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[Acanthus117]

I have to face the facts; I'm shithouse at fortress mode.

I guess all my fortresses don't make it past the first year because the layouts that I design frustrate me from a practical viewpoint and an aesthetic viewpoint.

Any advice?

Note: This is on a fortress in general, not so much for apartment complexes, so on and so forth.

[Hans Lemurson]

Dig a long wide central corridor (I usually go for 3-wide, but 4-wide can work too) and then make a series of 11x11 (one shift-move) rooms off to the side for stockpiles and workshops.  You can fit most of what you need for any single activity in an 11x11 room.  I have one for my dining hall, which is next to the one for my kitchen/brewery.  Underneath my workshop rooms are where i keep my stockpiles.  I carve my staircases into the walls which separate the 11x11 rooms.

It's a very modular design, easy to lay out, and doesn't actually look as bad as I was afraid it was going to.  Remember to think BIG, because facilities that can handle 20 dwarves will be over-crowded and overflowing with 60.

[forsaken1111]

I do something similar, but 9x9 rooms around central corridors.

[Acanthus117]

Wow... that was simple.

Man, I've been playing for this for almost a year and I never thought about it. Thanks!

[forsaken1111]

Yeah it doesn't have to be complex or overly optimized. For my entrance I usually have a 3x10 trap corridor leading into a 9x9 room decorated with fun stuff. Statues, artifacts in display cases, etc.

Past that I have a 3-wide corridor leading back to a crossroads and a modular set of 9x9 rooms and corridors which I repeat as needed. For living quarters I dig out the 9x9 rooms as small 1x3 bedrooms. For large storage areas I just hollow out the entire modular area so it still matches up with the surrounding corridors. Up or down stairs get their own 9x9 room, stairwells leading up or down to other levels of the fort.

For farms I build floors around the edges of the 9x9 room then muddy the whole thing and remove the floor tiles once the water is gone, giving me an unmuddied perimeter where I store seeds and set them to walk.

[dpg]

these are some of the structures I like to use.

That could be a whole functioning mini fort for a start.



PS: Create your own. You are somewhat limited but this tool works online and sould suffice for stuff like this. http://pixie.strd6.com/creation/images/new

[forsaken1111]

Oh nice, I like that layout especially as an early design.

[nuker w]

I do mostly the same as above. How ever, due to noise and the wish to just have everything neat, my entry level is a four wide hallway with a depot off to the side, followed by two layers of just stairs. Then, on the level I stop at, is my meeting, eating and general not-really-important-stuff area. I then dig down another single stair level and under that, I have a 3 wide corridor, with 9x9 rooms off to the side. I then dig down another two levels (so we are at roughly seven now) and do my apartments, with one side being the "Coffin rooms" (door, space, bed) and pod rooms (door, bed), the middle being the middle class sector (door, 2x2, with a bed and a box) and wealthy (door, 6x4,two/one bed/s, 2 boxes, closet and sometimes, if I have free gear, something nice to look at) and the final one being for champions and the nobles (Champions/legend's are given a door, 12x10 sleeping/artifact/awesome sauce, followed by a personal dining room. Nobles are given a 15x12 bedroom, 12x10 dining room and a 10x10 office. All of these rooms are smoothed and in some lucky nobles cases, engraved.). I then sometimes pan off to the side and do the general coffin rooms and noble rooms a layer lower. Farms... Eh. I just do with what ever works at the time/place.

[Tsarwash]

Aside from what space is dug out, it is important to decide upon appropiate areas for zones, industry and such. certain areas are benificial for some things. Some is obvious, some is personal preference, etc. I like to have a military training zone somewhere near the entrance, so that there will be active soldiers ready to meet any attacks. I like to have the butchers and tanners outside, to prevent miasma occuring from them. The hospital wants to be near a clean water source. I have started putting my soap industry next to the hospital now, to minimise the 'area inaccessible' spam from soap. It can be useful to place all levers in a secure room with stocks of food and drink.
I tend to use five dumps for different reasons, and try as much as possible to keep them all on the same level for ease of use. I have not managed that on this fortress, but there is no reason why my depot cannot move underground to the same level as my masons'.

[Hans Lemurson]

I do something similar, but 9x9 rooms around central corridors.

9x9 rooms, you say?  How do you efficiently designate 9x9 rooms, and what advantages do they have?

[dpg]

Something I didn't really figure out... when does a Room stop to be a room?

I often start with a large dining room (room for 40-60 Tables+Thrones) and from there I dig out apartments for those little 2x2 Bedrooms. Often the walls of the Dining room shrivel away as I start digging out all 4 directions (and sometimes even more). It ends up beeing more of an open hall than a room. Does this matter at all?

[Hans Lemurson]

A "room" is defined not by walls, but by a radius surrounding certain pieces of furniture.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

The simplest and most efficient design is basically this:

Code: [Select]

x.........x
.#########.
.#...#...#.
.#...#...#.
.#...#...#.
.#########.
.#...#...#.
.#...#...#.
.#...#...#.
.#########.
x.........x


It's repeatable, stackable, easily modifiable, and fits workshops with maximum efficiency.

The problem with it is that it's booooo-ring.

There are a number of fancier fractal designs on the wiki that are worth looking at, but most of them lack efficiency. I recommend looking at the quickfort site and trying out some of the pre-done dig plans there.

[petersohn]

I usually dig out large halls in the soil layers, fill them with stockpiles, then place workshops somewhere near stockpiles that they use (for example, smelters near bar/block stockpiles). In stone layers, I use some corridors, and mainly make bedrooms/dining rooms so that they can be engraved.