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[smeeprocket]

I can't help you with layout but if you are using siege defense be sure you are using a legendary siege operator if you want anything to hit.

That or go for quantity and line up a bunch of them with a very large stockpile of ballista arrows.

[Arx]

First, could you spoiler those images? The size makes it inconvenient to navigate the page.
Second, is the area with the depot and stairs on the left of the first image inside? I'm going to continue as though it is, because it looks like it.

Siege weapons fire along a perfectly 1-Z bounded trajectory - there's no risk of them hitting the roof. Ballistae fire along a perfectly flat trajectory, hitting anything and everything in their way - dwarves and cattle included. Catapults don't cause friendly fire (IIRC), but cause much less damage to enemies.

The main problem with your current set-up for siege weaponry is that they will be unable to shoot at anything beyond your outer wall, and anything within the outer wall will be dangerously close to panicking the civilian siege operators. You'd need to carve fortifications, but then you'd run the risk of goblins shooting in, unless you channeled out a moat around the edge; you also still won't be able to shoot through the doors without opening them.

I would say that siege weapons are not the optimal choice, but if you really want to use them, I'd say place two ballistae with the central tile aligned with the outermost tile of your main passage, somewhere reasonably far back. They will shoot wildly inaccurately unless your siege operators are highly trained (usually by building an underground catapult range with a collection trough to prevent waste), so be warned. Then carve fortifications into the walls up to three tiles or so distant from the doors on each side.

I actually think your fort is quite adequate for most sieges, especially if there's a good militia.

[sumusiko]

I guess I'll stick to my militia then, currently have 5 dwarves training for close combat a 2 for long range combat all of them with previous experience in fighting (from migration waves) all armed with steel armor and weapons besides the archers, these have steel crossbows and leather armor

[Arx]

Yeah, you're almost certainly good. If they're training 24/7 then you should have a few Masters, at least, in reasonable time, and then your militia will probably roll over almost everything.

[sumusiko]

I made a ballista where u suggested since a immigrante with lvl7 of siege operating just came in, anyways my fort is starting to get really thirsty, I don't have a underground farm since I don't have any mud/soil to plant in which means I cant farm plump helmets.

The river is quite far away too and I need to find a way to get reliable source of water inside the fort, anyone knows a way? On the mean time I'm buying hundreds of drinks from merchants.
Making rooms for each dwarf is also a pain in the ass jesus. I'm at 70 now , can't imagine how it'll be once I get to 120-150

Also I'm digging down and doing a 20x20 mine in each Z lvl, currently at Z 32 and still no cave found, is this normal?

[Garath]

use gatherers to gather some fruit and seeds from above ground crops and do surface farming?

no cave at 32 deep isn't really normal, but as is often the case not impossible either. It does depend somewhat on local geography. Especially on high elevations I've had situations where the caverns were quite far down.

[Reelya]

You should have some soil layers near the river, or are there no trees or anything here? Sand, soil, peat, clay should all be "growable" areas. You can also splash some river water onto stone if all else fails. Stone + water = mud.

You should look at how to control water. Put a floodgate 1 square away from the river (leave 1 square of ground in between). link it to a lever which is safe somewhere else (it can be in a master control room for the whole fortress, levers work at a distance), test the floodgate by flipping the lever on and off. then get a miner to channel out the 1 square behind the floodgate. You now have a water tap with an on/off switch that can divert river water anywhere, though you should build a floor over the channel for security reasons. Note, that if you make a pipe too long horizontally, the water pressure drops and it won't go all the way. you can use gravity or pumps to get it to go further.

If you have a big map and far flung resources, you can also set up either temporary or long-term "outputs" which produce resources. i.e. if only have soil near the river then farm near the river, and work out how to pump water closer to the fortress later. This gives you time to work out how to shift needed resources closer to the fortress later (e.g. running water system and magma pumping system). You can also set up automated or manual minecart shipping systems to get produced materials around the place.

A good optimization for far flung production, is to place bedrooms and dining area for the farmers right next to the farm, and make a farmer's burrow for them to live and work in. They won't often wander all the way back to the main fortress then, and will hang out near their job. Make sure you use underground tunnels to connect up the areas, and those outpost don't even need to connect to the surface for added security.

[sumusiko]

Also 4 of my Dwarves have been "found dead" and no witnesses in the justice panel what is htis?

[Reelya]

They died somehow but no other dwarf saw them. You can try and work out what killed them. Animals? Mining accident? Drowning? etc. If you have that many getting killed it's probably some single unsafe thing or other, e.g. I had a really tall waterfall once and dwarves thought it would be clever to try and cross the river right at the edge. Most of my dwarves ended up dead at the bottom.

[Arx]

And maybe check the unit screen for hostiles. Or badgers.

[sumusiko]

They died somehow but no other dwarf saw them. You can try and work out what killed them. Animals? Mining accident? Drowning? etc. If you have that many getting killed it's probably some single unsafe thing or other, e.g. I had a really tall waterfall once and dwarves thought it would be clever to try and cross the river right at the edge. Most of my dwarves ended up dead at the bottom.

The thing is 2 of them died in the bedrooms and 1 died in the middle of the meeting hall... with no witnesses....


Also is it possible to survive "Hell" I heard 30+ demons will spawn if you breach it, but the question is, is it possible to defend yourself against them and maybe win battles? That is if you have a huge amount of soldiers of course

[Reelya]

Shit, do you know about vampires? An immigrant vampire could be to blame. One way to check is to look at histories of all dwarves. Vampires live 100's of years and tend to have way too much history. Maybe someone else can fill you in on vampire detection, I'm not up to date fully with 40.xx versions.

I think a reasonable few squads fully trained up and armed with steel or better (spoilerite) can take down a lot of demons. But it's luck. Many demons are weak e.g. made of ash or some weird soft material, those go down really fast. Others could be made of stone and breath fire / poison dust or something. THOSE can wipe out entire squads in an instant, and it's blind luck whether enough guys survive to get fatal hits on those.

[sumusiko]

Yea I'll have to check that out, is it bad to have a vampire dwarf or are they handy and I should keep them?

[Reelya]

They could make a good pet, they're immortal for a start and don't eat or drink. One idea is a vampire-control-room full of levers. Basically seal him/her in there and you have a eternal lever-pulling machine who doesn't need to be resupplied. Give him an office maybe, too and you can double him as record keeper / manager.

[Arx]

I think vampires have a specific kill message - "Urist McDwarf has been found dead, drained of blood" or something. Dying in the middle of the dining hall is more than a bit odd, though. Not sure what might have caused that.