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[streen]

Hello guys, girls and dwarfs! I have some little questions concerning Stone, Digging and a problem i keep encountering for you!

First of all, lets start with everything that leads up to said problem.

Digging is Fun. Expecilly if you dig to deep. Which is what i did really often when i was new. So basically i had alot of fun when i discovered gold after only a single season in game. Where was i ? OH yea, restart, so i restarted, didnt dug at all and had fun without stone. Again. Stone is important.

But how important is it really? I am new so i only always took the obvious approach but how long can a fort survive without stone? And what exactly do i need stone except for a few items anyway? Expecilly flux stone was rather pointless for me , and still is! It doesnt seem as important as food, beer or trees.

The second thing about digging is basically, how big do i have to dig in order for caravans to reach my underground castle? Like, is 3x3 of a channel really enough? Or do i need 5x5 because of the ramp downs?


Also, can i keep digging and reallocating my whole fortress deeper and deeper till i eventually have a (masochisticly) deep castle? such as -50 floor?

Now the nasty little problem.
A nasty little problem when i encounter digging is...wait let me explain with screenshots as i have the perfect seed at the moment and might reroll after figuring out what the hell is going on


Okay, so this is the very outline. from here on i do strike the earth:

http://gyazo.com/7bed81bb3543cc46d04fa4c38f795808

Everything fine so far. Can someone explain me what the difference between red and green ramp downs is? or is there none?

Interiour of my castle. not really organized( i know i am missing some stuff, like a warhouse,dormitory...pretty much everything. i know.)

http://gyazo.com/2199bf7559932d539b9dd8f0cde28b4d

So you see the ramp downs at the right side? Yup. hang on:

http://gyazo.com/811085aeffc2c8efee3cef1d35d3810f

This is where it leads to. now why is there a way outside? Its easy. Because as soon as i dug this channel, my dwarfes COULD NOT get up again. I repeat. i got 9 "Cant pick up the rocks because there is no way" error messages. ANd then my dwarfes where stuck. So i had to carve myself out of the mountain (as diggin "up" didnt work. maybe because it does not. if it does please tell me why i couldnt do it.).
So
What goes wrong here?
Oh btw, see the hole next to it?

Leads up to this
http://gyazo.com/c556b637511dc7bf9a4a9e97c1ed7275

And this hole works fine again. I am genuinely confused.


Anyhow, thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and thank you even more if you will help me with my newbish little problems.

[Garath]

stone-less forts are possible. Build your for above-ground with wood, only digging down to get ores and gems. It's a bit harder, but do-able. Usually however, you'll have easier access to plentiful stone than wood, which is why stone is often used for things like doors, chests, rock pots and the like.

A 3x3 is enough for a wagon to pass over, but if they have a long time going,
A) by the time they get to your depot, it might be time to pack up and leave again
B) the dwarf and human caravan can encounter one-another in the tunnels and cause a huge pile-up

The difference between the different color ramps can be due to (at least) two things. The one in this case is that grass has started to grow on some ramps while the others are bare soil. Another reason could be that the ramps are dug out of different base materials.

As to why the ramps don't work, well, you messed things up
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Ramp

Basically, a ramp needs to 'lean on' a wall that whoever uses it can step on next, like /[], which is why your entrance works. The second ramp is more like this:
  ______
/
Where there is a tunnel instead of walls in the traffic direction.

It's a common error. Use stairs to go straight down if you're walking or use a spiral design for wagons

[streen]

allright so what could i have done that the whole entrance looks better? Call me stupid. i prefer the word noob though: I dont quite understand how the ramps work.

So basically what i understand is that:
I approache the 3x3 channel from the south. the reason it is not working is because a layer below i am also mining into the south direction istead of north,w hich means that the ramp ups which actually would work (aka the ones going south) have no underlaying layer. When i would have dug north it would have worked . ...or am i miss understanding it?
It leaves me confused because basically the same worked just a minute later on a different spot.

and stairs down do not seem to work. as soon as i want to place them it instantly disbands the order
lets say, i press the right buttons (d-j) ( i believe it was) and then i click enter on a field where i want to construct stairs down and ha, the order cancels and well nobody starts to construct stairs. which is oddly enough fairly stupid.

[blue sam3]

The second thing about digging is basically, how big do i have to dig in order for caravans to reach my underground castle? Like, is 3x3 of a channel really enough? Or do i need 5x5 because of the ramp downs?

1x3 works.

Also, can i keep digging and reallocating my whole fortress deeper and deeper till i eventually have a (masochisticly) deep castle? such as -50 floor?

My record is -182.

Everything fine so far. Can someone explain me what the difference between red and green ramp downs is? or is there none?

The green ones have grass on, the red are bare red sand, if I remember that tileset correctly.



Garath already dealt with ramps.

So basically what i understand is that:
I approache the 3x3 channel from the south. the reason it is not working is because a layer below i am also mining into the south direction istead of north,w hich means that the ramp ups which actually would work (aka the ones going south) have no underlaying layer. When i would have dug north it would have worked . ...or am i miss understanding it?
It leaves me confused because basically the same worked just a minute later on a different spot.

Read the wiki article. The difference is in the arrangement of the empty spaces on the floor above. Essentially, you need to have the "floor on z, ramp up, floor (with solid rock beneath) on z+1" combination in a straight line. You have that on the south side of your second hole, so it works fine. . Digging one tile out around the top of the other hole should fix it.

and stairs down do not seem to work. as soon as i want to place them it instantly disbands the order
lets say, i press the right buttons (d-j) ( i believe it was) and then i click enter on a field where i want to construct stairs down and ha, the order cancels and well nobody starts to construct stairs. which is oddly enough fairly stupid.

It doesn't cancel, you just can't see it. When one of your miners is free, they'll dig it.

[Garath]

You understood just fine, the ramps didn't work because your corridor on the level below cut away the walls that would have made the ramps usable. In the other situations there are usable ramps at various other directions.

digging stairs isn't like channeling, it's more like mining but leaving some of the material in the tile in place in the shape of some stairs (up, down or up/down). If you want to make stairs at the surface or on an already mined tile, you need to use the (b)uild (C)onstructions and then select the type of stairs you want and a material to build them from.

I usually go down underground with ramps (if I have a largely flat embark) and then dig out staircases for any travel that doesn't involve wagons (or minecarts)
a 2x2 central staircase is a very common sight in many forts

[streen]

Allright excuse my somewhat - lazyness but i a mnot going to work with quotes here.


1) Thank you both, Garath and blue sam3 for helping me. I did not understood the part about ramps (and didnt find it on the wiki because i searched it wrong...well....) and now i do. Its easy enough if you know what you are doing.
i also understand how to do staircases. they are simple
first a stair down,then i go -1 layer and than i make stairs up and well, thats what i rince and repeat.

2) Thank you Garath for telling me what i did wrong. as a matter of fact blue sam3, it did cancel the job because i already "dug something out there".(which i shouldve said by all fairness)

3) what do you mean with minecarts? I am new to that concept, why do stairways not work with wagons,caravans or minecarts? Well, i mean, aside from the obvious. you can go up ramps with that?

4) So wood will be more of a problem the later i play so i should start getting used using stone instead? Thanks, noted =)

5)T hanks for your quick help. if i go into dwarf fortress again i now know how to strike the earth appropriately. Fun times may now commence!


Oh yea, one last quiick question

is there a newb checklist for new fortresses(not a flowchart which gives you some example ways you can do)  what they need so i can check what i have and what i should get?

[fractalman]

Checklist, eh?

-(underground: easiest) farming field created
-farming field is told to grow plump helmets in ALL four seasons.
-at least one dwarf has farming:fields selected as a valid labor.
-a brewing still
-brewing still is ordered to brew on repeat.
-crafter's workshop (b-w-r), set to make rock pots (preferably repeat)

-a kitchen
-kitchen told to make lavish meals only in a pinch. (see also: roasts, seed management)
-carpenter's workshop
-wood
-beds made at workshop
-beds placed.
-beds declared as 'bedrooms'
-a food stockpile that DOES NOT accept seeds. 
-an outdoors refuse-stockpile. 
-dining hall.
-meeting zone (under i for zones. )
-butchery workshop
-any excess kittens selected for slaughter; z-animals, or v-s.
beware the catsplosion.
-the following nobles declared: bookkeeper, trader, manager, cheif-med-dwarf.
-an office assigned to the bookkeeper and manager.

-mechanics workshop making mechanisms every now and then.
-carpenters workshop making a few cages.
-a trade depot created (requires "architexture" labor.)
-at least a few cage traps deployed around the entrance

-if you're not in a reanimating biome, consider starting two dwarves on military training. if you ARE in a reanimating biome, focus on 'dem cage traps. 

[Garath]

There is a quickstart guide on the wiki. Though you probably don't have to read and use it every time after a while, it does provide a sort of checklist of what to do first

Note that sometimes your situation may demand a change of the order in which you do things, but I'll let you find that out for yourself.

3: caravans consist of pack animals. Humans and dwarfs also bring wagons. Sometimes people just group wagons and pack animals together and keep it at caravans. They need a path to your fort, specifically your depot. The pack animals and their handlers can get everywhere where dwarfs can go, but wagons need a 3 tile wide path and can only travel over ramps, not stairs, are blocked by traps and a few other things. So wagon/caravan accessibility can be an issue. Wagons also travel much slower, so if they have far to go, it may be time to leave again before they even arrive.
In any case, it means that if you put your depot in a safe place, you need to make it wagon accessible with ramps. Wagons can carry much more weight compared to pack animals, which is important if you need to order iron holding ores, flux stones, etc

Minecarts are a tool to help in your fort. I'm not too great with them though, but they're very usefull for hauling large and heavy cargo. I'm not sure if they travel stairs well, but with some designing you can make them go up or down ramps by themself - or pushed/pulled by a dwarf. Read up on it and experiment before making it a feature of your fortress.

4: Wood doesn't have to be a problem, but if you dig down (not too far o'course) and make a home inside the mountain you can't help but have stone left over.

back to
2: no worries, I hang around -a lot- at this part of the forum, so I'm pretty good at spotting the problem in such situations

A last piece of advice
Keep the wiki open while playing DF for now and just look up anything you want (like catsplosion, which is unchecked feline population growth because cats get to adopt dwarfs as a pet instead of the other way around. Those cats can't be slaughtered, so you can't stop them breeding more kittens who may adopt an owner right away too, and breed and adopt and breed etc. Too many creatures running around may be bad for your fps, otherwise there is no serious harm. Beware the cat-loving dwarf if you have an older computer)

[streen]

I would feel really really really stupid if DF could make "my" rig overload due a catsplosion. But yea,i ll just slaughter kittens.  I dont like them anyway.


Ty for the checklist.

But if they need to enter my entrance to get to my deposite, how can i keep myself safe from !fun! after 2 seasons when goblins start flooding my fortress?

I cant put traps in there, otherwise the carts wont move. well fuck . Anyhow where were i? Thanks for the help anyhow.

Lets just go in and have fun ! If i ll get problems youll be hearing more from me anyhow. Its time to now finally not ...let all my miners die a horrible death because they cant go up again!

[Garath]

But if they need to enter my entrance to get to my deposite, how can i keep myself safe from !fun! after 2 seasons when goblins start flooding my fortress?

I cant put traps in there, otherwise the carts wont move. well fuck .

yep, that's the way it is. Get creative! airlock systems, multiple entrances, the whole story

[fractalman]

the following will work untill the next update, after which goblins will likely have better pathing AI:

multiply the width and height of this picture by about three:
0^^^^
0+++^
0+^+^
D+^+^
0^^++
D=depot entrance, +=road to stop saplings, ^=cagetrap, 0=road
-things like that.  make sure ther'e no straight line to the Depot for goblins.