Bay 12 Games Forum

One of the current, outstanding bugs as I understand it is that civilian clothing doesn't work so well because it's a "uniform" but we can't control it.  So my idea would be that we should have several classes of citizens and be able to set uniforms for them all.  There would be a precedence to them, so that if somehow someone fell into more than one class, the first class would fill all the slots it could, then only empty slots could be filled by low precedence uniforms.

Also, let us assign jewelry in uniforms.  There are all these necklaces and things, but nobody wears them except our enemies.  (Speaking of which, why do dwarves never forge rings?)

So we would be able to set uniforms for:
Nobles (might want them to wear lots of bling or whatever)
Woodcutters (might want them to wear armor)
Miners
Civilians
Children/Babies (can wear any old hand-me downs)

Lastly, it would be nice to be able to tell them when to replace clothing.  So nobles might junk stuff at the first little scuff, while children could wear clothing until it wore down to nothing.  Finally, they should actually dispose of worn-out clothing.  Yeah, you can try to atom-smash it or something, but....

Maybe it's already possible and no one has mentioned it yet, but it would be cool if the possessed moods resulted from *actual* possession.  You know, from that new feature that has everyone playing with stone slabs...

So far I've been able to explore about 3-4 z-levels of the magma sea by dropping kittens and such as lookouts, but they don't last very long.

Are there any creatures that would work better if dropped into the magma sea?  I really want to see more of it so that I know which parts of this adamantine spire are safe to mine out...

I suppose I could dig a huge waterfall from the sea in one of the caverns down to the magma sea, but I'm not sure how well that works.  I fear getting just one tile of obsidian and having my waterfall get plugged up.

I know there are tons of good designs on the Wiki, but what are some of the simple constructions you guys like to use that make your fortresses better or more efficient?

I have a bunch of my own, but I'm always looking for more ideas.  To get things started, I'm looking for tips like these:

* A lever room.  Build a room full of levers on the Noble's floor (because they idle a lot), put each one behind its own door (so you can lock it off if need be) and a main door (so you can lock someone *in*).  Use 'N'otes to label the levers and rid yourself of the habit of wanting to building levers close to what they control (I still have this habit, sometimes).

* A spike room.  Make a 3x3 room or so full of glass spikes in spike traps with a pit over it.  Great way to dump goblin prisoners and more reliable than a kill shaft (I dropped some the entire height of the map and they survived... granted, this is 40d).  If you put a lever at the far end that you can assign to specific nobles, it can double as a way to end mandates quickly.

* When you advance to having a million green glass terrariums, however, you can simply dump the full cages into your magma pit after stripping prisoners of their gear.  Unless you have some need of bones and goblin skull totems, that is.  A magma pit, of course, is simply a garbage dump situated over an empty space that leads down into magma.  The fun part is that they can't escape so long as you dump the cage, not the goblin.  It takes some micro-managing if you have other quantum stockpiles set up, but you probably won't be that disappointed if all you usually dump is stone and prisoners' gear.

* Use above ground fortress areas to avoid miasma.  Wall off or channel out (and roof over) a chunk of the outside.  Then keep your animals, butcher's workshops, kitchens and refuse piles up there to avoid miasma.  Food stockpiles go a level down.  Natural valleys are especially useful for this, because you just have to wall in one or two sides of them and create a roof (so that goblins can't shoot you from above.

* Build (trapped) entrances to the fortress in remote places for migrants and such.  Use traffic designations to make them high priority and then people can get things from odd corners of the map without going about totally exposed the whole time.  Use drawbridges and such if you're worried about defending them.  A chained animal or two (to prevent sneaking thieves) + pressure plates can essentially automate your defenses and close the remote sites off with minimal intervention on your part.

* If you're lucky enough to have a map cut by a river/chasm/etc., make a bridge across it.  Then fill it with traps.  The bad guys who spawn on the wrong side of the map won't have a choice about which path to take, even if it means certain death.

* Speaking of bridges, putting weapon traps filled with blunt weapons (e.g. warhammers) on bridges is *fun*  Make sure they have somewhere interesting to fall.

* Chain up some cats (male ones, to avoid catsplosion) near places where vermin are a problem (e.g. food stockpiles) rather than letting them roam free.

* Help control the pet population.  Butcher all the female cats (or at least cage them).  Your main animal cage should be near the butcher shops.

* Create a new trade depot near the edge of the map once you get established with a drawbridge on each side of it.  Make sure there's a sheltered (and trapped) path between the depot and the map's edge and that your main finished goods/useless trade crap stockpile is on the other side of the drawbridge from it.

* Build towers with fortifications one level above ground so that you can station archers up there and drive away sieges or ambushes.

* Use roach-motel style traps on invaders.  Set up pressure plates to lock off both sides of the hall via drawbridge, then set up something else to kill them (floods, magma, a million green glass spikes from your magma glass furnace... you DO have a magma glass furnace, right?).

* Chain animals near the edges of the map to discover sieges/ambushes.

* Make sure there's a level above your magma workshops.  When you get 5/7 magma or higher, channel a hole straight down into your magma channel and drop water from a pond zone two z-levels above there to form obsidian and make a permanent single 5/7+ magma tile below the workshop that will remain no matter how you want to decide or use your magma in the future.  Great for preventing insanity (yours, now that moody dwarves don't seem to use magma workshops).

* Make at least one of every workshop.  Most of them only take a bit of stone or a bucket or whatever, but it's better just to have one out there somewhere than to have to worry about moody dwarves being picky.  This especially applies to having non-magma versions of every magma workshop.  I even have two kilns, though that's probably overkill.

* If in doubt about the best way to do something, use magma.  It solves many common conundrums, such as:  "What do I do with all these kittens?",  "What good is a soaper?", and "Why does that noble like crystal glass and tentacle demons?"

Just like the Dungeon Master enjoys animal training and such, the Hammerer should be willing to take on butchery tasks simply because he likes killing things.

One of the big FPS problems as I understand it relates to having too many items.  So my idea would be to have all those XXPig Tail SocksXX (and any other similar worn-out items) lying around the fortress eventually decay into nothing unless they're inside a bin.

It should probably happen even faster if they're underwater/outside/etc.

I've always thought that we should be able to learn *who* they're getting possessed by.  It would be really cool if they got possessed by one of the dead dwarves from our own fortress.

Maybe they should even end up doing tasks based on the *dead* dwarf's abilities & preferences, instead of their own...

How do other folks set up their artifact vaults?  And do I need to set the stockpiles to accept base-quality "artifact" items, or total-quality "artifact" items?

I have this nifty place dug out in a fancy geometric design, smoothed, engraved, protected by a floodgate/lever, a skeletal titan in a cage, a dragon (my 3rd one; tamed & but missing the front left leg), several goblin squad leaders in cages (but stripped of possessions), and some tamed wolves all guarding the place.

But all I have in the stockpile is an empty bin, even though we have probably 30 artifacts total (granted, some are mechanisms/weapons which went into traps, but...), even though I told it to take from an existing stockpile with several artifacts in it and set it to accept all finished goods, weapons, ammo, furniture, etc. of artifact quality.

Maybe they're just too busy due to the 12k units of booze, 8k+ prepared meals, etc. that I need more barrels for, that 200x200ish storeroom I just mined out, or the ~80 new cage traps?  It'll probably take a while to process that huge magnetite cluster and those copper veins, too...  But I wish they'd put something into the storeroom, even if they've got a few thousand stone to dump