Bay 12 Games Forum

Question. Seems like it should be obvious, but maybe i'm stupid. Anyways, in this fort, I'm having a very, very, VERY suspicious amount of luck with my military. They are training quickly, and can decimate goblin ambushes that outnumber them with little to no casualties or injuries. A couple scratches, and my best one lost her hand [didn't slow her down, she broke the ambush by herself still.], but otherwise they're a powerhouse of destruction. My marksdwarves are training regularly, and won't hesitate to put a bolt ina  goblin from fifty paces without so much as a warning whistle. As a result of all this, I have quite a bit of goblinite lying around. Normally, I just unforbid it then trade it to caravans. Keeps me from having to make useless crafts, and gets rid of things I don't need. Then I got to thinking.. Why make clothing for my dwarves? I could just have them wear what the goblins bring. And where as I make the bare minimum [i assume.] of trousers, a coat, and some shoes, the goblins bring EVERYTHING. Now, i seem to recall a couple versions ago the dwarves would equip goblin clothing, so i unforbid some and waited for my raggity looking alcoholics to suit up. They did not. The clothing sat there, sat there, and sat there, but they never touched it. Why? I assume they still wear it, correct? I don't use burrows, it wasn't forbidden, their current clothing it falling off around them [infact i traded some of it to the last caravan XsocksX for everyone!] but still they didn't go anywhere near this pile of perfectly good goblin clothing.

I'm pretty sure this is the best place for this question, but I could be wrong. Anyways, I've been playing DF for like 2 or 3 years now, and only just now downloaded the Lazy Newb Pack. I don't need it in the slightest, but it seemed to be the best way to see what tilesets played like.

Well, I've only figured out how to get the default one to work, which I assume is Phoebus' pack. It's cool and all, almost makes it seem like an entirey different game. [I've been playing with default ASCII the entire time.] However, there's one thing I don't get.. in the bottom right had corner, there's an H, followed by numbers. I can't for the life of me figure out what the hell it is. Right now it says ''H:0/0/0/0/12/4/3" With the numbers in varying colors. What is this? What does it mean?

So, I have two squads of military dwarves. One is above average to godlike in skills. The other was a bunch of migrants with sicknasty names. 'Sazir Granitetool', 'Dodok Bronzeoaks', 'Goden Deadgirder'... things like that. Anyways, my Commander is my highest skilled dwarf, migrated as a Great Axedwarf, Great Shield User, Great Dodger, Great Armor User, and Skilled Teacher. Plus she has a pretty decent name herself, Ilral Crystalhail. After I became a Barony, I decided that [after reading about it on the wiki], Ilral would become my champion! She will lead my forces into combat, mutilate everything with an angry vengeance [her husband was assassinated by a goblin master theif. Popped up outta nowhere and stabbed him in the brain before the game even paused.] and train my legions into an unstoppable steamroller of goblin crunching destruction!

Thus my problem. She's my Champion, she's got her own little personal color [which apparently stops her from being listed as an 'Axe Lord'. Pfft.] but that's about it. She continues training with HER squad, whom are all between talented and expert, but my little second-line migrant army are all barely past dabbling. Should I... should I remove her from her squad? Does being Champion AND Commander conflict with one another?

Alright, I have no idea how to explain this, so bear with me.

I'm building a fortress at a 3 way river, where a waterfall splits two ways. My fortress will be behind the waterfall itself. Now, the section between the two lower rivers, I'm going to channel down so it's not some absurdly high little mountain thing. My problem is that ONE of the layers has some aquifer in it. Only 1 layer of it, and it's a small portion of that area overall. I can dig over, as well as under it. My question is, can i drop it like I would a 'plug' and destroy the aquifer layer itself? Or will water just start spurting out of thin air?

Maybe this happens alot, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it happened to me before and I never noticed, but considering what I was checking for, I doubt it.

A migant came to my fortress this year, and I've been checking to see if they have a hundred ''former member of'' or ''lacks alcohol.'' just incase I get a vampire. Because I have a legendary armorsmith to protect. Also I setup their obs as they enter the map, makes it easier for me. Anyways, this one guy is a fairly promising suspect for a vampire, his blue area is large. He doesn't 'lack alcohol' or anything, but he's 121 years old, and he's the former member of 4 different places. The part that piqued[?] my interest however is the last one..

''He is a former prisoner of The Torment of Aging.''

Despite this being funny cause he's an older dwarf[alot of my migrants tend to be around 50-70, for some reason], this single line has me... interested? What does this mean? What he baby snatched... then rescued? Was he taken prisoner in a war[!] and then escaped? I don't understand. The goblins still exist so it's not like his captors were smashed into oblivion.

Also, is 4 former civs enough to be qualified as 'undead scum'?

[Edit]: He also has a kill list, but it's only populated by one person; Song Umbraltick the Human[!], in 455.

[Edit2]: Yes. He was abducted as a baby[im looking in legends in a copy of the world] by a human[1] and imprisoned for apparently 3 years. He was abducted in 382, and 'In 385, Cerol was reunited with Lokum Wallroof and Atir Oilyawn in Groupedurn.' Two years later, he was attacked and bitchslapped his agressor. WHEN HE WAS FIVE YEARS OLD.

Do dwarves commit suicide after only being 'slightly' unhappy? My current fort is against a volcano, and everything is going fine. I'm at 43 dwarves, a metal indistry thriving, no hunger or thirst.. a couple of my dwarves are bummed out, but only because I forgot to actually make some beds and one of my miners valantly sacrificed himself to help get my forges ready. Magma moves faster than I thought it did. Anyways, everything seemed to be going fine, I punched a hole above my magma chamber for dumping unwanted garbage and goblins, then i received another migrant wave. As I was going through and assigning them jobs, a ''has been missing for a week.'' notice showed up. At first I figured a vampire, but when I checked the log I noticed that right before that, a hauler has ''bled to death.''

Now, there were no combat logs, so there was no fighting. No corpses. No bodies in beds, no drained of all blood, so no vampire. I noticed some smoke coming from my dumping hole, but thought nothing of it at the time. Thinking back on it now, I think my dwarves may have jumped in. But... is that something they DO?

I'm currently getting some strange behavior out of my dwarves. Nothing fatal or fortress-threatening yet, but definitely irritating. It started with setting up a meeting area in a cave I'd dug out as my fortress' bazaar, where shops and the trade depot would be. My turkeys went there, albeit extremely slowly. My dwarves just hung around the wagon. I had them dig out a farm area, and a place for my turkeys, and eventually they wandered over and hung out in my cave. Great! Odd, but it's what I wanted. Next, I built some shops to start making potash and various furniture. Well they took their sweet ass time getting it all done, and now, despite hav ing shops, available material, jobs enables, and free time [ 'No Job' freeloading bastards.] they refuse to actually do anything. Occasionally one will wander over, do one or two things, then go right back to no job. There are no burrows, and no stockpiles yet [just started.], so none of that could be it.


Edit: Their laziness has struck again. My turkeys were sitting on some eggs, which were marked with 'TSK' so I figured they would do something about them, but no. Now I have an extra 47 poults. =|

Okay, so. I've been the better part of a year [real life] it seems, trying to figure out minecarts. I've tried. I've tried. Then I've tried again. I've played with them in gae, I've read the wiki, but apparently I'm too stupid to get it. Repeatedly, and most often, this results in either one of two ways.

1. My minecarts just sit there and are never used. Ever. Sometimes because I can't even figure out what to do with them or why they'd be useful.

or, as resulted in my last several forts,

2. Broken legs. Broken arms. Dead dwarves. Though I did manage to smack a goblin in the everything with one. So there's that.

How the hell do I effectively use minecarts? What good are they once I figure out how to make them non-homocidal?