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[higgypig]

More specifically, at what intervals do you play it?
Do you designate jobs/creations and let them at it for a season or do you just designate and order as you go? I tend to do the latter which makes the game pretty slow.

[GoombaGeek]

As I go. Eventually I'll put key things (my still, coupled with a craftsdwarf churning out stone pots) on repeat but a fortress without constant expansion is pretty boring (and dead once you accidentally leave it on and the game only pauses once a bronze colossus shows up at your non-indestructable artifact doorstep).

[Telgin]

I issue orders, checks stocks, and periodically just checkup on stuff as I go.  Trying to let it run for a season at a time would end up ruining my forts pretty quickly.

I'll periodically queue up brew jobs and cook jobs if nothing else.  I'm also very frequently micromanaging the production of charcoal, iron, steel, weapons, armor and so on.  I never set that stuff on repeat, it always gets out of sync with production if I try it for very long.

Furniture is also something that requires manual intervention for me.  So, migrant wave shows up, I queue up enough beds, cabinets, chests, and doors to furnish their new rooms.  After I designate the rooms of course.

[wolfwood296]

i'm not very experience so i just designate as i go, which was a problem in a masterwork game i just started. it was filled with microline, copper, alunimum, galene and meteriric (meteror i gusse) and i spent a whole season mining out the stuff (still some there a lot to mine)

[itg]

I doubt many people just let the fort run for a season without player intervention unless they're just trying to see how many years they can last before their fps drops to zero. The game just isn't much fun if you aren't doing anything.

[Loud Whispers]

More specifically, at what intervals do you play it?
Do you designate jobs/creations and let them at it for a season or do you just designate and order as you go? I tend to do the latter which makes the game pretty slow.

I do the latter, which I find makes it as slow as my FPS. Which is to say variable. There are a few things in my fort which require overseer intervention to ensure fortress survival, which is fun to say the least.

[misko27]

I do it as the thought comes. I have ADHD, so, Whatever shows up at the moment is my priority. Its actually one of my favorite things about the game, I can say, order some stuff done at the jewelers, then go over to the minecarts and see what I can do there, then I head over to the memorial chamber to see how the FB memorials are coming along in the hall of Terrors.

[Blackadder]

I like to be methodical these days. When I first got into the game in 2007 (ish?) i just dug huge inconsistent rooms all over the place and filled them with workshops. I've adopted a few different formats now. A favorite is the vertical column, with a four-way bridge airlock protruding from the ground, the fortress descends directly below the entrance, with tunnels branching in four directions, on multiple levels. The workshops in all of my fort designs are a large grid of between 5x5 and 10x10 squares that are just large enough to hold the workshop in the center and a stockpile wrapping around it, with a path around the whole thing. I'm still working on bedrooms though.

I implement the manager as early as possible (I usually just build the dining room/temporary barracks first, then designate a chair until later. The manager is one of my favorite tools, because otherwise, making a large, successful fort requires too much micromanaging. Having everything I need mapped out on one page and designated by my manager frees me up to do other things.

I've played with minecarts to some avail, but I haven't yet realized my dream of using them to provide an endless supply of magma to the surface levels (as opposed to relegating Urist McLonely to the depths in order to provide the children of dwarven aristocracy with an ample supply of silver trinkets)

[wuphonsreach]

My forts are all now based on the pattern of:

Code: [Select]

...................
.XX.DDDDDDDDDDD.XX.
.XX.DDDDDDDDDDD.XX.
...................
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
.DD.DDDDDDDDDDD.DD.
...................
.XX.DDDDDDDDDDD.XX.
.XX.DDDDDDDDDDD.XX.
...................
This means at the very start, I create a 11x11 inner room surrounded by 2-tile wide passages, surrounded by 1-tile thick walls.  This gives me a footprint on the surface of 19x19.  The pattern is extendable / repeatable and dwarves are usually never more then 8-10 steps away from a stairway.

As for playstyle, I pause, do a bunch of stuff that is time-sensitive (sorting out critters to pastures, designating mining or construction), then unpause and keep an eye on progress while I spot check other things.

[Urist McSpike]

I like to try to design something unique each time, although they probably have a lot of similar elements to my other forts.  I also tend to get bored with "mature" forts that are established nicely.  I usually spend a lot of time at the start, with the game paused, designing the layout & designating rooms to be dug out later.

I've played with minecarts to some avail, but I haven't yet realized my dream of using them to provide an endless supply of magma to the surface levels (as opposed to relegating Urist McLonely to the depths in order to provide the children of dwarven aristocracy with an ample supply of silver trinkets)

I read something that might help you - first, of course, is the fact that you need one 4/7 tile of magma for each magma workshop, not an endless supply.  With that in mind...  someone got their dwarves to haul magma filled minecarts (which hold 2/7 liquid) on a disconnected rail system.  The bottom part ran the (magma safe) minecart down & back up a magma supply, which then ran off the track.  Another track & stop was built up top, and the haulers would carry the minecart up, put it on the track, and let it dump.  Here is the post.

[celem]

I play the former style, though I think its a little more unusual round here.  I generally have a years worth of digging designations done before the first unpause.  The first 3 years of the forts life i work as I go.  Designating and micromanaging, all the usual junk.  From year 4-5 onwards I generally have set up a full automation.  That is industries such as metalworking are finished (made all the gear i need so they get shutdown), industries required forever (farming/brewing/cooking) are stable and balanced on repeat.  Military is automated, fortress design funnels all visitors through killing fields where pressureplates reveal marksdwarf squads behind fortifications.  With this kind of setup I usually disable all pauses and recenters and run a year at a time, tweaking the fort each spring until im happy its ready for the final test.

The final test is really fun.  You keep all the alerts disabled and just leave your computer on to see how long the fort lasts.  I've had a couple of forts manage 50 years (several days uninterupted runtime) with 0 input from me, though many more crumbled due to poor balance in my automations.  There are a few game interruptions ive never managed to properly avoid however.  I could never figure a way to avoid the outpost liaison pausing my game to get input from me, its for this reason that I have pressureplates on my trapcorridor that trigger on anything, liaisons get skewered to avoid them meeting my leaders.

[Blackadder]

I like to try to design something unique each time, although they probably have a lot of similar elements to my other forts.  I also tend to get bored with "mature" forts that are established nicely.  I usually spend a lot of time at the start, with the game paused, designing the layout & designating rooms to be dug out later.

I've played with minecarts to some avail, but I haven't yet realized my dream of using them to provide an endless supply of magma to the surface levels (as opposed to relegating Urist McLonely to the depths in order to provide the children of dwarven aristocracy with an ample supply of silver trinkets)

I read something that might help you - first, of course, is the fact that you need one 4/7 tile of magma for each magma workshop, not an endless supply.  With that in mind...  someone got their dwarves to haul magma filled minecarts (which hold 2/7 liquid) on a disconnected rail system.  The bottom part ran the (magma safe) minecart down & back up a magma supply, which then ran off the track.  Another track & stop was built up top, and the haulers would carry the minecart up, put it on the track, and let it dump.  Here is the post.

Thanks! I'll have to try this sometime. Magma-related science is probably the most fun, after all.