Bay 12 Games Forum

I'd also like to see a tunneling creature. Some sort of Xorn or something that slowly chews it's way through rocks randomly, digging out a passageway, with ramps leading up and down as it meandered throughout the area. You could then find a passageway that tells you a lot about your mountain. Or maybe it finds YOU, and rampages through your fort. Or maybe just runs away, if it's benign.

It could also flood you with water or magma if the xorish thing dug through the wrong tile! Which could be fun. Although I could see them avoiding warm and damp stone.

Also, it could be set to [EAT_SOIL] [EAT_ROCK] [EAT_ORE] to add interesting effects. Have one type that only wanders through the soil, like a giant earth-worm. One that eats only rocks, going around veins and clusters of ore as indigestable. And another that will eat through anything. Although maybe Adamantine should always be indigestible, so you don't have HFS running around without warning of any kind.

Huh. Never noticed that before. Thanks for pointing it out!

I think I'll correct that for my Mod.

Yeah, I'd rather have golems then robots.

More mechanisms will be fun, though. It's one of the ways I impress people with the game, talking about the elaborate trap systems I set up in some of my forts.

Don't forget designating a vein and having miners auto-mine it, rather than you baby-sitting them the whole way.

I know toady has said that he has plans for that one.

Um...all the posts so far are assuming that he wants to get a fort up and running as fast as possible.

What if he wants to know how to run a fort that gets good FPS?

Guess I'll throw out a few tips for both.

First, for FPS:
1) Build a cage for all non-working animals. (Excluding a few cats who's job is to run around and eat rats and whatnot). Later on animals make for a giant mess and eat up FPS like crazy. Stuck in a cage, they don't slow things down much. Due to the quantum nature of DF cages, you can have any number of animals in one cage without any problems.

2) Build large hallways to avoid congestion. 3 tiles wide is decent for main walkthroughs, 2 for side passages. Only areas that need good defense or are very rarely visited should be 1 tile wide. Large is better, depending on your layout.

3) Most other FPS related issues really have to do with z-levels, liquids, and population. The wiki should have some good info on those.

Now, for getting a fort up and running quickly, here's my build:

1 dedicated miner
1 miner/mason/stoneworker
1 woodcutter/carpenter
1 farmer/brewer/cook
1 fisherdwarf (replace with herbalist/farmer/marksdwarf/whatever as appropriate for the map)
1 smith (skills in all areas, although you could probably ditch blacksmithing)
1 Trader/admin

I keep the anvil, ditching both axes.
With those extra points, I take:
2 dogs, 1 cat
10 extra turtle
a few of each seed. You don't need more then 4-5 of each
a rope for a well
2 silk thread, to be turned into cloth later and saved for moods
1 charcoal to kickstart my forge
10 tetrahedrite ore.
  4  of these will be smelted for copper and maybe a silver. Make an axe or two, a crossbow, and some bolts out of the copper.
  6 will be turned into Billon. These are worth as much as 1 silver and 1 copper bar, but you only get silver 1/5th of the time, I think. It may be a bug, but you effectively get free wealth by doing this. These all get turned into crafts.
1 platinum ore. Turned into crafts. You can get as much as 2-3k at the first caravan with this, if you're lucky. At worst, you get 400. I usually get 1200-2000.
30 bituminous coal
30 tower-caps

Extra points are spent on skills. If I have some left over after my critical skills are filled, I may grab extra booze, coal, or tetrahedrite.

Once I embark, I set my miner to ONLY mine. No other tasks.
I then designate my initial entryway and a dumping area inside which eventually becomes my trade depot area. I put a food stockpile there at first, so get all the food inside quickly.

 The woodcutter, trader, and farmer are all given plant gathering and set to gathering some plants. Fisher, too, if the map starts frozen. The trader is made a jack-of-all trades.

The miners keep clearing out all required rooms, starting with my workshop area, then the farms, and so on. My smith starts doing nothing by smelting and smithing ASAP. Once the farm is in, the farmer is moved over to only doing food related tasks. As soon as stockpiles are in place and everything has been moved, I start worrying about things like making beds, training the dogs, etc.

The 30 towercaps let me make 7 bed, 3 buckets, 10 barrels, and 10 bins. Everything I need for the first year, wood-wise. Which is how I get by without an axe until the smith gets around to making it.

Usually by the time the caravan shows up, I've got good food stores, thousands worth in crafts to trade, and a fort with a dining hall, bedrooms, and a well. I usually have an entrance that is protected by a drawbridge ready as well. Playing with modded enemies who can siege the first winter teaches you to move fast!

I always make sure I have my well ready before the water freezes, just in case.

So far, this basic pattern has worked well for every fort I've had. Barring the ones where some enemy runs in and kills me before the migrants show up, of course.

Once I get it finished I'll post my giant Bridge. It's functional now, but the railing, gate towers, and waterfalls aren't in yet.

Well, I played Starcraft 2 at Blizzcon last year and I can say it won't dissapoint. Truly awesome. Can't wait for it to come out.

As for Diablo III...it looks nice. I'll be interested to see how well it actually does. Knowing Blizzard, though, it won't suck. It might not be the best game ever, but they won't release it if it sucks. *shrug*

Personally, I wish they'd go back towards the Diablo 1 style of play instead of moving forward with the Diablo II style. I LIKED that fact that I had to be careful. I liked the gothic horror aspects. I liked knowing that if I got surrounded by goatmen I was toast. You had to think! Even basic monsters required strategy. In 2, the only things that required any strategy were the bosses. And it looks like they're going even further in that direction.

A pity. But, if it's anything like 2 I'll be able to mod it. And then I can play the game I want.

Wow. My compliments to everyone involved in this story. It's truly epic! I've been reading it slowly for the past...week or two I think.

If you ever get some more migrants, can I claim a dwarf? Make him/her a swordsdwarf named Runeblade. That can be the last name, if you prefer. Or a custom title. Hmm...that's a cool thought. A dwarf who inscribes runes on his blade in the belief that it makes him a better warrior. If he doesn't start off as a swordsdwarf, have him engrave for a while to up his stats and give him some skill with runes.