Bay 12 Games Forum

Well, I've been using Photoshop, which isn't an accessible tool for all, but it works like a charm.

Open your file, go to 'Save As', Format 'BMP', choose Windows, 24 bit. Just works.

Have you tried GraphicConverter? It's ancient and kludgy, but it's great at stuff like this.

Remove the grasper tag from hands.

So once it's dropped then (since nobody can pick anything up...) I just make sure he's not equipped for crossbow, change the tag back and you think that'll take care of it?

Nothing beats vertical designs in terms of efficiency, except possibly noise issues

Agreed. Put your bedrooms in a vertical stack along one side of the fortress and put a storage zone between the rooms and workshops - barrels, bins, bags, etc. appropriate for the production on that level. Put nobles on the bottom because who cares how long it takes for them to get to their bed.

Make leggings. You recover 1/2 a bar melting it down for every bar you use, so it's the cheapest in terms of metal consumption. It'll cost you 300 bars of metal (30 bins) to go from no skills up to legendary. You can knock about 20 bars off since you already have a plain armor smith.

Cross-train

Grab a dwarf, even one legendary in something, and train them up in glassmaking, or gem cutting, etc. with hauling turned off. You never know when your sole carpenter takes a stray arrow to the heart. Not only does it keep that dwarf busy but usually keeps a handful more busy hauling their wares away. If you have 20+ idle dwarves, training 2-3 is a good idea.

I don't spend much time designing, actually - that is, with the game not running. I might take 10 minutes at embark to come up with a rough plan. Instead, I build very slowly and while I wait for things to happen plot out the next little bit.  Water and magma projects may not get started for 3-5 years game time while I noodle on what I want to do, so instead I work on defenses or farms or workshops or whatever.

Sounds like you have 30 dwarves supporting the entire fortress. That *should* be enough as the military really only needs food/booze.

I've got a rather large sprawling fortress with 72 dwarves, only 32 of which are productive (the rest military, nobles, or kids). They have no problem feeding everyone (I do a 30 lavish/30 booze run every year or two and keep a 4x4 farm going all the time), and I can't do everything at once, but I have no problem keeping 1-2 dwarves on skilling tasks (I'm currently skilling up my gem cutter and glass maker).

The worst problem is when the military does their thing and I have to haul all of the gobbo crap. Simply moving where I engage the enemy closer to my trade depot has helped considerably. But I've only got 2 marksdwarves in training and 4 melee (2 legendary wrestlers, 2 legendary wrestlers/hammer) and they have no problem at all holding off the 3-4 ambushes I get each season. I've yet to face a legendary ranged gobbo, though. Been lucky there.

I only have one set of traps as last resort (never been used) though I do have a pair of drawbridges I can close to control matters somewhat - but one of them is always open. I should think you would have no problem at all with the force you currently have if you deploy them well.

The problem with draft armies is that they will be unarmed/unprotected when you deploy them. By the time a dwarf gets his armor on and grabs a crossbow and a quiver and ammo, the siege will have crossed a 3x3 map. Since you have no drawbridge to raise while everyone gets dressed, I'd just give up on that as a useful option. Realistically, expect them to engage unarmored and possibly unarmed (keep woodcutting on as a skill and at least they'll always have an axe on them) and expect them all to die. You have the added concern that any good draftee will hit elite status before you know it and you won't be able to reincorporate them into your labor pool. Dwarves skill up very fast in actual combat.

Instead, I'd add war dogs to your military in a major way - cage+lever at key points, that kind of thing. They can really tie up an attacking army while your regular soldiers do their thing. Rather than depend on a draft army to handle sieges, I'd look for ways to move the battle to your favor. If you don't want to be able to cut off attack altogether, create choke points that blunt the effectiveness of ranged units and force the enemy into a narrow area that spreads them into a long line but opens into a large area where you have freedom of movement and can overwhelm with force. Unless as part of your challenge you want to engage on an open plain, in which case my only advise is to breed more, because the first siege of 25 ranged units with a legendary ranged leader will cut your melee guys down in nothing flat unless they are all legendary shield users and very well equipped.

Defense is one of the hardest things. Unlike digging in, choke points tend to not exist until you make them. Consider a dry moat to start with a drawbridge. If you have sand/soil, novice miners can dig it out in nothing flat. You need to look at your terrain differently - look for features that you can incorporate into your defenses, where predators may come from, and so on.

My above ground buildings are actually dug out of low hills. Makes it much easier. I decided to set a uniform ground level for my settlement and level the hills down to that level by carving out the building shapes. It's pretty fast and you can use the stone generated to build your other buildings.

Once you get the hang of designating construction, it goes pretty fast. The hardest thing is remembering that you can't build corners from the inside, so on 2nd floors and higher you need to build two parallel walls, wait for the corners to go in, then build the other walls. Sometimes it's faster to designate walls and then cancel construction to add in a doorway or a fortification. You'll get a process after some trial and error.

Here's an older map of my current fort.