Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Leonidas]

I seem to remember, perhaps an earlier version of DF, in which Up/Down stairs were considered fairly dangerous when stacked vertically, because they didn't involve any floors.  If a dwarf stumbled upon the those stairs, IIRC, he could fall all the way down and go splat.

Now I see nothing about that in the Wiki, and I've seen some posted fortresses with lots of up-downs.  Was the hazard fixed, so that now up/downs are safe and preferable to the old way?  Or am I remembering it wrong?

[Lawec]

They are safe if you use Floor Hatches IIRC 

[Magua]

Up/down stairs are still exactly as dangerous as you described; it just turns out it's not that dangerous.

If a dwarf goes unconscious on the stairs, they will fall to the bottom.  This just tends to be an incredibly rare occurrence -- I've never had dwarves fall asleep on stairs, and I think I had only one "constantly going unconscious from the pain" dwarf do so on stairs, and that's out of a thousand dwarves, easily.

In other words, I don't worry about it -- I have a 3x3 up/down stair shaft that goes through the center of my forts, and it's never really caused me a problem.

[Innominate]

Although this is a humorous way to taunt your crippled dwarves. Training barracks where most of the floors are down stairs. Under those stairs is a 1 2 10 z-level fall. Now dwarves knocked unconscious will fall to their deaths, so you don't need hospital beds for incompetent trainees.

[Firnagzen]

There were once I modified crossbows to cause a lot of pain (I think I gave them gore damage. Itsy bitsy bits of gore damage.) and made my entrance consist only of down stairs over a 12 z-level fall, with retractable bridges to allow caravan access.

It was funny.

[Albedo]

In older versions, dwarves were clumsy and could, in fact, fall down flights of stairs. 

No more. 

However, for those rare times when they have help (cave-ins, fainting from injuries, combat dodging, whatever), as Lowec says, place a hatch whereever you want a safe "landing spot", and they won't fall further than that.  If they ever do fall in the first place, which is highly unlikely.

[shadowclasper]

I seriously just save myself the trouble except when making scaffolding (and in most cases, you really don't NEED to use scaffolding, it's just the quickest method). Just make alternating up stairs and down stairs next to each other. It really saves you frustration when that 1 in 1000 dwarf turns out to be your legendary mason/engraver who turns out all your nobility's masterpiece furniture.

[Leonidas]

I seriously just save myself the trouble except when making scaffolding (and in most cases, you really don't NEED to use scaffolding, it's just the quickest method). Just make alternating up stairs and down stairs next to each other. It really saves you frustration when that 1 in 1000 dwarf turns out to be your legendary mason/engraver who turns out all your nobility's masterpiece furniture.

That's what I've been doing.  But recently I was drawing out some plans for a new fortress, and I realized how much walking the up/downs could save.  As I understand it, dwarves can't move diagonally across z-levels.  So separating ups from downs means adding an extra step every time a dwarf travels more than one z-level.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

There is a word for "safety" in the Dwarven language. It's primarily used by Dwarven Comedians.

Build no hand rails or safety harnesses. What are we, pansy Keebler Elves who can't stand to fall a few dozen staircases at once onto a good honest rock floor?

That said it would be awesome if falling down a set of stairs generated an unhappy thought "He fell down some stairs recently" and you have to decide for yourself if that means his spouse smacked him up or if he actually did fall down the stairs.

[Jim Groovester]

Having alternating up and down stairs is inefficient. It takes two more tiles of movement for a dwarf to go up a level than shafts of up/down stairs. Use ramps instead.

It's easy enough to build some sort of spiral that your dwarves can climb up just as quick as up/down stairs and still have the safety of them not falling unconscious and falling down stairs to their deaths. If you're really that worried about it.

It also looks pretty cool, like a spiral staircase.

[Albedo]

Don't ramps get buggy when you use that many across that many levels? Thought they could. 

[Jim Groovester]

Not to my knowledge. I haven't had any problem with a ramp staircase, provided it's properly dug out.

[Skorpion]

Hm. So, hatch covers stop dwarves?

Dammit. I didn't need to put that hellishly complex interchange most of the way up the SkyTower.

[Kanddak]

Yeah, I'm solidly in the "all this falling business is bunk" camp. I build colossal up/down stairwells and deep wells all the time and I've never had a dwarf fall.

[Reese]

I had plans for a massive double helix ramp into my fortress with both helixes large enough to allow a wagon to pass, but scrapped it when I heard that ramps could be buggy for pathing... maybe I should go ahead and make it after all...the best part will be how it was going to be designed to flood up to groud level,open in the center, and require any invaders to descend to the bottom and climb up again to reach any of the fortress levels (trade depot at the bottom, of course)

of course, it'll be more than twice as inneficient as alternating up and down stairs...

um, right I use up/down stairs for myst of my construction and digging, but I never have more than a handfull of z-levels in my main fortress... probably because I never have more 100 dwarfs at one time... and when I get that big half of them never have any jobs anyway