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[âbirtobul]

Can I automate farming/brewing, make few shiny things, designate large areas as dorms or free beds and let years pass?

Or what is the ultimate lazy observer fortress?

-âbirtobul the diligent
 

[anewaname]

Mostly yes

You can let your fort run for many hours if you
- set up job automation
- prepare your fort to have the things it will need while the overseer is not in the driver's seat.
- disable most game pauses caused by announcements.
- Construct front-gate and cavern-gate systems that will reduce or avoid your dwarfs involvement when threats arrive

Also, reaching your population cap can reduce the complications.

With these things in place, you should be able to walk away for many hours without the fort going into ruin, but you will always need to "review, assess, and respond" when you get back to it.

As some programmers and engineers would say, they work hard to build systems of automation, so they can be lazy.

[Fleeting Frames]

Some of the things that cannot be automated, that might be important:

- assigning people into some roles like manager or military (unless modding raws to use elections, perhaps).

- building new things.

- digging and smoothing new areas.

It can be difficult to defend against all theoretically possible threats without doing any of the three, while still allowing unchecked access for caravans and visitors.

Defending against all currently existing threats in an average world is much easier, though.

This does mean that the fort needs to avoid more dwarves dying of something other than old age than you have coffins for, lest a ghost rise to end the fort.

Also, once your manager dies of old age (provided they're not immortal or elected), you're going to have issues with booze and clothes, though farms, wells and gathering zones will still work - but those also require jobs to be assigned⁎. Even with enough food, this might also hurt the fort through unhappiness, and any tantrum-destroyed building is one that wont be rebuilt. As current dwarves won't stand drinking water without a well, sleeping on cave moss, and having nothing to do but idle, this will eventually end the fort.

⁎ Not sure if you could do this through modding dwarves to have natural skill for plant gathering.

[Sanctume]

With autolabor enabled, will planting continue based on farm plot set to plant year round plump helmets, or outdoor farm? 

Manager election would be nice to have so workorders can keep going. 

Dfhack has a toggle to autoassign an office to a specific position (manager).

A grated fishing pond can provide indefinite food. 

How much can 1 apple tree last and provide food and booze?

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, autolabor should let planting/gathering labours be assigned indefinitely. The farm and still can be destroyed, but not the apple tree.

If you're below 20 dwarves, the manager doesn't need to work (so won't need built chair that could be destroyed) for work orders to be approved, but even above I'd guess preapproved orders would continue indefinitely - at least as long as you have manager, that is.

Fishing pond depends on biome, but yeah some biomes can have infinite mussels. However, need a workshop to clean or cook them.

The whole thing looks like it could be much more longer-lasting with a breeding population of elves, tbh.

[âbirtobul]

Taking notes

Infinate fishing hole
Immortal manager
Many coffins/beds/farm plots/shiny things
Foolproof automatic def system.

A follow up question: Do werecreatures, and necromancers need food?

[Fleeting Frames]

Nope, as you can see in /raw/interaction_examples.

But this means they won't get happy thoughts from it either.

E: I suppose library zone can't be destroyed in tantrum, so you could have an artifact necro book inside a zone to reduce demands on food - though any kids will still need some as they won't read the book until adulthood.