Here. I'll just do a write up of what I've played since we haven't had one for this fortress in awhile and I know I've raised some questions about my time as overseer that could do with definitive answers. Again, a goodly portion of the action I'm about to describe took place when I'd been up for quite awhile so keep that in mind.
My first difficulty in starting up Autumntower (that's the name of this fortress by the way, I don't know if anyone's mentioned that) was in finding out where anything was. The hotkeys took me to such disparate regions that finding out such basics as the location of the mason's workshop was impossible without a great deal of scrolling through the 'R' menu. Upon examining our stockpiles and the only part of the fortress I could easily locate, the Trade Depot and surrounding courtyard, I decided to devote my turn to creating steel and perhaps fortifying the surface. Fortunately there was plenty of wood, with the promise of more since I could see numerous trees threatening to glitch out the save at any moment, so there was no need to invest time constructing blocks in the hard to find row of mason workshops I eventually did locate.
This was fortunate, since when I went to put in a work order for blocks I was informed by a red notification at the bottom of the screen that we had no manager. I went to dwarf therapist and selected a suitable candidate and then discovered that many of our dwarfs were labelled "peasants" in spite of their skills and roles within the fortress. Trying to delete this label didn't work, it just kept reverting, so I re-named some of the prominent ones at least. This should be kept in mind because if their roles change their profession title will need to be manually rewritten. Setting out, once again using the 'R' menu to locate the nobles offices was quite an adventure. Zoom whisked me away to a gigantic, largely empty room filled with what seemed to be randomly placed chairs assigned to various members of the nobility. Likewise, attempting to address the mayor's complaints as to the state of his quarters took me to a group of beds set up, seemingly, in the middle of a stockpile. I decided to dig out some new offices and bedrooms for nobles to make dealing with Demands easier. The location I chose was in the middle of a magnetite vein in order to combine the job of harvesting more ore with expanding the fortress's living quarters.
I had un-paused the game for all of five minutes when a weaponsmith, named Ingiz I believe, was struck by a fey mood and vanished. Using the unit search feature, I eventually located him deep under the earth in the magma forges demanding brass and cut gems and here trouble arose. Our unfortunate smith had chosen to come down with his mood on the turn of a player who does not understand how mine carts work. I had, in my initial exploration of the fortress, found tracks for a mine cart system but it seemed to be entirely abandoned and certainly did not run all the way to the magma forges. I had not the slightest notion how to extend them to solve this logistics problem. I did the best I could and ordered some brass smelted in the nearby magma smelters (someone had ordered tetrahedrite, of all things, smelted endlessly on repeat, not that this had born fruit of any kind) even though said ore was many, many Z-levels away and had almost no hope of arriving in time to do any good. Did we have a jewelers? A search through the 'R' menu turned up nothing. I decided to collect the miners, disable all their tasks except mining, and have them dig out room for some additional workshops.
I had the new workshop built, along with a mason's, carpenter's, and mechanic's and then ordered some opals cut. This prompted no activity what so ever. My workers kept disappearing to parts unknown. More searching, this time through the 'J' menu, proved that many workshops had a number of inexplicable tasks set on repeat. The masons had all been ordered to make doors forever. The carpenter's shop was churning out endless chairs. Other tasks had been racked up underneath but to no avail since the top tasks were all on repeat. Meanwhile, the fortress was out of drinks. The stills were inaccessible, having been blocked in by butchers and other workshops constructed so close together that they formed an impenetrable barricade. I deconstructed all of these, rebuilt the farmer's stations in a place where they wouldn't block anything, then found the best brewer in the fortress and told her to do nothing but make booze. I then spent at least 10 minutes finding every single workshop and cancelling all of the tasks.
The butchers shop I decided to move to a consolidated location with the tanners. I decided to build a leatherworks and install another kitchen next to a main hall. There was no existing main hall, the closest thing available was the original embarkation wagon still sitting next to the main entrance.
It was in the middle of all of this that I received a strange notification.
Elf? Nevermind, he was gone for good. I never did locate a body or discover what had become of him.
The sound of battle drew me back to the surface where I witnessed a harpy attacking a dog. I deployed The Lucky Picks to take care of the mess and then had another look at the "wall". Our fortifications consisted of a single panel of wood that would do nothing to thwart archers or climbers. There were some inexplicable bridges erected haphazardly about. I ordered these taken down then got to work expanding our fortifications. My intention was to construct a respectable wall with fortifications, including some towers from which to shoot down the foul harpies before they could cause more trouble. I believe I was working away at this, feeling rather harried and as if I were being pulled in six directions at once, when I got another notification.
I need to pause for a moment here to note something I can't explain. This notification came immediately on the heels of the one about the weaponsmith.
This is one of the guys with the weird "peasant" designation. I renamed him Chief Enforcer because he was the hammerer. I found him lying dead in the new mason's workshops, many Z levels away from the action with the berserk smith. There was no battle report or sign of a struggle. Perhaps he died of old age? I hope nobody was attached to him. Anyway, back to the show.
I zoomed to the weaponsmith's location and followed him down into the caverns where he began to attack dwarfs going about their inexplicable business. The Lucky Picks were summoned once again though they took their sweet time appearing from wherever they had been since the harpy attack. Once they had finally arrived they made short work of him. Feeling some irritation of my own, I spoke the words that will make everyone reading this account cringe and groan aloud: "Why don't I just rebuild the entire thing?"
I returned to my old friend the 'R' menu and proceeded to disband, dismantle and dissipate every room, zone, designation, stockpile and stick of furniture I could find. You may all second guess about this decision but I do feel somewhat justified. I mean look at this mess.
I don't mean the room setup, that's fine, I mean the fucking graphics. This is why I haven't updated my copy of the LNP for months. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to make it so that engraving a room made the floor indistinguishable from the walls? I understand it in a limited ASCII palette, Toady wanted some way to differentiate the engraved portion of the fortress from the rest, but Phoebus had a perfectly good system for engraving and decided to go back to this absolute bullshit. I mean, is this room furnished? You can't tell because of the indecipherable mess of images here. If the new release of Dwarf Fortress doesn't have a clean looking tileset that does away with this nonsense available I will not play it. The end. Yes, this is the hill I have chosen to die on and I am sticking to it. Speaking of hills and imminent demise, this is about the time I started getting cave in notifications.
My instinctive response to the first notification was to ignore it and continue on with my radical restructuring of the fortress proper, but the first notification was soon followed by two more so I went to investigate. As it turns out, the trouble with the weaponsmith had distracted me from my work on the wall. The dwarves had continued to construct and deconstruct based upon my last commands unsupervised. At some point some bit of flooring or wall had become insufficiently supported and collapsed leaving our courtyard in quite a mess and our trade depot in ruins. This is how the miners, butcher and rabbit I mentioned in the previous posts were injured. Though on the bright side, I had recently finished a new hospital as part of my reconstruction project.
I began a cleanup but I was somewhat hampered by notifications concerning the drifting arrival of clouds of evil dust. Caution, and my recent reading of the
Clobbermountains thread, caused me to summon all the dwarves inside every time one of these notifications showed me a location that was close to the wall. This is a blessing in a way because it is the reason everyone was already inside when this happened.
This notification created something of an existential turmoil within me. I took a long moment while on pause to begin asking myself the big questions. What made me think I could rebuild the entire south side of the wall in one go? Why isn't the militia in metal armor yet? How many of these little staircases I've been seeing around go all the way to the surface?
Some of these questions will no doubt remain shrouded in mystery forever, but the answer to the last one turns out to be two. I soon found this out since the goblins were drawn to the second, smaller, access stairway like cats to the hole of a mouse. (A scientific aside, evil dust has no apparent effect on goblins.)
I ordered the front doors locked and this side stairway walled off. Unfortunately, this left a carpenter and a mechanic stranded. Fortunately, the goblins did not seem willing to traverse the trap barrier, at least for the time being. Perhaps they do not know the exact location of the entrance. They also failed to notice the hole left by the cave in. It leads directly into a large dug out room of indeterminate purpose. When I arrived in the fortress this room had a partially constructed Siege Engineer Workshop that I had taken down since the only nice thing I can say about siege weapons in DF is that they are marginally more useful than fish dissection. At some point during the restructure I had the clothing industry installed over in that direction but since we're busy smelting and smoothing the newly constructed fortress proper no one has gone over there much. I don't think the goblins will jump down, but they might take a few pot shots.
The Lucky Picks had assembled, as ordered, near the entrance stairway. I took one look at their quaint arsenal of silver knives and bone armor and decided they would not be facing the goblin menace today. I dispersed them again and refocused on steel production. This did involve totally dismantling the magma forges, as the only two anvils were down there and I needed my furnace operators smelting not sprinting back and forth down 40 stairs and through interminable narrow hallways.
While this was going on, the mechanic decided to make a bolt from the mouse hole. The goblins were on her in less than a second, but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
[Imgur]http://(
http://i.imgur.com/Te7g7aQ.jpg)[/img]
When Dastot the mechanic was knocked unconcious, she fell into the cage trap which registered her as a non-dwarf and snapped her up, protecting her from further attack. Observing this no doubt prompted the carpenter to try the same thing.
This exercise ended with two dwarves and two goblins enclosed in cage traps.
I would need to equip the militia, kill the goblins and retake the wall, all preferably before the dwarves in the traps starved or dehydrated. Was it worth it? What had the surface ever done for Autumntowers? It was a forested wasteland filled with goblins and harpies, not the sort of place to raise our growing horde of children. For a moment I considered reversing my exodus, rebuilding the magma forges and moving all the vital portions of fortress life to the depths, forswearing sunlight
and Trade Depot alike.
No, I would not do it. I would stay up here and undertake the grinding work of equipping the militia in time to kill this scouting force of goblins before it could return to its civilization and report our weakness.
However, the clock now read 5:30am, meaning it was time to drink a cup of tea and have a sandwich before heading off to work. The struggle for Autumntowers would have to resume at a later date.
Author
Topic: Pseudo-Succession Fortress, Ultra Hostile Experiment (Read 9041 times)