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[Techempage]

So, I started my first game this weekend.  I don't think I quite lost, but I decided to start a new fortress and abandon the old one.

I know part of what went wrong, I may or may not have had ore.  I may have messed up something in the sorting and actually had some but didn't recognize it as such, so kept digging and digging.  But I thought I didn't so I couldn't create more picks, thus I only had two little miners despite having over 60 dwarves at one point.  (I have this fixed in my second game. )

But what finally brought my fortress to be abandoned to the wilderness was a crazy dwarf.  First he was possessed.  Then he went stark raving mad and died, in the dining hall, which everyone was understandably upset about with all the miasma around.  This lead to a bunch of in fighting in the dining hall, which lead to more corpses in the dining hall, which means more miasma and yeah, it wasn't pretty.

That said, I realize now that I'm typing this I should have created a new dining hall at that point and somehow blocked off the old one somehow.  Ooops!

I've been following the intro guide on the wiki, but one thing I've noticed, no matter how many items I mark for dumping, the dwarves never seem to pick them up. =/ I'm having a little better luck on my second fortress by not marking much for dumping and creating random larger stockpiles.

Although, the more I think about it, the more I'm starting to envision a tiered stockpile system.  'm still seeing building around a central 3x3 staircase, but then dedicating separate floors to separate trade skills, and maybe putting a stockpile location on each floor and connecting those stockpiles with a 1x1 stair in the corner.  I dunno if it would work or not.  I'll have to do some more reading on the wiki and puzzle out the logistics of it.

But hi!  I've gotten hooked fast and figured it would be good to sign up for the forums, to have someone who groks what I'm talking about when I try and discuss such things.

Techempage

[Uristides]

Two legendary miners can carry you a long way. Tbh I have no idea when I start putting more miners in, but 2 for 60 doesn't sound that bad. You could order ores/picks from your liaison too.
You didn't need to seal off the old dining room. Just make some coffins, build them and then enable burial in their [q] menu.
As for dumping, you need to set a garbage zone IIRC.

Welcome aboard, have lots of !!FUN!!

[Nyxalinth]

Hi! *waves*  You had your firs encounter with 'Losing is Fun'.  May you enjoy many more to come.  Yeah, the dining room thing, live and learn.  Also, when you say they weren't dumping, did you create a garbage dump zone first using "i" then  designating a spot for dumping?

[Techempage]

Two legendary miners can carry you a long way. Tbh I have no idea when I start putting more miners in, but 2 for 60 doesn't sound that bad. You could order ores/picks from your liaison too.

That's definitely something I need to do more research on.  Right now, the trade interface confuses the heck outta me.

Also, when you say they weren't dumping, did you create a garbage dump zone first using "i" then  designating a spot for dumping?

Yup, I set a 1x1 dumping zone following the instructions here:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_guide#.22Garbage.22_Dumping

Although, I just started reading up on stockpiles and I'm am becoming fascinated with the logistics of it.  I'm going to have to do some sketching and figure out a way to make the best way to make things flow.  Granted, it may be too late for the current fortress, but if I start looking at it now, I feel like there is so much potential with feeder stockpiles and the like if you engineer it from the beginning.

Techempage

[Tacomagic]

Dumping is currently bugged.  You need to go into the 'o'rders menu then the 'r'efuse sub-menu and turn on outside refuse collection.  Otherwise they ignore dump commands for a variety of items because the inside/outside detection is currently inveted.

[Techempage]

Dumping is currently bugged.  You need to go into the 'o'rders menu then the 'r'efuse sub-menu and turn on outside refuse collection.  Otherwise they ignore dump commands for a variety of items because the inside/outside detection is currently inveted.

Would that also be why corpses and other random refuse would just lay around my fortress, despite an outside refuse area?

[Tacomagic]

Dumping is currently bugged.  You need to go into the 'o'rders menu then the 'r'efuse sub-menu and turn on outside refuse collection.  Otherwise they ignore dump commands for a variety of items because the inside/outside detection is currently inveted.

Would that also be why corpses and other random refuse would just lay around my fortress, despite an outside refuse area?

Depeds.  Indoor vermin won't get hauled unless you turn on outside vermin collection.  Corpses I think do get hauled without outside collection, but you have to specifically enabled corpses on a stockpile to make it happen.

I have a fresh corpse to practice on in my current game, so I'll check and see if it's affected by the bug.

EDIT: Corpses are not affected by the refuse hauling bug.   That said, you do need to specifically enabled corpses in a pile to have them hauled.

[Pink Photon]

Dumping is currently bugged.  You need to go into the 'o'rders menu then the 'r'efuse sub-menu and turn on outside refuse collection.  Otherwise they ignore dump commands for a variety of items because the inside/outside detection is currently inveted.

Oh. That makes a lot of things make sense now.

Is there a list somewhere of formerly-working features that have been broken in the new release?

[wuphonsreach]

Most broken features get mentioned by somebody pretty quickly in the Q&A thread:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140163.0

That's always a good topic to track.

The dwarf being possessed is a "strange mood".
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strange_mood

Any garbage dump (created with the 'i' menu) zones should be "outdoors" (exposed to sunlight, with constructed floor over top as a roof is just fine).  That way if the dwarves haul anything that can rot, you won't be affected by miasma.  My garbage dump square is usually at the top of the main staircase.

[Findulidas]

A tip is to build the workshop the dwarf with a mood wants and then wall him in when you know you cant give him everything. Start walling asap if you are unsure and leave a spot open. Then he can go as berserk as he wants to until he has starved to death, at which point you can tear down the walls and bury the s.o.b.

[Chimerat]

Any garbage dump (created with the 'i' menu) zones should be "outdoors" (exposed to sunlight, with constructed floor over top as a roof is just fine).  That way if the dwarves haul anything that can rot, you won't be affected by miasma.  My garbage dump square is usually at the top of the main staircase.

I make all of mine indoors, but with only diagonal access. Miasma can't leave that way.


And welcome to DF-playing!

[Skullsploder]

I am going to tell you something that will make your life much easier with regards to industry:

Use the shift key plus directional keys to make a 21*21 room centered on your central staircase. place three mechanic's workshops in a row coming down from the central staircase. Place a row of three masons workshops to the left of the central staircase. Place three jewelers workshops to the right of the central staircase, and place 3 craftsdwarf's workshops to the north of your central staircase. In the top left corner, place a stockpile for furniture, place a stockpile for finished goods in the top right, place a stockpile for stone at the bottom left, and a stockpile for gems at the bottom right. This area will let you create high value furniture and trade goods all on the same level. Which is nice.

At the same time, you can mine out a largeish area north of your craftsdwarf workshops, and designate this as a refuse stockpile. Remember to put a door in the wall! This way you will have easy access to bones for bone crafts and bone bolts at your craftsdwarf's workshops.

And here is probably the thing that takes you the longest to safely figure out as a noob (or at least, it did for me): safe garbage disposal. In your refuse stockpile, build this:

Code: [Select]

side    top view
view   
        z+1   z+0
_PS o   ooo   ooo
__oBo   oho   oBo
        oSo   ooo
        oPo
        o_o

h hole
_ floor
o wall
S track stop
P pressure plate
B raising (NOT retracting) one-tile bridge

Build the track stop with d-C-S, and set it to dump in the direction of the hole in the floor (press d once you've selected track stop in the build menu until it says "dump north" if the hole is to the north of the track stop. Build the pressure plate with b-T-p, and set it for any weight and to trigger when citizens step on it (the menu is fairly intuitive). The bridge you just build with b-g, but make sure you press w, a, x, or d before placing it to make sure it raises and DOESN'T retract. Once the bridge is built, (q)uery the pressure plate and link it to the bridge with a-b (You will need 3 mechanisms built at a mechanics workshop out of 1 stone each to build this).

Once you've built this, (make sure the bridge is completely walled off once it's linked up!) construct a wooden minecart at a carpenter's shop. then press h to open up routes and press r to create a new minecart "route." Move your cursor with the arrow keys onto the track stop and press s to create a new stop, and then go into the stop's settings menu. Press x to remove all the depart conditions, then move your cursor onto the refuse stockpile and press s to set the stop to take form it. Press enter to set desired items, in this case: refuse corpses, items, and body parts. Press esc to exit the routes menu, and voila, you have a system that will dump refuse onto a raising bridge which will pulverise it into oblivion, and it's all automatic, no oversight needed.

[Thisfox]

My refuse, corpse and dumping stockpiles, complete with tanners shops and butchers shops:

The diagonals prevent miasma from being in more than one pocket at a time. No muss or fuss, and the butchering of animals is very efficient. Occasionally it fills with rotting wereanimals (as you can see) but the miasma is never in all the pockets at once.

I can then have stockpiles of clean bones, horn and shells etc near my craftsdwarf workshops several levels up and over, and feed from one to the other. I really really wish I could stick shells in a bin though. That would rock.

[grody311]

Instead of large stockpiles, I usually carve out a 5x5 room, place a workshop in the middle of it, and create a stockpile encircling it.  I find large stockpiles to be a hassle, as hauling seems to be every dwarf's top priority.  Large stone stockpile will grind your fortress to a hault, AND your mason will grab stone that's not in the stockpile more often than not anyway.

As for your corpse dumping problem, why not just build a few coffins?

[Urist McVoyager]

Two points about stockpiles: Stone piles can be given wheelbarrows, which force a maximum of three dwarves to work them. Only up to three, no more than that. And you can force the (insert worker here) to choose only from the stockpile you want by hitting q on the pile and setting it to (g)ive to that workshop. If the pile runs out of supplies, the mason will cancel all jobs.

I dig a 2x2 staircase shaft, then an 8x8 room on each workshop floor. At each corner I stick a workshop, and follow it up by digging a 3x8 supply bay coming off of each corner's side. There should be eight bays at that point. Each workshop gets one for inputs, and one for outputs.