Bay 12 Games Forum

The Dwarves of Hammerborn were mighty.  They created a nigh impregnable fortress, defended with a Path of Doom and many fearsome traps.  They harnessed the magma sea.  They slaughtered the zombie hordes again and again.  They made zombie petting zoos ("Hi Grandma!"  "Braaaaaaaaaaaainnnnnnnsssssssss!").  They enslaved necromancers and captured vampires (and even made one the mayor...).

But in the end, they were done in by their own hubris.  You see, there was an emergency "Destroy World" lever that pretty much flooded everything with magma... you know, in case of emergencies.  In retrospect, the main meeting hall was not the best location for that sort of thing, even though it was very convenient and accessible.  Amost went berserk over the destruction of his first and only masterpiece carving and pulled it.  The carving?  It depicted that time when an undead goat skin struck down his wife.

Even a decadent dolomite door wasn't enough to keep him from going over the edge.

Whether it is difficult to move the game code in java? can increase productivity? well, there will be more opportunities.
or just do it all over again rewrite necessary?

Yes, it's difficult.  Imagine rewriting a 2,000 page paper in a foreign language that's supposedly better for some reason.

No, it would not increase productivity.  Toady One is basically the only coder.  Having him spend all that time rewriting things instead of adding new features will not speed up development.

I was worried when I saw that mandates would now be reasonable until I realized that we could always say that we arranged the unfortunate accidents due to the nobles being suspected of vampirism.

Quote from: Tarran on January 13, 2012, 06:25:03 am

I believe CFF explorer has the ability to add the flag without even having to bother Toady.

It is one thing to hack it in.

It is another to actually allow for the program to make use of the extra space effectively and to make sure that no stability problems occur. This is a suggestion for the latter.

Quote from: kaenneth on January 13, 2012, 06:34:43 pm

I'll try that CFF tool later, I did realize one other concern, the LAA flag might break DFHack and releated tools, like Therapist.

It might, but I have it on and see no problems.

Have you tried one of the embark sizes that would kill DF for lack of memory to see if it's doing any good?

To trap entire sieges, I would use an alternate entrance tunnel to the fort that is super-long and starts off wide, narrowing down to choke points further in. Hatch/pressure plate combinations could prevent goblins from entering the fort proper, or dwarves/animals from leaving. Troll destroyers outside take care of building destroyers. Once the entire siege is inside, you simply close the bridge doors to lock in the siege. Then, you could let them into cage trap hallways in small groups using other bridge doors.

Sounds like a new achievement: capture an entire siege, take all their weapons/armor, and release them outside to escape without anyone on either side being killed/injured for a pacifist victory. Note that you still get the goblin loot, and don't have to dispose of smelly bodies.

Use a 1-level dodge'm trap.  Nobody gets hurt after falling down one level and, more importantly, you don't end up caging the squad leader and paralyzing the squad... yet.  The hard part is always going to be the squad leader.  The rest of the squad always paths to the leader, so not paralyzing the squad is a priority.

It's too bad that siege squads don't choose someone new to follow when the leader is incapacitated or caged.

The "long winding corridor of traps" was my go-to scheme for a while, but it never worked. This is because goblin hordes would start to come in, a few would get trapped, and then they'd just stop, and sit there for months on end. Eventually I gave up and moved on to other strategies. I'm still not very happy with my front gates at this point.

Use a 1z pitfall with a dodge-trap setup.  That won't hurt anybody (don't worry, the lethal part comes afterwards), but it will get them all locked into your real trap, without having to time drawbridges just right or whatever.  They need to have a path to where they want to go (and a live, non-caged leader) or they sit on their rear ends and stay there for months.  But if the only fortress entrance is through the 1z primary trap and the only exit after hitting the 1z trap is to go into whatever horrible thing you've invented for them, that's exactly what they'll do.

I hate having survivors, you see, so I like to bottle all the invaders with that setup so that I can build whatever torment I desire without permitting a single enemy to flee or survive.

I use DT too, but it would be great to see what skills they have when I go to enable labors.  Similarly, when looking at their skills, I would like to know which ones have associated labors enabled.  And if that's added, it should probably also consider military skills to have the labor enabled if the dwarf is assigned to a squad.

That would probably make DT go from "pretty much necessary" to "nice to have."

I pave over some of the main hallways in the fortress using gold or possibly obsidian.

Yeah, if all you build are external roads, you won't have much value.  Especially if you used cheap stone (at _least_ use stone blocks!).

You can also build roads to random edges of the map, as though there was supposed to be something out there.  Sometimes, I build underground roads to random map edges and make airlock type things for migrants to visit or ways to let invasion-panicked wanderers run back into the fortress that can be sealed off most of the time.