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[Leonidas]

I'm experimenting with an open-concept fortress: I'm mining out enormous spaces without any walls and just sticking workshops and stockpiles along the edges of enormous hallways.  It's working great so far, and I'm wondering how far I can take it.

Do defined rooms need walls?  What would happen if I just spread some beds out over an empty floor, arranged so that their room-definition diamonds didn't overlap?  If I'm reading the wiki right, then I could give everybody nice five-square bedrooms, all packed together like sardines with no space wasted for walls.

And once I've handled the defined rooms this way, is there really any point to walls at all, besides miasma containment, fluid flow, fortifications, and channeling attackers?

[Tamren]

Yes, if you have no walls you can not control where your dwarves go. One common tactic for sieges and demon attacks is to sequentially lock doors to channel your civilians away from the fight.

Also, if you get a bezerk dwarf he will make a beeline for what he wants to destroy if you have no walls, there is no way to trap or delay him.

[THLawrence]

Walls help control the room definitions and make the fortress look nicer, however besides channeling civilians and the reasons that you mentioned there is no reason to have walls if you can build it correctly. Also they help stop cave-ins but you probably have supports or the like.

Can you post a map on the archive. I want to see this fort. You can control rooms with statues, doors, windows and other blocking objects so if you really want to just include these to help define the room you want.

[Btwilley]

I made a fort like that once. Each area I considered a Vault, they where generally 20+x20+, and there was one for each aspect. Farming, crafting, ect.

It worked well till I made a mistake when digging out an area and caveins started happening.

The easyesy way to do it is carve a 6x horrizontal line, then a ^x vert line with 1 spot. I use channels to restrict access to places, but after a while I got bored and abbandoned the fort. There was just no chalange in not restrictung rooms. I had something like 10 crafts shops destroying rocks, and just massive ammts of workshops and stockpiles.

[Capntastic]

Citizen of Erl was the first DF player to completely mine every tile, save adamantium, out of a mountain.   This was over a year ago (I have an image macro commemorating the fact!)

Just imagine what that cagey goofball will do now that the entire world is mineable!

[Arkan15]

quote:Originally posted by Capntastic:
<STRONG>Citizen of Erl was the first DF player to completely mine every tile, save adamantium, out of a mountain.   This was over a year ago (I have an image macro commemorating the fact!)

Just imagine what that cagey goofball will do now that the entire world is mineable!</STRONG>

Do you have an image of that fortress?

[John]

I'm actually working on the same thing.

My plan is to mine every tile, build supports, bridge the entire chasm over, bridge the cave river and outside river, pave the entire outside, and then bridge the entire magma river.  Then, I plan on attaching every support to a lever - and pulling the lever.

I expect the game to crash at that point.

So far I have the entire mountain mined to the chasm, and I'm working on the other side of the chasm right now.  Once you have five or six legendary miners, the work goes very quickly.

I've found that you have relatively few problems using this setup, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do when a siege shows up.  Cry, probably, because I'll have to take on the goblins mano e mano.

[Arkan15]

quote:Originally posted by John:
<STRONG>
I've found that you have relatively few problems using this setup, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do when a siege shows up.  Cry, probably, because I'll have to take on the goblins mano e mano.</STRONG>

I think you mean dwarfo a goblino.

[Turgid Bolk]

I could have sworn I saw a similiar map at the Map Archive. I forget the name and uploader, though.

[BurnedToast]

I was planning on doing this, as for goblins I had planned to either pick a map without them, or to leave the very front of the cliff face and just lock everyone inside. I was also planning on trying to sell the whole mountain (in the form of toys and mugs) to the humans, till I realized I'd end up with probibly around 100,000 stones (just the top half of the chasm -> magma mined out gave around 10,000) which would take FOREVER to sell.

I decided not to because 1. I'm lazy and 2. in the new version I'm going to (try and) mine out the whole mountain and use the stones to rewall the whole original outside. reverse mountain ftw.

[Btwilley]

On my current fort it's starting tp look like I built past a second river on the map. The whole edge-river is being deconstructed then over the river there is a few spots for flood plain then a wall with catapults behind it. I plan on making it look like irrigation after everythings done. (Think a castle with a lot fo farms on the outside) This will also leace chutes for sieges to come down giving the catapults easier targets.

[Leonidas]

Mining the whole mountain is a nice stunt, but what I'm trying is for simple economic efficiency.  Without walls I can cram all my buildings and dwarves into much smaller spaces, which means that all the paths become dramatically shorter.  Everybody spends a lot less time walking.

I see this as something of a flaw in the game, because it isn't particularly aesthetic to have one giant room crammed with beds, tables, workshops, stockpiles, jails, etc. all sitting right next to each other.  But under the game as it stands right now, having as few walls as possible seems like the most economically efficient setup.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I'd just like to see dwarves move slower as they clamber over junk, like their bedroom furniture or stockpiles, and respect bedroom privacy -- avoid walking through doors that are part of owned rooms if possible, and get bad thoughts from people using their private rooms as a hallway.

[Turgid Bolk]

Toady has said he'll make dwarves want some open floor space, at some point. I wouldn't be surprised if he made them want some privacy too, somehow.

Also, be sure to watch out for noise.

[Leonidas]

Yes, noise should be the big reason for walls.  I'm sure that measuring noise propagation would involve quite a lot of processing power.  It would be like a miasma cloud continuously erupting from every active workshop.