Print

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

[SpacemanSpiff]

I've played just long enough to realize two things:

• If you wall off your dwarves from the world, you won't have any Fun (i.e. too many cage traps, forbidden doors and raised bridges = boring)
• But without those barriers, you'll probably have too much Fun. This means losing all your dwarves, and having to either reclaim your fortress or start a new one, which can take a long time to get back to being Fun.

So I've decided to build a fortress to survive multiple cycles of Fun, with a few dwarves left alive each time in bunkers or escape rooms. These rooms would each have a door and/or bridge, plus enough supplies to give any inhabitants a fighting chance at survival (or a Fun way to die). So, what should these rooms look like? I've thought of three variants.

The basic bunker is a tiny room plus what amounts to a minimal starting build. It's cheap and small, so you can make lots of them (one per level or wing?), but any survivors will have to dig, irrigate, and plant a farm before they starve to death. This all they get:

• A well
• A stockpile with a pick, bucket, and a bag of seeds

The next step up is a larger dormitory/escape room. Two of these per fortress, set as burrows for civilians to run to (maybe half going to each?), with the following extras:

• A few beds (of the lowest quality), so survivors don't have to sleep in the mud
• Some cheap emergency supplies (biscuits and the worst Elf liquor), to keep them going while they farm
• A simple first-aid kit (thread, cloth, splints), to treat light wounds
• An anvil, to rebuild

Finally, one deluxe noble bolt-hole per fortress, set as a burrow for all the nobles to run to. It has:

• Better beds, more and better food, a bigger first-aid kit
• A resource stockpile of logs and bars
• A separate suite to keep the noble(s) happy
• A personal physician, permanently assigned with his own room, food, and liquor, to treat any injuries
• A few things to remind the nobles of life outside this hell-hole (Pets? Personal suit of armor? A cheap artifact? Basically, pander to their egos.)

Stockpiles are forbidden until use, and any beds are zoned as restricted traffic areas to avoid squatters. That's all I've thought of so far - what did I miss? When people have tried making emergency rooms before, what worked and what didn't?

[ZeroGravitas]

[flames removed -tt] You're 100% in control of whether your dwarves survive something or not. You're basically saying, "It's not OK to wall off your entire fort, but once the attack comes, it's ok to wall off PART of your fort." Might as well just wall off the whole thing and be done with it.

[G-Flex]

"Worst elf liquor"? Dwarven booze is actually completely average in value, the best boozes being sunshine and whip wine, which elves can presumably provide since they're made from above-ground plants.

[Vertigon]

Honestly I think this is a really dumb topic. You're 100% in control of whether your dwarves survive something or not. You're basically saying, "It's not OK to wall off your entire fort, but once the attack comes, it's ok to wall off PART of your fort." Might as well just wall off the whole thing and be done with it.

He's basically saying it's more fun to watch 90% of the population die horribly, safe in the knowledge that your fort can live on and you can do the same thing in a couple years.

[Hyndis]

Just build a vault.

Put some dwarves into the vault, provide them with a farm plot and a well. Seal it off entirely from the outside world so that nothing can reach them, not even HFS. Build walls many tiles thick. Preferably out of iron blocks.

If the rest of your fortress is doomed the vault survivors will still be alive. They are immune to invasions or even tantrum spirals as they have no contact with the other dwarves.

It is impossible for your fortress to crumble to its end in this way.

As a bonus you can have this be your lever control center. Link levers to the rest of your fortress, all controlled from the vault. You can very easily create an extremely reliably, very fast dwarf powered repeater using the vault subjects.

[Halo]

Just build a vault.

Put some dwarves into the vault, provide them with a farm plot and a well. Seal it off entirely from the outside world so that nothing can reach them, not even HFS. Build walls many tiles thick. Preferably out of iron blocks.

If the rest of your fortress is doomed the vault survivors will still be alive. They are immune to invasions or even tantrum spirals as they have no contact with the other dwarves.

It is impossible for your fortress to crumble to its end in this way.

As a bonus you can have this be your lever control center. Link levers to the rest of your fortress, all controlled from the vault. You can very easily create an extremely reliably, very fast dwarf powered repeater using the vault subjects.

Just make sure you bring a few extra water chips. If yours breaks, you'd have to sent a vault dweller out into the wastes to try and recover another one...

[Hyndis]

Just build a vault.

Put some dwarves into the vault, provide them with a farm plot and a well. Seal it off entirely from the outside world so that nothing can reach them, not even HFS. Build walls many tiles thick. Preferably out of iron blocks.

If the rest of your fortress is doomed the vault survivors will still be alive. They are immune to invasions or even tantrum spirals as they have no contact with the other dwarves.

It is impossible for your fortress to crumble to its end in this way.

As a bonus you can have this be your lever control center. Link levers to the rest of your fortress, all controlled from the vault. You can very easily create an extremely reliably, very fast dwarf powered repeater using the vault subjects.

Just make sure you bring a few extra water chips. If yours breaks, you'd have to sent a vault dweller out into the wastes to try and recover another one...

Pfft, not a chance.

If one of them tantrums and destroys the well then they get to drink muddy, murky water for the rest of eternity.

[SpacemanSpiff]

"Worst elf liquor"? Dwarven booze is actually completely average in value, the best boozes being sunshine and whip wine, which elves can presumably provide since they're made from above-ground plants.

I'm going on the "beverage value" from http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Alcohol, with the backstory that the emergency rooms were stocked with the cheapest-possible supplies

Honestly I think this is a really dumb topic. You're 100% in control of whether your dwarves survive something or not. You're basically saying, "It's not OK to wall off your entire fort, but once the attack comes, it's ok to wall off PART of your fort." Might as well just wall off the whole thing and be done with it.

He's basically saying it's more fun to watch 90% of the population die horribly, safe in the knowledge that your fort can live on and you can do the same thing in a couple years.

Exactly!    Plus I'm fighting a micromanagement urge to hand-pick a chosen few and keep them safely in a single vault stuffed full of resources.  Instead I want a mad scramble for safety, lots of luck involved in who lives and who dies, and some real hardship in getting out again.

As a bonus you can have this be your lever control center. Link levers to the rest of your fortress, all controlled from the vault.

Ahhh, I like it.  Although of course only the noble bolt-hole would have these levers...

[Karnewarrior]

Ooh, I'm liking the idea of one dwarf, all alone, living concealed in a small bunker with a hundred big, shiny buttons. One year after the gobbos conquer the fortress, "Bad luck" starts to happen, such as a important support mysteriously deconstructing, or the drawbridge acting oddly when gobbos are on it. Or, the mines slowly flood, filling up the fortress with water. Then, when the gobbos are gone, your hermit lives until migrants arrive, and your fort booms.

Until next year, of course...

[da dwarf lord]

Finally, one deluxe noble bolt-hole per fortress, set as a burrow for all the nobles to run to. It has:

• A pit where you store all the captured enemies
• A pressure plate linked to the support holding the floor up
• The pressure plate is near the entrance

fix'd

[Beeskee]

[flames removed -tt] You're 100% in control of whether your dwarves survive something or not. You're basically saying, "It's not OK to wall off your entire fort, but once the attack comes, it's ok to wall off PART of your fort." Might as well just wall off the whole thing and be done with it.

OP is obviously suggesting a challenge mode, not demanding everyone play like this.


I think it sounds awesome sauce.

[derekiv]

I agree, I keep wanting to have fun with my fortress, but don't want them wiped out complete. Love the idea.

[gopa4]

Very sweet idea, reminds me of my "oh s***" lever. It locks down the entire fort, flood gates close in every passage way/hallway/bed room, draw bridges shut, doors lock, flour hatches lock on every level ect. Never quite got it finished, having to build walls/tear them down, carefully manage the entire set up was tedious and I quit. But what I did get done was awesome, always gave me a mental image of some base locking down because of a biological contaminant.

[Eric Blank]

The reality of that biological contamination has dawned on us, as well. Fortresses are always being threatened by cruel beasts with blood/excretions that cause horrible illness that are then spread throughout the fort and end up killing everyone. An OH SHIT lever should be a big consideration in fortress plans. Bridges don't cut it either, many things need to be cut off with natural walls, meaning either engineered cave ins, or obsidian casters in narrow halls. Having a separate backup in each section and ordering every lever pulled in case the first fails is also important. You should wall off a pre-built farm plot, pick, and seed bag in each section for whatever poor souls happen to survive.

I did this several times, but I went with the vault solution: locking up some friendless migrants. It could be simple in 40d but it's very difficult now with so many enemies having the ability to either fly or swim, and using it freely. Means your vault absolutely positively MUST have booze at all times, and plenty of barrels. Might as well make it a mini fortress and stick several people in there.

[Psieye]

The residents of the sealed off Vault would need one of 2 things to keep them going:
1) They have a mini-food industry all to themselves so they are self-sustaining without outside input.
2) A quantum-stockpile of enough food and booze that they can last for years:

1 dwarf = 2 meals + 4 drinks per season < 1 barrel of food (stack of 10 meals inside) + 2 barrels of booze to last a year.


If you prefer your more Fun bunker concept where you leave it to luck to see who can hide away in safety, you can use this to judge how many dwarves that bunker can accept to operate for X years. Stragglers will be left behind as you seal off the bunker with a cave-in of natural stone to permanently seal off the entrance to invaders (or just use a floor hatch as flying building destroyers don't have the sense to destroy buildings in different z-levels).


Incidentally, what would your dwarves be doing while sealed off? You'd want some sort of "flush the fortress with water/magma to cleanse the invaders" lever in there, but you then want time to wait out the reset and the migrants (which ideally requires trade depot operation to give the signal to the outside world). I'd suggest a glass (with magma and sand in that vault) or cloth industry as those are self-sustaining avenues for trade good production.

Hmm yeah, this brings the question of how fast you want these bunkers and The Vault set up. You can get the quick and dirty "here's a pick, bed and enough supplies to last 10 years for 1 dwarf" up fast but the Vault with all the fancy "flush out the fortress" levers is gonna take time. Incidentally, you only need to forbid beds to stop them from being used I think. That or just not build them - leave a furniture stockpile in the bunker and your dwarves can set them up once they need them.