Bay 12 Games Forum

There aren't any raws for seeds. In matgloss_plant.txt find the bloated tuber record and change [BIOME:ANY_WETLAND] to [BIOME:NOT_FREEZING]

Quote from: Ieb on January 24, 2010, 07:36:54 am

After that, every offspring it produces falls down all the way into the butcher zone. Assuming those corpses can be butchered. It's sort of messed up at the moment to my knowledge what corpses can and what can't be butchered.

What corpses can and can't be butchered is pretty clear cut. Stray (tamed) animals can only be butchered through the "z" animals menu. The killing happens in the butcher shop. Wild animals will leave butchereable corpses, if this animal can be butchered of course, mountain gnomes for example are wild animals technically speaking but you still can't make em to meat and fat. I presume its just some mechanism to stop you from turning dead pets into roasts. Or whatever.

With regards to "wild animals", it's still rather straightforward - eating sapient creatures is unthinkable to dwarves, so any creature with [CAN_CIV], [CAN_LEARN] or [CAN_SPEAK] (or [INTELLIGENT] which implies all three of those) will not be butchered. You mentioned those beer-guzzling bastards the mountain gnomes, who can't be butchered because they have [CAN_LEARN]

Quote from: Retro on December 24, 2009, 09:46:47 pm

Quote from: shadowsofwhite on December 24, 2009, 09:08:41 pm

On a couple of fortresses I tried making, I never had a chance. As soon as I embarked, the fire man from the open magma pit (ironically, on both fortresses) promptly walked out onto the grass, and burned all of my residents and food and booze. The same thing happened on the re-embark for both of them. I had to embark elsewhere!

Fun fact: You embark in the cente of the last biome you were examining - if there's one farther from the magma pipe, you can just do that next time.

Wow, this is much more than a fun fact! This is crucial for doing certain things appropriately for survial in certain locations!

Either way, though, it was that the fire man was out standing on the grass, which would then burn across the map and destroy everything.

A bit late, but ought to be pointed out that the "fun fact" doesn't work any more. It WAS true for some older version(s) (.38c, maybe?) but it is NOT true for .40d. When it worked, I made use of it all the time by trying to embark close to a magma pipe without being right on top of it. That said, though, changing the last selected biome does have an impact on where your dwarves embark, but it's nowhere near as obvious as it was in that old version.

Civs appears in the (c) screen only after you met them. So unless you've had the visit of some gobs (snatcher for example), you might have an ambush crawling toward your fortress.

That is a possibility, but in my experience you'll get a listing for goblins in the civ screen long before you get an ambush; the first goblin to come by is (usually? always?) a snatcher and the very moment they appear on the map the goblin civ will be listed on the civ screen. This will happen even if the snatcher remains hidden and doesn't move towards your fort because you've not got any kids.
So, he should be safe for now but he'd better get his defences up or an ambush will come and bite him in the proverbial ass

What's his highest trade skill?

If it's something that you have a magma version of (like the magma forge, but glass furnace is common as well) then they'll only work at a non-magma forge/furnace.

It's been a while since I used fertilizer and I've only used it two or three times, so much of this is off memory and may not be entirely accurate. Anyway...

Is there any data on how often fields need an application of fertilizer and what the effects of fertilizer are on existing crops? (I.e., does order matter?)

You'll need to re-fertilize at the start of each season. There's an option on farm plots to do this automatically (the "Seas Fert" option). Also, the number of crops available for harvesting depend on the skill of the farmer who planted the seed and not the skill of the dwarf harvesting the crop so it's very likely that order DOES matter - fertilize first, then plant the seeds.

Finally, what's the shelf life of things like plants, seeds, etc. and how does being in bags/barrels/both effect that?  Any data?

Seeds...God knows; my stills tend to be filled with the damn things at the start of the game but I wouldn't notice 10 or 20 disappearing from the couple hundred that I get.
Get plants in a food stockpile ASAP or they'll wither away. So long as they're on a stockpile, they'll last indefinitely. Some vermin gnaw away at food, for which barrels can apparently offer some protection, but frankly just get a cat and you'll have that problem solved. Barrels are used primarily for storing more things in less space rather than protecting the food within.

ok, thanks for the quick response, my fortress wealth is nearing 2 000 000, is it possible that the further you are from sieiging civs, the higher your wealth needs to be to lure them? and my magma whateveritis spans a good 18 z-levels, so i guess i'll give it a go and assume its a pipe.

If it's 18 z-levels then yes, that'll be a pipe. Pools are typically only a few z-levels deep. A pipe will extend right down to the very bottom z-level.

another question; im trying to hit enough road value to entice the king, but its going very slowly, is there some trick im missing? ive never seen any mention of people having trouble with this but it is always, without fail, the last requirement i achieve.

As Heliman said, use expensive materials to make the road, as the value of the road is dependant on the value of the materials it's made from. A plain old rock of granite or rhyolite (or the more annoying ones like alunite or microcline that you probably just want rid of) has a value of 3. A block of the same material has a value of 5. A bar of iron (melt goblin weapons/armour and this is something you'll have in abundance) has a value of 50. A bar of steel has a value of 150. An adamantine wafer, in case you're curious, has a value of 1,500. If you're at the point of trying to get the king, you probably have a small stockpile of goblin armour or iron bars already from sieges/ambushes over the preceding years, so that's probably your best bet, especially since you've said you're a bit low on wood and so won't be wanting to waste it on making charcoal for the steel-making process