Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: lackofgrace on February 09, 2009, 04:52:36 pm

is there some way to force world generation to include bottomless pits as often as magma pipes?
i would really like to have a large river ( not brook ) and chasms in the same fortress

Afraid not.  There's no way to force those to be generated more often, no. 

Right.  Bottomless pits are generated exactly one to a mountain tile, and it's very hard getting a major river on a mountain tile.

I'm using the approaching next version as a deadline. "Must... experience... nobles!  Must... activate... economy! Must... complete... megaconstruction!  Must... talk like... Shatner!"

So far, I've got an adamantine-loving Baron Consort (Whose only real annoying penchant is forbidding export of things that A) I've already sold and B) are already halfway off the map.  Lost two glassmakers (Out of 30), a fish dissector (lol) and a lye maker (Also lol)).  The economy doesn't seem to be doing anything, although I do have room rent turned off and no shops built.  And I have a diamond-shaped tower 15 z-levels high, even if only half the floors are finished.

On multi-tile trees:

I get the mental image of them being basically mining for Sequoia.  You've got this big round tree, and you can designate a woodcutter to go over and, say, hollow it out and carve an up staircase.  Without some kind of fall-directing code, I imagine just "mining" out the entire tree would be both fatal and amusing.  With fall-directing code, I picture some enterprising players using big trees as siege defense.

"Lord Unwelcomeballs!  Goblins on the march!  They're making their way through our earthworks!"
"On my signal, unleash wood!"
If a tree falls on a goblin, and no one has hauling enabled, does he drop socks?

Smoothing a axe-hewn wooden wall would probably be easy enough to wedge into the Carpentry skill set, but I wonder if engraving it would use Carpentry or Woodworking.

Thinking about fall-directing code, I see some extensions of Mechanics: fulcrums and hydraulics.  You mine out a tree partially, place hydraulic jacks under one edge, supports under the other, and a fulcrum(s) in the middle, then mine out the rest of the tree.  Link up the hydraulics and supports, and you have a tree that falls in the direction you want on command.

Thinking about breath weapons:

The Gold Dragon breathes gold!
The spinning gold nugget strikes You in the third finger, left hand!
It is mangled!

Also, the Bonnacon.  Although Pliny's description gives it as leaving a trail behind it as it runs, the illustration I saw had it firing !!dung!! like a cannon.

Clay is soil, yes.  As are silt, loam, sand, and their combinations.  Ooze (Which you find at the bottoms of oceans) might also be, but I've never played with that.  You should be able to build a farm plot on clay just fine, though.

This is mostly just checking to be sure you're building the plot right, but:

• You are aware that plots get built like roads/bridges/constructions, correct?  Sized before placement?
• You have someone with the Farming (Fields) labor active? (A possibility is that you're placing the farm properly, but not waiting for it to be built or have no one authorized to build it)

Obsidian boulders raining down would be awesome, but they'd stack up and block the nozzles eventually.

This has been reported a few times before, both here and on the wiki.  If it's been observed with anything besides dragons and civ heads, I've yet to see it.

It is, however, awesome.

I had a similar problem.  No bauxite, but I embarked with an aquifer a few z-levels down, so I built myself a nice little multi-level obsidian farm.

Ground level: Empty.
1st level down: Terminus of the pump system.  Pours water across the magma in the layer below, also sealing off the channel to the magma pipe.  Excess water drains off back into the aquifer.
2nd level down: Magma chamber. Off to one side is the beginning of the pump system, bringing water up to the 1st level.
3rd level down: Aquifer.  This level is partially mined out, and solidifies into a second layer of obsidian when I dig out the magmagate.

So what happens is, the starting conditions is the aquifer level full of water, the other two layers empty, and the pumps off.
To begin, I have my miner channel out the section blocking off the magma pipe.  Magma begins flowing.
As the magma hits the aquifer, it solidifies.  After a little while, the 3rd level is completely obsidian, and the 2nd level begins filling with magma.
I don't need to wait very long, mostly until the 2nd level is at 2/7 or higher.  Then I turn on the pumps.

After that, it just takes a little waiting for most of the water to run off/dry up, and then a tiny bit of careful mining, especially on the aquifer layer and near the magmagate.

Okay, so I'm building a glass fort.  I have about 30 Magma Glass Furnaces, all with "Make blocks" and "Gather sand" set to repeat. I have about 90 of my 100-some dwarves with Glassmaking enabled.  I have sand zones designated and 40 spare bags of sand.  And yes, the dwarves can path to every single furnace, and each has at least 6/7 magma beneath it.  There's absolutely nothing preventing them from churning out blocks by the dozens.  I even mined out a new five-tile-wide hallway so pathfinding was less of an issue.

Guess how many dwarves are working on glass?

8.  50 others are eating, drinking, sleeping, or on break, the other 50 are all just standing around with No Job.  The only active furnaces are the last 7 that I built, and the one set so only my Legendary Glassmaker would use it.

EDIT: Nevermind, I'm an idiot.  I had forgotten that I forbid all the stone but obsidian when one of my glassworkers got into a stone-wanting mood.  That stone included the stuff making up the furnaces.  All working away happily now.  Boy is my face red.