Bay 12 Games Forum

If I understand correct, I think that means:

1. the mine cart stops on the pressure plate and is heavy enough (probably worth checking).  An open signal is sent to the bridge.
2. 100 tics later the bridge closes (assuming is is hooked up correctly -- also worth checking).
3. After the cart stops on the pressure plate it waits for X tics.  Someone pushes it.  It leaves the pressure plate Y tics later.  It arrives at the bridge Z tics later.
4. As long as X + Y + Z > 100 tics, the bridge should be closed and the cart can cross it
5. As in #3, the cart leaves the pressure plate in X + Y tics.  As long as the pressure plate is empty (and no other cart arrives!!! also worth checking), 99 tics later the signal is sent to close the bridge.
6.  If a cart arrives within 99 tics of the previous one leaving, no signal will be sent to close the bridge and no second signal will be sent to open the bridge (which seems like the desired behaviour to me).
7. The bridge will close 100 tics after receiving the closing signal (X + Y + 99 + 100 if you are counting).
8. If Z (the time it takes the cart to arrive at the bridge) > 199, the cart will fall in the hole, because the bridge is closed again.  Keeping #4 in mind, imagine that someone happens to be around to push the cart and pushes it 10 tics after it arrives.  Let's say it only takes 1 tic to leave the pressure plate, that means that X+Y = 11.  So Z (the time it takes to arrive at -- well cross really -- the bridge) must be between 98 and 199 ticks.  Too early and the bridge won't have closed.  Too late and the bridge will open again.  So you have to measure precisely.  Oddly, the longer it takes someone to push the cart, the more leeway you have, but you can never exceed 199 ticks to cross the bridge.
9. If a second cart arrives more than 99 tics after the first cart leaves, then a new close signal will be send to the bridge.  However, if the bridge is currently opening (within the 100 tics of the open signal being sent), then the close signal will be ignored by the bridge.  For example, let's say that a second cart arrives at X + Y + 99 + 10 tics.  The pressure plate will send a close signal to the bridge, but the bridge is occupied for the next 90 tics and it will never arrive.  If someone pushes *this* cart, it will fall in the hole.  This means that new cars must either arrive within 99 tics of the previous one having left, OR more than 100 tics after the previous one left.

I *think* that's all the edge cases, but I might have missed some.  Looks like you can do it, but it will be slightly tricky to avoid problems.

These are difficult questions, but I will try to help :-)

1. Yes, you can increase skills.  Telling stories is strange, though.  It only increases the skill a very small amount.  I can increase the skill very, very slowly by telling stories and doing poetry.  Maybe there is a bug...

2. You are not doing anything wrong.  You need more social skill to increase the number of companions.  I think you can increase social skill by talking to people (state your values, ask about their feelings, etc).  But it is very, very slow.  You can also get more companions by rescuing them from attacking armies, or that kind of thing.  Again, I don't have very good information, so you might have to experiment.

3. You can start your own performing group.  Also, sometimes it is easier to recruit entertainers than warriors.  I haven't played with this very much, but I would like to.

Been trying to find the best mixture of weapons for dual wielding.

Hard to say whether you would consider this "dual weapon", but I've found that open hand and dagger is a surprising powerful option.  You can use the open hand to intercept attacks and also to grab shields and helmets.  The dagger is then quite useful for opening arteries and stabbing in the head/neck.  Probably not a fantastic combo for megabeasts, but works very well for wildlife and humanoids.  I'll often go completely empty handed and draw the dagger once my opponent is vulnerable, or sometimes start off with open hand and shield, swapping out the shield for the dagger at some point (useful tip: create space, throw shield, draw dagger).

A couple of things to keep in mind: Managers review the list daily *at most*.  So once you queue it, it takes a day to validate it, minimum.  I play at low FPS, so sometimes that first day seems like it takes a long time.  Also, if your manager decides to go pray, or drink, or individually practice, it can take more than a day.  Management jobs have a very high priority and don't take very long, so I almost never have problems, but very, very occasionally my manager seems to need a vacation.  I usually have a backup manager fill in for a while.  My managers always have a full slate of other things to do and manage to get their management duties done (unless they are doing military work).

I think the way to think about the manager tasks is for things (usually recurring) that you want to get done eventually, but you don't need done *right now*.  If you want to micro manage it, then going to the workshop directly is always the best way to do it.  But, for example, let's say you just want to make sure that you have a couple chairs in stock at all times, setting up a management task to make chairs when stocks are low is fine.  Then when you install a chair sometime, a day or so later, another chair turns up.  If you are careful, you can automate almost everything in your fortress and it is quite fun.  But at the end of the day, if you suddenly think, "Crap, I need X and I didn't anticipate it 3 weeks ago", then just build it by hand rather than wait the 2 or 3 days for your manager to organise it.  You can also do a hybrid approach where you think, "I need to make sure I keep 10 steel bars on hand at all times" and then you can micromanage making weapons when you need them, knowing that your smelter is always going to be building the steel bars you need in the background.

Hope that helps!

Although I realise it is unhelpful to the original request (for which I have no useful input), I'm curious as to why atheist dwarfs cause a problem for a theist based fortress.  If you want to have them all worshipping around some kind of alter, why not make the atheist's alter a library and have them perform scientific studies?  Or similar to Ironfang's suggestion, why not go with an "untouchable" class.  They can be used exclusively for butchering animals, tanning hides, carrying corpses, cleaning etc.  You could even build a shanty town for them to live in (maybe forcing them to live above ground).  This would not be without historical precedent.

The options seem endless and interesting, so I'm wondering what you have in mind that requires that every dwarf worships something.  I'm also wondering what you are thinking of doing about dwarfs that worship non-god entities.  Especially in worlds that still have mega-beasts, it is not unusual to have dwarfs worshipping them.

Hmm, I'm having trouble visualizing it then.

I don't blame you.  I went back and read it and *I* couldn't understand what I meant :-)  So let's try again.

Tunnel down one layer and dig a room.  That room is underground, so it is inside.  Now channel around the outside of the room, leaving the roof and walls intact.  The room is *still* inside because nothing has changed.  We just channelled away on the outside to make a relief of a building so that it appears as if it above ground, even though it is below ground.  I'm nearly 100% sure this will work because the contents of the room have never been exposed to the outside.  However the walls and roof are made of soil, which lacks some authenticity.

Now start again.  Dig the same room, but this time build walls around the room.  The walls are still inside.  Now channel out around the room again, exposing the walls (but not the inside of the room).  Now we have a room with a soil roof and built walls.  Is the inside of the room inside or outside?  I'm relatively sure that it is inside because the inside of the room has never been exposed to the outside, and I *think* the determination of what is inside/outside is done with a projection from top down (otherwise having a door would make your fortress outside).

Now start again.  Dig the same room.  Then build a floor.  Then dig a room under the first room.  In the lower room, build walls.  Then channel away the soil over the top room (being careful not to cave it in!) and then channel around the walls.  The result will be a building with a built ceiling and built walls.  I *suspect* that the interior of this building (the lower room) will be indoors.  That's because the contents were never exposed to the outdoors.  I *suspect* that the code does not distinguish between building material, but rather sets a flag whenever a tile is exposed to the outdoors.  In this case the roof (the floor of the upper room, which is now gone) is outside, but that won't translate into the lower room.  Basically, I'm guessing how Toady implemented it.  It would be easy to check, but I haven't gotten around to it.

As to why to do it?  This will allow you to have a tavern which is "indoors" while being thematically "outdoors".  This will allow the dwarfs to clean (blood, vomit, whatever).  As long as you have 2 layers of soil, the areas you channelled away will regrow with trees and bushes and stuff, so you will never know that it wasn't just an outdoor structure built in a depression.

Edit: I tried it, and it does, indeed, work.  I planted pigtails no problem in my house.  Channelling is a gigantic PITA, though...  Very likely an easier way is to leave the soil on top and then build a floor, rather than doing the double layer.  I suspect it will work fine.

OMG!  I never knew that.  Thanks a million for both the question asking and the question answering!

Good one.  I've noticed that bug too, but never got around to figuring out what it was.  I suppose that means if you always have a job size of 1, that it will work without cancellation.  I'll have to give it a try.