Bay 12 Games Forum

Cool. That entrance is much nicer looking than what I usually make, except is it reachable by wagons?

Nope it's not (well it is now, after I posted the screenshot my miner dug out a 3X3 passage in the nearby sand).  What madness possessed the early settlers of that fortress still eludes me.

Haven't posted here in a long time but the ability to reclaim historical fortresses in the new version got me so excited I had to share!

In 125, I reclaimed a fortress from around the year 40 that had been overrun by a forgotten beast.  The fortress came complete with a giant two-story roofed above-ground structure containing a trade depot, a rampway down to the fortress itself, which takes up many, many floors, a paved roadway through the Caverns and 135 forges.  Curiously, the forges are constructed from raw stone and a steel throne.  This must be ancient forgotten dwarven smithing lore at work.  There was a giant olm wandering about the caverns, which could have been disastrous, but it wandered into the old fortress so Urist McClever just locked it in a room.  After I wall off the ramps so nothing more can get in, we will be trapping it to tame as a pet.

I really like not only the flavor of reclaiming a forgotten mountainhome, but the jumpstart you get on the fun by having bedrooms and workshop areas already carved out for you.

Does anyone else have some fun stories to share of the new reclaims?

Some screenshots here:

I read a thread recently about someone embarking on an island, which sounded pretty neat, so I set off myself with the idea of trying to generate a world with an island on it small enough to fit the entire embark site on (IE visible water on all 4 sides of the embark).

So far I've managed one world with an island that fits into a 15X15 embark.  I'm thinking it might not be all that bad, given that I won't have invasions and goblinite bringing down my FPS, not to mention lack of migrants.

But I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas for world gens that might increase the number of small islands and give a better shot at a smaller embark.  So far I'm mostly increasing the erosion cycle count, with the hopes of causing big islands to dissolve into small ones during world gen.  I've also pumped up a few of the river related variables (afraid I don't remember which).  I've gone back and forth with full/partial edge oceans, but it doesn't really seem to increase the total amount of water that much - I just end up with less lakes/inner oceans when I do so.

Make some "tier negative 1" stockpiles in many places where junk tends to accumulate.
Have those stockpiles load minecarts that will dump into the One Pile, and save haulage time while making it a quantum pile!

Thats a good idea. A sort of series of collective dwarven recycle bins (Do your part to keep WreckedPlanks clean!) with regular pickups. I havent gotten into minecarts much yet but i could see that being my excuse to do so.

I've been toying with this idea but haven't had time to give it a shot yet:

I would, instead of creating multiple 'tier 1' stockpiles (stockpiles which give but don't take), hollow out the majority of an embark tile on a central z-level to be the One Pile, a 'tier 0' stockpile which accepts ALL goods. Other stockpiles must then ultimately take from there, either directly or from another pile which takes from the One Pile.  (Refuse might have to be an exception if that designation causes rot as I've read before somewhere.)

This would lend a tremendous level of organization to dwarven inventory control. Problems with clutter accumulating on the floors due to full stockpiles would go away as the One Pile would serve as buffering capacity for all the others.  Workshop stockpiles could be tweaked on the fly, knowing stuff you've disabled would have a place to go (ie if you wanted to make some cool nether cap beds for those hot summers, just disable all other wood in your carpenters pile and away it goes back to the One Pile).  You would have to have two wood piles normally for this, one closer to the workshop taking the desired wood from the other; now the One Pile serves as that first pile for every workshop.

It would also be needlessly complex, labor intensive and time consuming. I'm wondering if anyone has tried this before or can see any downsides?

The carnage at the bottom of the shaft:


It's taken out about 20 of them in 3 shots of the dirty sock pit of death, but that conga line approaching the shaft doesn't look too promising that they'll all wait for me to reload, so it looks like I'll have to seal off the shaft and then come up with another means of clownicide after I drop the last load on them.

The main failure to rack up a higher death count was just getting all the clowns in the shaft at once, rather than the payload.  I didn't plan for the dawdlers stopping to look at the scenery on their way to the tasty dwarven morsels above.

I was thinking that with a taller shaft, I could just stockpile trap components at the top, designate them all for dumping and let my dwarves turn it into a manually filled waterfall of spiked doom.  Dangerous, of course, but possibly quite entertaining.

EDIT: Adding this one because it made me laugh.  "Rabbit! ARGGGHH!"

Total clown kills after 4 drops: 50.  A little better design and it could pretty well demolish the initial circus.

How are you going to uncap the circus?

I'm planning to dig into a cotton candy shaft, then as soon as the fun appears, send all civilians indoors.  The miner (if he can make it) will escape via an accessway, which I will then seal off with either an artifact floodgate or a raised bridge, forcing the fun to go up the tunnel of love.

I'm also going to put an artifact floodgate (I think I have two) near the bottom of the shaft, so I can seal the shaft off while I reload the deathpit at the top, assuming nothing in between is alive.

So, yeah...pretty much just that.  Does anyone know?

The reason I ask is because I've recently found a cotton candy vein (praise the miners!) and was considering building an approx 50 z-level 1X1 shaft going straight up from it before I breach the fun below.  My idea is to place about 5 retracting bridges on top of the shaft linked to levers, designate each for dumping, and load them up with used socks, chunks of raw marble, goblin skulls, etc.  And then with the fun starts to bubble up, start clicking off the levers.  In theory, it sounds quite amusing, but if falling debris won't harm flyers, the fun sadly goes up in a different way.