Bay 12 Games Forum

Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: Halenthal on February 05, 2007, 12:25:00 am

Title: Small request re farming
Post by: Halenthal on February 05, 2007, 12:25:00 am
This is probably next to useless, but it annoys me, so...

Could the layout of a farm be changed to where it'll overlap nonplantable areas? Right now, if I have a room that's thirteen spaces wide by thirteen spaces high, with supports built along the seventh row and column to keep it from collapsing, then I flood it and try to build a farm. It only lets me plot out the farm to the support, then it marks the support as an invalid area and won't let me plant. So I end up with a farm six plots wide, and a blank row of muddy floor on the seventh space where the support is.

Could the farm plot designation code be changed to like the code for designating stockpiles, where even if it's not a valid target space, it still lets you place the stockpile and works around it?

On a totally non-farming note, another thing I'd like to see. Dwarves in the military should give a much higher priority to going from standing down to on duty. I mean, if they're standing down and sleeping, eating, whatever, not a problem. But if they get put on duty, they should drop what they're doing and come running to the point they're stationed at. The entire dwarven military structure seems really relaxed and laid back-kind of like the National Guard if it was being run by the PTA. "Ya'll come on in this weekend and let's do some work. If you feel like it, that is. If you have something else to do, well, okay. And it'd be nice if you all showed up over here by the front door to the fortress, but if you really think just hanging out by the river is a good thing, well, go right ahead." A little short on discipline, I think, is what I'm trying to convey.  ;)

Title: Re: Small request re farming
Post by: ctrlfrk on February 05, 2007, 05:54:00 am
Supports are treated as buildings, as are farm plots, and atm buildings cannot overlap.

An alternative to using supports is to leave unmined pillars every six places. You can build farm plots with these inside them as they only count as terrain, not a building.

Title: Re: Small request re farming
Post by: Halenthal on February 05, 2007, 08:43:00 pm
You ever get that feeling where something you were looking for was right in front of you the whole time but you didn't see it?

Kinda like feeling incredibly dumb for missing something so obvious?

Yep, that'd be me. I'm so used to mining large rooms and using supports (at least that far from the chasm, anyways) I've just been automatically doing it for farms.

Thank you! Oddly enough, not being able to farm the whole area was really bugging me for some weird reason.  :)

Title: Re: Small request re farming
Post by: OldMiner on February 05, 2007, 11:07:00 pm
quote:
Originally posted by Halenthal:
<STRONG>You ever get that feeling where something you were looking for was right in front of you the whole time but you didn't see it?
</STRONG>

You could fix this without having to dig a whole new room.  Might try rigging a lever up to your central farming pillar, locking the doors, and then pulling the lever, collapsing the area. The resulting cave-in has a good chance of leaving a rock in the spot where you'd want one.

But, yes, these are all hacks. The requested behavior is desirable, but non-square buildings may be difficult with the current code. (Iunno.)

Perhaps more desirable is the ability to make more resilient supports/bridges such that any building destruction event wouldn't auto-kill them.  Future feature, I'm sure...

Title: Re: Small request re farming
Post by: Momaw on February 06, 2007, 01:38:00 am
The ultimate would be re-walling:  put back a block of stone. Supports would thus only be used when you want to reserve the ability to collapse the area on command.  Or make the place prettier I guess since supports can be made from a lot of different stuff.