Bay 12 Games Forum

Dear Urist McSlob,

I understand that when I drafted you to the military, and said your uniform replaces your clothing, you had to take your current clothes off. I also understand that since I wasn't paying attention, you took them off in a doorway. That was my fault really. But since this doorway is used to route traffic quickly for enabling and disabling my danger room repeater, I really need to have it unblocked before more
babies/pets/civilians/anyoneunarmoredtryingtoentombcorpses get impaled on training spears. I gave you a room, as I do all dwarves. A nice one at that. I even gave you multiple dressers and chests, more than ample storage space really. In fact, I even took you out of active duty rotation, just for the sake of giving you a chance to move your clothes to your room, so for the love of Armok, PICK UP YOUR D*** PANTS!

Signed,
Your annoyed Overseer.

*Every other dwarf in my fortress goes and puts their clothes in their room once I give them storage space, but this guy refuses to pick up his clothes. They aren't forbidden. I even removed him from the military temporarily, but he just drops his uniform and runs around naked, leaving his clothes there.*

Awesome, I am dorfed!

Also, if I recall correctly, spring migrations are always massive compared to summer and fall, especially if you are churning out steel discs.

Looking over the raws, I think I may see why pick-axes are the most effective, and why steel seems to be the best.

First off, picks have a contact area of 100. Compare this to an axe, which is 40,000, and the pick is much more similar to a spear with a contact area of 20(on a stab).

Second, penetration for the axe is 6000, while the pick is 4000. This may seem like the axe is better, but when taking in to account
the contact area, axes will have a much harder time piercing harder materials since there is more contact space it needs to break
through.

Finally, we have the velocity, and I think this final part is what gives picks their major edge. An axe's velocity is 1.25, so heavier
materials help, but a sharp edge is more important, making addy axes better. With a pick though, velocity is 2.0, same as a
warhammer. This means weight matters! But since a pick is an edged attack and not blunt, sharpness also matters, hence we
end up with the balanced option of steel being the best pick.

As an aside that has nothing to do with the topic of what is better in DF, I don't think you saw tons of picks on the battlefield, they are great for chipping away stone, but they would have a high tendency to get lodged in your opponent in a way that would be very difficult to remove, and while 1 on 1, you get the other guy, good. In mass conflict, losing your weapon after dropping one
guy really doesn't bode well for your survival. So if it was difficult to unstick a pick after getting it lodged. But it isn't, so pickaxes for everyone!

[Edited for typo on contact edges]

A couple years ago I had a friend who wanted me to fix their family computer because it was running slow.

Check it out, run a basic scan, tons of viruses, and tons of programs they installed, didn't want anymore, and rather then running the un-installer, just deleted the folder from their computer. Not wanting to do massive clean up, I back up their photos and important files, and reformat. Get it up and running, drivers installed, and download and install a decent anti-virus (They were running Mcafee which hadn't been updated or renewed in 3 or 4 years). Tell them they are good on their computer, have a good anti-virus, and it was running much better.

A week later I get a call from my friend saying his dad was p***ed because I broke their computer. Hoping I didn't miss a file in the back up, I go over and
ask what is wrong. His dad says his computer is running slower than before. Sit down, and it only takes moments before I see Mcafee on the computer again (Likely out of date still) as well the the anti-virus I installed.

After some arguing, I end up removing my anti-virus because his dad doesn't know what it is. A month later another virus, another phone call. Will I fix it? Heck NO!

Built a complex above ground drowning/freezing trap for sieges, since I had run out of room underground. Didn't think to secure the
mechanisms/pumps/watermills from the outside world.

Siege comes, group of 8 trolls rush in and play bull in a china shop with my trap layout, and now I only have a handful of cage traps and weapon traps to take out the 4 remaining goblin squads, and a ragtag under-equipped militia to stop the 4 goblin squads coming my way. This will be messy.

Throw me in as a swordsdwarf. Have done some swordplay stuff in the past, and we already have plenty of mechanics, so that's all that's left that suits me!