Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: KenboCalrissian on October 04, 2009, 10:10:51 pm

Oddly enough, I've left the grand majority of the outside edges of my map unmolested and my caravans reach me just fine.  They only rarely stumble across an ambush - normally, it's one of my dwarves that get ambushed before the wagon, and by then the wagon is often already at the depot.  Either that, or the sieges start so early that I won't get a wagon anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe not.  Logic dictates that if you try to bottle your fortress down to a single entry, and all wagons AND ambushes must enter this one path, then nine times out of ten the wagon will find the ambush.

The real problem with Ambushes comes when you lock up your fortress so that they just sit around outside.  I don't follow the belief of locking away the outside world (Rather, I have a lock on the main entrance that opens up a maze of 2x5 corridors filled with markdwarf kill zones and patrols, as well as choke point traps and shifting passages, all to the point of making opposing snipers unable to fire)

And since you need to keep away the champions while the recruits train, no better way then stationing them in the main hallway.  Have a few war dogs assigned to the dwarves that go outside, and you'll be clearing the amushes as they crop up, keeping it safe for the caravans.

there is a good bit  of truth in this. If you decide to clam up and wait out a siege you will end up wasting alot of time as the goblins dance outside. Maintaining some sort of defense (wether it be traps or dwarves) and routing the goblins will often be quicker in the long run.

Alright thanks for the info. A design question now.

When it comes to waterfalls and magma falls, is there any rhyme or reason to how they spread out? do they have a specific pattern that you can design around or do you just end up having to eyeball the space?

Okay the wiki is down and the search feature didn't really answer my question...

Hospital beds are any beds that have been constructed, but not turned into a room, or converted to a barracks. Now with hospital beds, do dwarves heal faster than normal? Also, if a dwarf has a room of his own, will he prefer the hospital bed to his own bed when it comes to injuries?

edit: okay apparently the wiki is up, I thought it was down for the day. the only question I need answered then is the question regarding preferance to room over hospital bed for injuries. Also if anybody can verify wether dwarves heal faster in hospital beds opposed to their own, I'd much appreciate it.

that kid is going into the military. there just isnt any other option..

speaking of military some goblins (and a human crosbowman) found out that you dont wake Ochal when he's sleeping.

Ochal was an elite marksdwarf i had guarding a weak point in my defenses while my civilians worked. well a goblin siege appeared and I did my usual, everybody in, lock the back doors, and ready defenses at my main entrance.

that wasn't what Ochul had in mind, he was blissfully snoozing away at his post, unaware of the encroaching goblin army. Well not wanting to loose a highly trained dwarf, I decide to abandon my front posistion and send all of my marksdwarves at the army. Sure they're on open ground, but most of them are elite, and I reckoned the first salvo of bolts would send them running.

course in typical dwarven fashion they took their sweet ass time getting there.

So Ochal is laying there probably dreaming of Urist McBarmaid with two kegs of ale, when he gets a bolt to the arm. Its a minor injury but it wakes him up, where he proceeds to mow a nearby goblin down with his crossbow, then proceeded to chase the human crossbowman down and beat him to death with the butt of his crossbow.

the rest of the goblin siege saw this, and promptly hauled ass the other direction.

It might be just how you percieve it. I have a fortress which is popping out babies left and right and my dwarves still work.

Whats really anoying is when something happens to the mother (like she gets dragged off to jail, or is injured and dragged to bed) and her baby just wanders around in the meeting hall area and slowly dies...

I think I've read somewhere that a caged creatures first priority is to try to escape to the edge of the map, and only fight as a last resort. I doubt that the captured goblin archers would be a reliable in a pillbox.

if anything they'd attack your dwarves and not hostile things.

I mean hell, I've captured tons of goblins, threw them into a pit, and tossed in a few mountain gnomes and they got along fine..

okay assuming the pump is magma safe, and there is not chance of the magma flowing back onto the pump, is it safe to have a dwarf pump magma?

yeah my perpetual motion plant works fairly well. I can erk out 3k of 4.8k power reliably. I did find that once both my resevoirs filled up, both the upper Flow resevoir and the lower Holding Resevoir, my power production dropped drastically. of course this could just be a design problem, but i dont know enough about how to rectify it.