I do it once every month, sometimes more sometimes less.
I usually only savescum when I REALLY want a project to work, or I lose a fort in a really lame and boring way (flood) or something.
Example: I recently lost 20 dwarves to a big gobbo ambush, but didn't savescum because it was a good fight, and I learned something from it (more soldiers bigger walls)
However, if my legendary miner drowns or something stupid happens and I accidentally collapse a big ceiling, I will probably just revert to a couple minutes ago.
I'm curious if some people savescum for every calamity or whether some people never savescum no matter what.
I also use DF companion alot, but really just for completely avoidable things, like preventing imprisoned or wounded dwarves from starving to death, or teleporting dwarves who've trapped themselves while building floodgates.
I do back up saves, though. Mostly so that I can adventure in a fortress that I'm still playing; backup, abandon, adventure, restore from backup.
Apart from that I don't scum.
For my first fortress it was a matter of game enjoyment. Having everything explode because I didn't understand how the game worked can be quite frustrating.
After I got the hang of things, I stopped playing that fortress and tried out my luck with a new one, and I actually haven't had to save scum in that one yet, although it's perhaps only five fortress years old. Either I learned a lot or I was a lot luckier.
Now, sometimes I start new fortresses for the pure suicide factor "play now in a haunted ruin!" but there's no point in saving those. I normally don't even get much of a hole dug before their souls are sucked out of their smiley faces.
My automated drawbridge that would throw dwarfes into the newly built pool (with water drawn from the other side of the map, 10 z levels above) to fill a 16 square pool with 4/7 water).
This project had 2 savescums. one because I wanted to se some results thus pulled the lever before realizing that I hadnt finished the drain yet. water teleporting directly from the brook into the center of my fort was quite unpleasant.
The other savescum was for the idea that I should "fling" dwarfes into the pool once finished so that they would learn how to swim and get cleaner. this was intended to be an automated process so pressure plates etc where connected to the bridge in question in one of the main hallways and a meeting area desingated on the bridge. the idea being that the bridge would flip every once in a while and throw the dwarfes abour 4-5 tiles aways into the bath.
This device was aptly renamed the automated dwarfcrusher, and managed to killed 2 champions, my legendary carpenter, 4 children, about a dozen dogs and a legendary mason before I was able to disable it.
I obviously savescummed and I'm currently working on a new system to deliver the dwarfes into their bath. This time I will, on the level directly above the pool, build a nice chess pattern in sterling silver and black bronze grates. These grates should then open up with a regular interwall, and drop the dwarfes through the floor into the pool. If I also designate this the new party hall (which is the plan) I will have an automated service that will make sure noone parties for to long.
3 birds in one very complex device using 60 mechanisms, 6 floodgates, 26 grates in precious metal, a total of 500 tiles of water, and an adamantine artifact table to designate the meeting hall.
All to wash my dwarfes from several pages worth of dwarf blood, goblin blood, demon goo, vomit, dirt, mud etc in a 4x4 pond filled with 4/7 water.
Has it really been ascertained that the players didn't start out sane?
Now wardogs...don't you touch my 60+ wardogs or my chained kitten royal guard brigade or I'll probably revert.
Like, oh crap the goblin bowmen just ripped through my entire army in a second. WTF?
Or, Oh crap water can go diagonal!?
Or, Oh Crap bridges can't support floors!?
Stuff like that...
I have used the companion before to give adventurers a little boost and a couple 1UPs when I want to fill up the legends screen with adventurer exploits. But I never take those adventurers seriously. It's annoying when you expect the dining room to be engraved with cool stuff but all you get is trades and noble elections because nothing interesting has happened in the world yet.
I also backup at the start of seasons sometimes, and/or when traders show up, and/or before opening that floodgate (hmm, will it flood my cistern or the food storage?) -- typically once overy two to four hours. I won't reload if I just lose a handful of dwarves, but will if "it feels unfair" or if I made stupid, critical mistakes (such as removing the wrong floor tile, collapsing a half-built staircase straight down into my barracks. Ouch :)
[ March 27, 2008: Message edited by: Samyotix ]
quote:
Originally posted by John Johnston:
<STRONG>...but being taken apart by a GCS just holds a sort of horrid fascination, and a fortress full of insane dwarfs is its own reward. :)</STRONG>
That about sums it up. Plus, personally, I am lazy.
And then lost the save and all the backups to a system error. That's the only fort I might have considered savescumming, but I think things had more or less stabilized and I might have been able to recover.