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Messages - Anvilsmith

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31
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Question on Starvation
« on: February 05, 2008, 01:41:00 am »
Don't wait for them to starve. Bring some extra sweet pod and cave wheat seeds along when you embark. As soon as you dig into the alluvial layer (which is made up of clay/silt/loam/whatever), build a farm plot of about 5x5, and add "farming (fields)" to the job list of two of your dwarves. Also have another dwarf fishing, and give orders to process the raw fish at your fishery (that's all you need to do to make fish edible). Your food problems will all be taken care of, provided the farmers and fisherdwarf work continuously.

My forts never starve when I have one fully active dwarf set to fishing and fish cleaning, and one dwarf set to farming (fields). I never butcher animals, except aggressive beasts like rhesus macaques, and get nearly all of my food out of farming and fishing.

I hope some of this helps.


32
DF Gameplay Questions / Animal care, military training and other topics
« on: September 06, 2006, 08:44:00 am »
After a couple of rather successful fortresses that I had to discard before the economy kicked in, I'm now starting from scratch. It's late winter in the first year, and I managed to fill my reserves of food with just one fisherdwarf and proficient grower working full-time. It's amazing what a bit of skill can do to keep a fortress alive.

I've managed to build a pair of copper cages for my mules and horses, who had given birth to foals prior to being caged. Do they still breed in captivity, or do I have to free them and design an indoor stable for their use? I really want to keep them far, far from the wilderness, as massive herds of elephants tend to prowl just beyond the river.

I'm also planning to create a military once I hit 30 people. Preferably marksdwarves, so they'll later have a small chance of taking down elephants. Do they only train with wooden bolts? And how exactly would I need to set up the barracks? I notice I can give both weapon racks and armor stands "barracks/armory" status, so I'm not sure whether all racks in the same enclosed space ought to be assigned as rooms, or whether I should just assign one of them... Or none at all.

For that matter, how does the game react to multiple rooms overlapping, assuming they're of different kinds (i.e. a dining room, study and bedroom)?

Finally, I'm curious how siege engines work. What do I stand to gain from building them? Do they work indoors? Could they, for instance, fire straight into a herd of elephants?


33
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: How to not fall 7 floors out of a tower
« on: April 24, 2008, 11:39:00 pm »
The corner-wall you built needs to be supported by other adjecent floors/walls, otherwise it'll collapse. So instead of this...

code:

X.XXX
Y...X

...,where Y is an empty space or, if memory serves, the roof of a floor tile one Z-level below, you need this...

[CODE]
X.XXX
Z...X
[CODE]

...,where Z is a built floor or wall tile. This latter design should probably work, as there will still be a tile supporting the top-left wall when the nearby floor tile is removed.

So really, if you had used the latter design in your tower, it should have worked.


34
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: hidden moons
« on: January 07, 2008, 02:48:00 am »
I don't see anything wrong with etching an invisible moon; one can easily write an ideogram that represents the new moon, such as two concentric circles.

If the Atlanteans did it (back in Indiana Jones 4), so can the dwarves.


35
DF Bug Reports / Re: [38a] Weird squad name.
« on: February 12, 2008, 03:18:00 am »
I don't see why the name generator should force plurals on squad names at all...  For instance, "The cage of death" sounds a lot more fitting on a squad name than "The cages of death", the latter suggesting that the soldiers themselves are "cages", rather than the overall squad being one giant deathtrap.

Just a personal opinion.


36
DF Bug Reports / [33g] Unreachable enemies cause caravan to stay on map
« on: March 31, 2008, 03:53:00 am »
On the edge of the map, separated from everything by a river and nearby cliff, a couple of zombie groundhogs sprang up. A human and dwarven caravan were supposed to leave the map on a nearby spot; upon encountering the zombie groundhogs, they halted. Neither the groundhogs nor the caravans could cross the river.

The caravans stayed still, failing to leave the map as they properly should, until the caravan drivers and mules (!) went insane. I dug a tunnel to the groundhogs and killed them, and the caravan guards left shortly afterwards.

Apologies if this bug has already been fixed.


37
DF Suggestions / Re: Spirit of the Fortress
« on: February 12, 2008, 06:53:00 am »
The idea behind the first post, as I see it, is that an increasingly complex fortress requires increasingly abstract means to manage it. Some of the concepts mentioned in it are along the lines of the Dwarf Foreman utility - effective ways of organizing the vast amount of data available.

Being able to design blueprints, both outside and inside of the game, would make fortress management a lot easier. One would be able to just copy-paste entire apartment blocks instead of building new ones tile-by-tile, for instance.

Likewise, being able to sort through the huge census of available dwarves in order to find one that "strives for excellence" and has exceptional artistic sensitivity, in order to decide who gets to be the new metalcrafter, would be excellent. Having a more fluid system, where dwarves choose their own jobs based on their skills and preferences as well as the fortress' accomodation, would be even better.

However, I disagree that any interface additions should be restricted by arbitrary requirements (population levels, for example). Rather, I like the way manager build orders and bookkeeping work: you're free to use this part of the interface from the very beginning, as long as you're willing to shell out an office and devote a dwarf for what is essentially a useless function in the early game.


38
DF Suggestions / Re: Metal Beds
« on: February 12, 2008, 07:09:00 am »
Bedrolls. It amazes me that the first seven dwarves would bring along an anvil and two axes, but no bedrolls.

I also agree with the concept of using cloth, straw and leather for mattresses, and stone/metal for the actual frames of the beds.

This could work by treating the beds as containers, which could only hold mattresses. It would also make it easier to satisfy noble requirements (platinum beds w/ giant cave spider silk mattresses, anyone?).


39
DF Suggestions / Re: Workshop designations
« on: September 05, 2006, 02:03:00 am »
I would particularly like the option, in the manager screen, to set the minimum and maximum skill level of those who take up a particular task. Same with the regular workshops - just throw in a hotkey to increase the minimum and maximum skill level. I suspect it would be pretty easy to implement, and would certainly spare the weaponcrafting tasks from being overrun by dwarves with novice weaponsmith/skilled metalsmith in their skillset.

40
DF Suggestions / Blueprints, labels and job assignment suggestions
« on: March 24, 2008, 01:56:00 pm »
1.Blueprints: activated via the designate command; puts any kind of character available to DF on any tile, with any foreground/background color; the tiles can be made visible/invisible during normal gameplay (i.e. when not designating blueprints).

Blueprints can be used to lay down messages/reminders and to mark down locations that will later be used for building (especially useful above-ground). Extremely useful in succession games. Unlike traffic designations, they don't flash, don't affect gameplay, and can be made permanently visible.

2.labels: a label, which is just a string of text with no gameplay relevance, can be assigned to any building/object (including levers and pressure plates). Useful for describing what a lever does.

4.Job assignment cutoff ranges: set in the manager menu, globally or for every specific job type; a "cutoff range" is the maximum distance a job will look for potential dwarves to do it.

This keeps dwarves from travelling halfway around a 6x6 map just to complete a single task, and makes sure that, if you set up a few stockpiles around a shop, the resident craftsmen won't waste time looking for materials when these stockpiles are depleted. Job assignment cutoff ranges are useful even in conjunction with the upcoming addition of burrows, as the burrows affect individual dwarves, rather than individual job types.


41
DF Suggestions / Re: More emotional ups and downs
« on: January 27, 2008, 03:51:00 pm »
Seconded. The happy/sad thought system really needs an overhaul.

42
DF General Discussion / Re: The minor annoyance of everyone in your fort suddenly ki
« on: August 17, 2006, 07:08:00 am »
I'm using v0.21.93.19a... Which I downloaded a few days ago, if I remember straight. Not exactly the newest version. Right now, my fortress has gone down to a single inhabitant, which, according to these forums, seems to be the norm for the civil war bug.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Dwarf fortress is an outstanding game, though it does have its frustrating moments.

I'll see if I can import my gameworld and fortress in the next version...


43
DF General Discussion / The minor annoyance of everyone in your fort suddenly ki
« on: August 17, 2006, 06:22:00 am »
I'm not sure how it happened, although I suspect it's related to the fact that one of my masons got possessed by a spirit, and soon after went insane. The fellow managed to die to my guards fairly quickly, but everyone around him (including the guards themselves) seems to have become enraged.

I dropped from a population of 50 to 15 in five minutes; it doesn't look as though I'm going to survive, as even if only being near the corpse triggers the berzerker reaction, the fellow practically died right in the middle of the cramped hallway leading outside. What's funny is that I had kept him locked down, but got so many "cannot bring item to depot" messages that I unlocked his door anyway at some point before he went mad. Now I'm being spammed with "interrupted by combat" messages.

Are dwarves supposed to turn enraged and slaughter their mates every time they see someone die, or was it all a consequence of the spirit possession? In the latter case, well... I'm hoping the programmer will get rid of this "feature" before more unfortunate dwarves (and possibly players) lose their minds. I got no warning, no option to kill the possessed dwarf or remove the spirit somehow, and no idea that he would've caused such havoc. Having to quit because of a random event just isn't fun, despite what the game urges everyone to think.


44
DF General Discussion / Re: how can I get a caravn?
« on: August 20, 2006, 06:06:00 am »
That's odd - I've gotten human caravans into my fort without any kind of roads or bridges. I do sometimes get a message that the humans avoid my inaccessible fort, but they still go into my depots. This has happened to me on several maps, each of them based on a cold/freezing climate.

45
DF General Discussion / Re: Strange mood bug
« on: August 20, 2006, 02:18:00 am »
EDIT: Okay, I figured out what the problem was. People got tasks to grab the platinum and send it to my stores as soon as it was mined, which is why the guy with the strange mood couldn't access it. When I didn't bother to make stockpiles, the fellow went up to the mine and helped himself with enough platinum to start his project.

Perhaps dwarves with strange moods should be given a priority to getting raw materials. That is, whenever someone wants to pick up a given resource, the game should also check if moody dwarves are after it, and if they are, let them take it instead.

EDIT #2: and now that I finally made the artefact, I got a savegame crash, bringing me back to step 1. At least I still got that backup.

[ August 20, 2006: Message edited by: Anvilsmith ]


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