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[thegoatgod_pan]

1.  How one loots only weapons (and not armor) from captured gobbos--my stocks screen midgame is a nightmare of 170+ iron spears, most of them lying around my fort, I have no clue which ones belong to the goblins in the cages.

2.  Why I keep finding various named blue weapons lying around forbidden, outside the barracks stockpiles while their owners are off duty--do dwarves forbid the weapons they name or chose--should I not unforbid them?  Is it a bug?

3. How do you set up a functional windmill-based power network--I tried the horseshoe wall with a gear in the middle but the game won't let me build without "solid ground", and if I just build windmills no amount of gears or axles between them seems to transfer power

4. How do people make marksmen work?

5. How do you catch Giant cave spiders--I went as far as to set their population equal to regular cave spiders and give them the travel-in-packs data of the naked mole dog and I still haven't seen one, even despite a massive cavern based lumber project, intended to lure one out.

[Girlinhat]

1) Melt them all, unclutters your Z stocks fast, especially with a few magma smelters.  Otherwise, the stripping of prisoners seems to be lacking.  Do your best.

2) I set my soldiers to remain uniformed at all times, so I have no clue.

3)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

Z=0
+++++
+W+W+
++*++
+WAW+
++A++

Z=1
+++++
+MMM+
+MMM+
+MMM+
+++++

+ = Floor
M = Windmill
W = Wall
* = Gear Assembly
A = Horizontal Axle
This setup makes a 5x5 section of floor to support the 3x3 windmil with a bit of extra walking room.  Just make sure that the center tile of the windmill has no floor.  Having a gear assembly under the windmill counts as a floor, sorta, and lets the mill transfer energy directly down through the hole in the floor.  The axles then push the power to wherever you want it.

4) Build 10+ archery targets, assign each of them to be a barracks for your squad(s), set your desired archers as off-duty with no skills activated.  Military dwarves naturally spend their off-duty idle time training, so your marksmen will go to the archery range when they have nothing to do.  You may have to assign them special ammo as both C and T, it's tedious at best, and a bit bugged.  Do your best.

5) No idea, haven't bothered with them yet, but I assume it's the same as other creatures where it involves bait, cages, and a lot of dead dwarves.

[Lagslayer]

1. Sift through the trash and unforbid the stuff you want. Alternately, unforbid it all, dump it, then sift through it. You can use crappy weapons in weapon traps or melt them down (melt them all at the same smelter so the bar fractions don't go to waste).

2. Either your soldiers are dropping their named weapons or enemies are naming theirs, which you are not collecting.

3. Windmills require a hole beneath the center tile of the building. from there, you can connect the axles and gears. You might have to start building the axels/gears starting from the stuff you want powered.

4. You can assign ammo under the military screen. The first hundred bolts are always reserved for hunters I think. They also need quivers, which they will equip automatically if they use a ranged weapon and you have some available. You can make them use different ammo for training and combat, but they will run back and switch every time which can be FUN!

5. Lots of cage traps and hope they come by. Use of live bait may help.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Thanks for the input!

1. Man, I was hoping there was an easier way than manually sorting the trash

2.  My soldiers are dropping them--just why?  Will they pick them up again? Am I obsessing over nothing?

3. Didn't know about the hole in the middle-for windmills-can you build over said hole?  I never seem to be able to (which might be the horseshoe shape I've been using, as opposed to the circle you seem to be proposing), but I've been building over constructed buildings so that might be it too.

4.  i love the idle dwarves will train suggestion, will definitely try that.

5. Hopefully a pack or two will roll in any day now

[Girlinhat]

3) Windmills can only be built on solid floors (which is rather useless) or on mechanisms.  So, you can build a windmill directly atop a pump or millstone, or put a gear assembly under the hole.  I've not attempted any horseshoe shaped setups, but I know that the doughnut hole works perfectly.  Just be aware that they do not stack, since windmills need to be outside, and anything above a windmill makes it "inside", so one windmill above another windmill will shut off the one on the bottom.  There's threads about how to make windmill stacks, use the forum's search bar for "wind mill".

[Spotswood]

1. When you set everything on the captured gobbo to dump. Wait for everything to be dumped then claim only the things you want from your dump-pit. Leave everything else as rubbish and it shouldnt bother you as much. I might be wrong

2. "should I not unforbid them"  lol. Dont forbid them. I think if you give your part time military dwarves bedrooms with containers in them they will place any of their shit in them when not being used. Also you can put containers in the barracks and make sure "personal" and "squad" equipment is selected in the assign barracks screen. Alternatively do not have part time military like me and your only problem will be your military dwarves wrestling and stripping each other like some weird beard-fetish porno.

3. Make sure you have wind first. Sucks to set this up to find out you dont have wind. Your first gear needs to be underneath the windmill. So put a gear down (on the first level down say), channel a hole on the level above (which needs to be outside) and then place your windmill so the channeled hole w/ gear below is in the center. That gear will now be powered. To extend the system your gears will form the joints for axles. So that first gear that was powered you can run an axle to that and the axle will be powered. Put a gear on the end of the powered axle and the next gear will be powered. That will probably be as much as that windmill can handle. Add windmills to the system to add power. You can also stack gears on top of each other to go up and down z levels. So if you channel a hole three z levels down you can put a gear on the bottom level under the hole then put a gear on top of the channeled hole on the z level above and again on the channeled hole on the top z level. So the gears are actually sitting on top of each other. Hope this helps.

3. Work it which way? I hear they're buggy but I dont use them much anyway.

4. Dont know

 

[Trouserman]

2. I had some weirdness with weapons becoming mysteriously forbidden when in use.  It seems to be caused by the "forbid other death items" order.  The weapon becomes forbidden if it is stuck in an enemy at the time of death, or something like that.  If your dwarf never puts the weapon down, it isn't a problem.  If the dwarf does put it down, the forbidden weapon will not be picked up again, which is a problem.  Unforbid the weapons that are forbidden now, then go to Set Orders (o) -> Forbid (F) and hit (t) to change "Forbid other death items" to "Claim other death items".  This should stop your weapons being forbidden in the future.

[shmelse]

2. I had some weirdness with weapons becoming mysteriously forbidden when in use.  It seems to be caused by the "forbid other death items" order.  The weapon becomes forbidden if it is stuck in an enemy at the time of death, or something like that.  If your dwarf never puts the weapon down, it isn't a problem.  If the dwarf does put it down, the forbidden weapon will not be picked up again, which is a problem.  Unforbid the weapons that are forbidden now, then go to Set Orders (o) -> Forbid (F) and hit (t) to change "Forbid other death items" to "Claim other death items".  This should stop your weapons being forbidden in the future.

awesome, thanks!  i've noticed this behavior as well and was wondering how my weapons were magically getting forbidden.  good catch.

[Makigall]

4.  I've recently had some very positive results from using marksdwarves.  I just assigned them the default leather uniform with a crossbow and quiver added.  Set my archery targets as firing ranges and let them do their thing.  No barracks at all, I think initially I looked at messing with the ammo but eventually set it back to default.  Had my weaponsmith train up to legendary making copper bolts, and later used bone bolts, my marksdwarves seem to grab either.

I also decided not to do live training for my melee squads this time around and instead pitted armed goblins into a firing range.  Which is basically a room with a trench dug in the middle with one side's ramps removed.  Doors on either side of the trench for access.  Forbid the goblin side, order the squad to their side, and then pit a goblin.  In armor and with shields the goblins will take a fair amount of punishment which will train up your dwarfs pretty fast.  I then built a couple spots for my marksdwarves to shoot invaders from.  Two towers with a bridge between, the bridge runs perpendicular to front wall and extends beyond it.  The bridge is lined with fortifications and the towers connect to the archery ranges and ammo stockpiles.  During sieges I station that squad on the bridge and they do a good job of driving off invaders and supporting my melee without wandering too far for a drink or to sleep or to get more ammo.

Also whenever I spotted FBs in my caverns I would send my miners down there, mine out, smooth and fortify walls that overlooked open stretches of cavern and if I ever saw a FB get close to one of my stations I'd send that squad down there to try to bring it down.  Last time I checked I think that squad of 5 was responsible for 4 FB kills and probably about 50 goblins and kobolds.

The biggest thing is to not have unreasonable expectations.  Markdwarves will do a fine job of forcing goblin squads to flee, or to bring down a single target like a FB that can't get at them.  But crossbows don't score quick kills which makes marksdwarves a poor defense by themselves.

[Girlinhat]

I've had good success with crossbows on walls.  Built a square of walls, and then on the next level up, cap those walls with fortifications, and build an inner battlement walkway with regular floors.  Set the corners of the square with points using the N thingy, and then make a patrol route around the battlements.  A squad of crossbows won't bring down a siege, but they'll certainly let you win in terms of outlasting the enemy.  Eventually they hit the enemy, and eventually those enemies die.  Eventually they could take down a siege, especially if the siege is brought to them with teasing the door open and close and use of bait animals, and in tandem with a melee force they provide good covering fire.  Not to mention, if they're stationed on defensive stance, you can deck them in metal.  While metal armor normally slows them down, this doesn't matter if they're standing on the wall and firing.  It means that any lucky shots to get through the fortifications will do minimal damage.  Although personally, I've not seen much, if any, fire going upwards towards the fortifications, even when the goblins were given perfectly good animals to shoot at.

[thegoatgod_pan]

It didn't even occur to me to try building windmills directly on mechanisms!  and amazing props for the "forbid on death" option.  I'm off to experiment with a windmill and archery based fort!

[shmelse]

I also decided not to do live training for my melee squads this time around and instead pitted armed goblins into a firing range.  Which is basically a room with a trench dug in the middle with one side's ramps removed.  Doors on either side of the trench for access.  Forbid the goblin side, order the squad to their side, and then pit a goblin.  In armor and with shields the goblins will take a fair amount of punishment which will train up your dwarfs pretty fast.

I've had good results with a firing range as well. I have a bridge leading to the far side of the range, so that I can restock with enemy cages. I link the cages to another lever, so that I can open them once the bridge is gone. I don't have any caged goblins right now, so I've been killing off all the troglodytes and cage ogres I've captures. One advantage of the bridge is that you can put building destroyers like trolls on the far side and they won't tear down your doors and escape.

[thijser]

If you want to catch a giant cave spider it;s probably a good idea to start wipping out other lifeforms in the caves.DF can only spawn so many wild annimals(of diffrend species) this means that if you already have a cave filled with creatures then it might not be passble for a new creature to spawn. So bring out your steel clad army and start hunting!

[Girlinhat]

Still-armed enemies will have more armor and survive longer, ensuring longer firing sessions.  Build fortifications and order your trainers to guard them, to prevent enemy archers from hitting your men.  And if they do get hit, that's more experience for the medics!  If there's a channel on the back side of the range, then all spent ammo will be saved, since any ammo that falls a z level won't be broken.  This can be useful if you're chronically low on ammo,

I also heard a hilarious idea to use a captured bronze colossus as a firing target.  Bone bolts fired at it will never damage it, and it's always available for your soldiers to aggro it.  Just make sure you've got a good enclosure built before-hand, because your civilians won't like having to cancel jobs when they see it.

Ninja'd fakedit: Set the cavern as a burrow, and have your men guard it for a few months of the year, they'll kill anything down there, and you can recall them if you see GCS.

[Urist Da Vinci]

1.  How one loots only weapons (and not armor) from captured gobbos--my stocks screen midgame is a nightmare of 170+ iron spears, most of them lying around my fort, I have no clue which ones belong to the goblins in the cages.

5. How do you catch Giant cave spiders--I went as far as to set their population equal to regular cave spiders and give them the travel-in-packs data of the naked mole dog and I still haven't seen one, even despite a massive cavern based lumber project, intended to lure one out.

1. follow steps:
make a garbage dump zone near your cages
use d-b-c on the cages to unforbid the cage contents
use d-b-d on the cages to mark all contents for dumping
go in the stocks menu
remove the dump letter from all armor, clothing, and the cages themselves, but not weapons
dwarves will now go to the cages, remove the weapons, and take them to the closest dump zone
unforbid the weapons in the dump zone
dwarves will now take the weapons to a weapon stockpile

or:
make a garbage dump zone near your cages
use d-b-c on the cages to unforbid the cage contents
use d-b-h on the cages to hide everything
go in the stocks menu
mark all hidden "H" weapons for dumping
use d-b-H on the cages to unhide everything
dwarves will now go to the cages, remove the weapons, and take them to the closest dump zone
unforbid the weapons in the dump zone
dwarves will now take the weapons to a weapon stockpile


5. GCS have [FREQUENCY:20] in their raw files. Large rats, for example, have [FREQUENCY:100]. If you deleted all underground creatures except for GCS and large rats, you would get rats over 80% of the time on your map. Modding the population affects how many you could capture/kill before they go extinct. Modding the pack size makes them arrive in groups. If they migrate to your map in 31.xx, they are visible (not ambushing!).