Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[andyman564]

Creatures can't swim through pumps, so you could use one for the beginning of an aqueduct.

According to the wiki, the same thing is true of grates.

am i being to obvious to suggest using fortifications? scary stuff can't get past them, liquid can flow through them and building destroyers can't destroy them...

[Elifre]

Creatures can't swim through pumps, so you could use one for the beginning of an aqueduct.

According to the wiki, the same thing is true of grates.

am i being to obvious to suggest using fortifications? scary stuff can't get past them, liquid can flow through them and building destroyers can't destroy them...

I think flying creatures can get through them, and I'm also pretty sure that swimming creatures can if they're fully submerged. Bridges are my typical answer to building destroyers, and for a lot of my traps too.

[Elifre]

Year two of my fortress is complete. I had some trouble with goblin ambushes at the end, but the magma bridge and airlocks / atom smashers let me survive with only one dwarf and three puppies dead (one wasn't quite dead when I pulled the lever for the magma bridge trap. It found some candy before melting). I finally have a mayor thanks to going over 50 dwarves (55 currently). No military yet, but that's not a big concern with my entrance the way it is. By the way, I've moved my previous screenshots around on photobucket to make it more organized, so the links will be broken for a little bit. Here's what I've accomplished:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Food and booze production increased to meet demand. I'll have some more farms up once I have a good supply of water in the cistern.
Metal industry 1/4 set up, with 3 smelters and 3 forges working now.
Sleeping quarters dug out, with 100 rooms. 1x4 rooms with doors and beds so far, with some also having cabinets and coffers.
Main stockpile is constructed, with a lot of room to expand it as needed.
Lots of extra picks made to train weaponsmiths.
Project: Flood the World with Magma is coming along nicely. I'll need pumps to work on it further, so my progress on it will be on hiatus.
I have a cistern complete now, with bridges to act as floodgates. I'll need a grate and to link the bridges to levers.
Noble's quarter has room for a mayor (useless) and a manager / broker / record keeper (useful).
I have a lot of lead bins now, but I still need a lot more.
I have alarms set up to get civilians inside, and sentry puppies to keep an eye out for snatchers and ambushers.
53 statues made of solid gold completed. It's looking like I have enough gold to make hundreds, maybe thousands more.
Trading has let me get some tin bars, cassiterite, hematite, limonite, lignite, bitumous coal, coke, iron bars, bismuthinite, and bismuth bars. This'll greatly help with setting up a decent military. I'm thinking steel picks and shields, bismuth bronze for the rest of the armour, with copper crossbows for any marksdwarf squads and the militia. Forty dwarves shooting crossbows at random without friendly fire means even dabbling skilled dwarves can do some damage.
I have a couple tree farms up, so I'll have less of a need to buy logs from traders. Alternatively, I could use the extras to make fuel for steel.
Lots of digging to find metals. Dwarf Therapist says I have 13 miners assigned, with a minimum skill of Competent. Most are Proficient, Great, or Legendary.
20 Silver spiked balls forged, with plenty more on the way for my dodge-me trap. Digging out the pit will take a little longer.


To do:

Complete previously mentioned projects.
Find cassiterite and iron. Coal too if possible.
Mine out visible galena to get lead for bins.
Dig out an indoor refuse pit.
Noble-killing sock trap.
Anything else people suggest that I think is a good or dorfy idea.

And now, pics! (8 of them this time, so clicking the spoiler below will take up a bit of room)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's my expanded sleeping quarters.




The magma bridge is rather effective. See here a melting goblin. ^^




This is my woefully inadequate dorfy meeting hall.




Project: Flood the World is coming along nicely.




My expanded food and booze preparation area.




The rather cluttered farm. Lots of space once I clear out the boulders and flood it a bit.




Entrance hallway, during an ambush.




A rather large area for a cistern. This is one of my next projects to finish.

As always, I'm looking for suggestions for the next year. Dorfy responses welcome.

[Elifre]

Screenshots for year 1 have been fixed.

Any comments on this project? I'd be interested to hear what people think of it so far.

[Kar98]

Very nice . Needs some magma waterfalls though

[Vodrilus]

An impressive fort! And a great embark.

It'll explode if I drop it in magma from a couple Urists up. Or at least cause magma mist, which is just as good.

I was under the assumption that only falling tiles of walls, floors etc. cause that lovely magma mist.

I particularly like having my melee dwarves equip pickaxes. Not only are they good weapons, but it's easy to train mining and it gives them a useful skill when off duty. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Enabling mining or woodcutting gives the dorfs in question a uniform that blocks military uniforms. It would be a bit of a hassle to keep switching mining jobs off, even with the Therapist. Recruiting miners is usually a good move, however, since mining trains essential physical stats.

Creatures can't swim through pumps, so you could use one for the beginning of an aqueduct.

According to the wiki, the same thing is true of grates.

am i being to obvious to suggest using fortifications? scary stuff can't get past them, liquid can flow through them and building destroyers can't destroy them...

I think flying creatures can get through them, and I'm also pretty sure that swimming creatures can if they're fully submerged. Bridges are my typical answer to building destroyers, and for a lot of my traps too.

I prefer collapsing tiles of rock on the channels leading to my smithies, in order to stop any unwanted guests. This can be done through a floor (or several). Another way to clog the magma channels is to construct a small water reservoir on the exposed channel, construct a retracting bridge/hatches over it, fill it with a bucket brigade and open the bridge/hatch to create an impassable barrier of obsidian. This is good for those extra dorfiness points.

About the Flood Device. I'm pretty sure your current setup will only produce a trickle of magma, what with magma having no natural pressurization of its own. Introducing a pump stack, submerged far below the normal magma level, would probably do the trick of pumping massive volumes of magma when so desired. Personally, I've never tried this, but see Magma Landmines for reference.

Edit: I also see that you have artifacts. Anything notable?

[Elifre]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

An impressive fort! And a great embark.

It'll explode if I drop it in magma from a couple Urists up. Or at least cause magma mist, which is just as good.

I was under the assumption that only falling tiles of walls, floors etc. cause that lovely magma mist.

I particularly like having my melee dwarves equip pickaxes. Not only are they good weapons, but it's easy to train mining and it gives them a useful skill when off duty. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Enabling mining or woodcutting gives the dorfs in question a uniform that blocks military uniforms. It would be a bit of a hassle to keep switching mining jobs off, even with the Therapist. Recruiting miners is usually a good move, however, since mining trains essential physical stats.

Creatures can't swim through pumps, so you could use one for the beginning of an aqueduct.

According to the wiki, the same thing is true of grates.

am i being to obvious to suggest using fortifications? scary stuff can't get past them, liquid can flow through them and building destroyers can't destroy them...

I think flying creatures can get through them, and I'm also pretty sure that swimming creatures can if they're fully submerged. Bridges are my typical answer to building destroyers, and for a lot of my traps too.

I prefer collapsing tiles of rock on the channels leading to my smithies, in order to stop any unwanted guests. This can be done through a floor (or several). Another way to clog the magma channels is to construct a small water reservoir on the exposed channel, construct a retracting bridge/hatches over it, fill it with a bucket brigade and open the bridge/hatch to create an impassable barrier of obsidian. This is good for those extra dorfiness points.

About the Flood Device. I'm pretty sure your current setup will only produce a trickle of magma, what with magma having no natural pressurization of its own. Introducing a pump stack, submerged far below the normal magma level, would probably do the trick of pumping massive volumes of magma when so desired. Personally, I've never tried this, but see Magma Landmines for reference.

Edit: I also see that you have artifacts. Anything notable?

My magma mist design consists of an obsidian support with an obsidian wall over it, and a 1x1 stockpile for booze. You don't really need the booze there, but it's rather funny / dorfy. ^^

As for my military, I've studied this pretty thoroughly, and you can keep the mining job equipped for your military IF you make sure to have a civilian pickax and a military pickax for each dwarf. A good way to do this is to set your military to exact uniforms and make only enough steel pickaxes to supply them. Use copper or some such for the rest, and make sure you keep a large supply of them. I agree with you on your latter point, though. I like enabling mining / engraving for my military. This is an excellent cross training choice, as it trains Strength, Toughness, Endurance, Willpower, Spatial Sense, Kinesthetic Sense, Agility, and Creativity. All of these except creativity are useful military attributes.

As for Project: Flood the World with Magma, this is mainly a nasty surprise I have planned for the carp and hippos.
Later, once I get pumps, it'll be used to flood the entire volcano with magma at will. That's a long-term project, but it promises to be really fun.

By the way, thanks for the comments and suggestions. I really appreciate it! ^^

[Qwernt]

There is a thread here somewhere with "how to make a volcanoe erupt".  I am thinking that would be a cool defense. erupt over the top of the entrance bridge/lava the world through the front door.

[Azure]

Don't know how to post images otherwise i'd upload a water intake design for ya

Just a heads up, without a step-down to your magma forge's reservoir it will flood back out as you flood the world. Look up magma pressure to bypass this. Also, you'll want to redo your storage. Raw below workshops so the dwarves only have to go 10 or so steps to get a material and not 60 to and back. You can use custom stockpiles around and above/below the depot to store your trade goods right by it. I like having crafts and roasts only 2 steps away when mountainhomes comes by.

Remember that there's 3-D's in DF You gotta think vertically as well as horizontally. Do you really want them to have 1 z-level of rooms where some have to go 20+ tiles when you can have 2 levels where the furthest IS 20 away from the stairs?

You'll want to have a couple "Dwarven bathtubs" set up to wash off syndromes especially once you breach the caverns. Full body necrosis is no fun. Try to have it set up as a bypass as well as having retracting bridges over in case you can't flush the syndrome into the sewer system right away.

[Elifre]

Don't know how to post images otherwise i'd upload a water intake design for ya

Just a heads up, without a step-down to your magma forge's reservoir it will flood back out as you flood the world. Look up magma pressure to bypass this. Also, you'll want to redo your storage. Raw below workshops so the dwarves only have to go 10 or so steps to get a material and not 60 to and back. You can use custom stockpiles around and above/below the depot to store your trade goods right by it. I like having crafts and roasts only 2 steps away when mountainhomes comes by.

Remember that there's 3-D's in DF You gotta think vertically as well as horizontally. Do you really want them to have 1 z-level of rooms where some have to go 20+ tiles when you can have 2 levels where the furthest IS 20 away from the stairs?

You'll want to have a couple "Dwarven bathtubs" set up to wash off syndromes especially once you breach the caverns. Full body necrosis is no fun. Try to have it set up as a bypass as well as having retracting bridges over in case you can't flush the syndrome into the sewer system right away.

The metal industry's magma supply can be sealed off at will using a lever linked to a bridge in the channel. Originally this was for the possibility of creatures that can survive magma and destroy buildings, but it's multipurpose. ^^

As for the depot, one of my very first projects was digging out a separate stockpile for trade goods right next to the depot, and my main stockpile doesn't accept these goods. This means that my trade goods are at most 12 spaces away from the depot when traders come by.

As for my general layout, I've been playing around with designs in my head for the next fort, and I have some promising ideas. It'll have to wait for my next fort, but I used one of those ideas for my farm / kitchen design. The farms are directly below the kitchens and stills, with stairs every 8 spaces. There are also nest boxes between each workshop on that level, meaning eggs are never too far away from a kitchen.

With dwarven bathtubs, I'm actually thinking of a slightly different design for this. I'm not certain how effective it'll be, but it looks good.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

0 - Wall
H - Hatch
D - Door
v - Ramp

0D0
0v0
0H0 (z=-1 for the hatch)
0v0
0D0

With a waterfall directly over the hatch, and the hatch linked to a lever, you can fill this room to 3/7 full of water and make it the only way into your fort when a FB comes by (use a bridge system to enforce this). Dwarves head into the bathtub and get the nasty goo washed off. This leaves the goo floating around in the tub, until the hatch is triggered, dropping it into your bio weapons / drowning trap, or into a magma incinerator. The waterfall above the hatch is then triggered, gradually cleaning the bathtub. To refill it, just hit the hatch again and wait for it to fill.

I truly appreciate the suggestions, but maybe you should look more into the design of my fort first. ^^

EDIT:

Here's some of the designs I'm thinking of including in either this or the next fortress I make.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The "Reverse Battlement" design:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Security_design

Bedrooms for the next fort:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/File:Dwarf-bedroom-simple.jpg

I've been using the above design, but the lower one also looks good:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Stockpile_Design

Gobbo season open! for this fort:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Military_design

Bait furniture for building destroyers in this fort:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Trap_design

[Elifre]

Edit: I also see that you have artifacts. Anything notable?

You'll probably laugh, but I don't make my dwarves use shiny materials for artifacts. This tends to mean that they're of lower value, but that doesn't bother me. What I care about is the Legendary Armoursmith I have now. ^^

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kodor Rir, "The Dawn of Ears", a gabbro millstone
This is a gabbro millstone. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encircled with bands of gabbro.
2,400 Urists in value.

Enamngilok, "The Pure Evisceration", a sheep wool coat
This is a sheep wool coat. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is made from sheep wool cloth. This object is adorned with hanging rings of sheep wool and menaces with spikes of llama bone.
5,840 Urists in value.

Egenkor, "Giftcaverns", a gold low boot
This is a gold low boot. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is decorated with oak and encircled with bands of clear tourmaline. This object menaces with spikes of gold.
81,600 Urists in value.

[Azure]

Neat tub design, get back to us on whether the water exiting will generate the necessary flow to move the contaminants or if you need the waterfalls on the ends instead.

[Azure]

I think i figured out this newfangled hosting technology to upload a water intake design

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Elifre]

Neat tub design, get back to us on whether the water exiting will generate the necessary flow to move the contaminants or if you need the waterfalls on the ends instead.

The waterfall design that I'm using is based off of the idea that mist cleans blood off of tiles, albeit slowly. I got the idea from the self-cleaning well thread. This will of course require some testing, but I figure if it doesn't work then a slightly modified version of my design above will.

[Elifre]

It looks like my mayor has put out a mandate for Crystal Glass items. Given that making raw crystal glass is broken, and there isn't a caravan due for a while...

*Pulls lever*.

Screenshot will be provided at the end of the year. ^^