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Author Topic: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!  (Read 1498 times)

Septus

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Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« on: September 16, 2009, 03:38:27 pm »

So I've been playing DF for about two weeks now, still on my first fortress about three years in. My fort of 55 just got a migration of like 30 more, all my stunties have bedrooms, we're stocked to the gills with good stuff to trade and build, and I've got a 40-trap gauntlet leading through my walls that has routed every goblin force that has (so far) attacked, all stone is smoothed and on it's way to being engraved. Paradise, right?

Now my Mayor is demanding I build trifle pewter items, 3 of them. Also I neglected to bring turtles or cave lobsters with me, so I have no shells to placate the moody dwarf screaming for them. I have turtles and cave lobbies in my food stock though, so this leads to my questions:

1, will just smelting 2 tin and 1 copper into 3 trifle pewter bars placate my Mayor?
2, how do I force my dwarves to eat the shell-y stuff in my stocks? I've tried forbidding all other food but that means my plump helmets don't get harvested and just rot and attract flies! I think I have like a month or two left before my moody dwarf goes nuts.  Can I forbid stockpiles of food and still enable people to harvest?

Like I said, I'm newish, so if there's a better forum area for this please tell me about it, and be gentle. :)
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Lemunde

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2009, 03:50:31 pm »

Try forbidding all the food in your stockpile (d,b,f I think) and claim all your turtles manually using the k menu(you'll have to search through all your barrels to find them).  Your newly harvested plump helmets won't be forbidden but it should greatly increase the chances your dwarves will eat turtles.

As for the trifle pewter, I'm not entirely sure.  But either way you're going to need trifle pewter bars to get the job done so you might as well do it.
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Airpi

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2009, 03:56:27 pm »

I usually embark with an excess of turtles so that I can start stockpiling shell early, even if they take forever to eat them I usually have at least a couple shells around before moods start coming around. Which isn't very handy in the short term.
I don't know if it'll be fast enough to save your guy, but you could make a turtle-only stockpile somewhere on the surface. Forbid turtles from every other stockpile, and forbid barrels in the turtlepile. They'll rot away and leave shell behind, no eating necessary. The only caveat is that you'll need to claim the bones and shells pretty quickly as they'll also disappear. Mass dump commands usually do the trick as long as you've got enough empty hands wandering around.

Good luck!
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⊂(゚ヮ゚⊂⌒つ    ⊂(゚ヮ゚⊂⌒つ

Thndr

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2009, 04:08:11 pm »

easiest way to get turtle bones and shells is just to dump a turtle or two and wait for it to rot.

A lot simpler and easier than trying to force them to eat them.

But I usually ship with only Helmets and Turtles, so that I have plenty of that stuff in case of sudden madness.
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RedWick

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2009, 05:03:35 pm »

Yes, making trifle pewter bars will placate your mayor.
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Neonivek

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2009, 05:06:06 pm »

Also NEVER select Shelled animals for cooking. It can help quite a bit.
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Fikes

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #6 on: September 16, 2009, 06:43:50 pm »

Yes, don't let anyone cook your turtles.

As a side note, do not engrave everything, especially random stunty 5's room. It raises the values way too high and can't be undone (unless you dig it out and replace it with a constructed wall).

Septus

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2009, 01:20:46 pm »

Yes, don't let anyone cook your turtles.

As a side note, do not engrave everything, especially random stunty 5's room. It raises the values way too high and can't be undone (unless you dig it out and replace it with a constructed wall).

Is smoothing the same way? Would it just make the place justa bit pricier or impossibly costly? What about constructed floors? I can't stand the thought of my dwarves living in rough-hewn crap holes!

So yeah, melted 3 trifle pewter bars and now the Mayor is going on about how we have to protect our strategic supply of chains, which I had no intent of exporting to begin with. A stunty finally ate a cave lobster and my craftsdwarf has built a lovely... drum? Meh.

So everything is great, except for the four dwarfs that got insta-ganked by a half dozen goblin archers who I ultimately revenged by testing the trapped survivors of the raid in my new drowning room. :)
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Niveras

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2009, 01:54:57 pm »

You can turn off renting, which will allow dwarves to claim bedrooms regardless of their income and the price of the room. They still sometimes sleep on the floor of your barracks though, for reasons I have yet to figure out.
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2xMachina

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2009, 02:30:09 pm »

They still get kicked out with a negative balance...

So make sure you have cheap food for them too... Or at least affordable enough that it won't make them go into the red.
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Jay Kayell

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2009, 04:09:47 pm »

You can turn off renting, which will allow dwarves to claim bedrooms regardless of their income and the price of the room.
What is this? Communism in MY Dwarf Fortress?
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Decapitation - enjoy the difference

XSI

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #11 on: September 17, 2009, 04:42:44 pm »

You can turn off renting, which will allow dwarves to claim bedrooms regardless of their income and the price of the room.
What is this? Communism in MY Dwarf Fortress?

The entire fort is communist untill the economy kicks in.

Besides that, smoothing does increase the cost of rooms, but not nearly as much as engraving, so feel free to smooth most of the rooms.

It's easiest to just keep a large amount of bad rooms dug out somewhere deep under the fort for the broke dwarves, just remember to regularly check them for dwarves that became legendary, they will not move out of their crappy room to get a big one.
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What kind of statues are your masons making, that you think they have "maximum exposure"?
(Full frontal ones, apparently.  With very short beards.) 

RandomNumberGenerator

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #12 on: September 17, 2009, 05:29:15 pm »

Yes, don't let anyone cook your turtles.

As a side note, do not engrave everything, especially random stunty 5's room. It raises the values way too high and can't be undone (unless you dig it out and replace it with a constructed wall).

Is smoothing the same way? Would it just make the place justa bit pricier or impossibly costly? What about constructed floors? I can't stand the thought of my dwarves living in rough-hewn crap holes!

So yeah, melted 3 trifle pewter bars and now the Mayor is going on about how we have to protect our strategic supply of chains, which I had no intent of exporting to begin with. A stunty finally ate a cave lobster and my craftsdwarf has built a lovely... drum? Meh.

So everything is great, except for the four dwarfs that got insta-ganked by a half dozen goblin archers who I ultimately revenged by testing the trapped survivors of the raid in my new drowning room. :)
When considering noneconomic stone, rough walls and floors have a value of 1☼. I think smoothed walls have a value of 5☼, and floors a value of 4☼. The lowest quality engraving possible will be worth 10☼, while the highest will be worth 120☼. Note these values are multiplied by the material, so:

A 3x3 Rough Shale Room will be worth 9+16 = 25☼
A 3x3 Rough Obsidian Room will be worth (9+16) x3 =75☼
A 3x3 Smoothed Shale Room will be worth 9x4 + 16x5 = 116☼
A 3x3 Smoothed Obsidian Room will be worth (9x4 + 16x5 = 116) x3 = 348☼
A 3x3 Engraved Shale Room (with low-quality engravings) will be worth 9x14 + 16x15 = 336☼
A 3x3 Engraved Obsidian Room (with low-quality engravings) will be worth (9x14 + 16x15) x3 = 1008☼

It's up to you what to do with this information. I generally smooth everything, but I don't engrave(Personally, I don't like the way engravings look, even when hidden).

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Jay Kayell

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #13 on: September 17, 2009, 11:34:47 pm »

The entire fort is communist untill the economy kicks in.

Besides that, smoothing does increase the cost of rooms, but not nearly as much as engraving, so feel free to smooth most of the rooms.

It's easiest to just keep a large amount of bad rooms dug out somewhere deep under the fort for the broke dwarves, just remember to regularly check them for dwarves that became legendary, they will not move out of their crappy room to get a big one.
Yeah, but actively working to keep it communist after the economy has kicked in just seems like something Lenin would do...

I most often set up barracks at the bottom of the fortress for the poor/useless dwarves to sleep in, called "The Poor Pits", where they fight over pieces of cheese for the amusement of the higher-ups. Or at least they would, if it was possible.
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Decapitation - enjoy the difference

2xMachina

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Re: Eat the turtles, they're good for you!
« Reply #14 on: September 18, 2009, 12:16:07 am »

There are spare homes, and homeless people. Surely the best idea is to house them for free as a "caretaker" of sorts?
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