Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[BlackFlyme]

How do I entice dwarves to take a bath with soap in my bath houses? I have built some pits, filled them with water, and placed soap in stockpiles around them. I haven't seen any dwarves go down there, though, and I'm kind of suspecting that if they ARE taking bathes (those stinky buggers) then they might be going up to the surface where there are some pools of water.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have no idea how baths work, as I've never really bothered with making them, but are your pools designated as a water source? It may be a factor, but I am unsure. All my dwarves just use the well.

[WanderingKid]

How do I entice dwarves to take a bath with soap in my bath houses? I have built some pits, filled them with water, and placed soap in stockpiles around them. I haven't seen any dwarves go down there, though, and I'm kind of suspecting that if they ARE taking bathes (those stinky buggers) then they might be going up to the surface where there are some pools of water.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you want your dwarves to bathe, you have to designate a zone as a water source... from the shore, btw, not in the pool.  Wells are automatic water sources, which is why most dwarves bathe there.

[ancistrus]

So.... syndromes, anyone?
I always played it safe, so I have lack of experience.

My dwarves are suddenly all going to hospital feeling numb, and I have no idea why. The only explanation is that they got infected about a year ago, when the last forgotten beast came and I turned it into roasts. Is it possible that the syndrome is only now starting to affect them?

[Sutremaine]

A year seems like a long time for an FB syndrome to kick in. Are there any pools of extract lurking anywhere? Extract can hide on equipment and get washed off into a pool when it rains, and anything that steps in the pool of extract gets a coating on their feet or footwear, which can get washed off into a pool...

I once had a four-tile streak of pooled blood multiply into a couple of dozen pools scattered around the pastures and other places outdoors.

[Lochar]

Back again.

So now my situation is my mayor is a vampire. I have already had him convicted twice and third time I guess the hammered just smacked him around.

I have him already signed to a remote guard post when healed but the main problem is the dang liason has been waiting for over a year to have meeting with him and trying to figure out any way they can do this w/o more dead bodies.

[Garath]

they can have meetings through walls. It's a minor exploit, but the meeting also takes place with 1 tile distance, regardless what is on that tile. Locking the mayor in a room and closing the door (forbidding it or something) will still allow meetings to take place. Also realize that you can choose to install a different mayor in the (n)obles screen, though doing so with a diplomat present will cause the diplomat to leave angry.

[Lochar]

they can have meetings through walls. It's a minor exploit, but the meeting also takes place with 1 tile distance, regardless what is on that tile. Locking the mayor in a room and closing the door (forbidding it or something) will still allow meetings to take place. Also realize that you can choose to install a different mayor in the (n)obles screen, though doing so with a diplomat present will cause the diplomat to leave angry.

Ok thanks will try that, lol the liason was next to him in prison and never had meeting but wasn't sure if due to arrest.

I never actually tried to change mayors but good to know I can. Will boot him soon as liason is gone.

[PaleBlueHammer]

How do I entice dwarves to take a bath with soap in my bath houses? I have built some pits, filled them with water, and placed soap in stockpiles around them. I haven't seen any dwarves go down there, though, and I'm kind of suspecting that if they ARE taking bathes (those stinky buggers) then they might be going up to the surface where there are some pools of water.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dwarven baths are a constant evolving project of mine, since I usually end up losing my forts due to syndrome (I've since learned to pretty much stay away from FBs).

Do you have a well?  If so, that will be the place they go to wash, if they're doing it as a behavior and not, say, pathing through water in order to get somewhere.  And they should be using soap while they're there, even if they have to go grab a bar from the stockpiles (they will usually drop it immediately and some other dwarf will re-stock it).

The real problem for me is: when a dwarf washes, any contaminants on him will fall to the floor at the tile he is standing on.  Another dwarf comes by for a drink?  He will step in the crap left by XYZ goo-covered soldiers.  It ends up creating a centralized point for contaminants.  Floor grates don't allow contaminants to fall through them like water does, so that doesn't help.  The ONLY thing I've been able to design is an atom-smasher or a magma drop (through grates) which will destroy the contaminants.  However it's really hard to engineer a system whereby you don't smash or fry one of your dwarves. 

Boots, shoes, and socks will keep the majority of your dwarves from catching syndrome from stepping in it, but I don't think it prevents spreading.  Animals of all types WILL catch whatever is lying on the floor (and possibly probably spread it if they die).

Don't even get me started on dust.

[guitarxe]

No, I don't have a well, but neither are my pools marked as water sources. I will do that now

[smjjames]

Are there any advantages to using bucklers over shields? I'm thinking of equipping my marksdwarf squad with bucklers to make it easier to use the crossbows or does it work fine anyway with shields?

[Telgin]

The only differences are that bucklers block slightly fewer attacks and (presumably) weigh less.  Shields of all kinds don't have any impact on using a crossbow, or any other weapon for that matter.

Having said that, there's pretty much no reason to use bucklers instead of shields, and you absolutely should give them shields.  Even wooden ones, which are just as good at defense as steel shields.

[jcochran]

Dwarven baths are a constant evolving project of mine, since I usually end up losing my forts due to syndrome (I've since learned to pretty much stay away from FBs).

I suspect you might be thinking about baths in the wrong way. If you're wanting the dwarves to clean themselves to prevent syndrome propagation, then having a spot where the dwarves have to voluntarily go to and clean themselves off is not the way to go. You want the dwarves to pass through a "cleaning station" routinely, and automatically, without any other actions on the part of the dwarves.

For instance, assume you have a single path to "the great outdoors", and you want to make certain that none of the dwarves track in any FUN stuff from outside. What you do is have a channel cutting across that path and have the channel filled with a slowly flowing trickle of water. Since the water is flowing, any contaminates get "pushed" towards the outflow so you don't get cross contamination by a dwarf walking through contaminated water. No soap needed. No voluntary baths needed. And nothing from the outside that hasn't been washed gets inside. And as a final little twist (just to make sure ALL the dwarves get cleaned), make the primary meeting area for the dwarves on the "outside" side of the watch channel. So when the dwarves go on break, or hang out in the meeting area, they trudge though the "bathtub" going to the meeting area, and upon their return, trudge back through the same bathtub.

Now, how to maintain that trickle of flowing water?
In the following diagram, pressurized water is supplied from the left, waste water flows away from the right.

Code: [Select]

##########        ########
~~~~#┼^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~╬^¢##
####~#####        ########
##########        ########

In sequence from left to right.
1. Pressurized water.
2. A diagonal pressure reducer.
3. A door.
4. A pressure plate activated by water linked to the door.    Min 0/7, Max 2/7
5. slowly flowing water.
6. A fortification.
7. A pressure plate activated by water linked to the hatch cover  Min 2/7, Max 7/7
8. A hatch cover.
I'm using doors and hatch covers instead of floodgates due to their rapid response time. The 100 tick "off" delay on the pressure plate is bad enough without adding an extra 100 ticks to handle a floodgate.

What is not listed is a lever also linked to the door to start things up. The pressure plate upon installation immediately goes active since there's 0/7 water, but that activation status isn't passed onto the door with the door is linked to the pressure plate. So you gotta give it a kick in the pants and open the door manually.

What will happen with this setup is that the door will be opened when the water is below 3/7, and you'll get an immediate flow of very slow motion water. Then the door closes after about a 100 ticks and the released slug of water will slowly migrate to the right until it causes the water level to excess the trip point of the exit pressure plate, which in turn, opens the hatch cover to drain the excess water. With proper tuning, the channel the dwarves are forced to pass through on a regular basis will maintain a water level between 2/7 and 3/7 at all times.

[emeralis00]

Is there a handy guide or something to Dwarven military? I've mostly just walled myself in before but now I want to try and defend my fort.

[greycat]

I use a completely passive dwarf-washing design.  Dwarves walk through 2/7 or 3/7 water, which removes all contaminants from their body and equipment, and leaves it in the water tile, or on one of the adjacent walls.  Eventually some dwarf will come along and do a Clean job on one of the water tiles, which destroys the contaminant(s) in that tile and all adjacent tiles.  No moving parts (except dwarves) required.

It's super easy to set up, too.  You take a simple corridor which is 2 or 3 tiles wide, and channel one tile in the middle of it.  (There must be solid soil or stone below the corridor.)  This leaves an omnidirectional "ramp" in the middle of the corridor.  Designate this spot as a pond and dwarves will fill it to 6/7.  Remove the pond designation.  Now channel the adjacent tile(s) so the ramp covers the entire width of the corridor:

Code: [Select]

##########
.....v....
.....v....
.....v....
##########

The water will spread out from the 6/7 ex-pond, which will give you 3 tiles of 2/7 water, or 2 tiles of 3/7 water.  Dwarves will have to go through it to traverse the corridor.  That's all there is to it!

Works on animals, too!

[Sutremaine]

How does that work with FB extract and the like? I tried dragging an extract-covered corpse through the trench, but the lethal extract remained frozen.