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Messages - xzzy

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31
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: My best ever pit trap thought
« on: March 23, 2008, 12:31:00 am »
quote:
Originally posted by Footkerchief:
<STRONG>If you connect your pit to the river and wait for fish to get swept in (which is probably your best bet), you're going to need a drain, because it'll take a long time to accumulate many fish.  Use a grate (with a drain floodgate behind it) so that you can drain extra water from the pit without the fish getting out.

[ March 22, 2008: Message edited by: Footkerchief ]</STRONG>

It would be a bit cleaner to set up a screw pump chain to pull water from the pit and dump it back into the river. That way you maintain the flow of the river. Just wall off the pumps with grates so the fish can't get through.


32
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Magma location utility?
« on: December 11, 2007, 10:33:00 pm »
Could probably find the "ultimate spot" in a few seconds if you reverse engineered the data files and just analyzed them directly.  ;) Could use those 229 days to program instead of watching a program run.

Memory editing and macro programs get your foot in the door, but are limited by what the game wants to show you.


33
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Brutal Dwarf Justice
« on: March 23, 2008, 09:26:00 pm »
You can avoid a lot of problems with justice by never creating fortress or royal guards, and dumping the Hammerer's weapon.

The guards don't really do much, unless you want the King.


34
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Alarm in case of an ambush?
« on: March 14, 2008, 08:41:00 am »
quote:
Originally posted by zagibu:
<STRONG>Hit o and then i...</STRONG>

Don't forget to hit d then f, and select every possible item laying around outside. And d then x, to undesignate every tree or mining operation you have outside.

;)


35
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Stopping magma
« on: December 09, 2007, 03:56:00 pm »
You have a river?

Flood the place with water.. including the spot where the magma is leaking from to seal the leak. Anything that gets turned into obsidian you can tunnel back out later.

Don't need 7/7 water either. Just enough to cool the magma is enough.


36
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Always running out of wood
« on: December 11, 2007, 10:36:00 am »
The real "fix" is to not get so fixated on steel.

Yeah, it makes all the best stuff, but it creates a serious chokepoint in your fort. Gear up those dwarves in iron instead, laugh at the horrible ways they get themselves killed, and hope the next migrant wave can replenish your ranks.


37
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Can I put out fires?
« on: December 06, 2007, 06:05:00 pm »
Flooding the fire works.

It takes an incredibly long time for fires to burn out on their own, think the longest I've seen was two years.


38
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: How Do You Find Good Fort Locations?
« on: December 05, 2007, 02:55:00 pm »
When I generate a world, first thing I do is save out a bitmap and open it in an image editor. Scan for red (volcanos) and in the region select screen I track down those spots and see if they're suitable (and/or look like an interesting environment). If it fails, I mark it on the image and keep searching.

Always check the area three or four tiles around a volcano for extra magma vents, because often the volcano itself is a horrible place for a fortress, but the surrounding area may have a vent with some better options.

It's not that I'm dead set on having magma on my maps.. it's just an easy way to narrow the search. Maps are so huge it's impossible to scan every tile for interesting features, so you gotta filter down the options somehow.


As for the materials, I use this page in the wiki pretty extensively:
http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Stone

And compare it to the materials listed in the region select, to identify what types of layers are available. Sedimentary and igneous extrusive are the "best" for steel production, so I tend to favor those. If I find a spot with poor layer selection, but has some other fun stuff (chasm, sinister, lots of obsidian) I'll probably play it anyways.


39
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Barrels, barrels everywhere
« on: December 05, 2007, 03:02:00 pm »
If you want to be really anal, you can 'forbid' on full barrels, to force dwarves to empty out ones that only have a little bit of food left in them. Just don't forget to reclaim them or your dwarves will starve.  ;)

Growing quarry bushes helps too, because they process into bags (which you then have your cook make into meals).

Also make sure your fishers aren't hogging barrels. They can bring in fish at a surprisingly high rate if you don't keep an eye on them, wasting barrel space with a lot of unprocessed food.


40
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Does water "Push"?
« on: February 28, 2008, 02:30:00 pm »
Yeah that's what I got out of it too.. pretty fascinating article.

From what I've been able to gather, the other option is to drop animals/people into the  pool of water, then pull the plug. Because of the teleportation trick, they will get "pushed" to the front of the water flow.


41
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Does water "Push"?
« on: February 26, 2008, 03:29:00 pm »
I just tested this with the latest version.. built a high water tower (11 levels) with a single hole in the bottom, blocked with a floodgate. Built a single tile wide tunnel to a chasm, got some dwarves stuck in the tube, and opened the floodgate.

Dwarves didn't get "pushed" at all, they stayed exactly where they were until they drowned. The water flowed extremely fast though.  ;)

Is there an init file options that controls this?

Crappy movie I made of the test:
http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/movie-366-waterpressuretest


42
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Isolated Dwarfs
« on: March 09, 2008, 09:11:00 pm »
You'd have to be extremely unlucky to lose a fortress to strange moods.. the vast majority only end up wanting stone/cloth/wood which you should be able to provide on your own.

I've had entire waves of immigrants die to ambushes before ever reaching my fort, and I never got a tantrum for it. So it's safe to kill them off if you don't want them.

I've never seen a troll knock down a wall, I don't think it's possible.


43
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Magma and deep water
« on: March 07, 2008, 10:24:00 am »
I've dropped water onto a magma vent, and it wasn't fun.. every time a block solidified I'd get the cave in alert and the game would pause and warp to the location.

Imagine magma onto water would be about the same.


44
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Drinking Algorithms
« on: March 06, 2008, 11:55:00 pm »
They seem to go for the newest booze but I haven't really put effort into verifying it.. just that whenever I expand and overflowing stockpile they seem to prefer the new one over the old one.

45
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: The Dwarven Economy?
« on: December 06, 2007, 05:57:00 pm »
I can't figure out what the economy does to bedroom assignments.

When I try to assign a bedroom to a dwarf.. the list has shrunk from one entry for every dwarf, to only about 20 dwarves on the list. Does the economy completely remove the need to assign beds? Dwarves will automatically pick one they can afford?

Selecting the "stop renting" option doesn't seem to effect my ability to assign a dwarf to the room.


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