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Messages - vanatteveldt

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361
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Optomised Armour Layering?
« on: May 03, 2013, 03:43:21 am »
Hmm, I just had a look at the data presented in the excellent 'The end of "What bolt metal is better?" arguments' thread linked in Urist's sig.

What I take from it is not that candy is worse than steel. It performs similar against everything except wood bolts, which are not your biggest enemy in any case, and wood bolts are still really bad against candy. Against candy or bone bolts candy actually outperforms steel, presumably because these bolts have so little mass that they depend on penetrating the armor.

Is there any reason to assume that the "wood bolt syndrome" translates to melee cases? Has anybody done an arena experiment to pit 1000 candy/steel/mix clad dwarfs against a variety of actual opponents (say goblin, minotaur, clown or something) and compare survival rates? Of course there is a lot of random but with only 9 cells and >100 cases per cell it shouldn't be too bad, I suppose? You can also have an unarmed dwarf and count number of blows before injury / incapacitation / death?

(I've never used the arena and have never seen candy other than by throwing my miner into a volcano (it was an accident, I swear!), so I don't think I am the person for doing this... I'll happily parse the logfile if someone can do the arena part, I'm good at scripts and re?)

362
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Slabs not being engraved
« on: May 03, 2013, 02:30:09 am »
I had a problem with slabs in my lost fort when I had set the stone stockpile to 'give' to the craft workshop, this prevented the workshop from engraving the slab, which was in the furniture stockpile. If you use stockpile linking you might have to give from the furniture pile that has the slabs as well.

363
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Armor, helmets, and replace clothing question
« on: May 02, 2013, 07:46:24 pm »
That's probably a good idea. Should I include civvy shoes as well?

Do any other items except for caps/helmets cause problems with military refusing to wear equipment?

Also, I often make both mail shirts and breast plates, but they never seem to wear both. Should I customize the uniform to include both, or is it redundant?

364
DF Gameplay Questions / Armor, helmets, and replace clothing question
« on: May 02, 2013, 07:14:28 pm »
I setup squads using the standard 'metal' uniform.

I noticed that my dwarfs refused to wear the bronze helmets I made. So, I figured I should set "replace clothing". This caused them to wear the helmets... but later I found out that some people in my newest squad were *extremely* unhappy because their uniforms weren't ready yet, so they were out stark naked in the cold (well actually, right on top of a vulcano, but I guess they don't care).

What is the normal/best thing to do with uniforms? Set to replace clothing and make sure a uniform is ready before creating the squad? Use "over clothing" (but how to force helmets?)? Or switch between the two when the uniform is complete?

365
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Dumping stuff off cliffs
« on: April 24, 2013, 10:36:23 am »
I think if you have a garbage zone next to a cliff or ramp, they will dump it even if the open space is not part of the zone

(I lost some dwarves when I had a rock dump zone next to a ramp that was in active use...)

366
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Regarding cavern wildlife
« on: April 24, 2013, 05:28:18 am »
If they're at the bottom of the sea you can also:

1) drain the sea through an area of cage traps to fortifications on the side

2) cave in from above, which should go right through the water (?)

367
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Idle Dwarves Refuse To Build Workshops
« on: April 19, 2013, 08:01:17 am »
Yeah, pathing does not seem to be the issue given the screenshot. You can't designate a building using a material you don't have, so that also shouldn't be the problem.

From the screenshots, however, it looks like the buildings have been created. At least the still and mechanic certainly look done to me. If you press q and go to one of them, what does it say?

368
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Note to Urist--In which you express your frustration to your dwarves
« on: April 19, 2013, 07:06:06 am »
Dear Urist and Arist McMiner, (c/o Armok, dept. of Darwinism)

We had a nice little tight-knit colony of 12 hardworking dwarves about to survive their first winter on the slopes of the vulcano. I had every thought for your safety by deciding to not breach the vulcano from the side, but rather breach it at the caldera and then guide the magma downwards. You were working nicely on creating the 4x4 channel down, going level by level like a good dwarf. How on earth did you manage to create a cave in on the last level, caused both of you to die in sight of the harbor???

At least you were nice enough to leave your picks where I could get them by removing a constructed wall so I could actually assign a new miner to train. I hope he learns from what he sees when he goes in there to collect his pick!

O your wife was not amused, maybe you should have considered that before channeling that tile???

Thanks.

369
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Sasquatchs in my bedroom !
« on: April 18, 2013, 03:07:50 pm »
In a pinch your miners make a good fighting force, so you can try sending in the pick militia

370
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Assorted newbie questions, mainly about drowned dwarves
« on: April 18, 2013, 09:51:11 am »
Many questions, so short answers per question :-)

Quote from: ocmsRzr on April 18, 2013, 09:38:16 am
I made it three years so far!  However, this is where things usually
unravel for me.  I dug out a cistern and provided a safe place for
dwarves to fish inside.

Unfortunately low booze stockpiles have caused a bunch of them to
congregate outside the fortess walls next to the river.  A dwarf and
her child fell in the river and are now being sucked towards the
waterfall on the map...

You can designate a zone for drinking using the zones menu (i). Further, you set an (o)rder to only drink from designated places. But you probably want to ..

1) make a well for getting any needed water
2) really fix your booze problem first :-)

Quote from: ocmsRzr on April 18, 2013, 09:38:16 am
So mom and child will go over the edge and die at the bottom of the
river.  How the hell do I recover their corpses to prevent their
ghosts from giving more unhappy thoughts?  How do I console her
husband to prevent a tantrum spiral? (I'm thinking give him a really
nice room, but that may involve evicting someone.)

Make a slab, first have the mason make one, then have the craftsdwarf engrave it with the right name, and then build it somewhere.

I might be wrong here, but I don't think the drowning will give many unhappy thoughts as nobody saw it happening. He probably thinks she is off buying cigarettes :-)

Quote from: ocmsRzr on April 18, 2013, 09:38:16 am
On a related note, because I'm pretty sure the answer is going to
involve damming the river. (which I want to do anyway) is there a
reliable way to dam a river without pumping water out faster than its
flowing in? 

Damming rivers is hard. The options are basically getting magma up, or pumping real hard. Google should give you some detailed designs.

Dwarfs occasionally suicide near waterfalls because they think the shallow water near the edge is a great place for pathing. The easiest solution is to build a bridge over the last part of the river so they can safely cross.

Quote from: ocmsRzr on April 18, 2013, 09:38:16 am
I want to dam the river up stream in order to completely
dig out the dry moat around my fortress.  I haven't decided if I'm
going to be able to fill/drain the moat yet.  If I do fill the moat,
should I make it two levels deep instead of one?
Quote

Standard advise seems to be to make the moat 2 deep and only fill 1 level with water. You might have to stop water pressure by having it flow through a diagonal on z-2.

Quote from: ocmsRzr on April 18, 2013, 09:38:16 am
If I do get a building destroyer FB, what counts as a building??  If I
carve fortifications out of a smoothed wall, can the FB break them and
storm into my fortress?

Walls (including fortifications) and raised bridges are safe, at the moment there is nothing that can destruct them. Doors etc will be destroyed.

Quote from: ocmsRzr on April 18, 2013, 09:38:16 am

Also, my booze stocks were zero, but I'm now in full time brewing
production with three stills  I hope this is enough for 110 thirsty
mouths.  Does booze have any nutritional value?

That is quite strange, I regularly have 100+ dwarf forts with a single stlil. Is the still actually being used all the time?

Quote from: ocmsRzr on April 18, 2013, 09:38:16 am

Finally, in my minds eye, is the inside of my fortress pitch black?
Can dwarves see in the dark?  Do they have torches lighting everything
up?  Its really been bothering me...

They don't mind, they can see in the dark :-). It would be nice if a future version has some notion of creature comforts (heat, light), but at the moment the dwarfs are not very picky...

Good luck!

371
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: can you drop a clay/sand tile towards the magma layer
« on: April 18, 2013, 03:44:00 am »
The bug (and especially the list of related bugs) sounds very interesting, as a programmer it makes one wonder how material properties are coded in...

I'll try a couple of times and report. I guess cheating to accomplish the goal is less cheaty if it is a bug workaround, so I might resort to savescumming / tiletyping if the transmutation is too consistent.


372
DF Gameplay Questions / can you drop a clay/sand tile towards the magma layer
« on: April 17, 2013, 04:27:06 pm »
I'm going to try to build a fortress directly in/near the second or third cave to have easy access to the magma. However, I would also like to have pottery and glassworking down there.

Can you drop  a clay/sand tile down towards the magma by making a huge chute and then caving it in?

373
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Zombies do not have souls!
« on: April 16, 2013, 11:06:57 am »
About the cave in remark: Assuming you have at least an extra z-level to work with, you can use the fact that floors don't stop cave ins:

Code: [Select]
(side view)

  _       <- floor (or rock) that is only supported by the support S
  _S    <- floor above zombie and support
 #Z#    <- zombie in tomb

I'm not a cave in guru and I haven;t tested this, but I think the above setup should create a perfectly safe cave-in from the top floor which will fall through the bottom floor and land on the zombie.

374
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Minecart Question
« on: April 16, 2013, 10:31:00 am »
If I understand your problem correctly you want to transport stuff down from near the surface to near the magma sea?

Why don;t you just drop it down?

on the top level, build a stockpile, track stop, and chute. Set the track stop to dump into the chute.

90 z levels down, just collect the stuff from the chute. If you like your dwarfs, set up a bridge or hatch to make sure that the chute is not in operation while the dwarfs are collection the stuff. You can even automate it using a pressure plate near the chute landing spot to automatically close the bridge/hatch when a dwarf apporaches to collect.

375
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Noise
« on: April 15, 2013, 07:11:32 am »
Urist Mc73 pauses game, thinking about future

I usually work with apartment blocks (3 or more z levels with the entrance in the middle z-level). Wood cutting travels 8 tiles so if you want to make sure that the dwarfs aren't disturbed by McLogger you should bury the block 8 levels below the surface, preferably 8 levels below the soil layer for future tree farms. Since digging and engraving are the other main sources, it would make sense to design a whole block in one go and smooth/engrave it before letting in any dwarfs, but I find that difficult to do in the beginning...

Actually, all metal workshops should generate positive thoughts imo. "Slept wonderfully with music of nearby hammers clanging on steel anvils recently", "Comforted by the hiss of ingots being cast"

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