Bay 12 Games Forum

I basically go with two "uniforms" - civilian and military.  Put it on "replace clothing" and am careful about assigning dwarves to squads until after I have accumulated enough clothing, armor, and weapons for the squad to use.  And I have given up on messing with socks.

In an iron/steel poor fortress I might split the military uniform into a "alpha" set with full steel and a "beta" set with any metal armor.  Reserve formations use the "beta" uniform since it's not as good. 

Civilian - Metal Cap, cloth hood, tunic, cloak, mittens, trousers, low boots

Military - Helm, Mail Shirt, Breastplate, Gauntlets, Greaves, Metal low boots, Cloth hood, tunic, cloak, mittens, trousers.

Using high boots gives some overlap cover the legs with the gauntlets.

And I fully armor my marksdwarves.  Yes, it might slow them down, but they also might need to deploy outside the fortifications in a pinch and I don't want to worry about having to suddenly issue more equipment or finding a marksdwarf squad that is fully equipped.

Per the extra layering I have not seen a lot of cases where it helps that much compared to the extra weight.  Though some of the recent research in the "efficiency of bolts" thread indicates that for receiving bolt fire double chain mail might be better than chain mail and breastplate.

Dwarven acupuncture experiment going on!   

Four marksdwarves got shot up by a elite goblin archer and were hauled off to the hospital. 

Unfortunately two were dumped into the same bed - which triggers some sort of non-treatment bug.

Various solutions were tried over the last six months:
- Deconstructing the bed (which got one dwarf moved and treatment continued on him)
- Undefining and then redefining the hospital zone (no effect)
- building a retracting bridge under the unconscious dwarf and "popping" him into a bed (no effect on treatment status)
- building a upright training spear under the dwarf (his steel armor deflected all the attacks)

Luckily the medical staff was at least willing to give him water and food, so he lived through all this.

Finally built a copper menacing spike under him and got him stabbed in the leg.  The new wound got him picked up, put in a bed, diagnosed, and treated while he sleeps rather than lying unconscious.  (Though lying there for six months pretty much healed up his arm wound anyways.)

And I was willing to experiment since otherwise he was going to lie there in a coma anyways.

In other news a military shuffling of squads just put 160 of the 215 population into full steel armor.  Most of the reservists are now trained enough to be assigned to militia or full-time units.   Including a pick squad in steel armor - time to see if their training is sufficient to survive open battle.

Spilling guts is already covered by the lovely "disembowel".   

How about a nice term for that explode-y effect when a goblin or mount (especially crocs) gets its teeth knocked all over the place?

Project: Underworld has been a long-running project by Waterspear to stake claim to the Underworld by opening up Hell, destroying the initial flood of demons, and then walling off the edges of Hell and the glowing pits to make the area secure for dwarves to walk around in.

Not breaking new ground since Aussieguy and others have pioneered processes for doing just this sort of activity.  However, the attempt at Waterspear was stretched out over a fairly lengthy period of time and was over-engineered in a number of ways.  To wit:

• The preparations for the Clown Car involved both a "checkerboard" and a long hall of lever-operated steel spike traps.   The hall killed 98 of the 102 demons that emerged, and seriously wounded the remaining four - who are still sitting under the as yet unactivated checkerboard in a sealed in area.
• The dwarves built down to the surface of Hell and established a bunker and archery post.  After a few fights with demons the bunker remained sealed and a "trap" was constructed in an attempt to seal in a demon.  This trap caught a forgotten beast, but a later trap did catch another demon.
• With three demon groups sealed in the Hell biome did not spawn more demons.  With the only threat being a new FB wandering in the dwarves could then wall edges and floor pits with relative safety.  The main limitation was constructing blocks and hauling them into place*.

With the project nearing completion it looks like Hell will be conquered with a very low number of casualties; two.  A sword dwarf who was melted by a demon's tossed fireball, and a child who was pushed into a eerie glowing pit by a demon's web attack.  These early encounters indicated that unless more demons were trapped and sealed off the project would be massively bloody with possibly irrecoverable losses.  (And there were enough fire-based and web-using demons in the mix that constant fights and heavy losses were to be expected.  Luckily, the two known types with a boiling extract or poison gas were already trapped!)

So, the poll is to see opinion on what to do now that this section of Hell has been claimed for Dwarfdom.

*- On the logistics of walling in Hell.  The fortress had five Magma Kilns since about Year 2.  These have been generating earthenware bricks for construction projects  on the surface or below since being constructed.  An initial estimate of 3500 bricks were built and stockpiled at the bottom of a shaft near the lone adamantine spire on the 3x3 embark.  Since the spire's passage through the Magma Sea was not straight each brick had to be individually hauled from the bottom of the drop shaft to the bunker at Hell's bottom, and then redistributed to stockpiles for building the walls, stairs for scaffolding, and flooring the glowing pits.  The size of the last were severely underestimated and even more bricks have since been made, moved, and used.  (The time waiting for a third demon type to get trapped was not entirely wasted - this was used by the haulers to move the initial allocation of bricks from the bottom of the shaft to the bunker stockpile.)
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Project Underworld is over half-completed in Waterspear.   

Running short of bricks due to underestimating the number required to floor over chasms.  The brickyard is back into full production while the limited supply on hand is being used to give priority to completing walls.

The fortress also just had its first dwarf die of old age as a master cook keeled over suddenly while running an errand in the lower galleries.  A slab carved to examine cause of death indicated that she had "died peacefully".

Recent crafted artifacts include an adamantine crossbow, an obsidian sceptre, and a bone war hammer.

Lost my fort.

The defense system worked... slightly. Only some of the goblins died, others were wounded, and a couple were actually still functional [Until they got pelted with bolts]

So, I dig it deeper so there was a bigger fall. Urist Mc MayorMiner decided to cause multiple cave-ins and maim ALL my other miners.

Then another Goblin Ambush happens literally right afterwards, and we run out of wood to make barrels, and have no barrels for booze. Right after the Ambush is gone, a SEIGE [My first] shows up before I can restart my booze flow, one where the Cave-Crocodile-Rider decided to sit in a murky pool and all the gobbos just sit there partying... even when the pool freezes over, with the Goblin in it. We die of dehydration because I can't get the booze flowing fast enough which leads to deaths and a T-Spiral.

You do know that you can make booze holding pots out of stone or clay?  (The latter might require glazing as well depending on the type of clay.)

That sounds like a true military fortress.

Here's my sketch for my next one. Miners and woodcutters uniformed, with extreme micromanagement of the military. No hunters, miners and woodcutters in their own uniformed squad.
Woman as markdwarves to stop the whole baby as shields thing, training on archery ranges that double as archery towers so I could have an instant response from all training dwarves.

All males keep their civilian jobs, but rotate several months in the year training in various barracks outside to guard for ambushers/snatchers etc. I think 10 squad training with 2 different positions assigned to train at different months would make sure all recruits get some training time.

The only problem I could think of is that if they eventually get to Lord levels of skill, would they not go back to their civilian jobs?

That would eventually happen.  That's one reason I keep inactive "Cadre" squads that hold my industrial specialists.  The squads lets me put them in uniforms (light armor) and do some training with crossbows for self-defense, but they mainly stay in the fortress and do their specialized tasks. 

My reservists train one season a month, wear light armor, and do a lot of masonry, hauling, etc. work.  Their training schedules are staggered so that I generally have enough haulers and such to keep the fort running.  If they get advanced in a weapon skill they might be promoted to a militia squad for more intense training.

My militia trains half the time and wears full steel armor all the time.  Squads staggered in training/patrols so that various barracks always have a squad on-hand.

Dwarves reaching "lord" status go into full-time military units (Army).  They get one month off-duty per year and otherwise spend their time training and sparring.  They get the brunt of patrol work and dealing with sieges and thieves since they can be moved to a location at any time and most of a squad will show up.  (And since their stats and Armor Use skill is developed they tend to get there quickly - I have axe dwarves that can outrun kobolds while wearing a full set of steel armor.)

(The one month off-duty is how I get the full-time squads to switch out worn clothes and pick up better quality weapons if they are not too attached to their current ones.)

Edit: Oh, and I noticed that I had a Lord level Marksdwarf in an inactive squad that Dwarf Therapist (and watching him) still showed him doing civilian tasks.  I assume that if I activated his squad he would then stop working.

Quote from: LittleJP on November 12, 2012, 10:16:36 pm

I don't mean just all males or females.

I've missed something, why is this clarification necessary?

Using a danger room and avoiding putting females in danger room trained squads to avoid getting babies spiked.

I don't use danger rooms and thus do not split squads between males and females.  IF anything my current fortress is a matriarchy - queen, duchess, female mayor, and some of the leading military figures are female as well.