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[Jancarius]

Not quite sure how it happened, but all the sudden I found myself totally out of food.  Best I can tell, my farmers just forgot to plant cause I forgot to take them off tasks like carting off all the stone I was hauling out of the underparts of the mountain and such, and so now winter has arrived and there is no food in my fortress.  I've been reassigning everyone I can to fishing, hunting, and farming, but what can I do to generate emergency food? 4 dwarves have already starved to death, some of my legendary dwarves are throwing tantrums, and I'm worried some of them might start to go.

[Retro]

Do you have any non-pet animals around you can mark for butchering? Preferably males, so you can breed more. You could also use the boozecooking exploit by marking alcohol for cooking. If it boils right down to it and you love your fort too much to lose it, you can also open up the raws and give dwarves [NOEAT] (might be [NO_EAT] with the hyphen, can't recall offhand).

[Jancarius]

I consider this fort a bit of a learnign experience, so I don't really want to cheat it back to life.  I've marked a few foals for slaughter, but generally, no, I don't have enough animals running around to feed my whole population

[gerkinzola]

if u have any shrubs outside u can set everyone to herbalism and designate everything outside to be collected

[Sutremaine]

I consider this fort a bit of a learnign experience, so I don't really want to cheat it back to life.  I've marked a few foals for slaughter, but generally, no, I don't have enough animals running around to feed my whole population

Kill the adults if you can, as they provide more meat and fat. Also send some axedwarves out if you can take on the local wildlife -- sometimes they can chop off enough parts to almost make a second animal, and you still get the corpse at the end of it. Plant some plump helmets if you've got seeds. They'll grow in winter, and the emergency butchery will hopefully see you through long enough to harvest them.

Consider drafting your less useful dwarves and sending them off into a lockable room. Or off to kill wildlife.

[zwei]

if u have any shrubs outside u can set everyone to herbalism and designate everything outside to be collected

you can also try enabling fishing. But for most maps, herbalism will help you last.

You can also try to cook seeds. Dangerous activity as you might end up unable to plant your crops and eventually starve at some point in future, but better than starvation right now.

[Jancarius]

Well, after about 10 dwarves had starved to death, what I assume is a 'tantrum chain' began to occur, as more and more dwarves went crazy and all work in teh fortress stopped.  Periodic slaughter of animals kept my legendary skilled dwarves alive, but all in all, I felt the fall of the fortress (or at least it's decline back to a single digit population) was inevitable enough to just start a new fortress.  I brought a cat this time, and it seems like none of the dwarves clean up the corpses, which is making annoying purple clouds.

[sproingie]

Did you designate a refuse stockpile outside?

[Jancarius]

Yes, as well as one indoors well away from the rest of the fortress isolated behind an airlock.

Also, incidently, is there a way to make 'fortress gates' for an outdoor wall?  I want something that I can open and close to to let trade caravans in or seal the fortress off

[kelumhi]

Also, incidently, is there a way to make 'fortress gates' for an outdoor wall?  I want something that I can open and close to to let trade caravans in or seal the fortress off

you mean a bridge?

[Jancarius]

If that works when there's no water to place it over, than yes

[JamPet]

Yea you can build a bridge anywhere, even over solid ground.  And if you make it a drawbridge by pressing 'wasd' when you are designating it, when it is drawn up it will even form a wall on one side.

Some other ways of doing this are to use floodgates which will function as sort of retractable walls.  Both floodgates and drawbridges require you to build a lever and use mechanisms to link that lever to them, in the case of floodgates you'll have to link up each and every gate individually, so it'll be more mechanism intensive.

You could also use a ramp that has a hatch cover built on top of it.  Wagons can traverse ramps no problem and you can just toggle the hatch to locked any time you needed.  Just remember if invaders make it to the hatch before you lock it they will control it and you won't be able to shut it then.

[Jancarius]

Can up/down stairs that I've already dug be transformed into a ramp?

[JamPet]

I'm not sure, but if they can't you can just construct a ramp where they are instead with 'b' > 'C' > 'r', just as good, right?

Edit:

I'll just say in case it needs to be said, need to use three tile wide sets of ramps for wagons.  Probably ought to even use five tile wide sets of ramps in preparation for when your fortress has 150 dwarves going in and out all the time one day.

[Jancarius]

When I try and build a ramp over hte stairs, just nothign happens