Bay 12 Games Forum

--Also, if someone might instruct me as to how to put images in posts, I would be most appreciative.--

Typically you upload your image somewhere, the site should give a link for the image, which will look something like this:
http://i1266.photobucket.com/albums/jj536/Panando/lol_zps4af785e0.png
You can also often click on an image to get a full view of the image, right-click on an image, and click "Copy Image URL" (that's the Chrome terminology, other browsers have something similiar), copying an image URL wont always work because of hotlinking protection, that's why it's better to use the link the photosharing site gives you. But often it will work, you then just paste the copied url.

You then put that link inside img tags like this:
[img]http://i1266.photobucket.com/albums/jj536/Panando/lol_zps4af785e0.png[/img]

And the result looks like this:


Personally I use photobucket for filesharing, it seems to have a long memory for uploaded images which is nice. There are other sites as well.

edit: Confirmed that 'Copy Image URL' works with imgur

You could also install a mod like Fortress Defense II (add both challenge and bonus races), which adds enough sieges that there is a fairly good possibility you'll be wiped out, especially if you're also doing a single pick challenge or something (One of the nice things about FD II, is unless you do something dumb like make an adamantine artifact in the first summer, the first siege will arrive in winter and be of very weak enemies, so it's exciting but wont wipe you out even if all you have is a squad of wrestlers. If you do grossly inflate your fortress value sieges can get very !!FUN!! very quickly)

Leather shields can be a better choice because leather can be ordered in far greater quantities form the mountainhome, and if you're going to construct a hundred shields (like for the entire civilian population) that'll add up on the log fronts, but will barely dent a leather order. The only thing with leather shields is due to a lack of leather material option you need to use color instead 'brown shield' and I believe 'exact matches' to restrict dwarves to leather (and highwood) shields.

A while back I invented a pump-powered quantum stockpiling device.

It looks like this:
#######
#####ds
~pPfdds
#####ds
#######Where pP is the pump, d is downstairs (with openspace underneath them), s are floors and f is a fortification. The same stockpile should cover both the downstairs and floors (d and s tiles). The pump will pump water which generates 'moving water' on the d tiles, the 'moving water' pushes items to the right, due to a quirk of dwarven physics, the items are pushed to the right, but the water itself falls down the tile, meaning the items end up on a dry tile the water never actually reaches. In normal Quantum Stockpile use dwarves drop items on the d stockpile tiles, and water pushes those items onto the s stockpile tiles.

At a minimum the pump powered quantum stockpile (PPQS) requires a pump and an aquifer for water source/return. If you don't have an aquifer handy, you can use a water return loop. The PPQS suffers from evaporation, you can easily water one with a murky pool, and rainfall will replace evaporation losses, you can use automatic refilling by including an infinite or indefinite water source connected diagonally at the point where the water is 7/7.
Example water return loop with auto top-up:
########
#####77# <- Water supply.
####7###
0##76#
1###5#
23345#

The PPQS works absolutely superbly in most cases, but unfortunately I invented it at about the same time minecarts came out, and the minecart dump is, well, better. But the PPQS still has one advantage - it does not require dwarves to move items. This means it can push items which have fallen from above from dangerous to safe tiles without dwarven intervention. The dangerous tile can be made off-limits to dwarves through the use of burrows. The system is simple to set up and very flexible, the simple rule of moving items with water is as long as water moves into a tile, items are pushed out of the tile (this means the pump outlet tile does NOT move items. Water does not move into the pump outlet tile, it is created there. The same probably goes for tiles where water arrives from above, it's where the water flows in from which counts, not where it leaves).

The PPQS also has one serious limitation - items can be divided into two categories, light and heavy. Light items are moved instantly by water, and heavy items take a long time to move (from several days to several seasons). There is a sharp abrupt transition from light to heavy at exactly 100 units. Most things in the game weigh less than 100 units, exceptions include stones, the corpses of large dwarves and large animals, very large pieces of food (i.e. from forgotten beasts), stone furniture and so on. However virtually all consumables are in the light category. Note that water will eventually move heavy items too, it just takes longer, hence while it's appalling for a platinum furniture stockpile, it's fine if you just get the odd forgotten beast meat roast.

A cool thing about the PPQS is it doubles as a mist generator and if it's your food stockpile dwarves have to regularly go there and get misted and cleansed. It can be easily configured to power itself by including a waterwheel on the water return loop, this turns it into a Water Reactor with around 70 surplus power (you could of course add more than 1 wheel as well). It can also, at least in principle, use magma instead of water since the tile the items end up on are actually 'dry', this would cause it to incinerate corpses and clothes but push iron and steel items onto the stockpile. Using it in magma mode is probably stupidly dangerous but ya know, you can if your philosophy is everything is better with magma.

So anyway with a PPQS you can make a completely safe zero-maintenance item conveying system. When using it to move dropped items, the items must land on a floor, grate or floor bars as they will fall straight through downstairs. The water will then simply push the item off that tile, onto a safe tile (which can be a downstairs since items never fall down stairs if they aren't already falling).

I had a lovely magma hallway once, thanks to embarking on a volcano.  The only problem was getting it clear of magma again in time for the next caravan to get through.

This. Is the problem with magma traps which are also caravan-enabled.

It's very easy using downstairs and a drainage area under the downstairs, the ways out of the magma pit can even be made as up/down stairs allowing them to both drain freely, but caravans cannot traverse downstairs. Caravans CAN traverse grates but you cannot combine a grate and ramp to make a self-draining ramp. The solution would seem to be to use 3-wide corridors of grates (the grates can be built on downstairs to avoid support issues) then either pump in magma from the side or drop it from above.

I designed a very effective self-cleaning no-drainage required non-recycling magma trap, using raising bridge-walls under the floors (which were made of downstairs). When enemies came in, the trap was triggered, the bridges would raise preventing any magma entering the tiles under the stairs, a retracting bridge (or floodgate) would open allowing magma to pour in. Then the raising bridges would lower letting all the magma fall down and the retracting bridge would close stopping new magma coming in. The magma simply pools on the raising bridges, and the next time the trap is triggered the bridges raise and the magma is atomsmashed out of existence clearing the space for the next load of magma.

Finally I linked the trap to a pressure plate set to be triggered by a dog. The dog (later a Leopard), would see enemies through a window, and try to run to them, activating the pressure plate. The bridges open/raise and the trap was flooded.
The trap worked exceptionally, it would incinerate everything without discrimination. When all my dwarves were in the trap collecting goodies, and a kobold thief appeared, the dog/leopard would trigger and all the dwarves would get incinerated. Hence a component of a good incineration trap is a way to seal off the trap and activate a safety mechanism and open an access way allowing dwarves to collect goodies, and once the goodies are collected, it can be reset to dangerous mode. Another considerably safer way is to use a 'dead man's switch' where you pasture the animal of choice ON the pressure plate, holding it down, for example, keeping retracting bridges open. Once the animal sees enemies it moves from the plate, and the bridges close, sealing the enemies in the trap. The trap can then be flooded with magma or water or military dwarves or whatever response is appropriate for whatever has been caught in the trap (the nice thing about the dead man's switch approach is the animal can't be put back on the trigger plate while the trap is still full of nasties - the dwarf trying to pasture the animal will just run away).

The problem is it somehow seems more dwarvern to have a death trap as your entrance way which is entirely lacking in even the most rudimentary safety mechanisms.

A couple of days I had a dwarf drop her baby in combat. A dark strangler (Fortress Defense II enemy) found it, broke it's ankle causing it to pass out from pain, then spent about two pages strangling it by the throat.

The baby lived!

Not as badass as the baby beating up the strangler, but apparently either stranglers really suck, or babies don't use their throats to breathe [they probably use their beards].

In the uniform, make sure the uniform is set to 'replace clothing' because if a dwarf is already wearing too much clothes they wont add armour on top. They will pick up weapon and shield and perhaps some random armor pieces but perhaps none. After setting to 'replace clothing' re-assign the uniform to the squad (A similar thing can happen if the uniform has incompatible item - for example assigning two gauntlets, instead of one gauntlets (hand and footwear are naturally pairs - unless you use the 'specific item' option))

If the uniform really is setup properly, there are also some 'ritual' things you can do like stationing the squad then unstationing, and forbidding the gear then reclaiming it (can help break 'stuck' tasks). Normally I find the rituals do nothing and there really is a problem with the uniform, or something else like the offending dwarf somehow ending up in an inaccessible location.