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[twilightdusk]

okay, so I've started a new 2010 fort, and I've dig a bit into the mountainside. I think I've got most of the basics figured out, but I gotta ask - what's up with burrows? Do I need them? What's the advantage?

Burrows have 2 main uses
1) setting one as a military alert means that all non-military dwarves will head for the burrow when you activate the alert. Use this to ensure civilian safety.
2) assigning a dwarf to a burrow means he will not do anything that requires him to be outside that burrow. Useful for keeping craftsman from wandering all the way across your base because they decided to help with the wood hauling.

[Eric Blank]

You don't actually need to use burrows; you can force your civilians to stay inside with a drawbridge airlock if you ever actually want to fight. Just use standard kitten-detectors or something to spot ambushes, then order the gates shut.

I have completely failed to utilize the military or burrows in this version. I've barely tried though; I keep getting bored and leaving or genning a new world where I've updated my mods and never going back I am a horrible fortress-maker.

[Shoku]

They should leave they burrows if they are starving or dehydrated though it's better to give them a space with some food and drink available.
I usually set up burrows so I can do a civilians stay inside type order but you can also place a burrow and then tell a squad to guard it or set up a quarantine area to stop certain dwarves from mingling.

Assigning dwarves to a burrow is like forbidding all of the items and jobs outside of it but only for them, mostly.

[The Dog Delusion]

Freakin'...

So one of my masons is outside, being chansed around by a freakin' Troglodyte.

How do I send somebody out there to kill the damn thing?

[Hydrall]

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Kill

Like that.

[The Dog Delusion]

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Kill

Like that.

Thanks! My mason is now safe in the hospital. She's apparently "lost the ability to grasp" - it seems that all of her fingers, both hands and wrists, and one of her ears are pretty badly mangled 

[Sutremaine]

Burrows: easiest way of getting the meat of the old 'dwarves inside' order is to create a burrow over the food and drink stockpiles. You'll get a ton of cancellation spam, but it doesn't seem to cancel anything at the workshops and you only have to deal with it until the fortress can be sealed properly.

  Assuming that you haven't touched the burrow or military screens at all --
  [w], [a], Enter. That takes you to the screen where you set the burrow's location. Create the burrow using the Enter and movement buttons (ie. like a stockpile). You can do this as many times as you like and the squares don't need to be connected, or even on the same z-level. Hit Escape twice to return to the main screen. Next...
  [m], [a]. Alerts are to the left, burrow list to the right. The default civilian setting is Inactive, which refers to your dwaves and not the alert itself or anything (it should probably be called something less ambiguous). It starts out with a bright green [CIV] next to it. The Burrows column will have one name in it, and that will be Burrow 1. Hit right, press Enter, and a green A will appear next to the burrow name. Pressing Enter again will cancel the alert, but don't do that yet.
  Once you return to the game, all your civilian dwarves will move to the area you specified. If you cancel the alert right away, they'll carry on to the burrow regardless.

The advantage of burrows is that they don't just do 'dwarves go inside'. You can also do 'dwarves go up beyond the reach of flooding' or whatever, and assigning a single dwarf to a burrow lets you force them to use a particular stockpile without the hassle of physically locking them in. I think the way to use the system fully is to create a burrow for each industry so that you can have a sprawling fortress but still keep your skilled workers in the general area of their workshops. But since you can't have a bunch of small food stockpiles drawing from a central one you're still going to have to figure out how to keep all your burrows stocked or put up with dwarves wandering back and forth for food and drink.

Question for everyone else... is this loss of grasping always an indicator of nerve damage?

[Loyal]

Broken bones in the hands (arms?) also impair grasping. I'm not sure, but I think artery damage can also cause a loss of grasping even if the dwarf can get over the bleeding.

[The Dog Delusion]

Broken bones in the hands (arms?) also impair grasping. I'm not sure, but I think artery damage can also cause a loss of grasping even if the dwarf can get over the bleeding.

Yeah, the doctor diagnosed her, and then cleaned her wounds, and then ran off to do something...in the meantime, she jumped out of bed and was walking around partying...until she succumbed to infection and died in the dining room. She was partying with compound fractures and smashed open bones all the way from her fingers to her elbows.

[The Dog Delusion]

okay, the fort seems to be up and going pretty well now

I've had invasions turned off (I know...not dwarfy ), but I'm planning on turning them on soon, but I figure that in the course of doing this and getting my military back on track, it would be a good idea to ask a few questions.

I know that weapons and armor have been totally re-worked with a bunch of new variables. Assuming that I have access to steel, is it safe to assume that making sets of steel plate armor is the best option? should I be starting them off with leather or something else first? And what kinds of weapons would be best to arm them with? Make them wrestlers? hammerdwarves?

I'm not really asking about the best possible uber-protection, but rather, a quick rule-of-thumb reference to go off of as I figure out all the military screen stuff, and a place to start as I do so.

Thanks for everything so far guys, I'm enjoying the cliff! 

[Frogwarrior]

Oh, by the way. Liaisons? Are replaceable now. Enjoy.

[EvilJawa]

if you have the materials steel is the best option, or bronze a close second, leather really doesnt do very much and its a bit of a pain to harvest unless you trade for it,  as for weapons, hammers are the best close combat weapon against goblins and other humanoids, make them out of silver because it's a heavier metal and increases damage but silver weapons tend to not work very well against superior quality titans,

here's a link to magma wiki for armor info http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Armor
and weapons http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Weapon

as it turns out you can layer armor for even more dwarf uberness. hope that helps =)

[EvilJawa]

and another tip is have alot of hunters as they train up their marksdwarf/archery skills pretty fast and then you can draft them

[Frogwarrior]

if you have the materials steel is the best option, or bronze a close second, leather really doesnt do very much and its a bit of a pain to harvest unless you trade for it,  as for weapons, hammers are the best close combat weapon against goblins and other humanoids, make them out of silver because it's a heavier metal and increases damage but silver weapons tend to not work very well against superior quality titans,

here's a link to magma wiki for armor info http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Armor
and weapons http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Weapon

as it turns out you can layer armor for even more dwarf uberness. hope that helps =)

How much layering can you do? I know you can have chain mail and breastplates, but can you also do other layerings?

[EvilJawa]

quoted from the armor wiki

Head
2 x caps
1 x helm
6 x hood

Upper Body
1 x breastplate
3 x mail shirts
6 x cloaks
Upper Body (cheap)
6 x dress
3 x robe
3 x cloak

Lower Body
2 x trousers
1 x greaves
Lower Body (cheap)
2 x trousers
1 x leggings

Hands
1 x pairs of gauntlets
1 x pairs of mittens
Hands (cheap)
2 x pairs of gloves
1 x pairs of mittens

Feet
1 x pairs of socks
1 x pairs of high boots
Feet (cheap)
1 x pairs of socks
1 x pairs of shoes