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Topics - RocheLimit

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1
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / LeopardLens, Fortress of Forgotten Beasts and Wealth
« on: January 28, 2018, 06:01:48 pm »
LeopardLens, Fortress of Forgotten Beasts and Wealth


Mingkilcerol, or LeopardLens, is a Fortress Defense, Large Address Aware, 40.24 Fort that I began back in May of 2015 with the purpose of capturing or killing all forgotten beasts, and documenting as much of the process as possible.  Secondary goals included conquering the circus, building a castle on the surface, maximizing artifact creation, and accumulating as much wealth as I could.

Now it is early 2018.  The fort is nearly 3 real-time years old, has been in single-digit FPS for over a year, and has hit a patch of instability where progress was measured in in-game days.  These chain crashes started as I attempted a 5th generation of artifacts and began building above the sky's limit using infinitesky.  No combination of work-arounds helped... in fact, I had to migrate the fort to another df folder with a slightly different dfhack used for Armok Vision images; it wouldn't even work in the original folder.  In the end I decided to both rewind the fort to year 465 and, as the future of the fort is cloudy, spend some time getting this all uploaded and posted.  Which I am glad I did because I had no idea how much I'd managed to collect over the years.

Edit: I just realized that the spoiler tags may show nothing at all for a while as the images can take quite a while to load.  They're there; just have to wait a bit.  Though maybe I should go through and edit some of them to be external links to cut down on the load time...

Edit 2: Went through and swapped out the larger animated gifs (FB Battle Royal, Obsidianizing the Surface, Descent, Aquarium 2D, Aquarium View, & Filling of Cavern 3) with direct links.  It should help with the load time.  Also, here is a link to the rather unorganized album most of the images and gifs are pulled from (https://imgur.com/a/DcX9g), for those interested.

Beware of Spoilers ahead

Stats
Fortress Year – 215
Earliest Image Date – 5/13/2015
Current FPS – 1
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Dead – 28,912
Max Pop – 239
Current Pop – 194
Generations – 4
Artifacts – 353
Artifact Wealth – 637,831,600
Total Wealth – 2,002,823,883
Exported Wealth – 18,364,883

Programs Used - Irfanview, Paint, Gimp, GifCam

Historical Population
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spreadsheet
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Current
Status Screen
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Unit List
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fort Images
Main Fort Levels, 2D
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Entire Fort... in Ascii, short descriptions
(link to external album, 155 images)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Armok Vision
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Paving the Surface in Obsidian
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The Filling of Cavern 3
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Aquarium
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Helpful Artists
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Artifacts
Artifacts, Overview
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Artifacts, All 353
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Artifacts, Most Valuable
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Artifacts, Detailed List
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sieges
Overview
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Complete Siege List, Invaders & Defenders
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Invader Kill Lists, searched from the Dead List
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Best Warrior
Teresa Ruledpicks the Mortification of Playing
Swords-dwarf with 2059 kills and full Artifact Armor. 
Gave her eternal life after kill 2000.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Wields ToneSwallow artifact adamantine
two-handed sword: 1869 kills
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
& The Natural Gills artifact
adamantine shield: 29 kills
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Of course, the rest of her squad
weren't slouches either
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


Forgotten Beast Info
Counter
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Forgotten Beasts Incursions by the Year
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Forgotten Beasts Incursion Graphs
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Current Residing FB List
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Forgotten Beast Reclaim Battle Royal
I once tried to retire/reclaim to gain some precious fps. 
I had forgotten upon reclaim all caged entities are uncaged...
I had stored 157 Forgotten Beasts, 6 ettin, 4 cyclopes, 4 weres
(2 skinks, 1 civet, 1 tortoise, all non-transformed) 3 giants,
2 bronze colossi, 2 minotaurs, and 1 titan in a single room.  3 minutes long.


Spoiler (click to show/hide)


In another portion of the fort, I had stored other forgotten beasts,
bronze colossi, and various megabeasts.  All in cages yet to be built.
Seems the dragons were  still holding their own by the time I checked
on them.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Animal Training & Herds
Every animal that I could catch was bred
and trained, minus the handful of Giant Cave Spiders
I caught.  Some never showed up (like Cave Bats) while
vermin were both hard to catch and hard to get rid of.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Currently, the fort boasts herds of the following
animals for food, moods, and decorations.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was most excited when word came we had become
expert gremlin trainers.  Not that they are every really
tame...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Embark's Surrounding Area
Using a copy of the original world, I did a fresh embark
over the original location... at 14x14 (16x16 kept crashing
on me).  I took screen-shots, used irfanview's ability to
batch 'trim', and then pieced the images together into
a single high-res shot.  I then located the ponds that
were in my 3x3 embark and overlaid a more current
high-res shot of the fort on it.  Sadly, uploading lost
much of the resolution for some reason.  Still cool
to see the surrounding area, like how there are hills
North and East of the embark, and a stream to the
South.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, years after the caravans stopped coming, I sent
out an adventurer in a copy of the save.  The following
link is to an album devoted to her travels.  I could have
sworn I sent out a second adventurer later, but could find
no record of such an endeavor.  Probably delerium.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The Hamlet Next Door
These guys are one overworld map tile to the East, a hamlet
of The Empires of Aquamarine named AdmiredCarried. 
We do much trade with the humans of this civilization;
the dwarfs welcome their law-givers' yearly visits.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The Dark Fortress Down the Street
And here is FellStench, the nearby capital of the goblin
civilization The Poison of Despair.  Despite their proximity,
goblins have not invaded in nearly 200 years.  In the current
year of the fort, only trolls and the Capybara monster,
Asmrar Quakewhip itself, still live in Fellstench.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Research Shows an massive decline in goblins from 250 to 270
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Coins
A few years into the fort, I took up having the dwarfs forge
a single stack of coins to mark each year.  Eventually I
settled on copper for normal years, silver for those ending in 5,
gold for 10's, platinum for 50, and adamantine for 100.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


All Log Entries (~100 entries each, 4700 total entries)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


2
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Constructing Mega Projects: Method Poll
« on: August 30, 2017, 08:02:38 am »
Getting ready to start my own mega project and, while my project is almost assured to be cast due to FPS issues, I became curious what others thought of the various methods. 

3
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / A method to instantly cast walls, 1 tile at a time
« on: August 27, 2017, 11:03:50 am »
I found this method out in my old DF40.24 fort and just confirmed that it still works as late as DF43.05.

Basically, you fill 1 minecart with water and 1 minecart with magma, then dump them on a track stop.  The trackstop is either not set to dump (if you are fine with using DF Hack to change the dump direction) or set to dump but disabled by a lever.  Be sure that all tiles around the 1x1 dump zone are not drops, as dwarfs will toss dumped items down rather than place them in the dump zone.

When ready, either set the dump direction or pull the lever; the two minecarts will dump 2 units of magma and 2 units of water onto the same tile, instantly creating a tile of obsidian.

While each tile does require quite a bit of setup, and if you go the lever route it isn't truly 'instant', the process cannot be stopped from operating, can block a hall with an indestructible tile stronger than any bridge, and will kill anything on the affected tile.  It's also very useful for small construction projects and touching up existing structures.

Slightly detailed instructions
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Gif of the walls being formed
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

4
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Standing Siege tags, lost forgotten beasts, and missing wildlife
« on: April 07, 2017, 10:14:38 pm »
This script does the follow:

  • Recovers lost invading armies so that you can kill them and remove the [Siege] Tag
  • Recover forgotten beasts that never appear despite the announcement
  • Recover packs of wildlife that are missing from your surface/caverns
  • Recover caravans that are partially or completely missing, fixing the caravans that are constantly 'unloading'

(5-8-2017 Edit: The missing i's have been found.  It should now work as copied.  Many thanks to Lethosar)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It should look something like this:
(5-18-2017 Edit: Note that this code will only look at the first 6 or 7 units of the fort; I will swap it out later with one showing code that checks all the active units Updated image)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Backstory:
My generational fort has had a constant issue with siege tags being stuck, forgotten beasts saying they have arrived when they really did not, and years of 1 or 2 herds of wildlife despite having a surface and three caverns.  Using a recent siege whose tag still remained, a recent forgotten beast that stood me up, and PatrikLundell's mention of df.global.world.units.active, I found that not only were the 'missing' units on the active unit list, but their flags could be altered using DFHack. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
It turns out that the 'missing' units universally had move_state=false, dead=true, and incoming=true, invaders and forgotten beast alike.  When reversing the aforementioned three flags, and ensuring can_swap is true which *most of the other units had, I was able to manually 'spawn' the unit where it should have been and add it to the Unit List.

I then used PatrikLundell's script for Dismissmerchants (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=159297.45) as a base and adapted it to search the unit list for anything with dead=true and incoming=true, then making flag changes to those that fit the parameters. 

Results:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kill the retrieved invaders and the siege tag will disappear.

I imagine that, so long as an overseer is prompt in dealing with squatters in the void, no group spawned with this will be very large.

That said, I am unsure of this script's usefulness for my own fort.  I think my computer will die if I unpause with 6000+ Other Units.

(5-18-2017 Edit: For now, it is unlikely it works in the most recent version of DF, 43.05.  I will make a current fort and see what can be done with the script, if anything.)

5
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Gamelog.txt
« on: April 08, 2016, 04:46:17 pm »
Interesting thing just happened.

Scenario: 5 fps fort that I leave running while at work and overnight, dealing with things that pause the game as they come up and occasionally checking to see if anything new needs doing (such as mandates).

I came home today to find a strange mood had begun.  I stuck the dwarf in the Strange Mood burrow, assigned some high quality material, and started browsing/reading until the game paused to announce he had begun.  Quicksave, unpaused, and back to browsing.

Checked back a bit later to find DF... pretty much wigging out.  It would snap out of it for one or two seconds, then go Unresponsive for twenty seconds and the CPU load would drop to 0%.  Reloads did nothing, nor did forbidding doors and checking for stuck creatures (hard to be stuck, there are only a few dozen trees left on the entire embark).  Figured at this point I may have to replay the last decade... until I tried a crazy long shot.

I copied the entire DF folder to a new location... and deleted the gamelog file.  Tried again... and it worked!  Ran at the consistent 5 fps I've gotten used to.  Closed out, copied the gamelog file back... and it began stuttering again.

So I took a look at the gamelog file...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At this point, the file is so large it cannot be opened in windows.  I had known the file was getting absolutely huge for quite some time now, and had always wondered if it might have some effect on gameplay eventually.  Seems I was right.

So I ask this question: how big is your Gamelog.txt?

6
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Dwarfs being too philosophical or bugged military AI? You decide!
« on: July 17, 2015, 04:30:58 pm »
/rant on!

This bug blindsided me so bad that I am reloading the save to try to work around it.  But I did save the gifs I took of the fight showing off exactly what happened, so hopefully others who have not experienced it yet will be forewarned...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Here we have 4 squads of dwarfs rush out to defend the fort against a force of about 34 white tigermen (fortress defense).  The group they rush has about 25 in it.  No problems so far.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Here we see the trouble setting up.  All dwarfs have been ordered to station beyond where the left hand group of tigermen stand.  instead, they stack on top of three tiles and stand there.  Sound Sense is flooded with sounds of terror from my dwarfs.  Meanwhile, marksdwarfs show up and begin shooting at the enemy.  A spearmaster who was not involved in the main fight spies them and rushes them as well

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The lone spearmaster reaches them and does his best to fight, but is soon knocked out.  More crossbowmen arrive and shoot, but crossbows just aren't the railguns they were in DF2012.  Meanwhile, the 27 melee dwarfs involved in the first scuffle are STILL hanging out on three tiles.  They ignore new station orders.  They ignore kill orders.  A new spear master, injured in a previous fight, walks up from the back.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The lone unconscious spear master is rescued by 2 spearmasters who both did not fight in the main battle.  Meanwhile, the 27 others are still standing still, being terrified.  Based on soundsense, they are making comments about how fleeting life is, banishing terror, or expressing horror at death.  I cancel orders on one group, and they immediately try to run back inside!  I tell that group to station near the fight, and they ignore it.  I tell them to KILL the group, and they ignore it.  I wind up locking them outside the fort, at which point they STOP and do NOTHING.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The finale.  The final tigermen die to the three spear masters and the marksdwarfs taking potshots.  As the last tigermen dies, the remainder of the military snaps out of it and rushes to the scene of the battle.

I have encountered this before, though never for such a long amount of time.  They will fight one fight, then stand there stupidly until they actually see another target or have their current orders canceled.

I think when I redo this fight (the lone spear master suffered some nasty injuries) Ill keep one group in reserve and send them in if the main group freezes like that again.

7
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Highlights of my experience with Dwarf Fortress
« on: April 19, 2015, 12:45:23 pm »
There are plenty more, but these are the ones I managed to catch using GifCam.  DF2012-DF2014.

That time I FINALLY got archers to train correctly:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
then improved it by moving the process to the dining room:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I successfully built a magma pump stack up the middle of my fort and had lvl 20 stone detailers engrave the entire magma cistern:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I was lax on building a military, and confronted 20+ naga bowmen with two macelords:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I had 30+ undead fall to the bottom of my moat, and I had to wait for winter to stop the siege:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I first discovered a tower, and approached it without thinking:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I found the land of the titans:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I found an extremely simple and effective defense against enemies vulnerable to traps:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I built my first automatic Forgotten Beast/Titan trapper:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I discovered giant toads with all limbs broken make very good wrestling partners:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I began using quantum stockpiles and stopped using massive stockpile rooms:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I built a swimming pool for my military and forced them to use it:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That time I broke into the caverns and found out the reason behind my 20 fps:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

8
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / No cavern wood for the forseeable future at "Roadloved"
« on: March 17, 2015, 10:03:27 pm »
About two years into my terrifying, reanimating, volcano fort and things have been pretty uneventful.  Got magma forges up and running asap, both my entrances zigzag (all hail zigzag! zigzag, your grand vizier, is here!) up/down with hatches for easy denail-of-entry, and I found my fort host to a king who desires nothing more than splints and statues.  He makes them himself, since he just hit lvl 20 blacksmithing, getting a boost from both a fulfilled mandate and creating common masterworks.

Top Level.  Upper Zigzags, Block Storage, Front and Back Entrance, Stair to the depths on the left, Trash dump w/ adjacent butchers.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Main Level.  Forges/Glass Furnaces on left, Dorm upper right, dining hall sans table mid, food storage/prep/farms clockwise from right.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Lower Level.  Magma cistern, Workshops, King's future quarters, and a water cistern being dug out.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

All was good.  So I decided to dig for the caverns to see about securing some wood.  Dropped a staircase near my front entrance, and down my miners went, digging some silver and gold veins along the way.  I let them be for a bit, until I get an odd interruption; a single Crundle corpse has somehow made its way to my stairway to the depths.  This tells me one of my Up/Down stairs is diagonal up or down from the cavern, even though I haven't hit it directly.  It also tells me the caverns may not be as peaceful an area as I had hoped.  My militia make quick work of the undead beast, and digging resumes.

Then I breach the caverns, and feast my eyes on carnage...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As I watch, more crundles spawn, and are quickly taken down:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I managed to seal it up again before any made their way into the fort; luckily they broke through 2z's up.  Currently thinking of the best way to clear this... infestation.  As many as there are, my two macemen would be torn apart.  Maybe open up the volcano and let the blood of armok sort them out. 

9
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Chicken-Run Aquifer-Pierce Trouble
« on: March 15, 2015, 10:47:04 am »
Hey, I'm having trouble utilizing a variation of the chicken-run aquifer-pierce method in the latest version of vanilla DF.

For those who don't know, using a chicken-run technique uses a relatively high (10+) lvl miner who can outrun/outdig an aquifer for a tile or two.  Since aquifers can drain into themselves you can (could before, anyway) have your miner dig a drain from the first aquifer layer to the 2nd or third, giving you more room and effectively cutting the thickness of the aquifer down greatly. 

The problem came up when I was designating the second up down stair, to allow the first Aq. Layer to drain into the second.  The miner, who had just one tick ago finished the U/D stair in the first Aq. Layer, moved 4 tiles away from the dig site before registering the U/D stair, if he did at all.

I tried this three times in succession, using burrows, trying to designate both stairs at the same time (can't do it: the 2nd is cancelled due to 'wet stone'), etc.  I'm now of the opinion you cannot do this anymore. 

As to why it now takes them so long to determine a newly assigned dig job?  I can only guess it has something to do with the new priority system.  Miners have no problem going quickly from one job to the next when they are all designated at the same time.  But it would seem if you designate a new job for one miner right after the previous one is done, the game takes a dozen or three ticks to forward that to the miner.

Long story short, I, who have utilized the chicken-run method dozens of times in DF2012, cannot get it to work anymore.  Any help from those who have gotten it to work in DF2014 would be greatly appreciated, as would any additional insight.

10
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Catching a Zombie Swarm
« on: February 01, 2015, 02:35:32 pm »
Well, long story short, I was too complacent after 5 or so years within range of a tower and thought my two macelords and 10 elite marksdwarfs could handle pretty much anything.  Then 60+ equipped undead roll in.  Maybe I just have bad luck with sieges, but I've never seen even a 60 man goblin siege; this took me by complete surprise.  Just managed to wall off the entrance, but eventually got to thinking they would make great training fodder if my guys could face 2 or 3 at a time, say, in an arena.  Or combine with the necromancer leading the charge for a permanent, live-target, shooting gallery.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's not building destroyer-proof (though can easily be made so), and will not work on anything yak-sized or bigger, but for dwarf-sized enemies this works beautifully.

11
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Archery Ranges
« on: January 26, 2015, 10:40:31 am »
Great feeling when the stars align and your dwarfs actually use them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Setup: I have each target expanded to the same area, assigned to the same squad for training, and set to shoot top to bottom.  I also have the squad assigned to train at the armor stand in the gif.  Default training settings.  No bolts hunter, 500 bolts for this one (and only) squad, all wood bolts for both combat and training.  Equipped with backpack, waterskin, quiver, copper crossbow, steel shield.

Note: If I had to build the ranges again, I'd leave gaps for arrows to actually pass the targets and fall down the channel behind.

12
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Satisfaction Guaranteed
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:25:13 pm »
Tanglednets:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Backstory:
Tanglednets is a 9z-tall tower surrounded by a 2z-tall outer wall with a bridge raised 1z up connecting the tower to the outside world.  It was originally built directly on a river, but recent progression with the tower required the river be diverted.

So I dug out a 4z-deep trench in a circle around my outer wall, leaving the river in place until it froze during winter.  Then carefully channeled the ice and dirt out, leaving a frozen river looking out over my trench.

That's when a necromancer showed up at the head of 44 undead.  By the time I had built 45+ cage traps to catch them all, Spring had come, and the trench was filling quite quickly.  However, I should have located my cage hall entrance better.  Fully half the undead were in the north-east of the map when I opened up the west-facing trap hall to them, and they took the shortest path... right into the lowered-water-level area of the river emptying into my trench.

Roughly 20 of them, plus the necromancer, were washed into the trench, and refused to path out.  The necromancer died on impact, but the rest just sit there.  Keeping me under siege and shooting at passing Buzzards all day (though they did attract, and murder, a were-iguana, so I do owe them for that)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


With no recourse (no military at the moment, and many of them were ranged) I decided to wait them out
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Very satisfying
 

Edit:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

13
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Automated Cavern Trap
« on: August 17, 2014, 10:19:29 am »
Here is a design I came up with to automatically catch just about anything in the caverns

A goal I have in any fort is to catch as many cavern creatures as I can and train/breed them (cave crocs at the top of the list).  But building and watching over cage traps for three different levels of caverns, plus make them all resistant to FBs was troubling.  So I took a series of tunnels I had come up with to manually catch Titans and Forgotten Beasts, and automated it.

#1 This first image is the top level of the trap
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Levers to control the filling of the water reservoir, as well close off the individual cells on the left.  When closed, each cell has plenty of water for use in the trap.

#2 Second image shows the main level of the trap.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Cage traps line the front, then a ladder-like pattern of tunnels.  A floodgate is located in each path across, directly underneath the hole in the ceiling to the water reservoir.  A pair of doors lie next to the floodgate, to give the building destroyer something to munch on while the trap activates.

The levers on the right correspond to the same path at its level, and are linked to the two drawbridges to release their occupant (or close the path) at your discretion. 

Also note the GCS and pig in the lower right.  Once a web FB or a GCS is caught and a web trap setup, the other FB caught by the automated trap (not web FB) may be released and secured in simple wooden cages for display in your dining room.

#3 Bottom level of the trap
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
This level is nothing but closed off pressure plates set to 1-7 water, reusable, and linked to the two drawbridges for that path on the main level.

How it works:
FB spawns, paths to the entrance to the trap on each cavern level.  Bypasses the cage traps, runs to the nearest unused cell, and begins to destroy the floodgate.
Once the floodgate is gone, it moves on to the doors; meanwhile, the cell of water above the floodgate is released, rushes down, and will pool in the lower cell with the pressure plate, triggering the trap.  By the time the first door is gone, both drawbridges are raised and the FB is trapped.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some tips:
-If you have Gremlins in your caverns, keep those levers walled up until you need them!  Also possibly station a military squad to train next to them.
-Floor over some of the trap area; it will get wet, and the occupant may be walled up for quite some time.  Tree growth may inadvertently lock them away for good without woodcutter intervention.
-Use an aquifer or a reservoir to fill the trap.  Cavern water is decent, until it gets low enough to allow the growth of trees held stagnant.  As you can see in the top picture, One such tree popped up when I first filled the trap, and almost blocked the intake.
-Be careful once you set up the web cage trap; merchants loved to exit that way in my fort, and would walk right into it. 
-Never release a web FB unless you know what you are going to do with it!  They cannot be caged by a web cage trap, and are thus best kept contained or positioned (using doors and drawbridges) into a silk farm or a web turret for sieges.
-Use of the ladder design, without any automation, is a great early-fort defense against Titans and Forgotten Beasts.  Each 'cell' requires 2 blocks for the bridges, 5 mechanisms to link the drawbridges to a single lever, and 2+ doors (more = more time to pull the lever!), while the trap itself should be closeable as well, so another block for a drawbridges, and 3 mechanisms to close it up.

Here's a link to the imgur gallery:

14
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Central Stockpile Design- Organize Anything!
« on: July 23, 2014, 07:52:26 pm »
Thought I would share (and welcome criticism on) the central stockpile design I use for many of my forts.  Should be noted here that this is still DF2012, Vanilla with the Defense mod, Soundsense/LNP/Therapist running, and Cartilage modified to count as a [SHELL].

It is a very simple design, though some mine-cart knowledge is required.  I developed it because I am slightly OCD when it comes to what stone my masons and stonecrafters use in their work; having convenient stockpiles to link to them that are stuffed with that one stone I want is great.

Take a large room, plop a big-ish custom stockpile in the middle.  You can alternatively plop down many little ones, and give each wheelbarrows to speed up collection.
Along the edges of the stockpile (or group of stockpiles), place outwardly-dumping track stops.  Then, place a single 1x1 custom stockpile in the tile each track stop will dump to, and make it so it only takes from links (and do not set any links).

At this point, you can do what you want with it.  I generally start with organizing my stone and ore, though you can easily have it organize furniture.  In my case, I will set the big stockpile to only accept the type of stone I have the most of, and off my dozens of idling dwarfs will run to stockpile it.  I then setup a route, named appropriately (like Granite) and put a single stop on top of any of the Track Stop (this will put the mine-cart there).  Delete the preloaded Stop settings, and simply tell it to take from the big stockpile (or aaaaall the little ones), and set the desired item to whatever you want (Granite, in my case).  Assign a mine cart to the route, and voila.  Your minions will now not only take the desired item to the stockpile, but also load it directly into the mine-cart, which, as it is sitting on a track stop, immediately dumps it into the 1x1 stockpile.

In most of my forts, I have a small version of these for Refuse (dumps an entire refuse stockpile onto a single 'Inside, light' tile to prevent miasma), Wood (goodbye massive wood stockpiles), and Stone (automatic stone organization once setup).  If I ever get a metal industry setup, I'll have another for that (Coal, Bars, etc).

It's very nice for stone gathering as, once you have it set up and are caught up on gathering the stone you dug out to date, the stockpile will keep up with it forever.  Dig out a new room or mining new ore?  All that stuff with be automatically tagged, picked up, and organized.

Here are a series of gifs that show the process; in them, its barely a year into the fort's lifetime, and I have just begun organizing the stone scattered around the fort.

Stockpile Overview
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Setting the Collection Stockpile
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Setting the Quantum Stockpile
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Setting up the Route
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Result
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And in case the gifs do not load here (still new to posting), here's the Imgur gallery with all of them:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

15
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Crossbow Range... 30+ tiles??
« on: July 04, 2014, 01:23:49 pm »
Hi!  Sorry if this has been posted before; quick google search and examination of the bug forums turned up nothing.  This is an odd bug I've noticed while doing single pick challenges.  The map is the exact same one Furnace Clans is on, tileset is Phoebus, and as clean an install as you can get (ignoring Cartilage modded into shells).

The setup I have is a 2z-tower with zero ground access to the enemy, and all enemies out of range of a legendary +5 Archer/Marksdwarf right up against fortifications.

Order the marksdwarf (pref. elite, so fortifications do not matter to him) to attack one of the out of range, inaccessible, enemies.  In this case, its a zombie well out of range of the tower.

The marksdwarf will then start machine-gunning bolts at everything (remember: everything is out of range) BUT the target.  In previous instances where I've seen this... oddity, I saw bolts fly 50+ tiles away at times.

In this case, the first bolt flies 33 tiles south and 11 tiles east... from a 1z high tower.  And nails a zombie in the upper front tooth.
The second?  Flies 39 tiles north and 33 tiles east, hits the zombie in the leg, and takes it down.

The marksdwarf will continue shooting at just about everything.  Until he runs out of ammo.  Cancel orders, he'll grab the next bit (I have an ammo stockpile, no bins, right under the tower).  Also interesting, I have never seen him take out his initial target.

-could not figure out how to post pics: therefore, imgur gallery link-
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Conjecturing, since I've seen this over multiple games, I imagine so long as the marksdwarf meets the following, he/she will have very high range:

A)Told to kill a target he is out of range of
B)Not able to access target to get closer
C)Has bolts
D)Is in a position where range is the ONLY issue (i.e. up against fortifications as low level marksdwarf, but otherwise clear line of sight to enemy)

O, and the guy hanging out by the u shaped bit of walls south of the tower?  He's my vampire janitor, dumping the bodies down into a shooting gallery 12 or so z-levels below.

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