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[AmpsterMan]

topic says it's all, what do you finto each.d to be the pros and cons

[MrWiggles]

I do individual rooms, mostly because when I started playing Dorms didnt really work that well.

[Noobazzah]

Dormitories: suitable is you have few beds but many dwarves. A dormitory of 5 beds can offer sleeping space for 20 dwarves or so, however the dwarves get a bad thought. Vamps get spotted easily (I think).

Individual bedrooms: Good thoughts, but one bedroom usually serves only 1-2 dwarves. Needs more resources and labour.
 
I personally use a mixture: building bedrooms as the populace grows, while a semi-large dormitory keeps everyone from sleeping on floors.

[Starver]

Dorms are easier, less resource-intensive, can be made sufficiently interesting to somewhat offset a whole load of dwarf unhappiness by a significant amount, through decorating and installing items in the one area (I think).

But I always do individual rooms.  It's more digging (but I usually set them in the middle of marble layers, so I want to dig them out anyway), it's more beds (you need one per dwarf, rather than half, third or a quarter and hoping for the best), it's more of everything (including more walls to be smoothed[1], and packing four rooms-with-shared-walls takes up more tiles than a dorm with four beds and a communal wall, as an additional simple example), including doors...  But if you're giving them rooms you can individually equip the rooms with chests (useful) and closets (not useful, still?), and all the rest as and when you're rolling out masterwork statues ppurely for the sake of it, and if/when your charge rises to a nobilic position you're not having to suddenly scramble to get them something, you can just upgrade what they have.

Actually, let me return to the first sentence of that runaway paragraph: I always do individual rooms.  If I'm assigning someone to a room (I could let them pick, but I prefer to micromanage, and shuffle them around sometimes for reasons best known to myself) I can see how many dwarves (including children and babies, who don't need rooms, but will still get them, to save time when they finally attain adulthood) are still needing rooms, compared with how many half-completed or waiting-to-be-furnished rooms.  I may even ensure that spouses have a room each[2], but as 'rooming' one of the pair marks their partner as room-satisfied as well, this is the one saving of effort I probably make most use of.

Whoops, the keyboard ran away with me, again.

Shall we say ease (with lower psychological benefits) vs better moods (with a somewhat more involved industry needed to create them?  And I go the latter route, habitually.


fakedit: Ah yes, vampire protection.  That's why my most recent forts (all, so far, too short to reveal any benefits) have been based around a Panopticon principle so that vampires have very little opportunity to be unobserved.  And maybe they know this, because I've had neither an observed vampire nor anything that might have been a unobserved vampire.  Or I've just been 'lucky'.


[1] I never engrave.  Smoothing is as far as I go.

[2] For whatever reason, my spouses are always the ones that immigrate, I've not had an on-fortress link-up for a long, long time.  40D era?

[Hans Lemurson]

I've been experimenting with Semi-Communal bedrooms (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115342.0) , but so far haven't done it long enough to have conclusive results.

A Dormitory is better than sleeping on the floor, but I'm not sure if it's any different than a dwarf grabbing a random nearby bed (not in a room) to sleep in.  Dormitories as rooms though should give you the opportunity to enhance their quality with furniture and decoration, but I don't know if a high enough dorm value will change the "haven't slept in a proper room" unhappy thought.

[aoxoa]

I never have used dorms. Only kind of ones I do are barracks and hospital.

But at the start of a DF game, I always built;

1. Farm

2. Workshop level, where stone is, and id put my masonry, crafts, maybe carpenter if I dont build above, etc

3. Bed area, consisting of 3x3 rooms, 7 of them. Ill add to them as the game goes on. But not only does it give decent rooms, but the stone can be used also.

4. Meeting hall, if not still, then that + other food/leather etc related things. Butchers workshop maybe also at start outside on top. Not too needed, but does sometimes help to combat miasma.

5. Etc etc etc, but yeah mainly I could of just said;

I never build dorms, always 3x3 rooms. Only ever designate rooms to certain dwarves like manager, nobles etc. But I smooth them, engrave them sometimes especially if I get a legendary stone detailer, but not soon as ambush etc isn't fun. (But its !!FUN!!).

[vadia]

In a low tree setting dorms are more useful otherwise go for individual rooms.

[AmpsterMan]

In my latest fort, I have tried building mainly above ground. I had one dormitory under the mess hall and a few rooms. I noticed most of my dwarves were happy to ecstatic even though none of them had rooms. This was accomplished by building silver roads... Everywhere! I tried building an appartment complex but I got so fatigued by designating all the walls, floors, beds, cabinets, chests, etc. That I just gave up!

I would use more dorms but I don't know if dorfs use cabinets and chests inside dorm rooms. I'm going to give an all dorms shot at my next fort and see how it goes.

[Nyxalinth]

I do a large communal bed space but assign a bed and a small area around it in my latest fort, because in my previous fort I had so many married couples that they needed all the bedrooms.  I put the singles in the dorms.

This new fort, of course, there's no married folks, after I'd dug out mostly bedrooms.  Law of Perversity and all.

[Oaktree]

I put in a 4-6 bed dorm early on to handle initial settlement and overflow.  And from there dig out residential areas of individual rooms. Usually 1x3 or 2x2 rooms that sometimes share a door.

Furnishing is usually bed and two cabinets now.  The latter seem to reduce the clothing lying about issue a bit as compared to the one cabinet and one chest/coffer option.  Though I also put 90% of my populace into uniform replacing own clothing by the 3rd or 4th year where they are wearing 2-3 armor items and thus there is less worn clothing about (usually just trousers and hoods).

[darkgloomie]

I prefer individual rooms too, if you dig them beforehand you won't have much problems with immigrants.

This said, it's always better to keep a couple of dormitories around, just in case of really heavy migrations. Plus, you can always assign them to a noble when the need be.

I haven't tried to see if they still keep functioning as dormitiories after giving them to somebody though :/ not inclined to try either, have dug enough room to last the next migration (if they don't get killed by a goblin ambush first, which suits me fine actually.

[Tirion]

I put in a 4-6 bed dorm early on to handle initial settlement and overflow.  And from there dig out residential areas of individual rooms. Usually 1x3 or 2x2 rooms that sometimes share a door.

Furnishing is usually bed and two cabinets now.  The latter seem to reduce the clothing lying about issue a bit as compared to the one cabinet and one chest/coffer option.  Though I also put 90% of my populace into uniform replacing own clothing by the 3rd or 4th year where they are wearing 2-3 armor items and thus there is less worn clothing about (usually just trousers and hoods).

Does it work for you? Mine get all stupid sometimes, not equipping half the assigned uniform, even if it's available. Or dropping even that, and tantruming butt naked.

[ASCIt]

I actually just started a revised version of my 2-floor apartment complexes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The staircases lead to an open area, and the ramps lead to a reservoir and become waterfalls. I also grate/glass around them so the dwarves can see them, and in the communal areas they get an excellent mist bath. The downward hatches are so my dorfs can hide in their rooms in case of invasion/massive flooding/"tragedy"/evil gas/etc

[Adequate Swimmer]

Dorms can lead to tantrum spirals if one if the dwarfs in it has a bad personality. If six dorfs are stuck with a fantasy variety of Sheldon, they'll irritate each other until shit hits the fan. To top it off, its really hard to find which of the dwarfs in the dorm is causing the problem.

One definite advantage of dorms is it makes vampires more obvious.

[pixl97]

I've been giving dwarfs their own 'room' lately, but they don't have walls. After mining out a level of marble I set the bedroom to be a 3x3 area with a cabinet. I leave an air gap of one tile  between the room designations. It seems to work, when I look at them now they are 'Sleeping in a bedroom like a personal palace'. Before I set the beds I engrave the floors with a good engraver. Only nobles get a room with a door now.. Mostly so I can flood the room if needed.