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Author Topic: town bell?  (Read 708 times)

Heathy

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town bell?
« on: February 22, 2011, 06:52:38 pm »

hey all I've only been playing for a week or 2, i love DF its really addictive to say the least, the only thing that keeps bothering me when i play, is the stupidity of dwarves when you get sieged, now i know you can pause the game and try to cancel orders. (even though i'm only a week old noob i know that the therapist tool is pretty much mandatory).

basically theres a reason i started this thread to put my voice in there, to make sieges less of a slaughter fest when you have 3-5 dwarves out cutting wood or fishing. or better yet merely hauling. would it not be a good idea to have some kind of town bell you can construct that, when you ring it, any dwarves out in the wilderness will run back to a preset zone.

this would really make the tedium of pausing the game whipping up the therapist and scanning around crazily to see if any dwarves are stuck outside and doomed to die.

don't get me wrong i'm still a scrub i have much to learn i'm sure, yet the only way i've been able to prolong a game so far is to completely wall off the outside and try to open it up for caravans and migrants. most of the time i find the waves of goblins just aren't worth contending with and best left alone to play with my moat and myriad of traps. yet this idea I've had would maybe save some lives. Also guess that this has probably been suggested (since theres 400+ pages woot), or there is a way to prevent this being a problem, yet it seems to be the only problem i have, farming up stocks and then turning into a turtle fortress is pretty much the only way i see of out lasting sieges. at least until you can setup a half decent military force. for lols i tried taking on a wave of goblins and trolls with my 2 squads of iron clad warriors which turned into a pretty nasty bloodbath. :P it was hilarious tho :D
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: town bell?
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2011, 06:59:51 pm »

You need to use burrows.  (See the wiki page on burrows.)

Set an "emergency" burrow that makes all your civilians hide somewhere safe, and set that burrow to be where all your civilians go when you hit the alert button.

For future reference, you should ask for help in the Gameplay Questions forum if you are unsure about how to accomplish certain tasks, rather than create a new suggestion.

Before starting another suggestion, it is also reccomended that you read the dev pages and use the search function (in the top right of the forum window) to look for what will already be going into the game anyway, and what threads have already been started about a subject, and if it would be better to just add on to or support an existing suggestion, rather than creating a whole new suggestion thread.
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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Heathy

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Re: town bell?
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2011, 07:03:57 pm »

ah there we go, well that indeed is my bad, if a mod wants to then they can delete this space waster, i have been chewing through the wiki, ive managed to get myself down to the 90~ z-level. so im getting the hang of the game.

its funny since as soon as you mentioned burrows i instantly realized that there is a method in place yet i have overlooked it, at first i thought i was for military purposes but ill have a play around now and see if i can get it to work. thanks for the help though :D

edit: as a side thought though, since i have dwarfs spanning 50 or so z-levels i dont want to setup an alert thats going to make 20 or so dwarfs that arent in danger run 50 z-levels :/
« Last Edit: February 22, 2011, 07:07:53 pm by Heathy »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: town bell?
« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2011, 07:26:10 pm »

edit: as a side thought though, since i have dwarfs spanning 50 or so z-levels i dont want to setup an alert thats going to make 20 or so dwarfs that arent in danger run 50 z-levels :/

You can make burrows span multiple z-levels (unlike rooms or activity zones, you can go up and down z-levels while designating them).  You can even make a burrow that basically covers the entire fort, except for the outside of the fortress, which is how people typically build their "civilian safety burrow".  That way, you can make sure that all your woodcutters run back for cover, while your craftsmen smithing away at the forges at the bottom of your fort just ignore the alert, since they're already inside the burrow.

(Burrows are very powerful tools for controlling where your dwarves can and cannot go, so it's worth spending the time to get to know them.)

Also, while there is no delete button for anyone but Toady and Threetoe, you can lock the thread yourself with a button at the bottom left of a thread you have created.  At the least, that lets the thread sink into obscurity.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2011, 07:27:41 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

Improved Farming
Class Warfare