Bay 12 Games Forum

Er, sorry if I'm being bothersome, but I think my questions were skipped... they're a few posts back. Basically:

1. I don't have any rivers or magma pits. How can I use my bridge to kill people (read: friggin' migrants) more easily? (Crushing is difficult - it's so small that I only have one tile long crush-space, so it's hard to lure people in)

2. Why did my migrant die of thirst while drowning in 4/7 to 5/7 water?

Also, I have another question:
3. How can I make a decent waterfall without access to rivers? (I do have murky pools though)

1: Make several bridges 1 tile long and however many tiles you need it to be to span the width of your entrance hall, and build several of them in strips along your hall. Like this:

##|===|## <--bridge
##|===|## <--another bridge
##|===|##
##|===|## <-more bridges
##|===|##

Link them all up to one lever. When they close, the bridges will all become solid tiles and crush anything on them. No chance they'll survive it, unless you let some slip past. You can also make a retractable bridge over a deep pit.

2: You probably wouldn't think about drinking if you were drowning, would you? Or are you asking why he didn't drown? Dwarves will prefer to swim in 4-depth water, but it's not drowning-depth. Dwarves will only drown in 5-depth water or higher, and they only have to be in shallower water for a moment to get a breath of air. Your dwarf might have gained some swimming skill by thrashing around in there too, which will allow him to stay afloat in drowning-depth water. Dwarves only need novice skill in swimming to do this so it's not entirely unlikely. I suggest you add more water and build a floor over the pool - IIRC dwarves can't breathe in drowning-depth water if there isn't open air above them, even if the water isn't completely full below it.

3: If your map has plenty of rain, water should be a renewable resource. Evaporation is the enemy here though, never let the pools get below 2 units deep or water can start to evaporate in the pools. Once that happens, rain might not be able to replenish them fast enough before it evaporates. I suggest you channel around a pool until the water spreads out a little and reaches 2-level depth, wait for it to fill up, and then repeat until you have a large pool. This will be your buffer zone. The bigger it is, the better, and if you can find a way to make it deeper as well as wider, all the better. Again, never drain it below 2 units. Pump the water into a cistern whatever size you need it, if the water in your buffer gets low you'll have to wait for it to rain and pump some more. The cistern will most likely have to be slightly smaller than the buffer to compensate for the water left behind in the channel, otherwise you won't have enough to fill it to 2 units. Keep the cistern as full as possible at all times It's kind of a pain but it should work. Once you've done that dump it out of the cistern whenever you need to.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification!

In other news, one of my migrants was not successfully drowned, but he eventually died of thirst.

WHILE DROWNING.

What's going on?

See, the problem is that you tried to drown him in water. Dwarves consider drinking a higher priority than breathing if you use booze.

I might just try this myself! I'm already building a green glass (green glass is sooooo cool) tower in a yellow sand desert so this will be right at home. I'll probably make each of the four bottom ones out of gold (it should be on this map somewhere), silver (I've got galena), crystal glass (no shortage of sand) and steel (plenty of flux and iron), and maybe make the top one out of crystal glass. I've got no idea what to put in them but I could probably make tombs... Unfortunately the sum of trees in the area amounts to zip so I have to buy all the wood and charcoal off the caravans, and make coke from the coal veins nearby. I've got water too, 4x5 site. THE TOWER COMES FIRST THOUGH.

THIS one isn't a succession. There's a DIFFERENT Cat Splosion fort that is; should be near the top at the moment. 100killer9 is in line for year 6 or 7.

DOH. I misread that. Similar names, I guess? They both have screaming, except this fort has less torture and more packs.

Or something. I don't know.

Heh, thanks to everyone for the comments. To everyone who said that "immigration officer" isn't quite the right term, I have to agree, I think "registrar" or "gatekeeper" might be better, I'm just bad at coming up with names for things

Now that I think about it, this could have be of relevance to the bustling town arc and having forts and cities look a little more alive in adventure mode and could present all kinds of conflicts and quest opportunities from all the travelers... As for framerate issues I think an init option for visitors (a cap or even an option to turn it off completely) would definitely be appropriate, but by designating a small burrow for visitors you could possibly have many visitors without them dramatically impacting fps. It could also be possible to make them meander around a little less than dwarves by making them path somewhere new only every 15 seconds or so  - which wouldn't look too odd since they're there to stare at things and lounge around, right? There could also be a limit to how far they can path and possibly have them go slower to buy more time before they have to gawk at things somewhere else. Unless, of course, there's a goblin on their tail, in which case they should scram. Not really sure how it would all work out...

Heh, no problem. Also, you're aware of the ramp trick right? It's essential when hollowing out large areas because ramps are basically like reverse channels and you don't have to specially designate anything to keep your dwarves from stranding themselves or cutting off access to other tiles. Just designate a large swathe of ramps and your dwarves will do the rest. Just be careful when doing this around unsupported floors, it's surprisingly easy to disconnect them and cause a cave-in since they're not easily noticed above the level you're working on.

Terrifying biome with a river and you'll get undead sturgeon and other fish which are pretty dangerous. Embark by a terrifying ocean and you risk an encounter with undead whales which can wreak havoc... Though, most ocean wildlife seems to spend most of it's time around the edges of the map, so you can avoid it if you're careful. Magma pipes are also fun due to the fire imps and magma men, and if you've got a chasm you might be lucky enough to get giant cave spiders, which are hell. I think it's possible to get undead versions of creatures in features (heh) too, so be on the lookout for zombie batmen.

So: Terrifying, river, magma vent, and chasm for extra fun. There's also Rysith's orc mod which guarantees brutal sieges early on, but I don't recommend that unless you *really* like losing.

Yes, there's a z-level limit, and yes you can get more levels in your map if you're near extreme cliffs.  Be carfeful with that though, if your dwarves are pathing all over a 30-level mountain it can create framerate issues.

I suggest you embark near the highest mountains you can find and have a team of miners completely mine it away until the map is flat, and then build your tower where the mountain was. This is not only incredibly dwarven, but it should supply you with all the stone (and z-levels!) you need and hopefully eliminate some of the lag. I don't recommend buying stone from the caravans since it's ridiculously heavy, thus the caravans won't be able to bring much of it. Now, there's other materials which may be slightly lighter that you might be able to buy and use for construction, glass and wood in particular come to mind. Whatever you use, you're going to need a *lot* of it, the tower is going to have to be reasonably wide to support an entire fortress. Maybe not as wide as a gobbo tower if you have enough z-levels, but you don't want to run out of space. There should always be room for expansion. Then again, I suppose you don't have to be limited to one tower...

As for arbitrary challenge rules, I suggest you don't build anything underground. By this, I mean that if it requires you to press 'b' it should not be in a subterranean area. Stockpiles, on the other hand, might be allowed.