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[jugglervr]

I have 9x9 blocks with rounded edges to make use of on grid that basically consist off waterlocks which can be severed from rest of fotress easily

that's not a fortress, that's a submarine!
(though i recently had a flooding problem followed a few years later by a magma problem, so perhaps i should look into something similar, eh?)

It never ceases to amaze me how much excessive planning some of you do.  The game is so much more fun when you plan as you go.

yes, but it's also fun to ponder a bit on optimization. I wonder how much our fort building strategies say about our personalities. Someone oughtta write a dissertation.
But really, sometimes pre-planning is the most fun part, and it can be satisfying to see a complex plan come to fruition and work well. I used to spend significant time "solving" the number patterns in minesweeper so i'd have guaranteed knowledge about mine locations, based on the clues, rather than figuring it out on the fly.

It's kind of like juggling or plate-spinning. It's fun while it lasts, but eventually the chaos takes over and everything crashes to the ground. If you spend more time practicing, you can keep your plates up longer. There's some satisfaction in that.

Also: DFMA, holy crap! i'm in love with you now. I'd never seen that site. You just defenestrated my productivity for the day.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

I usually do 9x9 blocks because they can be effectively and easily cut into 4 3x3 rooms, which are a good size for workshops and bedrooms.

i.e.,

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Then you can put hallways of whatever width you want between those blocks. I don't know why everyone else doesn't use that same layout.

[Danjen]

I have 9x9 blocks with rounded edges to make use of on grid that basically consist off waterlocks which can be severed from rest of fotress easily

that's not a fortress, that's a submarine!
(though i recently had a flooding problem followed a few years later by a magma problem, so perhaps i should look into something similar, eh?)

That actually sounds like a very fun fortress to try out! Like, break it into modular room blocks and hallways, then introduce some form of liquid disaster, permanently sealing part of the fortress off forever, kind of like blast doors on futury ships and stuff

[jugglervr]

hmm. i remember boatmurdered talking about that...
actually, it seems like a great source of Fun. I wonder why it was removed?
(if i were to guess, i'd say that a materials strength arc is on a wishlist somewhere, to prevent magically floating platforms and whole forts resting atop a pillar of chalk)

[Qwernt]

I'm a little unclear on what's so great about the 15x15 exploratory method. the rooms that get left behind don't seem amazingly useful. I mean, if I'm preserving the walls that are made with the 15x15, i get 1x wide hallways, which are bad for traffic, and then I can carve 13x13 rooms inside, or 6x6 rooms, but otherwise this doesn't lend itself well to being split up, unless the rationale is to not have surrounding walls around the workshops inside? (seems like walling the workshops is a good idea, to allow locking in of berserkers)

for reference, view the image below...
<snip>
The top 2 rows are the 13x13 method, which seems to allow for much more dynamic and useful designs than the bottom row, which seems to produce "change" when creating 3x3, 4x4, or 5x5 rooms; the only solid room division is 6x6. Additionally, the "apartment" style of living quarters ends up with a lot of dead space with 15x15.

so, i hope i'm not sounding like a snot when i ask this but... why 15x15 (with all the huge minds who work on this game, i know there has to be an efficient reason somewhere)

Unless my math is off, 15x15 gives you 13x13 with 3-wide hallways.

[jugglervr]

Unless my math is off, 15x15 gives you 13x13 with 3-wide hallways.

eeeehehe. would you believe that I was a math major?

I guess I was expecting a 15x15 block, with a 2x2 hallway in between (yes, i was thinking about digging the 2x2 exploratory right away. i got over that). didnt think about expanding the placed hallway.

Seems like a 3-wide hallway would be needlessly large... is it really necessary? i was thinking that 2-wide would be nominally sufficient...
i dunno. thoughts?

[XSI]

I don't do exploratory mining in blocks of 15x15, or 13x13, I just dig out new projects when I feel like I need more ore. And the new projects end up needing more metals, so I'll have to dig out a new project..

But I do understand why there's a 6x6 room the old players love, it's the biggest you could get without cave ins, before that got removed, and old habits are hard to lose. I think it was changed because with the 3d version it would end up not working as intended. I'm not sure on the details, and this is all a guess, but my guess is that it would have the fun pits and magma/water pools collapse, those all tend to be a bit bigger then 6x6.

Remember, just speculation, I don't think anyone is sure of the exact reason.

[NW_Kohaku]

I actually only rarely go exploratory mining...  I rarely ever feel a need for more stone or metal, since I generally can get by on goblinite and whatever veins I strike while I'm doing one of my absurd projects like digging out channels for my waterworks or adding another 400 tiles of warehouse rather than just slow down production of useless crap.

When I do go exploring, however, I do it by just sending stairwells straight to bottom, and using diagonals to thread them together, since that's more effcient, anyway. I don't put shafts too close together, though, unless there's something really rare that I might want...

I mean, there's no point in going through the trouble of searching through every tile for the off chance of finding a diamond when none of my nobles (fortunately) have preferences for diamonds, and it's so much easier to make stuff out of glass, anyway.

[Tally]

I have a massive tendency to restrict one axis (z exempt) of any room to a maximum of 6 tiles.

In any case, though, I use exploratory mining by running a matrix of lines 7 tiles long. You'd be amazed how regularly I hit small clusters, especially gems. only real issue is that you don't exactly get spacious rooms. Enough for a workshop and a small stockpile to go with it, per 'cel'l that is. Though if you really need more space, it shouldn't be too hard to tunnel out some space, right?

Though really, I do all my strip-mining after I've already laid down my basic fort; the parts that are decided to be enough to support an entire fort, and close to hand. Because idlers be damned (at higher populations, that idler count always catches me), a small farm and a few workshops is all you need to keep a well to do fortress going.

In fact, I'm thinking on just cutting my max population down because it's annoying to deal with new immigrants. Not because of FPS issues, but because it's such a brain freeze to think of jobs for them all.

[NW_Kohaku]

I have a massive tendency to restrict one axis (z exempt) of any room to a maximum of 6 tiles.

In any case, though, I use exploratory mining by running a matrix of lines 7 tiles long. You'd be amazed how regularly I hit small clusters, especially gems. only real issue is that you don't exactly get spacious rooms. Enough for a workshop and a small stockpile to go with it, per 'cel'l that is. Though if you really need more space, it shouldn't be too hard to tunnel out some space, right?

Though really, I do all my strip-mining after I've already laid down my basic fort; the parts that are decided to be enough to support an entire fort, and close to hand. Because idlers be damned (at higher populations, that idler count always catches me), a small farm and a few workshops is all you need to keep a well to do fortress going.

In fact, I'm thinking on just cutting my max population down because it's annoying to deal with new immigrants. Not because of FPS issues, but because it's such a brain freeze to think of jobs for them all.

Heh, I just wound up with 300 tiles of farmland, 5 farmer's workshops, 5 millstones, 5 looms, 5 dyer's workshops, and 5 clothier's workshops.  Each with its own dedicated dwarf working in the sweatshops (except for the farms and millstones, obviously).  I also have four kitchens and am working on expanding my magma glass furnaces.  If I can't even fill all jobs with that, I just set up another dry pump in my gym, and set dwarves to pump for eternity.

When all else fails, MAKE work... (not that I ever run out of a need for haulers...)

[Dorten]

To topic starter:
15x15 is what you get with exploratory mining, with one tile wide corridors.
When you move to live here - expand corridors to 3 tiles wide, and get your 13x13 squares of awesomeness!

That's how I do, anyway.

[Dorf3000]

I have been doing some exploratory mining in my latest fortress in the bottom level, and I've been making (roughly) 48x48 blocks, near the edges of the local region tiles.  That way I can quickly tell which ones have the large oval deposits in, and which have veins or just gems.  Stuff like mica never has anything worth digging, but the others I can cut in half usually to 22/23 squares, and further divide them if I dont find anything.  Obviously it's not easy to reuse but as it's on the bottom few layers I'm just going to fill them with magma and put smelters above them.

There's usually so much space on a regular embark map that I don't ever need to mix the mining for materials with the mining for rooms.  Even on a 3x3 I barely use more than one embark tile worth of space for dwarven living, with the rest being unused or part of some megaproject pit/construction.

[Zaranthan]

In fact, I'm thinking on just cutting my max population down because it's annoying to deal with new immigrants. Not because of FPS issues, but because it's such a brain freeze to think of jobs for them all.

If you run out of jobs before you run out of fish dissectors, your military is too small. There is no fortress that would not benefit from a few extra meat shields wrestlers. Plus, that'll give your armorsmith more work.