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[Worblehat]

Is there anything I can do to prevent floor fungus and cave moss from growing in my fort? Apparently they magically started growing when I found the cavern layers, even though the peat floors in the earliest part of the fort are about 50 z-levels above the caverns. I even have a Young Tower-cap growing in the barracks somehow. I will not be surprised if fungus/moss start growing in the muddy area where I had a plumbing accident setting up the hospital well, too.

If I understand correctly, the latter can probably be avoided by smoothing the rock floor. But that's not an option for peat... Maybe constructed stone floors on every peat tile? What a pain. Maybe wood floors in the barracks in case of training accidents, though so far that hasn't been an issue.

Do people normally just ignore it, since it seems harmless (or minimally beneficial in the form of bonus wood to chop, in the case of tower-caps)? I think I'm too OCD about keeping the fort looking as tidy as possible to settle for that.

While I'm posting this anyway: unrelated question. In a rainy embark, is it worth trying to keep cave adaptation at bay? I've been thinking of setting up a surface statue garden in a walled pasture area. The walls keeping the livestock somewhat safer, the statue garden theoretically pulling dwarves up to the surface. On the other hand, every time a dwarf has to come up to the surface to re-pasture a straying animal they get the unhappy rain thought. So maybe it's better to forget about cave adaptation, fight exclusively indoors when necessary, and just have pasture walls keeping the animals from straying and from being easily targeted by enemies? Hmm, maybe even dig out a big peat space to serve as an indoor pasture once the moss/fungus take it over? That's a weird idea, but according to the wiki it would probably work...

[Ulfarr]

The only way to prevent fungi/moss from spreading is to either never breach the caverns or to somehow cover any exposed soil floor. Constructed floors are my go to option. Roads are a possible alternative to floor and it takes less materials but at least with Phoeubus tileset they cause everything (creatures/items) on them to flash and I find it very distracting. The most "gamey" option is to cut down any fungus "trees" from the area you want to keep clean and then set an unsuable stockpile over it.

Also you can always just move your fortress to the lower z levels were there is no soil. Fungi don't grow on stone, no smoothing required.

About your raining embark, it depends on how often it rains.

If it rains non stop I would say forget about countering cave adaptation. Even with a modded race that has higher thresholds for stress etc year long exposure to rain will eventualy cause them to to throw tantrums. Creating underground pastures for your grazers is a valid strategy and the main reason to breach the caverns early.

[PatrikLundell]

Note that cavern tree saplings will mature into trees only if there is at least two Z levels of headroom (and bridges will not block trees: they'll grow right through bridges without harming them).

Muddied floor and "soil" support moss/fungi, so you'll have to cover those with floors or roads, as mentioned. Stockpiles suppress display of the growths, as well as suspending the maturation of saplings (until the stockpiles are removed, at which time suspended sapling maturation is processed almost immediately).

[anewaname]

Years ago, saplings could grow into trees in 1-z, which would block 1-wide corridors. And all the colorful fungus would make everything confusing too look at, so I floored it and persecuted anything growing in the fort. If I could equip the dwarfs with fungicide, I would have.

Now, I intentionally dig out rooms in the soil layers, for pasturing hungry animals and also for plant gathering (create a zone, set it for gathering). I get annoyed while waiting for the cave moss to grow. I might set up temporary beds and workshops in the pastures, but I move those into stone below or into buildings on the surface as soon as possible.

I try to slow cave adaption by putting the tavern, temple, library, and barracks in a surface building. Usually it is a tower, about 4 z's tall. I built the uppermost roof first, like a big umbrella, to protect the dwarfs from the rain as they build the rest of the tower.

[Worblehat]

Argh, new problem!

My first marksdwarves are skill-10+ now (i.e. can shoot through non-adjacent fortifications), have been "on patrol" shooting at zombies from the archer tower for five months, and one has somewhat high stress levels (still "Fine", but 5.1k stress when the next most stressed dwarf is below 1000, and most are negative). So I'm trying to demobilize them so they can pray, spend time with family, have a nice meal and drink, sleep, whatever.

I went to the alerts page of the military screen and set their squad to Inactive. That seemed to work - the skill 10 guy reverted to his civilian job title, the skill 11 dwarf is still a Militia Captain but wandered off to spin thread like a normal civilian anyway. Unfortunately the first one (the 5.1k stress one) insists on going to the archery range to train. Using the good iron bolts he's been using on the zombies all these months. I tried changing the archery range settings such that their squad is no longer permitted to train there, but that had no effect.

Is there any way to force Urist McIdiot there to stop immediately and go relax for a while? All I can think of is removing him from the military entirely, with all the stowing of equipment and later retrieval of equipment that entails. Last time I tried something like that, when re-equipping they ignored their Superior or Exceptional quality wood crossbows for rubbish no-quality goblinite crossbows - took some fiddling to get that fixed. So if there's a better way, I'd love to know of it...

[PatrikLundell]

I don't do marksdwarves because all the hassle involved. However, melee militia perform "individual drills" most of the time when off duty once their skill exceeds a certain, fairly low, threshold, and I assume the same goes for ranged militia. Thus, in order to get them to relax (or perform civilian jobs) you need to remove the squad from the barracks (and I would assume the same goes for archery targets for ranged units), and then restore the squad to the facilities once they go back on duty.
However, once dorfs start activities it can take a fair while before they realize the activities are no longer available where they are (removing a tavern or temple zone, for instance. The dorfs will continue their activities until they perform the next check for what to do next).
Thus, I think removing the archery targets from the squad should be sufficient to get the "off duty" dorf off militia stuff, even if it can take some time for the bugger to realize it. I guess locking the door to the training facilities may keep them out as well, which may be less work than deassigning and reassigning a bunch of archery targets over and over again (but then you need to time it such that they're all outside when you lock the door: this can be achieved with a station order, though).

[Bumber]

Maybe ordering the archery target for deconstruction would cancel training immediately. Then you can cancel the deconstruction.

[anewaname]

To immediately stop an active job, you can also forbid items needed for the job. This should work if you forbid the crossbow, though they might walk to the archery target before cancelling the job.

For the issue of those other dwarfs that grabbed goblinite crossbows, change the uniform to "wood crossbow", then they will drop the more valuable (but lower quality) metal crossbows.

[Worblehat]

I don't do marksdwarves because all the hassle involved.

Yeah, I completely understand the appeal of that... But from what I've read there tend to be megabeast/forgotten beast/clown types that are impractical to melee but easily blown away by crossbow fire (creatures made of fire, steam, that kind of stuff). Are traps, cave-ins, and other engineering-based defenses enough to deal with those kinds of problems?

Maybe ordering the archery target for deconstruction would cancel training immediately. Then you can cancel the deconstruction.

To immediately stop an active job, you can also forbid items needed for the job. This should work if you forbid the crossbow, though they might walk to the archery target before cancelling the job.

Neither of those methods worked; had to boot the little bugger out of the militia entirely for now.

[PatrikLundell]

I don't do marksdwarves because all the hassle involved.

Yeah, I completely understand the appeal of that... But from what I've read there tend to be megabeast/forgotten beast/clown types that are impractical to melee but easily blown away by crossbow fire (creatures made of fire, steam, that kind of stuff). Are traps, cave-ins, and other engineering-based defenses enough to deal with those kinds of problems?
:

I've managed to take over the Circus using only engineering (with one exception*), so yes, it's sufficient. I need some (melee) militia to get rid of siegers that tend to set up camp in entrance tunnels and refuse to leave even when the rest of the siege routs.
 
*exception: I had a few stuck camping Clowns I removed with ballista bolts.