Bay 12 Games Forum

1. I believe so. I allow all my dwarves to select their own rooms, however, so I haven't actually tried.
2. Again, I'm not sure, but I believe it means that when set to shift between civilian and military clothing, the civilian/military pieces are stored here when the other set is used. Again, I haven't used this, as I have my military replace clothing and wearing uniform at all times.
3. It seems they will now gradually collect their stuff ("store owned item") over time, so I think they will actually collect their mess, given time. If you specify that they should wear uniform at all times (which I think is the default), this will not happen again until you change something in their uniform.
4. You actually have two barracks assigned to the same squad. It makes good role playing sense, but I don't think it makes a difference technically, i.e. I think you could place the beds in the same room as the training area. IF it makes a difference (in that sparring generates noise that disturbs sleep), you'd have to keep the sleeping barracks at least 8 tiles away from the sparring area (directly above is a single tile away).
Also, I don't think weapon racks etc. actually do anything, as I've never seen anything stored in them, so all you need is one of them to act as the anchor for the area. Again, role playing may want you to equip the rooms properly, and you may also want to increase the fortress value to attract attackers.

I don't find it weird, though. The webs weren't in the stockpile..
However, you might consider building a workshop exclusively for the purpose of hosting the web collection order on repeat.

Hm, good to know that trick works. I've wondered if it would, or if they would run away when magma comes flowing (since my embarks tend to be devoid of reasonable magma hauling capabilities [no iron, not even goblinite], I've tried water instead of magma, and a pressure plate activated by water to create a collapse on top of the titan or werebeast doing the destruction, but no candidates have showed up to test it).

Sorry if I'm dense, but I'm still not sure I get it.

To me it looks like you have two walls with a pump on top, and inside that, on the level below, another pump (presumably on a pair of floors) that feeds the first one.
If that's the case, you'd have needed to do some pumping to be able to build the first two walls in the water, on which the topmost pump is placed. The lower pump should only be possible to be constructed if the wall completely cut off a section of the sea (e.g. a bay), but if the section was cut off, yes, the pressure oddity would have the water level at one Z level lower than the ocean itself, while I think the second pump would fail to repeat the trick even after a second wall is built.

I'm not quite getting your description. Did you pump water away from a straight line of the water, or was it from a box around a patch of ocean?
In the second case, you should be able to pump water away faster than it was replenished, with the water pumped away draining from the ocean's edges rather than replacing water pouring into your hole from below.

There is also a pressure oddity that causes water that is pushed down and then up to only fill the second space to one Z level lower than the source. I've seen that with chambers dug into rock, but I guess you could also do it on the open ocean. If this is the case, the square should be possible to drain completely to 1 Z level below the ocean outside the square and it would stay that way (given that you've built a wall into the ocean in the pumped tiles), but when you'd start on the second Z level pressure would compete with your pumps. You should still be able to build a new level of walls where the pumps remove the water, but the inner square would constantly refill from below.

It's taken me quite a few years for trees to grow back in sparsely wooded areas, but I've had them eventually block my trade entrance despite it being protected by a paved road around it (Ended up with a paved road all the way to the edge).

In your case, I'd pave most or all of the map, or, alternatively, set the dwarven engineering corps to remove all soil from the map (a.k.a. strip mining).
The next time, you might want to embark in badlands or in mountains. My understanding is that there is no regrowth of anything in mountains (ruling out outdoor farming), while badlands support growth (including trees) only where the top level of soil is removed (and the layer below is soil as well).

I agree with utunnels that it looks like Urist somehow managed to climb into the fortification, which should not be possible if the layer above is untouched, regardless of whether the fortifications are dug or built. The only way it sort of should be possible is if you've had a strong flow of water, which are said to sometimes be able to carry stuff into fortifications, and I'm fairly sure you didn't have that.

Hm, I can actually think of a weird scenario: Up/down staircases "leak" downwards (I've had magma crabs invade from the still undiscovered magma sea this way). Check the level above the silk farm and see if there is an up/down staircase there (I suppose a down staircase behaves the same). If there is one directly above the fortification it might be possible to climb diagonally up into the staircase and then down into the fortification.

I've never tried it myself, but I've seen it said that a steel helmet will guarantee the survival of a webbed victim because the spider will attack immobilized targets with head bites exclusively, and the helmet ensures these bites are never successful. Unless rescued, the dorf will eventually die of starvation. That text might also relate to an earlier version of DF.

The silk farms I've built have used goblin volunteers or reanimated corpses as bait. The latter should work with both wild and tamed spiders, whereas I think the former requires a tamed spider.

True. Steel doors block "weak" building destroyers. However, stone doors do so as well, so while steel is better than wood, it's not better than stone.