Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: DerSchlund on June 03, 2020, 10:45:26 am
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Hi there,
I'm playing DF for about 6 month or so and think that I understand enough of the game now to face some challanges beyond the minimal fortress. So I try to understand DF more in-depth and want to know how other players design there fortress.
The first thing that rly bugs me is that magma is reeeeealy all the way down, but the main fortress is more on the surface. So my question is: How do you people make your fortress work? Especially when it comes to magma? I get the impression, that you have to make a forge with all the important parts near the bottom and your living area, with mainhall, temples, foodstuff and whatnot near the surface and all my dwarf have to walk over 120 tiles just to make a copper goblet.
I know that there are some advanced buildings to bring magma all the way up (piston and pumpstack), but to me, that still looks very complicated. I often plan to move my fortress to the deep deep underground once the most important things work, but I never got that far.
Long storry short... please tell my how you usually try to make you fortress work once the fuel (coal) is exhausted. Not every location has many trees or lignite/bituminous coal. Or at least show me how you get alle the power to bring magma over 80 tiles or so up with a pumpstack.
Greetings, DerSchlund
PS: English is not my first language.... so I'm sorry if the text sounds a bit weird.
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You can bring magma to the surface (very easily, safely and quickly) with minecarts (https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Minecart#Loading_liquids).
Having said that, you can also make worlds where magma is less than 20 Z levels down from the embark layer, if desired. (even closer than a surface volcano!)
Also, surface volcanoes are an option to make that part easier, if you really don't want to dig.
Typically, 1 out of the 3 (or 1, at all) caverns will have infinite trees in it for turning into coal as well, if not on the surface. You can also typically grow your own infinite tree farms near the surface, once the caverns are breached. An ideal 2x2 embark can have thousands of iron, coal, and flux.
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Well I don't want to make the worldgen too easy for me. I Already have frequent minerals.
But what do you mean by infinite trees. Don't they usually take a while to regrow?
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Yes, but what's in the caverns is typically hundreds or thousands of logs worth of underground trees. If you get it from the caverns, you should have more than enough.
If you want to grow it yourself, yes, you'll have to wait for the trees to grow, but.. they don't stop growing.
If you make your own tree farm big enough, you have safe access to more trees/wood than you would ever likely need, eventually.
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It takes 3 years from the appearance of a sapling to the time it matures into a tree.
Personally I make my magma facilities down by the magma sea, partly because I usually don't have any magma safe metal for a mine cart early on (relying on Goblinite for metal in very metal poor worlds). Making a mine cart and a screw pump to haul it to your normal workshop area to power magma facilities isn't hard, though.
Pump stacks are a lot of work, but needed only if you intend to move large amount of magma: it's definitely overkill to just bring some up to power workshops.
Tree farms in the soil layer has an unlimited potential to produce wood, while the caverns are actually limited: each tree cut leaves a bare rock tile behind (although you can muddy it). That doesn't matter in practice, though, as you're going to have more trouble with an excess of trees (blocking movement paths and killing FPS) in the caverns than a shortage.
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Every time I've done it I've either embarked on a volcano or built a pump-stack out of green glass (using magma forges at the bottom of the map), although as vjek says you can now use minecarts to efficiently transport a few units of magma over long distances. Each minecart can transport 2/7 magma, and I think you only need 4/7 to power a magma forge.
I tend to use motionless water reactors to generate sufficient power for a pump stack. You can use the following procedure to create a pool of water which is at a constant 7/7 level but which the game considers to be flowing and can therefore be used to power waterwheels:
1. Dig out a large room just a few tiles away from the map edge.
2. Carve fortifications at the map edge to serve as a drain, and install floodgates so you can control the drain with a lever.
3. Fill the chamber up with water (don't forget to regulate the water pressure so you don't flood your fortress).
4. Open the drain for a few seconds, then close it again. Water needs to reach the map edge, but you don't want completely empty the chamber.
5. Refill the chamber to 7/7 depth.
6. It should now all count as "flowing" water, even with the floodgates closed. Channel out the level above and install as many waterwheels as you like.
Don't worry about your English. It sounds fine and is easy to understand.
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In times past I've done the pump-stack routine to bring the magma up. Aside from powering forges, this would be used to fill up a reservoir for further processing into a weapon of mass destruction.
My recommendation? Now-a-days, I prefer to create a mini-colony near where the magma is. Give them a set of bedrooms, a dining room, forging ingredient stockpiles, and some food and drink storage nearby. Burrow all them who need to be down there and get to forging whatever needs done. Let some dedicated ingredient haulers do all the work of charging up and down the stairs to keep the local stockpiles filled. With this method, in previous versions, there was still some inefficiency as they occasionally found excuses to head up top, but it still was much less of a hassle. In the current version we now have things like temples and libraries and whatnot to help distract them up top, but it's still so much easier to manage.
You could also lock them down there, but that's just an open invitation to stress and headaches.
As the others point out, and I agree with, there is usually plenty of wood to be found so as to run a set of regular forges for most of your immediate needs. With enough preparation, magma forges can be relatively swift and efficient. First off, you might want to ask yourself why you suddenly want such features. Do you really need the ability to create 9000 steel anvils as maximally quickly as possible? Or, do you just need to do a quickie one off candy bake?
Weapons of mass destruction projects always trump any other considerations, of course.
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Also remember that going 50 z levels down really isn't much different from going 50 squares horizontally. Dwarves have no problems repeatedly climbing huge numbers of stairs.
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I have had the same issue for a long time. But, well, actually, as said, 100 Z level are not different from 100 X or Y tiles, as said stairs aren't tiring for dwarves.
If you want magma near surface, one word : Volcanos !
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Short answer: Wheelbarrows. And stockpile links.
Walking up or down 120 z levels is not so bad by itself. But if your smith is dragging a heavy ore by hand to smelt it first, it becomes terrible.
So here is how you prevent that. Next to your smelter, you make small ore stockpiles for every type of ore you want to smelt. Link them to the smelter and give all of them a high number of wheelbarrows. The stockpile link prevents your idiot dwarves from dragging an ore by hand from the surface.
Make additional linked stockpiles for bars that take from the smelter and give to the forge. Disallow most other tasks for your smith, so that he can forge things 24/7.
When forging steel, the stockpile links become a little more complicated, especially because your pig iron stockpile cannot give to and take from the same smelter. One workaround is to have two smelters. Another workaround is to have two stockpiles: pile 1 takes pig iron from the smelter and gives it to pile 2, pile 2 gives it back to the smelter.
Finally, if you use DFHack there is a great way to automatically smelt low quality items and reforge them. Make a stockpile that takes from the forge and only allows low quality items. Now press 'M' in the settings for the stockpile to mark all items stored here for melting.
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I usually use a forge room in the basement and let the dwarfs walk. You can also stop dwarfs from hauling ore long distances by using a workshop-restricted burrow over the forge room. And, sand is usually available a short distance away in the caverns. However, if you want to transport magma to the surface, go for it. It is a dwarfy thing to do.
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I keep all enterprises close to surface, either above ground or below. Quantum stockpiles, right beside workshops. Close to centrally placed taverns, temples, libraries, dinners. Below only those that require this like for example: mass-pit, hospital's wells and of course under-ground farming. All rest gets done on surface. I do not like the cave adaptation too much, even without current emo-system in. Cave adaptation affects combat on surface with annoying creatures. I get iron/steel usually from merchant, even in first year. Ironically I sell wooden wheelbarrows (priceless for hauling stones and empty steel/iron mine-carts) to be able to make iron/steel mine-carts and wheelbarrows for magma hauling. There are tools, you can make out of stone too.
Good thing is that magma never cools down, else I would need to engineer some supply train to a below surface colony. Still, it could be so, that burning tree logs for charcoal could be preferential instead magma. Iron industry kind of dies after you get all metal items done for the Dwarven military. There is no need for exports, even to colonies (we do not have those yet in DF lol), conquered sites or economically dependent hillocks.
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Thank you all for your answers. Very interesting.
I kept my distance from minecarts, cause there looked even more complicated to me then a magmapiston or pumpstacks. But I think, I give it a try now.
One thing I like to know though is, if magma in minecarts evaporates... also ... do I have to worry about the magma in a minecart to spill out or something with an impulseramp elevator? I get the impression, that a minecart constantly derails on it.
I think it's just me, but I like to have a compact overview over my fortress and that means, that I don't want switch to much between z-levels in my fortress. I also like aboveground crops for booze diversion... so I often end up to have the biggest part of my fortress close to the surface and I often want to keep it that way.
Last but not least I have another question. I play with the LNP and adjusted the Pop-max to 100 cause in the most games, I got overwhelmed with all the new migrants and to often didn't know what to do with them. After all, in most cases one dwarf would be enough to fulfill the needs of one industry. So if I have a savegame that started with with 100 pop-max and I change the setting before I play this savegame forward, does this cause any trouble? Also what happens if I rechange the settings back to 100 pop-max?
Greetings, DerSchlund
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As far as minecarts go, this is a fair overview of what would be involved, step by step (I just did this yesterday):
- Build a pump above the edge of the magma sea, with the intake tile above the magma sea.
- Channel out the intake tile. Build a grate over the intake tile.
- Dig a square in front of the pump output. channel it downwards, and seal all 8 remaining directions, so it can only go down. (using walls, doors, whatever)
- On the z level below, directly beneath the tile in front of the output of the pump, this is where the magma will fall into. This is where you want your minecart.
- In one direction away from the minecart spot, build a fortification, and on the other side of the fortification, build a large room for evaporation/drainage. 11x11 is plenty.
- Seal off the rest of the tiles around the minecart. Use a door for at least one of them.
- Now, in the hauling menu, create a route stop at the location where you want your minecart. Assign a vehicle, your magma safe minecart.
- Once the minecart is in place and the room is clear, turn on the pump manually. Immediately turn it off after it's been pumped at all.
- Wait for all the magma below the minecart to evaporate.
- Create a new track stop on the surface, with a dumping direction. Have the target of the dump be an adjacent channeled tile where you want to build your surface magma workshop.
- Assign the minecart with magma in it to the new surface track stop.
- Dwarves will remove the minecart with magma in it from the filling room and carry it to the new stop, where it will immediately dump the magma.
Repeat this twice per surface magma tile.
Voila. Magma Smelter/Forge/whatever on the surface.
As it's not explicitly obvious, no tracks are required between these two activities. Stairs are perfectly fine.
Two diagrams (top down view):
Pump Level
█D███
#%%·█
█████
Fill level, Z-1 from Pump Level
███D█+++++++++++
≈██M╬+++++++++++
█████+++++++++++
(Where everywhere else is presumed to be sealed/doors/walls/stone/etc: █ )
# = grate
% = pump (pumping from west to east, in this case)
D = door
≈ = magma sea
M = minecart to carry/hold/be filled with magma
╬ = Fortification (built or carved)
+ = drainage/evaporation room/area
Grate and all pump parts can be made from green glass. Minecart must be made from magma safe metal.
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Your design is actually needlessly complicated, vjek.
The way I do it:
- Dig a tunnel up to, but not through the magma sea's highest level (you need it to be 7 tiles long).
- Build a magma safe raising drawbridge at the end of the tunnel, and hook it up to a lever (with magma safe gears!).
- build a magma safe wall grate inside of the drawbridge (to stop unpleasant critters from getting in).
- Channel out the tile separating the tunnel from the magma sea from above and immediately build a wall or floor on top. The tunnel is now connected to the magma sea and is filling up with magma.
- Once reasonably full, close the drawbridge (you did test it before you breached the magma sea, didn't you?)
- My tunnel is fairly long, and I build my magma workshops on top of it, but for magma hauling you don't need a long tunnel.
- channel through the floor above the tunnel inside of the wall grate and again 3 tiles further on so you can fit a screw pump in between them.
- Build magma safe floor grates over the two holes (strictly needed only for the one the longest away from the sea).
- Build your magma safe screw pump in between the two holes, taking from the sea end pumping away from it.
- Enclose the pump outlet tile (the one furthers away from the sea) with walls, except on one side, where you install a magma safe door (and one side is the pump). If planning ahead, you left the original rock here, so you only need to install the door.
- Assign the minecart on top of the remote grate (inside the door).
- Pump for a short while.
- When the pumping has stopped you can order the minecart moved to the new location. There's no need for waiting for evaporation, as the excess magma falls down the grate. If you closed the drawbridge before pumping there is no risk getting temporarily lingering magma.
In practice I do it slightly differently because I very rarely have access to materials for building a magma safe minecart early on (very mineral scarce worlds, and so relying on Goblinite for metal, and they may not even bring iron. If they do, it still takes a fair while to get enough). My minecarts are used for cavern lake edge obsidianization rather than magma workshop setup.
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I think it's just me, but I like to have a compact overview over my fortress and that means, that I don't want switch to much between z-levels in my fortress.
Setting up hotkeys does help:
- 'H' for the menu
- press your desired hotkey (F1 to F8 or shift-F1 to shift-F8)
- 'z' to set it to zoom to the current location
- 'Esc' to leave menu.
Now you can jump to this location at any time with the chosen hotkey. I couldn't live without them.
Population caps can be changed during the game without any problems that I know of.
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if i'm not specifically building an above-ground castle, and i plan to do a lot of forging, i often build my whole fortress down near the magma. i'll dig out a little temporary abode near the surface at embark, to give the dwarves somewhere to live while the miners go exploring, but once they've found the caverns and magma sea, down we go into the deeps
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One thing I like to know though is, if magma in minecarts evaporates.
No. 1 mine cart keeps 2/7 magma in it for ever.
do I have to worry about the magma in a minecart to spill out or something with an impulseramp elevator? I get the impression, that a minecart constantly derails on it.
I use iron/steel wheelbarrows for speedy transport of iron/steel mine-carts filled with magma over stairs. Wooden wheelbarrows for bringing empty ones down. No spill this way.
I think it's just me, but I like to have a compact overview over my fortress and that means, that I don't want switch to much between z-levels in my fortress. I also like aboveground crops for booze diversion... so I often end up to have the biggest part of my fortress close to the surface and I often want to keep it that way.
My fortress had about 5 z levels (2 z levels bellow, 3 above). Almost no walls for rooms. Size is of the bunker is about 50x50 with lots of stairs for easy access between. It works well for 18 booze types + mead.
Last but not least I have another question. I play with the LNP and adjusted the Pop-max to 100 cause in the most games, I got overwhelmed with all the new migrants and to often didn't know what to do with them. After all, in most cases one dwarf would be enough to fulfill the needs of one industry. So if I have a savegame that started with with 100 pop-max and I change the setting before I play this savegame forward, does this cause any trouble? Also what happens if I rechange the settings back to 100 pop-max?
Changing maximal population up allows new migrants in. When you change it back down, then no new population from migrants. You just need to save and quit. Change in init.txt or d_init.txt for new values and re-load game.
My lava pumping facility looks like this:
1st level:
WWOWGW
WLPP+W
WWWWWW
W-wall, L-channeled hole to lava below, P-pump, O-door, +-floor where I dump empty mine-carts from stockpile nearby,G-bridge
2nd level:
WWOWWWWWWWWW
WHPP+++++++W
WWWWWWWWWWWW
W-wall,H-channeled hole above dumped mine-carts, P-pump, O-door, +-floor where magma evaporates (between 7-14 tiles usually)
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I use a technique similar to Patrik's with the 1x1 magma chamber, except that I get rid of the magma with a second pump. It requires an extra step per cycle, but it also allows the minecart to stay on rails the entire time. I hate it when dwarves carry minecarts.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around Sarmatian's trick of using wheelbarrows to move minecarts. It sounds crazy, but I'm gonna try it.
If you want to move magma with minecarts on a larger scale, you can pack as many of them as you want into a magma chamber, and they'll all come out with 2/7 magma. You can even, in effect, manufacture magma this way, turning a single 7/7 tile of magma into (2 x minecarts) magma.
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My designs tend to be vertical. Surface (and above-surface) dedicated to building sprawl, fortifications and the like, but very little that isn't surface-dependent ('open' grazing, natural orchards, all enclosed/enclosable) or Depot and entry.
Immeditaely subsurface (soil) is farming. Underground crops, plus surface-crops (with 'skylight', cut and recovered once the 'outside' is let in. Between there and the first cavern is initial workshop areas (which continue to be so for farm-related processing) and probably taverns/temples/etc, depending on what room I've got in my footprint and what I dug out as initial storage areas of later items. Trade Goods storage stays here, too. (Main dining area and food store will be hereabouts, but I'll dot some sub-refrectories around at other levels, a smaller "take from" food/drink stockpile in each for my haulers to worry about).
Skip through fo between first and second cavern (I'll have sunk 'exploration stairwells to discover the cavern(s), and chosen a route that misses entirely for cavern-passing routes) and that's generally where I find the rick layer I like to dig my bedrooms out of. If it's a nice big clump of marble-layers, that's usually it. Over several layers of this I spread down and out to dig (spaces for) individual rooms and get valuable rock (either literally, or to be my 'signature' surface construction material for my fort, to be passed upwards to a handy block-maker) as a side-effect, on the basis that my expansions do the "disturbing sleep" already so the quarrying side-effect is basically on a free pass in this respect.
Interesting other rocks (especially my signature magma safe rock, when I decide upon it) get similar mini-expanzions outwards in layers where found, to be given a number of mason/mechanic workshops set up dedicated to that localised material, whether granite or olivine or whatever.
Usually before this has become too mature, though, my explorations have found/sufficiently mapped from ceiling breakthroughs (resealed until needed) all three regular caverns and the fourth (magma sea). The latter likely due to seeing its intrusion up through one or other cavern. Working on that discovery (as cautious about the Hot Rock as the Wet Rock below cavern-pools, but in both cases determined to get cancellation spam over and done with ASAP) I decide where my magma-workshop layer will be and its extensive layout, to side-tap into the source to slowly flood a winding magmaduct (or several) that pass under the predug workshops in just the right way. Ditto with cavern-water, I'll design a side-tapping cistern into some underground lake (though there are different issues, meaning I can't eventually just fill it, albeit quicker, and close the strategic floodgate like I do with the magma one).
Sometimes this means I actually have my magma-source half way up my stack! Enough for me never to worry too much about moving it to a 'handier' location - I just take the hit when it is only at the very(-nearly) bottom of my bottommost staircase. Though I know it doesn't quite work this way, I rationalise that whatever ores(/’coal’/flux) I send down the stack to the magmaworkshop stockpiles is using far less effort than if I send it up; smelted bars stay in the same area for further use or intermediate alloying and finished metal goods come up from the depths in an easier fashion anyway (whether hauled by my haulers or collected by their new owner/claimer).
Which is just my choice of elegence in solution, not actually better than others' but it works for me.
And this is on worlds I generate with increased space between cavern layers, from default. It makes my quest for magma less easy, but gives me a number of solid layers (uninterupted by the neighbouring cavern layers, "secret tunnels" between them notwithstanding) to set up the accomodation bulge/etc.
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I just make a really tall staircase down and don't worry about the inefficiency. It's not that bad with a few well placed stockpiles and you can upgrade or pump lava later if you want.
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I just make a really tall staircase down and don't worry about the inefficiency. It's not that bad with a few well placed stockpiles and you can upgrade or pump lava later if you want.
If there's combat on those stairs and one of your dwarves loses consciousness, he'll fall all the way to the bottom---unless you've installed lots of hatches. I did many forts with long staircases. Ramps are better if you find a good design.
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(If there's combat inside my fort, I've done something else wrong. ;) )
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(If there's combat inside my fort, I've done something else wrong. ;) )
Well, if never letting any visitors in is your definition of doing it right, then you only have to avoid tantrumers and bar fights...
Having said that, I don't think I've had any staircase casualties in my years of play, so I don't bother with hatches (especially since there is a bazillion more urgent things that have to be produced).
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I just make a really tall staircase down and don't worry about the inefficiency. It's not that bad with a few well placed stockpiles and you can upgrade or pump lava later if you want.
If there's combat on those stairs and one of your dwarves loses consciousness, he'll fall all the way to the bottom---unless you've installed lots of hatches. I did many forts with long staircases. Ramps are better if you find a good design.
It's safer than my old way of doing it: making a 6x6 open shaft from the surface all the way down to the lava (to prevent cave adaptation) with stairs in the corners. :P
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@PatrikLundell: Might be of interest: copper minecarts are fine for hauling magma with the dipping method (2-tile trench of accelerating and non-accelerating ramp, with leadin having another accelerating ramp is an example of simple design) as magma-holding carts only reach half the heat of magma.
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Reminds me of the tale told (IRL) of the problem they had in getting rid of the slag in a steelworks, some time ago.
Some melting shop was, for some reason, unable to use the usual method of removing the bulk quickly enough, and the smart young kids straight out of Technical College/etc couldn't work it out, but one of the old hands piped upon.
"Ah knows 'ow t' doit. Whatya do is to use a load o' woodin wagins. Tha'll see it works reet good for thee..."
Wooden wagons? They'd just burn, wouldn't they? I mean, molten slag fresh from the blast furnace..?
"Durn't thee worry, lads. Just use woodin wagins, tha'll 'ave no problem."
Well, there's the old trick of boiling water on an open campfire in a container made of tree-bark, avers one, probably having been in the Scouts once or something. So maybe there's something to it. Heat contacting wood, maybe it does something like suddenly outgas all over the surface, self-insulating the rest of the wood from the extreme heat and giving time to cart the slag to where it needs to be tipped out.
So they tried it. They got wooden wagons right up to where they'd be tipping the slag out, and poured.
And, whadya know? It immediately burnt the wagons to a crisp.
This is actually a true tale, in that it is a tale that was told to me by an actual steelworks employee, my father, many many years ago. Beyond that, I cannot say.
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In this case, copper minecarts have actually been tested and shown not to melt, though :P (unless you leave them in the trench due some reason (like hitting fire imp inside it). In that case, they conveniently self-dispose without you needing to worry about how to remove them from it)
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In this case, copper minecarts have actually been tested and shown not to melt, though :P (unless you leave them in the trench due some reason (like hitting fire imp inside it). In that case, they conveniently self-dispose without you needing to worry about how to remove them from it)
I just tried a copper minecart with my favored screw pump filling method, and as far as I can see the cart is completely unharmed after the magma drained away through the grate. Definitely useful to know.
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Thanks again for all the input.
I recently started a new fortress with the intend do explore the Ceramic and Glass industry a bit more. The Fortress doing finde at his point (year 3) and I tried to bring magma up to z lvl 120 or so. The elevator is digged, the tracks are carves, minecards are filled... the testrun will follow in a couple of days. I keep you guys up to date.
Greetings
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I'm glad that you posted about this, because it is a recurring problem in many forts and one of the most interesting logistical challenges in Dwarf Fortress.
One day I want to build a fortress with a minecart / roller system to transport ores down and finished goods back up. I would love to make it as realistic as possible.. not going to just let the cart fall all the way down for example, although the game engine allows that. The smiths will permanently reside in the depths, with their own quarters / lunchroom..
edit: one more workable solution is to build normal forges instead of magma forges. Many maps have so much tree growth that coal isn't really a limiting factor, as long as you manage to protect your lumberjack from werewolves and cave adaptation.
And as another option, if you consistently order and buy Bitumous Coal and Lignite from the trade caravan every year, that also gives you a pretty nice supply of fuel.
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If there's combat on those stairs and one of your dwarves loses consciousness, he'll fall all the way to the bottom---unless you've installed lots of hatches. I did many forts with long staircases. Ramps are better if you find a good design.
I've somehow never had this happen from combat in the stairs themselves, but I recently had a dust explosion from an ill considered bit of channeling knock a dwarf into a stairwell that started from the top of the map all the way down to the semi-molten rock at the bottom of the magma sea. There was blood all the way down and nothing larger than a finger left.
As for magma I really like surface volcanos. I jack up the number of volcanos in world generation to increase the likelihood at least one possible embark will have something other than just a volcano to recommend it.
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I personally don't think volcanoes are worth the risk of fire imps and magma crabs, but it's a matter of weighing your pros against your cons, of course.
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I personally don't think volcanoes are worth the risk of fire imps and magma crabs, but it's a matter of weighing your pros against your cons, of course.
As long as the map isn't especially challenging, you can build a roof over the top of the magma pipe with your seven dwarves before the crabs cause much trouble. I've done it before. It helps to split stones into blocks before using them (faster hauling & building), using a small supply stockpile with wheelcarts for the mason workshop. And you can save some more time by covering parts of the magma pipe with large bridges instead of all floor.
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I personally don't think volcanoes are worth the risk of fire imps and magma crabs, but it's a matter of weighing your pros against your cons, of course.
I've had this be a problem with only one volcano embark, other than the occasional issue where I'd carelessly left open a channel while building magma workshops. It seems in most of them the crabs never climb out the top even though they should be able to, or at least don't climb out until they're easily dealt with. In the one where it was an issue, they killed me nearly immediately upon embark.
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I personally don't think volcanoes are worth the risk of fire imps and magma crabs, but it's a matter of weighing your pros against your cons, of course.
I've had this be a problem with only one volcano embark, other than the occasional issue where I'd carelessly left open a channel while building magma workshops. It seems in most of them the crabs never climb out the top even though they should be able to, or at least don't climb out until they're easily dealt with. In the one where it was an issue, they killed me nearly immediately upon embark.
I've had the issue several times, including the buggers setting the whole surface on fire. However, I've also had embarks where I didn't have any problems with sealing the top with a floor.
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I've never had problems with magma crabs. Can't you just tap into the pipe with a (drawbridge, fortification, grate, fortification, grate) and be protected?
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I've never had problems with magma crabs. Can't you just tap into the pipe with a (drawbridge, fortification, grate, fortification, grate) and be protected?
A volcano is open at the top...
There are ways to draw magma safely, or at least mostly so, but that assumes there isn't a huge hole at the top when you embark.
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So the magma crabs can just crawl out the top like ordinary wildlife?
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So the magma crabs can just crawl out the top like ordinary wildlife?
Yes. Haven't you seen any in caverns around magma pools? It's exactly the same logic.
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So the magma crabs can just crawl out the top like ordinary wildlife?
They can but do not always do so. I'm not sure if this is purely random or if some ways volcanos are formed are more likely to have them climb out of it. I think open calderas may be more likely to have this happen than mountains with z-layers of stone above the top layer of magma. Magma crabs don't seem to have climbing skill from the raws. I'm not sure if they can get it somehow.
They're little more than a nuisance later but they can be really dangerous to untrained un-armored dwarves.
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I embarked on a volcano once or twice and always had an eye on those crabs, but there didn't do anything for the longest time and at one point there weren't an issue anymore.
One question oot: Can I get the infos in FM from the embarking screen? Which biom I'm in, the wildernis, temperute and stuff like this?
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The reason I like to block off magma pipes is that I'm worried that something much more dangerous than a crab might eventually crawl out. I'm paranoid like that.
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One question oot: Can I get the infos in FM from the embarking screen? Which biom I'm in, the wildernis, temperute and stuff like this?
You need third party tools (such as various DFHack scripts/plugins) for that unless you want to copy your save, abandon/retire, start again to look at the embark screen (note the info down this time), and quit from DF, reload your original save to continue (which is quite possible, just requiring a bit more work).
The reason I like to block off magma pipes is that I'm worried that something much more dangerous than a crab might eventually crawl out. I'm paranoid like that.
Fortresses that take "unlikely" events into consideration tends to fall much less frequently of "freak events"...
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You need third party tools (such as various DFHack scripts/plugins) for that unless you want to copy your save, abandon/retire, start again to look at the embark screen (note the info down this time), and quit from DF, reload your original save to continue (which is quite possible, just requiring a bit more work).
How do i find some of these? I know there is a DFHack documentation board but what exactly am I looking for?
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You need third party tools (such as various DFHack scripts/plugins) for that unless you want to copy your save, abandon/retire, start again to look at the embark screen (note the info down this time), and quit from DF, reload your original save to continue (which is quite possible, just requiring a bit more work).
How do i find some of these? I know there is a DFHack documentation board but what exactly am I looking for?
One that gives you biome and savagery (which is my guess at what "wildernis" is supposed to mean), as well as "temperature" in the static sense (i.e. the parameter controlling the base temperature, not the current value) is the Biome Manipulator http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=164658.msg7495705#msg7495705 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=164658.msg7495705#msg7495705), while Showbiomes http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=160856.msg7194572#msg7194572 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=160856.msg7194572#msg7194572) provides the exact biome boundaries at the embark (e.g. to find out where to put farm plots in embarks with multiple biomes). I'm not sure which tools provide the current temperature, but a guess is that "probe" might do it.
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Magma crabs don't seem to have climbing skill from the raws. I'm not sure if they can get it somehow.
I believe they use swimming to get to the top of the 7/7 magma. If you channel into the top of a magma sea and wait, eventually they will climb out, even if there is nothing below but several z's of magma.
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Magma crabs don't seem to have climbing skill from the raws. I'm not sure if they can get it somehow.
I believe they use swimming to get to the top of the 7/7 magma. If you channel into the top of a magma sea and wait, eventually they will climb out, even if there is nothing below but several z's of magma.
Yes, but I think muldrake is correct in that they may have trouble getting out if the magma level doesn't reach the top of the sheath. Also, while magma crabs can be somewhat dangerous, fire imps are the critters I'm more worried about (there are some even worse ones, but they're rare, while fire imps show up fairly often). I haven't checked the climbing ability of imps, though.
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The reason I like to block off magma pipes is that I'm worried that something much more dangerous than a crab might eventually crawl out. I'm paranoid like that.
I believe the real concern (if fire imps are not a threat) is some FB of a magma-safe substance with swimming/climbing skill.
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(I wrote a version of this several times before, before cancelling. Will I post this one?)
One of the first embarks I made, ever, featured an open-topped (flush) surface volcano, and a fire-imp[1] walked out and sparked a handy bush-fire.
A lot has changed since then, not the least my tastes in primary features of embark sites (and the change to four caverns, the lower being the magma sea with SMR and then ...dot dot dot..., rather than a far shorter column of rock with interesting underground rivers/bottomless chasms/etc above an undiggable base), but I've never really trusted uncapped magma since then. Happy to break into the top (for 'sighting' purposes, as well as the initial discovery break-through) but I never leave them climb-outable (and tube-top exits into a cavern are left alone save for the insight I get into where to find/avoid rhe magma through the layers below.
And then there was Climbing, as a new issue, but I already had tried to work on countermeasures to that before it was even an issue, so I was ahead of that game. Not the only game in town, though.
[1] Were there even magma-crabs, then? There were fire-vermin, definitely, wifh awkward quantum-tunnelling to adjacent tunnels through the (then quite jagged) magmatubes that gave the clever tunneller a few more ways to safely tap the side for magma, and the unluckier tunneller a few more reasons not to ignore the obvious warning signs.
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The reason I like to block off magma pipes is that I'm worried that something much more dangerous than a crab might eventually crawl out. I'm paranoid like that.
I believe the real concern (if fire imps are not a threat) is some FB of a magma-safe substance with swimming/climbing skill.
All FBs are immune to the magma temperature, including those made of snow. FBs do not have magma vision, though, although that hasn't stopped some of them from navigating via the magma sea in the past.
And fire imps are a threat to anyone not able to consistently block/dodge the attacks from the imp, even if no fire is started (which is a big concern in itself, as Starver relates). Once a dorf is set on fire only water will douse it, and dorfs don't know that, so they don't run for water even if water is present. Wading through water seems to protect against fire, though.
Fire snakes still exist and, being vermin, appear in appropriate tunnels. I've never had any set vegetation on fire, though, but they've destroyed (wooden) minecarts and buckets (the latter resulting in horrendous cancellation spam as that precise bucket allocated to the water hauling job cannot be found in any of the 10000 attempts during the next minute).
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All FBs are immune to the magma temperature, including those made of snow. FBs do not have magma vision, though, although that hasn't stopped some of them from navigating via the magma sea in the past.
Do they come up the tube to the top and come out the top, though?
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All FBs are immune to the magma temperature, including those made of snow. FBs do not have magma vision, though, although that hasn't stopped some of them from navigating via the magma sea in the past.
Do they come up the tube to the top and come out the top, though?
Given how rarely they path through magma in the first place, it's doubtful too many people would have encountered it if they can.
Also note that this requires there to be a magma pool in the cavern the FB appears in. I've had an FB get up from the first cavern to the surface through a cave on the embark, if that's any indication.
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The reason I like to block off magma pipes is that I'm worried that something much more dangerous than a crab might eventually crawl out. I'm paranoid like that.
I believe the real concern (if fire imps are not a threat) is some FB of a magma-safe substance with swimming/climbing skill.
All FBs are immune to the magma temperature, including those made of snow.
Eh I think you're confused with *spoilers*. Some fb are immune, but most (all the fleshy ones) will burn from magma. I roasted about 20 of them in my best fort. The second before they die their description is two pages of bleeding, melted body parts and missing fat.
In fact, I witnessed a fire breathing fb fly over a magma pipe in the caverns, burn his wings, crash and burn to death.
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The reason I like to block off magma pipes is that I'm worried that something much more dangerous than a crab might eventually crawl out. I'm paranoid like that.
I believe the real concern (if fire imps are not a threat) is some FB of a magma-safe substance with swimming/climbing skill.
All FBs are immune to the magma temperature, including those made of snow.
Eh I think you're confused with *spoilers*. Some fb are immune, but most (all the fleshy ones) will burn from magma. I roasted about 20 of them in my best fort. The second before they die their description is two pages of bleeding, melted body parts and missing fat.
In fact, I witnessed a fire breathing fb fly over a magma pipe in the caverns, burn his wings, crash and burn to death.
That's odd, as I believe I've seen all types being immune. I've certainly had an FB get into the magma sea and go down to the bottom and being beaten on for the rest of the fortress' history by a magma crab or fire imp (don't remember which). The lack of magma vision meant it couldn't fight back, although it didn't take any damage either. I can't swear on it being fleshy, though: it might have been a solid non organic one.
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Given how rarely they path through magma in the first place, it's doubtful too many people would have encountered it if they can.
Also note that this requires there to be a magma pool in the cavern the FB appears in. I've had an FB get up from the first cavern to the surface through a cave on the embark, if that's any indication.
I have the latter happen fairly often, because I often dig down to the caverns through a separate entrance, so that the front gate blocks anything from the caverns, and so I can capture it on the way up, and release it on any particularly annoying siege.
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And fire imps are a threat to anyone not able to consistently block/dodge the attacks from the imp, even if no fire is started (which is a big concern in itself, as Starver relates). Once a dorf is set on fire only water will douse it, and dorfs don't know that, so they don't run for water even if water is present. Wading through water seems to protect against fire, though.
That's what I used to think too, but when I sent a swordsdwarf to slay one* recentlish in 4303 they got set on fire but stopped being so when the alcohol in their flask boiled away in a flash of hot - or relatively cold gas, leaving the ‼hood‼ on their head just a XhoodX.
Argument for making glass vials, I guess.
* A mistake when I could have just sent a miner and thus avoided the firejet, as fire imps usually don't use that on civvies.
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That's a cool (or, rather, hot) mechanic.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair
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Ok so I made it this far:
The track elevator works to a certain point. As long as the elevator goes straight up no prolem. Then there is a ~10 to 12 tiles long corridor with about 3 impulsramps. But the MC just stops in this corridor. I had to fix the elevator and some other things in my fortress so I hadn't enough time to fix this one...
so stay tuned :D
But to be honest.... with two stockpiles, 10 mincards und some wheelbarrows a managed to start about 10 magmaworkshops near the surface. So I think in the future I would probably do this as a standard.
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There's some wonkiness with impulse ramps (at least in the past, and I don't think mine carts have been touched since then). I've had them fail to work at time when the area above the track was mined out (but with a floor in between), and ended up moving the track.
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There's some wonkiness with impulse ramps
Impulse ramps are inherently wonky. :P
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Kinda hard to troubleshoot the issues without diagrams or screenshots, but I'm thinking your minecart is colliding with the wall due having sideways motion from going up a L-corner track/ramp; the length would be enough for this.
I've yet to see what PL describes, though track/ramps are more complex than they appear at first glance. Might be worth checking with devel/watch-minecarts in the future to see what happens tick-by-tick.
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Kinda hard to troubleshoot the issues without diagrams or screenshots, but I'm thinking your minecart is colliding with the wall due having sideways motion from going up a L-corner track/ramp; the length would be enough for this.
Well I had to stop my game very sudden. So wasn't able to touch on the problem. But this problem was fixed by now. Now I have a new one and I don't even know what I'm doing wrong...
So here is the setup:
The impulseramp elevator works fine and at the end I constructed a trackstop with Friction: Highest.
On the same tile I added a now stop in my hauling route for the magma minecarts with Guide east immediatly always.
I assigned a minecart.
The problem: Stop 2 still has a yellow exclamation mark next to him and the dwarf don't guide the Minecart from stop 2. They haul the minecart all the long way down to stop 1.
What am I doing wrong?
This is the stop near the surface. You can see the Trackstop
(https://i.postimg.cc/TK7mbKjp/minecard.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/TK7mbKjp)
The hauling route:
(https://i.postimg.cc/QBF7JjSS/minecard-2.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/QBF7JjSS)
And the Settings for Stop2 in the hauling route "Lavaexpress"
(https://i.postimg.cc/GB6yM65R/minecard-3.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/GB6yM65R)
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Something in stop 1 conditions, perchance. The dwarves don't think stop 1 did proper sendoff to stop 2, and thus think it should still be there.
Mind, I wouldn't use multiple stops here if I could get away with stockpiles on track/ramps, as those don't require you to assign carts to the stop.
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Something in stop 1 conditions, perchance. The dwarves don't think stop 1 did proper sendoff to stop 2, and thus think it should still be there.
Hm. Cause of the impulse ramps, Stop 1 works as followed: Push south always immediately.
Thanks for the info with the picture. I edited my last post.
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Hm. ! means track isn't properly connected - in which case they'll carry the cart by hand. With just 2 stops, it might be the cart does arrive properly at stop 2, but your impulse elevator (like is typical for impulse elevators) doesn't have straight track-to-track path from stop 2 to stop 1. That would also cause observed behaviour.
Try making a stop 3 near/after stop 2 to see which is the case?