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[Sphalerite]

K then. Thanks for the heads up. But still I need some speculations as to what would happen? Would I be defenseless against attacks or anything like that?

You'll have a population of 20-30 after the initial waves.  This isn't enough to defend your fortress with purely military might, but with a well-designed trap setup you'll be okay.  You won't get sieges until your population hits 80, but you will get ambushes and forgotten beasts and such.

[vonduus]

Traps blocking wagons is a new "feature" that was introduced along with minecarts and wheelbarrows.

Thanks Niyazov, I feared it was intended. Imo it is a pita, my whole fort design is compromised now. Guess I'll have to build some drawbridges in my next fort, then.

[Yovatsap]

K then. Thanks for the heads up. But still I need some speculations as to what would happen? Would I be defenseless against attacks or anything like that?

You'll have a population of 20-30 after the initial waves.  This isn't enough to defend your fortress with purely military might, but with a well-designed trap setup you'll be okay.  You won't get sieges until your population hits 80, but you will get ambushes and forgotten beasts and such.

I see !FUN! times ahead.  Thanks for the info.

[ab9rf]

This is not normal dwarfish behavior, I have had lots of forts with lots of stonetraps, and they have never before blocked access to the depot. So is this a new feature, or is it a bug?

In one of the recent updates (.08 I think), traps (of all types) became impassable for wagons.  This made fortress defense quite a bit more complicated; you can no longer ring your embark with cage traps and thereby thwart virtually all invasions, without also losing caravans.

The answer appears to be serpentine.

[Tirion]

I tamed some Voracious Cave Crawlers brought as mounts by the last siege, and they disappeared from the z/animals screen afterwards, so no easy butchery for me. In the Units screen, they aren't listed among pets/livestock, but still the 'other' cathegory, with something, (I guess invader) listed behind Utes Stray Voracious Voracious Cave Crawler (-Trained-) but not visible because of the overly long name. And they interrupt dwarves. Are they also trapavoid? I heard they become that when training is screwed up.

Anything I should look out for? Loyalty cascade, maybe?

[ab9rf]

I tamed some Voracious Cave Crawlers brought as mounts by the last siege, and they disappeared from the z/animals screen afterwards, so no easy butchery for me. In the Units screen, they aren't listed among pets/livestock, but still the 'other' cathegory, with something, (I guess invader) listed behind Utes Stray Voracious Voracious Cave Crawler (-Trained-) but not visible because of the overly long name. And they interrupt dwarves. Are they also trapavoid? I heard they become that when training is screwed up.

Anything I should look out for? Loyalty cascade, maybe?

Captured war mounts are inherently hostile and will attack your units even if successfully "tamed".  They cannot be slaughtered; you have to kill them in combat (or by pitching them down a hole), after which they can be butchered the same as any wild creature.

I will sometimes nonetheless tame them to gain experience in taming such creatures, before eventually tossing them into a hole or turning them loose with the military on hand for a slaughterfest.

[Tirion]

I tamed some Voracious Cave Crawlers brought as mounts by the last siege, and they disappeared from the z/animals screen afterwards, so no easy butchery for me. In the Units screen, they aren't listed among pets/livestock, but still the 'other' cathegory, with something, (I guess invader) listed behind Utes Stray Voracious Voracious Cave Crawler (-Trained-) but not visible because of the overly long name. And they interrupt dwarves. Are they also trapavoid? I heard they become that when training is screwed up.

Anything I should look out for? Loyalty cascade, maybe?

Captured war mounts are inherently hostile and will attack your units even if successfully "tamed".  They cannot be slaughtered; you have to kill them in combat (or by pitching them down a hole), after which they can be butchered the same as any wild creature.

I will sometimes nonetheless tame them to gain experience in taming such creatures, before eventually tossing them into a hole or turning them loose with the military on hand for a slaughterfest.

They are already tossed in a pit, surrounded by fortifications- I just want to know if they would be considered butcherable by my dwarves if my marksdwarves killed them while they are trained, or I have to wait.

[Tubercular Ox]

How do I guarantee sun berries on my map?  The wiki says they're "wet," so I built on good aligned marshlands, but the marsh is covered in feather trees, which the wiki lists as "dry."  I haven't done a lot of collecting yet, but I don't want to invest in a fortress if it's going to come up empty.

In one of the recent updates (.08 I think), traps (of all types) became impassable for wagons.  This made fortress defense quite a bit more complicated; you can no longer ring your embark with cage traps and thereby thwart virtually all invasions, without also losing caravans.

The answer appears to be serpentine.

Dig a channel around your embark, leave the slopes in place.  Fill the channel with traps, then build a drawbridge that opens sideways instead of to the top or bottom.  No caravan, drawbridge is up, things need walk through the trap channel to get in.  Caravan comes, lower the drawbridge, caravan passes over it.  Or would that not work?  I'm new.

[ab9rf]

They are already tossed in a pit, surrounded by fortifications- I just want to know if they would be considered butcherable by my dwarves if my marksdwarves killed them while they are trained, or I have to wait.

They will be butcherable if killed in combat. Training state does not seem to matter.  (Admittedly I rarely notice, since in my forts I am usually so overwhelmed with meat and food that I don't really care if captured critters get butchered or not.  Most of them just go straight into the magma.)

[vjek]

.. Traps blocking wagons is a new "feature" that was introduced along with minecarts and wheelbarrows.

I'm glad that feature was introduced.  Gave me a reason to disable caravans entirely.    If I can't make it myself, I don't want it in my fort!

[Isileth]

No its a straight line all the way from the river to the cistern, joined to the river without a diagonal as well.

Bwuh... That's bizarre. Are you absolutely sure there's open space in the section the water is supposed to rise through? That might seem obvious, but I can't think of anything.

Yeah it should work fine from what I can see. I went ahead and dug all round the stairs going down (at the level the river connects) and suddenly it started coming up the other end. Was a straight line connecting it before, not diagonal yet that seemed to do it. However then it only filled my top level in the cistern to 3/7 and stopped.

[vjek]

How do I guarantee sun berries on my map?  The wiki says they're "wet," so I built on good aligned marshlands, but the marsh is covered in feather trees, which the wiki lists as "dry."  I haven't done a lot of collecting yet, but I don't want to invest in a fortress if it's going to come up empty. ...

In this post, I had a 3x3 embark with 21 sun berries.  You'll note one of the biomes was a temperate broadleaf forest with "other vegetation" listed as thick, on joyous wilds. 

It might be worth generating that world and checking a few embarks to nail down what other conditions are ideal for Sun Berries.

[ab9rf]

It might be worth generating that world and checking a few embarks to nail down what other conditions are ideal for Sun Berries.

Sun berries will grow in just about any "good" biome that isn't freezing and has surface water of some sort.  It's fairly rare to have a good biome that lacks them, unless it's either frozen, entirely submerged, or a desert.  "Wet" means "within two squares of surface water" and "Dry" means "not within two squares of surface water"; it has nothing to do with the overall wetness of the ground.  In any case, you only need one harvestable plant; once you get those seeds you can plant them yourself.

Sliver barb is much harder to get; I've only managed to create a handful of embarks with sliver barb and in all of those I've ended up unable to harvest it because the evil rains have invariably killed the plants before I could harvest them, or because the zombie dingo swarms (or whatever other evil menace exists) have made it otherwise impossible.

[Dorfimedes]

I want to start a fort with the pop cap set to 0 so I won't get migrants after the hard-coded waves.

My question is; what problems would I encounter in such a case?

0 may be a bugged value meaning no cap. Set it to 1.

K then. Thanks for the heads up. But still I need some speculations as to what would happen? Would I be defenseless against attacks or anything like that?

Well, your created wealth normally decides both migrant wave size and how many attackers come to your fort but in this case it will only hinder you. I would not create unneeded wealth unless you're prepared to turtle, lost dwarves will be hard to replace without migrants, you'll have to rely on the children which take a pretty damn long time to grow up (12 years?), and when they do, they start with no skills whatsoever.

This is not normal dwarfish behavior, I have had lots of forts with lots of stonetraps, and they have never before blocked access to the depot. So is this a new feature, or is it a bug?

In one of the recent updates (.08 I think), traps (of all types) became impassable for wagons.  This made fortress defense quite a bit more complicated; you can no longer ring your embark with cage traps and thereby thwart virtually all invasions, without also losing caravans.

The answer appears to be serpentine.

It's almost certainly intentional. Not only does it make intuitive sense, but I remember reading either in the current dev page or dev_single that Toady intended to remove "edge of map exploits."

[Tubercular Ox]

It might be worth generating that world and checking a few embarks to nail down what other conditions are ideal for Sun Berries.

Sun berries will grow in just about any "good" biome that isn't freezing and has surface water of some sort.  It's fairly rare to have a good biome that lacks them, unless it's either frozen, entirely submerged, or a desert.  "Wet" means "within two squares of surface water" and "Dry" means "not within two squares of surface water"; it has nothing to do with the overall wetness of the ground.  In any case, you only need one harvestable plant; once you get those seeds you can plant them yourself.

Sliver barb is much harder to get; I've only managed to create a handful of embarks with sliver barb and in all of those I've ended up unable to harvest it because the evil rains have invariably killed the plants before I could harvest them, or because the zombie dingo swarms (or whatever other evil menace exists) have made it otherwise impossible.

Thank you (and vjek) for the info.  It's a shame about sliver barb, that was going to be the next thing I tried.  (I realize that growing one plant works a lot like growing any other, but it amuses me).  At first I was surprised the plants aren't immune to the rain, but after some thought the really surprising part is the plants don't reanimate as undead.