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[Yovatsap]

So I'm doing a no-migrant fort which is going pretty good for now. I've set up my farms, workshops and all dwarves are ecstasic. Gonna try to catch some elephants for buthering too.

Here's the thing though, since I have a small number of dwarves, I'm not gonna have a decent army for years and I'm trying to set up lots of traps. I've set up my cage traps and want to set some weapon traps too. So I created some large, serrated discs (they attack thrice so that's why I chose them) and I want to place them on good quality mechanisms.

My question is: How can I level up my mechanic so he can make good quality mechanisms?

[i2amroy]

Making more mechanisms is usually the easiest and fastest way. You can just throw away any extras or keep them around for use in things like hooking up cages or other things to levers.

[Garath]

mechanisms arn't the worst trade goods, so no problem if you make some extras. Cage traps don't need good mechanisms, so that's a good place to put the lesser ones, as well as in levers and bridges. If you don't have big military, you'll also use bridges so you can seperate parts of your traps hallway for cleaning and such. Building levers and bridges is fine for mechanics too.

Don't rely on weapon and cage traps alone, they jam/need to be reloaded.upright spikes linked to a lever can take care of straglers

[Garath]

build a mechanics workshop and set it to make mechanisms while having someone with mechanic labor enabled

imagine that, there is a wiki articles on mechanisms

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Mechanism

[Yovatsap]

Is there any way I can recycle mechanisms by any chance? Because there's still a lot of farming, hauling, brewing, cooking jobs to be done in my fort and with the limited dwarfpower I have, I can't mine so much...

[Garath]

any time you deconstruct something the mechanisms you used are simply returned

[vidboi]

Is there any way I can recycle mechanisms by any chance? Because there's still a lot of farming, hauling, brewing, cooking jobs to be done in my fort and with the limited dwarfpower I have, I can't mine so much...

You shouldn't have any problems. I've had non-migrant forts with 15 adults and more than 3 times as many children feed themselves with a farming staff of 3 (on planter, one plant processor/butcher and one cook/brewer) fairly easily. You should have plenty of stone for quite a lot of mechanisms anyway, digging out even a small fort leaves plenty to use.

[Garath]

don't forget not to build workshops from raw stone, except maybe the first mason, but process stone to blocks for that (and after the first set of blocks, deconstruct the mason and build it with a block). If you think you're going to be low on stone, use blocks any time you can instead of raw stones

[Yovatsap]

don't forget not to build workshops from raw stone, except maybe the first mason, but process stone to blocks for that (and after the first set of blocks, deconstruct the mason and build it with a block). If you think you're going to be low on stone, use blocks any time you can instead of raw stones

By this I understand that making stone blocks gives me more stone... I've been playing this game for 3 months now, how come I didn't know this? -.- Thx for the help though, gonna get to that right now

Edit: I just remembered that I knew this, I just didn't care because I had an unbelievable surplus of stones in my other forts. So you can disregard my noobish question. It's a shame I wasted all that stone for doors, coffers, tables, statues and cabinets though...

[Niyazov]

don't forget not to build workshops from raw stone, except maybe the first mason, but process stone to blocks for that (and after the first set of blocks, deconstruct the mason and build it with a block). If you think you're going to be low on stone, use blocks any time you can instead of raw stones

By this I understand that making stone blocks gives me more stone... I've been playing this game for 3 months now, how come I didn't know this? -.- Thx for the help though, gonna get to that right now

Stone blocks are for construction and strange moods only- you can't make goods out of them. And up until the mining revision a few weeks ago stones only yielded 1 block, so don't feel bad.

[greycat]

By this I understand that making stone blocks gives me more stone... I've been playing this game for 3 months now, how come I didn't know this?

Because that feature isn't three months old yet.  It was just added in 0.34.08, with the changes in mining/hauling.

[Milcheax]

Stone blocks are for construction and strange moods only- you can't make goods out of them. And up until the mining revision a few weeks ago stones only yielded 1 block, so don't feel bad.

And until I read this, I had no idea why my mason and craftdwarf kept yelling at me saying "could not find non-economic stone" when I knew I'd converted it all to blocks...
Woops.

[Yovatsap]

So turning 30 of my 90 stones to blocks gives me 60 stone for goods and 120 for construction. That seems nice.

[Mushroo]

Something seems odd about the labor-to-population ratio in your fort. What is your current population, and what is your maximum population set to?

In my small forts (20-30 dwarfs) I assign 2 military dwarfs in the first year plus 1 per year thereafter. I do not find this significantly impacts my labor ability to feed and clothe my dwarfs.

Maybe you are building up your industries too quickly? For a small fort, try keeping things simple. Not only will this decrease your labor requirements, but it will reduce the size/frequency of ambushes and sieges, so your military needs will be less. Serrated disks are one of the most valuable items in the game, so if you are building a lot of weapon traps with 10 serrated disks and a high-quality mechanism, you will drive your fortress wealth skyward and bring more invaders! Better to have a fort that is "poor" (low fortress wealth) but has a pair of legendary sworddwarfs training at the entrance.

In my opinion.

[greycat]

... why am I suddenly possessed by a desire to make a 3x100 entrance hallway completely lined with serrated glass weapon traps?  And a sign over the entrance saying "Free babies inside"?