I'm planning to set up my first danger room and want to be ready. This is a new fortress and I want to keep my dwarfs relatively safe. I have 2 or 3 sets of leather armor form taking ambusher on embark (this backfired somewhat when my underskilled miners dug a room in iron ore). I also have 30+ leather. What should I make? Would leather dresses and capes provide reasonable protection when combined with armor? Are dresses more effective then robes, because of smaller size with the same permit (that is, I can stack more of them)?
Is leather clothing (not armor, dresses and capes and stuff) more effective then cloth? Does silk offer better protection than plant clothes?
I plan on building some machinery, and plan to power it with water reactors. Looking at the wiki article one thing is unclear to me: where to connect to a double wheel reactor. Tiles close to wheel centers have walls in there. pump requires access, but i could probably connect an axle to the pump, and use that as output. I'd rather not take power by gear assembly above pump, and setting something below the pump would be even more tricky. So, what is "the right" way to do this? Horizontal axle connected to the pump and to a gear assembly?
Can I build double wheeled reactors next to each other? By my calculations I should be able to make: waterwheel - pump - waterwheel - waterwheel - pump - waterwheel - waterwheel - pump - waterwheel, connect one of the pumps to an axle and gear assembly, and still jumpstart that easily.