Bay 12 Games Forum

I fly into a rage and start attacking all the guards.

Bridge traps are now my new favorite trap. I got one 2x10 bridge going down a 2 wide corridor with pressure plates at one end. The bridge covers a simple 2 z-level pit with water from an aquifer taking up the bottom z-level. Gobbies cross the bridge, the bridge automatically retracts, gobbies take a swim.

I would say there's no weapon traps to clean but periodically the gobbies trip the two pressure plates in such a way that they get a small window of opportunity to get across the bridge. So a 2x2 array of weapon traps at the end takes care of any riff-raff that happens to make it through.

At the very least I think the bridge trap is a suitable replacement for stone-fall traps which are pretty much useless. All it requires is six mechanisms, some stone for the bridge, and a bit of digging. I think for my next fortress I'll just have a 1 z deep pit so the gobbies survive. There's just something entertaining about them all running around in a small room with no way out.

Now that the blood situation is under control I'm holding steady at 100 fps. My population cap is at 30 and I have fewer cavern layers so that might have something to do with it.

I can't tell my FPS Though in 40d I had it constant 20FPS, from Embark, even when i had 55 Goblins sieging, water, 150 Dorfs, 50 Animals, and about 100 Cats.

Now I'm guessing about the same? How can you abandon at 50? Our eyes only go at about 30 FPS, you do know that right? That's about what they use in films iirc Infact they're only recently experimenting with 70FPS...

The thing about our eyes being limited to distinguishing 30 FPS is a myth but that is beside the point. In Dwarf Fortress there's a difference between graphical FPS and the gameplay FPS that everyone is talking about here. Having a low gameplay FPS causes all your dwarves to move very slowly, taking forever to finish tasks. A good enough reason to abandon if you have a mega-project that could literally take weeks IRL to complete.

Quote from: Lemunde on November 03, 2010, 02:07:53 pm

Having my dwarves trek a few z-levels further to work metal is a small price to pay to have the freedom to choose any embark site I wish.

Yeah, but you're giving up the freedom to take cavern levels at your own pace for the impetus to secure the geothermal resources. However, I haven't yet found a volcano embark with the grand prize at the bottom, and that seems the better trade-off in the long term. I would prefer to have both volcano and all three rings of the circus, but that freedom isn't necessarily handed to you.

I always wall off caverns as soon as I hit them and dig around them. This is easier with some caverns than others but I've never had to go through an open cavern to get to magma.

Quote from: Lemunde on November 03, 2010, 02:07:53 pm

I feel that relying on volcanoes means you're allowing the game to dictate where you can embark.

Relying on any layer of stone would also mean you're allowing the game to dictate where you can embark by that logic.  There's always going to be some preference involved in where you embark, and I don't see how volcanoes are any different.

I agree somewhat. I only look at certain stone layers as a convenience when browsing around for a site. Still, any stone layer would be several times more common than volcanoes. I guess I may have a different perspective since I never use the site finder. I just believe that if you always use volcanoes you're missing out on a lot of interesting features.

On a normal generated map volcanoes are rather rare so I don't even bother trying to find one. I feel that relying on volcanoes means you're allowing the game to dictate where you can embark. It's much easier just to pick an embark site that has the types of stone and features you like and plop some magma forges and smelters on a layer just above the magma sea. Having my dwarves trek a few z-levels further to work metal is a small price to pay to have the freedom to choose any embark site I wish.

I walk up to one of the guards, ask what it is they're searching for and ask if I can help. (Could be an easy way into the zoo)

I sniff the wind to try and determine the direction of any large groups of animals within the city.