Bay 12 Games Forum

i would like more to see when a soldier falls the disarmed recruits that come in the back go and pick the weapons of his comrades

But they do. if your woodcutter gets killed way out on the other side of the map, some axedwarf who is supposed to be waiting inside your fort will decide that he likes the woodcutter's axe better than the on in his hand and will go running out alone into the middle of the invasion force to grab the axe.

"But it was a +Copper Battle Axe+ and I only had a -Copper Battle Axe-!

At which point he will go into a martial trance and kill half the invasion force, then come out of the trance and stand there staring in shock at all the carnage he caused for the rest of the battle.

"This is horrifying!"

   Keith

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Now I feel like I should be using more diplomacy and less dwarven steel because perhaps they are just misunderstood...but I digress. 

Ok, I'm confused. I thought Dwarven steel was Dwarven diplomacy. You mean there is another way?

Well, of course there is magma.

   Keith

For your timer, just have a room that fills with water until a pressure plate is at 7/7, then it empties and starts refilling. The pressure plate should be set to be on from 0/7 to 6/7, so it will send an 'off' to lower the bridge when it gets to 7/7. Have one whole wall be a bridge that is opened by the plate so it will drain quickly, and have the water come in through a diagonal so it fills slowly. How long it takes is simply a function of the size. If it's too quick, dig out some more space. If it's too slow, build some walls inside to make it smaller.

   Keith

When you're in the region view, hit tab to change what is shown. There are several screens, one of which will list nearby civilizations, in order of how close they are. It also mentions if you are at war with the elves or humans. It always shows a red line for the goblins, indicating that they are just naturally hostile without needing a declaration of war (at least that's what I assume it means).  So if goblins are near the top of the list, you can expect them to drop by often. if they're not on the list, they probably won't be showing up.

You can also see the goblin sites on the map. See the wiki Map Legend page to see what they look like. That's assuming you're not using a tileset. If you are, you're on your own to figure out what they look like.

   Keith

Almost everything mentioned here does work after world gen.

You just have to make the changes in your save directory, not the main raws.

   Keith

I build wagons around my shrines and transport them.

Here's an idea for a dock that could be very useful. For each dwarf I can currently hover over their square in the equipment column and see what items they are wearing that are worn, and what items they are missing. It would be nice to be able to get a summary list of worn and missing items, so I know what needs to be made/traded for. I think a dock would be the most appropriate way to do this.

It would be nice if it would list types of items, without listing too much detail. I'd prefer to see this:

2 xSocksx
3 xTrousersx
1 XTrousersX
1 xCapx

Rather than:

1 xSheep Wool Sockx
1 xLlama Wool Sockx
2 xSilk Trousersx
1 xSheep Wool Trousersx
1 XPig Tail Fiber TrousersX
1 xGiant Cave Spider Silk Capx

For me, I just want to know how many of what items I need, I don't care what materials the old ones are. But I supposed someone will want that, so maybe have a button to toggle showing materials?

The info is already in Dwarf Therapist, it's just a matter of putting it all together to make it more useful.

Thanks again for a great tool.

    Keith

Hmmm, I was thinking that an animal pastured on top of a pressure plate could be used to detect trapavoid invaders. The idea being that the animal is triggering the plate until it is killed, then the plate would turn on the pumps. This has a couple of complications, though.

For one, the plate the animal is no longer on (hereafter: animal plate) would send an 'off' signal, which would need to be inverted. That's not hard, just have a tile with 7/7 water and another plate (hereafter: water plate) in the tile, set to trigger on 0/7 to 4/7, and have a drawbridge next to it set to go down when the animal plate sends an 'off', which would let the water off the water plate, causing the water plate to send an 'on' to the pumps.

The biggest problem is the delays. The animal plate will wait 100 ticks before sending its 'off', and the bridge will wait 100 ticks after getting its 'off' before going down and releasing the water. That's a 200+ tick delay between the animal leaving the plate and the pumps starting.

Ahh, wait, there is another problem, which may well be the solution. The animal will run away as soon as it sees the invader, rather than waiting to be killed. So set up its pasture so that when it runs away it will go over a pressure plate set to citizens of the animal's weight. That will immediately send an 'on' to the pumps. This assumes that the animal will run away from the invader, not try and engage it or simply freeze in place.

Or flee towards it, like my dwarves were doing when there was a weremoose in the entrance to my fort yesterday. I had set a civilian alert to keep them inside the fort, but when the weremoose (sounds like a Monty Python joke) got to the entrance, dwarves that saw it kept running out the entrance, right past the weremoose, which proceeded to chase them down and kill them. Including my only two doctors. Scared dwarves (and probably animals) do unpredictable things. So you probably just need to put plates all around the pasture.

And don't forget to have a way to shut it all off when your dwarves lead the animal into the pasture.

This adds a layer of complication to vjek's elegantly simple design, but it shouldmight work to get trapavoids. But it's certainly not auto-resetting. You'd have to turn off the master switch, pasture a new animal, and then turn on the master switch again.

Will trade wagons path over pressure plates? If so, then if you put up ramps instead of the stairs at each end, you could use this on the route to your depot.

   Keith