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[Skuggen]

Marksdwarves will run over and smack the enemy with their crossbows if they run out of ammo, yeah.

[Covenant Ringthane]

Some otter corpses got rezzed by an ambushing necromancer. I hastily assembled a military, ordered the civvies into the fort, then killed the otters, sent my squad inside and shut the door. One of my dwarves got stuck outside (the only one with a weapon, our hunter), but I viewed him as already dead. Another, inside my tiny cave (about  the same size it was last post, with a slight extension) somehow went missing. Then, only a few squares away from the butcher's, the harbinger knocked.

"The Yak Bull corpse shudders and begins to move!"

I'd sealed myself inside with the necromancer. I draft everyone into the military and move to a good defensible location, the little half-dug nook. Waiting there was my missing dwarf. My undead missing dwarf. She had high strength and agility, the best we had, but she was very quick to tire, making her a less-than optimal squaddie - in life, she was reduced to a glorified hauler. In death, she was terrifying. Corned by the bull and her, we succumbed. The one locked outside could have potentially hung on til migrants, but she jumped in the river in despair (I honestly had nothing to do with it)

Well, just goes to show what happens if you don't play fort mode regularly. That was sloppy play, on my part, which is why i killed my last dwarf and didn't include images. I'm gonna go try on a regular savage/evil or savage/neutral fort to brush up on my DF skillls. For some reason, good's never quite appealed to me, although slaughtering unicorns is very me-ish.

[PDF urist master]

due to a small incident, I caught two dwarven merchants and a guard. their stuff is all over the floor now, and that's always a plus.

Still don't know what to do with them though.

[hjd_uk]

The undead hordes outside grow with every animal and Kobold theif and goblin squad that turns up - currently 68 Zombies and 1 Ghost  hanging about outside, my dodge-trap pit and atom-smasher bridges at the bottom have to work. Or I can try to survive an isolationist fort...

The necromancers themselves seem to have been killed or have left.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Larix]

One of my war "goblins" (dogs actually, just with added intelligence) was "struck down" all of a sudden. Seems it went to sleep somewhere outside and a dutiful dwarf dragged it back to the dog pit. Through the weapon trap guarding the entrance. The two halves of the deceased were dutifully delivered to the corpse stockpile. A miner almost went there, too. I was trying to get stuff done and kept deleting the meeting hall, since whenever i reactivated it, the first thing that happened was a massive party tying up ~20 adults. I have 31 adults total in that fort. Actually, there were probably about 25 invited, it's just that partydwarfs don't show their "attend party" status when they're busy eating, drinking, sleeping or shopping for fresh socks. Since i didn't want to wait several weeks before _anything_ got done, i kept erasing the meeting hall status. Curiously, the only dwarf who regularly showed "no job" was that one miner, but since no mining was being done, i didn't wonder too much about that. Until on the next meeting hall erasure, she didn't show "no job" but "hunt for small creature". Oops, she was stuck in a hole. And she wouldn't free herself from her predicament, because "hunt small creature" takes precedence over "remove that one tile of wall so you can get to the food and drink stockpile". Fortunately, erasing the meeting hall brought a fellow miner to her rescue. She was drowsy, starving and dehydrated, unhappy over wearing old clothes (a XloinclothX) and had suffered a miscarriage. Her happiness was all the way down to - "quite content".

Since i'd wondered about moving water into and out of minecarts as another logic option, i fiddled with water-loader designs. Seems that the roller-on-ramp is the most reliable, although in order for the cart to actually take on water, the cart had to fall, not roll onto the ramp, wasting quite a lot of time. Only one water-filled square is required when working with pumps - the roller gets power directly through the pump. I found the "tiny loader", which is talked about here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=120435.msg3873427#msg3873427 (didn't read that article, though, just another post that simply showed the basic setup) and fiddled with it to get input on a self-repeating cycle slow enough for the cart to load. I'd seen in other experiments that a cart has to 'sit still' in order to pick up liquid, and most failures to load are caused by going too fast. Sure enough, i ended up with a powerless autocannon that shoots about every fifty steps and can go forever when fed by a river. It's 100% wood, apart from the bridge i installed for easier stopping. It could be built entirely from wood and without digging (requiring a wooden pump and power), the main difficulty would be getting it to stop.

[MeMyselfAndI]

Schematic / screenshot / diagram?

[Kneenibble]

Hopefully I read your post correct, it seems like you have a pump drawing from a cistern, going up a level, and being pumped back over itself into the cistern to be reused. If you have a continuous flow into the cistern, you will have problems with flooding, but I think if you use a closed system it shouldn't flood (as much). Usually I use 4 pumps on a level, to draw the same bit of water around in a circle and create mist without any major flooding, but it requires a bit more setup. I'll try to explain how I do it (and draw pictures!)

+++++++++
+00000000+
+0*% %*0+
+0%+ +%0+
+0%+ +%0+
+0*% %*0+
+00000000+
+++++++++

So the north pump is set to draw from east to west, west pump is set to draw north to south, south pump from west to east, east pump from south to north. The asterisks are empty space, with a hole just above one point to have a bucket brigade drop in water with the use of a pond zone. Once the water hits 3/7 or so, I turn off the zone and that should be enough water to continuously flow without evaporating. The level above also distributes power through gears and axles to whatever power source you decide to use. Requires only 40 power, plus power train, so 2 windmills, a dwarven water reactor, or whatever else works for you should do nicely.

The floor below is just open, with statues constructed under the holes to prevent dwarves from cancelling their jobs when drenched by the falling mist. Mist should flow perfectly fine in the area, washing everyone and making them ecstatic.

You indeed read me correctly, sir: but the cistern is still, not flowing.  I have no idea which side the water is splashing out.  I would have thought my set-up gave enough space!  Experiments forthcoming today.

I may steal your design.  Very ingenious.  MIIIIIIST

[hjd_uk]

The undead hordes outside grow with every animal and Kobold theif and goblin squad that turns up - currently 68 Zombies and 1 Ghost  hanging about outside, my dodge-trap pit and atom-smasher bridges at the bottom have to work. Or I can try to survive an isolationist fort...

The necromancers themselves seem to have been killed or have left.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm about to watch a Cyclops take on ~70 zombies and reanimated skeletons.

[EDIT]

HULK SMASH!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The saviour-cyclops battered all the zombies and skeletons, felling all of them, but a hidden Necromancer keeps reanimating groups of zombies / parts.

[EDIT]

What FUN!, i lowered the outter drawbrige to flush the zombies through my dodge /trap pit... a nice tidy end to the invaders....

 except i forgot to set the burrow, *everyone* started for outside, desperate to grab whatever xSockxs had been left strewn on the battlefied...

i set the burrow and got everyone turened back just in time , apart from my master armorer who just so happened to be fast enough on his feet to run outside and headlong into the Army of the Dead in hopes of picking up some trinket.

now its a case of shut the outte rbridge again, get everyone inside and hope the traps work on the few zombies that made it inside.

[Larix]

Code: [Select]


.#.       .#.
.╔╗#      .╔╗#
#▲▲#      #╝╔#
#▲▲#      #╝╔#
▼▼╬╗      W╚╬╗
.#▲╝      .#═╝
..F       ..F

Left the visible constructions, right the tracks. I didn't give the bottom level an extra picture - it consists of nothing but the "loading" ramp (NE) and the water connection (spot "W").

The cart takes water in the loading tile, goes around the acceleration loop and then slams - over the EW track ramp - into the fortification F. After that, it rolls down the ramp, around the two corners, losing enough speed to pick up water in the loader again.


The author of the "tiny loader" thread got the basic idea right, but underestimated the importance of proper speed. The cart rolls "through" the water pit, _treating the tile as flat floor_. Consequently, there are no real ramp effects taking place. I had before only seen carts take up water when they appeared to stop, but this suggests moving at very low speeds - less than 20k - also works. With this minimal design, the resultant shot speed isn't too great, probably just over the required 70k. But it manages that with no power and no moving parts (unless you want to be able to stop it...), and with a footprint of a mere 4x7 tiles on the main level, 3x3 below, counting all required walls. I've connected it directly to a river, so the loading tile's instantly refilled always.

One shot every 51 steps, reliably. In the first go, i just let it run until the water it spread pushed the cart off the track, the revised version with a capture channel to prevent flooding just keeps going.

I threw a second cart in just for laughs, and the two kept going for quite a while before they went out of sync. For sustained fire, only one cart can be used.

[puke]

how far does it throw the water?  I guess adding additional carts is the best way to (eventually) stop it, if you ever need to for some reason?

[hjd_uk]

It worked, the zombies got trapped or smashed apart, the necromancer so far seems to have vanished. Atom smashing all the zombie parts continues, filthy mouths-on-legs migrants turn up, dozens of them... oh and all food and drink ran out.

Luckily an elven caravan turned up, bought all their food and wood for some metal items.

The zombie invasion bought one windfall though :

[Larix]

[Poor dwarf's watercannon]
I built it without a floor above, so all shots are ballistic - easily 10-20 tiles, sometimes more. For more power, just add more acceleration ramps, but this mini device already could serve as a cheap no-maintenance standoff turret, not least because building destroyers will have no interest in it. Stopping it is best done by putting a retracting bridge on any of the corner tiles (can be the track ramp in the shot position, too) and extending it when you want the gun to stop. Throwing in a second cart usually ends up with one cart sitting still in the loading tile, and it's a huge pain to extract it from there.

I built it in full above-ground mode: a pump powered by a windmill, all track constructed - i had eased my life by getting some stone for a kiln, so could work with clay - a minecart. No digging or mechanisms required, just a bit of wind and a brook. Without digging, the actual gun naturally sits one level above ground. I added a pair of extra ramps for acceleration and it keeps cycling at 55 steps per shot, without fail. Target area starts ~15 tiles south of the fortification and covers about 15 tiles E-W and 20 N-S; the furthest shots reached just under 40 tiles. Downside is it can't be properly shut down, you can only force it to run dry by constructing a hatch cover over the pump intake.

[nogoodnames]

For some reason the human caravan decided to loiter around the depot until late autumn, when the dwarven caravan arrived. Unfortunately for them, the dwarven wagons had just made it to the depot's access point as their own wagons were trying to get out. There is now a massive traffic jam along the one trap-free corridor leading to the depot, which is suspended over a volcano. And then a vile force of darkness arrived. I have yet to decide whether this is a bad thing or if dwarven Christmas is coming early this year.

Edit: Well the siege wasn't tough enough to break up the traffic jam. I guess they'll just stay there forever, or at least until the dwarves give up and leave.

Double edit: And now the fort faces an epidemic thanks to bleeding dust from the last forgotten beast that has gotten out of quarantine. It's not deadly to dwarves, but it does make them drop what they're doing and take up hospital space, as well as painting the fort a nice shade of red.

[Lich180]

Child went fey, demanded logs and silk cloth which were all outside with the zombies from the siege that arrived in the spring. Popped open the caverns, sent in the military to guard the silk harvesters and masons who were sealing in an area.

One mason was killed, and another lost both arms to a cave croc and a giant toad. Now the cripple is standing around the meeting area, content and just whiles away the hours talking to everyone. Can't think of much use for her, and I don't care to arrange an accident to take care of the issue of loiterers, since it was my fault she is all messed up now.

[FallenAngel]

Using the necromancer world parameters (minus the seed) I found the most bare-bones ultimate embark: An embark with flux stone, hematite, and some unknown other metal, near enough towers that it GOES OFF THE SCREEN. This is going to be !!Fun!!.