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[zzedar]

True that. I have a slight wood shortage in my embark zone. All my bins are made out of either iron or steel. Currently the bins go to the Trade Depot stockpile for trading. Getting the steel and iron bars is the hard part. Its a rather slow process, not helped by the size of my workshop and stockpile area.

That... I... what? Steel? You're spending steel on bins? If you absolutely must make metal bins, use something cheaper (not necessarily in terms of value, but in terms of dwarf-hours to produce). But you shouldn't have to -- caravans will bring plenty of wood (there's a special flag that makes them bring more wood if you have fewer than 5 logs per dwarf), and you can set up a very productive tree farm now that you've breached the caverns.

Also: why would you need bins in the trading stockpile? How big... looks at trading stockpile ... what. You do realize that there's a limit to how much caravans can carry if they want to get off the map before going insane, right?

Okay, here's what you do. Have a small stockpile near your decorating workshops, set to give to them (also give them stockpiles of decorating material like gems, obviously). Set up a second stockpile set to take from them. Feed the second into the first. Your decorators will now keep decorating the same items, increasing their value enormously. Ideally, have only a couple of dwarves work as jewellers/decorators, to train up their skill. When a caravan comes, you can put half a dozen items in the depot that'll be enough to buy out their entire stock. Goblets are excellent for this, especially if you have valuable metals to make them from-- you get three goblets per bar, and each one is as valuable as a door. So, for instance, a single bar of gold gives a minimum value of 900 and a maximum of 10800, even before decoration. Mechanisms are also nice -- smaller material bonuses, generally, but higher base value and you can use the mechanisms you don't trade.

Alternatively, grow some sweet pods and start making dwarven syrup roasts -- a single stack, with even a halfway decent cook, can be worth tens of thousands of dorfbucks. There are other ways to do this, but you get the idea. A few highly valuable items, not a lot of cheap ones. There is absolutely no need to have a stockpile that large feeding into the depot (you may want to have a large stockpile pulling from the depot, depending on what you buy from them, though).

[CognitiveDissonance]

True that. I have a slight wood shortage in my embark zone. All my bins are made out of either iron or steel. Currently the bins go to the Trade Depot stockpile for trading. Getting the steel and iron bars is the hard part. Its a rather slow process, not helped by the size of my workshop and stockpile area.

That... I... what? Steel? You're spending steel on bins? If you absolutely must make metal bins, use something cheaper (not necessarily in terms of value, but in terms of dwarf-hours to produce). But you shouldn't have to -- caravans will bring plenty of wood (there's a special flag that makes them bring more wood if you have fewer than 5 logs per dwarf), and you can set up a very productive tree farm now that you've breached the caverns.

Also: why would you need bins in the trading stockpile? How big... looks at trading stockpile ... what. You do realize that there's a limit to how much caravans can carry if they want to get off the map before going insane, right?

Just to expand on this - bins need to be carried, and steel is very heavy. (Iron is okay) Your best bet is using aluminum, Zinc or Tin. Otherwise Iron is quite acceptable.

Lastly, to grow your own wood, breach a cavern. Hollow out a large area, irrigate it (to make sure all squares are arable), close off the are to block dwarves and wait. Check back in a bit, and you should have plenty of wood. Fully renewable, too!

[zzedar]

Just to expand on this - bins need to be carried, and steel is very heavy. (Iron is okay)

Iron and steel have the same density, actually, I was just surprised at the waste of using precious steel on bins. Actually, looking over the trade depot a bit, I guess part of the idea was whimsical -- not actually planning to trade it all, jonanlsh just likes the idea of showing it off to the traders. But looking back at the stockpiles, there does seem to be a fair amount of wood there -- not as much as would be ideal, but it's not like there's any need to ration it. I'd make some more bins.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Just to expand on this - bins need to be carried, and steel is very heavy. (Iron is okay)

Iron and steel have the same density, actually, I was just surprised at the waste of using precious steel on bins. Actually, looking over the trade depot a bit, I guess part of the idea was whimsical -- not actually planning to trade it all, jonanlsh just likes the idea of showing it off to the traders. But looking back at the stockpiles, there does seem to be a fair amount of wood there -- not as much as would be ideal, but it's not like there's any need to ration it. I'd make some more bins.

Wait, they do? ... they do. Well, that surprised me. TIL It looks like there isn't any real reason to build bins out of metal, other than aluminum bins for trade.

[Dwarven War Boar]

Allow me to sympathise with you on breaching that cavern and having to reroute your stairwell. Absolutely love it when that happens.

[Catsup]

Allow me to sympathise with you on breaching that cavern and having to reroute your stairwell. Absolutely love it when that happens.

whenever i breached the caverns with one of my central stairways and open space is in the way, i mold the caverns to adapt to my fortress and not the other way around. Temporary safety hatches are built to prevent cavern creatures from going up (as well as forgotten beasts) and stairs are constructed down to the cavern floor and walled.

in my current fort i've taken over cavern lvl1 and changed the landscape there by walling off and flooring an entire magma tube for magma forging (it took a couple thousand stone blocks), but its all contained and secure, i even built ramps around the new area so creatures can move across it as if it were a normal cavern. I might flood it later too so plants can grow on it, but im too lazy to do it now.

[jonanlsh]

Thanks so much everyone for taking your time to read this (otherwise useless) thread of mine. I appreciate your feedback and discussion. You all have enlightened me to things I would otherwise have missed!
Now to reply to your posts!

Allow me to sympathise with you on breaching that cavern and having to reroute your stairwell. Absolutely love it when that happens.

i planned for that. Did some preliminary (and highly shameful) cavern placement scouting in anticipation of a cavern breach. (savescumming) At least I still have a few cavern-free floors for use.

That... I... what? Steel? You're spending steel on bins? If you absolutely must make metal bins, use something cheaper (not necessarily in terms of value, but in terms of dwarf-hours to produce). But you shouldn't have to -- caravans will bring plenty of wood (there's a special flag that makes them bring more wood if you have fewer than 5 logs per dwarf), and you can set up a very productive tree farm now that you've breached the caverns.
Also: why would you need bins in the trading stockpile? How big... looks at trading stockpile ... what. You do realize that there's a limit to how much caravans can carry if they want to get off the map before going insane, right?
Okay, here's what you do. Have a small stockpile near your decorating workshops, set to give to them (also give them stockpiles of decorating material like gems, obviously). Set up a second stockpile set to take from them. Feed the second into the first. Your decorators will now keep decorating the same items, increasing their value enormously. Ideally, have only a couple of dwarves work as jewellers/decorators, to train up their skill. When a caravan comes, you can put half a dozen items in the depot that'll be enough to buy out their entire stock. Goblets are excellent for this, especially if you have valuable metals to make them from-- you get three goblets per bar, and each one is as valuable as a door. So, for instance, a single bar of gold gives a minimum value of 900 and a maximum of 10800, even before decoration. Mechanisms are also nice -- smaller material bonuses, generally, but higher base value and you can use the mechanisms you don't trade.
Alternatively, grow some sweet pods and start making dwarven syrup roasts -- a single stack, with even a halfway decent cook, can be worth tens of thousands of dorfbucks. There are other ways to do this, but you get the idea. A few highly valuable items, not a lot of cheap ones. There is absolutely no need to have a stockpile that large feeding into the depot (you may want to have a large stockpile pulling from the depot, depending on what you buy from them, though).

I justify my choice of steel and iron with the massive abundance of magnetite and chalk in the mining ops section. Way back in the beginning trees were scarce. All that wood in the stockpile that you see, 5 years spent accumulating them. The only problem is coal, which can be solved with periodic mining. Yes, the dwarf-hours spent is a pain, but I see no better way to flaunt and increase the wealth of my fortress. On the plus side, the metalworkers have become quite skilled, and put out a masterwork every so often. I often do other things while I let DF run in the background, so the dwarf-hours spent to me are perfectly fine. 700 bins of either iron, wood or steel man! I like to collect gems. Every so often the gem cutters are ordered to decorate random items, and that's perfectly fine by me.
And yes, the fungal tree farm is growing slowly, but surely. Should be able to have a steady supply of fungal wood within the next 2 years or so.
You have NO idea how many pots of prepared food I have lying around. Sometimes I give to the traders a 90-200% profit. Even the elves. That's how much Prepared food I have. 'Course there's no such thing as too much. Cooks work round the clock processing the plants,meats and fish into yummy masterwork meals.

whenever i breached the caverns with one of my central stairways and open space is in the way, i mold the caverns to adapt to my fortress and not the other way around. Temporary safety hatches are built to prevent cavern creatures from going up (as well as forgotten beasts) and stairs are constructed down to the cavern floor and walled.
in my current fort i've taken over cavern lvl1 and changed the landscape there by walling off and flooring an entire magma tube for magma forging (it took a couple thousand stone blocks), but its all contained and secure, i even built ramps around the new area so creatures can move across it as if it were a normal cavern. I might flood it later too so plants can grow on it, but im too lazy to do it now.

Your dwarfy feats have inspired me greatly to do the same. I'll have to take some time to plan though. The breach revealed a hole going down to the next cavern. Probably gonna floor it over in the next 5 years or so, followed by a cavern sealing wall in the next 8. Long-term for me.

[sealclubber]

Damn yo. That's a shitload of pathfinding to process. What's your FPS on average?

[zzedar]

Edit: Okay, just reread this post, and wow, do I sound like a jerk. I was in kind of a bad mood when I wrote it, but I really shouldn't have taken it out on you.

Yes, the dwarf-hours spent is a pain, but I see no better way to flaunt and increase the wealth of my fortress.

I can think of several, depending on what materials you have available. Gems, mechanisms... if you are going to use steel, there are better ways than bins. Weapons and armor, for instance -- that'll train up your armorsmiths and weaponsmiths, rather than the much less useful blacksmiths. Or, again, goblets: for a given amount of steel, you can get nine times as many goblets as bins, and goblets have the same base value as bins...

On the plus side, the metalworkers have become quite skilled, and put out a masterwork every so often. I often do other things while I let DF run in the background, so the dwarf-hours spent to me are perfectly fine. 700 bins of either iron, wood or steel man! I like to collect gems. Every so often the gem cutters are ordered to decorate random items, and that's perfectly fine by me.

I'm noticing a lot of plurals here. How many metalworkers, jewelers, etc. do you have? It shouldn't be more than a couple, unless you've had time to get large numbers up to legendary skill. Not only will they produce higher quality works, they'll also work much faster (with beds, at least, a legendary +5 carpenter can produce about twelve beds in the time it takes a no-skill dwarf to make one, not counting the time it takes to haul the logs)

You have NO idea how many pots of prepared food I have lying around. Sometimes I give to the traders a 90-200% profit. Even the elves. That's how much Prepared food I have. 'Course there's no such thing as too much.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. (Edit: Geez, zzedar of the past, what's your problem?) You want quality, not quantity. Increasing quantity is additive; increasing quality is multiplicative. (Well, there is one sort of quantity that's multiplicative here: increasing the skill of your growers has a multiplicative effect on stack size. But the number of stacks doesn't need to be high).

There are three multiplicative effect to take advantage of when it comes to food: cooking skill, material multiplier, and farming skill. With legendary farmers, your prepared meals will likely be too large to fit in pots. With careful stockpile management and kitchen settings, you can ensure that your cooks use high-value ingredients. Cooking skill is doubly multiplicative: it increases quality of the meal and of each ingredient, and it increases speed at which meals are produced. What you want is not a situation where you have enough stacks of food to buy out everything useful -- what you want is a situation where your food is good enough that a single stack can buy out everything useful.

Another thing to keep in mind here is the way multipliers stack: a gold masterwork is 360 times as valuable as a no-quality item made of mudstone. That's an extreme example, of course, but you get the idea.

As for impressing traders... well, look at it this way. Which would you find more impressive, someone who owns a painting worth a million dollars, or someone who owns a million posters worth a dollar apiece?

[Marceline]

I like the central staircase, and it's very expansive, which I'm a fan of. I tend to make my hospitals just one big room, but seeing your fort made me remember that the hospital zone isn't restricted by walls, so you've given me some inspiration for my next update to my fort's healthcare system  . The layout of individual rooms seems pretty repetitive though, and it does bug me that all the bedrooms are interconnected (who would want random people barging through their room while they slept?). I'd recommend keeping your industries/stockpiles in their own designated sections for the sake of both efficiency and visual organization. The masses of goblin corpses are a very nice touch. Overall, you have a solid fort. I'm eager to see it develop and grow in further updates.

[DWC]

With the bedroom layout, I actually like that style, of rooms connected to rooms without the wasteful decadence of hallways and corridors. Many underground structures IRL use series of functional rooms with no hallways to maximize useful space.

I use 5x5 rooms linked together for all offices and noble rooms, as sort of a government complex. Co-workers are free to stroll through their fellow bureaucrat's office spaces like in a real workplace.

However, I don't use grids of rooms for stockpiles or bedrooms. It looks like dorfs would literally be climbed over while they sleep by dwarves going to their own quarters.

[jonanlsh]

Edit: Okay, just reread this post, and wow, do I sound like a jerk. I was in kind of a bad mood when I wrote it, but I really shouldn't have taken it out on you.

Yes, the dwarf-hours spent is a pain, but I see no better way to flaunt and increase the wealth of my fortress.

I can think of several, depending on what materials you have available. Gems, mechanisms... if you are going to use steel, there are better ways than bins. Weapons and armor, for instance -- that'll train up your armorsmiths and weaponsmiths, rather than the much less useful blacksmiths. Or, again, goblets: for a given amount of steel, you can get nine times as many goblets as bins, and goblets have the same base value as bins...

On the plus side, the metalworkers have become quite skilled, and put out a masterwork every so often. I often do other things while I let DF run in the background, so the dwarf-hours spent to me are perfectly fine. 700 bins of either iron, wood or steel man! I like to collect gems. Every so often the gem cutters are ordered to decorate random items, and that's perfectly fine by me.

I'm noticing a lot of plurals here. How many metalworkers, jewelers, etc. do you have? It shouldn't be more than a couple, unless you've had time to get large numbers up to legendary skill. Not only will they produce higher quality works, they'll also work much faster (with beds, at least, a legendary +5 carpenter can produce about twelve beds in the time it takes a no-skill dwarf to make one, not counting the time it takes to haul the logs)

You have NO idea how many pots of prepared food I have lying around. Sometimes I give to the traders a 90-200% profit. Even the elves. That's how much Prepared food I have. 'Course there's no such thing as too much.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. (Edit: Geez, zzedar of the past, what's your problem?) You want quality, not quantity. Increasing quantity is additive; increasing quality is multiplicative. (Well, there is one sort of quantity that's multiplicative here: increasing the skill of your growers has a multiplicative effect on stack size. But the number of stacks doesn't need to be high).

There are three multiplicative effect to take advantage of when it comes to food: cooking skill, material multiplier, and farming skill. With legendary farmers, your prepared meals will likely be too large to fit in pots. With careful stockpile management and kitchen settings, you can ensure that your cooks use high-value ingredients. Cooking skill is doubly multiplicative: it increases quality of the meal and of each ingredient, and it increases speed at which meals are produced. What you want is not a situation where you have enough stacks of food to buy out everything useful -- what you want is a situation where your food is good enough that a single stack can buy out everything useful.

Another thing to keep in mind here is the way multipliers stack: a gold masterwork is 360 times as valuable as a no-quality item made of mudstone. That's an extreme example, of course, but you get the idea.

As for impressing traders... well, look at it this way. Which would you find more impressive, someone who owns a painting worth a million dollars, or someone who owns a million posters worth a dollar apiece?

Salutations, good Zzedar! Your feedback is what I asked for, and even though your tone might have been jerkish in the slight, I'm all for it! We're here to give feedback anyway. All my cooks are legendary, and have been for some time. I'm not really concerned with logistics in this fort of mine. My fortress trades in clothing mostly, most of which is scavenged from the goblins and trolls that come to die at the front gates of my fortress. The fort does produce clothing of its own, mostly pig tail clothes dyed blue and other shades of purchased dyes.
With a little consideration, I have been slightly wasteful with steel. Mostly in the early days I let my masons play with magnetite, being that it was so abundant, and I traded in magnetite crafts. Sure, the value of them magnetite and limonite crafts mostly topped off around 2k dwarfbucks, but then food was my only problem back in the beginning, as well as wood. My armorsmiths only produce as much steel weaponry and steel armor as needed by the army. Some of the dwarfs opted for other weapons, iron whips and scimitars, and I let them keep their weapons. The rest wield mostly superior steel battle axes and complete sets of steel armor.

Most recently, a fey mood produced an artifact steel war hammer. Im loathe to break the (almost) 100% axedwarf military, but I suppose now would be a good time to make another military squad for cavern defense.

I like the central staircase, and it's very expansive, which I'm a fan of. I tend to make my hospitals just one big room, but seeing your fort made me remember that the hospital zone isn't restricted by walls, so you've given me some inspiration for my next update to my fort's healthcare system  . The layout of individual rooms seems pretty repetitive though, and it does bug me that all the bedrooms are interconnected (who would want random people barging through their room while they slept?). I'd recommend keeping your industries/stockpiles in their own designated sections for the sake of both efficiency and visual organization. The masses of goblin corpses are a very nice touch. Overall, you have a solid fort. I'm eager to see it develop and grow in further updates.

The central staircase is heavily inspired by Towersoared, a fort of epic proportions by a player named Battlecat. Towersoared's thread http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60827.0 will provide you with a few days of dwarfy entertainment. The shaft is inspired by Zion from the Matrix reloaded, a shaft that delves straight into the earth with a vaulted chamber. I may have failed to replicate Zion, so I affectionally call the new fortress the "Zion shaft".

With the bedroom layout, I actually like that style, of rooms connected to rooms without the wasteful decadence of hallways and corridors. Many underground structures IRL use series of functional rooms with no hallways to maximize useful space.

I use 5x5 rooms linked together for all offices and noble rooms, as sort of a government complex. Co-workers are free to stroll through their fellow bureaucrat's office spaces like in a real workplace.

However, I don't use grids of rooms for stockpiles or bedrooms. It looks like dorfs would literally be climbed over while they sleep by dwarves going to their own quarters.

Well, before the bedrooms were dug out, I tried other designs, which gave me a massive headache. I tried a fractal, I tried rows of 3x3 rooms separated by statue room hallways, but I ran out of space. In the end, I decided that the current design sorta resembled a flower, and it allowed for space for future expansion, which is currently being carried out, now that I've started to receive migrants again, presumably lured in by the barrels and pots of prepared food being exported to the home kingdom.

Damn yo. That's a shitload of pathfinding to process. What's your FPS on average?

For some time I had no idea how to enable the FPS counter. I play on a Mac, and I think I'm killing my motherboard with the game. 80ºC is not a temperature you want to keep your computer at for hours. Then I checked my FPS, and realized I've been at 8-10 FPS for about the last 10 years, and there was much rejoicing.


Thanks for your feedback guys! I'm slowly juggling DF with school, and I'll try to implement some improvements to my fortress! I'll post an updated DFMA link of my fortress when the next Late Autumn of Year 21 or 22 arrives! Stay tuned!

[zzedar]

All my cooks are legendary, and have been for some time.

What about the inputs? What are you making your meals out of? And how big are they? You mentioned that they fit in food pots, which surprised me.

You have DFHack? I would be willing to bet that the temperature bug is a large part of your FPS problems. Stable-temp (and probably also clean and fat-dwarves) will likely improve it enormously.

[jonanlsh]

Thanks for reading! The newest DFMA update has been uploaded for your viewing pleasure!

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11681-polishseals

The manager seems to be slightly disgruntled at all the orders for clothing manufacturing I have issued as of late. The dwarves have been nauseated by the sun post-siege clothing and armor scavenge. 1 sworddwarf died in single combat with a goblin. Copper axe to the skull, yeesh. He has been entombed in the complex, with some of his worldly possessions. May he rest in peace till the end of time.

All my cooks are legendary, and have been for some time.

What about the inputs? What are you making your meals out of? And how big are they? You mentioned that they fit in food pots, which surprised me.

You have DFHack? I would be willing to bet that the temperature bug is a large part of your FPS problems. Stable-temp (and probably also clean and fat-dwarves) will likely improve it enormously.

The meals appear to be made mostly of plump helmets, quarry bush leaves, and 2 other random ingredients. Plump helmets are not in short supply in Delethurvad (15k++)

[zzedar]

The meals appear to be made mostly of plump helmets, quarry bush leaves, and 2 other random ingredients. Plump helmets are not in short supply in Delethurvad (15k++)

If you're going for value (which you may not be), it's worth focusing on having at least one highly valuable food in each meal -- flour or sugar or syrup or something. Meal stacks multiply the value of each ingredient, not by the quantity of that ingredient, but by the total number of all ingredients, so this creates very valuable stacks.