Dwarf Fortress on Steam and itch.io has been a mega success for Bay 12 Games, a deserved success, given their previous free release supported and updated for a long time. Now the developers have confirmed it's closing in on a million sales.
With this new start I hope they invest in some help to figure out a better method to dispose of clothes and fix a couple of bin sorting issues. Also, I notice that the efficiency of individual dwarves on a large scale fortress is a sharp decline from their effectiveness when it’s just a few of them mining rooms in close proximity. Not to mention, fielding a military can quickly just become uneconomical when you have to make multiple barracks to patrol different Burrows and defend entrances above and below and hospitals along with their own supply chain meaning for 40 dwarves producing 1/7th the supplies you need all of the other dwarves to pick up the slack. Meanwhile you plan every room, constantly being badgered about guilds, worrying about floods and accidentally hitting lava or opening up a cavern with a titan, and manage every single livestock necessary to feed, clothe, and keep your dwarves clean (tallow for soap). With the natural growth rate if you trade gourmet food for enough drinks and clothes to satisfy your dwarves then you end up attracting so many dwarves that you literally cannot produce tombs fast enough. Why is specialization and trade a sin?
It almost feels like you’re forced into a very specific playstyle to have any long term progress: traps and closed doors, artificially slow growth by limiting trade to bare necessity, trash atomizers to remove things you just don’t have time to work with (bones and shells, etc).
Here is my wishlist for the future of this game:
With this new start I hope they invest in some help to figure out a better method to dispose of clothes and fix a couple of bin sorting issues. Also, I notice that the efficiency of individual dwarves on a large scale fortress is a sharp decline from their effectiveness when it’s just a few of them mining rooms in close proximity. Not to mention, fielding a military can quickly just become uneconomical when you have to make multiple barracks to patrol different Burrows and defend entrances above and below and hospitals along with their own supply chain meaning for 40 dwarves producing 1/7th the supplies you need all of the other dwarves to pick up the slack. Meanwhile you plan every room, constantly being badgered about guilds, worrying about floods and accidentally hitting lava or opening up a cavern with a titan, and manage every single livestock necessary to feed, clothe, and keep your dwarves clean (tallow for soap). With the natural growth rate if you trade gourmet food for enough drinks and clothes to satisfy your dwarves then you end up attracting so many dwarves that you literally cannot produce tombs fast enough. Why is specialization and trade a sin?
It almost feels like you’re forced into a very specific playstyle to have any long term progress: traps and closed doors, artificially slow growth by limiting trade to bare necessity, trash atomizers to remove things you just don’t have time to work with (bones and shells, etc).
I just want them to fix the cavern dweller hidden spawn performance tanking. Killed a save of mine and I’ve barely tried it since.
No Dwarf Hack didn’t fix it, or maybe I’m not sure how to.