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[Cephas]

Not a particularly descriptive thread title, but I've got a bit to say before I get into the question that wouldn't really go up there.

Okay, I'm working on a fortress that completely ignores metal. My army would consist entirely of leather armored marksdwarves with wooden crossbows and bone bolts. All trap components will be made of wood or glass and the only things I plan on using stone for are mechanisms and fire safe workshops. This whole plan will get me working on industries that I've previously ignored and shift my focus away from increasing fortress value solely with metal items. Purchasing pre-made metal items from caravans or on embark wouldn't be forbidden, but that should only be used for replacement picks if I get my miners killed. I would be using a map that contains sand, a river, and hopefully a volcano, but I'm waiting to start until marksdwarves get a little more refined.

My problems are a little vague but mainly consist of worries about the strength of glass weapons when compared to the hoards of enemies that will eventually come knocking on my door. I know that the usual 3-10x Steel or Bronze serrated disks make mincemeat out of whatever may walk up to the trap hallway, but I haven't been able to find anything in the raws that will allow me to compare the strength of the various glasses with metal. Thus the first question, does anyone know of a way to unearth that information or otherwise compare the two without insane amounts of effort?

Second, I'm also concerned about framerate. I've never had a fortress go past 100 dwarves or so simply because I always feel like I've been doing stupid things that reduce it to a third or less of normal. I understand that it's still playable like that, but I know that if I hadn't been as ignorant as I was when designing the fortress things would have been much faster. I think I've got the gist of it now and I'm going to attempt to set what I know out in a list, but if anyone else has tips or sees something incorrect then help would be greatly appreciated.
-Minimum numbers of pets, preferably caged or chained depending on need for meat. Cats are restricted to male only. (In that regard, what animal is best for bones/meat without the threat of adoption by Dwarves if there is one?)
-Wide (3+) passageways for regular travel
-As little flowing water as possible, including damming rivers when needed.
-Small embark size - Anything over 3x3 is too much, but as you get smaller it reduces your chances of finding enough trees.
-Wide open mining when you need to get more stone or stockpile space. However, the game should run faster if you could dig out less in the first place.
-Central staircase problems, perhaps ramps are better, but I really haven't gotten a firm picture of what the issues are. Could anyone offer advice here?
-Well-defined burrows keeping some citizens out of areas where they obviously will never need to go.
-Methods of cutting down on excess supplies and items from farming/brewing/glassmaking that end up creating piles of unneeded food/booze/furniture. (Atomsmashing? - Feels too wasteful)

And finally, if anyone has statements about the problems a fort ignoring metal might undergo, please feel free to help me along. At the moment I can only think of issues with mandates and moods that will sadly be solved through accidents.

[Drawde]

I'd gen a new world with lots of valcanoes.  Magma glass forges are much better if you want a large glass industry.

The biggest problem you'll run into is that you'll need more support for glass than you'd think.  Stone is easy to get, since your miners usually find it just digging out your fortress.  Sand, on the other hand, has to be collected.  Which also requires a bag.  Unless you design your fortress with specific overlapping burrows (if you use 31.x), you'll find your sand gatherers doing other stuff as well.  Even with well designed burrows you'll still find yourself either running out of bags, which means you stop collecting sand, or running out of sand, which means you stop building things.  Which you probably won't notice until way later.

I once tried to do a fortress where all possible furniture was glass.  And glass blocks for building.  It takes a while to get started, unless you use magma forges.  Though you do need pearlash if you want clear or crystal glass.  It's nice for keeping your dwarves happy though, with that nice expensive glass furniture   

[Double A]

They don't reuse the bags?

[Sphalerite]

I built a giant green glass pyramid in 40d, with glass furniture and weapons wherever possible here:

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-8247-pagedslipped

You will need a lot of bags.  Bags aren't consumed in the process of making sand, but you want a buffer of empty bags so that sand collection isn't getting canceled by lack of bags.

You want to use magma.  Magma exists in basically every embark in DF2010, so this will be taken care of, you'll just need to dig deep enough.  And obviously you want an embark site with sand, having to import all the sand for this would be silly.  I started with about a dozen magma glass furnaces, initially split evenly between making glass items and gathering sand.  As my glassworkers became more skilled, the ratio had to shift as the glassworkers did their job faster but the sand gatherers still worked at the same rate.  Eventually I built a giant overly large magma moat inside the fortress and built dozens of glass furnaces on it to support further construction.

You can make magma-safe pumps entirely out of green glass, which will make getting the magma to your furnaces easier.

[rlbond86]

I've found that framerate is a lot better when you get magma from magma pipes rather than the magma sea. After the pipes refill, speed returns to normal, but with all the magma moving around in the sea things seem to slow down a lot.

[Drawde]

As mentioned, they reuse the bags.  But the bags are basically lost until the sand in it is used.  If you have too many dwarves gathering sand, you eventually run out of bags and the next time a dwarf tries to do that job, it gets turned off.  Then you have to restart the gathering job to get more sand.  Though if you're like me, you don't notice the lack of sand-gathering jobs until your make-glass-item jobs turn off for lack of sand.

I use normal glass furnaces built next to the sand plot to gather sand.  My magma furnaces do nothing but make glass items.

[Cephas]

Pardon for the revival, but I was never able to get an answer to the first question. I read through the other responses and checked out that impressively massive glass pyramid fortress and I think I can build this with confidence now.

However, I still know nothing about the comparison of glass with metals and I cannot locate it anywhere within the raws.

[Sphalerite]

Glass isn't defined anywhere in the raws.  That's very surprising, and means that the actual physical properties of glass must be hard-coded.  I have no idea how well it works for weapons in DF2010.  I don't know that anyone other than Toady knows the answer at the moment.

[Urist McPenguin]

Experimentation will show how glass performs. Plus, it might result in Fun.

[Daetrin]

 I recall from some tests done a while back that glass has about the same stopping power as wood. You'll want to set up more elaborate traps (drowning, magma) to deal with goblins.

[Dzenaiya]

the best meat-to-cost, adoption proof animal on embark is the Dog. Wardog packs are also handy, and still edible if they die (although, IIRC, they can't be assigned for slaughter)

Another recommendation is that if you have any spare points left from embark, drop it into sand. Each unit of sand costs 1 dwarfbuck and comes with a free bag of a random material. Not even a cheap material, necessarily. You'll be using the sand anyway, and the extra bags you don't have to make are definitely handy.