Bay 12 Games Forum

I have a setup wich worked pretty well:
I makee a refuse/corpse stockpile, a minecart, and set the minecart to dump everything in the volcano as soon it's not empty.

I do this as well. Works great, and automatically to boot. No micromanagement once it's set up. Even with only the first seven, they prioritize vehicle hauling pretty well, so you shouldn't ever have more than one or two things on the stockpile at once, and it clears out pretty quickly. Great setup for a reanimating embark.

DFHack can change family names, no problem. But it's extremely dicey to change dwarves' first names for some reason. I think it has to do with the names being replicated across Legends mode, world history, all that jazz. I wrote a script once that would change their first name and last name, but those changes didn't show up anywhere except on the main unit screen. And the game behaved... oddly... after that. Don't know how to explain it.

Short answer: Not yet. I know that it's possible with DFHack, but it's far more complicated than it sounds, even if you're familiar with the DFHack API and Lua scripting.

Is it better to use a track stop set up to dump the item as opposed to having a Give to Stockpile condition in the hauling route?

If you've got your track stops set to dump then the "Give To" option should be unnecessary. Set your stop to simply "Take From" the stockpile you want, then set desired items to everything. Since it'll only take from the one stockpile, and that one stockpile will only have items that you want, you shouldn't have any undesired stuff on the route.

On your track stops, set them to dump in a certain direction (set when they're built) and then create a 1x1 stockpile on the tile you're dumping to that includes your dumped items. Make sure you set the 1x1 pile and all your other minecart-related stockpiles to 0 bins, 0 barrels. Containers just gum up the whole works. You should be able to do this with only two stops.

At the top floor, Stop 1 is a track stop constructed to dump West. F is a "feeder" stockpile set to accept only coal. S is a 1x1 bar/block stockpile with 0 bins/barrels. You can then set S to give to your main bar stockpile or wherever you want your dumped product.
FFFF
FFFF
S#====
Set the desired items to everything, set the stockpile link to take from F, and then set it to guide east when 75% full or whatever. You shouldn't need any other conditions.

At the bottom floor, it's the same in reverse. Stop 2 is a constructed stop set to dump East. F is the "feeder" pile that accepts bars, set to 0 bins/barrels. S is the 1x1 destination stockpile that accepts coal.
    FFFF
    FFFF
======#S
Set desired items at the stop to everything, set the stockpile link to take from F, and set it to guide west when 50%/75%/whatever% full.

Has the crossbow material any significance? Probably for melee fighting but does it has influence on the ranged attack?

Material makes no difference in a ranged attack. All crossbows fire at the same speed and range regardless of what they're made of. Craftsmanship makes a difference, as higher-quality crossbows are more accurate than lower-quality ones, but they use a different skill to make depending on what they're made of. So if you have a Legendary Weaponsmith you should be making them out of metal instead of bone or wood, and vice versa if you have a Legendary Bowyer.

The best one I had was a dwarf found drained of blood in the bedroom complex. There was a crime reported, a witness, and an accused murderer. I thought it was an easy find on the vampire: I looked at his thoughts screen and saw this:


The long list of memberships gave it away, and he had an enormous extended family, none of which were present at the fort. Okay, so he's a vamp. I lock him into a tiny room and make him bookkeeper-for-eternity.

Then I looked at the justice screen and saw that I had gotten the names mixed up, and I had locked up the accuser instead of the accused by mistake. Turns out to have been a happy accident, since when I found the dwarf accused of murder, her thoughts screen looked like this:


...so I locked her into a tiny room and made her manager-for-eternity. Two vampires in the same fort, and either one of them witnessed the other one draining a victim, or one of them drained a victim and tried to pin it on the only other vampire around. I still don't know which one of them actually did it.

Great analogy with the chopsticks. Continuing further: there are people who use chopsticks all over, and chopsticks or fork is fine. But there are a lot more people who brag about using chopsticks than people who brag that they can use a fork. Those people are assholes and can be safely ignored.

Using ASCII can be more rewarding, and I'd encourage you to at least give it a fair shake. But if you prefer tilesets then that's totally fine. Don't let anyone tell you that you're somehow "less hardcore" for using tilesets.

Personally, I didn't switch to ASCII until I sat down and made a tileset that I liked, and I've been using that one ever since (Shizzle 16x20, it's on the wiki tileset repo). I think it's a good option for HD monitors. Play around with a couple and find one that you like.

I don't use dump zones for anything but clothes, so my dump zone is a 1x1 in the middle of the trade depot. Once a year, usually springtime or so, I go to the stocks menu and designate all the worn-out stuff for dumping. The dwarves dump it and it remains safely on the depot and forbidden until a caravan comes, at which time I just unforbid the pile and designate it for trading (easy, since sorting by distance moves all of it to the top of the list).

Bonus points because I can also designate crafts and whatever else to be dumped there over the course of the year and not have to wait for stuff to be brought to the depot when the time comes.

Don't forget, Shift + Enter when choosing construction materials auto choose the entire wall segment to be 1 type. Makes building much quicker(100enters for a 10x10 floor).

Indeed. I played for two years before I found this out. Huge time saver.