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[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.

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.
now.

Sure it's possible but it usually conflicts with any plans I may have had. I'd prefer to just wall it and floor it but this is an issue for someone with major smooth and engrave OCD.

[jonanlsh]

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.

hmm. last I checked, getting flour/sugar/syrup into meals was quite the pain. Also, how high would the value of your optimal prepared food pot be? 20k dwarfbucks or 50k dwarfbucks?  Most of my Prepared Food Pots top out around 20k dwarfbucks, some hit 28k dwarfbucks. Thanks!

[zzedar]

hmm. last I checked, getting flour/sugar/syrup into meals was quite the pain.

Easily solved by setting up stockpiles to give to your kitchen (if you do this, you'll want to set up a non-cooking kitchen just to render fat, most likely)

Also, how high would the value of your optimal prepared food pot be? 20k dwarfbucks or 50k dwarfbucks?  Most of my Prepared Food Pots top out around 20k dwarfbucks, some hit 28k dwarfbucks. Thanks!

Well, lessee. Max stack size for dwarven syrup is 25, which is also the max stack size for quarry bush leaves. So a stack of masterfully prepared roasts of masterfully minced syrup, masterfully minced syrup, masterfully minced syrup, and masterfully minced quarry bush leaves would be worth a total of (12*10+12*20*3+12*5)*100= 90,000. Of course, even legendary+5 cooks aren't going to actually make everything masterfully in most meals.

It would have a stack size of 100, far too large to fit in a pot. It's probably possible to do better than that if you also cook some meat in the meal

[jonanlsh]

hmm. last I checked, getting flour/sugar/syrup into meals was quite the pain.

Easily solved by setting up stockpiles to give to your kitchen (if you do this, you'll want to set up a non-cooking kitchen just to render fat, most likely)

Also, how high would the value of your optimal prepared food pot be? 20k dwarfbucks or 50k dwarfbucks?  Most of my Prepared Food Pots top out around 20k dwarfbucks, some hit 28k dwarfbucks. Thanks!

Well, lessee. Max stack size for dwarven syrup is 25, which is also the max stack size for quarry bush leaves. So a stack of masterfully prepared roasts of masterfully minced syrup, masterfully minced syrup, masterfully minced syrup, and masterfully minced quarry bush leaves would be worth a total of (12*10+12*20*3+12*5)*100= 90,000. Of course, even legendary+5 cooks aren't going to actually make everything masterfully in most meals.

It would have a stack size of 100, far too large to fit in a pot. It's probably possible to do better than that if you also cook some meat in the meal

that's wayy higher than I expected. thanks for the feedback. currently i used dfhack to improve FPS massively. the entrance atom smasher is currently being put to work destroying extra clothing, corpses and remains for FPS improvement.

[EDIT]: The DFMA for Year 22 is up! http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11686-polishseals

[zzedar]

Why are the chalk and iron mines done in corridors rather than a big rectangle?

[jonanlsh]

Why are the chalk and iron mines done in corridors rather than a big rectangle?

improves efficiency. a dug tile reveales the 8 adjacent tiles right? i can't be bothered to do other more complicated methods, so i just dig corridors with 2 tiles in between parallel corridors, reveals the most tiles for the least effort and planning. then when I find valuable ore veins I just do manual designation

[zzedar]

Ah, it's exploratory? Looking for anything in particular?

[DWC]

Corridors only 2 tiles apart is too much. The smallest vein in the ground is a gem cluster of ~3x3. So putting 4 spaces between each corridor will catch everything and then you can actually use the old mining tunnels for bedrooms or storage or something useful later on. You don't need to see every single tile, just having a gem cluster exposed on one wall is all you need.

If you are just looking for ore veins, a single tunnel running through the middle of the embark tiles will generally catch everything.

[jonanlsh]

Ah, it's exploratory? Looking for anything in particular?

mostly coal. Coal is the only thing that I'm willing to wreck my fortress's architecture for. You can never have enough coal.

Corridors only 2 tiles apart is too much. The smallest vein in the ground is a gem cluster of ~3x3. So putting 4 spaces between each corridor will catch everything and then you can actually use the old mining tunnels for bedrooms or storage or something useful later on. You don't need to see every single tile, just having a gem cluster exposed on one wall is all you need.

If you are just looking for ore veins, a single tunnel running through the middle of the embark tiles will generally catch everything.

Interesting. I had no idea. Maybe next time I do exploratory mining.

[slothen]

My harshest judgement is that the central feature of your fortress, the open-air double-helix ramp, is completely decorative and seems to play no role in the operations or design of the rest of the fortress.  Your fortress should be built around the special feature, but instead it looks like you built a nondescript, big-flat-squares, 1-z-level-per-function sort of fortress and then punched a big hole through the central staircase.

1.  4x central stairs make the helix completely redundant, dwarves don't even use it.
2.  Central Helix is caravan accessible, yet the trade depot is still near the entrance of your fort instead of farther in which would at least show the traders your awesomeness.
3.  No apparent means for prisoners/invaders/nobles to be dropped from the top of the shaft
4.  Shaft ends rather suddenly with the dirt layer instead of being gloriously open to the heavens or topped a with a constructed edifice/dome.
5.  Fortress outer defense is very basic drawbridge+lever+elite militia.  No internal layers of security at all.  Doing it this way is a gameplay choice as much as a design choice, but I think addressing this offers an opportunity to make your fort more interesting.  A fact about central staircases is they often doom your fort if the outer defenses are breached.  An open-air, constructed helix in place of a central stair is much the same, but by nature you have some creative options.  A) make the central up-down stairs separable from the spiral everywhere except the bottom, so that with a flick of a switch invaders would have to path down one of the main spirals instead of taking the shortcuts your dwarves use.  B) weapon/dodge traps on the edges of the spiral, take advantage of that nice open space.  You can also use puppy-bomb traps instead of weapon traps so you can cause invaders to fall off without doing it 'too cheap.'  C) Drawbridge leading to the central ramps.  D) panic-lever that isolates the main spiral from the working/living areas of your fortress, except at the end/bottom where there are additional defenses.  You can use retracting bridges, grates, or selective collapses for this.
6.  Needs more features, stupid-dwarf-tricks, etc.

Good job on the catacombs.  If you've gone to the trouble of building tombs ahead of time, go ahead and assign them to all your important dwarves before any of them actual dies.  You can't assign rooms afterward.

Bedrooms are uninspired.  Best would be to cluster them over 2-3 z-levels of spiral, or over say 6 z-levels of one quarter of the spiral, with nice rooms w/ windows overlooking the interior.

Don't give up!  You've done a lot of work and have a stable, large fortress to show for it.  Better to use that workforce to do what you want than to start over from scratch over second thoughts in the design.  Plus, you didn't dig out that huge double helix for nothing... did you?

[jonanlsh]

My harshest judgement is that the central feature of your fortress, the open-air double-helix ramp, is completely decorative and seems to play no role in the operations or design of the rest of the fortress.  Your fortress should be built around the special feature, but instead it looks like you built a nondescript, big-flat-squares, 1-z-level-per-function sort of fortress and then punched a big hole through the central staircase.

Central feature eh? Well... only for the time being. Something big is already being constructed, I'm just leaving it out of the DFMA for now .
The dwarves do use the double helix, but mostly only on the upper 2 floors and the bedroom floor. The high traffic designations forces them to use the helix on occasion. But yeah, I had a goblin master thief sneak past the barracks and get spotted on the second basement. It was fun.

1.  4x central stairs make the helix completely redundant, dwarves don't even use it.
2.  Central Helix is caravan accessible, yet the trade depot is still near the entrance of your fort instead of farther in which would at least show the traders your awesomeness.
3.  No apparent means for prisoners/invaders/nobles to be dropped from the top of the shaft
4.  Shaft ends rather suddenly with the dirt layer instead of being gloriously open to the heavens or topped a with a constructed edifice/dome.
5.  Fortress outer defense is very basic drawbridge+lever+elite militia.  No internal layers of security at all.  Doing it this way is a gameplay choice as much as a design choice, but I think addressing this offers an opportunity to make your fort more interesting.  A fact about central staircases is they often doom your fort if the outer defenses are breached.  An open-air, constructed helix in place of a central stair is much the same, but by nature you have some creative options.  A) make the central up-down stairs separable from the spiral everywhere except the bottom, so that with a flick of a switch invaders would have to path down one of the main spirals instead of taking the shortcuts your dwarves use.  B) weapon/dodge traps on the edges of the spiral, take advantage of that nice open space.  You can also use puppy-bomb traps instead of weapon traps so you can cause invaders to fall off without doing it 'too cheap.'  C) Drawbridge leading to the central ramps.  D) panic-lever that isolates the main spiral from the working/living areas of your fortress, except at the end/bottom where there are additional defenses.  You can use retracting bridges, grates, or selective collapses for this.
6.  Needs more features, stupid-dwarf-tricks, etc.

1. Adressed above, but thanks for the feedback. I'm gonna construct separate steel stairs that can be sealed off, and eventually remove the central staircases. Plus, it kinda looks ugly to me now.
2. Always knew it was caravan accessible, but I actually want to get trading done, than wait for an overloaded caravan to take 1 week to path into the ground floor Trade Depot.
3. I don't drop nobles. My baron is sensible, does work and furthermore, only mandates the production of coffins, helms or ballista ammo. Lovely fella. Prisoners are non-existent, and invaders are usually slain before they can be caged.
4. Kinda my only regret. Ah well, the upcoming mega-project is going to make up for that shortcoming.
Good job on the catacombs.  If you've gone to the trouble of building tombs ahead of time, go ahead and assign them to all your important dwarves before any of them actual dies.  You can't assign rooms afterward.
5. Traps along the entire length of the helix, along with strategically placed bridges for shaft-sealing, got it.

Bedrooms are uninspired.  Best would be to cluster them over 2-3 z-levels of spiral, or over say 6 z-levels of one quarter of the spiral, with nice rooms w/ windows overlooking the interior.

Really never crossed my mind while I was designing the shaft fortress. I just wanted a central feature that looked nice and allowed me to design separate floors for different purposes. But yeah, the 3rd and 4th basements are currently unused. Maybe magma smelters and a pump stack in the future.

Don't give up!  You've done a lot of work and have a stable, large fortress to show for it.  Better to use that workforce to do what you want than to start over from scratch over second thoughts in the design.  Plus, you didn't dig out that huge double helix for nothing... did you?

Hell no, that double helix looked nice at the time, but its gonna be weaponized eventually. Or when I can be bothered to get around to that .

Thanks for the feedback Slothen. I'll take it into consideration for future improvements to the fortress.