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[zagibu]

Holy crap, six 10x10 plots? Are you trying to feed the whole dwarven nation? A single 5x5 plot was always enough for me...

[Psieye]

I don't get these problems. If you position a dwarf to the barracks, then press 's' and then turn them to active, they will train.

But then if you turn them inactive, they won't train, unless they are positioned to the barracks.
Then whether or not they are positioned, they will do station and kill commands.

But when positioned and if they have nothing else to do, and they are inactive, they will train.

Too many unnecessary steps. All that's needed is to assign dwarves to squads, set their alert level to inactive, assign a barracks to their squads and activate 'T'raining at those barracks. Now the diligent recruits will do individual weapon training, while the slackers won't.

Yeah, farming is pretty easy to set up in a year, even with irrigation.

1) Pick a murky pool (or several in a group).
2) Count how many squares. Multiply by 7, divide by 2. This is the absolute maximum size of your farm.
3) Dig out a farm area at least a bit smaller than this size.
4) Add floodgate(s) where you are connecting to the pool(s). Connect to lever and open.
5) Mine to the pool(s), either directly (see miner run) or by channelling from above.
6) When farm area completely flooded, close floodgate.
7) Wait.
8) Build farms.

The only tricky parts are if your pools evaporate or freeze at different times of the year. I find digging this out in the first spring and summer leaves you ready to flood in Autumn, when rains refill the pools and freezing hasn't set in yet.

One 70 square murky pool can support two 10x10 (maximum size) farm plots, which should do for anyone. I managed six 10x10 plots by Autumn of the first year, so that's more than doable and I probably don't have to think about farming again unless I want to grow something aboveground.

I just look for a suitably sized murky pool at an appropriate location, multiply the number of tiles in it by 6 and dig that much space out 2 z-levels beneath in the soil (I usually have more than 2 layers of soil in my embarks). Then I crack open the murky pool and lead all the water down. Not all of my farm room will be irrigated but enough will be to feed my fort forever. Afterwards I wall up the breach to the murky pool so rain water doesn't screw me up. All this takes 1 month after embark. It's exactly the same as I did in 40d except I didn't have to breach the murky pool before. The extra step of irrigation is a trivial counting exercise as far as I'm concerned.

[palsch]

Holy crap, six 10x10 plots? Are you trying to feed the whole dwarven nation? A single 5x5 plot was always enough for me...

That was the plan.

I was trying to make a dedicated farming settlement, only trading food and booze and limiting other production to just what is needed for survival.

Then I found out the dwarven nation consisted of the seventeen dwarfs I got in the first year and nothing else.

[Thief^]

Yeah, a 7/7 depth pool can irrigate a farm 5-6 times the size of the pool, including any squares joining the pool to the farm (e.g. the floodgate). 6 will not manage to irrigate the whole farm (due to a few squares evaporating), 5 will flood a lot of the farm to 2/7, and takes a long time to evaporate down to all 1/7 so that you can actually build.

If the pool refills it is reusable for more plots. You can also dig out a pool of the appropriate size and fill it from a river yourself, but that takes more work.

[Orkel]

whats wrong with farming?

That...

And Toady, please, fix Military! I haven't even tried embarking in a dangerous area because of so much of the bugs associated with it.

Military by itself works somewhat, melee dwarves train invidually without any problems and they also equip the things I order them to. The main problems in .06 are in my opinion:

- Marksdwarf training is broken.
- Surgery problems (fixed for .07)
- Combat balancing (better metal always defeats inferior metal armor, inferior metal weapons have absolutely no chance of penetrating better metal armor (it needs more randomness), also the unkillable FBs and stuff like pierced hearts not being fatal), really annoying.
- Farm needing irrigation, should be an init option or something, makes embarking in deserts way too hard as you need to dig down to the cavern immediately to get water

[Mandaril]

- Farm needing irrigation, should be an init option or something, makes embarking in deserts way too hard as you need to dig down to the cavern immediately to get water

I might be nitpicking here, but isn't getting water for farming a significant problem in real life deserts too?

[smjjames]

- Farm needing irrigation, should be an init option or something, makes embarking in deserts way too hard as you need to dig down to the cavern immediately to get water

I can accept that solution as it works for both parties, those that want to keep it as it is and those that want it fixed. Not sure how toady would accomplish that or if it is accomplishable. Probably depends on the nature of the bug.

- Farm needing irrigation, should be an init option or something, makes embarking in deserts way too hard as you need to dig down to the cavern immediately to get water

I might be nitpicking here, but isn't getting water for farming a significant problem in real life deserts too?

Yes but we are talking about gameplay balance here.

Edit: Check out the Mantis bug tracker, Toady just added a big chunk of new stuff to the list of stuff thats fixed for .07, go Toady!

[greycat]

- Marksdwarf training is broken.

Just the training?  I haven't dared to try making a Marksdwarf in the last several versions.  Will they actually shoot at things now, if you give a Kill order?  Or will they run up to the enemy and try to beat them to death with the crossbow?

I guess I should nominate a guinea pig brave volunteer to test it....

[Orkel]

I have no idea, they probably will try to beat them to death, I haven't used marksdwarves since 30.01 so I don't know. Toady hasn't mentioned anything about them in the bug tracker so I guess they will beat instead of shoot.

[Baughn]

IMO, embarking in deserts should be hard. I'm perfectly fine with Toady not fixing the "bug"; it's more interesting like this - call deserts hard mode.

What I'd accept as an init option is the ability to stop mud from deteriorating over time. Which, okay, it doesn't yet.

[Zalminen]

IIRC, farming was supposed to require either:
1) irrigation (mud)
2) a whole soil wall below the farm squares

Number 2 is different than how it was in 40d but it also isn't currently working quite right for underground farming.

(Well, I haven't tested it myself since my own PC broke while I was still waiting for the merge and it'll take a while before I can afford a new one... But with this rate I'll have a nice bug-free version to play by then )

[paedansu]

Just adding my two cents here, I've been playing DF for about a month now and the only thing I've ever known is "surface plants grow dry on the surface, underground plants grow in wet caves." Makes perfect sense to me, and irrigation has never felt like a challenge either. With a bucket or two your dwarves can easily wet a little 2x5 plot to get food production going until you can put in some plumbing and build your 'real' farm plots.

I know the gripe here is mostly from desert-dwellers who have no water for their buckets, but... Well, it's realistic. I've actually been considering giving a desert fort a shot myself, and all my plans have started with "Dig for water."

[FuzzyDoom]

whats wrong with farming?

That...

And Toady, please, fix Military! I haven't even tried embarking in a dangerous area because of so much of the bugs associated with it.

Military by itself works somewhat, melee dwarves train invidually without any problems and they also equip the things I order them to. The main problems in .06 are in my opinion:

- Marksdwarf training is broken.
- Surgery problems (fixed for .07)
- Combat balancing (better metal always defeats inferior metal armor, inferior metal weapons have absolutely no chance of penetrating better metal armor (it needs more randomness), also the unkillable FBs and stuff like pierced hearts not being fatal), really annoying.
- Farm needing irrigation, should be an init option or something, makes embarking in deserts way too hard as you need to dig down to the cavern immediately to get water

You forgot things not dying unless you completely mutilate them. I HAVE played around in adventure mode, and Spears are completely useless unless you get a headshot. You can stab them all you want, and in the end they might die of suffocation if you've hit a lung. Weapons do need fixed.

[Chromasphere]

You forgot things not dying unless you completely mutilate them. I HAVE played around in adventure mode, and Spears are completely useless unless you get a headshot. You can stab them all you want, and in the end they might die of suffocation if you've hit a lung. Weapons do need fixed.
[/quote]

Hmm, I think it may be more with body/injury reaction rather than the weapons themselves.  I have always found it odd that after shattering both legs, an enemy can stand up and still attack. Or continuously shattering the same "upper left arm" or whatever.  I think eventually injuries will be tweeked so they have more of a realistic impact on body function. 

[Psieye]

Oh I see, there's scope leak for the term "military bugs" - people are including everything remotely related such as inorganic Forgotten Beasts, materials balance, melee aiming AI and unfatal injuries. Sure, there's still plenty of bugs that are highly inconvenient with INVADERS:ON but can we expand the term from "military bugs" to "all combat-related bugs"?

- Marksdwarf training is broken.

Just the training?  I haven't dared to try making a Marksdwarf in the last several versions.  Will they actually shoot at things now, if you give a Kill order?  Or will they run up to the enemy and try to beat them to death with the crossbow?

I guess I should nominate a guinea pig brave volunteer to test it....

From .04 testing, it's possible (by not binning any ammo as that stops it getting assigned) to get marksdwarves to train at an archer range. They'll never shoot in live combat though.