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[GrizzlyAdamz]

Hey dwarf mode discussion, question:

Do many of you maximize the number of z-levels your fort occupies?

Seeing as how it only takes one movement to go up or down stairs, it seems as if the way to minimize the distance your dwarves have to travel, and thus improve their productivity, would be to spread one's fortress vertically instead of horizontally whenever one has the chance.

I myself have only used this principle nominally, instead opting for pretty shapes and grandiose floor plans that sap my dwarves' time. Is this the norm?

[Hans Lemurson]

I do like compactness, but I also like being able to see major portions of my fortress all on one screen.  I usually have 4 levels: Entrance/guardhouse, Food/Housing, Workshops, and Stockpiles.

[Geldrin]

Of course!
Dwarves get unhappy toughts if they feel bad about the draft, so vertical design has practical and performance aspects.

I usually make separate levels for the great halls (usually 2 or 3 levels high, forming balconies on the upper levels), a multi-level bedroom section, one level for food/booze/plant processing, one for textile industry, one for masonry, one for the metal industry, and a separate prisoner block.
All quaters have several stockpiles

I move the barracks/archery ranges/weapon stockpiles near to entrance, so I consider the military quarter as a separate part of the fort.

I also make a central chute for dumping garbage near the staircases, piercing trough all levels, so there's a relatively short walking distance to the nearest dump zone, regardless wherever they are.

So yeah, I like multi-level design. It makes you plan more carefully.

[vanatteveldt]

I found that once you get the basics of DF down getting a fort to run "good enough" is not a great challenge. So, you can pick for yourself whether to choose aesthetics or efficiency.

I like having stockpiles in the z levels adjacent to a workshop (e.g. input above, output below). This is efficient but I also find that stockpiles are "ugly" next to workshops, dining halls etc. Also, a level dedicated to stockpiles makes it easier to do visual inspection of stocks (since the z->stocks screen sucks pretty badly...).

I am currently working on a fortress (that will be) arranged around a circular shaft of about 30 tiles diameter, with a central staircase in the middle of the shaft. The fortress will be compartmentalized with the only access between compartments via the central staircase. Barracks will be placed on floating platforms around the staircase.The whole fortress is set in a sort of peninsula formed by two rivers, with the bottom part almost cirucular with a diameter of around 30-35.  On living/workshop levels, there is a (semi-)circular or ring road around the shaft, with living quarters between the road and the shaft, and workshops between the shaft and the cliff, with staircases leading up/down to dedicated workshops. For efficiency reasons the workshops also have their own connection to the central shaft. Eventually I will open the shaft to the sun

Here you can see the floor plan for the first workshop/living level. On the left is the dining hall, with a semicirucal road and 3x1 rooms dug out. I will probably make nobles quarters outside the ring on the right as there is more room there

Due to sheer luck careful planning, there is just enough room between the shaft and the cliffs for rooms, a wide road, and a workshop room with enough space to walk around.



Here you can see the stockpiles and the 'hauler's entrance'. 




This is the only soil layer, where you can nicely see the second rivier. I think I will dam it at some point and channel it further down, and divert the largest part to of the water waterfalls around the central shaft, but we'll see what happens.

A nice feature of planning a large to-be-channeled out shaft is that it allowed me to create a temporary fortress in the shaft, so I don't have ugly pre-modern relics hanging around on the map. This is the farm and foodstuffs layer and has the inside pens and central stockpile.

(You can also see that the farms don't match the pattern, as I only started thinking about the design after the first couple rooms were dug. But that is not so bad as I would want to make a stone inner wall for the shaft anyway...)



Here you see the stone layer directly beneath the soil, which is also temporary, with living/office in the top left, smelters in bottom left, and stone workers in the bottom right. As workshops come online in the lower layer they will be moved there, and as soon as the 'temporary' layers are empty they will be channeled out.



Is this design efficient? Pretty sure it's not. If I assign dwarfs sleeping quarters close to 'their' workshops it won't be too bad, but once more compartments come online they will spend a lot of time walking from and to the central axle. But I like the way it looks / I imagine it will at some point look..



Open design questions:
1) do I cover the whole shaft in glass?
2) What to do with the bottom of the pit? magma would be dwarfy and a nice way to dispose of goblins and garbage... but waterfalls around the edge of the shaft and through the central staircase would also be nice. Maybe I will do both, with 'gutters' to collect most of the water and annual cleaning to get any obsidian out. Maybe even make it so that I can periodically obsidianize, channel, and refill the whole thing to get a steady supply of obsidian as well.
3) windows looking out to the shaft or grated balconies to collect some lovely mist?

[Repseki]

Cool design for sure.

I usually dig out vertically over 6 - 10 z levels, depending on what I hit or how I'm embarking. Usually with a central staircase that just goes to the surface, into a small structure where my military spar between the main gate and stairs. Farms and Kitchen are near the top, channeling and then covering areas for refuse or above ground farming. Then a few levels for Crafts, Stonework, Cloth, Leather, Metal stuff, and the stockpiles above/below them. Then I'll stick a big hall and the hospital at the bottom. Housing spans as many levels as it needs slightly off to the side, using 2x2 rooms in groups of 6, with 24 a floor, with up/down stairs as access. Then a Depot somewhere.

It's kind of a lazy design, but it works, and my brain just can't deal with abandoned early areas while the fort is dug out.

I'm about to start a fort where I am going to try and use separated areas for the different professions, sorta like your compartments, but not sure how I'll do it just yet.

[Pinstar]

Hey dwarf mode discussion, question:

Do many of you maximize the number of z-levels your fort occupies?

Seeing as how it only takes one movement to go up or down stairs, it seems as if the way to minimize the distance your dwarves have to travel, and thus improve their productivity, would be to spread one's fortress vertically instead of horizontally whenever one has the chance.

I myself have only used this principle nominally, instead opting for pretty shapes and grandiose floor plans that sap my dwarves' time. Is this the norm?

I have a preferred floor design that I repeat across Z levels all centered around my 3x3 staircase.

It is four 9X9 rooms connected by short 3 tile wide hallways from each direction from the stairs. I like the 9x9 blocks because they are so useful.
One 9x9 block can:

House a workshop with PLENTY of space for both its inputs and outputs
House several workshops that need to work closely with one another (smelter/blacksmith) along with inputs/outputs
House 7 dwarves in humble living quarters (5 3x1 rooms and 2 2x2 rooms).
Make a fine dining room
Make a single noble very happy
Make a very solid storage area
Make a good barracks
Have ample room for fields and seeds to keep a farmer busy
House an indoor trade depot with plenty of storage to have my eventual trade-goods delivered to.



Now I just need to figure out that utility that lets you quickly plop down designations so I can build my fort faster.

[acetech09]

Now I just need to figure out that utility that lets you quickly plop down designations so I can build my fort faster.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Macro



I've designed max-efficiency forts inside cubes of up/down stairs (really saves on travel time and pathfinding FPS), but I still design most of my forts with wide open hallways, dining halls, workshops, etc. on 1 or 2 levels, so I can see it all at once.

[vanatteveldt]

I have a preferred floor design that I repeat across Z levels all centered around my 3x3 staircase.

It is four 9X9 rooms connected by short 3 tile wide hallways from each direction from the stairs. I like the 9x9 blocks because they are so useful.
One 9x9 block can:

House a workshop with PLENTY of space for both its inputs and outputs
House several workshops that need to work closely with one another (smelter/blacksmith) along with inputs/outputs
House 7 dwarves in humble living quarters (5 3x1 rooms and 2 2x2 rooms).
Make a fine dining room
Make a single noble very happy
Make a very solid storage area
Make a good barracks
Have ample room for fields and seeds to keep a farmer busy
House an indoor trade depot with plenty of storage to have my eventual trade-goods delivered to.

Edit: I thought you meant 11x11, which is the block created by two shift+moves, which I like because it is easy to designate even without a macro. I was confused and messed up my post, so changed the numbers

11x11 is  convenient and efficient. When I do 11x11 blocks I generally have 3x3 staircases at each junction, plus a single staircase in the middle of the block.  The 11x11 can be divided into 4 5x5 workshops with a wall in the center, which are easy to wall up in case of a failed mood and can access storage above/below via the stair in the middle of the block.

For 11x11 housing I like the "Living Pods" from the wiki (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.31:Bedroom_design), alternating 16 bedroom levels without acess with 11 bedroom levels with a single access corridor. The 'lobby' can hold some statues etc.

A single compromise to aesthetics can be to have the central staircases in a 5x5 room by cutting one corner tile from every 11x11 block, this is actually quite pretty when smoothed; but the most efficient pathwise is to use the corners for doors since diagonal movement is generally the fastest.

[Snaake]

My "basic room size" has been 11x11 for a looong time, because that's what you get with enter, 2 shift-arrowkey presses to the other corner, enter. Fits eg. 9 farm plots at 3x3 (with seed stockpile in the # mark left between them), or workshops with a similar arrangement, or 3 workshops along a middle, with input+output stockpiles. Also can fit eg. a kennel (if I build one) and three 5x5 pastures for pigs, my breeder dogs and puppies and (insert other non-grazer, non-egglayer of choice here), or 4 5x5 farm plots (may be necessary now, since I modded crop growth times up quite a lot). Or a 3-wide corridor with 12 1x3 bedrooms (or 3-wide corridor with 6 3x3 bedrooms, or 4 3x3 bedrooms plus 3x3 bedroom/office/dining room apartment for nobles). Good barrack size too.

tl;dr: 11x11 is easier and faster to designate than 9x9, can do all 9x9 can and more.


On the other I'm trying to get a bit more variety into my designs, so it's not all 11x11 squares.
My current fort has the following around a central staircase:
- surface has walls, drawbridges, water moat, grazers outside fort, barracks, trade depot, beekeeping on roof above trade depot, trash, butcher, surface farms,archery barracks on roof above barracks, a walkway with fortifications on Z+1, will have a tower extending up from my main stairwell
- Z-1 has surface plant seed stockpile cellar, which also gives access to the basement of my walls, mainly has some levers to control draining/filling of my moats on both sides of the river (which my fort straddles). The river itself also has a drawbridge dam now
- 1 soil level just above aquifer: farms, butcher, XSocksX stockpiles, breeder dogs, pigs, poultry, kitchens, stills
- "main" floor: noble quarters, dining hall, hospital, childcare room
- main crafting level: room A: bone and similar, leather; B: Wood products, including ash/charcoal; C: Stonecrafters, masons, mechanic; D: temporary ore stockpile, will be something else later (gems?
- product stockpile level for the crafting level (logs, boulders, bones etc. are stored in the workshop rooms themselves, wood and stone with minecart quantum stockpilers, although with autochop the wood one wouldn't be absolutely necessary)
- Textiles, floorplan is 4 leaves. One "half" of each leaf is a source stockpile, the other half + usually the 1st half of the next leaf is a product stockpile and the source stockpile for the next leaf, 2 workshops along the middle of each leaf. Plants come in to the NW, get processed to thread stockpile, auto-weaved to cloth, dyed, and made into clothes. Minimal barrels/bins, for instant viewing of stocks levels in each portion. Auto-weave + workflow for unsuspending "process plants"(into thread) are great, too bad workflow doesn't understand dyeing.
- I think 5 floors of 3x3 bedrooms, from top to bottom 2 bedroom floors + bedroom lobby (all rooms are accessed via stairs) which also has my crypts off to the side + 3 more bedroom floors. Coffers/cabinets are/will be made of same material as the floor they're on (gabbro or orthoclase).
- Magma industries level is being cleared out at the moment.
- Magma plumbing. The magma will be in the shape of a rough ASCII-art dwarf face (eyes+beard+smiley mouth probably)!
- A couple of layers that have the jails (being furnished/water plumbing under construction), access area to 1st cavern, and will the top terminal for my automatic magma minecart route; dwarves will haul the magma minecarts from here, at least if it's only for workshops etc.
- lots of space down through cavern 2 down to cavern 3, still waiting on dwarves to dig drop chute for magma minecart route, haven't even designated impulse elevator back up yet
- at cavern 3/the magma sea, the magma minecart filling area is being cleared/engraved. I've dug out and am furnishing a barracks, all in blue since it's in a 10-tile diameter microcline pillar that runs through the 3rd cavern (about 20 tiles away from my main stairwell). The whole pillar may end up as a outpost tower, filled with barracks, ammo, booze, food, all the essentials to function as a "bug-out" location if need be. When I get around to it.

I built my bedrooms in ordinary stone, but my jails in marble. Heh.

[Cuddles]

I find that when in mountains I like going very deep and generally doing a skinny, tall fortress on 10-15 z-levels. However, when in aquifer maps I tend towards very shallow wide fortresses. I do find that it's optimal to put bedrooms in stone layers when possible because you can smooth and engrave the already existing stone rather than having to build walls.

[Pinstar]

You could be right, I could be talking 11X11. Didn't know about the shift-designate trick. I'll use that!

[Snaake]

You could be right, I could be talking 11X11. Didn't know about the shift-designate trick. I'll use that!

Shift-arrowkey works for pretty much every mode/menu that has a cursor. Shift-arrowkey actually moves the cursor 10 tiles I think, but with designations you also get the original tile, for e.g. 11x11 squares. 21, 31, 41, etc. can also be done with that, but I mainly use the longer lengths when planning out stuff to measure distances, or for corridors.
Forgot to mention that the 3-wide corridors + 12 1x3 bedrooms are also a fast design to designate with shift-arrowkey, as 3 tiles per bedroom + 1 tile per bedroom for door + 3-wide corridor = 11 tiles.
3-wide corridor going west (start from SE corner): enter, up, up, shift-left, enter
For bedrooms, start at eg. NW corner of the whole block, then enter, shift-down, enter, right, right, enter, shift-up, enter, right, right. Repeat 2 more times.

[Merendel]

I normaly have 5 main levels.  workshops go on the lowest level(leaves room for magma chambers below forges).  On the level above the workshops I have stockpiles for supplies the workshops need quantum stockpiled directly above the shop with a hatch covered stair leading up from the workshop to the pile.  each workshop is in its own 3x4 room so if I forbid the hatch I can easily seal off a workshop if needed (damn moody dwarfs needing things I dont have)  The level above that is the sleeping level.  This will usualy consist of a compact individual room design ranging from 1x1 to 1x3 depending on how large a fort I plan to make.  at the far ends of the coridors is where I put noble quarters, the useless blighters can walk a bit further than the dwarves that do something useful. Above sleeping quarters is the meeting halls and food/booze stockpiles, kitchens will normaly be next to those piles instead of down on the workshop level.
the 5th and final level is the entrance level.  Military barracks, the trade depot, farms(if in a soil layer) along with the brewery and plant stockpiles near the farms and my export goods stockpiles all go on this level.  While a central shaft leads through the lower 4 levels I tend to offset the access so I can install bridges to seal off the lower levels so the civies survive even if my military does not in the case of a fortress entrance breach.

[wierd]

Too many Z levels can actually decimate your FPS, as it caused DF to allocate considerably larger blocks of memory. Normally, sky that has nothing in it doesn't get allocated, and thus, does not get simulated. Same with deep earth that hasn't been revealed yet. Building a space elevator fortress can make for bad juju.

I try to keep my fortresses compact, and within 10z, at most.

[evictedSaint]

I've fallen into a self-standard design that I use for every fort (which I'm fairly certain is a bad thing).

z0: Entrance Level [Barricades, Depo, Fortifications, etc.]
z-1: Grand Hall Level [Dining Room, Food and Drink Storage, Food Workshops, Hospital, Barracks, Doctor and Kings Offices]
z-2: Dormitory Level [Individual Dwarf Rooms]
z-3: Workshop Level [One of Every Workshop, Raw and Finished Goods Storage]
z-4: Specialized Level [Optional Level; has Magma Workshops if I can get it.  Also Contains Well and Refuse Storage]
z-5: Noble Level [Manager, Captain, etc.]
z-6: Food Production Level [Farms, Seed Storage, Mill, Hen House.]
z-7: Justice Level [Sheriff, Hammerer, Jail Cells, and the optional Amontillado Cells]
z-8: Catacombs [Winding Catacombs and Tombs]

It tends to vary slightly per embark, but they're always connected via grand staircase.  I've also wondered about the viability of mining with up/down staircases, rather than [d]igging.  It'd provide easier access between level, but it would look ugly and be virtually impossible to seal off to quarantine different areas.