40d Talk:How to safely start fortress mode

Farm size: 10x10 of plump helmets without fertilizing will feed 500 dwarves. A 5x5 field WITH fertilizing will feed about 500 dwarves. Do the math. (Rough estimates. Untested.) -Yanlin

Is this with or without boozecooking? Random832 23:12, 27 October 2008 (EDT)

Reformatting this page

This page breaks from the style used on the rest of the wiki -- it's a dump of opinions and suggestions instead of a collaborative, well-organized article. The problem with this is evident in how people are just arguing with each other on the page (that's what talk pages are for) instead of putting their heads together to offer readers streamlined, practical advice.

Can we do some discussion here of what its general advice and structure should be, then rewrite it?--Maximus 21:38, 29 October 2008 (EDT)

Having a bunch of different viewpoints in the page is fine to me as long as it doesn't look like a big argument :P --Xonara 01:48, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

I was thinking about this too, but the unfortunate hurdle is that there's no good way to put in a 'generally agreed upon' sort of structure, and there's a lot of strong feelings that run both ways with many things. Perhaps the better way to do this would merely be to take the names out of it. Just put a heading and a couple of equally-bulleted points with the various views, possibly with the dates these views were last updated. A large part of my issue is that most of the advice on the page is clearly from many moons ago (the cats comments being the most noticable). The anvil discussion, for example, could then just be broken down into three bullets, one which suggests crafts, a second which suggests mechanisms, and a third which suggests meals.

A reformat does need to happen, though. This wiki is really shortwinded on useful, coherant gameplay advice (MANY of the Beginners FAQ pages need total rewrites that I'll probably get to sooner rather than later) and I'd really like to see that change. --ThunderClaw 02:09, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

Removing the signatures is definitely the starting point -- it will allow us to treat what's on the page as "our words" instead of "my words".

I don't think "general agreement" is out of reach -- for any subject, there will be obviously bad advice, obviously good advice, and stuff that will largely depend on how you like to play the game. Our current dispute over trade goods is like that: crafts, mechanisms, meals, and clothes can all be effective trade goods; we can list their respective advantages and disadvantages and leave it for the player to decide what approach he or she wants to take. We just need to avoid the "One True Approach" mentality, except where everyone agrees that a given idea is Very Good or Very Bad.

While we're at it, the page title needs to be changed -- though we can do that after it becomes clear what direction the rewrite is taking it in.--Maximus 03:38, 30 October 2008 (EDT)

I'll give the page a once-over tomorrow and give my initial thoughts on what should be changed then.--Maximus 03:42, 30 October 2008 (EDT)