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[MuseOD]

What do you guys do, generally? I open with a long corridor that leads to the trade depot and a 5*5 up/down staircase that goes down eleven floors. Then, on the floor below I do a cross. What I mean by this, is four 3*11 platforms coming out of the main staircase, with workshops, dining/sleeping, military and food production at each relative end. This goes for five floors. Now, you're thinking, he's got his ass unprotected here. I haven't. There's a ten to fifteen floor drop near my enterence of about 3*6 in size. I'm sorry, I can't do pics cause my computer thinks the game is broken so i can't play.  Any critiques/ ideas to make this better? Oh, and the dorms revolve around a hexagonal/circular meeting hall.

Plus, what I mean by 3*6, is three squares across, six along.

Like this vv

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-much love
Newby

[Blizzlord]

I don't care about design. I make it as I go to suit the need(s).

[Elf Lover]

3x2 rooms, with bed, door and chest for every dwarf.
Fully engraved meeting room, with statues of HEAVY METAL.
A magma lever for said meeting room.

[Sting_Auer]

A huge + shaped hallway on each level that is 5 tiles wide, with a 4 leaf clover layout for the rooms. Nobles get two 3x3 rooms to put their things in, everyone else gets a 2x1 room.

[martinuzz]

My newest fortress layout consist of lots of hexagons. It looks nice, and works pretty efficiently as well. I'll try and upload a fortress map to dffd once I finf out how to do that again.

[MuseOD]

@Blizzlord, then why did you comment?
@martinuzz, if you could, that would be beyond fucking awesome. I'd love to see what you guys are doing and where I'm going wrong.
@Elf Lover, in the wiki, it says that a closet/drawer thingy is good too for a room. Is it?

[dwarfhoplite]

I have the most inefficient yet awesome fort going on
Here you go http://postimage.org/image/i9rtgvs99/full/

[peskyninja]

I usually make the most inorganic design possible. For your entrance just make a 2x1 hole on the ground and cover the surroundings with blood.

[miauw62]

3x3 rooms arranged around the meeting hall.
Big areas for workshops and furniture stockpile.
Food stockpile just behind meeting hall.
Hospital under that.

[xaldin]

I tend to build on a per level basis with each level being semi independent with food stores separated off and not directly accessible by surface. A central stairwell to reach the levels that leads to the fort entrance which leads to the trade depot. Every area can be blocked off from all others and survive on supplies stored in it long enough to rebuild/recover/whatever.

It tends to always be a big fort and the stock design has about 25 levels to it out of the box. From there I then build the mega projects, reactors, experiment area and other stuff that is needed. Think the best way to describe my design is paranoid. Everything is built around the concept of being able to be cut off from rest of the fort and survive long enough to act (mine out, build new, fight whatever). Even my refuge pits have mantrap style entry points in case something gets into them. 3x3 living area, workshops near the living area for quick transit, every workshop has its own stockpile for supplies and huge warehouses for finished good storage (with interior locking system to secure it from breeches. Think the doors in a submarine and you have my design.). 

Downside to my design is that it takes longer to get set up and going than others and is very weak to early ambushes/raids. Good against most other threats but having an odd kobold get in early on just is a PITA.

[doublestrafe]

@Blizzlord, then why did you comment?

"No plan, no aesthetics, no design" is a perfectly valid strategy for fort design. It maximizes the organic nature of the fortress. Other strategies balance other aspects.

Lately I've been building around a 3x3 staircase. I've got a peasant apartment strategy that I love, which is basically modular 11x11 blocks sliced in half vertically and then into 1-urist slices horizontally, with three staircases in the center. Let's see if this works:


╔═════╦═════╗
║ΩӨΠÆ+║+ÆΠӨ+║
╠═════X═════╣
║ΩӨΠÆ+║+ÆΠӨ+║
╠═════╬═════╣
║ΩӨΠÆ+║+ÆΠӨ+║
╠═════X═════╣
║+ӨΠÆ+║+ÆΠӨ+║
╠═════╬═════╣
║+ӨΠÆ+║+ÆΠӨ+║
╠═════X═════╣
║+ӨΠÆ+║+ÆΠӨ+║
╚═════╩═════╝

It's incredibly quick to designate, and with the beds where they are, rooms are created exactly the right size without the need for doors. Note the extra space for statues if somebody gets too emo. I generally have two levels of eight of these blocks arranged in a square, with an access level in between. That leaves plenty of space for noble quarters, jails, and such.

A couple levels up is the magma shop, which means that there's magma conveniently above the noble quarters. Below is a great big dining hall, which I want to be multilevel with both magma and water flowing through. I've accomplished this once, with the drawbackbonus that the magma kept overflowing onto the nobles' dais. I'm still working on ideal layouts for these things.

[dizzyelk]

I usually dig a 5 wide passageway into a cliff leading to down ramps until the second rock layer, then I'll dig out a largeish chamber for my single tile winding passage over a 10-z level drop, with open space above for fortifications so my marksdwarves can shoot at incoming enemies. That passage leads to a blind room where my melee dwarves wait for enemies. The 5 wide passage goes to a depot room, with the main entrance to my fort nearby with dwarven shower system set up. Beyond that I usually have 5 wide corridors with 3x3 stairwells at most intersections. A legendary dining hall in the middle, food prep area above, workshops below, and an apartment living system running the height of the fortress off to one side with connections to every other level.

[Azkanan]

Average Staircase + Craft Stations




Average Bedroom area

Usually 5 bedrooms in a row then a "node" in the corridors... Ran out of map space to the right this time.

Nobles have larger rooms with antechambers, bottom left.




Latest Meeting/Dining room design




Farming Area + GODAMNMUDDY Reservoir

I have a storage room for seeds, and currently a small plump helmet/JUICE storage room.




Latest Fortifications design

Currently quite messy, t'is my fort's first year. Basically make a dumping ground for everything to get things to safety, from the wagon.

Top left: Militia Commander's quarters.
Top right: Barracks
Top Center: Box-kill zone.*

People come, I raise the bridges, that area between the bridges turns into a box - with fortified fortifications to the left and right.

[Mushroo]

10x10 hole in the dirt with some plump helmets.

Everyone is off killing goblins/FB's.

[Montague]

I generally try to make my fort compact, with individual rooms and hallways and a small footprint to make it more vertical then horizontally laid out. Most of it is in the stone layer and I never have a good plan for farms and above ground entrances/ buildings, I sort of make it up as I go along.

I'm interested in other people's designs, but just from randomly looking at uploaded maps on the DF map archive, people like sprawling, inefficient forts with massive floor plans and huge open hallways and rooms, compared to my forts anyways.

I'm not sure I got a good feel for how most people actually make their forts, since a lot of the ones uploaded seem intentionally gimmicky, grandiose or made by total n00bz I think.

I'm also curious about what sort of fortress design would result in the best FPS, minimizing path finding as a priority rather then in terms of travel efficiency, per se.