That might just be for me. I see a lot of tools in there I've never used, but they might help me get organized so I can feel comfortable playing longer.
Hmm... sounds like you're not going to find much love in DFHack. The therapist will help, as it's the best way to organize dwarf labors and see dwarf info 'at a glance', but the hack tools are mostly for working around various issues with the game or simplifying some tasks (like digging whole mineral veins). One or two are worth a note in this case:
dfreveal can be used to see the entire map you've embarked upon, if you like having a fort connected from top to bottom with a single staircase, for example. If you want 'the ideal siting' for your fortress within an embark, this might help. Just DON'T unpause it or hit a period (which advances the game one frame) while the map is revealed.
dfliquids can be used instead of a bucket brigade or pumps to put water where you want it. This makes farms totally simple, but assumes you don't have an issue with creating water "from thin air". I don't normally bother with this one.
dfvdig allows you to tag an entire vein (iron, coal, etc) for digging at one time. This is probably one of the least "cheaty" of the hacks, since you could duplicate this by selectively tagging the minerals one square a ta time as they were dug out, but it's very convenient to be able to tag it once and just sic your dwarves on it.
I think some of why I stop is just the SHEER amount of organization. I'm like "Oh boy, if I can't figure out what's going on now, what am I going to do later?" The mods with LazyNewbie MIGHT help me with that?
No, the only thing that helps with that is having a few forts starve, dehydrate, tantrum spiral, loyalty spiral, die to forgotten beasts, be slaughtered by ambushes, collapse during sieges, accidentally flood with water, flood with magma, flood with HFS, cave in and kill everyone, and so forth. While I don't buy that losing is fun 100%, trying to AVOID losing is fun, and there's plenty of that to be had in DF. After a few forts, the organization becomes very much second nature.
For your 'first trip out', go into it with the following mindset:
This fortress is crap, and it will collapse, probably sooner than later, and that's OK. It will happen sooner or later, better to recognize that you're not an experienced fortress manager right out of the gate, and start the lengthy process of learning how to be one. Once you've had 10-12 forts, you'll have a much better feel for the things you don't currently understand, but there's really no way to put all those bits of info into your head other than 'the hard way'. Once you can reliably get up to 100+ dwarves and have forts that last more than a few years, it's easy to start finding ways to make the game
harder.
Play a fort until it dies (or is clearly GOING to die) and then ask yourself: What happened? What went wrong? How can I prevent that next time?
Each fort will build on the experience you gain from previous forts. My first few 'forts' didn't really even make it a year before bad things started to happen. I'd play until I hit something I didn't understand (like farming to keep dwarves from starving), then go read the wiki and figure it out. Many times, I'd find that what I learned (from the wiki or experience or through testing) caused me to need to refine my design, so I'd start a new fort that took advantage of my new knowledge... (Sound familiar?) Every DF player goes through the early period of wrestling with the interface and complexity. If you don't like complexity, or you don't want to dedicate the time to learning the intricacies of the game, then it's probably just not for you.
(Please note: I don't want to discourage you, but this is a much more complex game than many others, and making mistakes can often cause harm to your work to date, so learning what the mistakes are and how things work is essential to avoiding those mistakes and keeping your forts on the rails! If you want a "perfect" fort, you can expect to have a lot of false starts. The typical goal isn't a 'perfect' fort, but a good one. I've never had a 'perfect' fort, but I've had some really solid ones.)
Also, I tend to over think the entrance to my fortress. I prefer to just have one opening wide enough for the trade-depot that I can think about defenses on later without having to worry about how to protect multiple openings (But I've only ever played long enough to get "attacked" by monkeys, lol).
Monkeys are common attackers, but are easily thwarted. Chain a pair of dogs at the door, and the monkeys never get in, because they're scared of the dogs.
There are some necessary "easy" basic things that are mostly necessary to a fort and give me trouble; I freeze up trying to figure them out.
Paralysis by analysis. Quit thinking and "just do it". If you really want to keep one fort contiguously, then you should try save scumming. Just back up your saves, and then if you screw up, restore the backup save and keep playing. It's not a purist's solution, but if it helps you learn the game, who gives a flying fluffy wambler?
The easiest way to save scum is to simply turn on the automatic yearly/seasonal saves, so that if something goes wrong, you go back a season/year and have time to prepare for it.
Traps
For now, focus on cage traps and stonefall traps. They're simple (one cage + one mechanism or one stone + one mechanism) and a solid line of cage traps will hold against anything up to (and including) a siege. Later, you can move into complex mechanical traps that involve floods, cave-ins, or magma. At the beginning, focus on getting a perimeter and some cages built without your dwarves starving, dehyrdating or being killed by wildlife.
safely irrigating farms.
the safest farm irrigation is accomplished by breaching the side (not bottom, not top) of a muddy pool, and letting the water flow out over your future farmland. It's fast, effective, easy, and (unless you've done something strange) safe. It doesn't allow for covering as much farm land as some other methods, so I typically use an arrangement with a reservoir and baffle.
These include (But are not limited to): Wells/Cisterns (I don't understand how to utilize pressure plates and gates to keep a cistern full)
I wouldn't use pressure plates for a basic well/cistern. You CAN, certainly, but I don't. I build a gravity fed reservoir and baffle system, or a pump with a reservoir and baffle:
Baffle, top view:
OOOOOO
...OOO
OOO...
OOOOOO
O = Walls (natural or not)
. = floor where water will flow.
Connect one end of the pipe to the reservoir/source and the other to the destination. A baffle will remove pressure from a gravity-fed source. The water will rise
to the Z-level of the baffle, so build your well ABOVE (a Z-level above, not "north" on the same level) the channel where the water is, and build the baffle on the level where you want the water. It doesn't matter how far DOWN you go before you build the baffle, but make sure you position the well AFTER the baffle, and not before (or the well floods your fortress because you haven't removed the water pressure). Note that if you want water to exist on several levels (multiple wells, or to use for other purposes) you can simply use one main pipe and branch from it at each level, with a baffle for each level. Each baffle will kill its branch's water pressure at that level, allowing you to reach them from above (as with a well) safely. I often use this trick to have not only wells, but fishing areas where the reservoir water is covered by grates the fishermen can fish through.
Pumps are fairly starightforward. When powered (by dwarves or machines) they pick up water from a tile on one end (one Z-level below the pump) and spit it out on the other end (at the same Z-level as the pump). They are effectively archimedes screws. For now, ignore pump stacks and some of the other more complex pump operations (like water reactors). Concentrate on building a pump that can push water into an underground reservoir for storage. Be careful with pumps. They move a LOT of water VERY quickly, and flooding through over-supply is possible. Monitor pumps when they are active, if you're not 100% sure of how much water they'll move and to where. A pump consists of two tiles (dark and light) and is made from a block, a pipe and a corkscrew. The pump will always draw from the light end, and push out the dark end. The dark end acts as a wall to dwarves and water, the light end can be walked on, and is where a dwarf will stand when manually operating the pump.
If a pump tries to push water into a confined space with no exits (like a sealed reservoir) then the water is instead destroyed, but the pump will continue to operate normally.
Consult the wiki on pressure, flow and water, and read the article on pumps as well. Reread the articles until they start to make sense. Flooding a fort is lots of Fun, but you probably are trying to avoid that much Fun in an early fort. For your first pump, build a pump house like this one:
#%>#
# = floor grate
%> = Pump, pumping west to east
Then just wall in the pumps and grates to make a pump house. This will pump water from the grate on the left into the space ABOVE the grate on the right, where gravity will take over and move the water down into your pipe system.
Finally, there's floodgates and levers. Floodgates are the most intuitive way to control water flow. When you build them, they are in the down position, and can be raised to allow water to flow through. Levers require a mechanism to build. Build a floodgate, build a lever, and then add a "link lever to building" task to the lever that links it to the floodgate. Once linked, pulling the lever will raise the floodgate and allow water in. Pulling it again will close the floodgate. (Putting a floodgate in your pipe to allow you to cut off water flow is a good idea.)
My farms' irrigation hookups look something like this:
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
...FXFOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOO.........
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Where:
. is a floor tile
O is a wall tile
F is a fortification (like a wall that lets water through)
X is a floodgate.
Make sure to link the floodgate to a lever BEFORE walling it in with fortifications, or your floodgate can't be raised. Once I've irrigated the farms, I usually wall up the pipe and go on my merry way. (If later versions require re-irrigation, I can remove the wall and open the floodgate.)
If you'd like, I'll try to remember to upload my most recent good* fort, and its worldgen parameters to DFFD. I've been meaning to do it to show it to a friend, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Perhaps being able to fire up a fort "in progress" and tool around in it a bit will help ease some of your fears?
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Topic: I think I am Ready to Try Again (Read 1882 times)