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[Niddhoger]

I usually don't pay attention to specific names, as I don't want bias to influence the advice I listen to.  I just judge what is being said as its being said. 

That being said... the one name I remembered was Sphelerite.  He's not active anymore afaik, but went by the name "God of Dwarven SCIENCE!" for his obscene engineering feats... like suspending a pride of whales on a curtain of pump-floated water, so that he could go whale-fishing with ballista.  A ballista can't shoot across z-levels, so he had to get the whales (swimming in water) on the same plane as the ballista.  He then continued to grumble about how the (bugged) blunt damage of the ballista wasn't enough to kill them, so he used bloodthorn and copper bolts.  He also made a breeding factory of untamed, aquatic sea monsters.  It involved chains, air locks, and peep screens hiding growling war-dogs to separate the babies from the mother into drain-rooms filled with cage traps. 

Back on point... Crossbows have been nerfed and bugged into nigh-uselessness.  They used to act like machine guns, but are much less fatal now.  Marksdorfs are also fondly known to jump off of walls to bash in forgotten beasts with their xbow stocks, with full quivers! There are other bugs where they won't want to shoot at something they don't have a valid path to.  That being said, you need a moat between the fortifications the marksdorfs stand and wherever the enemies might be.  With enough skill, an archer can shoot through fortifications with no penalty if they are close enough.  Thus, you need to prevent goblin archers from getting within 3 tiles of the fortification.  Also, despite real-life working the opposite way, going up a z-level will decrease the range of a marksmen.  Its treated as another horizontal movement, so a marksdorf up a 10-tall tower will have his range halved. 

Enemies don't tend to climb if they have another valid foot-path, so I tend to just build a long, narrow, hallway and station some ballista on the other end.  Even if they are innacurate, if you overlap 3 of them firing down a 3-tile wide hallway packed to the gills with gobbos... Even if you build an aboveground fort, you could probably still build walls along the one path leading into your entrance to "funnel" enemies.  IIRC, a ballista's effective range is 100-120 tiles, but they have a minimum range of around 15-20 (they are civilians and will run at the site of enemies).  Thus, you need to make sure enemies can't get within those 15 tiles (or cross train discipline).

But to your broader question... Its all but aesthetics.  "looking good" is too subjective without a proper framework.  Some want symmetry, uniform colors, mosaic patterns on the floor, organic shapes, organized and clean layouts, etc.  Some put efficiency in front of aesthetics, some put aesthetics in front of efficiency.  What blend you want (and how you define it) its ultimately up to you and you alone. 

[tranquilham]

*insert fantastical dwarfy escapades and good advice here*   

Thank you for that good, solid paragraph of advice.
I mean, to share my "vision" of my fortress, well, if you've ever played Skyrim, you know the Dwemer? Yeah, like that. Well, almost. I like the tall towers and subterranean areas, and I ESPECIALLY love the big elevator thingies and the cool entrance tower bonanza.

All in all, though, all I look for in dorf is to build a giant statue of a dragon, and have a magma cannon coming out of his mouth. If a magma cannon is actually a thing. Also, magma hot spring baths. Is it possible?   

EDIT: I'm a fan of Homestuck. (I'm not meaning to be a stupid annoying fan though.) I was wondering: has anyone actually done anything like that in modding? I heard there was a guy here who was doing that in the previous version?

[Niddhoger]

Thank you everyone for the advice! So far, I've got a small place of 16 beds, and I'm aiming to dig down into the gabbro for DIAMONDS! Also, how would I know if a place has caves or not? Does every embark site have caves? Or is it just certain ones?

More questions, also:
1. Is there an estimate for about how deep the magma sea and cavern levels are? Is it even possible to estimate it?
2. Is there a way to transport rocks faster?
3. I used a quantum stockpile. Is that bad?
4. When do the invasions and megabeasts come?
5. Whats so dangerous about building above ground? In world gen, the above ground settlements don't seem to be murdered ruthlessly by gobbos.

That's all of my questions for now, but feel free to use this post to share your building style or whatever. I'd love to see how others plan out their things.

1. No.  Some worlds are "thinner" than others.  The magma can be at -40z, or -140z  Just... keep digging.  When you hit warm stone or semi-molten rock, you know you are in the right neighborhood.

2) Outside of wheelbarrows? Setting up minecarts.  They carry more for faster speeds, but take time to set up and must be handled with care.  A minecart loaded with ore will splatter any dorf caught in its path.  Minecarts are in-depth, I hate to say it but just read up on the wiki.

3) Its a matter of preference.  Some of us consider QSP's an obvious exploit and refuse to use them like the metal-duping exploit.  Others scream about QSP reducing FPS and say there is no cheating in a single-player game.  Its up to you to decide if you want to use them or not.

4) There are population and wealth milestones for Megabeasts.  I want to say 80 pop and 100k created wealth.  Werebeasts and tower invasions can come much sooner though.  I can't remember correctly if sieges just respond to wealth, and that FBs respect the population cap (or if its the other way around).  I just know to limit wealth before building up defenses.  The first fort I discovered how expensive prepared meals could be, I was ambushed within a year by gobbos (older version).

5) Aboveground is harder to defend.  Underground you can have 1 entrance to your fort that is easy to block off.  Aboveground you are attackable from all sides.  Add in climbing and flying enemies and you'll realize just how porous your settlement is in comparison.  So unless you build a single tower-fort fully enclosed with only one-two (sealable) entrances, you will have a hard time fully defending it.  I believe toady fixed/is fixing siege mounts too, so we can get squads of goblin bat-flyers on top of winged titans spewing necrotizing vomit from above.  Also, Keas.  @#$% keas.  There is also the set-up needed.  Building aboveground is a tedius block-by-block process that has to be designated in layers.  You can't build walls over floors either, so you have to carefully plan out hte room design of each "floor" while building a multi-story structure.  In contrast, a couple of miners can carve out x10 as much space with x10 quicker while PRODUCING materials (stone/ore/gems) to later refine.  Combine the two and most people don't bother with above-ground forts at all. 


Btw, every embark site has THREE caverns under it.  Each layer down increases in danger, but all spawn forgotten beasts.  The plant-life changes somewhat too.  You get different colored mushroom-trees mostly, but blood thorn and nethercap have some special properties.  Nethercap has a forced temperature of just above freezing, so its a fire AND magma safe wood.  Bloodthorn has a deep red color, but has the distinction of being the heaviest wood in the game.  I mostly save it for ballista bolts (that I transport via minecart due to how friggin heavy they are!), but it can be used for any other (wooden) object you want to be have more heft to it, or just like the deep-red color. 

As for their depth, they generally start at -8/10 for the first layer, but I've seen the first cavern appear as deep as -60.  You also have no guarantee to pierce it while digging a down-shaft, as you can dig through pillars or the walls of hte cavern without revealing it.  I'd just dig straight down to the SMR in one shaft (this also reveals what stone layers you have) and should pierce at least one cavern.  Then send down other shafts as needed to find the rest.  I then wall off the breaches until I'm ready to deal with that layer.  Piercing them lets you know where it is so you can design around it, if its dry or not (and thus lacking in trees or water for a cistern), and announces when the FBs arrive.  If you wait years to pierce a cavern, you can get immediately blinded by an FB that you were never told about.  It also releases spores, so that cavern plants/trees will begin sprouting on any underground soil/muddy stone. People use these to make underground pastures and tree farms. 

[vjek]

... Also, how would I know if a place has caves or not? Does every embark site have caves? Or is it just certain ones?

More questions, also:
1. Is there an estimate for about how deep the magma sea and cavern levels are? Is it even possible to estimate it?
...

Some of my worldgen comments & experiences regarding caverns, magma sea, etc:

So, by default, unless you're using advanced worldgen, as far as I know, every site will have three cavern layers before the HFS.  Typically, just digging straight down through the center you have a pretty good chance of breaching all of them, but sometimes not, depending on their layout.  You can control the depth of layers between the caverns, but typically not the Z levels 'thickness' of the caverns themselves (outside of some strange worldgen bugs)

Some caverns have higher openness, some have higher passage density.  This affects their appearance, and is covered in the wiki.  Again, barring some really unusual worldgen bugs (which you can still do) most caverns are exactly 5 Z levels high. You can make the open part of the caverns over 50Z levels high, but it's contrived. Some caverns have all plants/trees, some only have two or three types, and dry caverns only have bloodthorn trees and no plants in them.  Not all embark locations have cavern water, but cavern water in at least some of them is required for a dwarven civ to form.  In other words, if you set your cavern water to zero min/max, you'll never get a dwarven civ.

If you set "Z Levels above Ground" , "Z Levels above Layer 1" , "Z Levels above Layer 2" , "Z Levels above Layer 3" , "Z Levels above Layer 4" , "Z Levels above Layer 5", and "Z levels at bottom" to their minimum +1, using advanced worldgen, you'll have a very compact or thin world, given a few other conditions.
The other conditions are: no ocean, very few/no mountains, and a small world that's generally quite flat.  Adding in huge mountain ranges and large oceans will create very thick worlds, sometimes several hundred Z levels thick.
So at that extreme, you could, for example, have an embark height of 160 on the surface, with -470 at the lowest depth, showing a world that is 630Z levels thick, with the magma sea well over 500Z levels away from the embark level.
On the other hand, you can have an embark level of 140, a single cavern, and a bottom of 124, with the magma sea on 129, meaning 11Z from embark level to magma forges.  A short walk!
And that's all with vanilla DF, no raw editing.

[tranquilham]

So I've reached the first cavern. I'm tunneling around the cavern as of now. I don't want any baddies to invade my fortress. At least for now.

... Also, how would I know if a place has caves or not? Does every embark site have caves? Or is it just certain ones?

More questions, also:
1. Is there an estimate for about how deep the magma sea and cavern levels are? Is it even possible to estimate it?
...

*snip* the HFS. *snip*
[/quote]

What? What does THAT mean? I suppose the H stands for "horrible"?

[Niddhoger]

We tend to keep it as a spoiler for new players such as yourself... Lets just say it stands for "Hidden Fun Stuff" and is found deep underground around the third cavern layer/magma sea.  If you really want to know what it is, you can read up about it.  However, its best left as a surprise ~.^

Btw, magma cannons DO exist! I don't think you should build one if you plan on doing an aboveground fort though.  Something about a "fire hazard" and "choking smoke" Its probably all hippie non-sense, but proceed at your own risk if you want. 

As far as the first cavern layer goes, the most dangerous thing is the rare Giant Cave Spider.  It will web a lone dorf before killing them easily.  You really want at least 3 dorfs to attack them.  They leave permanent syndroms of dizzyness and nausea in anyone they bite as well.  On the other hand, you can capture one in a cage trap and make a silk farm out of him.

For the caverns as a new player, I'd just wall off all breaches for now.  Later, you can build a drawbridge to seal the entrance and line the hallway with cage traps and end it with a barracks filled with axelords before finally connecting to your fort.  I usually just leave them open with cages and linked to a bridge.  Whatever wanders into the cages is either 1) dinner and bone exports/armor 2) the start of a breeding program 3) live training for my military (1 cave troll versus 5 recruits, more experience than sparring).  You can also look for choke points to trap/wall off to gain better control of the caverns.  They are also a great source of gems, since you'll find many exposed clusters along the walls.  If you have no trees above ground, you can send out loggers.  However I'd station some military dorfs nearby for protection (or at least constantly check the wildlife list to see what is in there).

[tranquilham]

Btw, magma cannons DO exist!

Oh god yes!
I also heard...
waterfalls = mist
mist + dorfs = happiness

Can you artificially make a waterfall? Oh, and what about the magma hot spring baths? Would that work? Would the magma heat the water? Could I make an actual hot spring?

[Detros]

Thank you everyone for the advice! So far, I've got a small place of 16 beds, and I'm aiming to dig down into the gabbro for DIAMONDS! Also, how would I know if a place has caves or not? Does every embark site have caves? Or is it just certain ones?

More questions, also:
1. Is there an estimate for about how deep the magma sea and cavern levels are? Is it even possible to estimate it?
2. Is there a way to transport rocks faster?
3. I used a quantum stockpile. Is that bad?
4. When do the invasions and megabeasts come?
5. Whats so dangerous about building above ground? In world gen, the above ground settlements don't seem to be murdered ruthlessly by gobbos.

That's all of my questions for now, but feel free to use this post to share your building style or whatever. I'd love to see how others plan out their things.

• Depends on the world settings you used, can be easily 100ish levels unedr the terrain
• Ways to trasport stones from the fastest to the slowest one:
  
  • drop it via garbage zone (only down)
  • fire it via catapult (only sideways or down)
  • carry it via minecart (lot of work around, can be possibly really fast)
  • carry it via wheelbarrows (assign them to destination stockpile)
  • carry it in hand (so slow)

[/list]
...just noted there are already other responses...

[vjek]

... Can you artificially make a waterfall? Oh, and what about the magma hot spring baths? Would that work? Would the magma heat the water? Could I make an actual hot spring?

artificial waterfall, definitely, and trivially easy with a partial aquifer on the embark.  As for hot springs, not really, at least, not in the sense of warm water being any nicer or happiness-making than normal water, for dwarves.  You can make them walk through flooded areas, and they'll take soapy baths if you have a well and soap, but that's about it, afaik.

[Niddhoger]

... Can you artificially make a waterfall? Oh, and what about the magma hot spring baths? Would that work? Would the magma heat the water? Could I make an actual hot spring?

artificial waterfall, definitely, and trivially easy with a partial aquifer on the embark.  As for hot springs, not really, at least, not in the sense of warm water being any nicer or happiness-making than normal water, for dwarves.  You can make them walk through flooded areas, and they'll take soapy baths if you have a well and soap, but that's about it, afaik.

Yeah, "hot water" is basically just steam.  Similarly, "cold water" is ice.  Freezing is also instanteous and typically kills whatever falls into its new ice-tomb.  You can have "warm stone" that borders magma and will pause your game, undesignate he mining job, and give you a message about it, but there is no such labeling (nor benefits) for warm water.

The "Dwarven Mist Generator" can be installed into your dining hall.  Its usually just water being pumped over a grate.  As mentioned, aquifers simplify this, but you can pit/pond a few tiles worth of water to your dining room via buckets and get a closed system running.

[Innocent Dave]

I'd strongly second the obsidian-casting solution, as this gives you a uniformly-coloured area that can be engraved, and is worth three times as much as normal stone.  Building constructed floors and walls in place of off-colour ones is much easier, but means you can't engrave them.

I also like to check what sort of stone I have in abundance before starting, and use excessive stockpile management to only build furniture from that one stone, because otherwise things don't match, and then I get sad.

 Of course, my most common cause of fort death is being seiged before I've set up defences, because I spent too much time coordinating the furniture.

[Spehss _]

EDIT: I'm a fan of Homestuck. (I'm not meaning to be a stupid annoying fan though.) I was wondering: has anyone actually done anything like that in modding? I heard there was a guy here who was doing that in the previous version?

Skimming through this thread, no one else replied to this, so I'll get it. The mod you probably heard of is Fortbent by Putnam. I'm not personally familiar with the mod, and the thread was last active by Putnam in July, and the mod itself isn't updated for the most recent Dwarf Fortress version. You could send him a pm asking about it, I guess. He does a lot of programming and stuff, as far as I know, so he may be too busy with other things to work on the fortbent mod.


Anyway, my tips for good fortress aesthetics: Symmetry is good, asymemtry can look good but it's harder to do and in my experience doesn't work out, and generally if you choose one style you should stick with that style - ie square and rectangle rooms or organic circles and shaped rooms don't work together well.

[greycat]

There are always 3 cavern layers, unless you modified the world gen parameters.

If you use Basic world gen, or an "ISLAND" template in Advanced world gen, the magma is usually 100+ levels below the surface.  If you use a "REGION" template in Advanced world gen, the magma is usually ~50 levels down.  I really like the thinner REGION layouts.

A magma cannon is not a single construction.  It's more of a design archetype.  The essence is to unite your invaders with your magma, for the joy of togetherness.  Imagination and game mechanics are the only limits.

Probably the three most well-known magma weaponization solutions are the dodge-em trap over a magma pool; the magma waterfall; and the magma minecart shotgun.

[Niddhoger]

There are always 3 cavern layers, unless you modified the world gen parameters.

If you use Basic world gen, or an "ISLAND" template in Advanced world gen, the magma is usually 100+ levels below the surface.  If you use a "REGION" template in Advanced world gen, the magma is usually ~50 levels down.  I really like the thinner REGION layouts.

A magma cannon is not a single construction.  It's more of a design archetype.  The essence is to unite your invaders with your magma, for the joy of togetherness.  Imagination and game mechanics are the only limits.

Probably the three most well-known magma weaponization solutions are the dodge-em trap over a magma pool; the magma waterfall; and the magma minecart shotgun.

Yeah, but I remember a post a while back about a guy who made so-called "magma cannons" to jettison out magma in pre-determined directions from a "bunker" in the middle of the map.  He even showed us screen-caps of trolls melting from the lava.  While this is most definitely an advanced construction that I don't even remember all the parts too, it qualifies, damnit! This is DF, Stupid Dwarf Tricks and convoluted feats of engineering are soul of the game!

[Zuglarkun]

I believe that was the magma land mines or something similar.

Was it this one?
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134331.0

More to the topic at hand, if you want to make your fortress look "good", as in the aesthetics wise, make sure to visualize your fortress design in 3D and do make use of more than one z-level for aesthetic designs. Use a third party visualizer like stonesense or armok vision to enable viewing of your fort in 3D and plan accordingly.

I like to thoroughly plan out my fortresses in advance (learning how to world gen was a god send) and save good designs to use later on. With enough experience and failed forts, you should have a lot of workable design templates to use for your workshops areas, tombs, bedrooms and so on.

A dragon tower is definitely possible with some planning, as for magma hot springs, just channel a pit where you want your hot springs to be and guide the magma to that spot. Unless by hot springs you mean magma geyser hot springs, in which case I'll advise you to learn up on water pressure and magma pressure.