196
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: I miss Dwarven Syrup Roasts
« on: January 23, 2013, 01:16:22 pm »
If you can tame dragons you can produce dragon egg omelets.
Dragon egg omelets for everyone!
Dragon egg omelets for everyone!
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197
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Non "cheaty" way of bolt seperation
« on: January 23, 2013, 01:15:26 pm »
A sufficient number of wooden bolts is enough. Even wooden bolts, in large numbers, can be very lethal.
If you want to go with metal, an archery range in a 3x20 room, with only a single tile wide shooting gallery with a pit on either side is the most efficient for unstacking bolts. Make the archery range at maximum size, so odds are that nearly every bolt will hit a wall and fall into the pit unharmed, where they can be recovered.
In my experience archery ranges really aren't needed. Just go with a large blob of marksdwarves with wooden bolts. 50+ marksdwarves all firing wooden bolts at the same target will drop anything. Including dragons.
If you want to go with metal, an archery range in a 3x20 room, with only a single tile wide shooting gallery with a pit on either side is the most efficient for unstacking bolts. Make the archery range at maximum size, so odds are that nearly every bolt will hit a wall and fall into the pit unharmed, where they can be recovered.
In my experience archery ranges really aren't needed. Just go with a large blob of marksdwarves with wooden bolts. 50+ marksdwarves all firing wooden bolts at the same target will drop anything. Including dragons.
198
DF Suggestions / Re: Even bigger worlds?
« on: January 23, 2013, 12:15:10 pm »Just a note, It won't be a 1200% speed improvement. The speed will still be limited by the slowest thread, as each thread can only be assigned to a single processor. Most likely, this'll be pathfinding.
So while multithreading will be a rather large improvement, I don't think it's going to matter that much. Especially not in worldgen, because there's little opportunity to splice up threads there.
Yes, very likely pathfinding, temperature, weather, and moving liquid can be split off into their own threads, but I don't think the game can be divided up any more than that. But if somehow, magically, DF were to take full advantage of an entire processor, the improvements would be amazing.
I'd love to be able to build a full kingdom. Fortress? Pfft. Too small. Kingdoms are where its at. Full 16x16 embark, thousands of dwarves, mighty castles and walls, with multiple settlements scattered around the area. Now that would be all kinds of fun.
Of course that would be impossible due to DF using only a small fraction of a current processor. When I play DF my processor is about 84% idle. So many cycles being wasted.
199
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: The size of a fortress
« on: January 23, 2013, 12:11:37 pm »
My fortresses are centered around a main great hall, which has large stone pillars and a tall ceiling. Then off of the great hall are the modular bits. My quantum factory sector and my kitchen/food sector are all the same. They're both very efficient designs that use very little space, yet can expand production and storage to infinity due to using quantum storage. Its all automatic as well.
So off of the main hall, two sides will be used for food production and for industrial production. Then I'll dig out large bedroom complexes. I prefer to use communal bedrooms, with several dwarves sharing the same room. This allows for some marriages to happen between roommates, but it also contains the damage of any tantrum spirals, as dwarves are generally friends only with their roommates, and no one else.
So off of the main hall, two sides will be used for food production and for industrial production. Then I'll dig out large bedroom complexes. I prefer to use communal bedrooms, with several dwarves sharing the same room. This allows for some marriages to happen between roommates, but it also contains the damage of any tantrum spirals, as dwarves are generally friends only with their roommates, and no one else.
200
DF Suggestions / Re: Filling in tiles, brick walls, cement, farmland
« on: January 22, 2013, 06:16:25 pm »
Being able to make an artificial underground cavern would be fun. Import enough dirt to grow mushrooms and trees without the need for water. I dislike how mud turns everything brown.
I'd also enjoy being able to create pond tiles, which would interact with rain by making 1/7 water when a raindrop hits.
I'd also enjoy being able to create pond tiles, which would interact with rain by making 1/7 water when a raindrop hits.
201
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Windows and magma.
« on: January 21, 2013, 07:53:31 pm »
Building destroyers can destroy windows.
Note that a dwarf throwing a tantrum can also become a building destroyer.
Note that a dwarf throwing a tantrum can also become a building destroyer.
202
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Furniture decorating
« on: January 21, 2013, 06:50:10 pm »
An object can be decorated one time per material. This means you can decorate an object with every kind of metal and every kind of bone in game. If the object is a piece of furniture or a finished good, it can also be decorated once for every type of gem in the game. It can also be decorated once with an image if the base object is soft, such as made out of leather or cloth.
Thus, if you have, say, a leaver quiver, and a wide range of raw materials, you can really go crazy with the decorations on it.
Thus, if you have, say, a leaver quiver, and a wide range of raw materials, you can really go crazy with the decorations on it.
203
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: undead
« on: January 21, 2013, 05:52:25 pm »
If you're in an evil biome then weapon traps are useless against undead. They may actually make the problem worse.
Use cage traps instead. You'll get cages full of undead creatures, but its easy enough to haul the cages to a stockpile and safely dump them into a pit where the undead can be safely disposed of.
Dumping them directly into the magma ocean is my favorite means of disposal, but you need a straight shot down to the magma ocean to do that.
Use cage traps instead. You'll get cages full of undead creatures, but its easy enough to haul the cages to a stockpile and safely dump them into a pit where the undead can be safely disposed of.
Dumping them directly into the magma ocean is my favorite means of disposal, but you need a straight shot down to the magma ocean to do that.
204
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: feather or chestnut barrels any better ?
« on: January 21, 2013, 05:50:30 pm »
If you abuse quantum stockpiling and mine carts, and you're clever at where you position your farms and kitchen area, barrels and pots will hardly need to move at all. And having them move only a few tiles shouldn't cause that much of a slowdown even if you're using lead to make your storage containers out of.
205
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Clothing Issue
« on: January 21, 2013, 03:59:22 pm »
I've found that if I have a single clothing workshop on repeat making clothes, its enough. It will cycle through all clothing items I want, and it will continue to repeat indefinitely.
Or if you have a lot of sieges going then thats all you need. I've got 4 hostile civilizations at war with me, so on average that is 1 siege per season. Most of them have dwarf-size creatures, so they just end up using that for clothing.
Or if you have a lot of sieges going then thats all you need. I've got 4 hostile civilizations at war with me, so on average that is 1 siege per season. Most of them have dwarf-size creatures, so they just end up using that for clothing.
206
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: feather or chestnut barrels any better ?
« on: January 21, 2013, 03:44:52 pm »
The other thing to consider is just how plentiful a material is. If you're making rock pottery its certainly going to be heavy, but rocks are plentiful.
Wood is an unlimited resource, but its harder to get wood as you need to go out of your way to do it. Stone is a byproduct of simply digging a fortress, so you'll have huge amounts of stone simply by being dwarven.
Wood is an unlimited resource, but its harder to get wood as you need to go out of your way to do it. Stone is a byproduct of simply digging a fortress, so you'll have huge amounts of stone simply by being dwarven.
207
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Paper Planning a fortress?
« on: January 21, 2013, 03:43:19 pm »
When starting I do a reveal in DFhack just to get the lay of the land, and then I hide things again. Its nice to get a rough idea of where things are, so I can plan what depth I want my fortress at. I prefer at least 10 fully solid layers of rock to dig my fortress in, as I'm fond of very tall great halls. I don't use much in the way of room for storage due to heavy abuse of mine carts and quantum stockpiles. I just like big, tall rooms.
208
DF Suggestions / Re: Even bigger worlds?
« on: January 21, 2013, 02:42:37 pm »Also in the future pcs might be able to run worlds of gigantic sizes at fair speeds.
Sadly, this will not happen unless multi-threading support is added.
The maximum speed of a single core is around 3.5ghz. While you can overclock a single core to higher speeds, heat begins to become an issue. Higher than 4ghz is very hard to do, and 4.5ghz is pretty much the maximum speed.
Even if you have 12 cores in your processor, you're only ever going to use 1 core. These days all processor advancement is in more cores and more threads, as the speed of a single core has more or less reached its maximum speed.
If DF could take advantage of more cores/threads, then you could get a 1200% speed improvement on a fancy 12 core processor. That would likely be sufficient to run a 16x16 embark with 1000 dwarves, and still probably be at 100+ FPS.
Sadly, this will never happen unless Toady adds in support to take advantage of multiple cores/threads, or pathfinding and temperature calculations are made vastly more efficient.
209
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: The size of a fortress
« on: January 21, 2013, 02:38:14 pm »
I prefer building my fortress on a single level if at all possible, but the FPS hit from having a large area can be bothersome.
Lately I've been constructing my fortresses under oceans. I embark on a 4x4 or 5x5 zone, but only the very corner tile is land. The remainder of the embark area is water. This lets me build up a nice gatehouse right in the corner, but the rest of the embark is not pathable, so it should save on FPS. It also makes it easy to channel all visitors right through the gatehouse where my military is on duty to greet all visitors.
Then I build below ground. I'm a fan of high ceilings. Great halls maybe be 4 or even 5 levels high, but they're just empty space, though fully smoothed and engraved. I try to put as much of the fortress on a single level so I can keep track of everything better. It also looks nicer.
Lately I've been constructing my fortresses under oceans. I embark on a 4x4 or 5x5 zone, but only the very corner tile is land. The remainder of the embark area is water. This lets me build up a nice gatehouse right in the corner, but the rest of the embark is not pathable, so it should save on FPS. It also makes it easy to channel all visitors right through the gatehouse where my military is on duty to greet all visitors.
Then I build below ground. I'm a fan of high ceilings. Great halls maybe be 4 or even 5 levels high, but they're just empty space, though fully smoothed and engraved. I try to put as much of the fortress on a single level so I can keep track of everything better. It also looks nicer.
210
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: The effectiveness of catupults
« on: January 21, 2013, 02:34:51 pm »
Siege engines can be useful for building destroyers or the demon hordes.
Construct an artifact furniture item as bait. An artifact armor stand works great for that. It needs to be a passable tile. If the tile is not passable then it will be dismantled, but as artifacts cannot be harmed the furniture will still be in pristine condition.
The building destroyers will attempt to destroy the artifact armor stand forever, but will be unable to harm it. They'll be stuck in place.
Then use crossbows and siege engines to attack them. Crossbows work fine against things that bleed, but against things that do not bleed you may need more firepower. With some pre-planning you can install steel spikes all over the floor, and link them to a lever. A combination of crossbow bolts, flying boulders, and steel spikes from the floor make quick work of nearly anything.
Construct an artifact furniture item as bait. An artifact armor stand works great for that. It needs to be a passable tile. If the tile is not passable then it will be dismantled, but as artifacts cannot be harmed the furniture will still be in pristine condition.
The building destroyers will attempt to destroy the artifact armor stand forever, but will be unable to harm it. They'll be stuck in place.
Then use crossbows and siege engines to attack them. Crossbows work fine against things that bleed, but against things that do not bleed you may need more firepower. With some pre-planning you can install steel spikes all over the floor, and link them to a lever. A combination of crossbow bolts, flying boulders, and steel spikes from the floor make quick work of nearly anything.