Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: dbay on May 28, 2012, 11:58:15 pm

Couldn't ambushers just shoot the animals upwards through the grates? That's the advantage that windows have, although TBH my animal guard towers haven't yet actually caught anything through their windows.

No, because floor grates and floor bars block arrows/bolts/etc.
Wall grates and wall bars allow arrows to pass through.

Floor grates and floor bars used to block line of sight, but that was fixed when Toady made human cities with sewers.

EDIT: A new and improved animal-based ambush detector is to dig a channel, put a grate on top, and pit an animal into the channel. Yes, in that order. You can pit through closed grates and hatches. Don't do this if your map is prone to flooding with water or magma.

Well, one of the points of the animals is to detect ambushes in time to flood them with magma, so...
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Quote from: uncool on May 28, 2012, 12:42:13 am

Quote from: Ieb on May 28, 2012, 12:39:12 am

You could cut those glass "gems" though and make gem windows with 'em. It'd only work for the windows though, still need sand to get the glass floors.

Nah, I've got 3 types of diamond to use for the windows.

The glass floors are still transparent, right? If I station a dog there, it will be able to detect enemies?
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No; glass floors and other constructions work just like stone constructions. Using glass for construction is mostly a style choice--well, that and glass is worth more than most sorts of stone, and is unlimited if you have a source of sand.

Hrm. Is there some way to have a transparent floor or anything like that? A fortification below, etc.?
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They're not made with raw glass, they're made at the glass furnace with sand. Raw glass is pretty much just a rough gem.

...ah. Well crap. I've been buying the raw glass for all these years for nothing. Oh well. Time to start buying sand and hope the civilization has rock crystal to trade.
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You could start throwing out the non-masterwork foods, only accepting the best of the best.  That should help with mood even more, and cut your stocks by about half.  Though since food stockpiles can't really be made based on meal quality, that's gonna be one helluva designation project.... Easiest way would probably be to trade/offer every single one of the sub-perfect meals away the next time a caravan comes.

That actually has been my policy, and I'm damn close to getting rid of the exceptional ones. I think it'll take only one more year to do so.
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Then drop them on a dwarven child.

Don't have that either. I've restricted the population to 20 so that the fort can run quickly. There was one child migrant, but they've grown up into a nice, respectable (mooded) armorsmith, who is currently making 20 sets of masterwork steel everything.
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So I currently have 35354 prepared meals, and make approximately an extra thousand or 3 every year (200 meat, plenty of alcohol). Since this is more than enough to feed the fort for 100 years, I'm opening this up to suggestion. What should I do with the extra?

Note: The meals are all either exceptional or masterwork, and many of the stacks are worth over 10k. I can buy out the caravan every time it arrives and still have a surplus of meals.
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You should be, if you have at least 20 dwarves in the fort, and some wealth, which I'd have a hard time believing you didn't have after 20 years. 

I've currently got 15 million, which should be more than enough.

Check your civilization page, see if your goblin civ has a leader, I guess it's on the fringe of possibility that those snatchers were the last remnants of the goblin civ. 

It's still got a war-leader and a law-giver.
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Quote from: uncool on May 26, 2012, 01:12:14 pm

As a note, I'm getting 8 per year by buying the ore and the bars.

Don't forget to order Native Platinum Blocks.

I have been - I was originally buying all of the expensive moodable items, and I'm still doing it even though all my dwarves have mooded (20-dwarf fort ftw), but it doesn't seem possible to turn those into platinum bars. Or are you suggesting making the road out of the mix

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Also, does the road have to be pure magma-safe or can it be mixed, with the majority being magma-safe?

I think it takes the properties of what it is named after, but I'm not certain.

Hrm. I guess I'll have to check this. For SCIENCE!
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