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[mahrgell]

Okay, so before I make 200 screenshots, this time I decided to use the maparchive...

I marked a few points of interest, but feel free to look around.

Here it is:
http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-31421-surfacelevel

[Meph]

I knew it!

Sunsail = Magmatraps.

[Tenderroast]

I've got a question for you, Mahrgell. How did you deal with having 2 dorf squads sparring constantly. I started trying 2 man squads because of your success in Hexxedgarish, but I get massive amounts of lag when they spar. With just 2 squads of 2 dwarfs, i can go from 60 fps, to single digits when they go to spar.

[mahrgell]

Uh, I never had any FPS problems like that.
At the end of Hexxedgarish I was running at around 30 FPS... And there I had 10 2dwarf squads... But also 230 dwarves total and quite a huge city with caverns and fun opened and in general a huge pathfinding mess... (unlike here, where the undergroundlevels are all stripmined^^)

This fortress here is running at 50 FPS right now, so that is also pretty good.
In general I use a 80 FPS cap, as I can't see shit at 150 FPS ^^

And my notebook specs are:

i7-3630 @2,4Ghz x4
8 GB Ram
Win 8.1 (terrible... And the memorybug is still not fixed... Luckily DF uses only 1 GB)

So yeah... no idea what's wrong with your system...

[mahrgell]

Another named death

[Tenderroast]

how the hell ma i getting bad fps issues then.... ive got a 3.4 ghz x6, with 16 gb of ram

[palu]

What do you have against using power?

Also, there are holes in your office wall.

[mahrgell]

I mentioned it a few times, but I don't like power, as windmills are just annoying to deal with and water reactors are an FPS drain I don't want to handle. And steam engines require manual labor.

But I want my system to just work on a lever pull^^

And about those holes. They are closed by now, but as you can see, the roofs of the apartments were not fully done at the moment of those screenshots So I needed those holes for the workers to get out there. That was actually really intentional

[mahrgell]

18th Granite
Construction of the new defense sysem has started. It was decided to call it Bloodshower. To speed up it's construction we added another drawbridge in our fortress walls... We just have to remember to pull it up when enemies come...


7th Slate
A bunch of migrants showed up, bringing our number to 167. Most of them were drafted for construction work. The Bloodshower requires a lot of workers...

12th Felsite
Even though we gave the order to stop construction 2 days ago, there are still a few workers out there. And then today, we got invaders... Dark stranglers again. But this time we wouldn't wait for the Seesaw.... CptCrunchy and dawnofdarkness were ordered to face them directly.

14th Felsite
It turned into a huge chaos.... 2 dwarves were chasing about 40 Dark stranglers, which again were chasing about 20 civilians... In the end we lost one carpenter, while they lost 18 attackers before they finally fled.

17th Felsite
The dark stranglers weren't everything! On her way back, dawnofdarkness found a very special guest.

A minotaurus thief.... For some reasons she decided not to chase it.

18th Felsite
But there was more... DROW!!! Tons of Drows.... A quick count gave us at least 30 Drow, all riding giant beetles, and half a dozen war jaguars.

19th Felsite
Evacuation proved to be highly difficult.
Many civilians were still scattered around, but in the end, all but 3 made it inside. But this time, it weren't just haulers... A farmer, our best gem cutter and our best bone crafter, Shadow, were out there. But spotting even more Drow, there was no way to send our militia against the Drow... And as long as the lost dwarves were running around in circles on the outside, there was also no way to use out traps...

20th Felsite
There was no way to save them. The farmer somehow escaped, but the gem cutter and Shadow stood no chance. Considering that most dwarves are resting on beds crafted by Shadow and all furniture in this fortress is made by her, we have to make her some proper burial place.



21st Felsite
With all living dwarves on the inside, it was time to start the Seesaw.

22nd Felsite
We were not alone! A bunch of Elves decided to help us against their dark cousins. Both sides lost a few units in the fight, but interesting for us was the dropped loot. But also the Drow had some help. Well... they were not helping, to be exact, as we only noticed the 4 Minotaurossi thieves, when they were dead under the wheels of the Seesaw.

25th Felsite
In the end about 50 attackers died, before they finally aborted their mission. Parts of the Elven caravan survived, but fled immediatetly. And so peace came back to Becordobar. But we had lost Shadow... This was a severe hit to the quality of all future furniture.

1st Hematite
Spring has ended and the situation was calm again. We would now have to look, how to replace Shadow, and build her a tomb fitting her craft. And of course, the bloodshower still needed a lot of work....

25th Hematite
Becordobar continues it's trend to produce useless bone artifacts for the military.


8th Galena
Work on the Bloodshower again has stopped. The difficult parts of the construction have been finished, but most likely we will need another season before we have completed everything and are able to start the tests.
We have now started the work on the tomb for Shadow, as this does not require anyone to step out of the fortress walls.

14th Galena
Damn! There were not many opponents we really didn't want to see right now. But those we had spotted now were certainly the worst we could imagine.

Why they are the worst? Because we removed most parts of the roof of the statue hall to build the tomb for shadow... And now  this is an open entrance to all those Furies. Our militia was  now immediatetly stationed at the construction site.... If the furies would fly up there, we would have to fight them.

OOC: Nightwings would have been worse ^^

16th Galena
Furies are obviously not the brightest. As last time, they just sat there, while ColdBones was throwing all his axes at them. Well... good guy needs some kills as well...
OOC: Okay, their pathfinding is so bugged, that they are no problem at all...

18th Galena
But dawnofdarkness would get some kills as well... An animated iron axe chased some Minotaurossi thieves straight into her blade.


1st Limestone
A bunch of Furies are still out there, camping outside of ColdBones range. We probably have to fight them where they are. And then we noticed something else at the construction site of the Bloodshower... Something yet unseen has removed two hatches...

While on their cleanup tour, the ladies should probably walk by there as well...
Shadows tomb wasn't yet completed, but should be done soon.

[mahrgell]

3rd Limestone
It seems, the hatches were removed by a pair of Minotaurossi. It is certain, that the Minotaurossi were removed by a pair of dwarves.

4th Limestone
The fight with the harpies got a bit messy, as the melee fighters had already fled due to ColdBones work, so only the bowwielding ones were still there. And they were flying around, shooting at CptCrunchy and dawnofdarkness from above. They managed to catch one, when finally the leader of the pack, an Fury spearlord came down to fight them. Once he was done, the remaining furies finally fled, before doing any damage. The amount of arrows dodged by the two ladies was truly impressive.

7th Timber
Another artifact. It's value is boosted by the rather valuable ressources, that were used in making it, but the art is lacking.


9th Timber
Construction has been stopped again. Only the roof is missing, but we will start our tests as soon as winter has arrived. There is already a plan, how the tests will be done.
1) one minecart on each lane, no magma
2) 2 minecarts on each lane, no magma
3) 2 minecarts on each lane, with magma
4) more minecarts on each lane, with magma – FINAL
Hopefully there are no building destroyers disturbing the process again.

15th Timber
Our favorite siegers have arrived. Goatriders! About 50 Tigermen and 50 goats...

21st Timber
No surprises. ColdBones claimed 7 kills, the Seesaw about 30-40. Then the Tigermen fled as usual. Why are they doing this? They seem completely unable to learn. Maybe it is some sort of ritual?

1st Moonstone
The Tigermen had caused a calm autumn. They prevented the arrival of the dwarven caravan, but there was nothing we urgently needed anyway. With the start of the new season, the constructionwork would continue.

28th Moonstone
It were he engineers who pressed most on the finishing of the construction of the Bloodshower. And now it was them, delaying the tests... We were still lacking a few mechanisms...
But at least we have now fully connected the Bloodshower to our defense network. Then former entrance to the Seesaw in the northwest has been sealed, and instead is now connected to the Bloodshower. Enemies will have quite a long march, before they even come close to the fortress.


9th Opal
It is about time. We were finally able to drop the first set of minecarts into the Bloodshower. It was myself, who did the final lever pull.


10th Opal
Bloodshower test #1.1 (one cart per lane):
Result: failed miserably.
Details:
4 ramps were constructed in the wrong direction
for some reason the carts changed lane

Conclusion:
The entire return corner has to get reconstructed...

10th Obsidian
Reconstruction is done, but we have to get everyone inside. We would love to do the next testrun, but we can't risk having the whole fortress opened up anymore. It has to wait.

14th Obsidian
Day of surprises:
Drow arrived...
Friendly Drow... a caravan...
They decided to turn, as they claimed to be unable to reach our trade depot...

Turns out, our trade depot got destroyed... Awesome... We have to rebuild it at some point...
Humans arrived...
They didn't look friendly at all...
About 140 enemies, with the Humans using camels, goats and even steelclad horses as mounts...
Oh, and a few war snow leopards and war dire lions, and the whole army was even led by their general...

27th Obsidian
The Humans were cowards as usual. Or maybe they were just smart.... Anyway... They were waiting outside, and so ColdBones was the only one to see some action. He reduced the Zoo a bit, by claiming a bunch of kills on their mounts and pets.

1st Granite
And the year is over. We are still under siege, but we expect the Humans to leave soon. Meanwhile we are cleaning up some parts of the fortress. And we are using the silent time to mourn Shadow. Her grave had been finished some time ago, but now finally everyone had enough time, so we could all remember her together. Her tomb was built entirely out of boneblocks, as it was fitting. We had put a masterpiece of each type of furniture in the corners of her little tomb located between my rooms and the magmafountain on top of the statue hall.

[mahrgell]

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I'm an idiot...
Mid of spring the FPS dropped from 40 to 10... I had done quite a lot of testing(3 runs) on the Bloodshower, and it was quite interesting... But then... crash... DAMN!!! I should have just saved, when the FPS dropped

Will replay it, and will just repeat the made mistakes ^^ Still... quite a lot of time wasted, as testing is quite... tough... This thing is not as easy as the other traps...

[mahrgell]

6th Granite
With the Humans still there, we have to do other stuff... Like crafting more artifacts.


15th Granite
AHHHHHHHHHHH dawnofdarkness!!!! what are you doing? She claimed, that she needed to fill her waterskin. But this surely was no reason to rush out there... Cpt Crunchy immedietatly chased after her. It was clear, she would not return, once she had the Humans in sight... So we better help her as good as we can.


16th Granite
Obviously the next watersource for her was right where the Human general stood...

17th Granite
The Humans decided to run, while firing at dawnofdarkness. But her training made her almost invincible. No bolt and no arrow was able to hit her. Being faster then the Human camels, she chased down multiple attackers, before finally everyone had fled. The siege was lifted... and only because dawnofdarkness was thirsty....

22th Granite
Bloodshower test #1.2 (one cart per lane):
Result: success
Details:
all minecarts stay on their lane and the repeat works fine
sadly the lanes have two different durations for each round
Conclusion:
It is time for #2... 2 carts per lane

28th Granite
Bloodshower test #2.1 (two carts per lane):
Result: failed
Details:
half of the lanes worked
on the other half minecarts got stuck in the turn around loop
Conclusion:
We will redesign it, but there is hope, that it requires only a handful of changes.

13th Slate
Bloodshower test #2.2 (two carts per lane):
Result: success
Details:
for now all lanes are working as expected
Conclusion:
We are still not sure if everything is as intended. For that reason, before doing any magmatests, we will try if the system works with 4 carts per lane as well.

27th Slate
Bloodshower test #3.1 (four carts per lane):
Result: failure
Details:
the carts got stuck right at the dropdown
Conclusion:
We have no idea at all how this happened... For some reason the first set of carts just stopped on the ramps... And strangely enough, once the hatches above the ramps were closed, to shut down the system, the carts got released... At least this saves us the work of getting the carts back... We will redesign the ramps, even though we have no idea about the exact reason.

10th Felsite
Just in time we finished the adjustments. Now we can launch another testrun, while staying inside.
The masons had used most of their time, when they were not working at the Bloodshower, to expand our fortification network for ColdBones. Until now, only one bastion was completed, but 3 more would follow.

14th Felsite
Bloodshower test #3.2 (four carts per lane):
Result: failure
Details:
the carts got stuck right at the dropdown (as last time)
Conclusion:
This is weird... We have no idea, how this can happen. The carts get stuck on a single ramptile, pointing towards a pit, with only walls around... But it only happens, when another cart is right on top... If the top cart is disconnectd via closing the hatch, the lower stuck cart suddenly gets released...



16th Felsite
The diplomat and it's escort managed to dodge the Elves... But they didn't dodge the Seesaw of Armok...

23rd Felsite
The Elves weren't much smarter either. 15 of them were dead, before they started to run. But on the inside, we celebrated a bit. It was a very special moment:


1st Hematite
And finally spring was over, and we could try to fix the Bloodshower. We were still clueless, but had an idea, what may solve the problem. But even if it would work, would it also work, once there was magma?

[mahrgell]

As I have no idea, what is causing the problem right now, I will probably have to wait a bit...

I made a thread here.
If there are no smart answers, I will probably try a bit by myself tomorrow...

[Stormbuilder]

Can you give me a pointer at which thread to look at for more info/guides on weaponizing minecarts?

So far, my only knowledge of them is on how to make a quantum stockpile.

[Shadow9657]

Haha damn so much for my plan to pick a proffession that wouldn't be killed easily.