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[maltapotamus]

hi all, im trying to drain some magma that got into the lower portion of my fortress, but for some reason i cant carve fortifications at the edge of the map... i use d-a but it does not seem to work at the edge of the map or any where for that matter.... any ideas?

Have you smoothed the stone first?

ah! thank you. didn't realize i had to do that first!

[Jabler911]

Hello, guys!

I'm quite new to the game and now I have a problem with growing plants. I have many farmers and I've constructed a couple of farms to provide my fortress with plump helmets, and ofc a stockpile for-seeds-only near them. Everything was working just fine until some moment. Now no one wants to plant anything, spamming "Farmer cancels plant Seeds: needs plump helmet spawn". That's strange, because I have >150 spawns all the time according to my bookkeeper's page.

What's the reason for such a behaviour? Are there any solutions for this?

Sorry for my English, I'm a native Russian speaker.

[Trif]

Welcome to the forums!

This behavior is quite well-known. It happens because seeds are stored in bags which are stored in barrels. Now, if some dwarf wants to collect a plump helmet spawn, they'll take the barrel with 150 spawns in them, drag it to the spawn they want to collect, put it in and put the barrel back in place. While this dwarf hauls the barrel, 10 farmers want to plant plump helmets, but they can't because the barrel isn't at the stockpile. That's why the cancellation messages happen.

A solution is to allow no barrels at the seeds stockpile. Then only the bags get hauled around, and more seeds stay at the stockpile. Don't expect the cancellation spam to stop completely, though - 100 seeds fit in one bag.

[greycat]

Now, if some dwarf wants to collect a plump helmet spawn, they'll take the barrel with 150 spawns in them, drag it to the spawn they want to collect, put it in and put the barrel back in place. While this dwarf hauls the barrel, 10 farmers want to plant plump helmets, but they can't because the barrel isn't at the stockpile. That's why the cancellation messages happen.

That's pretty close.  When a seed needs to be collected, a dwarf actually removes a bag from its barrel, takes the bag to the seed, and puts the seed into the bag.  (This may be repeated several times if there are several seeds -- that part of the change is very good and useful.)  Then they'll leave the bag on the table or wherever the last seed was.

A different job will be generated to put the seed bag back into the barrel.  This is done by a dwarf taking the whole barrel (with all the rest of the seed bags) out of the stockpile, bringing the barrel to where the bag is, and then putting the bag back into the barrel.

Once that's done, a third job will be generated to move the barrel back to the stockpile.

The workaround of disallowing barrels in the seed stockpile is the best one we have.  It's not perfect, but it helps.

[wuphonsreach]

An even better workaround that I've been using is to both:

- Not allow barrels in seed stockpiles

- Use a minecart & auto-dump track stop to quantum pile the seed bags into a "take only from links" stockpile

Downside is that it requires more bags then normal because haulers never add seeds to existing bags once they've made it into the quantum stockpile.

[Flare]

Aquifers also produce water in the level beneath them:

Aquifers are tiles which produce water in their neighboring tiles -- north, south, east, west, and below.

^{(Emphasis mine.)}

Unless there's a particular ore I want thereabouts, I usually give it an extra 2-3 levels before digging sideways, just to be on the safe side.

Ah, I see, thanks for clearing that up. However, would you know any explanation for aquifers not draining into each other? Some parts of the aquifer seem to be inert once I make a hole into the second aquifer level. Given the same amount of exposed aquifer tiles in a single vertical tile down the two z-levels, all I get is the second aquifer filling up with water with the top one quickly filling up afterwards.

[Tirion]

Are Forgotten Beasts really [NOSTUN] in 34.11? Or they can be caged in traps, if knocked around by cave-in dust?

[Telgin]

Has anyone else had problems with pastures in .34.11?  On several occasions I've had my animals suddenly stop respecting them, and dwarves wouldn't haul them back to the pasture.  I had to delete the pasture zone and recreate it before they'd start respecting it again.

I think in the cases where I had this happen I accidentally changed the zone type before hand, but when I changed it back I've tried unassigning and reassingning the animals to be absolutely sure that this wasn't the problem.  They still let the water buffalo starve to death in the dining hall. 

Deleting and recreating the zone caused the dwarves to immediately haul the animals back.  Strange.

[lap101]

I embarked on a spot with volcano and flux stone and a stream. Now I've been playing for ~2 ingame years, but I have only seen goblinds, dwarves and elves. There should be humans, droves and orcs too (Yep, masterwork mod). Once a friendly human popped up, but was followed with 3 ambushes. I don't see him on the dead screen, but he didn't make it to my fort, so I suppose he left.
I wouldn't wanna give up on this embark, as this has a lot of nice features, but I would like to see more civilizations (and their caravans), so should I just wait or could reclaiming help?

[XXSockXX]

You probably should just wait. Reclaiming won't help.
Are you sure all these civs are on the same continent, so that the can reach your fort? If the humans already sent a diplomat they will probably send another one and then a caravan.
Since you're playing a mod it could be something else, but 2 years is not much time for all civs to show up.

[Pasakoye]

I am putting this here because I do not want to start a thread on it right now.

I seen a lot of people want to remove aquifers.
I made a video guide on how to remove aquifers from a fresh Dwarf Fortress.

If you hate aquifers/don't know how to deal with them, here you go.

Edit: I'm sure there are programs that will do this for you, this is how to manually do it.

[MantisMan]

As long as we're talking about common gameplay things, how do you guys generally dig down to the magma? What I've been doing is having a downstair, a space, and an up stair. Kind of like this:

Code: [Select]

<
.
>But Going down over a hundred levels. I do this because I use a central staircase like this:

Code: [Select]

.....
.<<<.
.....
.>>>.
..... I use the central tile for a statue. The problem I'm running into is that it's taking a while to get enough materials down there to really start up my smithing.

How can I work around this? Will setting up a small dormitory with food stockpiles be enough? I plan on doing that for my metalcrafter anyway. Should I instead have a single up/down stairway that goes almost straight down? I remember reading that that was a terrible idea due to potential falls and traffic jams, but that was back in 40d.

[wuphonsreach]

Not sure why you wouldn't just use up/down stairs from top to bottom.

When I dig for magma, I just dig up/down stairs, (d)-(i) I think, until I break through into a cavern or hit warm stone.  If it was a cavern, go back up 1Z, dig sideways, and construct an "up" stair over the offending stairway.

[i2amroy]

Are Forgotten Beasts really [NOSTUN] in 34.11? Or they can be caged in traps, if knocked around by cave-in dust?

Yes. Currently the only way to capture FB's or other procedurally generated creatures if with a webbed cave-in trap.

[wuphonsreach]

If I have a fort, and I voluntarily abandon after 10 years, will the next fort I start in that world start in year 11?
Will migrants that show up be members of my old fort? 
Only if I embark as the same civilization?