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[Kyubee]

All in all, who does these? I like em, but I'm looking for other people's experiences and tips.


My own personal tip; If you want to build ON or IN the ocean, go temperate. If you wanna build OFF the ocean, and just use the ocean as a fish source, go tropical. Oceans that freeze (temperate) tend to end up with  mass extinction, in my experience (That seems to have been slightly nerfed). But oceans that freeze are easier to build off since you don't have to orchestrate dangerous surface cave-ins.

My second tip, savage oceans have some of the best creatures for meat, namely, Giant Sperm Whales. If you can air-drown and butcher them, your fortress will eat basically for eternity. Though, they tend to have a pretty low population.

My final tip, one I encountered recently, is that if your ocean freezes, and a siege shows up, if they have nowhere better to go, they might just stand on the frozen ocean until it thaws. While you can't collect goblinite this way, it is a great way to ensure siegers dont commit genocide on your population.

[HungThir]

if you retire a beachfront fortress and then revisit in adventure mode, it may be flooding, even though it was secure from water ingress in fortress mode

i'm not sure what the cause is, but i guess maybe when it's in the two-weeks of worldgen, it doesn't look closely at the details of the fortress, just fills open underground ocean-biome areas with water? idk

if you retire your adventurer and reclaim the fortress, it'll be watertight again, and you can drain/pump out the water left inside. but it'll flood again next time you leave it

[Kyubee]

if you retire a beachfront fortress and then revisit in adventure mode, it may be flooding, even though it was secure from water ingress in fortress mode

i'm not sure what the cause is, but i guess maybe when it's in the two-weeks of worldgen, it doesn't look closely at the details of the fortress, just fills open underground ocean-biome areas with water? idk

if you retire your adventurer and reclaim the fortress, it'll be watertight again, and you can drain/pump out the water left inside. but it'll flood again next time you leave it

I tend to always have a drain installed in my fortresses by default. it makes things so much easier when instead of worrying about a flood, you can hit a lever in the water-safe portions of your fort and drain your water into the caverns. also makes a convenient method of harassing anything short of an uninvited guest

[anewaname]

With the reclaim and flooding issue, my fort had fortifications on the edge of the map under the ocean to drain aquifer water, and after the reclaim, salt water came in from those fortifications as if the tile was converted to an ocean edge tile. The fortifications were above the level of the first caverns and probably would have been considered to be part of the ocean biome.

You can collect goblinite from the ocean bottom when it freezes, just designate-marker the tile below the stuff (so you can find it when frozen) and then dig ramps down to it when it freezes.

I avoid freezing oceans now, too many accidental deaths, but playing freezing Horrifying oceans was a favorite thing in 43.nn. Currently I like 5x5 non-freezing ocean embarks with only 4 or 5 tiles of land and Horrifying oceans, with the objective of having the fort on the beach and mostly separated from land, and of catching sea monsters.

[PatrikLundell]

Note that "temperate" isn't equal to "water freezes periodically". Freezing is based on temperature, and temperature varies with seasons with no variation at the equator and the poles, and an approximately linear change to the mid latitude from these. This means that it's possible to get seasonally freezing tropical biomes if the temperatures are sufficiently low, as long as you're away from the absolute equator (might require at least 129 height worlds, but that's only a guess, as I haven't checked the data). Similarly, with a sufficiently high temperature temperate biomes will never freeze.

It can be noted that the shortest freezing (and, conversely, thawing) period in a biome is 10 ticks, which is generally too short to even be noticed.

[Kyubee]

Note that "temperate" isn't equal to "water freezes periodically". Freezing is based on temperature, and temperature varies with seasons with no variation at the equator and the poles, and an approximately linear change to the mid latitude from these. This means that it's possible to get seasonally freezing tropical biomes if the temperatures are sufficiently low, as long as you're away from the absolute equator (might require at least 129 height worlds, but that's only a guess, as I haven't checked the data). Similarly, with a sufficiently high temperature temperate biomes will never freeze.

It can be noted that the shortest freezing (and, conversely, thawing) period in a biome is 10 ticks, which is generally too short to even be noticed.

While this is true, I'm going off more layman's knowledge than deep info about worldgen. Its safe to assume if a biomes listed as temperate, its probably going to freeze for at least a little bit. Meanwhile a biome in the tropics is typically listed as "Warm", "hot", or "scorching", which you can safely assume will freeze for little to no time at all, unless youre messing with some exceptionally weird advanced parameters.

[PatrikLundell]

If you look at the real world, much (most?) of the temperate zone doesn't freeze regularly at all.

I don't know what criteria DF uses to describe the temperature, but I would expect at least "hot" and "scorching" to be completely free from freezing, and probably "warm" as well, and that this would be a better indication that the type of biome.

Also, I'm not embarking at any embarks that has any bit of freezing/thawing in it because of the mess that causes.

[Kyubee]

If you look at the real world, much (most?) of the temperate zone doesn't freeze regularly at all.

I don't know what criteria DF uses to describe the temperature, but I would expect at least "hot" and "scorching" to be completely free from freezing, and probably "warm" as well, and that this would be a better indication that the type of biome.

Also, I'm not embarking at any embarks that has any bit of freezing/thawing in it because of the mess that causes.

Warm can VERY rarely freeze for VERY short periods of time, IIRC.

[DrCyano]

I've been playing on worlds without poles, which apparently disables seasons altogether (so no freezing oceans).

But having played with a fortress trying to bridge the ocean, I can say that ocean forts have a number of interesting benefits:

• Lots of sedimentary stone layers, which tend to have iron ore
• Ocean waves are visually pleasing to look at
• Easy food from fishing industry
• Predicable invader map entry (they only come by land, not by sea)

[Kyubee]

I've been playing on worlds without poles, which apparently disables seasons altogether (so no freezing oceans).

But having played with a fortress trying to bridge the ocean, I can say that ocean forts have a number of interesting benefits:

• Lots of sedimentary stone layers, which tend to have iron ore
• Ocean waves are visually pleasing to look at
• Easy food from fishing industry
• Predicable invader map entry (they only come by land, not by sea)

Yeah, I read the thread about that poleless world. Seemed interesting, would definately make ocean bases so much easier to defend, if harder to make

[Quarque]

I love ocean embarks. Nice atmosphere.

Your post made me want to try one. I went for a near-minimal embark, where 7 unlucky dwarves had washed ashore with only a pickaxe, a copper axe and a small supply of food + booze.

So I set some herbalists to work, set up a butcher's shop and kill my pack animals. I'm contemplating how to solve my longer term food problem while setting up a basic camp. Suddenly my dwarves are running about, doing something.. why did those new meat items appear in my stockpile?

(k)

sperm whale meat [656]