Bay 12 Games Forum

I really really wish that dwarves bothered to clean inside lit areas. I really like having outside buildings, and the green sea gets old. 

I think it's understandable to assume that the player would remember the layout of his/her own fort, so I can easily see why Toady didn't see it as important to include a directional reminder . . . but I also don't see any reason why it shouldn't be added.

Personally, the kind of drawbridge addition that I'd like to see is the trapdoor drawbridge: Open, it's horizontal and walkable. Pull the lever, and it suddenly drops right out from under you. It doesn't form an impassable wall like a raising drawbridge (the gap can still be cleared by flying/jumping), but you can pit a titan or colossus with it.

I think that already exists, it's the default if you don't set a direction. Pull the lever and the bridge effectively vanishes.

So, I've got this beastie. I want to entrap it. For one thing, it's positioned such that it has cut off access to my clothing works. On the other hand, it breathes fire, and fire has its uses. I built some doors, very nice doors, to try to ulre it back into a space of entrapment, but it is simply sitting there, even though there are eminently destroyable doors nearby, and an entire factory floor beyond the doors.

I often find FB behavior flummoxing, but I think this one hasn't so much as taken a step in an entire year.

Suggestions?

It's worth noting that after a major catastrophe, you will see a lack of migrants for a while, or so it seemed to me.

And I would expect refugees to band together if only for mutual protection and the fact that there aren't often that many places to travel. Economics will tend to push them in a certain direction.  Travelling is dangerous, but travelling alone, as anyone who has played in adventure mode knows, is especially dangerous.

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http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-12698-snarledglazed

Heh. Bit sprawlingly reminding me of some worldgen forts, expect lot more organized. Curious story of growing lax and guide/dwarves dang it.

- Ball!?
- 9-tile staircase to depths?!

Should I take that for a compliment? I'm not sure...

It'd be nice, though perhaps it'd make the game a bit more idiot-proof, if you could examine a completed bridge and observe which direction it will raise in.

This is not the sort of thing one likes to learn in the midst of a crisis.

Godzilla vs Mothra, Dwarf Fortress-style.

So, years ago, I saw a web spinning forgotten beast and got inspired to entrap it for a silk farm. I made the trap, a simple affair with two draw bridges along a single-tile corridor and some statues in the middle to slow it down...

...yes, that was a mistake...

...but the stupid thing climbed up a tree and got stuck.

So the trap lay dormant for years. The fort went through a decline due to poor defenses and too many goblins, but after out-turtling a couple sieges, and some careful planning, we again attracted migrants and were approaching our initial glory. We were fresh from a great victory against the goblins, had just constructed the tavern (The Dark Chocolate, I kid you not) and had a curtain wall mostly completed. Things were looking really nice. I even made a dfma upload to celebrate the occasion.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-12698-snarledglazed

And to ice the cake, another web spinning forgotten beast showed up!

I mistakenly thought this FB was in cave #2 (which was walled off with a drawbridge due to another FB lurking there) and thought I could ignore it.

That was another mistake.

I ignored it until it mangled one of my farmers somewhere along the great cavern stair. I seized the opportunity by calling a civilian alert and raising the bridge to the caverns, leaving the trap as the primary avenue into the fort!

Except the beastie wandered back into cavern 3 and meandered, like you do.

Well, at least I could contain it until a more opportune time? I hit the purple lever, and....

Someone forgot to set the drawbridge for "raise." The bridge disappeared into the rock.

Panicking somewhat, I designated a wall, and completed it, except that our legendary engraver walled himself on the wrong side of the wall. I immediately set the wall to deconstruct, and the engraver got to work, just as the forgotten beast was creeping up behind him. He got it open and bolted up the stairs!

And not long after that he was caught bye the webslinger, and most mercilessly destroyed.

This was the fort's only legendary engraver, by the way...

But no time to grieve, I checked for any other stragglers, and there was a fish cleaner somewhere between cavern 2 and 1 and the surface, and a peasant further up. The peasant got out ok, and I check on the fish cleaner.

The fish cleaner is hauling some gabbro.

The FB was still working on the engraver, or something, so I watched carefully to see when the best time to hit the switch would be.

And somehow the fish cleaner got out! Hit the lever! Everyone downstairs! 

The lever was hit, a planter named Nil got squished in the bridge. I don't even know why Nil was going for the stairs at this point. I'll leave a slab as a cautionary tale.

So I watch...and the beast meanders...the beast destroys the doors to our corpse heap. The beast wanders into a mined-out vein of cobaltite...the beast...what?!?!

Another forgotten beast has arrived!!! And this one breaths !!!FIRE!!!

(it's worth noting that the first and worst catastrophe this fort ever faced was a fire breathing toad monster that slew 20 or so dwarves before it was vanquished)

Of course, Mr Coral Quadruped with the webs must face down the new threat down in cavern 1. I tried to raise that drawbridge, and I don't even know if it did because it was the same error as in 3, and by the time I looked the two were going at it like Godzilla and Mothra.

Godzilla won, kicking the web spinner's head off with its rear leg.

OK, I get a fire room instead of a web room...

Godzilla proceeds to book it up the stairs, where my trap is waiting.

It's worth noting that this trap opens directly into the clothing factory, with only a door or two in between...

Remember those statues? I was thinking that forgotten beasts ripped down statues the same as they destroyed doors...slowly.

It went through them like a bowling ball hurled by Thor himself.

I panicked and set up a borrow in the tavern (on the surface) to try to persuade all the dwarves to go outside for some fresh air and immediately sent the entire army to the clothing factory.

I think better of this, cancel the burrow, and move the troops back a bit to a more defensible location, a landing where several ramps meet. And I watch as the capital red C just sits there.

And sits there.

(I realize now, after I'd stopped playing that it was probably working on destroying the door to the clothworks; I didn't realize this at the time.)

And of course, multiple dwarven civilians are now trying to go through that door to get to the caverns. I locked the door just in time. That would've been bad.

Somewhere in there I thought to hit the switch on the back of the trap, sealing the monster on the clothe side of the tunnel, but it made no sense to hit the other one, which the monster is now past, so I let that be.

In a cooler panic, I started to put floors at the ramp leading in, but was worried about trapping dwarves inside, so instead I walled off the cloth sector that would be the nearest entry into the trap outlet. Then I realized that the beast could easily take a detour through the storage rooms below, and built a solid wall cutting off all four sectors. This includes all of the looms, clothing workshops, and leather workshops, as well as the fort's entire stash of thread, cloth, and leather.

But now, at least, the beast is contained.

We're hoping that it will at some point get bored of ripping apart looms and textile mills to wander back into the passage. Actually, what would really make sense would be to seal it in the cloth and leather works and build some more robust defenses on the way back. That would make a lot of sense...

I think that was a rather pleasant measure of !!!FUN!!! Fewer than five casualties, and if I do this right I'll have a handy dandy forgotten-beast-powered incinerator instead of a silk farm. 

I honestly don't care if it'd be wise or even prudent to assign bodyguards to certain dwarves. I just think it'd be a neat option. Maybe something as simple as a "follow" command.

And yeah, you could also assign one to your legendary gem cutter, or weaponsmith, or even to your weavers who spend a lot of time wandering through the caverns...