Bay 12 Games Forum

Haven, your tunnel idea is just what I was looking for.  I'm not sure why I didn't think of it myself, but it's exactly how I'll get the microcline I'll need for the background of my design.

LeoLeonardoII and nahkh, I loled.  Then I considered it seriously.  Then I loled again.  

Boksi, your snake-around-a-spear is perfect.  The rest of the design needs a little work, but I can handle that.

Ladies and gentlemen (There ARE women on the Internet, right?), I give you the Grand Mosaic of Snakebanner!

...Whoops, that's not it.

The angles seem a little odd, but that's due to working with such an oddly-proportioned area.  With a bit of experimentation, I've found I can use walls to block off portions of the areas I don't want to color and so I could probably make the snake itself out of 6 roads of green glass or olivine.

Construction of the border is underway, but the full mosaic will need to wait for my engraver to wake up and start smoothing off the boulders in the area.  And it will probably take a couple game years to finish, especially if I hit a materials shortage.

The first thing he did after going stark raving mad was charge into the dining room/animal storage and begin hanging around the cows.  I figured he was mooing, trying to fit in.  Then he took off his pants and jumped on the table in front of a dwarf that was eating, and I thought "Man, that's GOTTA give a bad thought."

I'm thinking about turning an entire vein of kimberlite into another noble's room, too.  Just walling off where I mined into it at first, polishing the entire thing, and designating the room as best I can from it.  There's probably enough area that I could make two rooms.  Naturally the stretch with the diamond floor will be the most valuable.

Personally, I'm working my way up to haunted biomes.  I've gotten fortress management down to my satisfaction, now I've turned on invaders and will see how I deal with sieges.  When I feel like my siege defense is adequate, then I might try setting up shop next to one of these evil oceans the map gen keeps giving me.  See if zombie whales are as horrible as they say.

First, I read the wiki article on water pressure and assumed I could power the entire thing with one pump down at the bottom (A multiple z-level tower).  Then, after I had built several levels of tower and nearly had the spout finished, I read the screw pump article that said it wouldn't pump water up z-levels.  D'oh!

On the plus side, none of my dwarves got conked with falling blocks when I pulled the bottom floor out. (I knew it would reduce to its component blocks, so I figured losing a dwarf or two was an acceptable cost versus dismantling it floor by floor)

Second, I learned the fun way that grates can be targeted for building in an area supported by only grates, but can't actually be supported by the grates.

Third, I found windmills will only power mechanisms if placed OVER them.  Grumble, dismantle, build more walls...

Fourth, I discovered my cistern was too small at the same time I found my exhaust pump didn't work the way I wanted, because my dwarves started canceling jobs due to dangerous terrain.

And in upcoming news, it seems I will have to gauge the onset of winter carefully, since my map freezes and the waterfall is right over my entrance.

Background:  I just got done fighting off a goblin ambush, thanks to savescumming twice and rigging a hasty cage trap bottleneck.  This left me with six caged goblins (And one caged corpse that bled to death after getting caught while fleeing).  After stripping them naked, I thought about what to do with them.  Pitting them into the lava or off a high tower would be the obvious solution, but I can't spare the glass right now, since the need to savescum twice makes it obvious I need to finish my wall. (Desert, glass fort, aquifer, magma pipe, you know the drill.)

After a bit of thought, I hit on the following idea:  Set up an extension to one of my barracks, where the goblins could be released in a controlled environment, letting new marksdwarf recruits train under live fire conditions.  The easy thing would just be to link up the cage(s), but that's joost nae dwarven, laddie!

Concept:  After forging chains from the goblins' equipment (Swords to plowshares?  Not quite.), I hitch up the goblins on one end of the room, then open the floodgates blocking off fortifications on the other end of the room, letting the marksdwarves behind it fire on the helpless dancing gobbos.

So, are chained hostiles still counted as hostile, or would the dwarves think, "Ah, those guys aren't going anywhere, let's go have a beer."?  I don't have the resources to set it up yet, but having the answer will tell me if I can plan for it or if I should just focus on a more traditional method of POW treatment.