Bay 12 Games Forum

A question so broad and vague, the best answer is probably "go to modding forum, browse the sticky there for worthy mods". Some of the more extensive ones are Fortress Defence, Genesis and Dig Deeper.

Quote from: Psieye on December 09, 2011, 10:30:43 am

Uh, do note the OP already is splitting high and low quality crafts in different stockpiles. No, this to me seems like a problem of "stockpile not big enough". Make the low quality stockpile accept no bins and be a huge 15x15 in size. Then when it gets full, do a mass-dump-designation and arrange for them to throw all the trash into an atomsmasher bridge. Don't worry, once your stonecrafters get even better, they'll stop making low quality products altogether, with everything being at least exceptional level (unless they're hungry/thirsty/drowsy).

They'll always make some low quality crafts, regardless of being hungry/thirsty/drowsy. See the crafting statistics in my sig 

The correction is welcomed. Amend my statement to "pretty much everything".

Uh, do note the OP already is splitting high and low quality crafts in different stockpiles. No, this to me seems like a problem of "stockpile not big enough". Make the low quality stockpile accept no bins and be a huge 15x15 in size. Then when it gets full, do a mass-dump-designation and arrange for them to throw all the trash into an atomsmasher bridge. Don't worry, once your stonecrafters get even better, they'll stop making low quality products altogether, with everything being at least exceptional level (unless they're hungry/thirsty/drowsy).

I keep seeing things like copper shield or copper crossbows.  Why not steel?  Any specifics you guys feel to feed us with?

Because copper is denser and both shields and crossbows don't actually care what material they're made of to do their primary job. The hope is that when a dwarf resorts to bashing with those items, the extra density helps put more punch into this secondary use.

I've been meaning to comment for a while now: whenever I see a mod introduce a lot of new content (i.e. Dig Deeper and Genesis), I find I want to see a 'tech tree' of sorts introducing the new alloys and extracts. At present the Genesis thread OP has a flow chart of sorts for the alloys but nothing on the plant side. All the information is there for us to dig up, especially if we read the raws, but it'd help newcomers to the mod if you organise it in an easy-to-absorb way.

Afterall, when we learnt DF vanilla we all had to learn which plants can be milled, threshed, cooked or brewed and what seasons they grow in. There aren't many plants in vanilla and normally people ignore the surface plants while they learn the underground plants as those are the constants that every fort can expect to work with. It's a long process to learn everything relevant about farming and without control over the food industry nothing else can happen in a fort.

Similarly, we learn various facts about the metals before we're competently fielding armies. In what order are the metals best for sharp or blunted weapons? Which are best for armours? What are the requirements to make the combat alloys (bronze and steel for vanilla)? Which geological category of rocks should we be aiming for to find them? What about melting points, in case magma gets involved?


It's a lot of information and for vanilla there isn't much metals or plants that we need to memorise all this for. One of the hesitations holding me back from playing a big 'new contents' mod is that I have to go through this noob process of soaking up information and I'm not receiving much if any help in this process (unlike vanilla DF which has a wiki plus an extremely helpful and erudite forum community). I don't need help learning everything about the new content, but the food industry (so domesticated animals information too) and war gear industry are the most relevant sectors for fortress survival. I'd like to see the additions in these areas be presented in a succinct way (so a table or a tech tree flowchart perhaps).

"The drones of my industrial complex, gathered at the organic harvest chamber."

Translation: all my haulers are marksdwarves (because they don't have anything to do otherwise during siege lockdown). The goblins enter a chamber where they meander through a windy maze all while weathering death from above. A dodge-me trap makes them go back to the start should they succeed in getting through the maze. Once the siege is broken, my haulers have administered medical treatment to those who need it and they've harvested whatever spoils of war I want (including corpses - they're the source of more bone bolts in my cannibalist forts), I wash the chamber out with magma.

Trade with the elves requires more than just the "don't give them wood, even in bins" knowledge. Having your wood log stocks be rock bottom will prompt them to bring lots of logs - even if you just forbid your stock of logs. If you've been steadily giving them a profit by buying their cloth year after year, that's all they'll start to bring as they know it sells. Getting them to bring lots of war animals (which are heavy for not much of a price tag) requires carefully conditioning them over the years - the favoured way usually being to pillage and slaughter them since that counts as "we made a loss this year" to them (and not "we must avenge our fallen").

Will there be any changes to the trade/caravan system in the next release? I believe Toady has created trade links between cities and smaller sites.

Will that have any effect on fortress mode?

The more relevant detail is that each city has a 'stockpile' of goods now and so caravans visiting your fort will probably be pulling items out of that finite (albeit very abundant) stockpile. The trade links mean those stockpiles will include non-native products too, so there will be less instances of "we don't have this product for you to buy".

Ultimately though, probably not much effect yet. This is all just preparation for making time move outside your fortress in the future. When that happens, then you will feel the impact of market saturation and other such economic events.