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[Faces of Mu]

Heyas,

I'm interested to see what ideas people have to make use of the z-axis inside their fortress to create greater efficiency (RATHER than to create monstrous projects where the fortress resembles a sphinx, or a complete working model of the human digestive system, etc etc!). I posted a workshop/storage/bedroom idea here, and I've reposted it below and modified it to show the access levels in between.

Original (edited) post:
Toady posted that dwarves don't sleep well within 4 squares of a workshop. I don't know if that workshop had to actually be in use for it to disturb dwarves, but I think this info will be crucial when people design bedrooms in 3D (as I would like to have dwarves sleep above their workshops, and a sweet design would be to have a mezzanine level or loft in the workshop!).

Gonna give this loft design a go. This is the plan if workshops only disturb sleep when in use and I've assigned this workshop to it's inhabitant.

code:

Lvl -2  Lvl -1   Lvl 0   Lvl +1   Lvl +2
                    
###     ### #.#  ###     ### #.#  ###
#@##### #!# #.#  #!##### #!###.#  #!##### 
#....># ### #^#  #====^# #   $^#  #   $<# 
#.xxx.#     ###  #=====# #   $$#  #  $$+# 
#.xxx.#          #=====# #     #  #  $C.# 
#.xxx.#          #=====# #     #  #  $TD# 
#.....#          #=====# #     #  #  $BD# 
#######          ####### #######  #######
 
# wall
. floor
+ door
x workshop
= stockpile/storage
> stairs up 
< stairs down 
^ Stairs up/down
$ glass window
@ grate (see conveyor idea below)
! schute (see conveyor idea below)
B bed
T table
C chair
D dresser/drawers
empty space = empty space

I am thinking my common plan is to have workshops on one level, material and goods storage directly above that level, and bedrooms above that. Food Prep workshops (kitchens, brewery), storage and bedrooms would all be the same so ppl can take food back to their rooms through the interconnecting passages on Lvl +1.

I'm thinking that it would be wise if I put one complete floor between floors so that if I need to make channels for any reason I can. I'm still not sure what the best order is for anything, but the 3D version will certainly mean dwarves will be spending far less travel time to get anywhere!

Later idea:

The later idea I posted was a conveyor belt solution. It depends on water flows being able to reliably push materials around. This is a diagram.

code:

Level G
#############+++++++####
watersource|==========!#
########################

Level J
                     ###
                     #@#####
                     #....>#
                     #.XXX.#
                     #.XXX.#
                     #.XXX.#
                     #.....#
                     #######   
Here:
# rock
+ door
| floodgate
= stockpile
! beginning of chute to below
X workshop
@ grate
> stairs up

So, to begin with the doors are open and the floodgate is closed. Dwarves store the materials (let's say, wood) in the stockpile. When it's full, a lever is pulled to close the doors. Another lever is pulled to open the floodgate, the water pushes the wood along the hallway, down the hole and into the storage room far below the surface (travelling through the chutes shown with ! on levels +2 through to -1 in the top most diagram). It is stopped by the grate and the water falls into a sewer below. The carpenter can then go and grab the wood and use it in his workshop deep in the fortress.

I'd like use this idea with the access tunnels and hallways I'd have between my workshops, storage and bedroom levels. With some smart engineering, you could even make a grid of conveyor hallways on this level so that one hallway may transport more than one type of material to more than one storage way, all with the right combination of floodgates and switches (like stop and go lights).

Do you have any space- and time-efficient models you are tossing around in your head that you plan on trying out in the next release??

[ October 25, 2007: Message edited by: Faces of Mu ]

[Faces of Mu]

Hmmmm...

Now I'm thinking of plans that benefit from synergy between tasks. It might help to see a flow chart of how different workshops and job roles relate to each other, but for the moment a small example of the plan would look like:

code:

Animal   Meat       Meal &     Raw
Pens     Stores     Drinks     Plants
   \    /    \      /     \   /     \
   Butcher   Kitchens   Brewery    Farmer's
        \      /              \    Workshop
         \    /                \    /
         Corpse     Leather    Bagged 
         Stores     Stores     Plants
        /    \       /   \          \
   Crafts     Tanners    Leather    Loom (Lvl 2)
   Shop\                 Workers     /
    |   \                /          /
    |   Bone        Clothes----Clothes
    |   Products    Stores     Makers (Lvl 2)
    ------------------------------|

So each form of storage is nearest it's workshop and each workshop's is near it's product stores AND raw material stores. In this example, animals are stored in the pen. They get butchered and turned in to corpses, stored at the corpse storage. Tanners grab the body and make leather which the leather makers use and store the leather boots in the clothes store.

Alternatively, pig tails are put in the raw plant storage ready for bagging at the farmer's workshop. From there they are put into the bagged plants room and then processed at the brewery. The alcohol is stored in the Meals and Drinks room and then recooked into meals. The plants also, just as easily could have gone through the loom to the cloth stores and then onto the clothesmakers to be stored as linen vests in the clothes store.

I'm sure there's a name for this process (tracking the path of products and then trying to reduce the distance and resources expended in the process), but dunno what that is. I bet someone could come up with a program or utility that maps this process and can help make the neatest connections between them all! I fiddled with a process-flow program a few months ago and don't remember the name of that one, either.

I may have gotten the connections or details wrong, but the important thing is that we now have 3 dimensions in which to configure this constellation to.

 EDIT: Cleaned up connections and added z-level (harder than it looks!  :p )

[ October 19, 2007: Message edited by: Faces of Mu ]

[Btwilley]

One thing that I havent seen listed is are there going to be some(all?)that need more then 1 floor? For isntance a smelter could be 2 floors high, 1 floor would have the smelter, and above that would be the exhaust pipes. Or one level has the mill, and the other has a spinning blade of dea... wee the wheel part.

Also how is misasma going to work, can you dig a courpse den under a workshop and have it not come up/down?

[THLawrence]

Toady has recently mentioned that you can put more then one item in a stockpile tile. In fact you can have as many items as one wants. So large stockpiles that take up a floor are going to disappear and the 3D designs will be even more efficient. As for a design:

code:

Level -1   Level 0
######     #####
#WWW>#     #BBB<
#WWW=#     #BBB#
#WWW=D     #BBBD
######     #####
Where:
W=Workshop
B=Bedroom
<=Stairs up
>=Stairs Down
==Stockpile
#=Wall
D=Door
 

The door on the workshop level will connect to the working floor which contains other workshops and stockpiles. The Door on the living level will connect to the  living level which will contain dining rooms and other nice things. The exact position of the stairs and stockpile will depend on the workshop since not all of them are access able from the same direction. The bedroom design will depend on what I feel like adding. It may even be smaller then that.

[THLawrence]

quote:Originally posted by Btwilley:
<STRONG>One thing that I havent seen listed is are there going to be some(all?)that need more then 1 floor? For isntance a smelter could be 2 floors high, 1 floor would have the smelter, and above that would be the exhaust pipes. Or one level has the mill, and the other has a spinning blade of dea... wee the wheel part.

Also how is misasma going to work, can you dig a courpse den under a workshop and have it not come up/down?</STRONG>

Toady has mentioned that buildings will not go between z-levels yet.
If miasma works like mist and steam it will rise and fall between z-levels.

Maybe it would work better like this:

code:

 
 10   9-0    -1
###   ###   ###
#*#   # #   #=#
#D#   ###   #D####
            #WWW>#
            #WWW=#
            #WWW##
            ######
Where * is refuse dump for use able items
      W is workshop for items
      = is stockpile for refuse or use able items. Figure out which one's which.
I think you understand the rest.
 

This would allow the refuse haulers to dump stuff into the stockpile without being effected.

[Faces of Mu]

quote:Originally posted by THLawrence:
<STRONG>Toady has recently mentioned that you can put more then one item in a stockpile tile. In fact you can have as many items as one wants. </STRONG>

Hey that's a big change! I sorta got used to the bins idea. I wonder if he's  allowing that just until actual size and mass of objects is determined somehow?
Got a link for when he mentioned that change?

Thanks for the heads up!

[Mechanoid]

What THLawrence suggested is known as a "Quantum stockpile" where you can fit an entire mountain of dug stone into a single stone stockpile square, as long as you're able to chasm the stone directly above the stockpile so that all the stone lands into the stockpile. It's not really "new" so much as it's a quirk in the coding of how stockpiles work.

Hell, you can even create this effect in the current version, by creating stockpiles, waiting for them to fill to normal capacity, and then removing the primary stockpile leaving only the quantum stockpile behind, after which you build a series of buildings (like farms; NOT CHANNELS, THEY ARE TOO COSTLY IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE - bridges are the same, since they can become masterpeices) over the area to 'push' the items towards the quantum stockpile(s)
Once the items are on the square, they register as being owned by the stockpile. Thus, you can fit 10000 stone into a single square (until Toady codes in item limits per square)

code:

#X######
#......#
#......##
#......QD
#......##
#......#
########

A 6x6 room with a Q quantum stockpile next to the D door. The floor area . can be any stockpile that matches the quantum stockpile. The room can also be muddied via floodgate X so that a farm can be built and 36 items pushed into the quantum stockpile for 3/4rs of the game year.
Once the next version is released these large stockpile areas will not be necessary, as items can be chasmed directly into the quantum stockpile from the level above.

The number of items you can store REALLY pick up when bins and barrels are used (by a factor of however much each bin and barrel can store)

...
As a side note, it is fully possible to give your haulers a living wage (assuming they're dedicated) by shifting the chasm point over a new quantum stockpile and removing the old quantum stockpile. Thus, you no longer need to make a lever room for your dwarves to pull repeateded for payment.

[ October 19, 2007: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]

[herrbdog]

quote:Originally posted by Faces of Mu:
<STRONG>T'm sure there's a name for this process (tracking the path of products and then trying to reduce the distance and resources expended in the process), but dunno what that is.</STRONG>

Greek
oikos nemein (to manage the house) = english economy

related:
oikos logos (to study the house) = english ecology

Edit: Greek spelling (it's been years since my classical Greek and Latin classes...)

[ October 19, 2007: Message edited by: herrbdog ]

[Faces of Mu]

quote:Originally posted by Mechanoid:
<STRONG>What THLawrence suggested is known as a "Quantum stockpile" where you can fit an entire mountain of dug stone into a single stone stockpile square, as long as you're able to chasm the stone directly above the stockpile so that all the stone lands into the stockpile.</STRONG>

Ah! Yup yup, I remember this. So in my plans above, I would still need the storage room on Lvl 0 to store all the products made in the workshop below and carried up. Otherwise, the workshop could be on Lvl 0, and the raw materials still get dumped there, but products are dropped to the level below for even more quantum stockpiling. This would be really useful in the workshop scheme above if you could get, say, butcher over the tanners and the tanners over the leatherworker's shop so that skins fall to become leather which fall to become shoes.

I guess these conveyor plans are all invalidated if Toady makes items get damaged by falls.

[ October 20, 2007: Message edited by: Faces of Mu ]

[Alfador]

quote:Originally posted by Faces of Mu:
<STRONG>I guess these conveyor plans are all invalidated if Toady makes items get damaged by falls.</STRONG>

Depends on what you're dropping. I would expect glass to break if it drops a level. I would not expect leather to break or get damaged by a one-storey drop. Rock, depending on what kind of rock, might get damaged only by longer falls, or get damaged more readily if it's better quality (i.e. finer detail = more fragile). Certain other kinds of crafts like armor would be LESS likely to be damaged the better quality they were.

[Earthquake Damage]

It would be awesome if we could mark a stockpile for chasming (i.e. chasm all its contents until you unmark it).  Beyond quantum stockpiling, I can see legitimate uses such as chasming all those damned non-masterpiece mugs your craftsdwarf-in-training is churning out.

[Sukasa]

quote:Originally posted by Alfador:
<STRONG>

Depends on what you're dropping. I would expect glass to break if it drops a level. I would not expect leather to break or get damaged by a one-storey drop. Rock, depending on what kind of rock, might get damaged only by longer falls, or get damaged more readily if it's better quality (i.e. finer detail = more fragile). Certain other kinds of crafts like armor would be LESS likely to be damaged the better quality they were.</STRONG>

So?  Just use ramps down.  It's a little harder to get multiple conveyors to drain into the same area, but it works.  AND, no fall damages!

[Faces of Mu]

Still interested to see what other efficient internal 3d designs peeps have!

C'mon people, what's YOUR plan gonna be?

</bump>

[Talion]

Foe cleaning system.

code:

Side view:    Top view:
#X####        ########
#~~~~#        #_#~~~~#
#~~~~#        #1#~~~~#
#~~~~#        #~~~~~~#
###~~####     #~~~~~~#
#_1~~2..#     #222222#
#######.#     D...._.D
1 = Flood gate connected to both pressure plates.
2 = Flood gates connected only to the pressure plate guarded by flood gate 1

Ideally the pressure plate in the corridor outside will only respond to creatures. As soon as a creature steps on the pressure plate the inner floodgate  opens and allows the inner floodgate to be activated by the water. This opens and holds open the floodgates until the entire water tank has been emptied. The water exits into the corridor and knocks everything into the pit below.

[Faces of Mu]

I can see this foe cleaner being really useful for cleaning up all the armour and weapons that get left around after sieges!!