Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[smeeprocket]

why not just pump out leggings until your dwarf is legendary, then work on everything else after you've melted them down and reforged enough.

[Larix]

Melting/reforging to shoot for masterworks can be tuned to break even on the normal metals, but _not_ on adamantine.
The wiki page only mentions it in passing in the "Yield" section, but the point is that adamantine anything takes not the "bars to make" but rather one full wafer per "item size" to produce and still only returns the "bars returned" when melting, i.e. on all weapons and armour you're losing 70% of invested adamantine for each melt/forge cycle, with no exception.

You can still recover/generate adamantine by exploiting bolt/coin splitting or the coin overshoot, but if you don't want to get that cheaty, you should simply delegate adamantine smithing to your best workers and accept the quality you get - melting recovers so little that you're better off just giving the *adamantine helmet* to your second-best squad instead of running through ten attempts at a masterwork, losing 12 wafers in the process (enough for six helmets, or a breastplate and a short sword).

[Aslandus]

I think only the coin and bolt things work for adamantine, and since I've never used either I can't verify that... I think avoiding the exploit is one reason adamantine has the weird thread-wafer system rather than ingots like other metals...

why not just pump out leggings until your dwarf is legendary, then work on everything else after you've melted them down and reforged enough.

As I said, it's an exploit, it can be done as much as you like with almost no repercussions, but some people may look down on your for it. It's a manipulation of game mechanics that's not necessarily "realistic" but doesn't change the game itself. For example, an easy way to make powerful soldiers is a danger room, but a lot of people think it's overpowered and shun their use, though these same people often have no problem using quantum stockpiles (at least equal in unrealism and often more useful for longer running forts). Just use your own judgement.

One reason you may not want to do it is if you are limited in fuel for the forges, though most people aren't. There's also the matter of masterworks (which I think can happen even if your dwarf isn't legendary, though it's much less likely). If your dwarf happens to make a masterwork from a material you were trying to multiply (if you really didn't need an extra set of leggings for example), you could get in serious trouble for melting it down.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks!
Fuel is no issue, since I've got magma (but it was before, when I was limited to wood).
I happily use quantum stockpiles. If I wanted to have an excuse for it it would be that bins basically are broken, but it's actually because I like it because it's very convenient and also fairly cool. I also (ab)use impulse ramps, both because it's cool and because I can't affort using running water power due to FPS issues.
Material cheating: well, it just seems wrong, when used beyond "correcting for errors" in the current materials loss system. I'm contemplating a non metal fort for the next one, to live off spoils, but on the other hand, I also contemplate non wood (above ground), but those two restrictions seriously cramp usage of mine carts...

Adamantine: well, I've got enough for one squad, which is basically what I've got (the other one is a crossbow squad that sucks. It took them several minutes to kill to kill the last, unconcious, goblin from the latest siege (just minutes ago)).

[smeeprocket]

don't underestimate crossbow dwarves. They generally won't be able to kill things on their own but they will seriously soften whatever it is up and there will be much fewer injuries.

Also, you might end up like me and get a FB that uses webs. I only had one squad of crossbow dwarves. I did so much damage to that thing, it was beaten up, but anyone who tried to get in melee range got webbed and killed pretty much instantly. That fort survived a dragon, a swamp titan, about a billion other forgotten beasts, but man, those webs...

[PatrikLundell]

Well, I consider crossbows to be broken until you can actually assign combat bolts to them while getting them to train with expendable stuff. Also, their inability to equip a reasonable number of bolts, plus their tendency to get themselves killed by trying to whack the enemies with their crossbows, plus the fact that they frequently decide they can't get into range to fire at the target (like the bunch of crows that got into my 3 tile high roofed courtyard), and then silently just walk away just isn't worth it.
I generally kill stuff using devices, with my melee guys mopping up the remains, if needed.

[Aslandus]

Well, I consider crossbows to be broken until you can actually assign combat bolts to them while getting them to train with expendable stuff. Also, their inability to equip a reasonable number of bolts, plus their tendency to get themselves killed by trying to whack the enemies with their crossbows, plus the fact that they frequently decide they can't get into range to fire at the target (like the bunch of crows that got into my 3 tile high roofed courtyard), and then silently just walk away just isn't worth it.
I generally kill stuff using devices, with my melee guys mopping up the remains, if needed.

They're more useful if you know how to work around those quirks, like stationing instead of giving kill orders (or giving the kill order after they arrive, so they shoot rather than just walking away). Also helpful is keeping them on the far side of a set of fortifications, at which point they are useful support soldiers rather than useless coffin fillers... also, if they're just acting as support against a few enemies there's not too much trouble with using only wooden bolts, they still do decent damage against unarmored enemies

[smeeprocket]

I think they're worth it and keeping metal bolts on them, even if they are going to waste some in practice.

There's enough megabeasts out there with breath weapons and weird effects that can't be taken out by melee guys.

But traps and siege are also good.

I never get too technical when it comes to battling the enemy. At some point, my fortress gets laggy enough that I don't necessarily want to win.

[Bognor]

...what I'm trying to get is steel helm, chain mail, gauntlets, and high boots as the basic full body protection...

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned, you should add some sort of lower body wear to that, eg cloth pants, or the dorfs might get unhappy thoughts (or current equivalent) from other dwarves seeing their butts.  Apparently Dwarven chainmail has the cheeks cut out or something.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, the butt should be covered by the steel -> adamantine greaves, but thanks for the warning! Given that the armor wiki page says chainmail +high boots provides complete coverage, this gotcha was unexpected.

[Mechanixm]

I wrote a fairly easy guide on how to setup and train your first Archery Squad.  You might find it useful:

Mechanixm's Archery Training Primer