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[isitanos]

The 0.47 changelog makes it sound like not much is different compared to 0.44.x in Fortress Mode, so I hesitate to make the jump losing all the quality of life features from DFHack and other tools.


Is there anything of note that really improves the experience? (Use spoiler tags if needed.)


Some things that sounded rather boring, with extra busywork for minimal impact:
- Temples
- Guilds
- Villain sendings thieves, and subsequent interrogations (do villains also send armies or anything else than thieves?)


Some new enemies that seemed potentially exciting:
- Intelligent undead lieutenants
- Experiments
- Corpse giants
That is, assuming you can get them to attack you without settling in a nigh-unplayable cursed area. I don't know how the latter are these days, haven't played in a while.


Thanks!

[Robsoie]

From my Fortress games in 0.47.x, the real main attraction to current version for Fortress mode is the introduction of another kind of aquifer too, a slower one.

This one is a gift to anyone wanting to embark anywhere, as aquifers have always been in the majority of DF possible embarks.
With the slower type of aquifer you then don't have to spend as it used to be so many in-game months (and doing very annoying repetitive keyboard stunts due to how many suspended job you have to re-enable because of how fast aquifer were to fill empty spaces) to pierce an aquifer to get through them.

Other than that, the new stuff in Fortress mode does not seem yet to be impactfull enough to make gameplay better/different from previous 44.x , and there are still stress/relationship/performance problems that are plaguing the fort on long term.
Hopefully things will continue to improve during the 47.x bugfix sessions.

[Naryar]

Guilds are nice. They let dwarves teach each other, and even if it isn't much, I think the roleplaying helps. It also helps counteract skill rust.

Haven't had any special temples so far, so can't say about those.

Of course it's mostly farmer guilds, or miner/stoneworker ones. And the dwarves mostly teach useless skills like presser or soap maker. It is sad but not unexpected.

Slow aquifers are pretty nice. I've never done so much water management since this new version.

[FantasticDorf]

Necromancer sieges are exciting now with the mixture of varied types of enemies, and that they're a teeny bit more common. You can also provoke the deep-disaster sites to come up against 🤡 's potentially. Some under the hood fixes and some loudly announced ones between 47.01 and .02. Game is more tolerable long term now as the issues are more subdued rather than eliminated.

47.xx is only getting started and i hope the next few versions before the steam release can be as exciting or least insightful.

[isitanos]

Thanks guys, looks like I'll stick with 0.44.x for now, though the aquifer modification in particular does sound like a nice quality-of-life improvement.


I'm really disappointed at 0.47 to be honest, during development I assumed that a lot of the cool stuff mentioned was going to be in fort mode. Oh well, I'll go back to cryosleep for a while.



Please do keep posting if you find more cool stuff. I guess the stress/relationship issues you mention should be alleviated with Temple sermons?

[Shonai_Dweller]

47.03 will have raids that won't corrupt your save and mess up your experience for good, so there's that. And traction benches that won't go into diagnostic repeating overdrive.

Not sure if there's really any reason to choose 44.12 over this. It's more stuff and less bugs (once 47.03 hits, anyway).

I'm curious, what exactly in the devblogs were you thinking was going to be included in fortress mode that wasn't? Did you maybe think a brand new necromancer Tower Mode had suddenly been created? Players creating hideous experiments and such?

[teh sam]

I hesitate to make the jump losing all the quality of life features from DFHack and other tools.

I am playing the latest Captain Duck pack with DFHack and Therapist, just so you know you don't have to go without.  It's on DFFD.

[towerator]

If you find a light aquifer that's only like 1 or 2 z-levels deep, you have a super easy an super safe way to make a mist generator: just dig through it with your main stairs (preferrably make these at least 2x2) and seal all but 1 or 2 aquifer tiles. Now, they will produce water in your stairs, but that's alright because they produce just enough to cause puffs of mist from times to times, and since dorfs go there all the time, they get happy thoughts.

[Pancakes]

If you find a light aquifer that's only like 1 or 2 z-levels deep, you have a super easy an super safe way to make a mist generator: just dig through it with your main stairs (preferrably make these at least 2x2) and seal all but 1 or 2 aquifer tiles. Now, they will produce water in your stairs, but that's alright because they produce just enough to cause puffs of mist from times to times, and since dorfs go there all the time, they get happy thoughts.

If you do this, you might want to create a large enough room at the bottom of the stairwell in order to let the water spread out and evaporate. Despite the new aquifers being 1/500th as quick to flood as the old ones, they still can cause flooding if you don't respect them.

[Naryar]

If you find a light aquifer that's only like 1 or 2 z-levels deep, you have a super easy an super safe way to make a mist generator: just dig through it with your main stairs (preferrably make these at least 2x2) and seal all but 1 or 2 aquifer tiles. Now, they will produce water in your stairs, but that's alright because they produce just enough to cause puffs of mist from times to times, and since dorfs go there all the time, they get happy thoughts.

If you do this, you might want to create a large enough room at the bottom of the stairwell in order to let the water spread out and evaporate. Despite the new aquifers being 1/500th as quick to flood as the old ones, they still can cause flooding if you don't respect them.

Yeah, if you go through a light aquifer, you will need enough space for the water to evaporate at the bottom. It doesn't need more than 5x5 or so, though. Also it's free mud for farming and/or free water for reservoirs, which is nice, and free cleaning, but it also causes cancellations when water reaches 2/7 and hence some trouble with caravans and such.

I did some mineral extraction in a sedimentary layer that was in a light aquifer... and if you do, you WILL need to drain this water into the caverns. Once your mining becomes consequent, so will the water flow.

[towerator]

Even light aquifers can have some nasty surprises however, such as that fortress I did in 01 with a 7 layer light aq, covering the entirety of the sedimentary layer.

[isitanos]

47.03 will have raids that won't corrupt your save and mess up your experience for good, so there's that. And traction benches that won't go into diagnostic repeating overdrive.

Not sure if there's really any reason to choose 44.12 over this. It's more stuff and less bugs (once 47.03 hits, anyway).

The reason would be that it typically takes months before a full-featured, and more importantly, stable version of DFHack emerges again. The reverse-engineering work they do is extremely hard.

Also, new bugs just as bad as the raid corruption are likely to crop up, and be left unfixed for two years again. It's pretty much what happens every release cycle, except the raid one was particularly nasty it seems. Typically Toady's bugfixing spree doesn't last long enough for the really gnarly bugs to surface and be confirmed and fixed.

Since some of the bugs fixed in 47.x -and more- were already fixed by 0.44 DFHack, that doesn't leave much of a reason to switch over right away.

I'm curious, what exactly in the devblogs were you thinking was going to be included in fortress mode that wasn't? Did you maybe think a brand new necromancer Tower Mode had suddenly been created? Players creating hideous experiments and such?

To be honest, at this point it's a little fuzzy. I've been reading the dev blogs on and off over the past two years, and the Villain stuff sounded really exciting in particular. I assumed it would have a lot more impact on Dwarf Mode, perhaps some scheming and plotting and evil dwarves recruiting people to their cause within the fortress? Alliances also sounded like something that could be extended to fortresses.
Basically I didn't expect Toady to say "We will get to the fortress plots beyond artifact heists when we return." - who knows if he'll actually get to that any time soon given the imminent Steam release and all the likely complications that'll entail.

[Dain]

If you wanna play some long term fortress, stay with 44.12 lnp. 47.xx is good so long as you don't want to go to ''in depth''.

[Shonai_Dweller]

If you wanna play some long term fortress, stay with 44.12 lnp. 47.xx is good so long as you don't want to go to ''in depth''.

How so?
I'm playing quite happily "in-depth". And I'm somewhat more confident about sending out raids than in 44.12. Oh, and my dwarves are making friends and the fortress isn't a field of flashing red arrows.

And as a bonus, Adventurer is on another level completely and not crashing on unretire. What was it about 44.12 that allows more "in-depth" play?

[Laterigrade]

The friends thing, while a bit overdone in legends with lovers, is really good in fortress because, especially with deaths actually mattering to some other dwarves, even if they don’t see the body.

Also, loving guild halls — a bit of a pain sometimes, but it’s more useful recreation than just dancing and it adds a part of dwarven culture which I would imagine being integral to them — the public displaying of skill in other things than singing and ‘simulating the obosh’.

And I was often scared to death of sending a legendary squad to permanent semi-exile in 44.12; the bugfix makes it much better.