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Author Topic: 40d:New batch o' questions (Site finder, screw pump, upstairs challenge)  (Read 1145 times)

WeekendGamer

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Ok, some more questions kept piling up.

1. Is it just me or is the site finder really sloppy? It checks only 129 sites?
I'm often better off searching by myself. How can i stop the site finder from proposing the same locations over and over again?

2. Next fortress is going to be an upstairs fortress. Means the fortress is made up out of construction and the ground level contains only a receptionist and defense. The real fortress starts on floor one. The whole thing is built on top of a brook.

Here are my pitfalls so far:

No engraving or smoothing available. Room value drops significantly.
Every usable tile has to be constructed. 7 Masons are mandatory ofc.
No underground crops.
Big material consumption.

Any aditional input on this idea?

3. I already tested the idea of making floor tiles muddy using screw pumps and it worked out ok. But:
Can i do this easier with the pond zone water dumping?


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MooUK

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As long as you have a couple of idle dwarves, pond and bucket irrigation is fairly simple to get working. You will need space on the level above the farm to designate the pond - other than that there's no challenge at all. Definitely simpler to get working - at least for a smaller farm area - than a pump. And you only need to do it once.

For larger areas, if you still want you use pond designations you might have better luck using a cistern rather than directly dumping the water on the farm. But that's not too hard to set up either.
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WeekendGamer

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Well, i definitely need a big area for farming to ensue a variety of booze. Cistern sounds like a plan. I guess a large room with a floodgate leading to the outside.
Fill with 2/7 water ->
Disable pump ->
Open Floodgate ->
Muddied Room

Do outdoor crops grow inside? Else i would need to build a balcony.
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NecroRebel

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Ok, some more questions kept piling up.

1. Is it just me or is the site finder really sloppy? It checks only 129 sites?
I'm often better off searching by myself. How can i stop the site finder from proposing the same locations over and over again?
It doesn't check just 129 sites; it checks 129 world tiles, each of which is made up of 256 region tiles (in 16x16 blocks). Your map's dimensions are in region tiles, so the finder checks every possible location for the map you've told it to.

That isn't to say it's not sloppy, however; it checks every region for a match, then just spits out the first match it finds. This is also the reason for the last problem, in that it just keeps spitting out the first match even though it searched through all of the maps. The way to stop it from giving the same match repeatedly is to change your search parameters. Start with the parameters you really want (say, underground water and a magma pipe), then if you don't like the map it spits out, check the biomes and features of that map and exclude them (for instance, if you find yourself on a biome with no trees, set yourself to high or medium rainfall). With the former match no longer valid, it won't get chosen again unless there's no new valid matches, in which case it might.

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2. Next fortress is going to be an upstairs fortress. Means the fortress is made up out of construction and the ground level contains only a receptionist and defense. The real fortress starts on floor one. The whole thing is built on top of a brook.

Here are my pitfalls so far:

No engraving or smoothing available. Room value drops significantly.
There's a couple of options. First, use higher-value materials for walls and floors where value is needed. Second, use bigger rooms. Third, use statues or windows for your "walls" except for where you need doorframes; these things have quality modifiers and actually have a higher item value multiplier than engravings, but can get knocked down by buildingdestroyers or tantruming/berserk dwarves. The buildingdestroyer point can be very important, because buildingdestroyers apparently constantly path to every building they can destroy that they can reach, so their presence can ruin your FPS if you have many, many statues (I had a fort where I used statues for all walls. Giants (from the Relentless Assault mod) showed up. My FPS went from 200 to 1. Bad Times.).

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Every usable tile has to be constructed. 7 Masons are mandatory ofc.
No underground crops.
Big material consumption.

Any aditional input on this idea?
Building aboveground is much, much slower than excavating underground forts. Fulfill your needs for survival, then have everybody else either produce building materials or build. It's the only way to get an even reasonable speed out of this thing.

Aboveground crops are actually somewhat more efficient and effective than UG crops for the most part, as all of them can grow during any season if you put a roof over them. Do note, however, that biomes that have no natural plants (mountains are the most commonly problematic) will not grow AG plants at all, even in a muddied greenhouse.


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3. I already tested the idea of making floor tiles muddy using screw pumps and it worked out ok. But:
Can i do this easier with the pond zone water dumping?
Easier? No, not really. It takes less setup to start, but much more micromanagement, and is much less water-efficient unless you do even more micromanagement, takes longer overall, and once you're done the whole setup is totally useless. At least pump irrigation systems can be repurposed for other waterworks.
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A Better Magma Pump Stack: For all your high-FPS surface-level magma installation needs!

WeekendGamer

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Thanks for the help. i used a pump setup to flood a room. Problem solved. That statue trick seems to be a nice way to make use of the high level masons.
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Ashery

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For an above ground fort, my recommendation is to use an obsidian farm. If you further process the obsidian into blocks before construction and use only exceptional or better quality furniture, you'll be able to obtain fairly high quality ~2x3 rooms. Just checked my 40d fort and it looks as though most of the bedrooms are of decent quality, but a fairly sizable chunk are of fine quality. Note, however, that I haven't bothered to swap out the lower quality furniture on these levels yet. Nobles have larger quarters, but even the king's is only ~5x10. You don't need to go crazy with statues, either, as a single masterpiece obsidian statue is worth 900.

But NecroRebel is right in that it takes *ages* to complete a large above ground fort. Bladeshoots is in its fourteenth year and it looks like I'll finally be able to complete the main spire (Once I get around to playing it again). It took three years for the founding seven to finally have above ground bedrooms setup.

I also don't recommend taking seven masons at the beginning. Just take your normal setup and enable masonry on all otherwise worthless immigrants. I currently have 23 out of 237 dwarves under the profession title of "Mason," but that doesn't count the other 21 dwarves that have masonry enabled, but only haul blocks up for construction (My full time masons all became legendaries years ago, so now I'm able to bump up the minimum required skill to work in a workshop). Note that these 21 part timers mainly include dwarves that have capped out their primary skill (Engravers that only engrave once every year or so, bone carvers that are no longer needed to make bolts, etc).

You'll also likely end up with at least part of your temporary fort underground. Something just seems right about having nobles temporarily live in their future tombs, though.
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