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[kicktothehead]

Hi there. Love DF but after about 2-3 years into the life of the fort I tend to get bored.
I think it is because of my bland ideas.
I usually dig straight in .. then down... then lay the farms ...blah blah.
Anyone have any good design suggestions? I really am uncreative haha.

[Iamblichos]

LOL I have this problem too... I always seem to end up creating the same, hyper-efficient fort no matter where I am or what's going on.  I dream of one day being able to roll up a custom fort without being stuck in this rut, but so far it hasn't happened.

[Dunamisdeos]

Don't use shafts. Create actual rampways and stairways. Yes it does increase travel distance but also looks and feels more "realisitic".

[kicktothehead]

Ohh thats a good one. So you just channel down to the next level and use that?

[Dunamisdeos]

Pretty much.

Sometimes I channel 3x3's so it looks like a big open ramp.

[Iamblichos]

That's a good idea.  I usually sprint for the first cavern since I embark with nothing but a pick and anvil, but maybe I'll bring some food and booze next time and try this 

[GhostDwemer]

Speaking of caverns and different designs, "cavern fortress" is always fun. All workshops and housing must be mined out of cavern pillars, with doors opening into the caverns. If you really feel you must, walling off a safe area is acceptable. Extra dwarfy bonus points for extending the cavern up higher. Super dwarfy bonus points for trying this with anything but the first cavern.

Once time, I spent years engineering a system to drop magma into the cavern ponds so I could wall them off completely. In the end, the upper fortress-works were completely abandoned and everything was relocated to the caverns. Monsters and FBs were confined to thin strips at the edges of the cavern.

[Mostali]

About two forts ago I created a luxury fort.  The idea was to make the dwarves just as happy and comfortable as possible, while still getting fort business done.  While none of that is especially creative on it's own, the creativity came in designing the suites.  I decided that no two dwarf living quarters should look the same, but still have everything - bedroom, dining room, office, craft workshop, tomb, bath (with well), sculpture garden, zoo, and armory.  All the doors in the suite were set to 'internal' so that all the rooms overlapped creating a (small) multiplier for item values.  The design challenge came in building around pipes that fed the wells, and in some cases around magma reservoirs for magma forges on the floor above.

It was actually quite a bit of fun designing and building it.  The only reason it's abandoned now is because I took a break from DF for a few months and when I came back I couldn't remember any of my plans.  So, I installed the latest version and started fresh.  Even in the fort I'm playing now I have it in the back of my mind that I'll eventually go back and retro-design all my dwarves living quarters into something similar, but probably a little more reasonable.



Edit - added an image to illustrate.  This is four suites surrounding a central column of spiral ramps.  The floor above has four suites each with wells. There are also two magma forges on the floor above, so two magma reservoirs on this floor. 

[kicktothehead]

That is ambitious for sure Mostali! Looks great!

[Fleeting Frames]

...Well I won't claim them to be good ideas, but:

You can have murals with colors - without compromising layout, if you plan what you make your furniture out of. Even a simple two-color one can look quite neat.

Similarly, you can go overboard with tombs, creating a necropolis - since they'll be the final resting places, this impedes you relatively little after the fact (some fps loss for big open areas so perhaps mark them restricted).

Working within the boundaries of existing locations can be neat too - such as fort submerged in a lake with highly-controlled access, or more ambitiously over/open to eerie glowing pits.

If you plan/draw things out, you can get those organic shapes of your own. Alternatively, native mouse and dfhack's digcircle can also be used to designate non-rectangular shapes.

As long as you lay out workshop's materials as close as possible to them, you get most of the efficiency for most jobs (few obvious ones exempted). Compromising the core fort thus you can do all sorts of implausible-looking things such as entire fort hanging on catwalks - here, you can use minecart tracks to provide support instead of floors, as those will look more like bridges or walls, depending on materials used (which can give the illusion of closed rooms when there's actually openness).

Alternatively, support can be provided by the trees, which looks quite neat as well - though aesthetics and defence are at odds, here.

[Immortal-D]

Speaking of caverns and different designs, "cavern fortress" is always fun. All workshops and housing must be mined out of cavern pillars, with doors opening into the caverns. If you really feel you must, walling off a safe area is acceptable. Extra dwarfy bonus points for extending the cavern up higher. Super dwarfy bonus points for trying this with anything but the first cavern.

This is easily my favorite challenge, and lends itself to some unintentionally cool designs.  Protecting your plump helmets becomes especially !FUN! (I actually do build a enclosed area for that part).

[GhostDwemer]

Oh yeah, since no one has mentioned it, there is a whole list of "stupid dwarf tricks" on the wiki: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Stupid_dwarf_trick
There are some great fun projects listed there, like the mine cart swimming trainer, or the magma cannon.

[Lozzymandias]

I'll admit my fortresses are incredibly utilitarian in their design, to promote the most efficient workflow, safety and happiness, but i feel that can be an artform of its own.

The whole thing is designed around 2 central staircases, with one in the middle that goes to the surface (surrounded in defenses) and one that goes to the Deeps. Then theres a central square room around those defenses where the wood is kept. Then the fortress has 4 wings each with a purpose. north/south goes the industrial sector, where stone, wood and bone, metal and glass is shaped. The shops are four abreast in the middle with a central avenue, associate stockpiles on the other side to the central avenue, both 1 level above and below. Metal is usually its own sub section.

The organics is on the other side to the industrial sector and has a similar set up, and handles food drink, leather, clothes and soap and the like. I found theres actually very little overlap between the stockpiles of these two, except bone and wood but bone technically can go on either side, and wood is in the middle for easy surface collecting.

On the east/west goes bedrooms, usually large 20 dwarf dormitories with cabinets but sometimes i'll do little apartment complexes.
On the other side goes needful rooms, like a common meeting room, dining room, temple, hospital, jail, rooms for nobles, morgue/graveyard, tavern and associate rooms.
After that it gets a bit freeform. Cisterns and wells i try and design below fortress height, for safeties sake, and prisoner storage/processing is either between the fortress and the first cavern or near the magma cistern for the metal industry, for easy disposal.

The Deeps staircase never goes directly into a cavern. It has staircases that branch off and attach to gatehouses in each cavern from above, so you can shut it off with a hatch. That way you can lose caverns to FB's but keep downward access.

[Broseph Stalin]

I spent years perfecting my fort design and have macros for the dig and build jobs so they tend to be very cookie cutter. Sometimes it's nice to try out a new design like a Gemclod style open pit or shut down the planny part of your brain and just go wild.

[Iamblichos]

Lozzy's fort sounds similar to mine, but my functional areas tend to be separated by Z-levels.

Entrance is usually a fortress or, at the very least, a drawbridge leading into the deeps.  A 3x3 U/D stair stack connects the fort top to bottom, interrupted only by offsets when caverns make it necessary.

There is often a shallow trade hall if it isn't on the surface; sometimes I put a trade temple and/or squad barracks there as well.  If I have to bury the trade hall (glaciers/evil clouds/etc.) then I channel ramps down to the trade level and then seal off the stairs.

The food area is either dug out of soil (rarely) or depends on where I can find standing water below for irrigation.  I irrigate a 7X13 room using either a pump or a channel-and-floodgate hookup, then construct fields on the mud.  Once the water has evaporated I remove the walls.  The location of the rest of the fort in the Z-stack depends on where I find my water (1st, 2nd or 3d cavern).  All food prep and organics are processed in this space.

One level above/below the farms is the living area, comprising taverns, temples, libraries, and public works (mayor's office, noble suites, etc.)  Occasionally I will have the hospital and graves here as well.

+/-1 Z level is a level which is all manufacturing, surrounding a giant open storage space for raw materials and goods.

+/-1 Z level is a level which is 2x3 rooms in halls of 20, 10 to the side.

+/-1 Z level is the hospital/grave area if not included in the living area.

At the very bottom, just above the magma sea, are the forges/smelters/kilns/glass furnaces.  I prefer to build them directly above, but will dig channels for magma if necessary.