Topic: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated! (Read 4259 times)

SpoCk0nd0pe · « **on:** December 08, 2014, 12:30:06 pm »

Hi,

I have a problem with getting back into DF: Finding a fortress design that I like left me with analysis paralysis. I thought maybe there are people here who are interested in collaborating for a fortress design, contributing their grand and small layouts. From things like making the central staircase look cool, carving extra stairs so dwarfs don't have to climb up the trade wagon ramp to whole workshop area designs - every input is appreciated!

I would generally like to stick to angular shapes, I just think it works best with what the game gives us. Large rooms or hallways should have some kind of pillars to support the ceiling, even though the game does not require it (I consider that kind of cheesy). Slightly asymmetrical designs (e.g. for workshops) also have a more "lived in" then "built at a computer" feel for me.

So far I have a plan for the entrance hallway that starts at the first two stone z-level (I figured dwarfs would probably want to build into stone and not dirt). It is 2 z levels high so humans and elves can stand comfortably and to show off a little.
I'm sorry but I don't know the ascii graphics for the game and picturefort doesn't work on my system so I kind of used some nethack inspiration. B is for the Bridge, T for trade depot and G for grate (there is a gallery around the entrance hallway for archers). The s stand for Stairs, they are there so dwarfs don't have to climb up the slope. S stand for Statues.

Stone level 2:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Stone level 1

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On top of the entrance slope for the caravan and the stairs could stand a citadel. It should contain barracks, good overview so archers can protect the woodcutters and space for grazers.

After the entrance there could come something like a great hall. It could also be 2 z levels high. It would probably make sense to store wood and trade goods around here. Maybe it needs another barracks.

From the great hall, stairs could lead up into the soil where the underground farms are and poultry nest (I thought if they have no sunlight, at least let them have some dirt under their feet). Below would probably be a good area to start with workshops.

A possible outline of z level planning (some entries may require more then 1 z level):
survace/small citadel
farms/poultry
entrance hallway/entrance hall/offices/jail/dorm/tradegood storage
workshops
dining area/hospital/main food/booze storage
living area
tomb
stone/iron workshops

Some meta thoughts: If I figure out how to, I will probably translate my favorite design and alternatives to quickfortress. It would probably help if "modules" can be found in the OP, I will try to update it with level designs.

I hope this caught your interest, I would be grateful for any further suggestions!

AbanShakehandles · « **Reply #1 on:** December 08, 2014, 01:03:35 pm »

Quote from: SpoCk0nd0pe on December 08, 2014, 12:30:06 pm

From things like making the central staircase look cool

I had a lot of fun designing a fort around a central platform ramp spiral:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Each floor has a 5x5 landing with ramps up on one side, and ramps down on an adjacent side.
This spirals all the way through the fort.

This allowed for some creativity with the z-space.
Note the stone stockpile on the right is not accessed from this floor, but from the mason's workshops on the floor above.
And the big leather stockpile at the top-right is accessed from the leatherworks on the floor below.

I just did this for fun, but was surprised at how efficient it was. No real !SCIENCE! was done, but just from following random dwarves around, it seemed as though they got around rather quickly.

McCautious · « **Reply #2 on:** December 08, 2014, 05:24:48 pm »

This is my foodprocessing and dining area.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mining designations on the edges indicate exemplary where stockpiles start and end.

Dining hall on the bottom left. Larder hall right above that.
The dining hall is definitely indoors as you can guess by the craploads of puke.
In the larder hall, the bottom half is 4 rows of dwarfen booze: Beer, Rum, Ale, Wine. The top two rows store outdoors liquor and prepared meals.

On the very right we have stockpiles for food-processable goods: Quarry bushes, anything millable into flour, rocknuts and of course bag- and barrelstockpile.
Left of this first step-storage area we have farmers workshops, querns, a soapshop and the screwpress for cheesemaking, bush-processing, rocknutpressing and flour-milling.

The processed goods then proceed towards the large "hall of ingredients".
Here, meat, fish, eggs, cheese, leaves, fruit, pressed and milled materials, fat, tallow and raw cookable or brewable plants are stored in seperate stockpiles. Anything that is only cookable on top. Anything that is cookable and brewable or only brewable on the bottom. Barrel and potstockpile on the very left right next to the:

Kitchen and Still. It all eventually goes through here and gets carried over to the far left to end up in the larder hall.
Chéfs are told which lavish meals exactly to cook using a Dfhack-command (see kitchen design topic).

Poultry pens and butchery are on the floor below, right next to the staircase on the right.
Farming area and Grazing pens (with milkers farmers workshop) are some floors above this right staircase.
This way meat and fat, unprocessed plants, milkbuckets come in through the "backdoor".

My average dwarf who is not involved in the foodbusiness just enters this level through the staircase, slides right up to the diningtables on the puketrail and yells at his buddy to fetch him "one of those barrels while youre there".

Loyal · « **Reply #3 on:** December 08, 2014, 05:50:10 pm »

Quote from: AbanShakehandles on December 08, 2014, 01:03:35 pm

I just did this for fun, but was surprised at how efficient it was. No real !SCIENCE! was done, but just from following random dwarves around, it seemed as though they got around rather quickly.

It's hard to do consciously since you only ever view a single Z-level at a time, but it's important to remember that a dwarf travels up or down a a single Z-level just as fast as they do a single tile on flat ground. You can use it to do really cool things for living quarters, work areas, noble housing, even mining and trap design.

SpoCk0nd0pe · « **Reply #4 on:** December 08, 2014, 06:21:48 pm »

Yes, efficient fortress design uses the z axis a lot.

I haven't decided which staircase layout I like best. 3x3 central stairs is probably the easiest to do symmetrically but I'm more thinking about a 2x2 staircase with secondary connections.

@ McCautious: That screenshot provided me with tons of inspiration! I love your use of pillars, especially in the middle of the 3x3 staircase. It kind of simulates a large circular stair. I also love the way the corners around the staircase room look (essentially doing it 5x5 with 1x3 symmetrical extras to each side).
Is that refuse stockpile producing miasma? If yes, it would profit from a double door afaik (like an isolation chamber in the hospital). I personally prefer clothing workshop layouts that keep the stockpiles for raw materials and unfinished goods very close.
Do you really need a second kitchen and brewery?

@Aban: I like that style of stockpile design. For stones I used to open the stockpile to the sides so the stones from the mining operation do not have to be hurled through the workshop and the workshop can access from the level below. I couldn't bring it together with an aesthetically pleasing workshop design yet though. Currently my idea is putting furnaces+metal smiths to one side of a z-level above iron ore and masons+mechanics on the other above stone. The stockpile areas could be much bigger then the workshop areas as long as the stockpiles are shifted a little to the south.

McCautious · « **Reply #5 on:** December 09, 2014, 05:56:50 am »

Glad you like it.

I got the "pillar in the staircase" idea from MarcusAurelius who is hosting a pretty fun (and inspiring) DF2014-playthrough on youtube right now. His plan was to eventually carve out the pillars and set up artifact furniture in this central staircase: Just about every dwarf in the fortress will get to see them on a daily basis and be happy about it. Not sure yet, if I'll really do it though.
Concerning miasma, there is no refuse stockpile on this level. The green stuff is vomit (aka "dorfpuke") because apparently all my dwarves are cave adapted and can't stop throwing up all the time.

(In my next fortress I will definitely adress this by making some protected "light" dining- and meeting halls.) The only refuse piles of this fortress are on the butchery and leather level below and the whole butchery + refuse tract is behind several layers of doors indeed.

Concerning the double brewery, they are simply there because I sometimes forget to take care of things and then churn out a couple hundred dwarven wine or whatnot at a time. Also the production in this fortress works rather seasonally: E.g., craploads of cave wheat and pigtails come in at a time. Then its "beer and ale"-season: One brewery gets the wheat stockpile via "give to" stockpile settings, the other gets pigtails ... and I don't have to get mad that they only take from the closest pile or that I have to switch around my settings in the kitchen menu all the time.

Now the second kitchen relates to the abovementioned DFhack-cooking-method. Since you can set up very specific meals, one kitchen could make meat-quarryleaf-wine-flour roasts and the other one makes egg-fish-cheese-presscake roasts for instance. But yes, you are right: The cooks get it done so quickly that only one kitchen is really needed.

Quote from: SpoCk0nd0pe on December 08, 2014, 06:21:48 pm

I personally prefer clothing workshop layouts that keep the stockpiles for raw materials and unfinished goods very close.

The area above is only for foodstuffs. If you like streamlined clothing production .... this would be my "Textile district" three levels above:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The staircase is the one seen on the right in the food-area. Right above this level are then farming + pastures.
Green arrows indicate the flow of goods.
"Animalists" (custom profession) bring down livestock to the farmers workshop to milk and shear them. The wool ends up right across from the workshop in the top stockpile. The milk gets taken down three levels to get turned into cheese.
Rope reeds and pigtails wind up in the second row of stockpiles on the left and the bottom row is dimple cup and a bags stockpile (for dye).
Wool, reeds, pigtails and dimple cup then get turned into thread and dye-powder which are stored in the bottom right in seperate stockpiles.
Conveniently, Loomeries, Dyers shop and Clothier are then right across the hallway to turn them into cloth, dyed cloth and, of course, prime clothing, which can be picked up in proximity to the staircase by naked dwarves.

The only goods that are used in the food-area as well as the textile district are pigtails and bags ... balancing who gets how much can require some micromanagement but generally overproduction takes care of this.

AbanShakehandles · « **Reply #6 on:** December 09, 2014, 11:18:17 am »

I second the admiration of the pillar design. Very classy.

In my current fortress, the clothing industry isn't able to keep up with the demand. (several missed caravans)
So I've removed the thread, cloth, and dye stockpiles all together.
I kept the pigtail stockpile, of course.

The workers simply grab what they need from the nearby workshop, instead of a nearby stockpile.
Now UristMcBonecarver can concentrate on covering EVERYTHING in musselshells,
instead of coming all the way up to the farms just move a bag of dimple dye 3 steps.

SpoCk0nd0pe · « **Reply #7 on:** December 10, 2014, 11:36:20 am »

My current thoughts about workshop design is something like this (very crude outline):

For Mason Carpenter or other single resource workshops I'm think just building the worshop with a small stockpile fed from a larger stockpile on another z level.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then design a nice room around it. For style I think putting the small stockpile to the side or behind the workshop when looking from the entrance makes sense.

For intermediate goods of the clothing industry, I'm not a fan of large entrepots. To the bottom left could be a finished goods entrepots from which haulers get the clothes to an actual stockpile.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Another idea for clothing industries. "+" are doors. This is suited if you have some large area to either side. You could of course just get rid of the fancies and just place 3 workshops right next to each other with a 3x1 stockpile between them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Food industry is a little trickier because of the barrel stockpile. But generally both formulae are expandable and adaptable for other industries (except metal which requires special arrangements). If set into a nice room design with some pillars this could actually look decent. I'm trying to strike a balance between aesthetics and functionality.
Food and clothing should probably be arranged in close proximity to the central staircase as they probably will be the most frequented.

deathschemist · « **Reply #8 on:** December 10, 2014, 02:02:58 pm »

how about a pit that menaces with spikes at the entrance?
also a retractable bridge over said pit?

Eldin00 · « **Reply #9 on:** December 10, 2014, 07:03:17 pm »

My fortresses tend to be a bit more "build-as-you-go" than carefully designed, but one thing I have ended up standardizing is my workshop areas. I use what I call "Industry Pods", laid out across 3 z-levels, with the following design:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


z+1
#############
#...........#
#...........#
#...........#
#...........#
#.....>.....#
#....>#>....#
#.....>.....#
#...........#
#...........#
#...........#
#...........#
#############

z
####.###.####
#WWW.WWW.WWW#
#WWW.WWW.WWW#
#WWW.WWW.WWW#
.............
#WWW..X..WWW#
#WWW.X#X.WWW#
#WWW..X..WWW#
.............
#WWW.WWW.WWW#
#WWW.WWW.WWW#
#WWW.WWW.WWW#
####.###.####

z-1
#############
#...........#
#...........#
#...........#
#.....Q.....#
#....Q<Q....#
#...Q<#<Q...#
#....Q<Q....#
#.....Q.....#
#...........#
#...........#
#...........#
#############


# = wall
. = floor
W = workshop
Q = quantum stockpile
> = down stair
X = up/down stair
< = up stair

Level z+1 has stockpiles set up for finished products from workshops in the pod. The quantum stockpiles on level z-1 contain the various raw materials used by the workshops. Depending on the types of workshops in the pod, level z may contain small stockpiles for products of one workshop in the pod which may be used by another workshop in the pod, or in the case where one or more workshops in the pod has a 'decorate item' labor, may contain items I wish to have decorated. I add doorways connecting level z+1 or z-1 to adjacent rooms or halls as needed, and as shown, put doorways between the workshops on level z (though I only put in the ones which actually have adjacent rooms or hallways).

The main advantages of this design are that none of the 8 workshops is more than 8 steps from any of the 8 supply stockpiles for the pod, the room size of 11x11 is very easy to designate quickly, and it packs 8 workshops and all associated stockpiles into a relatively small area. The walkways between the workshops limit potential pathing issues caused by impassible workshop tiles. Magma workshops can be accommodated with a slight modification to the design, by adding in a magma chamber between layer z and z-1.

The pillar in the center of the staircase is there for aesthetic purposes, and could just as well be an additional tile of staircase, which might help a little with traffic congestion in a very busy pod.

Spehss _ · « **Reply #10 on:** December 10, 2014, 07:46:31 pm »

Quote from: AbanShakehandles on December 08, 2014, 01:03:35 pm

I had a lot of fun designing a fort around a central platform ramp spiral:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Each floor has a 5x5 landing with ramps up on one side, and ramps down on an adjacent side.
This spirals all the way through the fort.

Seconding using a ramp spiral staircase thing instead of literal in-game staircases. I like it more than the usual 3x3 pillar of X's going up and down the fort.

McCautious · « **Reply #11 on:** December 11, 2014, 05:24:13 am »

Quote from: Eldin00 on December 10, 2014, 07:03:17 pm

My fortresses tend to be a bit more "build-as-you-go" than carefully designed, but one thing I have ended up standardizing is my workshop areas. I use what I call "Industry Pods", laid out across 3 z-levels, with the following design:

Ah yes. I have used this method in one of my previous fortresses. It works really well in terms of workflow efficiency and traffic reduction. Basically everybody just needs to walk a maximum of around 5 tiles to get a product done if you arrange it right. I even went as far as situating all my workshops on one floor, all input stockpiles above and all output stockpiles below that. This way I would have all "crafters", all goods and all "raw materials" at one glance per level.
For some reason though it totally bothered me that I could never see a single industry at one glance. Normally I care about how a single industry is running at a given moment. I then ended up with: Is there still enough coal? -> go up one level; how many greaves did we make already? -> zoom down two levels; is anybody even working the smelter right now? -> zoom up one level again; Why is nobody working the smelter? Did we run out of iron? -> zoom up one level again ... and so forth.

SpoCk0nd0pe · « **Reply #12 on:** February 25, 2016, 01:20:25 pm »

I hope it is o.k. to necro old threads here. I found the time to play around with Dwarf Mockup and started designing a new fortress while waiting for the bugfixes for the current DF version.

Here is the file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5DAxHscwIb_VGVwdU9qOHdqdjA/view?usp=sharing

Level 0 should be the lowest Soil level. You can see the ramp down and the little farming area to the upper left. The large rooms in the great hall are meant to be barracks and armory (for when it gets fixed). Some fortifications are missing because they don't seem to stick with the file.
Below the great hall is a stockpile level, mostly for raw goods. The big one is meant for wood, the one below the farming area is meant for food. The level below is meant to become a workshop area.

I haven't decided on the placement of the Trade Depot. I like the idea of placing it somewhere in the great hall but all the options didn't look organic so far.
The farming area is a little suboptimal as well. the two larger rooms are meant for poultry, the two very small ones are meant as storage for potash.

Thanks in advance for any input and feel free to change the file

NorkasAradel · « **Reply #13 on:** February 25, 2016, 05:06:19 pm »

What is this "designing" you speak of? You try'na tell me that there are people who DON'T dig a metric fuckton of random corridors in search of ore and build their fortress in the resulting mess of dug-up ore veins and single-tile hallways?

ToastGoats · « **Reply #14 on:** February 25, 2016, 10:47:18 pm »

I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet, but I think you should designate a large meeting area as a tavern and try to put a mist generator or a small water-filled channel between the tavern and the rest of the fort that cleans everyone who walks by, the ultimate mood increaser ^{I know that's not a word so don't judge.}

I tried this on my fort ~~I flooded the z level below it thanks to the placement of the floodgates and the water dried up.~~ and it worked pretty well. ~~I also used the floodwater to make a moat.~~

The way I did it was simply make a typical tavern, add a lot of bedrooms for ~~unpaid mercenaries~~ visitors and put a channel like this down.

I had to type this out on my phone, so this is gonna look like trash.
Tavern floor:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The actual channel (below):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

+Bonus points if you use both this and a mist generator.

++Bonus points if you use magma.

News:

Author Topic: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated! (Read 4259 times)

SpoCk0nd0pe

Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

AbanShakehandles

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

McCautious

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

Loyal

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

SpoCk0nd0pe

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

McCautious

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

AbanShakehandles

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

SpoCk0nd0pe

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

deathschemist

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

Eldin00

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

Spehss _

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

McCautious

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

SpoCk0nd0pe

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

NorkasAradel

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!

ToastGoats

Re: Help design a fortress thread, any design input is appreciated!