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[Simokon]

So I am having a real problem when it comes to embarks, I never feel dwarfish enough unless I embark into a mountainside and I quickly abandon any other locations. Am I alone in this obsession?

Also just some other random questions I had since I am thinking of them.

Is there a way to clean blood from floors inside without dfhack?

If I set a stockpile to take from another one will it always try to fill up the one I am sending to no matter how little may remain in the parent stockpile?

I always thought nobles were lazy freeloaders who barked orders. In my last fort my baroness was the broker and she would perform the task and even haul goods to the depot when required to, is this new?

Will there ever be a day I can embark on a 16x16 lag free?

If I build a well inside my fort do I have to worry about it becoming stagnant as well like the pools of water always seem to do outside?

Thanks for answering my random musings at 2 am.

[Urist Da Vinci]

1. Try embarking in the middle of a glacier. That should feel dwarfy enough for you. I know most stereotypical dwarves aren't found in jungles or marshes.
2. Dwarves with cleaning labor.
3. Yes.
4. In version 40d, you'd want to execute your nobles. Things have gotten better since then.
5. Yes. Either DF becomes capable of using more RAM and multiple cores, or computers with faster CPUS (rather than multicores) become available.
6. Yes, you should check your well quality on occasion.

[Garath]

I think wells will only become stagnant if ever getting into contact with stagnant water.

the 16x16 embark may be a few or more than a few years into the future though.

[kaijyuu]

I can embark on a 16x16 with ~20 fps.

I just can't dig anything or it plummets into single digits.




CPUs are going the ways of multiple cores. Unless some massive breakthrough in computing comes out, CPU speeds are going to stagnate for the foreseeable future in favor of just having more of them. So, if dwarf fortress is going to be less prone to FPS death, change will have to happen on DF's side.

[Stil]

I like carving into a mountain side also, feels better than digging a hole on a flat plain.

Cleaning should happen *but* I think it only happens on smoothed/constructed tiles.

Yes

Nobles are still 'lazy' in my opinion but I too have seen some of them working - I don't know too much to say for sure though

Maybe if you use masterwork fortress and reduce the cavern layers

My wells have been running well but I've seen 1000's of posts recently relating to stagnant water. Brooks and streams are bad, m kay?

[kingubu]

I was just about to post how I'm obsessed with soap.  I must burn through 100 bars of that stuff a year.  All my little dwarfs carrying bars around rubbing out dirt.  So neat, so tidy.

I'm preparing my next embark, and I'm making sure to have soap production ready to go from start.  Then I'll find some water and build a dwarfwash.

Must keep dwarfs clean!

[Simokon]

Thanks for answering everyone, I totally forgot about cleaning job!

Another question.

How CPU intensive are the pathing calculations, should I be worried since I like to embark on mountains who are sometimes 60-80 Z levels above ground?

Also would removing access to these higher elevations via removing ramps be the best option to deal with it if it is a significant factor.

[Stil]

Pathing can eat up a fair deal of FPS, but don't let that put you off an embark. I don't know know the exact algorithms used, but I've been told on multiple occasions that MORE paths put more strain on the framerate as the algorithm tries to find shortcuts and optimal routes. From this I think having a mountaintop isn't a bad thing. And there are always traffic designations too.

[Trif]

Path-finding uses quite a lot of CPU, but usually isn't as bad as lots of flowing fluids, tons of items or temperature calculations. DF uses the A* algorithm, if you're interested.

Dwarfs will only path to places when there's a job to do. If you don't use the upper levels for your industry, nobody will path there (except for the wildlife). If you want to stop your dwarfs from going up anyways, you could just as well use burrows or traffic designations.

[ohgoditburns]

I prefer embarking on not mountains. In the last version, it was terrifying shrubland for the ogres, but now I'm actually terrified of evil biomes. Nowadays, I probably would choose deserts for the giant scorpions and glass towers.

In general though, I tend to just head down to the caves to make my home anyway, so any hill will do as an entrance. My latest endeavor involves boring an open air hole all the way down to the first cavern.

[Frogwarrior]

Is there a way to clean blood from floors inside without dfhack?

I don't know if a lot of people know this, but:
Yes, absolutely, and on command!
Any time a building is completed (not when it is removed), all of the tiles it occupies will be cleaned of all contaminants.
Applications:
To clean large swathes of ground at once, paved roads work well. Roads follow the same placement restrictions as farm plots: In a rectangle of any shape up to 10x10, all of the unobstructed ground tiles (for dirt roads, this means dirt ground without trees but shrubs are OK; for paved roads this means dirt or stone floors without trees but shrubs are OK; for farm plots it must be dirt ground without shrubs or trees; boulders obstruct all three just like trees) must be connected and there must be no buildings of any sort (workshops, chairs, levers, unfinished constructed walls). So if the goblins get into your hallway and you paint the floor red with their insides, order a series of paved roads covering the entire hallway, or at least those parts of it that don't contain traps. (Which you can deconstruct and rebuild to clean, I guess.) If the exposed area is entirely dirt, you can use a dirt road, which is built much quicker and any dwarf can do it immediately (no need for an architect).
If the contaminant in question is dangerous (deadly blood or dust) then paved roads / farm plots may not work, since dwarves stand on them when building, and I do not know the rules on where they stand and when. I DO know that when architecting and building a bridge, they will build it from an adjacent tile. So you can order a bridge (or a series of bridges, if the stain is in a curved hallway; sadly, bridges do not have the flexible shapes that roads allow you) built over the stain, and while cleaning it up the builder will not step on the affected area. You SHOULD, however, make sure that the materials for the bridge are all on the same, safe side of the stain, and if necessary use traffic designations to ensure that they take a safe path to the bridge (if you can't cover the entire stain with one bridge), and if necessary do Science to figure out if dwarves prefer to build bridges from a certain side (I do not know the answer).
My favorite building for clean-up purposes is kennels. Kennels are large (5x5), use 1 building material, are much quicker to build than bridges or roads, and do not obstruct movement at all unlike siege workshops or smaller workshops. Even a dangerous stain can be safely handled by careful use of kennels.
For stains where you need 1x1 precision, constructed floors work as well. As soon as the floor is completed, the stain disappears. If you use this to clean up dangerous stains, remember where builders prefer to stand.

After a clean-up building is finished, it can be removed. I can't quite figure out what rules dwarves use when choosing which side to destroy a building from, so if it looks like someone's about to walk onto a dangerous stain, cancel the destruction order. (With dirt roads, this is not a problem, as they do not actually produce anything that needs to be destroyed.) Constructions are much more reliable, as dwarves follow the same rules for removing constructions as for building them.

[Frogwarrior]

Oh, and I can't believe I forgot: I didn't even mention that, of course, all items must be cleared away from any building before it can be constructed. This can pose a problem in the case of deadly blood forgotten beasts, as the corpse will usually be sitting in a huge pile of the stuff. In that case, a cave-in onto the corpse may be recommended instead. Alternatively, I have found that shallow water will magically erase contaminants in the same tile after a bit. (Except mud, of course...) So you could dump buckets of water on the corpse until the ground is clean, then haul it off to the butcher's because THAT isn't a terrible idea, no sir!
Or, if it's not on constructed ground, you could channel out the ground under it (which does not require one to step on the ground in question) and then build a floor over it, thus entombing it forever. Build a statue or something to mark the spot. Can you slab forgotten beasts? Make them a tomb, sorta thing?

[simonthedwarf]

I prefer embarking on not mountains. In the last version, it was terrifying shrubland for the ogres, but now I'm actually terrified of evil biomes. Nowadays, I probably would choose deserts for the giant scorpions and glass towers.

In general though, I tend to just head down to the caves to make my home anyway, so any hill will do as an entrance. My latest endeavor involves boring an open air hole all the way down to the first cavern.

Care to tell me about the following problems:

- No goddamn scorpions appearing just a bunch of retarded thrips men
- Coal supply in no-wood desert (caverns?)

[Frogwarrior]

I think large, dangerous creatures are more likely to appear on Savage biomes and less so on Benign biomes. Try looking for a desert that's Untamed Wilds and see what you get.....
Also, caverns can be pretty much guaranteed to have lots of wood. Also, if you embarked on one of the aforementioned savage biomes...... lots of other things as well.

[Teneb]

I think large, dangerous creatures are more likely to appear on Savage biomes and less so on Benign biomes. Try looking for a desert that's Untamed Wilds and see what you get.....
Also, caverns can be pretty much guaranteed to have lots of wood. Also, if you embarked on one of the aforementioned savage biomes...... lots of other things as well.

If you like giant animals/animal men, then savage biomes are the right place to go. Otherwise you may want a 100% neutral one.