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This is shameful display and I have to apologise for it, but it didn't happen without a reason. The framerate reached the point when I can no longer just leave DF running in the background for an extensive amount of time without everyone running out of things to do, but at the same time it's not quite high enough for regular screen-staring not to get boring. My efforts to speed up progress paradoxically slowed it down, at least until I can boost performance even more. Secondly, with other projects either complete or at a satisfying enough stage, I felt it's high time I got to setting up the magma hellcannons I was probably talking about a long while ago. The thing is, I didn't have a design ready, and it's not something I can just eyeball, slap together and adjust as necessary. Huge volumes of magma and trial-and-error don't go well together. I wanted to examine and possibly incorporate
Larix's findings, but couldn't really find time to sit down and do it properly.
Anyway, I have a basic design to work with now. Very much a work in progress, nothing to show just yet. I might even end up using one cart for multiple shots, rollers may or may not be included, either way should be fun. I can't just copy the watercannon design since I'm building on the lowest z-level and can't dig. Magma will be behind the tracks and the carts will dip into it for a moment, taking advantage of the lack of pressure. I didn't want to exploit that in the beginning, but there doesn't seem to be another way to do it and minecart engineering is
made of exploits, so I might as well embrace it.
One thing I finished before that was the surface minecart cannons. All the batteries on the same level as the river are at last online. The lever linking interface is incredibly clunky even by DF standards. The damage they can deal depends heavily on the size of the target: creatures no bigger than an elk bird will suffer multiple broken bones, but a Forgotten Beast will be barely bruised.
There was a problem with the drainage - the channel in one place near the hospital is only 1 z-level deep, and that's apparently not enough. A water reservoir I was going to use for a hospital well is right beneath. I had remembered pressure is a thing in time and hadn't flooded the whole hospital, but it was still connected to the main cistern and the river. I closed the floodgates and shut the river off, then drained the cistern into the caverns. The exact area had been connected to the old shaft previously used to dump trash into the magma sea. There was (and still is) a huge pile of magma-safe furniture at the bottom I had wanted to reclaim, and this seemed like a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Once I had a nice 4x7 column of water 7 z's tall, I pulled the lever. You can probably see where this is going. It was quite impressive really, the water reached the bottom in mere moments. I was afraid for a moment it would flood the forges, because a lot of it went sideways into the corridor between them and the trash shaft. Took ages to dry up and now I have trees popping up and blocking the way. At least the cistern has a nice stone floor now.
I see the last update had the for at 119 inhabitants. This number has since gone up to 136, and the first children born thanks to my matrimonial program are reaching adulthood. The first two will be a brewer and a dyer, they're tasked with using up my arrow stockpile as well. I have a few elven bows with ammo old enough to suffer from wear. They'll get some archer skill out of it. One of the kids was the first one to be born in hell as the mother, Uvash Dashportal, was dragging a gorilla to a cage at the moment. Oddly enough, it didn't make her cancel the job.
I don't know how many new couples did I set up until now. The last two candidates have been sitting in their suite long enough for their clothes to become threadbare. Maybe they will get to it once they're both naked. I'm building an experimental suite with a well buckets. Losing legendaries is still painful, especially that it's often hard to train the replacements up to a decent level. I lost a macelord, Stakud Netdabble, and my last skilled jeweler. I could try to train a new one through bedazzling random crap with green glass, but even then putting it on things that might end up melted down feels like a waste. All I use jewelry skill for is occasionally decorating furniture. Mostly coffins.
I keep both cut and rough gems and leather around in case of moods, but they never occur. Most likely I ran out of eligible dwarves at some point, but that should've changed with the wave of new births. Is there some sort of an artifact hard cap?
I'm melting individual unstacked bolts to reduce item count. Any that aren't masterworks, don't have forgotten beast poison on them and don't have a kill list attached are treated as scrap metal. I don't even care much about the metal, but I'd rather get a few bars and convert them to bolt stacks. Much of my ammo stock is bone and suffers from wear. Unfortunately, dwarves prioritise the undamaged bolts and there's no way to change that. All I can do is avoid making new ammunition for now. With over 22k bolts there is little need for it. The military dwarves have just picked up their assigned metal ammo, which is nice.
Minotaurs don't seem to breed. That's a shame, but look what blundered into my cage!
This one is female, and I already have a male. I'll have to mod them a little if I want them to breed, as dragons don't have a [CHILD] tag. Hopefully the fort doesn't burn down. I have a few legendary animal trainers, time to put them to a good use...
The vomit blob FBs apparently can't be shot to death. As far as crossbow training goes they're as good as a steel creature. Who would've thought it would be so redundant?
