Print

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

[Zarhon]

1. If I have a functional well, and channel above it and place another well, will it be useable?

2. One of the things I put in my forts is a mist waterfall in the dining room. In my latest attempt to do it without pumps (brook water from above, that gets directly drained into a chasm), the tiles surrounding the place where the waterfall holes are (covered by grates for safety) seem to be randomly splashed with 1 depth water. What is causing this? The water above it is de-pressurised twice by diagonal flows, and the water falls down a 2x1 hole with grates ("##"), into the dining room with the same holes beneath it, and down the next Z-level to be drained into the chasm.

Here is how it looks in my dining room:

11111    1= Water that's splashing around and drenching the tables near it >.<
1#1#1    #= Floor grate through which water is falling
1#1#1
11111

And above it:

WOW       WOW
WOW       WOW     W= Wall
WOW#W#WOW    O= Floor
WWO#W#OW       #=Floor Grate
   WWWWWW

Why is the water splashing around the holes? Is it from my dwarves running through it, pressure issues, draining issues, or something else? Will 1-depth water that is drenching my tables affect the dwarves eating on them? And is this potential to cause a flood later?

3. I have a GCS that I captured (with casualties) in a cage trap, and tamed it. Due it to killing a few dwarves, my attempts at using it for endless GCS silk have been... unfortunate (it is currently in the cage it was caught in, as a zoo atraction and dwarf party spot). How can I use a tamed, dwarf-bloodthirsty GCS for fun (goblin abuse) and/or profit, A.K.A. silk generation (preferably without dwarven casualties)?

4. I have tame wolves, tame giant bats, and tame war dogs. How good are they in combat by comparison to each other?

5. How do I make my tame elephants attack gobbos, and can I use them as projectiles effectively?

6. Is there any way to move/get rid of/dump "owned" items that belong to dwarves who never pick them up (soldiers, nobles, dead soldiers and nobles)?

7. I have fire snakes on my map, which I managed to catch several times with animal traps, but when I try to tame them, I get "error: Needs tameable creature item". I also try to extract fire essence, but then it says I don't have extractable vermin. Checking animal list shows them as "not tame". I also had one assigned to a cage, but it was never put in it. Why is this happening, and how can I extract/tame vermin effectivly?

8. Been playing the map for 6 or so years with zero migrants (save nobles who "accidentaly" end up in my obsidian farm/chasm) due to their fear of death. Yet despite this, I have FOURTY NINE children and probably double the babies. My dwarf limit is 400. How on earth do I stop this, and how can I get dwarves to start arriving finally, because I need military replacements, practicly zero dwarves that aren't expendable/legendary >.<

9. Where the hell is the underground river/water pool in "dwarf heaven" exactly? It's driving me nuts, and can't get reveal.exe to work, and I know where it is vaguely, but have yet to find the bloody thing.

[blue emu]

1. If I have a functional well, and channel above it and place another well, will it be useable?

No. Wells cannot be stacked.

3. I have a GCS that I captured (with casualties) in a cage trap, and tamed it. Due it to killing a few dwarves, my attempts at using it for endless GCS silk have been... unfortunate (it is currently in the cage it was caught in, as a zoo atraction and dwarf party spot). How can I use a tamed, dwarf-bloodthirsty GCS for fun (goblin abuse) and/or profit, A.K.A. silk generation (preferably without dwarven casualties)?

Try putting the GCS in a small room, connected to an adjacent room by an unlocked, pet-impassible door, with Fortifications facing the adjacent room. Give it a target within four tiles on the other side of the Fortifications. It should attempt to path to the target, fail because the door is impassible to pets, and shoot webs instead. You'll need to set up a lever-controlled raising drawbridge to mask off the Fortifications when you want to gather the webs.

6. Is there any way to move/get rid of/dump "owned" items that belong to dwarves who never pick them up (soldiers, nobles, dead soldiers and nobles)?

Flood the area with Magma.

7. I have fire snakes on my map, which I managed to catch several times with animal traps, but when I try to tame them, I get "error: Needs tameable creature item". I also try to extract fire essence, but then it says I don't have extractable vermin. Checking animal list shows them as "not tame". I also had one assigned to a cage, but it was never put in it. Why is this happening, and how can I extract/tame vermin effectivly?

Are you trying to transfer it ro an animal trap? You can't put vermin in cages (although you can buy them already in cages). As for taming it... do you have a Dungeon Master? Some creatures can only be tamed by him/her.

8. Been playing the map for 6 or so years with zero migrants (save nobles who "accidentaly" end up in my obsidian farm/chasm) due to their fear of death. Yet despite this, I have FOURTY NINE children and probably double the babies. My dwarf limit is 400. How on earth do I stop this, and how can I get dwarves to start arriving finally, because I need military replacements, practicly zero dwarves that aren't expendable/legendary

Are you in contact with your home Civ?

[slink]

Re reveal: Have you marked the entire bottom level for digging, then umarked it, before running reveal?  This is required to force the game to fill in the data for all of the levels.  Be sure to do this on an expendable copy of your fortress, then revert to the unrevealed copy.  Magma and underwater sources don't work right if you find them with reveal instead of by digging to them.

[Malicus]

5. How do I make my tame elephants attack gobbos, and can I use them as projectiles effectively?

You can't make them go anywhere without dwarves also wandering there (via setting up a meeting area), so, no, you can't send them off to attack.  The most you can do is chain them up at some important spot.

6. Is there any way to move/get rid of/dump "owned" items that belong to dwarves who never pick them up (soldiers, nobles, dead soldiers and nobles)?

I haven't tried this personally, but I've heard that people have had success with atom-smashing them with a bridge by building a drawbridge to move them to one side of the room, hooking up the drawbridge and opening it, then building something else on the other side of the room to move them back under the bridge.

7. I have fire snakes on my map, which I managed to catch several times with animal traps, but when I try to tame them, I get "error: Needs tameable creature item". I also try to extract fire essence, but then it says I don't have extractable vermin. Checking animal list shows them as "not tame". I also had one assigned to a cage, but it was never put in it. Why is this happening, and how can I extract/tame vermin effectivly?

Fire snakes have the [PET_EXOTIC] tag, so you need to have a dungeon master to be able to tame them (though you probably DO have one).  Also, they need to be in an animal trap to be tamed or extracted from.  I don't know what happened with the cage, though.

9. Where the hell is the underground river/water pool in "dwarf heaven" exactly? It's driving me nuts, and can't get reveal.exe to work, and I know where it is vaguely, but have yet to find the bloody thing.

Re reveal: Have you marked the entire bottom level for digging, then umarked it, before running reveal?  This is required to force the game to fill in the data for all of the levels.  Be sure to do this on an expendable copy of your fortress, then revert to the unrevealed copy.  Magma and underwater sources don't work right if you find them with reveal instead of by digging to them.

Actually, with reveal, the underground features are already loaded, so just running reveal will get them to show up without doing any designating-at-the-bottom trickery.  Doing that is only needed if you want to see EVERY BIT OF STONE.

I think the problem is that reveal isn't working with Zarhon's version of DF.  I use Reveal2, which is updated to work with 40d16.  It also says that it works on Vista and Windows 7, but it works on Windows XP just fine, too.

[geoduck]

1. If I have a functional well, and channel above it and place another well, will it be useable?

No. Wells cannot be stacked.

This is incorrect. Wells can be stacked, but only one of them can be used at a time.

[Lord Dakoth]

2. That's just the way waterfalls work. What happens is that there is a chance for the water to move diagonally. The only way you can solve this is to have a 3*4 hole, instead of a 1*3. If you're nervous about having open holes in your dining room, you can do a setup like this:

Code: [Select]

#####
#W#W#
#W#W#
#####

The water hits the floor (W) and then flows into one of the grates. (#)

Keep in mind that a floor grate must have an adjacent floor tile to hold it up. Therefore, the "floors" should be walls built up from one z-level below.


4. All three of the creatures you named have the exact same attack power and attack type. However, Giant bats have a larger size than either wolves or dogs (5 as opposed to 10,) so they are better at combat.

So, dog = wolf < giant bat.

Keep in mind that dogs are the only creatures that can be trained, so you cannot have War Giant Bats or Hunting Giant bats (aside from modding.) If you want to train the bats (or the wolves) you must add [trAINABLE] to the giant bat's entry in the raw file.

[darthbob88]

1. If I have a functional well, and channel above it and place another well, will it be useable?

No. Wells cannot be stacked.

This is incorrect. Wells can be stacked, but only one of them can be used at a time.

Clarification, please? Does that mean that I can only have one active well at one time, or can I have multiple wells as long as they aren't being used simultaneously?

My previous solution for building multiple wells was simply to build a large cistern and have each well given its own hole for accessing it. This works, but it's inconvenient.

[zchris13]

Killing nobles counts as a large number of dwarves dying for immigration purposes.

[Grendus]

1. If I have a functional well, and channel above it and place another well, will it be useable?

Unfortunately no.

2. One of the things I put in my forts is a mist waterfall in the dining room. In my latest attempt to do it without pumps (brook water from above, that gets directly drained into a chasm), the tiles surrounding the place where the waterfall holes are (covered by grates for safety) seem to be randomly splashed with 1 depth water. What is causing this? The water above it is de-pressurised twice by diagonal flows, and the water falls down a 2x1 hole with grates ("##"), into the dining room with the same holes beneath it, and down the next Z-level to be drained into the chasm.

Here is how it looks in my dining room:

11111    1= Water that's splashing around and drenching the tables near it >.<
1#1#1    #= Floor grate through which water is falling
1#1#1
11111

And above it:

WOW       WOW
WOW       WOW     W= Wall
WOW#W#WOW    O= Floor
WWO#W#OW       #=Floor Grate
   WWWWWW

Why is the water splashing around the holes? Is it from my dwarves running through it, pressure issues, draining issues, or something else? Will 1-depth water that is drenching my tables affect the dwarves eating on them? And is this potential to cause a flood later?

It's possible the water's behavior is just causing this. Unless it starts to actively overflow, I wouldn't worry about it. You do have it linked to a lever above the river, right?

3. I have a GCS that I captured (with casualties) in a cage trap, and tamed it. Due it to killing a few dwarves, my attempts at using it for endless GCS silk have been... unfortunate (it is currently in the cage it was caught in, as a zoo atraction and dwarf party spot). How can I use a tamed, dwarf-bloodthirsty GCS for fun (goblin abuse) and/or profit, A.K.A. silk generation (preferably without dwarven casualties)?

There are two designs I can think of.

The first is a GCS arena. Create a room and pit/release the GCS in it, with the only exit either a forbidden door or, better yet, a barrier linked to a lever (drawbridge, floodgate, lever linked door, etc). Pit, drop, or order creatures - friendly or hostile, doesn't matter - into the room. The GCS will spray silk and you can collect it. Now you need a GCS recovery mechanism. Create a tunnel with a chained puppy or stationed soldier at the end and a cage trap in between them. When you want to recollect the GCS, open the tunnel. The GCS will eventually wander into it, caging itself, and then you can gather the GCS silk cloth.

The second is Silker. The basic design is like so

wDwB                        w = wall
wGf B  C                     f = fortification
wDwB                         b = drawbridge to control line of sight
                                G = GCS
                                C = target animal (usually a kitten).

The doors need to be set so dwarves can path through them but cats cannot (be sure to make sure the dwarves have no reason to path through it, otherwise the GCS will eat him and escape). A GCS will only spray silk if they can path to the creature. Pet impassible doors count as a path, even though the GCS can't get through. When you want to create silk, lower the drawbridge so the GCS can see the cat. It will try to attack the cat, realize it can't reach it, and spray it with silk. Then pull the lever again to raise the drawbridge. Now the dwarves can gather the silk without freaking out because they can see a GCS.

4. I have tame wolves, tame giant bats, and tame war dogs. How good are they in combat by comparison to each other?

My guess? Giant Bat>War Dog> wolf. Dogs get a pretty serious power boost from training, while a wolf can kill a dog the inverse is true for a war dog. Giant Bats are downright scary.

5. How do I make my tame elephants attack gobbos, and can I use them as projectiles effectively?

Non war animals will run from enemies unless they're attacked. Even the mighty carp, if modded to be tameable, will run from goblins. Projectiles? You could try bridgeapulting them, but the fall might injure them.

6. Is there any way to move/get rid of/dump "owned" items that belong to dwarves who never pick them up (soldiers, nobles, dead soldiers and nobles)?

Dunno. Try giving the dwarf a cabinet in his/her room. I think when a dwarf dies though they stop owning the items, so you can always wait apply magma.

7. I have fire snakes on my map, which I managed to catch several times with animal traps, but when I try to tame them, I get "error: Needs tameable creature item". I also try to extract fire essence, but then it says I don't have extractable vermin. Checking animal list shows them as "not tame". I also had one assigned to a cage, but it was never put in it. Why is this happening, and how can I extract/tame vermin effectivly?

Dunno. Did you tame small animal?

8. Been playing the map for 6 or so years with zero migrants (save nobles who "accidentaly" end up in my obsidian farm/chasm) due to their fear of death. Yet despite this, I have FOURTY NINE children and probably double the babies. My dwarf limit is 400. How on earth do I stop this, and how can I get dwarves to start arriving finally, because I need military replacements, practicly zero dwarves that aren't expendable/legendary >.<

You killed your nobles. That causes major fear for immigrants, they think your fortress is dangerous. My suggestion, find a noble with simple likes (say, who likes copper and tables) and just put up with him.

9. Where the hell is the underground river/water pool in "dwarf heaven" exactly? It's driving me nuts, and can't get reveal.exe to work, and I know where it is vaguely, but have yet to find the bloody thing.

Dunno. Try to dig in the middle of every 48x48 square, not necessarily perfect but odds are you'll at least find damp stone.

[piesquared]

2. One of the things I put in my forts is a mist waterfall in the dining room.

As someone else said, water can move diagonally down. Personally I always have a 1x1 channel dropping water and a 3x3 hole in my dining room to avoid this problem. I've never had anyone accidentally fall into an uncovered waterfall hole in my dining room, either, and I often have four of them. (A suicide jumping in and stinking up the place is still annoying, but that's what the "emergency draining lever" is for.)

3. I have a GCS that I captured (with casualties) in a cage trap, and tamed it. Due it to killing a few dwarves, my attempts at using it for endless GCS silk have been... unfortunate (it is currently in the cage it was caught in, as a zoo atraction and dwarf party spot). How can I use a tamed, dwarf-bloodthirsty GCS for fun (goblin abuse) and/or profit, A.K.A. silk generation (preferably without dwarven casualties)?

Future note: it's really best to *not* tame your GCS. Here's my last silk farm, though once again I'll note that my GCS wasn't tame. (It's possible that your blood-thirsty one will still work, but I really don't know).



(Textual description: put the cage in a 1x1 room with fortifications on 3 sides and a door on the fourth in the middle of a larger room. The door should be set to allow dwarves through but not pets. Stick raising drawbridges between the GCS and bait animals, and lock the doors to the larger room. Lower the drawbridges to let silk accumulate. Raise the drawbridges and unlock the outer doors to gather silk. In my setup each side operates independently for maximum efficiency. Once again, non-tame GCS...)

(Why it works: in order to shoot silk, the GCS must be able to path to an acceptable target. Pets path through any door dwarves can go through for pathfinding reasons. But if you disallow pets going through, they just keep running into it, stopping once in a while to shoot web. Drawbridges to keep dwarves from freaking out when they see the spider.)

5. How do I make my tame elephants attack gobbos, and can I use them as projectiles effectively?

First off, you don't. Secondly, no.

 Anything in the air doesn't actually exist (in most ways) until it hits the ground again. So... if you drop an elephant on an enemy neither the enemy nor the elephant take damage. (Though if you can manage that you might succeed in making your tame elephant attack a goblin, unreliably).

6. Is there any way to move/get rid of/dump "owned" items that belong to dwarves who never pick them up (soldiers, nobles, dead soldiers and nobles)?

Nobody will screw with someone else's owned item, so not really. You could try pushing them with water, or burning them with magma. It's possible that if you "build" something on top of the item someone will move it out of the way. If that's true you might be able to eventually get it over a cliff or under a bridge, but the short answer is still "no".

8. Been playing the map for 6 or so years with zero migrants (save nobles who "accidentaly" end up in my obsidian farm/chasm) due to their fear of death. Yet despite this, I have FOURTY NINE children and probably double the babies. My dwarf limit is 400. How on earth do I stop this, and how can I get dwarves to start arriving finally, because I need military replacements, practicly zero dwarves that aren't expendable/legendary >.<

Deaths - for any reason - will curtail immigration. Nobles get counted multiple times. To get it back stop having dwarves die, and make lots of wealth. Especially let your dwarven caravans get out alive in the fall after a nice big wealth increase since their last visit. I'm assuming - if you're on the Dwarf Heaven site and judging from the rest of your post - that you've had immigration before.

[Mechanoid]

Water splashing:
Water that falls on top of a 7/7 tile will attempt to teleport to the nearest empty space that's first below, and then besides the 7/7 area. Between the time that it teleports or is capable of moving downards, it will 'walk' over the surface of the 7/7 water.
This momentary walking of the water before it teleports is what causes the "spashing" effect of fountains/water falls.

Here is a general example of what happens, and how to solve the problem:

Code: [Select]

SIDE VIEW:
  V            V
  V          .<->.
#<-># GOOD | #777# BAD
#777#        #####
#####

  V             V
  V             V
.<->.           V
##7## WORST | ##V## ALSO GOOD
#####         ##7##
              #####

  V
  V   THIS LEVEL DOES NOT MUDDY
#<V># THIS LEVEL GETS MUDDY
##7##
#####

V is water fall, < > is the momentary water 'spashes'
. is where water may spash to, stack-up, and possibly cause a flood (of either 7's, or 1's and 2's)
The "Drain" is assumed to be on the same level as the 7's, connected somewhere and in a way that allows pressure; the 'surface' is also assumed to be covered with grates or other liquid-allowed flooring.

A "splashless" fountain water fall example, top-down:

Code: [Select]

###S###
###7###
###>### This level is where the water is 'S'ourced.
#######
#######

#######
###7###
###X### I thought it'd be nice to have
####### a maintence stairwell. :3
#######

#######
#.G7G.#
#.GXG.# Water will fall through the stairwell here
#.....#  so it's effectively a grate
####### DO NOT PUT A HATCH HERE

#######
## 7 ##
## X ## This level is responsible for preventing splashes.
####### You can put a hatch on this level if you like.
####### As well as fill the open spaces with grates.

#######
##777##
##7<7## This is the level where water 'D'rains.
###7### Also construction-floors to
###D### prevent annoying tower caps.

[geoduck]

[quote author=darthbob88 link=topic=45020.msg875572#msg875572
Clarification, please? Does that mean that I can only have one active well at one time, or can I have multiple wells as long as they aren't being used simultaneously?

My previous solution for building multiple wells was simply to build a large cistern and have each well given its own hole for accessing it. This works, but it's inconvenient.
[/quote]

You can have two wells using the same shaft, but only one bucket at a time can be lowered/raised. If a dwarf tries to use the second well while the first is in operation, you'll get some sort of "can't reach water source" message. At least, that's how I interpreted it when it happened to me.

[Zarhon]

Thanks for the help peeps on most of the questions 

A little clarification regarding the fire snakes: I do have a dungeon master, so taming (via small animal taming) is not the issue, rather my dwarves seem to act as if I don't have any vermin, even if I do, so they keep giving me cannot tame errors. What I noticed however, was that one of the fire snakes I caught was promptly taken by one of my dwarves and eaten raw.   

Does this cause the snakes to be "unavailable" because some idiot dwarf keeps deciding he want's to eat burning critters? Also, how does extracting from vermin work exactly? Do I need to order it, then dwarf kills a fire snake and extracts, or do I need a dead snake which is then ordered to be extracted? Does taming small vermin allow me to butcher them via animals menu, like the cats and dogs? I'm also unsure where exactly the vermin needs to be "stored" for taming/extracting/whichever to work, in the animal traps they were caught in, or a large creature cage/terrarium?

Regarding the wells, I tried doing it on a new map... It seems the well stacked on top of the other doesn't show as "dry", but assigning zones around it show that it is NOT a "water source", while the well under it works fine.

Also, how do I pit dangerous creatures safely? Put the cage next to the hole and assign? And how can I make it to work with chasms properly? (It kept spamming errors when I tried chasming a creature from the adjecent tile down my garbage chute chasm)

Regarding reveal.exe, my version of the game is the one from here: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=839 
Trying to run it with DF just makes it's window open and close instantly, so it's probably not working with that version.

[Reese]

Are you trying to transfer it ro an animal trap? You can't put vermin in cages (although you can buy them already in cages). As for taming it... do you have a Dungeon Master? Some creatures can only be tamed by him/her.

You can, in fact, put vermin in cages.  I have a cage next to my animal trap stockpile with over 20 vermin(lizards, rats, etc.), caught by my trappers, which i have transferred from my animal traps.

[darkflagrance]

Thanks for the help peeps on most of the questions 

A little clarification regarding the fire snakes: I do have a dungeon master, so taming (via small animal taming) is not the issue, rather my dwarves seem to act as if I don't have any vermin, even if I do, so they keep giving me cannot tame errors. What I noticed however, was that one of the fire snakes I caught was promptly taken by one of my dwarves and eaten raw.   

Does this cause the snakes to be "unavailable" because some idiot dwarf keeps deciding he want's to eat burning critters? Also, how does extracting from vermin work exactly? Do I need to order it, then dwarf kills a fire snake and extracts, or do I need a dead snake which is then ordered to be extracted? Does taming small vermin allow me to butcher them via animals menu, like the cats and dogs? I'm also unsure where exactly the vermin needs to be "stored" for taming/extracting/whichever to work, in the animal traps they were caught in, or a large creature cage/terrarium?

Regarding the wells, I tried doing it on a new map... It seems the well stacked on top of the other doesn't show as "dry", but assigning zones around it show that it is NOT a "water source", while the well under it works fine.

Also, how do I pit dangerous creatures safely? Put the cage next to the hole and assign? And how can I make it to work with chasms properly? (It kept spamming errors when I tried chasming a creature from the adjecent tile down my garbage chute chasm)

Regarding reveal.exe, my version of the game is the one from here: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=839 
Trying to run it with DF just makes it's window open and close instantly, so it's probably not working with that version.

1) Working with vermin sucks. You have to hide them in a corner of the fort so that dwarves don't randomly eat them all the time; even the milkers and dungeon master are capable of doing this, and it does cause the cancel spam. The best you can do is forbid the vermin inside the cage before a dwarf gets it, and then move the cage to the milking/taming rooms. But I find the micromanagement not worth the effort.
2) To pit a creature, you need to use the zone menu (i) to designate a pit/pond over an empty space, then afterwards bring up the pit/pond's menu and assign things to it. They will then be dumped into the space. Unassigning things from your civ tends to release them, while unassigning vermin or non-civ units will result in their being recaged.