Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Codyo on December 24, 2015, 11:29:45 am

I would argue that when a siege lasts long enough, people will get the message that, "Hey, this place has no traffic coming out of it, and there's a big goblin or undead army camped there. Let's not visit that fortress." So, visitors really shouldn't be flocking to their death in droves, like suicidal lemmings.

visitors can't be THAT stupid...right?

We are talking about a game were miners routinely channel out the floor they are standing on.  So... I'll let you answer that question.

There are always 3 cavern layers, unless you modified the world gen parameters.

If you use Basic world gen, or an "ISLAND" template in Advanced world gen, the magma is usually 100+ levels below the surface.  If you use a "REGION" template in Advanced world gen, the magma is usually ~50 levels down.  I really like the thinner REGION layouts.

A magma cannon is not a single construction.  It's more of a design archetype.  The essence is to unite your invaders with your magma, for the joy of togetherness.  Imagination and game mechanics are the only limits.

Probably the three most well-known magma weaponization solutions are the dodge-em trap over a magma pool; the magma waterfall; and the magma minecart shotgun.

Yeah, but I remember a post a while back about a guy who made so-called "magma cannons" to jettison out magma in pre-determined directions from a "bunker" in the middle of the map.  He even showed us screen-caps of trolls melting from the lava.  While this is most definitely an advanced construction that I don't even remember all the parts too, it qualifies, damnit! This is DF, Stupid Dwarf Tricks and convoluted feats of engineering are soul of the game!

Man, we have... 15? magma safe stones now.  They are in a rainbow of colors too! All forms of glass are also magma-proof.  Nickel has limited magma-safe uses, but can be made into floodgates and minecarts.  Iron and steel, naturally.  There are probably a few others.  Nethercap is -technically- magma safe, but I think nethercap minecarts and items still melt in it (bug, probably?)

All in all, its something like 30+ total materials (including some metal ores that are magma safe where their metals are not).

Yup, dorfs that roll a fell mood (due to unhappiness) will grab the nearest Urist they come across and kill them.  Their remains then become an artifact SOMETHING (either bone or leather).  There have been dwarf bone beds, dwarf bone bins, dwarf leather trousers... And since mother's always carry their infant for the first year of its life, said infant will -always- be the closest dorf to use in a fell mood.  Talk about post-partem depression...

Oh, an unhappy dorf can also go into a macabre mood, which will take an already dead thing and make an artifact.  Only the fell mood kills a dorf in hte process.

Quote from: tranquilham on December 23, 2015, 03:06:53 pm

... Can you artificially make a waterfall? Oh, and what about the magma hot spring baths? Would that work? Would the magma heat the water? Could I make an actual hot spring?

artificial waterfall, definitely, and trivially easy with a partial aquifer on the embark.  As for hot springs, not really, at least, not in the sense of warm water being any nicer or happiness-making than normal water, for dwarves.  You can make them walk through flooded areas, and they'll take soapy baths if you have a well and soap, but that's about it, afaik.

Yeah, "hot water" is basically just steam.  Similarly, "cold water" is ice.  Freezing is also instanteous and typically kills whatever falls into its new ice-tomb.  You can have "warm stone" that borders magma and will pause your game, undesignate he mining job, and give you a message about it, but there is no such labeling (nor benefits) for warm water.

The "Dwarven Mist Generator" can be installed into your dining hall.  Its usually just water being pumped over a grate.  As mentioned, aquifers simplify this, but you can pit/pond a few tiles worth of water to your dining room via buckets and get a closed system running.

Thank you everyone for the advice! So far, I've got a small place of 16 beds, and I'm aiming to dig down into the gabbro for DIAMONDS! Also, how would I know if a place has caves or not? Does every embark site have caves? Or is it just certain ones?

More questions, also:
1. Is there an estimate for about how deep the magma sea and cavern levels are? Is it even possible to estimate it?
2. Is there a way to transport rocks faster?
3. I used a quantum stockpile. Is that bad?
4. When do the invasions and megabeasts come?
5. Whats so dangerous about building above ground? In world gen, the above ground settlements don't seem to be murdered ruthlessly by gobbos.

That's all of my questions for now, but feel free to use this post to share your building style or whatever. I'd love to see how others plan out their things.

1. No.  Some worlds are "thinner" than others.  The magma can be at -40z, or -140z  Just... keep digging.  When you hit warm stone or semi-molten rock, you know you are in the right neighborhood.

2) Outside of wheelbarrows? Setting up minecarts.  They carry more for faster speeds, but take time to set up and must be handled with care.  A minecart loaded with ore will splatter any dorf caught in its path.  Minecarts are in-depth, I hate to say it but just read up on the wiki.

3) Its a matter of preference.  Some of us consider QSP's an obvious exploit and refuse to use them like the metal-duping exploit.  Others scream about QSP reducing FPS and say there is no cheating in a single-player game.  Its up to you to decide if you want to use them or not.

4) There are population and wealth milestones for Megabeasts.  I want to say 80 pop and 100k created wealth.  Werebeasts and tower invasions can come much sooner though.  I can't remember correctly if sieges just respond to wealth, and that FBs respect the population cap (or if its the other way around).  I just know to limit wealth before building up defenses.  The first fort I discovered how expensive prepared meals could be, I was ambushed within a year by gobbos (older version).

5) Aboveground is harder to defend.  Underground you can have 1 entrance to your fort that is easy to block off.  Aboveground you are attackable from all sides.  Add in climbing and flying enemies and you'll realize just how porous your settlement is in comparison.  So unless you build a single tower-fort fully enclosed with only one-two (sealable) entrances, you will have a hard time fully defending it.  I believe toady fixed/is fixing siege mounts too, so we can get squads of goblin bat-flyers on top of winged titans spewing necrotizing vomit from above.  Also, Keas.  @#$% keas.  There is also the set-up needed.  Building aboveground is a tedius block-by-block process that has to be designated in layers.  You can't build walls over floors either, so you have to carefully plan out hte room design of each "floor" while building a multi-story structure.  In contrast, a couple of miners can carve out x10 as much space with x10 quicker while PRODUCING materials (stone/ore/gems) to later refine.  Combine the two and most people don't bother with above-ground forts at all. 


Btw, every embark site has THREE caverns under it.  Each layer down increases in danger, but all spawn forgotten beasts.  The plant-life changes somewhat too.  You get different colored mushroom-trees mostly, but blood thorn and nethercap have some special properties.  Nethercap has a forced temperature of just above freezing, so its a fire AND magma safe wood.  Bloodthorn has a deep red color, but has the distinction of being the heaviest wood in the game.  I mostly save it for ballista bolts (that I transport via minecart due to how friggin heavy they are!), but it can be used for any other (wooden) object you want to be have more heft to it, or just like the deep-red color. 

As for their depth, they generally start at -8/10 for the first layer, but I've seen the first cavern appear as deep as -60.  You also have no guarantee to pierce it while digging a down-shaft, as you can dig through pillars or the walls of hte cavern without revealing it.  I'd just dig straight down to the SMR in one shaft (this also reveals what stone layers you have) and should pierce at least one cavern.  Then send down other shafts as needed to find the rest.  I then wall off the breaches until I'm ready to deal with that layer.  Piercing them lets you know where it is so you can design around it, if its dry or not (and thus lacking in trees or water for a cistern), and announces when the FBs arrive.  If you wait years to pierce a cavern, you can get immediately blinded by an FB that you were never told about.  It also releases spores, so that cavern plants/trees will begin sprouting on any underground soil/muddy stone. People use these to make underground pastures and tree farms. 

I've never seen this behavior before.  Civilians tend to run away from megabeasts in the first place... however you might have left an open path out of your fort besides that door (a tunnel somewhere that makes a diagonal connection outside?)

Doors make crappy fortress defense anyway- basically all your serious threats (megabeasts, FBs, Titans) are all building destroyers.  Goblins almost always arrive with dozens of BD trolls as well.  This is why we use (draw)bridges instead of doors.  One game I actually stopped to make a normal bridge over a canyon, and busted out laughing.  I was actually making a bridge to just be a bridge, instead of as a cheap floor/cheap roof/flood gate/gateway.