Bay 12 Games Forum

So fps is a problem.

I really want to boost it through constant raids...

Why would you assume that sending dwarves to fight battles off-screen will increase your fps?

The items your civilization can produce are determined by the tokens in entity_default.txt. Under MOUNTAIN (a.k.a. dwarves) is the token: [ARMOR:ITEM_ARMOR_ROBE:COMMON], which usually gives dwarves access to robes, but not always. Weapon, trap component, and shield tokens do not appear to support a rarity value, so they are always available.

As far as I've seen dorfs have variable access to upper body clothes (there's always at least one for both clothing layers), and the same goes for boots (which are armor) where high or low boots may go missing (but you can have access to both, and you can't miss out on both).

The game does not enforce any minimum access to clothing/armor. I changed all the COMMON values to RARE, generated a world, and embarked from a civilization that could not produce any clothing or armor (except shields). My embark dwarves were naked (and unhappy about it).

I plan to build a underground well, but I'm not sure if its flood- and siegeproof

No and no. Here's one recommended design that's both:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Pressure#Safe_well

So ever since I started playing again I've been constantly harassed by claims of not having any seeds for my plump helmets. What change is it that has led to this trend?

Storing anything in a barrel blocks access to everything else in the barrel until the job completes. Don't store your actively farmed seeds in barrels.

My farmer's keep making thread out of hair that I think they get from the refuse pile, and it's not getting stocked in the cloth pile, nor is it labelled correctly - it's not "[Animal] Yarn" but "[Animal] Thread". Is this thread useless and a glitch or something?

Hair thread cannot be woven into cloth, but it can be used for some jobs like suturing and book binding.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Get rid of all pet-locked doors.

Make all your hallways with any traffic at least 2 tiles wide. Dwarves meeting in a single-tile-wide hallway will repath to avoid sharing a tile, potentially flood-filling the entirety of the map to find an alternate route. Even worse, repathing uses jump/climb pathing, which is more expensive than regular pathing.

I've had some success using a single spiral ramp through my fortress. Ramps seem easier on FPS than staircases.

Short of rather ridiculous bugs, I don't see how stairs could have much impact at all.

Dwarves will never path through restricted zones unless they need to, even if it takes them to the other side of the map.

Nope. "Restricted" tiles have a pathing cost of 25, meaning dwarves will only detour up to 12 normal-traffic tiles (or 25 high-traffic tiles) by default. (You can modify these values, however.)

In general, setting traffic costs can be helpful, but only if you know what you are doing. It doesn't matter what traffic costs you set if your dwarves are constantly running into each other in one-tile-wide hallways--they will flood-fill the entirety of the map looking for an alternate route, regardless of your traffic costs.

I wanted to see how you guys do booze droppers for isolated dwarfs.... Last time I tried it demanded a shit tone of micro management....

A simple minecart route can fully automate the process. Dwarves load the cart full of booze and push it down the track, through two statues (blocking dwarf-access to the tracks), and dumping the booze in the isolated area. Dwarves in the isolated area drink the booze and load the empty containers back into the cart. Once the cart fills up it's pushed back out for a refill.

I noticed that (some of) my boulders were simply vanishing...

The game already has a "wear/damage" tracking system for objects, and Toady would very likely use it for "falling damage" much like it is now used for "fire damage", "combat damage", and "throwing damage". Having falling items simply disappear seems rather unlikely.

I tested dumping booze barrels down a 30+ z pit in v0.44.09. Whether dwarf-dumped, minecart-dumped, or "tossed" by a retracting bridge, all the barrels survived the plunge. I then set the dwarves to repeatedly load the barrels into the minecart and let it run a while. By the time all the booze had been consumed there still weren't any damaged or missing barrels.

I'm not sure where your missing items disappeared to, but if you post your save it might clarify the matter.

Double pull ceased to work with any degree of certainty with the jobs rewrite back in 0.40.X, as dorfs now pull the lever once, walk away for 10 or so steps, then figures that they should take up a new job. Not only does it mean that the time it takes the dorf to return for a second pull may be too long, there is also a significant risk the second pull task has been taken up by someone down by the magma sea during the time the pull order has been "published" and the initial puller has been walking away.

It worked in v0.44.07 when I tested it, but if you're having problems you can temporarily lock a door to keep the lever-puller from wandering off or switching jobs.

The default Dwarf Fortress download is 64-bit, which Windows XP cannot run. Under "All versions" you can select a 32-bit build which should work.

Nevermind, looks like my dwarves didn't want to build stuff using raw basalt stone, so I changed the material to wood, and it worked.

You don't specify the type of material to use, you specify the specific item(s) to use. If those specific items are then rendered inaccessible (say, by the flooding of the reservoir wherein they lie) your dwarves will not substitute any other item. The items that you select for use in buildings are marked with 'TSK' in game, which you can use to investigate why your dwarves won't complete a build job.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why using dwarf-made materials for buildings is recommended--the odds of basalt blocks in your mason's shop or stockpile being rendered inaccessible are much lower than those of random stones scattered throughout your fortress.