Show tunnels one level below hidden space? (need to make it clear that the current level isn't dug out - maybe blink?)
• On Req539 UNDIGNIFIED DIGGING, maybe allow wooden picks/shovels to be made that only work in soil?
  • This (well, the original request for the same reason, but this would make it a little more dignified and require you to make equipment before doing it) would be mainly useful on soil-heavy maps to allow everyone to participate in building your initial above-the-aquifer structure.
  • On that note, how about dirt digging as a separate labor type, and shovels are more efficient than picks.
• Soil staircases should be temporary (wear and collapse if not replaced with constructed staircases.)
• High or low temperatures should have a higher cost
• Diagonal movement and movement up ramps (but not down ramps; since you've got gravity assist) should cost 1.4x
  • Is this already done? Req582 UPWARD DIAGONAL MOVEMENT RATES seems to imply it. Though, that's talking about a speed modifier - is there a cost modifier along with it?
• Movement up should cost more. Movement down should cost less.
  • Asymmetric costs may complicate calculating "distance" for materials. The naive way (consistent with the current behavior of only considering the trip hauling the material to the destination) would be to use the "material to destination" cost rather than the "destination to material".
• High-traffic areas should not be taken into account when calculating distance for materials
• High/low-traffic areas should be able to be made asymmetric (i.e. make dwarves keep right in wide tunnels)
• Farm plots should have "any available+appropriate+in-season crop" as an option and default to it; right now they default to fallow and it's up to the player to discover they have to set the crop. Or crop selection should act as a toggle (i.e. allow these crops if they're available) and start with all enabled
• Allow diluting contaminants; they vanish if diluted enough (a single spatter of blood in a river shouldn't make it run red, it should pretty much disappear)
  • maybe just vanish from view but still tracked as a low percentage, so that bodies of water _can_ run red if a large amount of carnage occurs near them
  • This could fix mud/blood spreading
• Market economy (supply/demand prices) - This would be seriously complicated, but could resolve price issues.
  • Ties in with Bloat8 RENT SETTING
  • This could even allow coins to be made of metals other than silver/gold/copper (set the market value of the metals, and base the values of the coins on that)
• Bloat16 ADVENTURING IN DWARF MODE is marked complete, but it'd be nice to be able to venture outside the embark area (memory management might be complex for this though. Don't want to trigger it randomly, but maybe have a "scout" job type, and you can designate a path for the scout to take.
• Smash silica-rich stones (Quartzite, Sandstone, Granite, Obsidian [but why?]) into sand.
• Use a different tileset for text.
  • Use a different *width* tileset for text. 16x16 is nice for the map but unreadable for text. Maybe require the width to be exactly half or the same.
• Fast flicker, instead of blinking slowly
• Z views in dwarf mode - People can reasonably have a 160x128 grid, more options on how to utilize that space generally would be nice. Maybe even allow multiple views with their own positional cursors; they can be locked together (to move together) or not (in which case you use tab for each one.
  • "everything in sky" view, displays everything that's in the sky, regardless of layer - maybe with numbers for distance.
• AI reaction to fire - should seek water when on fire, and try to put out dwarves and things that are on fire (bucket brigade). Dwarves should NOT try to pick up things that are on fire.
• Geyser (underground hot water source that starts under high pressure, but only activates occasionally - turns into a chasm when not active)
  • Freely-flowing high pressure water should emerge from openings with a velocity that makes it continue upward until gravity kicks in
• Ventilation - one shaft with fluid [air] access to the surface sufficient to prevent miasma in a large area
• Floating stones - namely, soap and ice. (could also add pumice, if you want a normal rock) - Not sure if the current temperature system can handle ice and water coexisting. - heck, floating anything - are there mechanics for this?
• Exclude tower caps from elf-unacceptable / (sometimes?) exclude elf-created goods from elf-unacceptable. thread.
• Some way to train swimming skill

== Performance suggestions

• Performance-killing features should be able to be chosen in init.txt (return to a simpler flow algorithm, simpler path-finding, etc) rather than disabled entirely.
  • Including temperature - there should be a [TEMPERATURE:SIMPLIFIED] that just directly checks magma-safe materials and freezes and unfreezes outside water at the appropriate times.
• Speculative pathfinding calculation while paused. Especially save door-to-door and stair-to-stair paths, paths from meeting areas, etc.
• Less pathfinding - after picking a path; if something changes (i.e. a dwarf crosses the path they're intending to take making it slower, a door gets forbidden), only recalculate path upon actually being obstructed - option for less CPU.

Military suggestions

• Allow military dwarves to operate siege engines (duh) and levers (since levers often control defensive structures such as moats, drawbridges, etc, you may want to have someone stationed there for quick response)

misc

Some stuff I'm working on

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