Bay 12 Games Forum

So I got this notification that an elven caravan has arrived and that it has started raining. Pretty normal occurrence. I usually wait until they arrive at my depot before bringing out the goods mainly for security reasons. So I'm waiting, giving digging instructions and watching the depot for their arrival. The fortress is on a volcano so its very difficult to see where anything is. Then I notice that my dwarves are pathing outside and bringing in all sorts of things, all sorts of wooden things. I looked around and found a pile of equipment, rope reed items, absurd wooden weapons, surface booze, and animals in cages. A pile of elf gear sitting at the center of a spreading circle of fire. There was no reports of combat or anything. Just poof. Gone. Did it get struck by lightning? 

I just had to say it, this game is fat. As in, if dwarf fortress were a person his ass would be so huge it would dominate any room. Plus the guy it belongs to has a tenancy to park himself wherever is least convenient for the rest of the household and be completely oblivious to everyone trying to get around him.
DF in my kitchen:
Me: "Hey DF wanna, like get out of the way so I can make some bagel bites?"
DF: "Sure dude." (does nothing)
Me: "You're not moving."
DF: "Whatever man, you invited me in here so you gotta run at my speed." (scratches ass, continues to do nothing)
Me: "BLUH!" (DFhack: die)
Letting it run in the background is fine, but getting there requires you to maneuver you way around an ass that is registered as a mid-sized sedan in five states and is parked in your bathroom.
If I want to look up something on the Wiki I reduce the DF screen, go downstairs, make a drink, go upstairs, fire up Netflix on my 360, watch half an episode of Top Gear, then look over to realize DF has been crashed to Desktop for 20 minutes. My screen has gone white as my computer is shocked by the sheer amount of surplus power it has gained with DF's demise. Reliability, speed, we have none in the DF zone. Yes, I know it is a game that is in perpetual Alpha test phase meaning there is no optimization or final de-bugging planned in the future but that wouldn't be funny. Would it?
Thoughts of CaptainBadwheel on the 9th of February, in the year of our lord 2012

In evil embark.

1. Dig/Build small chamber with a hole in the ceiling with one end open to the surface.
2. Seal off open end of chamber with a magma-safe raising drawbridge.
3. Devise method to pipe magma into chamber and drain it.
4. Set cage traps in caverns and on surface in places normally frequented by zombified creatures.
5. Pit/Pond Zombie animals into chamber.
6. Trickle magma into chamber to set zombified animals on fire, then drain the magma. Most of them should burn indefinitely.
7. Wait for siege.
8. Drop drawbridge when siege shows up causing the invaders to have to fight a hoard of burning undead creatures.

To make this more effective devise a method to lure invaders in close so that they are forced into close combat with undead. Though most undead I've seen have been killed quickly by goblins I think a burning one might set the invaders on fire if they try to engage it in CC. Have to test this method.

So I had this siege show up and try to get through a hole in the top of my Depot/Archer station which is connected to my archery range and the rest of the fortress. The Marksdwarfs had, despite being stationed, left the tower to switch armor. So I threw my two squads of dwarf infantry at about 50 goblins and trolls streaming into my archery range and successfully repelled the attack a cost of four dwarves. During the crises 3 dwarves gained titles one of which Litast Furnacewane the Competitive Just Mother a name which kind of makes sense, with 11 kills did not survive. The other was Kubuk Bitewhips the Incenses of Leading pretty typical nonsensical name surviving with 7 kills in that one sortie. Finally there was Asmel Urmimerush Ulolcomnith or rather Asmel Swamhandle the Last Butterfly Butterflies being particularly vicious and the last of its kind even more so, killing 7 in a single engagement. Its the best title I've seen for a fighting dwarf in a long time. 

So in the next version of this wonderful addiction there will be occasional rains of blood in evil areas. I wonder how much difference that will actually make, because it already seems to do that in every area I've set up in. Well right after the first siege hits my weapons traps, or after they tangle it up with my battledorfs, or after the Mayor stubs his toe and bleeds all the way to the clinic. Someone walks through a trail of it and its suddenly in my well, in the river, in my theraputic carp pond. I see trails of blood from the current siege crossing the ones from the siege 5 years and an age ago. Childeren coated in nothing but layers upon layers of Stozu, Urist, cat, and Cutebold blood. A list of injuries and conflicts splattred on the walls in glorious red and blue.
I guess the point is, considering how persistant blood is now, what is going to happen when it starts falling out of the sky? Is the blood spreading going to be fixed or toned down somehow? It monsoons regularly in my current fortress and it just will not go away.

Does anyone have a type of stone that they really hate?
For me its anything brown, I recently embarked in an area that was heavy on the mudstone. Oh look! Poopstone!, the mud stone doors in Mayday are nearly black. I also dislike schist (shitstone) not merely for its look but for the fact that its extremely cheap and there's so much of it that I have trouble getting rid of it before all my tables, chairs, and statues of my mayor melting are all brown. Bluh!
I've come to like microcline. I can use it to line my Dwarf shower haus giving it a sort of Mediterranean tile look, its also good for building wells and setting up levers related to water functions.

When I first started playing this game while searching for embarks I would see the Evil areas and wonder if there was any sort of back story behind why that particular area is more evil than the area right next to it. I don't know what exactly causes an area to be genned as "evil". I always figured that it was the site of some historical battle, or where a dark lord settled down and was overthrown. Like Mordor after the 1st defeat of Sauron. Embarking at a site across the street from Utumno or Angband would probably be challenging.
I suppose that deity x could have punished civilization y out of boredom, spite, or humor. Or some necromancer lord could have cursed the area just for giggles. Maybe a Battlefailed sequel took place and the area has become a dwarf Superfund site until the lethal levels of soul radiation fades to background levels or the universe ends.
It would be interesting to see how these sites came to be, depicted in legends mode. Thoughts?

I've been pondering some designs for several mega weapon projects, that is, mega projects designed specifically for fighting surface enemies.

There is an elegant device called an Dwarf orbital strike. I'm not sure how extensive these are, most I've looked at seem to deliver magma to a single spot right in front of the gate. I've been planning for a device that could deliver magma from an elevated reservoir to the center of any 5x5 square on the surface from 20zlvls up. Basically a huge areal grid with notations on the ground of the X,Y coordinates. It would be very precise, capable of dropping a stream of magma on or next to a single goblin anywhere. It could also, amusingly, be used to make a ring around a squad of enemies. If you were adventurous enough with a fast computer you could use it to support friendly units in the field.

For a valley fortress I've thought of a multi-shot FTW device. Basically you hollow out the walls of the valley on each level and use 2x10 raising drawbridges where people would normally use floodgates. Instead of having magma stream out of two or three points you essentially have the whole end of a reservoir stretching the entire length of the map suddenly open up. This would result theoretically in a gullywasher of magma. How many shots you get is dependent on how many levels you have available to hollow out on each side of the valley. Why you would need a multi-shot insta-kill region-sweeper? Why not? Bragging rights? I also imagine it would be handy with the Fortress Defense Mod where you can get chains of sieges.

I've thought of a massively impractical mega weapon called Arclight . It would consist of row upon row of collapsible ceiling set up in the middle of a field. When dropped in sequence I imagine it would resemble a B-52 carpet bombing. A one shot weapon with a hideously long reset time depending on the scale (I imagine 20 rows 20 squares long). Likely to crash my computer. It would be funny to employ it in a community fortress though.

Or I could just be a boring wiseass and cover the entire surface with 10/10 weapon traps.