Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Ipslne on September 07, 2011, 03:57:57 am

Glassmaking requires a fuel source, so is a big problem if you do not have bituminous coal/lignite or a magma source. Clay is annoying since the most useful things to make are pots, and you'd have to take the extra step in Glazing them.

   Fire clay is both pretty valuable and doesn't require glazing at all, in fact an economy based around a single fire clay tile can produce all the wealth you will ever need in my experience.

& how often do you have to embark to find that single fire clay tile?

That Desert world seed it's nice...  but the problem is the massive lack of embark points and the lack of any interesting metal at all in most locations I've scouted

And I'm not talking about iron here, most places have just a bit of cooper and maybe some silver... the was one location though that had a ****load of gold... hell, most of the terrain under the sand was gold! I was tempted of starting there and making a golden city instead of a glass one...

How can I get more embark points? Also... I've seen some desert locales have "scarce" trees, so I might not need the mods, well, might need the one for pearlash if you need 1 pearlash per square wall of crystal

If you're using the World Gen profile provided upthread, & aren't familiar with configuring the Advanced Parameters using the in-game tool, just edit the appropriate line of the profile in your world gen file (which you're obviously familiar with or you wouldn't have gotten the data above into it).

The specific line for embark points is "[EMBARK_POINTS:1274]", just change the 1274 to whatever, but make sure it's the one in the section headed "[TITLE:DESERT]" (or whatever you called it if you changed it).

If you want improve the availability of metals, lower this ("[MINERAL_SCARCITY:1500]") number, I don't think doing so will bork the geography.

Umm... Unless you hit a volcano, or early magma pipe, you'll probably be able to get wood from the caverns.

@FrankMcFuzz have you checked the wiki? 'cos the method described at http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Aquifer#The_cave-in_method works fine in soil.

Just remember that for each extra layer of aquifer you think you might have to breach, you need to add 2 tiles of width to the initial 7.

The floor holding up the central core can be of anything, including wood.

Can you even live w/o trees?

With the introductions of Rock, Glazed Earthenware, & Stoneware (& Porcelain?) booze containers, I believe the only thing wood is still required for is Beds, & you almost always have 3 logs available from deconstructing your wagon (I don't know whether or not you get them on embarks where the wagon is deconstructed on arrival).

I'd think it would also be a very rare embark where there wasn't some sort of wood in the caverns (unless you set them to be deserts in the Advanced world gen).

And finally, I don't think sleeping without beds will actually kill your dorfs, just cause bad thoughts, so if you managed to create one bed, & use it to designate a dormitory in a room made of gold with lots of masterwork or artifacts to give them happy thoughts... (NB: I haven't tried this).

It would be doable. But perhaps excessive, potentially resulting in a lot of wasted haulage & FPS.

maybe 21x21 or 31x31? Hell, 11x11 might work, though if you have a central 3x3 stairwell you might not have enough space for everything you want (OTOH, if you start with 11x11, expanding should be quite easy).

Thank you, that goes a long way to explaining my problems (I've previously been trying to design circular double helixes as 3-wide corridors, so I usually end up with the inner ramps approx 11-tiles apart).

Personally I prefer ramp spirals (for one thing, things don't fall straight to the bottom) but tend to go with staircases because I suck at designating usable spirals.