Bay 12 Games Forum

Continue life as normal; dwarfs gave up on fission long ago, after discovering the secrets of magma.

WWUD if the magma sea were made of marmalade?

Egotistical dwarf is egotistical.  Pretentious, as a true artiste ought to be.

Build a minecart track, set to haul it.  Then completely ignore said minecart, and try to carry it by hand, anyways.

WWUD if he had cirrhosis?

Because magma?

Okay, I know, just kill the bastards.  That said:

Playing a succession fort (IronFist, if yer curious), and I just got to trading with the elves.  They gave me the classic 'now a rude bauble' speech - except that I have absolutely nothing wooden in the depot, never mind marked for trade.  Even the Depot is made of clay, not wood.

Is there anything else that can cause this message, or is this bugged, or....?

Cheers.

p.s.: It may be relevant that the Depot was not yet built when the traders arrived.  Upon building it, they pathed just fine to it; I don't see how it could cause this issue, but that's the only unusual thing about this trading experience.

You don't have to watch me browse the results of the 'find' menu, for example, you just need to know what the options mean for when you search your world.

It certainly would have been nice, and saved me many, many hours, if any other tutorial series' had looked at more than 'aquifer, flux, and metals' when using the <f>ind options on embark.  Heck, I wasn't aware that there was ANY reason whatsoever to allow an aquifer, until I first watched Andrakon's SPC series.  Now, I search FOR aquifers, instead of avoiding them.

When I was a total noob, it never occurred to me that temperature, elevation, or even hitting <Tab> and the <F1, F2. . . > keys were an important part of choosing an embark.  This is definitely a place where you can easily improve on what's already existent on YT.  The number of vicarious facepalms I go through, watching 'tutorial' videos, these days....

It depends on how you use it... which may mean a tutorial in itself.

True; the same can be said for the in-game UI as well.  The difference being that there are already plenty of tutorials that use DT; there aren't, however, (m)any that don't.  A tutorial on the in-game controls would probably be more useful to Mac and Linux players, as well - AFAIK, DT is iffy at best on non-windows platforms.

Machinery, as well, is rarely touched on in tutorial videos (beyond 'here's how to hook up an atomsmasher bridge' that is).  A great niche that needs filling is the application of machinery to non-defense tasks.  How does one, really, set up a proper pumpstack?  The most recent video I've seen on that was from DF2010, and poorly-made at that (as far as production, not content).  How exactly does an impulse ramp work, and what's the advantage?  You are, after all, a proven expert on that particular topic. 

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Basically, with the caveat that I personally will support whatever DF content is spread around (even the downright awful vids I've seen!), I humbly suggest you play to your strengths: there are already plenty of basic tutorials; there are few (if any) that cover the sorts of topics you've expounded on in these very fora.  Remembering the the past year or so of play, it wasn't until I started watching non-tutorial videos that I personally even realized just how deep the rabbit hole goes; seeing a successful minecart shotgun does a lot more to motivate a player like me to learn the basics than yet another 'here's how to build a farm plot' video.

But, once again, you know your subs and your interests better than I ever will.

I, personally, prefer challenge embarks - my dorfs tend to tantrum even when I do my best to keep them happy, what with the shambling corpses, piles of miasma, and general murderousness of my embark zones.

I find the real joy in this game to be bringing a population back from the brink.  Start out with everyone miserable; then it feels like more of an accomplishment when I can keep even one or two legendary dorfs in ecstasy.

Once you've set up QSPs a few times, you can do it very quickly. Just remember to set the giving stockpile first, so you don't have to make two trips to the routes screen.

This is true.  It was some months ago that I first learned to properly use minecart QSPs; haven't looked back since.  The main reason I opened this thread was due to a (semi) argument in a succession fort: I'd spent hours setting up minecart piles, linking them to other spots, and micromanaging what's in them - only to have a kibbitzer berate me for poor organization.

Is there any empirical evidence (# of dorf actions, dorf steps, time to setup and use, etc) to support one system over the other?

I understand that a lot of it is situational; a one-tile dump zone is still how I remove rocks from a foundry's magma cistern, for example.  From the first couple responses (thank you, btw), it seems that the minecart system is more efficient in the long run.

Perhaps, instead of asking others, I'd best just spend a couple hours doing the research for myself.  Cheers.