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[bigcalm]

Well, I think I'm starting to get reasonably competent!  I have a fort that's just going fantastically well - all industries are up and running, sieges are put down without a casualty (well, maybe a war dog or a kitten), and beasts are not a bother.  So, some questions for you all:

1) I have a caged dragon - she's in a chestnut cage, she's been expertly trained, what should I do with her?

2) I have an artifact door.  Where should I place it?  I'm thinking I place it at the bottom of the pump stack (see 5), so I have a dual access channel that's completely inaccessible unless I want it to be.

3) How do I encourage goblin sieges?  (I've had 2 so far, but they're too infrequent - maybe 1 every 2 years, I want their loot!)

4) I have a "bath", that is, a 2-3 deep layer of water that all dwarves have to cross before the main stairway to the caverns.  How do I get rid of all the blood that's sitting in the water now?  Do I need to?

5) I've been busily constructing the pump stack of doom (that is, 4-5 stacks of 30ish pumps from almost surface to lava with big places for pools in between).  Is this the best way to get lava to the surface?  (ignore lag as a problem for now).  It's almost complete but it's such a faff to do - is there a better way?

6) My pastures are currently above ground, should I relocate to caverns or build a (big) roof?

[Brewster]

1) Put her in a pit and throw goblins down for a snack.
2) Don't waste your door. Put it in your dining room, to make it legendary, or a nobles room.
3) Increase your created wealth.
4) Unable to without Dwarf Hack I believe... no need to really though.
5) http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Magma_piston
6) I personally dig in the dirt (so cave moss will grow) and place my animals there so they can graze and they are incased.

[Merendel]

One way to boost fortress wealth and therfor encurage sieges is to start mass engraving projects.  Set a few dwarves to smoothing and then engraving all your halls.  If you run out of those send them off to some big mined out area.   particularly once the engravers are legendary wealth will skyrocket with little effort on your part.   High quality armor armor and weapons also work wonders.

Pumpstacks are fine for moveing magma to the surface however several stacks may not really be the most resorce effecent method.  a pumpstack can move alot more lava than natural flow will feed to the botom of the stack, this is what slows them down.   You can probably move the same amount of lava with 1 stack with its input being force fed by 5 primer pumps pulling from different lava pools as you would building 5 full stacks and would take alot less power to keep runing.   Magma pistons also work but they can be a bit tricky to setup the first time and generaly wont be  faster than a pump stack in total magma moved.   They take a bit of time to reset after each cycle while the pump stack just keeps runing.  The advantage is a piston takes almost no resorces to setup and operate, just miners, some mechinisms and some rock for construction. well that and the FPS hit is minimal compaired to a magma pump stack.

Actualy one bit of clarification after rereading your post.  is your 5 towers of pumps from magma layer to surface or 5 stacks each filling a resivior that the next stack up draws from?  Its generaly better to have 1 solid stack than having several stacks just from a power distrabution standpoint unless finding a strait shot is impossible for whatever reason.

[itg]

1) If you have a crappy wooden artifact, you can use the dragon to set it on fire, and it will burn forever. It's great for garbage/prisoner disposal, or it could be part of your next death trap.
2) an artifact door is an indestructible barrier, so put it somewhere where you need to keep out building destroyers, and you'd like to be able to do it at a moment's notice. I like to use them for caverns.
3) As suggested, engraving everything is good for building wealth. Also, make trap components like spiked balls and serrated discs. High-quality trap components made from valuable materials are worth more than a lot of artifacts.
4) Don't worry, blood adds flavor.
5) Depends on what you're using it for. If it's just for magma forges closer to the surface, you'd be better off using minecarts. If it's for a magma death chamber or something similarly ambitious, a pump stack is the best way.
6) Underground pastures are usually safer. If safety isn't an issue, it's just a matter of taste.

[Garath]

most dragons are actually quite small, so they're kinda useless in a battle. The ones I caught and trained also had the bad habit of flaming at the wrong moment, either killing my own militia too, destroying a trap corridor or simply hitting just 1 out of 20 goblins. In general, they're more trouble than it's worth to deploy effectively in my opinion.

artifact door is one of the best, use it however you see fit. Building destroyers won't go past the door but instead stay outside trying to destroy it, no need to forbid it or otherwise close it to protect your pumpstack, but it does mean FB and such won't go anywhere else after spotting the door, so make sure you have some way to dispose of them or redirect them.

If you build a floor or something on a tile with a contaminant, the blood, vomit or whatever is gone. You'd need to repair the bathtub afterwards though

relocating underground is better in the long term in my opinion, as constructing an enclosure big enough for a good number of animals takes quite some stone. Not that that needs to be a problem, but if it contains 10.000 rock blocks (a 10x10 area with walls is about 140, so maybe 1.000 is more likely) it will start to impact the stone section in your stocks screen and fps at some point, more than digging out the same area.

[bigcalm]

> Actualy one bit of clarification after rereading your post.  is your 5 towers of pumps from magma layer to surface or 5 stacks each filling a resivior that the next stack up draws from?  Its generaly better to have 1 solid stack than having several stacks just from a power distrabution standpoint unless finding a strait shot is impossible for whatever reason.

It's a pump stack of 30ish, leading to a reservoir, then a pump stack of 30ish leading to a reservoir, then a pump stack of 30ish leading to a reservoir, etc.  It's not quite finished - about 20 more pumps needed in various places to reach the magma sea, plus sorting out of power-supply.  Each reservoir is progressively smaller as you go up.

A previous fort attempt to build another pump stack of doom led me to change my approach somewhat - a single stack seems extremely fragile.  Any screw up on my part (e.g. whoops used a non-magma safe block for that pump) or any monster that somehow gets into the pump stack and destroys one means the whole stack collapses.  Another experiment that involved adding gears/axles everywhere so I could have each pump on solid ground turned out to be even more of a faff and required stupid amounts of power.

So this is my new plan with smaller stacks and large reservoirs - note that some of the reservoirs for magma may be in useful places - e.g. cavern layers, and I may find use for forking and using the reservoir in those places in some instances.  I'm also intending that the pump stack is "sealed" once complete - as in, access will be available from top (in the fort) and bottom (possibly using the artifact door), and I'll have bridges to segment and protect each stack of 30.  This route can then be used as an "archer's alley" where if my main staircase is somehow rendered inaccessible I have the option to use the archer's alley to tunnel to an appropriate place, carve fortifications and solve the problem.

Could I build the roof out of clay?  "Collect clay" task seems to create clay without removing any of the scenery?

If I removed the water in the bath and -temporarily- put a bit of lava in there, would that destroy the blood?

Also, I've got a caged live rat (vermin) got from capture a live land animal task.  How do I get rid of it?  I can't seem to pit it!

I've started engraving everywhere (it was mostly smoothed already thank goodness), and I think the dragon is staying right where it is (in its own personal tower surrounded by cage traps) for now until I decide on what to do with it.  I'm also constructing the "monarchs chambers" with a lot of platinum goodies so hopefully that'll boost wealth a bit.

[jcochran]

Well, I think I'm starting to get reasonably competent!  I have a fort that's just going fantastically well - all industries are up and running, sieges are put down without a casualty (well, maybe a war dog or a kitten), and beasts are not a bother.  So, some questions for you all:

1) I have a caged dragon - she's in a chestnut cage, she's been expertly trained, what should I do with her?

I've caught a few dragons and war trained 'em and they universally seem worthless. Frankly, I've decided from now on to simply train 'em, then butcher 'em. They're more useful that way. Or perhaps you can sell it to a caravan.

2) I have an artifact door.  Where should I place it?  I'm thinking I place it at the bottom of the pump stack (see 5), so I have a dual access channel that's completely inaccessible unless I want it to be.

A good use for 'em has already been described earlier.

3) How do I encourage goblin sieges?  (I've had 2 so far, but they're too infrequent - maybe 1 every 2 years, I want their loot!)

Wealth. Lots and lots of wealth.

4) I have a "bath", that is, a 2-3 deep layer of water that all dwarves have to cross before the main stairway to the caverns.  How do I get rid of all the blood that's sitting in the water now?  Do I need to?

Make your bath self cleaning. Allow water in slowing on one side, and drain out the other. The walls will still stay dirty (unless you pave the bottom of the bath with a constructed floor and have a dwarf with the "cleaning" task and burrowed to stay there. But dirty walls won't hurt anything. As for needing to, that depends. If it's just blood, don't worry about it. If is forgotten beast stuff, then cleaning is a darn good idea. One design for a self cleaning "bath"

Code: [Select]

Z+0                    Just a simple 3 wide channel to leave a slope down at each end. It's wide than the N/S passage to both provide more water volume and to help even out the water flow.
####+++####
#▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼#
#.........#
#▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼#
####+++####

Z-1
#########################
#####▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲###########
#¢^+++++++++++++^┼#++++++
#####▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲####+######
#########################
The two pressure plates are to allow water in and water out. The one to the left is hooked up to a hatch cover to its immediate left and is set to trigger on 3/7 to 7/7 water.
The one on the right is hooked up to the door to its immediate right and set to trigger on 0/7 to 2/7 water. Additionally, an other lever (not shown) is hooked up to the same door. (That's because the pressure plate doesn't immediately open the door when first hooked up. Gotta throw the lever to start the process). There's a source of pressurized water coming in from the right and underneath the hatch cover on the left is a drain either leading down to the caverns, or to the map edge where a fortification has been carved.
NOTE: Using a door instead of a flood gate due to its faster response time. The 100 tick delay of a flood gate can sometimes cause it to miss a signal and either jam open or jam closed. Also, note that there are two diagonal paths into a single tile next to the door resulting in an effective 1 tile suppy for the bath. This is needed. Having a single diagonal path connecting directly to the pressurized water source will result in too much flow and you'll get 4/7 tiles of water in the bath. The small 1 tile source allows for a gentle flow into the bath which will stay at 2/7 to 3/7. There will be 4/7 and higher immediately next to the door, but the single tile tunnel leading to the bath proper allows those surges to settle down.

5) I've been busily constructing the pump stack of doom (that is, 4-5 stacks of 30ish pumps from almost surface to lava with big places for pools in between).  Is this the best way to get lava to the surface?  (ignore lag as a problem for now).  It's almost complete but it's such a faff to do - is there a better way?

When building a pump stack, I do the following.
1. Dig everything out.
2. Every 3rd level build a gear or axial that connects to the passable tile of the pump.
3. Designate and build every pump on the levels I just put the gears or axials on.
4. After the pumps in step three are built, designate and build all the rest of the pumps.
5. Deconstruct the gears or axials built in step 2 above.

By building the stuff in step 2, I provide support for the pumps that I'm constructing so it doesn't matter in what order the majority of the pumps are built. This allows me to send in hordes of dwarves to build all of the designated pumps at the same time. And if you have sufficient power, you could leave in a few support gears or axials to keep most of the stack intact in case something breaks. And for throughput, nothing beats having multiple pumps at the bottom supplying a single stack. But if you're using the reservoir method, I suggest that the reservoir be several Z levels deep and that you have your pumps actually inside the reservoir completely surrounded by magma. That would give you great "burst" capacity when you want magma from an upper level pump.

6) My pastures are currently above ground, should I relocate to caverns or build a (big) roof?

Dig out a soil layer and penetrate the caverns so fungus starts growing there. After a year or two, you can pasture the animals in the dug out areas.

[Garath]

a roof made of clay is certainly possible. To increase value (I think) and promote more and bigger sieges, use the clay to make bricks first.

I don't know what your idea with the dragon is, but if it reverts to wild it will be immune to the cage traps around it.

and yes, I'm quite certain magma destroys contaminants too. For bonus points, leave the water in and just re-carve the bathtub in the resulting obsidian