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[assimilateur]

I figured I'd build just a room that goes down 1z level so that they can be in a type of pit for them to breed in.
Would that work?

Yes, it would work, but the moment you wanted to butcher any of your livestock, you'd either have to let all the animals out (they'd go to your meeting area right away and would have to be thrown into the pit again once you're done) or lock your butcher and tanner in with the livestock. Even if you did lock your butcher/tanner in, you'd still need to either re-pit your animals or cage them or something, which is why I don't consider it worth the micromanagement effort and instead recommend using chains/ropes.

[vorpal+5]

I can't for the life of me makes the 'form squads' keys work... Each time I draft dwarves, I get one-man dwarf... What is exactly the key combination I must use when I enter the military screen to have a squad of 2 dwarves?

[vorpal+5]

How do I see the value of a room?

[NecroRebel]

I figured I'd build just a room that goes down 1z level so that they can be in a type of pit for them to breed in.
Would that work?

Yes, it would work, but the moment you wanted to butcher any of your livestock, you'd either have to let all the animals out (they'd go to your meeting area right away and would have to be thrown into the pit again once you're done) or lock your butcher and tanner in with the livestock. Even if you did lock your butcher/tanner in, you'd still need to either re-pit your animals or cage them or something, which is why I don't consider it worth the micromanagement effort and instead recommend using chains/ropes.

A better idea is to have a 3-level setup for this sort of thing. Top level is a pit for dropping critters in, middle level is floored exclusively with at least 2 retracting bridges linked to levers and otherwise completely sealed off, and bottom level is accessible for your butcher/the rest of the fort.

This setup allows you to easily release part of your herd with a pull of a switch without needing to re-pit any of the other animals. Just pull the lever, wait a bit, then designate all of the now-stunned-from-the-brief-fall creatures for slaughter. Sure, they'll get to the meeting hall, but then get taken up and killed shortly, and you're back to an entirely animal-free fort. Better yet, you're (mostly) certain to still have at least 1 adult female still in the pit most of the time, which means you don't even have to micromanage to prevent the death of all of your breeders! Good stuff.

I can't for the life of me makes the 'form squads' keys work... Each time I draft dwarves, I get one-man dwarf... What is exactly the key combination I must use when I enter the military screen to have a squad of 2 dwarves?

Go into the military screen, scroll over a dwarf, hit enter, scroll over another dwarf, hit enter. You now have a squad of 2 dwarves lead by the one you hit enter over first. Adding more dwarves to the squad is as simple as scrolling over them and hitting enter. Hit space when you're finished making the squad.

I'm pretty sure you can put undrafted dwarves into squads, though if you put them into a squad with a drafted dwarf civilians will be auto-drafted.

How do I see the value of a room?

The (r)ooms menu lists all of your rooms, placed furnishings, stockpiles, and zones. For bedrooms, dining rooms, offices, and tombs, it also has their quality listed (Meager through Royal). This, unfortunately, is rather vague. You can't see the actual numerical value of a room until the economy activates when the tax collector arrives.

Also, there is a button to modify posts at the upper-right corner of the post. It's widely felt to be rude to double-post when such things exist, so please use it 

[gopher dude]

Can anyone direct me to the df guide on building above ground?

[assimilateur]

Good stuff.

You're talking about a design that's basically random in respect to how many animals remain for breeding? I really don't see the point in bothering with livestock unless you make sure you're getting a relatively steady supply of meat and other products.

If you do insist on culling most of your herd each time, a two-level design with a contained butchery and tannery would probably be preferable. Otherwise, there's little point in stunning your animals, as that will (assuming you've got more than one animal per butcher) do little to keep them from going back to your meeting area.

[NecroRebel]

You're talking about a design that's basically random in respect to how many animals remain for breeding? I really don't see the point in bothering with livestock unless you make sure you're getting a relatively steady supply of meat and other products.

Somewhat, but not really; 1/2 or less of your herd each time. I usually build it with 3 1x1 bridges, so I cull 1/3 of the herd at a time. How steady it is depends on how close to the max population of animals of a species you have, how fast they mature, and how big of litters they have, but even with only 1 species you're still generally good for meat and fat and more stable for bones, skulls, and leather than the alternatives I've seen.

Besides, it's not like you have to have just 1. I usually build 4, segregated by species, and have 1 for cows, one for muskoxen or camels if I can get them, 1 for dogs, and 1 for whatever exotic reproducing creature I manage to get a breeding pair of first (for my current fort it's black bears). Slaughtering 1/3 of one of the species each season usually provides plenty of resources and has the aforementioned advantages.

If you do insist on culling most of your herd each time, a two-level design with a contained butchery and tannery would probably be preferable. Otherwise, there's little point in stunning your animals, as that will (assuming you've got more than one animal per butcher) do little to keep them from going back to your meeting area.

The whole point is to avoid accidentally culling must of the herd. Animals tend to move roughly randomly inside the pens, so they tend to get evenly distributed between each bridge, so you do get very close to 1/3 each time. For instance, in my current fort, I have about 25 black bears, and the times I've tapped the pens I've gotten 6, 8, and 9 bears.

The point of stunning the animals is actually just so they stand still while you designate them for slaughter from their preferences menu so you don't accidentally slaughter your guard animals. More importantly, does it really matter if a relatively-small number of animals gets to your meeting area between when you release them and they get slaughtered?

Can anyone direct me to the df guide on building above ground?

I think you're probably looking for this.

[assimilateur]

You're right that it does not, indeed, matter that animals will escape to your meeting area before getting slaughtered.

Your design makes more sense now, with the added explanation, but I'd still rather use chains. I slaughter the young as soon as they pop out (assuming I've already reached my quota of breeding females, which is usually 10-15 for valuable species, and 3-5 for less valuable ones [if I even breed those]), because I can't be arsed to stuff them in cages or whatever. I obviously lose some amount of meat and bones that way, but I normally have way more of those products than I'm ever gonna need.

Unless I'm gravely mistaken, those should be lag-friendly as well. One problem for me is placing chains in a way that's both aesthetically pleasing and ergonomic.

[vorpal+5]

Thank you Necrorebel!

1. Are trees making saplings or bushes spreading?
2. Are monsters breeding (i.e do trolls have sex affairs between them  ).
3. Is set my marksman as 2 handed and he is taking 2 crossbows! Is this a bug?
4. How do you see the other creature on a tile when there are 2 with the v key?
5. Bone/Turtle armor protects as chainmail?
6. I really don't understand how the 'take from stockpile' menu is supposed to work. I want to move 3 barrels of wine from my main stockpile to a tiny one.

Thanks all in advance.

[assimilateur]

1. Are trees making saplings or bushes spreading?
2. Are monsters breeding (i.e do trolls have sex affairs between them  ).
3. Is set my marksman as 2 handed and he is taking 2 crossbows! Is this a bug?
4. How do you see the other creature on a tile when there are 2 with the v key?
5. Bone/Turtle armor protects as chainmail?
6. I really don't understand how the 'take from stockpile' menu is supposed to work. I want to move 3 barrels of wine from my main stockpile to a tiny one.

1. If I understand that question correctly, you don't need one bush or sapling to get new ones, i.e. you can cut all trees or pick all bushes and you will still get new ones later.
2. Most monsters probably don't breed (while "regular" animals do), but that can be checked for in the raw\objects\ folder. Open some of the creature files and look for child-related tags in their respective entries. For example, the dog is going to have the tags [CHILD:1] (meaning that a young dog matures after one year) and [CHILDNAME:puppy:puppies]. Without equivalent tags, creatures don't breed. Now, if you do want your trolls or whatever to procreate, you can add such tags even after embarking.
3. I don't know if this is a bug, but that setting is useless to a marksman anyway. You use the "2 handed" (or was it "2 weapons"?) setting when you want your guy to equip a two-handed weapon. You won't be able to use those, as far as I know, unless you mod the game anyway.
4. I think you switch between creatures occupying one tile by pressing + and -.
5. The base values of bone/shell armor might as well be those of chain armor (I haven't checked), but the bones and shells are weaker than metal, so you're going to end up with worse armor anyway. Of course, it's better than nothing. Look on the wiki for the article about armor for more details.
6. You set your small stockpile to take from the large stockpile, and it should get filled, assuming the large stockpile is full and accessible in the first place.

[Garrie]

Thank you Necrorebel!

1. Are trees making saplings or bushes spreading?
2. Are monsters breeding (i.e do trolls have sex affairs between them  ).
3. Is set my marksman as 2 handed and he is taking 2 crossbows! Is this a bug?
4. How do you see the other creature on a tile when there are 2 with the v key?
5. Bone/Turtle armor protects as chainmail?
6. I really don't understand how the 'take from stockpile' menu is supposed to work. I want to move 3 barrels of wine from my main stockpile to a tiny one.

Thanks all in advance.

1. Depending on your biome, trees will randomly germinate as saplings. After a certain time (3 yrs above ground 1.5 yrs belowgrond I think ) they will become trees. I don't think deforestation prevents germination rate.
2. AFAIK, what you have on embarking is what you get for on-map "monsers". This excludes migratory animals (eg: deer etc) that come and go from your map,  "ambushers" and "siegers" who are generated on a per-event basis.
3. This is really for melee soldiers: weapons like spears tend to get stuck, giving him 2 weapons means if he loses one he can keep fighting.
4. On my settings (with ASCII) they cycle through in turn. When more than 1 critter is on the same tile at a time all except 1 are laying down and will be black. If you are using a tile-set... look at the instructions/documentation for that tile-set.
5. Look at the wiki. material, armour type (leather, chain, plate) and quality all effect protection. If you have a soldier set to "none" set them to "leather" they will put leather on. If you set them to chain they will keep the leather on. This is better than if you go from "clothes" straight to "chain". etc.
6. "take from stockpile" pretty much sucks arse. There is no way to set say a stockpile next to a workshop, REQUIRE haulers to full bins/barrels, then take the FULL BIN/BARREL ONLY to some other stockpile. To do what you are saying, set up the 2 stockpiles correctly, then from the small stockpile, q->t, select the big stockpile. But your dwarves will wander all over the map to get the newest vintage of their preferred beverage, rather than drink from the stockpile next to them.

Hopefully "Burrows" will solve some of this. Roll on the new version!

[assimilateur]

3. This is really for melee soldiers: weapons like spears tend to get stuck, giving him 2 weapons means if he loses one he can keep fighting.

Can they store backup weapons in backpacks? Because if not, then what they really should be carrying is a shield in their off-hand, as opposed to a second weapon.

[Garrie]

3. This is really for melee soldiers: weapons like spears tend to get stuck, giving him 2 weapons means if he loses one he can keep fighting.

Can they store backup weapons in backpacks? Because if not, then what they really should be carrying is a shield in their off-hand, as opposed to a second weapon.

Have another look at their inventory. Like most rogue-likes, they can carry a waterskin, a shield, a barrel of beer, AND a sword. All in their left hand. 

[Particleman]

3. This is really for melee soldiers: weapons like spears tend to get stuck, giving him 2 weapons means if he loses one he can keep fighting.

Can they store backup weapons in backpacks? Because if not, then what they really should be carrying is a shield in their off-hand, as opposed to a second weapon.

Have another look at their inventory. Like most rogue-likes, they can carry a waterskin, a shield, a barrel of beer, AND a sword. All in their left hand. 

Yep. I had a swordsman recently who decided to tote around a pair of greaves when I was trying to get him to trade up to a better sword.

Also, as far as I know, the only thing that can currently be stored in backpacks is food.

[vorpal+5]

Thanks guys, as usual, you are great with new players!

Another batch if you will? I feel like a sponge, craving for so many information!

1. Is this a problem of using my leader (which is the broker) when the liaison is around? In other words, should I have a broker for trade, and another guy discussing with the liaison? For example the caravan arrived then went, the liaison was around my broker, but I never got the exchange of messages (what do you want, etc.), is it because my broker has been busy?

2. When you get a message (that you can see with 'a') how can I focus on it? Example, I have a dwarf killed... I want to know where.

3. Why I would not want to have a depot outdoor? Because of attacks? Why do people always want to have the depot indoor?

4. How can I remove the stones of a specific area? Do I need to Dump them as opposed to stockpiling them? Because if I do a stockpile area, you an bet that the dwarves will haul all the stones but the one I want to be moved!

5. How can I tell a dwarf to wear a given armor piece and not another, i.e 'wear this bone helm, not this turtle helm'?

6. How can I give a particular object to a dwarf, i.e 'from now one this crossbow is you, and you have a weapon rack in your bedroom to store it'.