Bay 12 Games Forum

Your biggest challenge there would be that children will harvest and haul, but they wont do any of the essential jobs like planting, building, brewing, mining.

If you don't mind being rather exploity I think the ideal final setup for a one adult fort would be to setup a magma glass furnace and a sand collection zone and have him produce an infinite supply of masterwork serrated green glass discs and use those to buy everything you need off the caravans.
And also to stock the weapon traps you will need since you won't be able to form a militia.

Green glass discs?

I am actually playing an above ground fort at the moment, purely by accident. I embarked above an aquifer near a necrotower and focussed on throwing a wall up and putting a roof over that just in case of a second season siege, and my population grew so quickly that I ended up deciding piercing the aquifer wasn't worth the effort until things were stabilised. I have to say, above ground forts, while more difficult, are way more fun. At the time of my last save, I have 60 dwarves milling around behind the locked gates of my 3 storey little wooden keep, hoping the food doesn't run out before the undead stop milling around outside. The whole "to the keep!" Business is much more fun than sealing the gates and letting life continue as normal underground

You make me want to do what you're doing very badly.  My next settlement will be above ground only!  A worthy challenge!  Of course, after I brave this [TERRIFYING] biome.

Hm.

I don't enable aquifers.  Too much work in my opinion.  It really takes away from the game and creativity of embarks.

Are they active?

I don't usually go lazy, but I remember my best one was when I was still learning...
"Oh, this is game is very complex... Dwarves need rooms to sleep... And I must build those workshops for them to cook and eat... Wait, they can sleep on the ground too? And I can make workshops anywhere I want? Screw that digging stuff, I'm staying here!"
That was my first no digging fort, my second attempt at playing and I survive until the second goblin siege, since I didn't knew how to equip dwarves nor how to make weapons,  so my military were a bunch of bearded mud wrestlers.

So, when I first started playing, I would make rooms by just doing [SHIFT] and then do a square out of those.  Even worse so, I made rooms that were 8x8's... for regular commoners!  Ha!  How unthinkable now!  Just give 'em a 2x2 place to put their crap and get out!

So, first and foremost, Hello!

I was looking over the forums for a while and decided that there needs to be a place where all of these !!Science!! experiments can be compiled.  A place where we scientists, whether we study the most effective way to give warmth to kill dwarfs, or make a revolutionized defense system, can post our findings.  Whatever we do, it must be compiled and documented in a comprehensive place!

I urge all of you below to post your findings.  Once you post, I shall copy and paste it up on top here.  Comment on other people's and enjoy!  It would be great if you could do it in this format below;

Experiment Name:
Scientist:
What are you trying to solve/accomplish?:
Diagram (Optional):
How does it work?:
Did it work?:
Materials:
Link to another thread:

List of Science Experiments

None so far

Well then chaps, time for some !!SCIENCE!!