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Messages - BlueTrillium

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1
Honestly I almost never use custom labors and my dwarves get along just fine. My forts are stupid rich as soon as I get the kitchen up and running, so I don't care about who makes what kind of artifact -- and the system seems to do a pretty good job at keeping the most-skilled dwarves working in their highest-skilled professions anyway. Do I get some dwarves-of-all-trades? Sure. But I'm fine with that (really, can't avoid it, since like mikekchar said unemployment is a major issue past like 40 pop anyway).

I hear you about not getting the artifacts you want, but personally I guess I'm just not so min-max that I want to ensure *maximum value and/or utility* out of every single artifact. I let the dwarves make what they wanna make. It gives me a variety to display in my artifact vault. xD Heck, half the time my armorsmith's artifact is a single boot, or a weaponsmith's artifact is an aluminum hammer or something.

I *will* occasionally specifically assign a dwarf to a workshop if I especially want that dwarf to skill up, but that's about it. Usually I have a specially assigned cook, an armorer, and a weaponsmith yes, along with free/open workshops of the same types for when the assigned dwarves are busy.

The only exception I can think of offhand is sometimes I'll create a lever-pulling labor and assign a specific dwarf or dwarves to it, in order to get them to go to a particular location without having to put them in a squad and station them. I'll use this to get a couple dwarves I'm hoping will marry to interact more, for example.

I could get behind the suggestion of some sort of menu tooltip or indicator in-game about which specific skills are included in each labor (default *and* custom), though. That'd be a nice QOL thing, to not have to look it up in the wiki - or edit the custom labor - all the time.

2
DF Community Games & Stories / Re: Dwarf Fortress brewing contest - ended
« on: November 23, 2023, 01:09:08 pm »
Re the Gem Cutting orders --

I read somewhere, quite a while back, that the only way (outside of moods) to get Large Gems currently is to set an order to cut a specific gem (e.g. not just a general "cut gems" order, but "cut pink jades" or similar). You still only get large gems randomly among regular cut gems, but it's at least *possible*. Now, Large Gems are useless outside of display/trading, but still they're kinda interesting... What can I say, I like pretty colored rocks. (though in RL I prefer my colorful polymer dice sets lol I have way too many)

So in this fort, I set up a new work order whenever I found a new type of gem, to cut that particular kind of gem (keeping up to 3 rough ones in reserve for moods -- three was maybe too many but, that's easily changed). So I set up orders to cut pink jades, cut citrines, cut onyxes, cut white chalcedonies, etc. It's a lot of orders in a group, but since I only set them up for gems I actually encountered, it was pretty simple. And I did get multiple large gems out of it, which ended up to my benefit as the home civilization actually requested large gems one year during the challenge.

Probably not actually profitable or especially useful really, but I enjoyed the streamlined nature of how those orders were literally 'set it and forget it', and I could just look in my stocks every once in a while and see what cool shapes of large gem I'd gotten since last time. xD In future forts I could see this providing handy decorations for temples and guildhalls, or anywhere I want a nice looking display.

So I just felt really proud and entertained that my plan worked so easily and smoothly.

3
Hm, I'd say that at least I never *felt* slowed down by the hauling tasks -- then again I was generally just hauling in a random fashion whenever I felt there were too many barrels piling up in my stills.

Overall despite the loss via # of barrels, I see from the screenshots drink stocks I may have had the *fullest* drink barrels haha. xD
And I had a bunch of fun, definitely pleased with my first attempt at a community game. *thumbsup*

That said, there are definitely things I could've done to produce more/faster.

Firstly, while I did manage to get all the migrant waves with my second try, the initial 2-4 waves were still quite small, only like 2 dwarves apiece. This kept me struggling a bit with not enough dwarves to do everything I felt needed to be done. (Of course, after things really took off, I had more dwarves than I knew what to do with, lol -- thus letting them spend time hauling barrels around. Even with that, I'd say there was easily a third of my population hanging out in the tavern with those mist generators most of the time). I think I made some relatively unwise requests from the dwarven caravans early on that took up their weight so I didn't get enough other things to help bring up my wealth faster (or maybe I was just unlucky with what they chose to bring). I maybe also should've gifted those first caravans more so they reported better 'profit'.

Secondly, I probably should've had more workshops going (once I had dwarves for them). I stuck to just 2 metalsmiths and 2 stills (and even then, I only went up to 2 each after I was halfway through).

Thirdly, I screwed up my stockpiles for brewable plants (accidentally allowed barrels and never got up the motivation to delete the stockpiles, clear them out, and set the stockpiles properly) which meant I frequently had cancelled brewing jobs because they couldn't access the barrels (because they were in use by dwarves delivering more plants into them). So there were definitely times when the stills were idle that they didn't need to be and required too much micro management. I also should've set up better orders for brewing. (Though, irrelevant to the challenge, I am *very* pleased at how my gem cutting orders worked out this fort, I experimented with a new strategy there and will be using that plan again. xD)

Fourthly, I let coal use get ahead of me a time or two, stopping the smiths while I dug out more. If I'd kept on top of it better, I could've had more continuous production there too.

----

Even running the game for another season or so netted me a good 100 more barrels of drink, so if it'd gone longer I think there'd have been quite a difference, though still not enough to improve my spot, I'm sure. xD Although maybe it was just as well the challenge ended when it did, because barely one month later, with the Mid-Spring 103 full moon, we got a visitor...

And then the goblin sieges started. xDD (And I dunno about you guys but my 'militia' was thoroughly untrained and 'equipped' only with that starting copper stuff... let's just say I added a few more tombs.)

4
Huzzah! Just finished my final attempt and sending it over shortly. I think it went pretty well, despite all the polar bears and emus haha. xD Definitely still many things I could've done differently, and I long since gave up on making it pretty, but we'll see how it stacks up! *thumbsup* Looking forward to seeing everyone's numbers!

Some entertaining images from my doomed initial attempt (it does not do to underestimate even light aquifers...)


5
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Multi-tile Tree Trunk Mechanics
« on: November 18, 2023, 02:44:32 pm »
Is there anything in their way? If the ground around them is not flat and unobstructed, they won't grow. It may also be influenced by nearby trees? E.g. if the ground is clear but nearby trees are taking up all the branch space above, maybe they still can't grow.

I had a fort with Highwood trees and they frequently grew in size. Some stopped at 2x2 because their area was constrained by ramps, etc. But many of them did grow to 3x3 when there was clear space. It took less than 10 years so your 50 years sound far more than enough, if there are no obstructions.

6
It's fiddly yes, but I've not had too many issues (so long as I follow all the steps whenever needed). Is it a bug/can the coding be improved? Absolutely. But it has got a pretty simple workaround.

First, yes, I make sure their training schedule always keeps their armor on. It's also shown as the 'Ready' status, once you have it activated. Then you never have to worry about them taking the armor off 99% of the time.

Next, I do have them set to 'wear armor over clothes'. I let them equip everything they can (and yeah this often means they are assigned their steel high boots but won't wear them, because they're already wearing shoes and you can't put the boots on overtop the shoes).

So once they have grabbed everything else, I briefly switch the individual dwarf with problematic footgear over to 'armor replaces clothing'. This causes them to drop their clothes including the offending shoes, and go to grab their boots. Once everything is green, I switch them back to 'wear armor over clothes'. They will rush back to where they dropped their clothes and put them all back on (except the shoes that they can't wear because now they have the boots). They will often carry their shoes either to storage or back to their bedroom cabinet.

From there they are usually good for long periods of time, until they get into a fight where a boot gets knocked off, or better equipment is made that they want to switch to, or the various bugs that happen when they come back from an offsite raid, etc, and they might lose track of their boots and pick up shoes again. If that happens I just repeat the process - switch that dwarf to 'armor replaces clothing' again, have them grab the new boots, then back to 'wear armor over clothes' and we're good again for a long while.

As I said, fiddly. I typically only need to do this once per dwarf in the militia squads on initial setup, and then sporadically and rarely in the years afterward (there are some dwarves that seem more prone to grabbing shoes than others but I haven't tracked it to any particular personality trait yet).

If the clothes underneath their armor get worn... as far as I have noticed they *do* replace their clothes with new ones if available. However I don't watch this super-closely.

One thing I'd like to try sometime but I haven't yet, is actually assigning them clothes as *part* of the armor uniform, then see if that has an effect on whether they replace the clothing pieces that get worn. In that situation, if all pieces of clothes including stuff like loincloths and socks are part of the uniform, then I could probably set 'armor replaces clothes' permanently and never have to worry about the shoes/boots shuffle anymore.

7
Yeah, aboveground plants are based on biome and temp and all those good things. So certain corners of your embark area may be able to grow different aboveground plants than others (even if you roof over your aboveground plots).

8
Hehe xD Giant polar bear sounds terrifying!! On my part, I had a tribe (approx 6) of polar bear men & women... AND a yeti. (also a flock of puffins which were cute but fortunately did not add to the issue). *edit* Oh yeah and I had a herd of moose come through too. *end edit* I think there's enough time... my current run is already a disaster but I think I'll just go with it and see how bad I do (I already missed 3 waves of migrants for various reasons...) and then start fresh to see what goes differently.

I did think of a question - we've got 3 years. Is the end date Granite 1 of year 103 (first of the year), or Granite 15 of year 103 (3rd anniversary of our embark date)? xD 15 days probably won't make much difference but I don't want to accidentally go extra if it's the 1st.

9
I haven't even unpaused yet lol. xD I feel self-conscious that someone else will actually see my fort for once so I'm actually trying to plan things out first so they look nicer than my usual mishmash of cubes. And I am also like AHHHH WHERE WATER lol. (Guess we'll find out if there's an aquifer, or if I need to go to caverns, etc). I did note the bituminous coal exposed along the northern ramp/cliffs for when I actually start moving! xD I am... unlikely to go all the way to magma (at least in time for this round anyway) but we'll see.

*edit* Uh. Oh dear. xDD Well !FUN! with water was had. That is... one HECK of an aquifer lol.

10
You're welcome! OOoh, I'm a couple days behind. Ah well I couldn't have done anything yesterday anyhow. Snowy fortress/permafrost, huh? That'll be definitely something new to me! I've only done warmer climes so far. I'll take a look. xD

11
DF Community Games & Stories / Re: Dwarf Fortress Competition!
« on: October 28, 2023, 10:47:01 pm »
Tentative interest, I've got a couple days off in the next two weeks; might be enough time to participate. I haven't used someone else's save/embark before though so I'll have to look up instructions for that if I do. xD (Though I do have a dffd account, I haven't used it for anything so far.)

*edit to add* I'm currently not looking to start using DFHack, so hopefully it (or other mods) aren't required. If they are, then maybe I'd just put myself in 'hard mode' and try it without.

*edit 2* For my own ref (and/or anyone else that wants it) - link to previous fort competition thread.

12
DF Community Games & Stories / Re: Against the Storm inspired challenge
« on: September 10, 2023, 02:55:18 pm »
I've been pulled away from DF for a bit, trying out Minecraft. xD I can't say I'm totally back yet, but I did find some time to start adding the extra random events into my version of the generator. Definitely not fully-fleshed out yet, and nothing requesting items with specific materials, etc, but if anyone feels like they want to take a look, feel free:

Blue's Experimental Against the Storm generator

13
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: How to prevent monarch coming?
« on: August 13, 2023, 06:53:56 pm »
The best (maybe only?) route to keep the monarch from coming the normal way is to cap your population below 150. As long as you don't hit 150, they won't move in. You can still have your baron/count/duke just fine as long as you stay under that cap.

However, nothing can fully stop one of your dwarves from potentially inheriting the monarch role if the original monarch dies. To avoid this the best you can do is pick larger dwarf civilizations to join when you first embark. The bigger the civilization, the less likely that the monarch will die, and the less likely it is that even if the monarch *does* die, that one of the dwarves in *your* fort will inherit the title.

14
Completed Year 10. This summer was a doozy -- through my own fault, haha.

The year started out pretty quietly. I started sending raids occasionally against the closest goblin-held forts and locations, but nothing much yet.

Spoiler: Possessed Mood (click to show/hide)

No issues with the winter siege. Spring came, and a war dog died of old age. Kea-people continue to annoy me (seems to be every Spring and Fall) and I kill them whenever I can. The elves came with nothing special (I have plenty of animals now, probably too much haha) but they're good for augmenting the clothing supply. Seven migrants came (5 adults, 2 children, and their pets alpaca and cavy) bringing the total population to 87 (out of a cap of 90).

Even the forgotten beasts seem to have slowed down, perhaps... this was the only one to arrive this year.


Spoiler: Fey Mood (click to show/hide)

I managed to raze and destroy one goblin-held dwarf hillock in Spring, and I already had all my tributes ready for Fall. Sooo... at the end of Spring, I sent out another raid on the goblins.

Big mistake.

I didn't even think about the summer goblin siege. But as soon as my raiders (all my steel military) left, the season changed to summer. A few more days and.... Goblin siege arrived. And all I had to fight them off was my 'stress squad' - six poorly-equipped (I'm talking leather and wooden shields; no weapons, even) dwarves that wanted military training but were extremely prone to stress from actual fighting, including my Duchess.

I suppose the smart thing would've been to (try to) get everyone inside, close the drawbridge, and wait for my army to come back while letting my giant guard cougars and dingoes take the brunt of the attack until then. I, of course, did not do the smart thing.

No, instead I was like, 'Oh, my army should return any time now, let's station the stress squad out there, get them some experience. They can hold off the siege alongside the animals until the army arrives.' I'm sure you can guess where this is going.

On the plus side, we won. Not the usual three, but FIVE snatchers, and eighteen goblin fighters (most of which were bow- and crossbow-gobs). All dead or fled (mostly dead), no children stolen. But on our losses... several giant cougars and dingoes, a war dog, and Kol's remaining war grizzly (remember, Kol was the dwarf that died in the parley-siege last year alongside his first grizzly -- this was his second one, left behind no longer). And three dwarves from the stress squad. Among them the squad leader and a fave of mine, Zas Floorcrystals. You may (or probably may not) remember her as the super-stressy child and young dwarf that I was always yelling at for sleeping on the floor when she had a perfectly good bedroom. One of the first migrant children, and one of the dwarves I actually know by name.

At least she went down epically. She went into a martial trance, absolutely destroying goblins with her shield until it literally broke in her hands, then punching and biting and throwing like a whirlwind. The gobbos continually shot arrows at her but everything missed - not even blocked by the shield, but missed. The trance ran out and she passed out from exhaustion, and they still couldn't hit her. (I like to think the others in the squad protected her until she got back up.) But get back up she did, and took out even more goblins, yanking off goblin helms left and right... and finally took the one and only hit she got in the fight - an arrow through the neck. And still kept fighting, taking down one more goblin before she finally succumbed.

Hers wasn't the only epic bit of the fight, but there were so many notifications it was the only one I managed to follow all the way through. Other notable moments included Sazkul her uncle literally caving in a goblin skull with a sock that he picked up somewhere. (No it was not his own sock, and yes Sazkul survived, though injured).

And then the fight was over. Three dwarves including Zas dead, the other three stress-squaddies including Sazkul and the Duchess surviving but wounded, limping back to the hospital. The Duchess was fine for the most part, but the other two were deep in the red, stress-wise. All I could do was give them the best care I could.

So of course, NOW is when the steel-clad army returns. And to add insult to injury, they don't even bring back any loot from the raid, lol. And while they're still trickling in...

Yeah, she was no problem. A spear dwarf gutted her and then stabbed her through the head before she even got close.

Amidst all of that... the human caravan came. Seemingly unperturbed by all the chaos and cleanup and mourning, they just traipsed right in. I offloaded most of the goblinite on them.

Four migrants arrived - three to replace those that died, plus an extra -- who arrived 'Drowning in Sorrow!' and happens to be Zas's aunt, and sister-in-law to another dwarf that died. She went straight to her sister (the wife of the dead dwarf) and cheered up with 'joy at reuniting with a loved one'. I'll choose to ignore the fact that the widowed dwarf and their one child in the fort don't appear to notice that he's dead yet. Population is now 89 out of 90.

So, since the summer siege was over, in revenge I sent out my soldiers again to raze that goblin hillock... and succeeded. Two goblin-held hillocks destroyed this year.

Spoiler: Secretive Mood (click to show/hide)

And so Fall arrives and with it the caravan from the Monarch... Next year they want goblets and crowns (not that I ever seem to pay attention to that). Though I recall that armor is one of the things they want this year... well I still have a bunch of goblinite to get rid of, so that's fortunate.

Tribute was delivered -- 27 silver chains, 38 bone crossbows, 114 microcline boulders, 46 copper maces, and a very annoying 162 raw meat (mostly from my turtles). That gives me all five base rewards (I'll just do +5 rep) and all five bonus rewards which total out to +10 popcap and -5 impatience. Three artifacts for +3 rep. Once the caravan left, I was at 163k exports, up from 152k last year, for +1 more rep. I lost those three dwarves, but it was all due to siege so I think no penalty there.


Goals for Next Year:
  • 117 meals -- biscuits for -2 imp
  • 31 mini-forges -- all glass for -2 imp
  • 64 soap -- 3x for +5 popcap (I prob won't do this bonus)
  • 49 metal bars -- all billon for +5 popcap
  • 34 large pots -- all glass for -1 imp

Final Status for Year 10:
  • Impatience = -15 (was -10; -5 from bonus rewards)
  • Reputation = 63 (was 54; +3 from artifacts, +5 from base rewards, +1 this year exports)
  • Population = 89 (cap 100 after bonus rewards)
  • Available workshops =
    Spoiler: Workshops (click to show/hide)

------------------------

I've been poking around in my random generator looking to add those extra/random goals we talked about. Nothing functional yet, but I got the option added. I'll link it up again when I have something to show. xD

15
a real sadist would start generating requests for specific combinations of studded materials, like metals or gems. that would drive any player insane... ahahah

Heh heh... well I mean, most of the framework (lists of materials and such) is already there in the current generator. I could probably come up with something... -ponders-

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