Bay 12 Games Forum

Make a big food stockpile with 0 max barrels; your dorfs should take the pods out to stick them in the pile and leave empty barrels behind.

Mine never do that. They just leave the barrels where they embarked. I have to get the bookkeeper set up so I can dump and claim the items manually.

Not a replacement for damblock, but an addition.
Body tokens [ARMOR_HARD], [ARMOR_SOFT], [ARMOR_NONE], and [ARMORLEVEL:n].

The first two would protect the body part to which they're attached until they're broken or worse, at which point the protection would cease. Hard armour (shells, bony frills, etc.) would protect against piercing and slashing but less against bludgeoning attacks, and soft armour (thick skin, thick fur, etc.) would soak away hammer damage but be weak against a strong arm and a sharp sword. Multiple armour parts attached to the same body part would provide extra protection through chance. For instance, a dwarf facing a creature with one mangled upper back plate and one unbroken one would have a 50% chance of striking the unbroken plate. [ARMOR_NONE] would be available if you wanted to have the opportunity to pull off a dramatic lucky shot without having to force your way through a layer of armour.

Protection could take the form of a modifiable number from which the material strength of the weapon is deducted. So a creature with [ARMORLEVEL:200] and soft armour would reduce damage from a plain bone bolt by 150% (so, zero damage), damage from a plain steel bolt by 67%, and a masterwork iron bolt or anything better would go right through. If it had hard armour anywhere, the masterwork iron bolt wouldn't be enough to bypass the armour completely. A masterwork iron hammer, on the other hand...

I know basic subtraction isn't good enough given the current material damage ranges in DF, but it's just a quick start (armour vs. ammo in particular would likely be near-impossible to balance with vanilla DF as it is). The damage reduction should probably be applied after the attacker's Strength is taken into account and before most other things, but that's really Toady's area.

Having some of the armour level carry over to the creature's hide would be nice too, since kitten leather is currently just as protective as elephant leather.

I think that hauling DO give stat increase, as my dumpers get VERY strong with only running around dumping stones.

How are their social skills?

Never ever EVER?  Not even in a million billion years?

Okay, so noted.

I normally go through the raws and remove the [NERVOUS] tag from all bady parts. Doesn't help with brain damage (and possibly head injuries), but it does sort everything else out. I wish dwarves would heal light grey nervous injuries at the very least, even if it takes as long as a yellow injury.

Sounds more like his idea of defense and yours is markedly different.

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Okay, I see what you mean about working areas -- natural ramps can be dealt with by a single miner and don't carve up the level below as a channel would. It is possible to force invaders to enter the fortress lower than the archers, although I'm not sure it's possible to fire on them consistently and safely as they descend. (I built the original right up at the edge for some reason, so I've no room for further testing.) I think you could work something out with channels though.

Thanks for the mention of firing stations. When I rebuild, I'm going to run some stairs up from the main archer stations and build a couple of small towers.

Yes. Except for booze and bags*, a barrel can only take ten individual items.

I really wish barrels and bins had some kind of at-a-glance fullness indicator. As it is, I never use them for anything but liquids because it's easier to see what you have, and where, when it's strewn all over the floor.

*I think the limit is ten bags per barrel, but bags can hold multiple objects.

I tried not to, but after enough (2D) wiki articles I had a general idea about the pits and the adamantine. The 3D version only combined them, which didn't come as much af a surprise. I did spoil the HFS itself by using reveal to check out the ore patterns (the floors were a surprise, however. So... much... depravity), as at that point I thought all ore veins crossed z-levels and I wanted to see what everything looked like.

If you don't have such things revealed on embark screen and also don't use the finder, knowing about the existance of HFS can actually enhance the thrill of the game (especially if you are afraid of the HFS):

This.

I might do the same for chasms as well. The last place I embarked with a chasm had it open to the surface, and of course I had no way of knowing whether there were GCS in them there hills.

Besides, isn't Blue Cheese, rotten cheese? Last time I've seen it, it's barely blueish-pale white, not blue.

What kind were you looking at? Blue cheese generally resembles marble, as the mould that colours (and flavours) it is lovingly mixed into the cheese instead of being on the surface where it's easy to cut off.