Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Urist McMick on September 30, 2010, 05:03:25 pm

Hmm? Magma's broken?

From what I've seen, only seems to make enemies/dwarves drown and not actually sizzle alive.

I know it was bugged at one point--I had, for example, a cave ogre fall in a magma pit and have all its fat boil off very slowly before finally drowning, but that was in a rather old version, and I've had no trouble burning things up with magma in the arena.

Nope, no cave.

I had a forgotten beast once show up in the caverns before I'd breached them.  I kept getting a "The Forgotten Beast is no longer enrage" announcement, and when I finally breached the cavern, it was badly crippled by a tribe of antpeople, one of which was still alive and repeatedly stabbing it with a blunt spear.

My military arrived soon after and finished them off.

Also I've frequently gotten "A Snatcher! Protect the Children!" annoucements which center the screen on a corpse or cage in one of my trap corridors.

Yes, irrigation appears to increase the yield.  Also sand has a much higher yield then non-sandy soils.

And I most definitely have gotten tower caps--and cave wheat and sweet pods and such--popping up before I breached the caverns.  They do it all the time in my hallways when I'm in a sandy layer; it's a bit frustrating when one decides to mature in a doorway.

However, stuff from deeper cavern layers does not seem to appear until you've breached the layer.  After which it'll appear anywhere, for some reason.  So blood thorns near the surface...

Count out a multiple of 48 from the edge of the map and dig your shaft there.  The corner of embark map squares are frequently solid all the way down.  So you can reach the magma sea without breaching a cavern accidentally.

Also, as has been mentioned, going up and down is exactly the same as going side to side, and if your magma sea isn't really far down (my current fort its only 40 z levels) then it's pretty close to everything else, really.

If you do breach the cavern, seal it off with constructions; doors are for when you're ready to actually expand into the caverns.  Generally this works and'll keep you safe.

As for relocating down to the lower levels, I've tried that a few times and it seems pretty effective, the only down side is you'll get way less iron or flux as a byproduct of your expansion.  Unless it's a marble layer, obviously, then just less iron.  Also setting up farming is a bit harder without doing it in a cavern, since you can just dig rooms near a muddy pool then drain it into them.  But it's definitely doable.

Also there's no question that setting up the forges down at the bottom is better than moving magma up.  Moving magma up requires probably at least 50 magma safe blocks, corkscrews, and pipes, and lots of architect work.  Setting up by the magma sea can be entirely set up by winter.  So yeah.

You don't have to breach the caverns.  Nor flood, actually, though it seems to speed up the process.  Digging an open space in a sandy layer though will quickly cause Tower Caps and Fungiwood (and anything you've modded to be in the first layer) to grow.  Other soil layers seem to work too, but much slower.  (And, as I said, muddy ground may work fastest, and can be applied to stone.

So really, it's more like:
1. Dig big room in soil layers
2. (Optional) breach caves to get more colors
3. (Optional) flood some rock areas to get more space
4. Wait a few years
5. Profit.

Quote from: Sheb on September 27, 2010, 03:31:26 pm

Could someone do SCIENCE by changing that slade into rock using DFHack and then mine it out?

what utility lets u do that?

As of the newest version, just remove the "[UNDIGGABLE]" tag from the raws.  Prior to that you could tweak its hardness or something.  I forget which number; but lowering it would make it diggable.

Erm, the mesh thing doesn't need to be enabled to make the weighted ranges work, I believe.  And volcanos don't need high elevation.  They'll frequently appear in the middle of the ocean.  They do create a mountain around them, so they're inevitably at high elevation, but that's a trait of the volcano, not where it's placed.

But aynway, weight the second highest level of elevation higher and the highest lower and there should be less mountain ranges, I think.

Or increase the elevation X and Y variance and you'll get not less mountains, but they'll be scattered more.  Or mess around with PerfectWorld.

As for temperature extremes, make the min and max temperature 50, but I don't think that will actually change the poles....  Haven't tried it myself because I like freezing biomes   Soil you can avoid by embarking almost entirely in mountains or glacier.  (You can't embark entirely in mountains, but you can have it so the soil is a tiny block in the corner you don't plan to use)