Bay 12 Games Forum

You won't find anything like this, I don't think. The entire embark region is salty or fresh, and it mostly seems to be dependent on the altitude of the area. If anything on the embark region is below or at the ocean's surface, the entire region is salty. At least, this is how it looks like to me.

I have two wells on the same z-level, 1 is salty, the other fresh! The salty one was at my hospital, but in the end i just moved the hospital over to where i got a fresh water well, both wells are connected to the SAME cistern and a thin pipe off it (no floodgate or anything separating them), so salt is not magically spreading by contact either. Every part of the cistern/pipe is also natural rock, btw.

And this is in a Nano-Fortress of only 1x1 embark tile, so what you say cannot be the whole story. Note, i do get a little bleed-over from a neighbouring biome, because the borders are jagged, that could be areas marked as salty/fresh, but i'm not getting any contamination in my freshwater cistern being linked to a salty part.



EDIT : I have run a few embarks, and used dfliquids to do some tests. Tile Edit didn't seem to help, and i'm getting some wierd results (suprise, suprise).

On the first map, I had a salt water brook, not a water source. I dug into the soil near the brook, and filled with "fake" water. This water was fresh, but 1z above the brook. so I then dug another pit 2 levels deep, making the water on the same z-level as the brook water itself. Still fresh.

So z-level by itself cannot be the determining factor. I then tried a seaside embark,vanilla worldgen settings, and got some interesting results which back up the "contamination" meme and the "constructed floors" meme, which I did not expect.

First, I built "fake" obsidian walls in a hollow 11x11 square, filled it with water, on a cliff 2 z-levels above sea level. This was not drinkable. Next, I built a solid 11x11 obsidian square right next to it, hollowed it out with mining, filled with water. Presto! this WAS drinkable. I rebuilt the first reservoir like the second one, but it never became drinkable, nor did subsequent reservoirs built anywhere water had spilled out of the salty one.

The only difference was the floor of the reservoir when first filled with water - local grass or fake obsidian floors.

EDIT2: I just channelled a basic hole-in-the-ground (into soil), filled with water and it IS drinkable, even in this salt-water biome. So the grass is salty but the ground 1-z-level below is not salty?

That's 2/2 salt-water maps this has worked on, just channel a hole into soil and bucket-brigade pump some salt water in, should give you fresh water. Buckets spread the salt if you draw from a well over a salt source, the hole you're filling becomes salt water.

@lytha : Is there a biome boundary there? using dfreveal you can clearly denote biome boundaries in the layers by viewing up/down z-levels, the boundary is not square, but it's the same on every z-level. Or maybe the pools are marked specifically during generation, but the algorithm ignores setting the flag on surrounding squares.

You CANNOT shoot AT ALL through a fortification unless you are right next to it. Dumb the design down a bit and stop over-thinking it :-

DF G
HHwH
The above = 100% kill for dwarf, the goblin deals 0% damage. This is a ground-level defence though, if you want it up a level then :-
DF
HH G
HHwH
I guess you could have it over-hanging if you like, I prefer the fortifications to be in line with the wall below.

Making the water wider just impedes the dwarves from shooting, an extra thick fortification will stop them shooting out whatsover.

One thing someone suggested in another thread was "shutters" in from of the fortifications to block views outside sometimes (could stop dwarves getting scared, help encourage marksdwarves to reload). That would look like this (where B = Raising Bridge). remember this is a side view and the bridge would really be 10 units long, along the outside of the fortifications  :-


DFB
HHH G
HHHwH


Sounds like an interesting and very buggy site. I'd love to see that. Keep the save, sites like this area rare.

I'd keep mostly non-grazer animals, on solid rock. All types of birds are good as are cats, dog, Black bears, grizzly bears. These are the non-grazers which have the [PET] token by default in the raws (i searched), so no modding needed. Tigermen also are non-grazing pets, but they are sentient so cannot be butchered.

You can also keep wild herds of grazer animals, if not tamed, they do not need grass, but many natural animals will still breed if non-tame. Just note this will slow down or stop other wild-life entering the map.

Also, I'd suggest you find out what's below the Magma sea, could be anything, going by how odd your site is. If you don't have underground trees or plant's I don't think your tree-farm will work. Just hope there's at least 1 tile of moss somewhere.

Building destroyers cannot attack "up". Making the enemies have to path upwards through a floor hatch to get in effectively stops  anything. Just lock the hatch like a door to stop your own guys using it during a siege.

EDIT: Poster below found this may be an urban myth, not proven game mechanics, see posts below.

It's easier than that.

1. Build an atom-smasher bridge, lever operated.
2. make a pasture & a Burrow inside said Atom-Smasher.
3. Assign unwanted dwarves to the Burrow, unwanted animals to the pasture.
4. Pull lever.


btw, you checked that the pit zone has the animals assigned to it? And the dwarves can reach the animals, i.e. no locked doors or burrow restrictions

Here's my pitting instructions for goblins which i posted in another thread, this can be modified with the FB down below, though in the discussion I had marksdwarves to finish off the goblins. I think this is about as efficient as I can make it (no need to build the cages, no levers or linking). I'd definitely strip the goblins first, otherwise there'd be a lot of junk down there you couldn't safely clean up.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=82493.msg2192360#msg2192360