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[DwarfUli]

If I place a pressure plate on the tavern dance floor that is 12x12, will this change the patterns of the dancers? I built a drowning tank for my trade depot, but I don't want my dorfs to be to murderous so I figured I would have visitors dancing in the tavern trigger the kill system, but the visitors don't seem to dance on my triggers in the floor? Did my dorfs pick a square that is just never used in dance?

[Thisfox]

I was under the impression that not only could dancing only happen on no structures, but around no structures, so a statue in the middle of the dance floor, or a pressure plate, or a chair, would prevent the dance in or around that location.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Iirc, I believe the “dance floor” needs to be a contiguous square or rectangular area without any obstructions within it.  It’s possible that by including the pressure plate, you have reduced the size of the available “dance floor” to the point that no one will use it for dancing.  From what I can tell, your “dance floor” needs to be at least 5x5 (however, some dances require more).  You can check the size of your “dance floor” by using the locations menu and selecting the option for your tavern.  It will have a line that gives the information.

[DwarfUli]

Thank you both. I never got it to work but I am messing with other pressure plate traps. To be honest I just now am getting into real proper traps on my DF journey of learning. I never imagined a gaming experience could have this kind of depth. I am blown away with the things I can do with water alone; sprawling aquaducts, waterfalls, energy production, terraforming deserts with underground water sources using massive numbers of pump stacks...and I haven't even touched magma yet. I still haven't gotten to a vulcano embark, haven't built a true metal industry yet, let alone a real working bee farm or a nicely set up hospital wing with patient rooms etc. I have had to much fun with water! 

I am going to try a work around the dance floor trigger. I put a ton of time into Channelwood and it was my longest lasting fortress to date. I have found that every iteration of a fortress sim, I learn something new and after several years will retire the fortress and make a new, improved version. I was building a waterfall that entered through the ceiling (a 4x4 funnel) of my tree canopy tavern, and drop through the floor, back to earth. My plan was to set up a small glass factory to see if I could put glass walls around the 4x4 waterfall area inside the tavern, and see if dorfs still enjoy the waterfalls, even if viewed through glass. I would think so.

I never got to that point though. After I asked this question on here I went back to Channelwood and got my first siege! It was a crazy thing. There were 4 creatures labeled as "invaders". it appeared to be 2 necromancers and 2 humans of some kind. But there were 30+ undead with them, humans, goblins, elves..a whole variety. I assume the necromancers left their towers and as they killed their way to my fort, just kept creating a bigger and bigger undead army. At first I panicked. I paused the game and ran outside. When I regrouped I activated 1st Speardwarf Division. My finely trained squad of 5 speardorfs. They trained for a full calendar year, every other month. I even had 3 copper spears and two carried very good quality wooden spears. All had wooden shields and two had full leather armor. This was the whole of my military at Channelwood.

It was my first siege so things moved very fast. First of all I was amazed how well my dorfs did with what they had. They killed 7-8 undead or so before they were killed themselves. My population was about 90+, looking back I should have had a bigger military but I didn't want to lose dorf industrial power to military training.  Everything was overrun. The chicken farm even was destroyed. I was able to lock off access to 5-6 dorfs and 10 or so children using a drawbridge. luckily I could dig to the food storage so I tried waiting out the siege, I waited a long time and the necromancers  showed no intention of leaving. Then came the ghosts of the dead, who apparently can fly right through drawbridges. The children became terrified as their small 4 room area starting filling with more and more ghosts of the dead. They even witnessed decaying parents and such. The whole thing got quite ugly.

I ended up opening the drawbridge and trying to run but everyone was killed, even the God Child I had raised to adulthood in the trees...so ended Channelwood 

I closed the Age (deleted the file folder) and have started afresh 

[Schmaven]

That sounds like a fun ending for sure.  I try to keep a reserve stash of weapons around for those situations to arm every dwarf in the fort, even if it's with just a wooden spear.  90 or so dwarves with sharp sticks and hastily drafted into untrained squads can still hold their own fairly well compared to unarmed civilians just flailing about with no weapons. 

[Thisfox]

Epic. Excellent.

I was building a waterfall that entered through the ceiling (a 4x4 funnel) of my tree canopy tavern, and drop through the floor, back to earth. My plan was to set up a small glass factory to see if I could put glass walls around the 4x4 waterfall area inside the tavern, and see if dorfs still enjoy the waterfalls, even if viewed through glass. I would think so.

If you put in glass windows, instead of glass walls, they will be able to see the waterfalls, yes. But they prefer getting a bit of the mist from the waterfall if possible, so I recommend putting the waterfall on the inside of the tavern, with the dwarves. With a good drainage area, obviously, so they don't have to wade.

I closed the Age (deleted the file folder) and have started afresh   

Huh. Why did you do that? Because of the necromancers? I am never happy just deleting my fortresses. In my folder I have vanilla mac versions of the game since the 2D version at least, and if I want to mod versions I just grab a new download. I can't fathom why people want to destroy the work they put into it all. I often start again and again on the same map, for that matter.

Note on future sieges: If you successfully wall yourself in (well done!) immediately start mass producing slabs and engraving and building the engraved slabs. Even if you only have one adult dwarf, it's best to make that adult a mason and a craftsdwarf, get the workshops built up, and start commemorating your newly dead.

[PatrikLundell]

Sieges last either one season or one year (with isolated reports from credible sources of non standard length sieges), so you can wait them out if you've got enough food and drinks if you've managed to isolate yourself.

[Salmeuk]

If I place a pressure plate on the tavern dance floor that is 12x12, will this change the patterns of the dancers? I built a drowning tank for my trade depot, but I don't want my dorfs to be to murderous so I figured I would have visitors dancing in the tavern trigger the kill system, but the visitors don't seem to dance on my triggers in the floor? Did my dorfs pick a square that is just never used in dance?

Another way would be to put the pressure plate in a 'visitor only' corridor... which you could construct with um well I'm not entirely sure actually. Burrows would work but be sort of painful to sort out.

You could also set the pressure plate weight to something higher than dwarves, but low enough that other visitors could trigger it. Though I am ALSO not sure if dwarves are lighter or heavier than other species. On average.

Ok after checking, humans are avg. 70,000 , while dwarves and elves are svg. 60,000. So you could definitely set it up to point the blame at your human visitors!

[DwarfUli]

Thanks everyone,

Schmaven; Your advice about arming every dwarf citizen with a wooden training spear was instantly adopted. Quite frankly, I can't believe I didn't consider doing this sooner. At 90+ strong, a crowd of angry dorfs swarming towards a single target with spears will be awesome. I started a new fortress and have been making spears and a shield for each dorf that joins Towerpuzzle.
Only problem I am having now is that when I do a lot of construction (like building walls), and when the dorfs go get more materials, they will drop spears and shields everywhere. Then another dorf will race to get them with a wheelbarrow, and drop the shield and spear off at my stockpile. So I keep having to rearm the dorfs because they leave their spears and shields on the ground, which then all up in my stockpile (which I at least moved to the armory).  Is it because they need to use both hands in construction?

I switched from Mayday tileset to ASCII, so I wanted a fresh start, with all new folders  I loved the mayday tiles but 1) information does get lost 2) the colors created by the ascii graphics
are better imo. I understand why the MoMA keeps a screenshot of DF on the wall. Channelwood also felt very done, and I wanted to move on. Since everyone was dead, I assumed the linking book would have been found and destroyed in the raid. I waited out the necromancers for maybe 2 seasons but then I felt I needed to take some action. I should indeed have built coffins. As a matter of fact, I think its wise to make some coffins/memorial slabs as soon as I embark to have some available when needed. Thanks Thisfox.

I will check the weight thing, that is a really cool idea.

My broker dorf fancies himself a bit of a philosopher.  He asked the question; If elven traders are innocently drowned at the depot through the use of a trap mechanism, which is triggered by an innocent guest in the tavern, without their knowledge...well, clearly this poor, drunk soul can't be held responsible for any crime? When asked if the maker of the trap mechanism was the one to carry the blame, he got very upset, thought things over for a while and then concluded the ultimate blame fell on the mechanism itself, and adviced all dorfs to be cautious when working in the mechanic's workshop.

[Mobbstar]

Schmaven; Your advice about arming every dwarf citizen with a wooden training spear was instantly adopted.

You misread.  They were talking about wooden spears, not wooden training spears.  It is a subtle but important difference.  For one, training weapons are blunt.  Think of them as wooden hammers.  Elves may bring wooden spears, those are more powerful than unarmed strikes in my experience.

[Schmaven]

Schmaven; Your advice about arming every dwarf citizen with a wooden training spear was instantly adopted.

You misread.  They were talking about wooden spears, not wooden training spears.  It is a subtle but important difference.  For one, training weapons are blunt.  Think of them as wooden hammers.  Elves may bring wooden spears, those are more powerful than unarmed strikes in my experience.

Interesting... I always assumed there was no difference between the training spears and what the elves brought to trade.  I still think training spears would be better than no weapon.  I just imagine being whacked in the face with a broom stick hurting a lot more than eating a knuckle sandwich.  But I usually embark somewhere with lignite or coal, and a weapons grade metal, so the wooden spears get generally get replaced with copper or silver weapons before they're needed. 

But the issue of your Dwarves dropping weapons all over the place is odd.  I suspect you're drafting your dwarves into squads assigned with wooden spears and then activating them to train, then deactivating them later to work?  Or possibly giving them scheduled on / off rotational training?  How I do it, is just leave everyone 100% civilian (except for the standing army which trains 100% of the time), and only draft them and assign emergency weapons when there is no one left standing between them and their doom.  They're not very effective, because no one has any training, but the up side is all their weapons stay in the same spot. 

I suppose you could keep them on a training schedule, but just lock the door to the armory, and possibly forbid the weapons behind the door to prevent cancellation spam.

[DwarfUli]

Wooden training spears aren't sharpened??

damn you Urist...


Here you can see, my squad attacked the large turtles in the dock and killed 2 of them. It took so long that I told them to go back to work, and they all threw their spears on the ground and ran off (see number 4). Something I noticed when I filled the tank...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[PatrikLundell]

Burrows are useless when it comes to creating visitor only corridors, as burrows only restrict dorfs to take jobs within them: they do nothing at all when it comes to moving between job locations, so the shortest route is taken regardless.

What you want is to set up the movement cost of movement through the shortest route (the visitor corridor) to be high enough for your citizens to go through another, longer, corridor. However, you also have to make sure both corridors are at least two tiles wide, or people meeting each other in one of the corridors will both turn around and take the other one (regardless of movement cost), only to bump into each other, turn around...

[anewaname]

From observation, training weapons are better than fists. When your embark starts wtih alligators near the wagon, 3 dwarfs with wooden shields and wooden weapons was always better than 7 dwarfs with fists. The alligators are beaten into unconsciousness sooner and fewer dwarfs lost legs.

Two common causes of dwarfs dropping spears and shields all over the place:
- When you are currently producing new spears and shields, every time a higher quality item is produced, a dwarf may drop their old item and walk to get the better one.
- In the Military Schedules screen, there is a default setting "Inactive = Uniformed" which can be toggled for each squad and month, and if you switch that to "Inactive = Civilian" they will pickup/drop their uniform every time they alternate between a civilian and a military job. Also, woodcutters, miners, and hunters will have problems with "Inactive = Uniformed".

Giant tortoises are difficult to hurt with wood weapons, as that wiki page describes. They weigh five times as much as a dwarf so that shell is thick, meaning that most of the momentum delivered by the blunt wood weapon is dispersed.

[DwarfUli]

Two common causes of dwarfs dropping spears and shields all over the place:
- When you are currently producing new spears and shields, every time a higher quality item is produced, a dwarf may drop their old item and walk to get the better one.
- In the Military Schedules screen, there is a default setting "Inactive = Uniformed" which can be toggled for each squad and month, and if you switch that to "Inactive = Civilian" they will pickup/drop their uniform every time they alternate between a civilian and a military job. Also, woodcutters, miners, and hunters will have problems with "Inactive = Uniformed".

Ah thank you that fixed it! When I make them wear their military gear when off duty, they don't throw stuff on the ground.