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[Truean]

Well, I for one am sick of having row upon row of various, preformatted housing blocks. This includes all of the designs in the wiki [even fractals].

Let me start with a broad question:
How do you make dwarven housing to scale accommodate 200?

Subquestions:

How are children dealt with? Nursery? Their own accommodations? A separate room in the parent's "house?"

How many dining rooms/offices should dwarves share? The trend seems to be one huge dining room, which is fine, but boring by itself. Semi private dinning sounds like a nice addition to the "pile everyone in to eat" approach.

Personalized food stockpiles? Prefer or not?

Overall floorplan? This includes hallways, etc. I find that the more hallways you have the more fps seems to lag. Can anyone confirm this?

Truean

[slink]

My currently favored method only works if you keep the economy turned off.

I assign a large walled area to each immigrant or founder who gets married, along with their spouse.  The doorway is flanked by two statues, one each in a favorite material of each of the two Dwarves.  Their bed goes in the center or near the back, depending on what is required by the shape of the room in order to cover it all with a room designation.  I have had both rectangular and pie-slice areas.

Thereafter, each of the descendants of the couple gets a bed assigned within that area.  The space assignment for a descendant is usually 3x3, but sometimes 5x5.

Each bed gets a cabinet, and possibly a coffer.  The clan founders always get coffers.  Children sometimes don't get a cabinet until they reach peasant age.

Unmarried Dwarves sleep in the barracks, except for unmarried nobles who of course get private quarters.  The mayor gets a mayorial mansion in addition to a bed in clan quarters, if that is applicable.

This works for me because I limit immigration.  Also, I have not yet successfully gone through to the next generation, or dealt with marriages between clans.  This is because FPS drops too low.  I lack the patience to deal with single-digit FPS, when I could be generating new worlds instead.   

A single dining room has so far been my only plan in that arena.  I make blocks of four tables with four chairs, to simulate a cafeteria layout even though Dwarves only interact with one chair, one table, and zero companions while eating.   If I were to institute clan dining areas, I would assign one table to each, with the area being the entire room so that the value would stay as high as possible.

At one point I reproduced the layout of some housing in my own NWN PW.  The houses were two-story, with windows overlooking the underground street from both stories.  I had a four-table/four-chair dining area on the first floor, and two bedrooms above.  The master bedroom had two beds side-by-side, representing a double bed, and the other bedroom had two beds on opposite ends which represented twin beds for the children.  After the glow of accomplishment faded, I realized that it was totally inappropriate for DF Dwarves.  DF Dwarves, at least until the next version, don't recognize a jointly held multi-level/multi-room structure.  Also, DF Dwarves have children numbering in the dozens rather than just a couple.

[Foxbyte]

I once made each dwarf a true and proper house; two wells on the ground floor, huge bedroom, private dining room with booze/food storage. Lower level had a private garden or a workshop [or two for couples] pending on their professions. Upper level was a gigantic office, with green glass windows looking out onto the main streets...

That said, private food piles don't work very well, food seemed to get shuffled around between them, and if a dwarf prefers a single kind of food he'll raid his neighbours if they happen to have it.

The more hallways you have the more the game's pathfinding will branch out to find good routes. My solution was to set the entrance to each house 'Restricted' so the pathfinding wouldn't go there. If a dwarf wanted to go home he could obviously get there. I also put Restricted tags over every staircase when possible, or branch of the streets.

[Astramancer]

I think that once Burrows are in, you'll see more varied housing designs.  Right now, because it's difficult to make dwarves work rationally, efficiency is key.  If all of your hauling jobs are within 100 steps of each other, it doesn't matter that your dwarves will take hauling jobs that are the farthest from where they currently are, despite there being a hauling job in the tile that they're currently standing in.

Fort design reflects this.  The fractal designs, while the they look neat, are also designed to make walk distances uniform.  If the dwarves generally walk the same distances to perform their vital functions, and generally walk the same distances to perform their fortress functions, then they generally take about the same amount of time to do anything - so you can more easily strike the right balance of crafters and haulers.  You won't have times when your 50 haulers are doing nothing because all the jobs were right next to each other (and then you have to break up a party), and you won't have times when you're hauling list is backed up to over 500 tasks because all your haulers decided to haul ore from one corner of your map to the other.

Now, when burrows are implemented, you can assign haulers who's jobs are to specifically keep the craftsdwarves shops clear, and assign haulers who's jobs are to specifically pull ore out of the ground.  I bet you'll start seeing more variety.  The mines across the map will have a miner and a handful of haulers living there - maybe smelters, woodcutters, and woodburners, too.  They'll transform that bulky ore into nice, compact bars, which more dedicated haulers will drag into your fort proper so it can be turned into gaudy, gem-studded buckets or something.  These smaller sub-forts will probably be rebuilt somewhat frequently as mines play out.

============

I just realized I ran off on my own tangent, and didn't actually answer your questions...

How do you make dwarven housing scale to accommodate 200?

That really depends on if you have the economy turned on or not.  If it's on, probably with many large barracks.  If it's off, Multiple layers to reduce walk time.  The 3x1 room isn't glamorous, but it's enough to make dwarves happy (ecstatic, even).   Ideally, the longest travel hallway won't be much longer than the tallest staircases.  A 10x10x10 block holds 1000 tiles, and has a longest walk distance of 30, if your design sucks.  A 30x30 block hold 900 tiles, and has a longest walk distance of 60, if your design sucks.  Stacking is where it's at.  Make something that will accommodate, say, 20 dwarves, and stack it 10 times.  There you go, 200 dwarf accommodations.  Blocky apartments are easy to designate (heck, just make a grid, and use un-designate to chop it into separate rooms, and then re-designate the hallways.  You can make a surprising number of rooms with very little effort or thought this way)

How are children dealt with?

For a little while at least, they live with their parents.  I just make tons of rooms and leave the beds designated as bedrooms, but not assigned.  Dwarves needing a bedroom (or, for some nobles, 3 or 4) will just grab one.  Honestly, I have no idea when children move out, I let the dwarves handle that.  It does make it somewhat annoying to try to find a depressed dwarfs bedroom to try to spruce it up, though.

How many dining rooms/offices should dwarves share?

The reason why you see a lot of massive dining halls with seating for everyone is because that's really the easiest way to ensure everyone's always eating in legendary dining halls - even if it's filled with granite tables and chairs made by a dabbling mason, enough of them add up to legendary.  Depending on fort design, you may decided to make other dining halls (say, for your magma operation, so they don't walk across half the map for a snack).  Just make sure there's enough stuff in there to make it legendary (not difficult for a mature fort with skilled craftsmen and lots of materials to decorate with - just put in a masterpiece aluminum throne studded with every metal and gem you have, and it'll probably end up making the place legendary by itself).

Same for offices really, except that very few dwarves need an office.  Just some of the nobles and the bookkeeper (who's happy with his 'barely above squatting in the mud' quality office).  Making a massive super-office is just another lazy/efficient thing.  With enough bling, even a 5x overlapped office will still be royal for everyone.  Especially if you make it in a gold seam or something - those engraved floors add up, fast.

For aesthetics, I always make my bedrooms 3x3, and they have a bed, a cabinet, a chest, a table, and a chair.  If I notice married dwarves living together (since I rarely even look, this doesn't happen much), I'll add another cabinet and table/chair combo.  I sometimes see dwarves eating in their room, but it does happen.

Personalized food stockpiles?

Too much effort for me.  The main problem is getting the food onto the stockpile in the first place.  Stockpiles can only have one stockpile taking from it, and your main food stockpile is going to get all the food - because if it's not the closest thing to your food source, you're wasting a whole lot of hauling time.  Add these two things together, and you realize it's very, very difficult to ensure everyone's personalized food stockpiles are actually stocked.

Keep in mind that it is possible, if you make individual 'base' stockpiles for each kind of food near your production, then use long, long chains of 'take from' you can eventually get everyone's personalized food stockpiles (in actuality, 4 or 5 one or two tile stockpiles that can only hold one type of food/drink) more or less stocked constantly, but at the cost of an absurd number of hauling jobs.

Burrows may help with this, since you could (with great effort) sort your dwarves by preferred foods and just direct all of that kind of food to that burrow).

Overall floorpplan?

This one is tricky - and highly individual. For me, since it often varies based on what resources are around.  Industry tends to center around magma (if available), and food production tends to center around soil (so I don't have to mess with irrigation).  Depending on map layout, housing is either to the side, or between those two major economic zones.  I generally tend to go with the "major hallway" approach - a 4 or 5 tile wide hallway that spans the length and breadth of my fort.  For some reason I prefer ramps to stairs, which makes my overall designs somewhat corkscrew-like.  As I stated earlier, building in layers are great.  My industry is usually a massive storeroom with non-fueled workshops above, and fueled workshops below.  I use two 3x4 workshop rooms linked by a short hallway with doors for each workshop and an up/down stair between the doors.  The extra space between the doors and the workshop proper is for cage traps, to be build if a moody dwarf claims the workshop - insanity is safely contained before they can hurt anyone else.  The extra space in the shop itself is for small and specialized stockpiles for whatever materials the dwarf uses.  Not so useful for craftsdwarfs (they go through a ton or rock/bone), but great for jewelers, because even a 3x1 stockpile can hold a ton of gems.

Basically:

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+----+   +----+
|....+---+....|
|.....DXD.....|
|....+---+....|
+----+   +----+

I like this design because it's very, very stackable and repeatable.

[smjjames]

Yea well, I have an idea for a bedroom design that takes advantage of the three dimensionality and breaks somewhat from the fractal on one z-level tradition, but I don't want to spoil my idea right now.

It'll probably also cut down on the number of doors.

[bluea]

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+XXXXXXXXXXX+
XBBBBBBBBBBBX
XBCCCCCCCCCBX
XBCTTTTTTTCBX
XBCTrrrrrTCBX
XBCTrfffrTCBX
XBCTrfSfrTCBX
XBCTrfffrTCBX
XBCTrrrrrTCBX
XBCTTTTTTTCBX
XBCCCCCCCCCBX
XBBBBBBBBBBBX
+XXXXXXXXXXX+
X=wall, +=door, B=Bed, C,T,r,f any furniture, S=artifact statue. Perhaps take the 'f' ring and make it decorations too.

Yes, it still looks like hell. The key is: you don't need "rows and rows" to cover 200. After smoothing and filling with masterwork (but undecorated) stuff, the room is Legendary. The severe overlap means each individual room is still affordable under the economy. And the wandering dwarves practically can't make it through the room without admiring someone's masterwork something-or-other.

[Truean]

At work, but I like the economy off (all sorts of problems otherwise).

I also like the idea of using traffic designations to help FPS along.

As for housing arrangements, I do prefer each dwarf having their own room at least. I dunno, I've just always been like that. It seems somehow wrong to deny them any privacy at all. I suppose I could understand having a room mate, but not much more.

On the whole, I tend to make overly elaborate housing blocks for my dwaves with entire city layouts of 4 wide tunnels as "Streets." I might stop doing this, or at least severely limit it in the interest of FPS and simple decoration. Flat street planning doesn't seem too Dwarven to me and it wastes the 3rd dimension (at least partially).

*Thinks of creative uses for plazas and hallways.... in 3d. Also of possible integration of work and living space....* (yes I know, noise).

[MrFake]

I have a few living spaces:

- The barracks: self explanatory.

- Workshop housing: This is mostly for the cooks and brewers, but I try to add a living space or two in some craft areas just to switch things up a little.

- The slums: The usual rows of 1x2 bedrooms with 1-wide access hallways.  These are always on one z-level.  Though I'll stack them if I need to, they're never interconnected.  I never design spaces symmetrically, but these come the closest since they're so simple.  Almost always as high up as possible in the fort, whether above ground or below.  Luckily, I don't need many of them.

- The dwarf tenement: A multiple z-level structure with a single 2-wide hallway bisecting each floor and bedrooms on either side.  There's access into the structure on only one z-level, and an up/down staircase on one end of the hall to access each floor.  The bedrooms range from 1x2 to 3x3.  Aesthetically natural; practically boring.

- The dwarf apartments: Again, multiple z-levels, but probably only 2 or 3.  All units are about 30+ tiles large, split into a bedroom and dining room.  I'll usually order them so that the units are built next to each other, but I always vary the layouts so it's never uniform.  Some units won't separate the dining room from the bedroom.  Some have balconies overlooking open spaces.  Units are accessed by 3-wide hallways, and upper hallways are exposed to the lower hallways down the center.

- The dwarf row houses: 2 or 3 level buildings with the works.  Bedrooms, dining room (with all the swanky metal furniture), office, closets, hallways, stairwells, balconies, picture windows, decorative items.

- The dwarf mansion: I'm still working on it, but it will probably need room for servants, separate sleeping quarters for multiple family members, and a special amphitheater to watch private gladiator matches.  I'd probably only make one or two of these: one for the King, and one for my favorite Champion (and there's always a favorite, right?).  Maybe a third to lock up a captured goblin, if I'm feeling exceptionally ironic.