Bay 12 Games Forum

Thanks again for helping me out!

Quote from: omega_dwarf on October 31, 2015, 02:46:27 pm

So your issues with xbow dwarves might have something to do with this...miners, woodcutters, and (I believe) hunters won't use the same tool/weapon for combat and for their day jobs, and will either drop the weapon where they stand when they get drafted or go to a stockpile and switch out. I'm pretty sure that's still the case.

Ah ok. I read about the problems with wood cutters being also axedwarves but somehow didn't make the same connection with xbow military dwarves being hunters although it is the same case.

Remember that miners are a third case that has a civilian uniform which will conflict with military uniforms, and possibly other civilian uniforms too. Maybe. Not that it's a good idea to have a miner-hunter, miner-woodcutter, or woodcutter-hunter. There are 3 secret civilian uniforms, no more, no less!

(new issue with clothier mood)

There are plenty of these available and non-forbidden and accessible but he just sits there and doesn't go pick them up. Any ideas?)

EDIT: This was my fault, not a bug. I did not have plant cloth after all, there's just so much stuff there that I didn't notice my Plant processing labor had suspended. Apparently moody dwarves do not collect any of the needed items if even one of them is missing.

As others have noted, if you were missing the cloth they want for the base item, they won't gather anything. If it's not the base item they're missing, they'll gather down a list until they hit something that is missing, iirc. My first instinct was to ask if you were sure you had the right kind of cloth (usually plant cloth isn't the problem though, it's wool or especially silk), and my next guess for the source of the problems would've been bones. It could've been possible that all your bones were forbidden (dumped?), or iirc in the cryptic mood, forget which one that was, they say the same thing for bones and skulls.

Some of these were already answered, but anyhoo:

1. Set your own uniforms, or equip the individual dwarves using e.g. generic metal breastplates. Don't mess with individual items unless you're trying to get them to equip a specific artifact, decorated weapon/armor piece, etc.

2. Yea this just happens. If the mass of hauling after a cleanowned command is a problem, disable the hauling/dumping labor in question either on dwarves who should be doing something else, or even periodically for your hauler peasants when you need them for something else.

3. On the flip side, lots of people do have trouble getting the military to train and to any decent skill levels without asking the forums for a bunch of help. Skill learning (and rust rates) can be adjusted, some mods do this (masterwork at least used to) to have separate e.g. guildsmen and military castes for dwarves, you can also mod it yourself in the RAWs with http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature_token#SKILL_LEARN_RATE and the tokens listed immediately afterwards: for more advice, look up some mods or ask in the modding sub-forum.

4. Yea, dwarves are berserkers, they usually won't retreat despite commands if they're within sight of an enemy.

5. Maybe something was pushed by the flow to block the floodgate tile? Might also be invisible, flows used to make some of the items they pushed invisible, possibly only viewable/able to be located through the stocks screen.

6.-7. ??

8. One farm plot can only farm 1 plant per season, regardless of season. There IS a way to deselect, it might be a different button, or by choosing "none" or "lie fallow" for that season... can't remember what the exact mechanic/wording is, but it's there.

9. Simultaneous promotion from baron to duke sounds like a bug, nobles of other places immigrating to your fort may or may not be one.

10. Not sure what's happening, but note that traps (including pressure plates) block caravan pathing.

11. ?? ...but once the bookkeeper has achieved max. accuracy, I thought it still just stayed that way (haven't played 0.40, it's been that way for ages but afaik it is/was scheduled to change at some point, so accuracy would decay). And yea, food includes lots of other stuff besides prepared meals. Also, for example, you plant a rock nut to produce X amount of quarry bushes, depending on the dwarf's grower skill. Each quarry bush, when processed, produces 1 rock nut and 5 quarry bush leaves. A single animal being slaughtered will give anything from a few to a few dozen (or hundreds/thousands in case of stuff like sperm whales or their giant versions) meat products. Cooking to prepared meals will not change the total food count, however: a biscuit of 1 rock nut (paste/cake/oil) and 5 quarry bush leaves will give a stack of 1+5 = 6 biscuits.

12.-13. ?? or not sure. Could be you've misunderstood the o-r menu somehow, it's entirely possible it's not quite intuitive
14. Yup, sounds like it's unintended behaviour, despite not necessarily being strictly a bug.
15. ??

16. That's your logic, the game does the milking at the farmer's workshop, definitely intended behaviour and not a bug. Even in reality, if you had a lot of milk cows, you would drive the cows to be milked at one spot instead of making dozens of trips to the pasture to milk individual bucketfuls from each cow.

17. ??

18. Dwarves just aren't the smartest tool in the shed. Give the wheelbarrow storage stockpile wheelbarrows of it's own, for added irony?

19. Retaining the cursor location is a feature, not a bug. Scrolling not working anymore would be a bug.

20. I would double-check that you have workflow set up correctly. To get more specific advice, you should probably post your exact workflow listings (and the raw materials available), or a save. Maybe in a workflow advice thread rather than here. That would also be where you should report bugs in workflow, I think.

I usually embark in very deep soil, and the aquifer (which is there because I want one) is usually 3 levels down (allowing roof puncture free farming). My thickest aquifer was 8 in conglomerate (don't remember but there might have been two levels of sand as the two top levels), but I've seen a neighboring ocean biome that yielded wet walls all the way down into the first cavern (but the walls weren't crying anyway). Someone reported burying through 17 layers.

An aquifer right below the surface would be an interesting change, but I doubt you'd be able to do much with a single pick challenge, since the jobs rewrite seems to make it impossible to speed dig through wet layers (automatically cancelling the job, manually redesignate the tile, walk away a bit, return to a now water filled dig tile to cancel again permanently. Even if you were to single step to designate the next tile as soon as the previous one was done, you seem to still get the walk away behavior [in fact, I've designated the next tile while channeling away floors while the miner is still working on the previous tile, and have had it still walk away and return, so the next tile job allocation seems to happen prior to the finish of the previous one, somehow]).

The speed-digging used to require at the very least mining 7; 8-9 or 10+ were preferred, and a decent-statted dwarf too. So yea, hard to do without soil above, and you also don't have anything to cave into the aquifer even if you could drain an upper aquifer layer into a lower one. If the aquifer is right below the surface, I think the double-slit method or a winter freeze in a cold climate is really your only choice, but you'll need quite a bit of wood (or a channel elsewhere to absorb the water/lead it away?) to channel the pumped water away from were your dwarves are digging and pumping.

Quote from: Immortal-D on October 26, 2015, 01:33:21 pm

Quote from: Loud Whispers on October 24, 2015, 05:45:26 pm

Evil oceans. I've seen loads of them but never found a suitable one for embarking that wouldn't result in instant death.

If the body of water is large enough, you should be able to find an Evil Ocean with a normal shoreline, or at least only a few tiles of Evil land.

Yeah but usually all aquifer'd up or something

Ocean and lake shores IIRC very frequently, if not nearly always or always, have aquifers. If this is an issue, disable aquifers, there *is* an init option for that. Endless free water though (can be desalinated with a pump). Although you can get that from the ocean too, even if building a pump to draw on that can be a bit trickier (and may affect fps, depending on if it causes wandering 6/7 tiles in the ocean...).

Quote from: PatrikLundell on October 23, 2015, 02:18:30 am

...
Is it even possible to get an aquifer in the first layer below ground?

...
Regarding aquifers just below the surface, I recall someone saying they had that once in a swamp. I haven't played that often with aquifers: I find them easy enough to pierce, but I haven't played much in general recently (after I learned to pierce), and the pierce area messes with my fort aesthetics, even though endless water is nice.
...

I just realized we may have been talking across each other here. When I talked about 1, 2 or 3+ "deep" aquifers, I originally meant how thick they are, since it doesn't really matter that much how many non-aquifer soil levels you have above the aquifer, as long as you have at least 1 (although 2+ lets you do the whole pierce underground for safety). Aquifers are usually 1-2 levels thick AFAIK, although 3-4 is possible, and maybe even more, if you have 2 aquifer layers that merge with each other. How soon you encounter the first aquifer level varies with soil thickness but also other factors I think; like I wrote above, I've read of someone getting an aquifer right below the surface (wooden surface fort time, anyone?), but usually there's 1-3 levels of soil first. More is also possible if your soil layer is deep enough as a whole.

Just dying for (to?) those undead giant sperm whales, eh?
Glacier forts have always been my favorite. Once you get magma and enough beds, wood becomes a non-issue. You can get what you need for steel from the caverns, even if you don't have coal handy.

@Snaake:
The bottom of a glacier is weird, so when you channel the bottom tile you don't get a ramp, but a hole, so to get down you need a stair. If you're unlucky, you'll get an ice boulder at the bottom of the hole, in which case you'll have to try again (since the boulder blocks the building of the stair).

Is it even possible to get an aquifer in the first layer below ground?

What about if you dig up/down stairs through the glacier, or dig down stairs instead of constructing them once you reach the bottom of the glacier?

Regarding aquifers just below the surface, I recall someone saying they had that once in a swamp. I haven't played that often with aquifers: I find them easy enough to pierce, but I haven't played much in general recently (after I learned to pierce), and the pierce area messes with my fort aesthetics, even though endless water is nice.

And my experience with oceans/shores the last time I tried them was that it did feel like I got less fps. And the main theory there is that it's due to flowing water; the large volume of fluid just sits there like lakes or cavern lakes, not even draining off one end of the map and in through the other like everything from brooks to major rivers does. The waves may not have traditional depth values, but their movement is calculated somehow, since I've also read about dwarves being pushed/pulled around by the surf, and I think I saw this myself back in my last ocean embark. It's not a "small continuous change" and "largely pre-programmed" in my opinion, it looked to me like the flow pattern was random and calculated separately each time. If it's a flow, even if it's not the normal 2/7 etc. kind (as PatrikLundell said, you don't see depth numbers, but it can flood areas inland that it can reach), it will use up CPU cycles whether you're looking at it right then and there or not, much like dwarven water reactors will impact fps when they're on, even if you're not looking at the z-level they're at. Maybe try embarking on a cold-climate ocean or lake shore which freezes part of the year to see the difference? On a related note, waterfalls also impact fps, which you can easily test by building a raising bridge above the waterfall, so you have the ability to shut it off.

Finally, yes there's always something magma-safe if you have water, but manufacturing obsidian before you have anything magma-safe to begin with can feel tricky and at least dangerous for a newer player (I know it's not hard, just channel a trench from the side of the magma tube and dump some water into it with buckets from 2z up). For making glass, you can first use a regular workshop to make the first blocks if you have even a bit of wood to spare for charcoal and something fire-safe, like any stone or even ash. Also, just regular floor construction and subsequent removal can (used to be able to, at least) yield sand from other soil, magma flows shouldn't be necessary.

I embarked in an evil biome once.  A flock of undead ravens spawned on the edge of the map an instant after I unpaused the first time, and slaughtered my entire expedition before I was able to dig out even 40 tiles.

Sometimes you get unlucky, but you should just get underground ASAP. Bring a stone block and a pick on embark, then you don't even need to dig a 10-tile tunnel before you can order the mouth of it walled. Technically you only need 1 dwarf to survive, although at least 2 (the miner and the builder) is likely, and to be honest designating a meeting area as soon as you have a 3-5 tiles or so dug underground should let you save the whole expedition + pack animals. You may want to bring a couple extra blocks or logs for a butcher's workshop and then a kitchen after that (dump the skin, bones etc. in a pit and maybe floor it over - I don't know if reanimated remains can climb). Then it's down to the caverns ASAP, or if you have an aquifer, you have a bit more time since you won't die of thirst, and if you have meat from the pack animals, that'll last a while.

Getting through the aquifer may seem daunting with just a pick, but it's not actually hard if you know ho: the Single Pick Challenge thread a couple of years ago worked on a method for aquifer pierces using just 1 pick and soil cave-ins. This was my final version of the method, although you should probably read up on the few preceding pages too, if not from the start of the thread. I don't remember if there were any real improvements to that afterwards, but there are some limitations even to this: it does require at least 1 level of soil above the aquifer, 2 if you want to do the whole process safely underground, and the aquifer has to be 2 deep for the exact method in the linked post, but apparently there were a couple of posts on 1-deep, and 3+ deep aquifers right afterwards too.

Quote from: neblime on October 20, 2015, 07:35:24 pm

I have never tried to play a glacier, I guess it would be pretty cool, never played in a swamp/wetlands either.  can anyone tell me what they're like?

I did that, it's easier than it seems. Just tunnel into the caverns and you're laffin. Just remember that you have to construct a stair at the bottom of the ice sheet.

Why is the constructed stair necessary?

Sunberries and Unicorn bone are my primary reasons for seeking out Good-aligned, but Giant Eagles & Turtles are fun as well.  When I want to make above ground contructions, I prefer serious Hills or a Mountain.  Building into and around an existing vertical structure is much easier than needing to do the whole thing yourself.

I wanted to check off a Biome from my to-do list.  My latest Fortress straddles 2 Deserts, 1 red and 1 yellow.  No sign of Giant Scorpions thus far, but I did discover a Magma Pipe in the first Cavern layer   I am now sending my Miners out in all directions in an attempt to find some magma safe stone   I will laugh (cry) if there is nothing magma safe in a Desert.

You're in a desert, make some green glass blocks.


And to reply to the original question, I, too, prefer elevation differences, and gorges are also cool. I once built my cavern entrance so that dwarves and the caravan (I dug a ramp down the edge of one of the gorge faces) had to pass through the waterfall to get in. Automatic decontamination shower + happy mist. Waterfalls do have some effect on fps, too, even if it's not as bad as waves on coasts. I also built a bridge across the gorge halfway up from the river to the top, so I could dig in to the cliff face on other side as well (was cooler than just digging underneath the river for that access). Tropical forests, swamps or sometimes savannas are nice for animals.

Quote from: Snaake on October 13, 2015, 07:35:37 pm

(The simple solution of course is just to have the pit have just one large beast, as originally suggested, and not a writhing mass of teeth and claws – this single creature is then fairly easy to lure away, e.g. to attack a sacrifical puppy or door, once the offending bard or diplomat is disposed of.)

No, the simple solution is to have a turkey pit instead of a snake pit with nest boxes. That achieves the writhing mass quota but with beaks instead of teeth. Bonus points for modding the turkeys.

Wait, I thought we were trying to find humane ways to kill bad performers, hence the pit drops with monsters or magma, if you just want to dump something into a horrible mass of rending and tearing pain, train your military as wrestlers and sic them on them... or dump them into a daycare center if you're feeling really sadistic.

Both of the above return to the same problem as the tamed and war-trained cave dragon: tame creatures and militia dwarves will not attack diplomats/performers/other peaceful visitors, at least not on their own and in the case of the militia, without possibly causing loyalty cascades.

No, seriously, now I want to set up my Duke's throne room with a floor grate that will drop unsuspecting diplomats into a pit containing his pet cave dragon. It's a damned shame you can't have war animals attack "friendly" diplomats. Oh well, it's not like the elves or humans ever pay me a visit and setting the pit up so that the cave dragon would be able to maul the diplomats while making sure they never fell directly on him would be a lot of trouble anyways.

Or just wait for the pet dragon to lose its training. Feeding offending visitors to semi-starved not-trained-at-all subterrenean monsters sounds very dwarfy!

Frankly, I don't know why you'd need to tame&train the cave dragon in the first place, if this is what you want to do with it. 

Now I started thinking about snake pits with a nest box in them, so once you get a breeding pair, you don't need to empty the pit (I think that some/most snakes don't breed in the game without slight raw modding, though). Or jabberers, or rutherers, or frankly any other default-hostile creatures, which may lay eggs or not, and which don't need to breed. Which are in fairly good supply in the caverns. Of course, collecting the bodies and/or belongings of the deceased diplomats may be an issue, but I'm sure some sufficiently dwarfy solutions can be invented to that. This is the forum that realized merman bones were really valuable, and despite them being both sentient and non-hostile, proceeded to capture and breed them, air-drown the offspring and craft their bones into trinkets. The offspring may also have been dropped from great heights in order to enable bone collection.

(The simple solution of course is just to have the pit have just one large beast, as originally suggested, and not a writhing mass of teeth and claws – this single creature is then fairly easy to lure away, e.g. to attack a sacrifical puppy or door, once the offending bard or diplomat is disposed of.)