Bay 12 Games Forum

Air pressure would keep that in place, unfortunately, the air pressure on magma would be negligible (as would air pressure on deep water (I think 33 feet of water is equal to one atmosphere, or something like that). I'm glad it doesn't follow actual physics at the moment, because underground magmasmelters would be a huge pain (involving lots of magma pumping and steel floodgates and such).

...although, I do think magma-based workshops are a bit too easy to set up now.

Watching some of my dwarves again, and - despite having ramps now - some of the insist upon going around the entire hillside to walk down the natural hill and come in the other mined-out entrance.

I just had a craftsdwarf pick up a stone, bring it passed the ramp into the fort, 20 tiles to the west, then down a hill, then 5 tiles to the mouth of the mine (and then a 20+tile hallway back to where he could have just gone down the ramp, pretty much).

Apparently they prefer natural slopes for some inexplicable reason.

I think this happens if you build a ramp up from the level below, and it becomes the only path up.

I had a downward stair and an unbuilt upward stair, and since both of the miners that got trapped on the lower level didn't feel like climbing the ramp, the only way I could get them out was to dig a brand new path outside through the cliff (and it's a good think I started on a cliff, because they didn't seem to want to build any ramps or stairs (including the pre-designated up-stairs they didn't finish).

I think this can be avoided by having your miners build stairways before you consider putting a ramp in.

(the N and NW parts at the top of my ramp were clear, but they still didn't want to go up)

I'm thinking there might need to be a change to how trading works during at least the first year (and the fact that it doesn't seem to be explained anywhere how to trade effectively).

I'm talking about the fact that 'poor trades' tend to make merchants leave without trading, which can potentially damn new players (or even just new fortresses). The big problem here, is that: without appraisers you're not going to know the proper value of your goods, and even with appraisers if you give the merchant a profit he still get's pissed at you. Is there somewhere it's explained that I should give the merchant some sort of profit margin? If I'm giving him +50 value as profit I'd expect him to take it, especially if I'm only trading 7 things.

I'm thinking there should be an explanation of trading the first year (with no ability to anger the merchants), so that the player isn't potentially screwed by lack of appraiser skill (since one dwarf should get it from the successful trade the first year), and the profit margins expected by the traders can be explained to the player.

It seems to just make the cliff-like learning curve that much steeper (although, if you're on a very habitable plot area there wont be much trouble).

[edit]
I just read on the wiki that dwarven merchants aren't opposed to hours and hours of bargaining...the ones I just had gave me about 5 times (with each one giving them a +trade value), and they left.

[ November 02, 2007: Message edited by: UltimaGecko ]