691
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: How do I fix a well if winter freezing causes the overflow?
« on: January 24, 2018, 06:20:36 pm »
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692
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Optimized Embark Builds
« on: January 24, 2018, 05:32:09 am »
Thing with setting on embark high levels in a skill, which gets used rarely or a lot, but only on rare occasion is that skills deteriorate extremely fast. Those skill points spent on embark turn into lv1 (dubbling) just in few years time frame. This is why I take under consideration aptitudes of Dwarves for the skills and give them just +1 in some of those. If skill gets used, then they'll skill like a lightning. Recently I started considering to turn skills off from immigrants, as I can have a talented but unskilled Dwarf going legendary almost in the same time extremely unable immigrant Dwarf getting his skill from lv14 (high master) to lv16 (legendary). You don't need even spreadsheet for that. Just "u"-"enter" to check Dwarves in the list for their attributes and then with "u"-"y" you can leave remarks in their custom profession name. Also there is no mechanism in vanilla DF to check quality and value of workshops, bridges and other structures, so there is no point with those.
Lets be honest. Greatest challenge on embark is covering basic needs and shelter from wild life. Not maintaining skills sky high. It is matter of 1st season if not 1st year survival. Sometimes you need to greedily dig into 1st cavern for resources or just hide underground from immediate dangerous elements. You need to dig that cave asap and move all your stuff inside, then cover entrance with some wall, if not bridge. For that you need woodcutters to asap remove annoying trees on surface (if you cut them down later, trees will create holes in your cave's roof). Then you need miners. A lot. You need also some basic combat skills for your 7 Dwarves to fend off predators in your immediate area without any inflicted wounds. Discipline, observation, striking and kicking seem most efficient to shorten fight. Wrestling combines with biting and prolongs it, endangering your Dwarves to receiving wounds. When I had wrestling on one of my embarks bird of prey efficiently removed one leg on a wrestling Dwarf. What a fail.
Lets be honest. Greatest challenge on embark is covering basic needs and shelter from wild life. Not maintaining skills sky high. It is matter of 1st season if not 1st year survival. Sometimes you need to greedily dig into 1st cavern for resources or just hide underground from immediate dangerous elements. You need to dig that cave asap and move all your stuff inside, then cover entrance with some wall, if not bridge. For that you need woodcutters to asap remove annoying trees on surface (if you cut them down later, trees will create holes in your cave's roof). Then you need miners. A lot. You need also some basic combat skills for your 7 Dwarves to fend off predators in your immediate area without any inflicted wounds. Discipline, observation, striking and kicking seem most efficient to shorten fight. Wrestling combines with biting and prolongs it, endangering your Dwarves to receiving wounds. When I had wrestling on one of my embarks bird of prey efficiently removed one leg on a wrestling Dwarf. What a fail.
693
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Optimized Embark Builds
« on: January 23, 2018, 04:52:43 am »
I had once FB idling on side of my well in a cavern. Not moving even to attack passing by Dwarves for some reason. It seems FB needs 1 empty space to be able to destroy its target. It is a bug. I guess the upward hatch trick exploits this bug in FB behavior.
694
DF Suggestions / Re: Militia arts: simple tactics to improve effectiveness of groups.
« on: January 23, 2018, 04:34:37 am »To be honest, allowing your squads to do something besides "run directly into the enemy and desperately bludgeon them to death" would totally be of use to dwarf fortress players.
That, and if you simply just set their behaviors to default, your squads won't have much of an impact on fps taking on certain targets.
Have you looked into optimizing ram latency and frequency in your computer upgrades?
Maybe you are right there. Since I upgraded from 32bit os to 64bit os, I need more RAM indeed.
695
DF Suggestions / Re: Militia arts: simple tactics to improve effectiveness of groups.
« on: January 23, 2018, 04:30:12 am »FPS is something that the devs indeed need to take into account.
But really I don't agree that it would be harder on the FPS to have a proper tactic system. The main FPS hit is pathfinding and having the whole squad act in a unified manner would be good for FPS inherantly since less pathfinding needed.
I did 10+ embarks, just because pathfinding as main issue hitting FPS was suggested. So I tried to wiggle my fortresses around different architectures. I found out that 20k blocks is more efficient fps killer, then any pathfinding ever could. More bricks I put in, the slower pace game run at INHERENTLY no matter how I put them.
Furthermore walling around embarks (just 6 tiles from map's edge) and leaving 4 3-tiles wide entrances and building a lot of roads around at edges and to center of map to my fortress usually hit my fps at worst extremes. With just 1-3 land animals pathing their way around to half enclosed forest areas and that was on my large 220 Dwarves colony embark. Just 1-3 animals? Not all those bricks I put in into walls and roads? It just doesn't inherently make sense.
It is not pathfinding that kills inherently FPS, but amount of bricks put into construction. 10k bricks hello 20fps, 20k bricks hello 10 fps, 40k bricks hello 1-2 fps. Do you get it? Even if you excavate by channeling and pave with bricks and roads everything to be on same level. Constructions inherently kill FPS, not pathfinding issues.
696
DF Suggestions / Re: Separate the character limit for combat reports and announcements
« on: January 23, 2018, 04:18:19 am »
I second martinuzz's suggestion. Queues for reports and announcements should be separate.
3000 entries for reports is ok. Nobody reads those anyhow. Unless something weird or buggy is happening. Plus they get written like 10 pages in one second during sparing, hunting and so on.
200 entries for announcements. It shouldn't be too long. 10 pages to scroll through is overkill imho.
3000 entries for reports is ok. Nobody reads those anyhow. Unless something weird or buggy is happening. Plus they get written like 10 pages in one second during sparing, hunting and so on.
200 entries for announcements. It shouldn't be too long. 10 pages to scroll through is overkill imho.
697
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Tavern but no visitors?
« on: January 22, 2018, 06:00:48 pm »
On lowest settings, you get off with Goblin civ, Dwarven civ and Human/Elf civ. 3 civilizations in total on lowest settings smallest world. I know I play it. It doesn't help much with fps though. In 0.44.05, if you use "c"-ivilization interface and scroll over settlements you can see their population. Except your own settlement, for some reason known only to Toady.
On my embark I have goblin tower +200 population, my own fortress 110 pop, mountain home 0 civilized population and Human town +100 population. In locations you can set your restrictions for visitors. On my embark it took like one month, not even whole season, for a Human singer to show up, when I put in my first location in, which was tavern. However, I did build pretty extensive fortress by then like almost 20k quartz blocks and i had already quite few adamantine artifacts, worth like 1m each to back it up. I slapped "citizens only", as soon as I saw the visitor. After few years singer was still idling in my fort. Visiting guards of Human diplomat were constantly giving him beatings. Probably because he was nude. There was lots of blood each time and teeth. He wasn't leaving or applying for anything. Just idling in my general meeting area for ever. I just got tired and atom smashed him in my mass pit. I just see no point with visitors. Plus underground they get cave adaptation and above ground Dwarves refuse to clean. So it is just too huge harassment to keep visitors and try to keep fortress clean. DF is just bad with cleaning filth. Rain and bath do spawn entire new blood pools annoyingly, which is illogical. But this is not on topic now.
Make sure your fortress is worth few Dwarf bucks.
Make sure except your civilization and Goblin one, there is at least Elven or Human with some civilized population.
Wait a month.
However I have no idea, if there is some minimum population required for visitors too. I didn't see anything about that in init files.
On my embark I have goblin tower +200 population, my own fortress 110 pop, mountain home 0 civilized population and Human town +100 population. In locations you can set your restrictions for visitors. On my embark it took like one month, not even whole season, for a Human singer to show up, when I put in my first location in, which was tavern. However, I did build pretty extensive fortress by then like almost 20k quartz blocks and i had already quite few adamantine artifacts, worth like 1m each to back it up. I slapped "citizens only", as soon as I saw the visitor. After few years singer was still idling in my fort. Visiting guards of Human diplomat were constantly giving him beatings. Probably because he was nude. There was lots of blood each time and teeth. He wasn't leaving or applying for anything. Just idling in my general meeting area for ever. I just got tired and atom smashed him in my mass pit. I just see no point with visitors. Plus underground they get cave adaptation and above ground Dwarves refuse to clean. So it is just too huge harassment to keep visitors and try to keep fortress clean. DF is just bad with cleaning filth. Rain and bath do spawn entire new blood pools annoyingly, which is illogical. But this is not on topic now.
Make sure your fortress is worth few Dwarf bucks.
Make sure except your civilization and Goblin one, there is at least Elven or Human with some civilized population.
Wait a month.
However I have no idea, if there is some minimum population required for visitors too. I didn't see anything about that in init files.
698
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Entrance dwarf washer?
« on: January 22, 2018, 05:40:01 am »
Inside of my fortress I have soap, hospital area with soap in chests with 2 wells and water source area with 3 wells. Still my Dwarves never ever bath. It is so depressing. I think the only time I saw Dwarves taking bath, when I have build my water reservoir on surface beside my fortress and put couple wells on its top. Dwarves simply couldn't stop washing themselves there. I do not know what I am doing wrong. It suppose to be simple. Water, well, soap and dirty Dwarf needing bath. Bathing was giving them good thoughts, if I recall it correctly.
699
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Closing Caverns
« on: January 22, 2018, 05:30:19 am »
I think introducing your own species into biomes, like alpacas, would solve this issue. However, how do you make domesticate alpacas to roam surface area in a semi-wild fashion? If you put pasture, then animals will go out from it (vultures? bird of prey?, you need to roof it too it seems, so say good bye to trees) and force Dwarves to perform useless "pasture animal" job. Maybe, if you wall every big pasture leaving a single door in it (+ roof maybe?). However with every 1000 quartz blocks you put in, the fps will go further and further down. More animals will cause same effect. Overgrazing will come slowly into play and there is no location for pastures, so you could redefine some auto-butcher jobs on pastures. Anyhow wild life will chew still on your fps and you can always start your own alpacas farming to get more tanned skins. I found that when you put wall 6 tiles away from edge of the map, all around your embark, suddenly for some unknown reason your fps drops drastically. Animal pathing issues?
700
DF Suggestions / Custom naming stockpiles and _WORKSHOPS_.
« on: January 22, 2018, 05:20:50 am »
OMG that would be so helpful. Renaming both stockpiles and _WORKSHOPS_. It would do miracles for players when linking production chains in vanilla clients. Quantum Stockpiling automation made easier. [MOAN: Why mining carts can't be loaded directly from linked workshops btw? It would stop Dwarves from stealing stockpiled items during their transport... "shoo shoo shoo go away with your grabby hands Dwarf, those not master quality to be owned"] Temporary production chain linking made possible, without deleting all links after usage and then to redefine old links (if you still remember those).
DFHack abusers got cntr-shift-n to do it, while vanilla clients users are so so so left out, like left lonely in dark crying into pillow themselves to sleep.
~
DFHack abusers got cntr-shift-n to do it, while vanilla clients users are so so so left out, like left lonely in dark crying into pillow themselves to sleep.
~
701
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Rename Stockpiles?
« on: January 22, 2018, 05:05:22 am »
OMG that would be so helpful. Renaming both stockpiles and workshops. It would do miracles for players when linking production chains in vanilla clients. Quantum Stockpiling automation made easier. Temporary production chain linking made possible, without deleting all links after usage to redefine old links (if you still remember those).
702
DF Suggestions / Re: Militia arts: simple tactics to improve effectiveness of groups.
« on: January 22, 2018, 04:58:41 am »
If this tactics would stop archers rushing to front to bash enemies with their crossbows, then everyone playing this game would be for this improvement. Unless...
However this would be entire new expansion, military expansion, and would probably further slow an already dying to low fps game. Now, this I don't think many would be for, especially this improvement would impact mostly adventure mode.
Next expansion is magic. I think I read somewhere on forum, there was in development thought of expansion dealing with low fps death of fortress once upon time... Long time forgotten maybe. Whatever cures the weight of 20k+ quartz blocks spent on constructions from impacting my fps I am all for it.
However this would be entire new expansion, military expansion, and would probably further slow an already dying to low fps game. Now, this I don't think many would be for, especially this improvement would impact mostly adventure mode.
Next expansion is magic. I think I read somewhere on forum, there was in development thought of expansion dealing with low fps death of fortress once upon time... Long time forgotten maybe. Whatever cures the weight of 20k+ quartz blocks spent on constructions from impacting my fps I am all for it.
703
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Optimized Embark Builds
« on: January 20, 2018, 08:21:29 am »
I've been forced through "sorry but I can't deal any more with this <cough!>" mechanism into doing quite few embarks. These days I do not open caverns at all, when digging for lava for example. So my setup is to get things organized asap and have as many Dwarves doing stuff as possible. Specially if I need to dig for some reason into one of the 3 caverns.
I got spread sheet system going for jobs, which is based on attributes required by the jobs. Attributes go in range 4,-4. I read Dwarves attributes into sheet and it sums up those negative and positive points on second page in list of jobs. There I can see then the highest scorers and jobs fastest learners. Then I go adding just 1 skill point on all those fast learners.
1. Organizer+social things+(Cook) (sociopath focus? social creepy crawler?) (creativity for cooking)
2. Broker+social things+(Miner/Engraver) (focus on memory+intelligence+intuition, judge of intent rly)
3. Carpenter (Woodcutter + all crafts, later on) (creativity focus)
4. Grower+Herbalist+Record Keeper (I add Brewer later on and limit harvesting to growers only) (strength focus for growing/brewing) (memory focus for herbalist and record keeper, can be assigned on any Dwarf really)
5. Mason+(Miner/Engraver)
6. All-Doctor+(Miner/Engraver)
7. Mechanic+Building Designer (high intelligence focus)
I give all my Dwarves +1 in conversationalist, discipline, dodging, (striking), (kicking) and shield using.
Because sometimes DF throws in Dwarves with different sets of attributes, the job setups could change from time to time, but I always send administration workers and masons mainly into mining and always supplement carpenter with wood cutting. Also I send them all in with 5 picks and 2 battle axes (copper preferably), brew, something to eat, anvil, 2 dogs, 2 cats and just in case 3 stones (for mechanisms). Rest can always be made on place and if not found on surface, then always in caves.
I got spread sheet system going for jobs, which is based on attributes required by the jobs. Attributes go in range 4,-4. I read Dwarves attributes into sheet and it sums up those negative and positive points on second page in list of jobs. There I can see then the highest scorers and jobs fastest learners. Then I go adding just 1 skill point on all those fast learners.
1. Organizer+social things+(Cook) (sociopath focus? social creepy crawler?) (creativity for cooking)
2. Broker+social things+(Miner/Engraver) (focus on memory+intelligence+intuition, judge of intent rly)
3. Carpenter (Woodcutter + all crafts, later on) (creativity focus)
4. Grower+Herbalist+Record Keeper (I add Brewer later on and limit harvesting to growers only) (strength focus for growing/brewing) (memory focus for herbalist and record keeper, can be assigned on any Dwarf really)
5. Mason+(Miner/Engraver)
6. All-Doctor+(Miner/Engraver)
7. Mechanic+Building Designer (high intelligence focus)
I give all my Dwarves +1 in conversationalist, discipline, dodging, (striking), (kicking) and shield using.
Because sometimes DF throws in Dwarves with different sets of attributes, the job setups could change from time to time, but I always send administration workers and masons mainly into mining and always supplement carpenter with wood cutting. Also I send them all in with 5 picks and 2 battle axes (copper preferably), brew, something to eat, anvil, 2 dogs, 2 cats and just in case 3 stones (for mechanisms). Rest can always be made on place and if not found on surface, then always in caves.
704
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: How do you handle Clothing?
« on: January 20, 2018, 07:36:38 am »These armor values may not apply to cloaks, since they do not have an "armor level" value in this chart, which makes them just another type of clothing on the chart and the only difference in combat may be based on the material's raw values (leather and plant cloth). I don't know what data is implemented in the combat system and am no expert on it.
I think you will find quite few topics on this forum on the subject of how useful are leather cloaks in military and in combat. There are positives if you can change sharp attack into blunt one. People gathered this knowledge through !SCIENCE!. It does not matter, if this makes sense, but DF military just works better with those leather cloaks. Even better is adamantine cloaks, but as it gets worn down as regular cloth, judged as extreme waste of candy *(just delete waffles in inorganic_material.txt and you'll go further with bars). Cloth cloaks help just so little in combat, they are generally ignored for military usage. Though Dwarves claiming expensive colored pig tail master quality cloaks, won't grab your precious cheap master quality leather cloaks. Here are few examples of those topics, some dating from 2011. I don't play DF for so long, but military system in DF is not updated, bug fixed, balanced, changed or added new features on yearly basis. If search engine on this forum is not working decently, just use Google with "Dwarf Fortress" and "bay12forums" in your search phrase.
"Cloaks, mandatory for military? " www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=89811.0
"Uniform design" www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98200.msg2862995#msg2862995 *(4 cloaks!)
"Ok so one of my dwarves claimed a masterwork adamantine cloak" http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=144373.0 *(hahaha! How typical.)
You read forum long enough, you better learn how DF works, then even Wiki wants you to know. Forum is far superior source of information on this topic over Wiki currently.
705
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: How do you handle Clothing?
« on: January 20, 2018, 12:12:09 am »Are pig tail cloth cloaks just as good as pig leather cloaks?
cloth's defense value = 0
leather's (bone's, shell's, wood's) defense value = 1
metal defense value = 2/3
master quality = +1
I wasn't doing this !science!, I just read on forum a lot of posts on this. Though I believe Wiki on armor topic should have this information too. You should also check on densities Wiki page, when setting up armor and weapon's material choices. I did. One of the unfortunate reasons I have in my artifact list lousy but named leather shields.
dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor
"
Types of armor
In terms of classifications, armor can be classed into three different types. The first is clothing, made of leather or cloth. Clothing can only deflect very weak attacks - say, a raven bite - but nonetheless can dampen damage. Most dwarves will be wearing clothing; those that aren't will usually be very unhappy, babies, or insane. The second type is leather and bone armor, which is specialized for the purpose from clothing; it is very weak, but still better than nothing. The last type is true metal armor, made at a metalsmith's forge; it is this armor that is made by an armorsmith, and should be used by a serious military.
Though all clothes can protect from damage, a "true" suit of armor consists of the following pieces, one cell from each column.
Torso Head Arm Leg Feet Shields (block attacks)
Mail Shirt (upper body + lower body + neck + upper arms + upper legs) and/or Breastplate (upper body + lower body)
Helms
Gauntlets (hands + wrists)
Greaves, made of plate
High boots (feet + lower legs)
Shield
Leather armor (upper body + lower body)
Cap
Gloves (hands)
Leggings, made of chain
Low boots (feet)
Buckler
The first row is the more effective choice, while the second row is an alternative offering less protection.
Note that if a mail shirt is combined with high boots, explicit leg covering can be omitted. (Dwarves don't have knees to protect, so upper leg from the shirt and lower leg from the boot is complete).
"