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Messages - khearn

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1501
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Stone stockpiles for mason+mechanic: useful or useless?
« on: October 03, 2011, 10:33:51 pm »
In my current fort, I have a couple of small stockpiles just above the mason/mechanic shops. One is for any magma-safe stone, one is for any non-magma-safe stone. Each one takes from a larger stockpile of the same types. Having a feed stockpile very close to each shop is important. If your stones are left in the quarry, the shop worker has to travel all the way there and back for each item he makes. If there is a stockpile a few steps away, hr can grab the next stone and be back in the shop with hardly any wasted time. Let the haulers spend their time carrying stones a long ways.

1502
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Just killed a roc
« on: October 03, 2011, 07:06:59 pm »
The rest of the squad comes running out the door to find Urist McRocSlayer walking out of a cloud of feathers, saying "Hey guys, what took you so long?"

1503
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Turned weather off but it's still raining
« on: October 03, 2011, 07:02:31 pm »
I haven't played with that setting, but it sounds like it might turn off changes in the weather. So if it's raining when you turn it off, it stays raining forever. But if you turn it back on and wait for it to stop raining, then turn it off, it might stay dry forever.

Or maybe not. Like I said, I haven't played with it.

1504
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: The Neglected Mace
« on: October 03, 2011, 06:56:41 pm »
Quote from: Sting_Auer on October 03, 2011, 06:22:42 pm
However, it's more about how quickly you can render your opponent incapable of fighting than it is killing them.

Not always. I've had plenty of cases where half a dozen dwarves will all rush to the closest goblin and pound him into a pile of jelly, while ignoring the 6 goblins 10 tiles away that are pounding on the poor wood hauler who had the misfortune of discovering the ambush. By the time the dwarf warriors fishing breaking every bone in that one goblin's body and the poor schmuck finally give in to pain, the wood hauler has also been killed. There are times when a quick kill is highly desirable. Or the good sense to leave a disabled but living opponent and proceed on to a target that is still an active threat to the fortress. But hoping for dwarves with good sense is pointless, so I'll keep hoping for quick kills.

1505
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: My animals are killing each other!
« on: October 03, 2011, 04:23:12 pm »
One peacock will service all your peahens. In my current fort, one of the immigrants had a pet peacock, so he wanders around following his dwarf and the peahens stay locked in their coop. Any new peacocks get slaughtered as soon as they're adults.

If the dogs are chained next to each other, as in each each chain is next to the next chain, then they're closer than they need to be. Put a couple of spaces between each chain so the dogs can't reach each other. They'll still spot the kobolds. Wait, you have kobolds??? I haven't seen them since 31.<something> came out and they all started starving to death during worldgen.

The blood, ichor, etc that you're finding near your well is stuff that got on some dwarf and got washed off when he cleaned himself at the well. The dwarf walked through it somewhere in your fortress and it stuck to him. Then he went to the well for a bath and it got left there. Normal and harmless, until you get forgotten beast blood that carries a nasty syndrome.

1506
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: confound these trees!
« on: October 03, 2011, 04:12:48 pm »
I currently have a row of 3 5x5 "surface" plots on my first level underground. I built walls on the surface around them and floors and fortifications on top of the walls (with stairs up) to make a handy marksdwarves' tower. The only access is from below ground. You do need a solid way to seal it off underground in case you get attacked by something that can fly. I use a couple drawbridges in the access tunnel.

The tower is very effective. Too effective, in fact. It's near the entrance to my drowning trap, and the last few sieges have taken so much damage from the archers that they run away before any get to the trap. Of course, I could just not station the archers there and let the sieges into the trap. But those guys do need the practice.

And the trap is kinda flakey, I need to work on the timing of the reset circuit. It works great on the first batch in, then gets stuck and never shuts off the water flow in order to reset for a second batch.

1507
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: confound these trees!
« on: October 03, 2011, 02:48:14 pm »
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1508
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Hunting
« on: October 03, 2011, 02:39:25 pm »
Quote from: zwei on October 03, 2011, 01:53:46 pm
Goblins can make cloth quivers. Dwarves can't
I never realized that. Obviously I've never tried to make cloth quivers. Thanks.

Quote from: Jimlad11 on October 03, 2011, 02:27:26 pm
Edit: And if your dwarves manage to bring down an Elephant...the roasts...THE ROASTS! *drool*

Yeah, I had a fort with elephants wandering around. Sometimes I'd go into the trade goods selection menu and hit d to order by value, and one of the top items would be something like  "Elephant Meat(112)". And once a decent cook gets his hands on it, those roasts are indeed impressive.

Of course, it takes a while to butcher an elephant, since the butcher shop is ☼CLT☼ the instant the hunter drags the carcass in.

1509
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Making my military wear a certain uniform
« on: October 03, 2011, 02:31:34 pm »
When in the 'm'ilitary 'e'quipment screen, you can hit 'P' for priority and it will show you the specific item each dwarf has assigned. Very useful if you want to see how many dwarves have steel leggings, how many just have bronze, and how many are using the stupid pine leggings brought by that elf caravan that you killed two years ago. All of them will show up as a green checkmark in the regular equipment screen, so you might think your troops are fully equipped when some of them are actually wearing junk.

You can also use this screen to set which squad has what priority for grabbing the best armor. If the first squad you created is your marksdwarf squad, and the second is the newbie training squad, and the third is your veteran strike-force, by default your marksdwarves will get first choice of available armor, then the newbies, and the strike-force (which should get the best stuff) will get whatever is left over. So your strike-force is running into battle wearing leather helmets while your marksdwarves are sitting safe on the walls in steel helmets. In the 'P'riority screen, you can select the strike-force squad, then select the first squad, and they'll be swapped on that screen, and in the order that good stuff gets issued.

It's worthwhile after re-ordering them to set all squads to the "nothing" uniform, exit the military menus and let the game run a few seconds, then come back and reassign the uniforms so the stuff gets reissued properly. Then use the squad menu to select all squads and move them somewhere, just to make sure everyone has come on duty and picked up their equipment.

1510
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: It was inevitable, and I gave it little thought. Silly me.
« on: October 03, 2011, 02:00:52 pm »
Hmmm, odd that. Did you turn on the mason labor in Dwarf Therapist and forget to export the changes to Dwarf Fortress? Use 'v' to select one of them in the game, then 'p'references, 'l'abor and go to the appropriate labor group and confirm that masonry is lighted up. My apologies if you've already done this, I just want to be sure all the bases are covered.

I'm assuming that your stone isn't forbidden. Check with 'k' and make sure it doesn't have squiggly braces around the name, like "{granite}". Ah, but if it was forbidden, you wouldn't have been able to select it when you designated the fortifications to be built. So that can't be it.

My only remaining thought is that the masons must not have a path to the stone/fortifications. Are they on the same z-level and have a clear path with no locked doors? If they're on a different z-level, have you done anything near the stairs/ramps between the levels recently? It's easy to make ramps unusable by digging out walls next to them, or down stairs unusable by building up stairs on top of them, or other similar sorts of things.

BTW, if the megabeast is sitting two spaces from a door, seemingly doing nothing, then he's probably actually in the process of breaking down the door. They usually don't get right next to the door, and there is no indication that they are doing anything. If you use 't' to look at the door, you can see it getting in worse condition. Instead of a "Pine Door", it will become a "xPine Doorx", then a "XPine DoorX", then a "XXPine DoorXX", then it will be destroyed.

1511
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Hunting
« on: October 03, 2011, 01:46:40 pm »
Quote from: Endiqua on October 03, 2011, 06:33:46 am
Quote from: Mister Always on October 02, 2011, 03:55:02 pm
It can also be done at a clothier's workshop. Yer gonna need some cloth.
Uhhhh...I don't think so.  I think you can make leather or candy quivers, but not cloth.
I've seen plenty of cave spider silk quivers in the piles of goblinite I've sold off to caravans.

1512
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Keeping my magma forges running smoothly
« on: October 03, 2011, 01:44:15 pm »
You might also want to make sure you designate a meeting zone down by the magma forges. Just setting up a dining room isn't enough. When they have any free time, they'll end up trudging up100 z-levels to hang out in a meeting area up top if they don't have one down below. Then every time you queue up a new weapon, you'll have to wait for your weaponsmith to haul is dwarfy butt all the way back down.

1513
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Dwarf in a secretive mood, not sure how to satiate his needs
« on: October 03, 2011, 01:39:33 pm »
Quote from: Martholomule on October 03, 2011, 08:20:21 am
For my trouble, I got a fantastic cabinet (yay?) and now the elves are at war with The Superior Tool. 

A fine example of a win-win situation. Congratulations!

Actually, the classic definition of win-win would require that it be a win for the dwarves and a win for the elves. In this case it's more win-win for the dwarves, and lose-lose for the elves. But i think most players would agree that this is better.

1514
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: 0_o spontaneous combustion?
« on: October 03, 2011, 01:33:39 pm »
The lesson to be learned here is that one should never designate a large area for channeling if it is over an open space. The miners will do the channeling in a semi-random order and you can be fairly certain that some floor area will end up with all of the spaces around it channeled out, causing the area to cave in.

There are two ways to do this:
1) If you've already dug out the lower level, you have to channel the upper level one row at a time. Designate the farthest row from the access point to be channeled, wait for it to be done, then designate the next row. That way there can never be an unsupported floor time. It's slow.
2) Plan ahead and don't dig out the lower floor first. Then you can designate the entire upper floor to be channeled and they'll dig out both floors at the same time. You'll end up with ramps around the outer edges, plus a few ramps randomly left in the middle. Use d->z to clean these up. Quick and easy.

1515
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Cure for invisible items?
« on: October 01, 2011, 12:32:52 pm »
As many of you are aware, sometimes an item that gets pushed by water flow will turn invisible. It still shows up in the stocks lists, but not on the map, and dwarves don't ever seem to use them. I had a bit of flooding in my current fort, and I've got some valuable steel armor bits that have turned invisible. Having no iron ore, steel is somewhat precious to me. Does anyone know of a way to recover this sort of invisible item?

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