Bay 12 Games Forum

If so, do you just leave the stone laying around in your rooms?

Generally, it doesn't matter if stone is left lying around.

If you try to build on top of stones, the builders will automatically move them out the way first.  (Exception: if the stone is forbidden, marked for dumping, or "tasked" for use in another job then it won't get moved and the construction job will get suspended).
 
As has already been mentioned, if the stones look ugly or are confusing, they can be hidden.

If you want to actually get rid of them, the easiest way is to put a mason, craft or mechanics workshop near the biggest masses of stones, and set them to continually make rock blocks / doors / stone crafts / pots / mechanisms etc.

The other way to get rid of them is to select them for mass dumping (either in a garbage crusher, magma, or in a "quantum stockpile" near your mason/craft workshops), but that takes a lot of dwarfpower, so should be left until you have a large and under-employed population. 

Stone stockpiles are a waste of time, except for specific uses (e.g. stockpiling ores near your furnaces, coloured stones near a specialist mason's workshop, and possibly a small stock of "ordinary" stone near the mason/craft/mechanic workshop).  But you don't need or want to be stockpiling every stone you dig out, as it is a hideous drain on dwarfpower for no benefit.

If AI-controlled fortress-mode dwarves fight the same way as human-controlled adventurer-mode dwarves, then carrying multiple weapons won't give you multiple attacks per "round".

What it would give you is more opportunities for the RNG to give good attack options.  (For example, one weapon might give the option to make a "difficult, not-square" hit to the head, but the other might allow an "easier, very square" hit to the same place.

That said, I have heard that holding multiple weapons gives an overal penalty to hit, and my experiences seem to support this.

The other potential advantages of carrying two weapons are that if one gets stuck in, you can still use the other one without having to extract it first, and that you can carry different types of weapons for dealing with different types of enemy.   But  I've rarely seen fortress-mode combat reports where weapons stay stuck in for long, and giving each soldier several weapons seems like excessive weight and cost for a problem that could more easily be solved by just having mixed squads.  (And it becomes even worse if carrying multiple weapons can give a significant to-hit penalty).

Quote from: Bohandas on August 27, 2011, 09:08:14 am

Oh, one thing I just thought of. While the trees in this game do produce unrealistically small amounts of wood, they also grow unrealistically fast, often maturing in under a year (IIRC), so it all balances out.

I think of the trees in DF as types of bamboo: low and fast-growing.

Alternatively, think of them as being coppiced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppice
(tl; dr: some trees, if cut down near ground level, will rapidly regrow lots of small branches, which can be harvested regularly).

I try to inspect all my dwarves when they arrive, so I can assign them jobs etc appropriate for their preferences (e.g. a herbalist with preference for "steel" and "battleaxes" gets weaponsmithing turned on).

If I find someone who would be a good canditate for a particular noble role, I'll give them a nickname to indicate that.  Then, when it comes to actually choosing a noble, it is easy to find the relevant dwarf.
E.g. a weak, compassionate dwarf would make a good sheriff, while a dwarf who likes copper and hammers would make a good baron, assuming you have a plentiful supply of copper.

I'm not so sure about this.  Most of metalcrafting is basically casting.  Goblets, toys, coins, etc.  Some of the crafts, like musical instruments, require more advanced tools, and chains are pretty much hammer and tongs work (with a press if you can get it) -- I've never understood why it wasn't under blacksmithing. 

I assumed metal crafting also involved things like cutting, welding, precision hammering, pinning, etc as well.  Basically, most of the things that normal smithing involves, but at a much finer scale.  (And copper and bronze weapons traditionally were made by casting).

So on the one hand, the fact that it is at a smaller scale could justify needing a different skill, but on the other hand, they are similar enough that combining them wouldn't be unreasonable.  (More reasonable than tailoring and ropemaking being under the same skill, anyway).

I can't remember what my best (or worst) random fortress names were.

But one of my recent fortresses was given the custom name Góstangtholavuzgeshud Berim, "The Awe-Inspiring Deep Mine Fortress of Artifice".

Some nice ideas there.

Regarding bows and ammo:
I support merging ammo making and (cross)bow making into the same skill.  (In fact, I was considering suggesting it myself).
I know technically fletching and (cross)bow making are different jobs with different skills, but it is no less reasonable than using the same skill for making bone bows and skull totems, or wooden shields and wooden barrels.  And it would make bowyers more useful while reducing the overload on the craft workshops.  This should include making metal bows, as (I would assume) making a precision machine out of metal is more similar to making one out of wood than it is hammering a metal bar into a blade or club.

Regarding the various flesh processing skills:
Mergeing butchery with animal dissecting, and fish cleaning with fish dissecting would be good.
Combining them all into one could also work, although is not so critical.

Regarding other crafts:
I like the suggestion of having a general "crafts" skill that affects multiple other skills in the manner of "fighting" and "archery".
Merging wood and bone crafting would be a good idea, as they are both relatively similar skills (at least compared with the other crafts), both produce a lot of the same items (cheap crafts, ammo, low-quality weapons and armour, and maybe in future skull and horn cups).

I'm not so sure about combining them with stone crafting, as there is less overlap between products (and realistically, the skills required are more different).

I find that both metalcrafting and metal smithing are underused skills, so maybe these could be merged into one (especially if metal crossbow making is moved to the bowyer skill).

Cloth and leather
Merging clothing and leatherworking could be done, although I don't it too much of a problem having them separate, and there is a fair degree of differentiation between the products.  (Or at least, leather workers make a lot of things clotheris dont, and I usually have my clothiers permenantly embroidering GCSS goblinite while my leatherworkers make useful stuff).


Siege engineering => carpentry + mechanics sounds good, as it shares one vastly underused skill between two useful-but-often-unemployed skills.

Farming
Combining all the dairy skills, all the wool skills, and all the ash skills sounds good.  Realistically, charcoal making is a very different skill than burning wood to ash or fueling a furnace, but I'm not sure anything much is gained by keeping them separate.  Although keeping charoal making and furnace operating as separate labour preferences would be a good idea, to ensure your dwarves make and use charcoal at the same rate.

Machine operating
Combining pump operating, pressing, and milling into one sill (but separate labour preferences) would also be a good idea.  (Especially as they are all basically things that can or should be replaced with wind/water power).

What about from the goblin's point of view?

"The gate's been raised general, but the drunkards left that tight corridor wide open"
"Gahaha, good work. Goblins, march!"
*Goblin one is swiftly diced into a fine mince*
"Who's next!? Those dwarven artifacts ain't gonna rob themselves"

"Alright lads, onwards to plunder and glory!"
"Where's the entrance, boss?"
"It's that narrow gap in the wall there.  The one filled will piles of goblin body parts, blood, and vomit."