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[nameless]

I had to register to ask all my saved up questions, you lazy people aren't asking them for me :-)

First, I tried making a custom stockpile for barrels next to my still, and barrels never end up in it.  Am I doing something wrong there?

Second, in the new version, will plants ever spontaneously grow on dirt, or does it have to be mud?

Next, how do you know where the human caravan will come from so you know where to build a road to?

Further, I've never tried building fortifications above ground.  Does everyone do this now?  Is it complicated?

Edit:  The main question I wanted to ask, and almost forgot.  Do we know the new rules for cave-ins?  Last I checked, it wasn't on the wiki yet.

I'll add more later :-)  Thanks to anyone that gets a chance to help me out!

[ November 08, 2007: Message edited by: nameless ]

[Thallone]

Barrels - Create a Food Stockpile, then [q]and scroll down to furniture and [e]nable it, the select type and [f]orbid it. Finaly select barrels and press enter. now, any barrel of any quality can also be stored in the food stockpile, even when empty. Really helps to know when to add barrels and stockpile space.

Dirt can be planted in most cases both inside and out.

The Human caravan shows up closest to the nearest human town, near as I can tell, you'll have to have one show up to know where that is precisely as it seems to vary.

havn't tried myself yet, but any smooth, one-tile thick wall should be able to become fortifications, so rewalls *should* be candidates.

Caveins currently only affect completely disconnected sections. I expect this will likely be revised as soon as Toady figures out how he wants that to work. For your sanity, I reccomend working as though the 6x6 rule still existed. Furthermore, something tells me that thin shells (digging z-level -1 out) will be out at some point

[Paul]

1. You can make a furniture stockpile to just store barrels, then deny everything else. This should work. I think theres a bug with the custom stockpiles, though. I may be wrong there, but they don't seem to work for me unless I make a default one and then customize it.

2. If you mean underground plants, I've never seen them spontaneously grow on dirt, so I assume it needs to be mud. If you mean overland plants, they will grow on grassy areas. It has to be the right climate for them - if they are there when you start, they will regrow, but otherwise will not.

3. At the moment, this seems to be completely random. I have most of mine coming from either the northeast, east, or southeast. However, I still get the occasional one coming from other places, even one came from way off to the southwest on a cliff and had to go down several levels of ramps. These are all from the same human civ.

4. Above ground fortifications are built the same way as walls or stairs or what have you. You just go to build, construction, and select fortification. You can't turn a constructed wall into a fortification without removing it and rebuilding.

5. Thallone is right on this one. As long as it is connected, it won't collapse. You can build a 500x500 floating fortress and have it supported by a tiny 1 tile beam in one corner.

[Thexor]

1) It's likely that all the barrels are being used for food storage. Make sure that you have several reserved barrels (open the stock[p]ile menu, then look near the bottom), as reserved barrels will be saved for booze.

2)Above ground, plants seem to grow wherever dirt exists on the layer below them (just my observation, may be hearsay). Below the ground, I know that towercaps will only grow if you've found an underground river. Might be the same for other plants.

3) Don't worry about the caravan right away. Check your depot pathing - hit [D] and see if the depot is marked as "accessible". If it is, you won't even need a road - and it'll usually be accessible with a bit of tree chopping, and maybe a touch of boulder smoothing.
They'll likely show up at a point where they can reach the depot.

4) Fortifications can be built above ground (although, keep in mind that you want to uild -> [C]onstruction -> [F]ortification, you can't carve fortifications into rewalled walls). They're useful mainly when you made your fort in undwarvenly territory - read, forests, plains, etc. Since your fort will start at a downward stairway, building an above-ground fort is a great way to deal with sieges and attacks.
Keep in mind, marksdwarves can't shoot up or down z-levels. Again from observation, they'll try to shoot downward, but the shot will travel straight, causing them to waste ammo shooting air. This is more of a problem above ground, where you might actually have defenses a level above the ground. Just something to keep in mind.

5) Yeah, it's been answered... but keep in mind that the cave-in code will be implemented someday, so think twice before hollowing out half the mountain, or your fort may be rudely destroyed some day in the future by a massive collapse. I tend to follow the old 7x7 rule, more out of habit than as a result of actual cave-in threat. We'll have to see what Toady comes up with.

EDIT: Gah, beaten to the punch >.<

[ November 08, 2007: Message edited by: Thexor ]

[Sykirobme]

Regarding the barrels, I've had no problems as long as I define the stockpile as furniture first, then forbid everything but barrels.

In addition, your stockpile might not be filling up because the barrels being made by your carpenter are getting snatched for other jobs, like storing plants, meat, seeds or uncooked fish.

[Surma]

Gah. Alright it is entirely possible to fortify rewalled walls. To prove this point I went so far as to upload a movie of myself doing it -.-

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-125-fortifyingrewalls

sorry if this derails the Q&A session  :p