Bay 12 Games Forum

I don't think they'll die, or go berserk, but I'm not sure.  It's time to experiment.

He is me.  But you are right, if I wanted them in a particular pile I should disable the other piles.

As it was though, I just wanted it moved off the floor.  The trick was that when you forbid artifacts their names are not bracketed with {}, so it's not easy to see that they are forbidden.

I'm not new to DF, I've been playing for a few years, but...I've never seen a dragon.  Not once in what's probably been 30 or more forts.

I was so excited when one showed up I jumped out of my seat. 

The front gate was closed, and I definitely wanted to trap him rather than fight him, so I sounded the civilian alert and ordered the military squad that barracks in the courtyard to station inside beyond the cage traps.  While I was waiting for everyone to get clear so I could open the outer drawbridge I noticed the dragon was moving. 

That's odd, I thought.  Then I noticed that he was chasing a dwarf!  WTF!?  How is there a dwarf outside?  It's not possible! 

Then I realize it's the liaison who's been waiting patiently forever for me to open the gates.  Now he's running from the dragon but headed straight towards my gate.  "OPEN THE GATE!" I yell.

I give the order to pull the lever.  The liasion reaches the closed gate.  The fastest dwarf in the kingdom reaches the lever and pulls.  The dragon arrives and...

...belches heavenly, glorious fire all over everything!  The liasion is instantly incinerated; there is nothing left of the drawbrige but a lone mechanism; everything is on fire or ashes.  I've never seen anything so beautifully awesome.

The dragon walked into the courtyard, destroyed the barracks there, destroyed the trade depot, and then marched directly into a cage trap.  (Hey, I said it was my first dragon, not my first game.)

I'm so giddy with excitement, I'm beside myself.  I'm going to build a "dragon gate" to welcome the next seige!  OMG, what fun!

(Now if I can just find it a mate...)

Hmmm, do you think it would help if they were not forbidden?   

1. Can any baddies destroy walls?  I take it there are some who can destroy things like drawbridges.

No and no.  They will destroy things you b)uild, like doors and grates.  They will not destroy things like bridges or walls.

2. Does wall material matter?  Are stone walls stronger than wooden ones?

Only in rare circumstances will material matter.  It won't matter for your first couple of forts.

3. I'm building a tower for my archers to shoot out of.  If I want them to fire through the fortifications at any enemies they see, what's the order to give?  Do I have them defend that area (i.e. the tower interior), or do i order them to defend the outside (the area where the bad guys are)?  Will they fire if I only (s)tation them there?  Or does it have to be an attac(k) order?

It doesn't matter what order they have, they will attack any enemy they see.  Any form of order that puts them where you want them will work.

4. Should I define the burrow for the archers to be only 1 tile wide, so I guarantee that they are next to a fortification? Or is it okay if they're a couple tiles in?  Will they still move to the window and fire if they are allowed to wander a bit?

I think you will find that 1 tile wide works best.

5. Is there any way to set it so that a certain action will automatically be taken if a material and workshop are available? For example, to automatically smelter lignite into coke, whenever there is new lignite.  Or to automatically process "pig tails" into thread, whenever they are harvested.  I know there are a few automatic processes, like the tanning of a raw hide after an animal is butchered.  What I want is to be able to set up one of my own.

Not with the vanilla game.  If you are using DFHack check out WorkFlow.

6. If I make clothing, will my dwarfs put it on automatically when theirs wear out? Or do I have to tell them to do this?

Automatically.

Ok, i'm getting deeper into the game and liking it a lot!  Some more advanced questions:

1. If I manufacture armor stands and weapon racks, will the dwarves automatically pick those up and use them in my weapon and armor stockpiles?  Or do I have to manually (b)uild them there?  Or is it something like I have to enable furniture for the stockpile?  My weapons and armor filled up all their available space real quick.

Armor stands and weapon racks are used to define barraks.  They will be put in a furniture stockpile.  Bins are used to compact storage in weapon and armor stockpiles.

2. If I tap into a flowing river for my indoor plumbing, is there any limit to how much water I have?  Does the river ever run dry?

No, the water will be infinite.  Have FUN.   

The last common reason, which hasn't been mentioned yet, is "bolt claiming".  Each squad, and your hunters, are allowed to claim a certain number of bolts.  For your squads these are separated by training and combat.  You set this number for each squad under the ammunition screen.

The important thing to know is that these bolts are reserved whether or not a dwarf is carrying them.  For example, if you have 4 marksdwaf squads with 250 bolts allocated for combat, you will have to make over 1000 bolts before there are any extras for training, hunting, etc.

In short, you often just need to make more bolts.

I've been embarking on this venture myself although I'm being fairly ambitious about it.   You see I wasnt happy with a constructed tower because I could not engrave the epic tale of its construction into the walls.  So I built a tower of twin pumpstacks, one moves water from the nearby brook and another from the volcano.   I constructed a 20x20 caseing at the roof of the world 2 lvls high with retracting bridges for floors.  pumped lava into the botom one and water into the top.   Directly below it I construct containment walls in the same shape as the catchment areas above, dump the lava, wait for it to fill the new resovior below, dump the water, wait for all the mist and magma mist to dissipate and send the dwarves out to construct the next layer of mold walls on the resulting obsidian floor.  repeat till tower is fully molded then remove the mold and carve out the innards to shape.

Ya my way is overkill but oh so dwarven.  if you are happy with constructed walls what I recomend is start stockpileing the blocks of your choice.   Mine out a wide area some Z lvls down plop down a bunch of mason shops in your quarry and get them produceing blocks on repeat.   Somewhere closer to the worksite place a large stockpile that only accepts blocks(you'll want a fair number of bins to cut down on the footprint)   Once you've got enough blocks stockpiled to make a good start on construction set a sizable portion of your hauler force to masons and start designating walls.

A couple things to note.
you cant build a wall on top of constructed floor, you need to remove that floor tile first, however floor will suport a wall to keep it from caveing in.
Walls can be built on top of the floor that results from building a wall a Z lvl below.
If makeing square walls from the inside make sure to build the corner blocks first.  Otherwise your dwarves may not be able to construct the corner pieces depending on your build order.
a 11X11 tower (with a 10X10 inside floorspace) requires 144 blocks per Z lvl while a 20x20 requires 484.   as you can see it takes a ton of resorses and dwarf hours to construct sizeable towers.

Awesome.  Any chance of some stonesense pics?