My outpost continues.
I got a fey mood. It resulted in a rock table decorated with rock and Smiley is now a High Master Mason.
To mitigate my wood stockpile problems, I've set up two more salvage yards. It helped a bit.
I've set up archery targets for my ranged squad, but oddly enough I don't get critically low on pellets. The soldiers train in the barracks too and tend to restock their ammo slowly, even when I have it. In any case, I've set up more craftopony's workshops to compensate and still can't get rid of all that dog bone.
I started digging stairs down. I hope to find the caverns and magma.
A wasteland caravan came. They said, the depot wasn't accessible to wagons, so they only brought their brahmins with them. All I got was some leather, cloth and food. I decided to make a 3-tile road to the edge of the map. As if the poor trade wasn't enough, I had to fiddle with my broker to even get it done. He insisted on making 20 bins first, then carrying some items, going to a party, drinking and what have you. In the end I got rid of some skull totems, jumpsuits, barding and other crap.
Yet another raider has shown up, but was quickly chased away. On his way he went by the leaving caravan and provoked some feral dogs into engaging my military.
Some of my Brahmins have starved to death. Gak, those mutants are stupid. I've set up a pasture for the remaining one outside.
Despite having a building and a floor above some water outside, it still froze. This is very bad for my hospital. Furthermore, I'm running out of drinks. I
have to do something about it. The clock is ticking. Watching a soldier in my hospital slowly die of thirst drove me to desperate measures. Since the floor over ice method didn't work, I dug out some ice and pitted it inside for melting. It melted into an undrinkable puddle of water, but my doctor was at least able to use it to clean herself. I went ahead and tried dfliquids, but all I got is a pony wash full of ghoul blood. In retrospect I may have misplaced my water source zone. After Evening Story, a soldier waiting to get a wound dressed, died of thirst, I started desperately gathering plants for drinks, but it resulted in mason Smily dying to a feral ghoul. (Wasn't he the one who just mooded out?) I even planted some quarry bushes to squeeze water out of their leaves at a screw press, but they grow so slowly. (For the hospital of course, I I planned a water reservoir to store water from the brook underground, but it is far from ready.) Eventually my exploratory tunnel solved the problem. They found the first cavern layer and we walled off a small section of it, with access to water. A few grates and I'm all set, I'm not ready to fight on two fronts just yet. Meanwhile my ponies won't die of thirst!
You weren't kidding when you said, farming is slower now. I barely get anything out of it, when in DF a small plot of plump helmets was more than enough.
My protectorpony by the entrance was damaged by a feral ghoul. Later I've noticed another feral pegasus ghoul almost kill a kitten and wound a sprite-bot and a protectorpony in my refuse pile, all the while being shot at by another protectorpony, a turret and two soldiers with BB guns. After they run out of pellets, they rushed in and shortly after that two melee soldiers arrived and killed the ghoul. It was bruised and broken all over, but kept on fighting till the end. This combined with my civillians dying to ghouls was so embarrassing that I set up a patrol route around my camp. The two squads I have alternate on it each month and still have time for training and rest. This system wasn't in place for long, but works good so far, at least against dogs and such. If something tougher shows up, like another scorpion, there might be problems. I recommend patrolling the camp to anyone with partly aboveground fort and no wall to speak off. It covers the area much better than "defend large burrow" and is basically free experience for the soldiers and free corpses for the butchers.
The caravan from my home stable has shown up and despite the new road, they still said, that the route was blocked. It turned out that weapon traps block wagon access. Derp. I ordered a lot of heavy stuff and got only one screen of it. Oh well, at least I got a sprite-bot, a turret and 2 sphalenite... wait, that was supposed to be saltpetre. I ordered saltpetre, not worthless stone, right?
Oddly enough my wood stockpiles now sort salvage and wood properly. All I did was remove two stockpiles and add one more, setting it to not accept normal wood. Oh well, it works and I can remove redundant salvage yards.
My militia commander scared off a snatcher long before he even got close to my entrance. The patrols work. They also easily repelled another bloatsprite invasion.
Trash is beginning to accumulate. Soon it will be time to get an atom-smasher.
I know about grinding rocks, but I only recently mined out enough of them to make this feasible without much fear of running out. Stone blocks use up pretty fast. I'll have to set up a rock farm: At least three stockpiles with three wagons and mutliple workhops: mason's, craftpony's, mechanic's, rock grinder and [FOUNDRY_STONE]. The grinder itself does what the most popular theory about rock farming says: the point is to get gems. In "The magic duel" Trixie even smashed open an empty geode.
In any casee I don't have a terminal yet and can't have the building that makes lenses anyway.
This came out long, so I'll put my feedback on this mod in another post.
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