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[kurisukun]

So, I'm currently working on a MegaProject.   Specifically, what I like to call my Ant Farm Fortress.   It is essentially a Fortress which runs itself, with zero human input required.

I've done this 2-3 times before, so I know what I'm doing.  Shouldn't be hard to get it set up.   My problem is I'm not sure HOW I want it to be set up.

The end Goal is to have the game run perpetually, set on Follow on a single dwarf (With other dwarves set to all the hotkeys so I can change that later if I get bored with following a particular Urist)  I plan on having this running on a spare PC in my living room hooked up to my TV.  Always on, following one little dwarf as he goes about his life.

Now the question is, how many OTHER dwarves do I want in here?   I need to decide the floorplan for the bedrooms, Which means I need to figure out how many other Dwarves are going to be in here.   I would like to keep it to multiples of 36 (there are 9 segments each split into 4 mini segments.)  With 36 being the min, and 180 being our max.


So, Since I plan on uploading this for the community to use in the future, which do you think I should go with?  180 because Higher numbers are more Dwarvish, or something smaller because not everyone has a spare supercomputer sitting in their livingroom?

[HavingPhun]

Maybe start with a small number then if you want to you can make another version with a larger amount. Then the people with slower pc's are happy and the people who have a powerful pc can also have a larger fortress to play around with.

[Gigaz]

Maybe a noobish question but how do you handle a steady supply of booze if you don't control your dwarfs? Sooner or later there must be a brew dring-job cancellation if you run out of rock pots or plants.

[Anathema]

Well, alcohol is not strictly required, dwarves can survive on (shudder) .. water. It'll cause a happiness hit, but you can make up for that in other ways that do not require micromanagement, such as fancy bedrooms and dining rooms. Of course it also slows down the dwarves, but presumably you can account for that by throwing more bodies at essential industries.

Edit: On the other hand it might be possible to maintain brewing without cancellation if you carefully tune the number of brewers vs. growers vs. alcohol consumers (i.e. all dwarves). You'd also want to start with a hugely excessive plant/pot stockpile, so that the brewers have a safety net whenever they happen to temporarily get ahead of the consumption/growing due to general randomness of breaks and such.

Anyway it is a shame that DF lacks the automation tools to handle this - i.e. a "brew drinks whenever plants/pots are available" order, or "brew drinks whenever drink stockpile drops below 100" - not just for the sake of projects like this, but to ease micromanagement for everyone.

To answer the OP, I'd go with somewhere in the 75-100 range. In multiples of 36, maybe 72 or 108? That's a decent number of dwarves - enough to represent all industries plus a respectable military - without overtaxing performance for redundant dwarves.

[TheDarkStar]

Maybe a noobish question but how do you handle a steady supply of booze if you don't control your dwarfs? Sooner or later there must be a brew dring-job cancellation if you run out of rock pots or plants.

Make lots of farms?

[kleril]

Maybe a noobish question but how do you handle a steady supply of booze if you don't control your dwarfs? Sooner or later there must be a brew dring-job cancellation if you run out of rock pots or plants.

There are utilities (Dwarf Foreman(?)) out there that can queue up jobs to pump out certain products either perpetually, or when they run below a certain threshold. Would work wonders for alcohol / clothing management.

[Tevish Szat]

You could get a proper sustainable ant farm effect with magma kilns and a Fire Clay layer: have enough farms that you're overproducing plants for your stills set to brew/r, enough magma kilns set to large pot/r to outproduce your farms, and then enough kilns set to gather clay/r to outproduce your magma kilns.  You'll end up with an ever-growing surplus of clay, stoneware large pots, booze, and plants.

[weenog]

How many fish make an aquarium interesting, without seeming too busy?

[Psieye]

There should be a theoretical solution that balances out all the equations (without Dwarf Foreman): booze and food get produced at the exact rate they get consumed. Then you don't need to make an increasing surplus of pots or anything. I assume everyone would have to reach legendary skill before that equation can be balanced and the fort is a Closed System (i.e. nothing from outside can interfere with it).

Birth would need to be banned and maybe Old Age could be modded to be near infinite so you don't have anyone dying on you. The other matter then, is clothing but again I don't see why this can't be balanced out perfectly in theory.

[Aspgren]

How many dwarves should you have?

ALL OF THEM

[Hyndis]

I prefer to have 250ish dwarves in my fort. I don't feel safe unless I have upwards of 60-70 dwarves in my military, as I rely on an entirely military based defense. I don't use any traps, and I don't completely wall off my fortress.

I'll have 20-30 producers. These are the elite dwarves that do no hauling and only produce useful things in the fortress. And then everyone else will be a hauler.

[Kibstable]

99 - because its between your max and min limits and all 3 (36,99 and 180) are multiples of 9

Also 100 just seems too many for this kind of voyeuristic dwarf reality show.

[Naryar]

I find that between 80 and 90 is more than enough.