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[San-A]

So I have been through the bedroom design wiki page, http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Bedroom_design, to find some funny design.

I have discovered that most design make use of a 3x3 stair case. Does it make the dwarves travel though z-level faster? Are they made of up/down staircase of are they made this way?

Code: [Select]

uuu
u*d
ddd
where u = up, d = down and * = wall

Thanks you!

[MAurelius]

They are made using up/down staircases (look like big X's in graphics sets), NOT some only up and some only down, as your example graphic shows. I believe it's d and then i when you're digging and b and x if you're building them, but I'm not 100% on that, since I'm at work.

Not to hijack the thread, but I also wonder when I watch let's plays why some people have HUGE staircases (in some cases 5x5). Does this in any way improve the pathing over a say 2x2 staircase? Because it sure takes up a heck of a lot of room.

[San-A]

They are made using up/down staircases (look like big X's in graphics sets), NOT some only up and some only down, as your example graphic shows. I believe it's d and then i when you're digging and b and x if you're building them, but I'm not 100% on that, since I'm at work.

In this one it seems to me half up staircase down staircase:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/File:Noblehive.png
(some of the tiles are going "left", some are going "right")

Not to hijack the thread, but I also wonder when I watch let's plays why some people have HUGE staircases (in some cases 5x5). Does this in any way improve the pathing over a say 2x2 staircase? Because it sure takes up a heck of a lot of room.

I believe it does improve the traffic, if you consider a 5x5 staircase as a 5 tiles width corridor, but I also think its really huge, and unecessary

[NecroRebel]

IIRC, in the earliest 3D versions right after stairs were added in, it was possible for a dwarf to trip and fall down stairs. Long shafts of up/down stairs were thus prone to causing fatalities as unfortunate dwarves would tumble down the whole way, so to avoid that, staircases were made from down and up stairs without many, or any, up/down staircases. Now, though, that doesn't happen, so having up/down staircases is more efficient because dwarves never have to waste the additional time moving horizontally to go vertically that they did with the prior designs.

[San-A]

IIRC, in the earliest 3D versions right after stairs were added in, it was possible for a dwarf to trip and fall down stairs. Long shafts of up/down stairs were thus prone to causing fatalities as unfortunate dwarves would tumble down the whole way, so to avoid that, staircases were made from down and up stairs without many, or any, up/down staircases. Now, though, that doesn't happen, so having up/down staircases is more efficient because dwarves never have to waste the additional time moving horizontally to go vertically that they did with the prior designs.

Cheers mate

[Nan]

Do note however, that even though dwarves don't trip down stairs, if they are already falling when they hit stairs, they will fall straight through. I've lost a few dwarves to this, and the usual way I've done it is like this:

Cross Section:

    (soldiers sparring)
######     ###
######XX######
######XX######
######XX######
######XX######


The soldiers are sparring, or there is a small meeting zone (causing animal fights) on the top of a ledge. One of them dodges off the ledge. Normally a 1-z drop wouldn't cause any harm, but if they hit the stairs they fall straight through and go splat at the bottom.

Apparently you can avoid this by putting hatches over the stairs (the hatches catch the falling dwarf), otherwise avoid any possible setup where dwarves can dodge off a ledge and fall down onto stairs.

In one of my more hilarious cases, I piled everyone into a tiny meeting zone for ready labor accessibility for a building project, and a bunny caused the death of several useless immigrants by causing them to dodge to their death down the staircase at the bottom of a channel. To be fair it was a pretty nasty bunny, it bit one dwarf in the head!

[Garath]

as for efficiency: an up/down staircase of just one square can hinder traffic just like a narrow corridor. One dwarf going up, the other going down, or one just going faster up or down than another, will make one of them crouch down on the floor for a while. I usually use 2x2 staircases, and after digging down a bit i do switch to a different spot to continue the staircase - so i can build some fortifications against attacks from below

[i2amroy]

Not to hijack the thread, but I also wonder when I watch let's plays why some people have HUGE staircases (in some cases 5x5). Does this in any way improve the pathing over a say 2x2 staircase? Because it sure takes up a heck of a lot of room.

I believe it does improve the traffic, if you consider a 5x5 staircase as a 5 tiles width corridor, but I also think its really huge, and unecessary

More like a 25 tile wide corridor (5x5=25). Really the biggest you ever need to go is a 3x3, especially if you designate the middle stair as high traffic. Personally I still find that a 1x3 works well enough for most cases assuming you high traffic the middle and it fits nicely at the end of a 3 wide corridor, though a 2x2 would work slightly better traffic wise. Seriously though, unless you somehow have like 200 dwarves and 400 animals all patching through the same stairway, the biggest you will ever need is a 3x3.

[daggaz]

keep in mind tho that the stairs, while increasing movement efficiency throughout your fort for your dwarves, do the exact same thing for invaders.  doors wont stop building destroyers or thieves, either, so you might want to think about compartmentalizing the floors somehow, such that you can seal each floor from the stairs in case of emergency using drawbridges.   

[MAurelius]

I've been having trouble with high traffic designations but yet really want to use them right to raise my framerate up a bit. Why the center only stair in a 3x3? Which would you high traffic in a 2x2?

Thanks.

[kaenneth]

I sealed off my old central stair, and now use a series of ramps winding down.

The main reason is so that on a few levels I can have trenches with water to wash contaminants off, there is no path between any of entry, farms, housing, workshops, hospital and caverns that dosn't require a dip.

[i2amroy]

I've been having trouble with high traffic designations but yet really want to use them right to raise my framerate up a bit. Why the center only stair in a 3x3? Which would you high traffic in a 2x2?

The best way to work with high traffic designations is to run them down the middle of the corridors. That way the dwarves tend to stick to the middle, and then can jump out of the way if they run into another dwarf. On a 3 wide corridor (or a 1x3 stair) this means that they have two different ways to jump out of the road to go past one another. In a 3x3 they have a potential of 9 different directions to move in order to get around each other (N, S, E, W plus all the in-betweens). For a 2x2 stair the best thing to do would be to designate 1 corner as high traffic, giving your dwarves a total of 3 different ways to move out of the road. Also if you are looking to improve framerate a good thing to do is designate dead end areas (like workshop rooms for example) as low traffic, since then the pathfinder will spend less time looking at them in order to determine where it is going.

[MAurelius]

Thanks! That's all eminently sensible!

[Garath]

keep in mind tho that the stairs, while increasing movement efficiency throughout your fort for your dwarves, do the exact same thing for invaders.  doors wont stop building destroyers or thieves, either, so you might want to think about compartmentalizing the floors somehow, such that you can seal each floor from the stairs in case of emergency using drawbridges.

definately agreed. as you get deeper, the possibility of getting a FB from a cavern increases. At that point, making sure you can raise a drawbridge somewhere so you have time to assemble your militia becomes a good idea

[Nan]

It's worth noting that you can build a hatch or retracting bridge over up/down stairs, it looks a bit odd, but works just fine.