Bay 12 Games Forum

What is bismuth like as an armour material? Or what do its stats suggest, as I can't understand them.

Bismuth alone can't make armor or weapons, it can be used to make a type of bronze.  Bismuth bronze has much more value then normal bronze but as I recall it has the same combat effectiveness as regular bronze.  Its better then copper by a good amount but not as good as iron.  Its not as good as silver for warhammers but a good deal better when making edged weapons then silver.

Have you set them as adoptable on the animals screen? I believe a dwarf must also have a preference for an animal to adopt it (or it at least helps.)

Yes I have that toggled on.  As to the second point, is it 0% with out preference and some chance with?  Does the game check for adoption multiple times for each dwarf or am I wasting my time keeping the animals for the purpose of being pets if they have been exposed to each dwarf a couple times with out affect.  I think this is likely since I have had forts with lots of available pets and still no adoption with 5+ years.

If you have temperature and weather disabled will that keep water from melting during the warmer season when embarking in a place with cold winters?  It seems to me that this is true, but my data sample is three embarks.  If this is true, and it seems to me that it is, having it defaulted to yes to weather and temperature might be less problematic to new players who might not realize that their river should be free flowing for part of the year.

Thanks for your work in putting the pack together in the first.

PoB

My ace in the hole for any situation where military is not picking up gear is to delete their uniform, remake it, reassign it.  Also if you are making iron bolts then have the ammunition be iron bolts instead of bolts in general.  This seems to fix it sometimes as well.

I stopped playing for a year or so and just recently picked it up again but I recall I had a strategy for this.  I think what I was doing was having the seed stockpiles linked to a feeder pile, much like what you do with gems for a jewelers shop so he isn't interrupted.  So something like this, stockpile A takes from anywhere, stockpile B only takes from A.  Do not use barrels, but rather ensure you have plenty of bags.  Also using smaller more specific stockpiles instead of a large general one helps as well.  To clarify AFAIR the seeds in each bag will be like with like, but bags in a barrel will be mixed, a situation that will produce most of this.

I always do 3x3 rooms for my commoner dwarfs.  Its not the most space efficient but helps in generating happy thoughts for the dwarfs as a rooms worth includes the floor and walls along with furniture.  Later on smoothing and engraving the rooms further increases the strength of the happy thoughts.  I also tend to use the planning mod DFhack plugin to auto place the materowork/exceptional beds in the rooms and use the lower quality beds for my hospital and dormitory, selling the excess so they don't take up space in stockpiles.  As for furniture a bed of course and a coffer and later a cabinet as well.

Cons: 

I'm making 3 beds for every one I end up using.
The small increase in tile size per room adds up, making the living areas less space efficient which in turn adds some travel time for dwarfs getting back to work from a nap.

Pro's:

Higher value rooms counter act happiness loss, the more of a buffer you have the more stable your fort will be.
I think it looks better on my screen then cramming dwarfs into as small of rooms as is possible.
When I give that 11 skill presser a room fit for a noble even though hes not worth the booze he drinks I feel like a much nicer person then I am in real life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN5Xpeq_LN4 Move to the 35 minute mark for a visual on how I stack them to mitigate some of the cons I mentioned.
         

New fort, had a thief try to sneak past my dogs very early on.  Combat log showed a normal dog one shoting the thief.

Then I saw this epicness.

http://imgur.com/xdBkbTk

Dwarves claim bedrooms automatically, you dont have to asdign them to dwarves.

Never liked them choosing for them selves.  Most the time I don't make one large bedroom area, but rather 20 room pods on differing levels.  Then assign the rooms to the dwarfs who work closest to that area.  So as an example the dwarfs who work closest to the surface or on the surface (farmers, wood cutters, milkers/shears etc) aren't walking 30 levels down to the "main" fort, and the dwarfs who work near the magma furnaces aren't walking 30 floors up to take a nap.

But hey if your a hero of the people then just let them go willy nilly.