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[Martin]

Summer 551


Construction has begun in earnest. It feels good to wield a pick again. I tasked Kadol with mining along with me - she's learning quickly. It took a few days to work out a general plan for the fortress. We're not entirely sure if it'll work, but it seems sound. Food production is the first issue, obviously. We had considered putting the farmers and various animals down to the first cavern, but were worried that securing the cavern would take too long, and moving all of the food up from that far down would be problematic. The cartographers that suggested this site said that we could likely build a 40 level fortress before hitting a cavern, and that there were probably 3 in total down there. Instead we decided that we would build the fortress as three concentric rings - an outer, minimally guarded perimeter, a middle heavily guarded perimeter, and an inner core that would be designed to be impenetrable. The inner core is small, but will go down until we hit magma. Between the inner and middle rings, we would undermine the soil and collapse it down deep into the ground. Above this space we'll build a solid stone lattice and then cover it in such a way that not even a dragons breath will penetrate. This should provide sufficient grazing area for the animals we brought to provide milk and wool, and allow both our usual underground plants but also retain knowledge about how to grow surface plants.


These iron picks that the king sent with us are quite nice and has allowed us to channel the area out and undermining has begun. This will likely take another season to finish at least. Things will move more quickly once it's complete, and it will provide us with adequate stone to take on the complicated mechanics that we've planned. I ordered Atis to construct some confinement rooms should any migrants arrive early. The mountainhomes were ordered to wait until we gave word, but there are always some who succumb to desperation. I hope none come, as their fate will not be a pleasant one.


The first caravan isn't due for almost 2 more seasons. We'll prepare some items to trade. It'll be nice to have some different food here. Whoever packed the food sent nothing but cave fish and we're all growing tired of it.

[Martin]

Autumn 551


As we feared, two dwarves arrived looking for shelter. We shouted at them to turn away - that they could not stay here - but they pled with us, offered to do any job, but kept coming. Just before they reached the fortress we convinced them to do a job for us, and then sadly locked them away. We couldn't stand the pleas any more, so we all returned to excavating the farms. When I returned at the start of Autumn, one was dead, the other is desperately looking for something to eat, but appears on the verge of dehydration. Please tell your citizens to not come until we are ready - they will not find shelter here just yet.


The excavation is taking a bit longer than I had expected. It's been quite a long time since I mined like this, and while it seems like there is less stone left behind than I recall, the stone seems much heavier than I remember. Sarvesh made some wheelbarrows to help with the effort. I wish we knew about those when building Lashedwines. Rather than try and salvage all of this worthless rock, we'll just recover the valuable ore and gems and leave the rest to be buried. We've struck quite a bit of gold ore, so we'll be wealthy, if poorly armed at this rate. A depot has been constructed so we're ready for the first caravan which should arrive any day. Hopefully we'll receive no more migrants before these messages can be taken back.

[EvilTwin]

ptw

[Martin]

Summer 552


The caravan arrived and were generous trading for the roasts I made. I learned the key to making a truly wonderful meal is to make it as quickly as possible. Who knew? We picked up meat and fish, some ammo, and a bunch of metal cages so we can lay some traps, and some other goods that we're not sure we will be able to create here ourselves. The traders took my messages back, but just before their arrival, 5 more migrants arrived. Just as the first time, we tried to warn them off, and just like the first time, they insisted on approaching the fortress. I send the other founders down below, and locked these 5 away as well. Do not send any more - I've seen my share of death, but and I don't relish it, but I will protect this place.


Progress has slowed somewhat as we had a few thieves sneak into the compound. They were spotted early and ran off, but the kobolds know were here. The first caravan brought word that there were signs of goblins nearby. I ordered a hastily built inner wall and told everyone to stay below - the animals would warn us if any intruders were nearby. The elves arrived as expected and set up their wares, but no sooner had I arrived at the depot to see what they had to offer, a speargoblin jumped one of the elves. I swung my pick and crushed his head in, but as I turned back the other elves had goblins on them as well. I killed a total of 7, but the elves didn't survive. Please send my condolences - we'll be better prepared when they return. We're cleaning up the items they brought, and then back to mining. There are 2 more levels to excavate, and then we can collapse the surface. It shouldn't take long to get the first few bunkers set up.


On the personal front, I got married last month. Rith and I have been spending much time together planning out how goods would flow throughout the fortress. She's very clever and good with a crossbow. I really enjoy spending time with her, in what few breaks from the work we take. I promised to train her to deal with the goblins as I did - they seemed quite surprised with how quickly I struck them down. There were no survivors to send back word of our location. I will have to work to keep it that way.

[Sallen]

I'm so going to follow this thread.

[Kofthefens]

This is awesome.

[GoldenShadow]

I'm wondering why you are getting worried about trapping skill. You can just make them build animal traps at a carpenter's workshop. Each one is 60 XP.

[Martin]

Summer 553


It's been a challenging, slow year. Just as the human traders arrived and we felt we were making progress, two groups of goblins appeared unexpectedly. I fought them off, but two escaped and it appears they brought word of us back to their people. The humans were also generous with their trading, but warned us of something terrible they encountered. On the way to the Sanctuary they made camp and one of them killed a pig to eat. During the night the pigs skin came alive and attacked them. They defeated it easily, but warned us that evil may have already reached us. They urged us to move the dead goblin and other animal bodies as far from the entrance as possible, which we did, and we started to make preparations to properly dispose of it all.


The caravan arrived in fall as expected and brought the items we requested - food, ammunition, and trap components. We quickly set up a confined approach from the depot to the fortress and tied several dogs in there - hopefully nobody will be able to sneak past them, with a weapon trap just beyond them, in case they do. Not as effective as proper soldiers, but it will buy us warning time to deploy - we can't afford to have sentries with so much work to do.


Winter was uneventful, and allowed us to make significant progress on our excavation and do some general cleanup. Spring, however, brought a new surprise. I was down below digging when I heard a call from up above: "Morul! The dead have risen!" I sprinted up and looked out and heading toward the fortress were several figures - elves and humans. We didn't know what to expect, and didn't want to put the fortress at risk, so we locked up the exterior doors and I took station. We could hear them clawing at the outer door but it was holding them back. After a few days, we started to relax, but then we heard the dogs inside the first door attacking something. Somehow the outer door had gotten open - then the inner two doors had. I ran out to check on the dogs, but they were dead, and then I heard another battle outside. Goblins - several of them. I ran back in and relocked the doors. The goblins were clearly agitated by the dead figures, but they attacked and seemingly defeated them. We waited, expecting the dead to rise again, but after several days they didn't. I decided we couldn't afford to have the goblins out there, so I charged out and attacked. Killed 13 of them, and several ran off. The dead corpses that had come were still laying there, but we were now worried that the goblin dead might also rise. We dropped everything and cleaned up, knowing the elves would arrive soon. They did arrive, safely this time, but we explained we had no time to trade. They understood, told us we should expect more of what we just encountered - evil was continuing to spread, and we should further our preparations. I can tell we'll need a rapid way to dispose of the dead bodies that I've been rapidly spreading around the front of the fortress. We may need to rethink our defenses.


On the construction front, we'll be dropping the farms any day now. Should be exciting. There's much construction to do then. And then back to digging.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The limited number of workers is clearly holding back progress. It's almost impossible to keep up with the hauling from the depot trades - but it's better to buy food than try and grow it. There are constant raids from thieving animals, and the goblin attacks have been heavier than I expected. I was worried that new Morul wouldn't be as capable in battle as old Morul, but so far he's been fantastic - his armor is slowly upgrading through trades, but this last attack was him against 18 gobbos - ⅓ were ranged and he came out unscathed. I don't know where the necro went in this last attack - it clearly entered the fortress but there was never an announcement of it being detected. Hopefully it's not still hiding in there a season later.

[caddybear]

I think he is =(

[Martin]

Autumn 553


That sound you heard was us constructing. I ordered everyone inside and removed the last support holding the surface soil layers in place and the entire thing fell perfectly into place. The dust took days to settle and rearranged a fair bit of the fortress, but now we can start putting in all of the plumbing. Anything that might have been down there is surely dead and buried now. Three stories of soil were dropped six stories into properly prepared areas. They'll form 5 of the largest bunkers - farms, shearing, milking, butchering, and beekeeping. I was reminded that the beekeeping area is vastly larger than needed, but what's done is done. Perhaps we'll give the beekeeper some chickens to take care of. The farms are large enough to comfortably hold 600 individual plantings. We shouldn't need even half that at full population. The shearing and milking areas are even larger than the farm space. The butchering area is smaller, but the butcher is expected to handle mostly poultry with much of the rest coming via thinning the milking and shearing herds sent over via cages. The animals we brought and bought are now being moved down there to graze. It's only slightly safer as it's still completely exposed to the outside - but it's safer. Two of us will resume mining while the others keep things in order and build some additional protections and start covering the collapsed areas.


We've had a change of plans regarding the trading. We had intended to have the guards handle the trading, but given that the invaders appear to be following the caravans, and the risk of them then possibly rising from the dead, we've decided that a separate bunker for trading will be made and a migrant will take over those duties. The trade bunker is being planned now and incorporated into the fortress design. It'll need to be quite large as you would expect. We're going to have the entrance very far from the fortress, barely even in visible range, hopefully to throw off the following invaders and convince them to not follow the caravans but instead to come straight towards us. The traders will be exposed to the caravans, but will still be isolated from the rest of the fortress. It's a risk we'll have to take. They'll be without military support, so a foolproof airlock system has been devised to ensure that the traders are never exposed to a threat. It means the traders will need to defend themselves, however.


The guards will still have plenty to do. In addition to defending the fortress, we're going to be responsible for maintaining the reserve stores for the fortress and distributing them as needed. Inevitably we will sometimes produce more food and other provisions than we need, and produce too little at other times. Because individual bunkers don't have tremendous storage space, the guards will build large vaults to stockpile these goods and draw on them to make up for shortfalls in production. Further, there will be individual demands that will need to be satisfied, and the guards will handle these requests. It's going to be quite some time before all the digging and mechanics are finished. We realized that the sheer number of levers will be overwhelming and ideas are being considered for how to deal with that. One idea is a lever room - a miniaturized layout of the fortress with levers corresponding to what they control. Some colored stone would be most helpful in this effort - however we neglected to bring any and so far have only found brimstone - and more gold than we can imagine using. Perhaps as we dig deeper, we'll find more diversity than just basalt, brimstone, and gold.

[Martin]

The farm collapse was a large concern. Not my first collapse by any means, but it's round, 60 tiles in diameter with a 30x30 square center section and peninsula remaining at the surface holding the inner core. I've had problems in the past with large collapses being incomplete - some sections falling but not leaving their layers - as if they just disappeared. This went off without a hitch. Even though it's 3z tall, I intend to leave a full story of soil under each usable area. It seems odd to plant things with nothing beneath it. If I need the space, I may change my mind on that as it'll double the size of each of these areas. But there's 500x2 tiles of grazing area for the milker and shearer, and that can be doubled if need be. Should be plenty provided I stick to smaller animals - goats, alpacas, sheep - and avoid the cows and whatnot.


The next challenge is to make sure that the design is solid before tunneling out all of the rail/water/magma/maintenance lines. The fortress will be 2 levels with about 30 industries per level. The top level is food and crafts related to food - bone carver, weaver, etc. Pottery and sand may cover both levels since the sand/clay will be another, smaller collapse and need to be near the top, but their support industries will be down below - stone, wood, metal, gems. Both levels will have magma (when I get around to it) so they may stay up top and ship their wares down below. There should be enough space for that - there's generally lots of room between bunkers with a few exceptions like the non-production skills - military, bookkeeper, etc. that pretty much only need food and booze and such. Each level is about 150x150. So about a full 3x3 embark. It's a 5x5 map. The depot is outside the 3x3. The power plant will be outside the 3x3. There will need to be some big cisterns, also outside the 3x3. The river runs just outside the 60 diameter middle defensive ring, so tapping it will be easy. It freezes for a while, so that helps too.


There's going to be 4 main shipping lines. One on each level for food, booze, soap, clothing - basically the necessities. One on each level for trade depot goods - in and out. Two on each level for non-finished goods - food and craft items on the top, wood and stone items on the bottom. Anything that is at the end of a production chain heads either out to the other bunkers for their use (like roasts) or to the trade depot. Between individual workshops there will be dedicated lines to take load off of the main lines. Spinning/weaving/dying/clothing are all in a line, so the weaver can send goods directly to the dyer who can send the dyed cloth directly to the clothier. There's too many interdependencies to do this for everything, but there's hopefully enough of them to make the craft lines still able to carry the other bits. Getting stuff like thread and cloth to the doctors will be interesting - I'm not entirely sure it's going to work. There will be some exchange of lines from top level to bottom level - food, etc. Several industries are dedicated to the caverns - woodcutting, hunting, fishing, herbalist, trapping, etc. - and their stuff will generally have dedicated lines to the appropriate shops. They'll likely be the last to get set up because of the challenges of getting the caverns set up, and I don't know what level might have water, so fishing might have to wait until the lowest cavern is breached. I'm still hoping there's a magma pipe up high so I don't have to make an enormous pump stack.


There's going to be a thousand levers. Seriously, probably at least 8 per bunker, with 70 bunkers? Plus levers for the power plant, plus some powered rollers where distances are too far for dwarves to push, plus a whole mess of permanent switches. I think I have a plan that will auto segregate migrants, which I'll test on another map. My thinking is that there will be a bunch of rooms - maybe 40 or 50 to make sure there's a room per dwarf/kid/pet. There will be a designated meeting area that the fortress can't generally reach (behind a locked door) which I hope the migrants will path to once I cut off the main meeting area. Each room will be open to the outside and to the meeting area. Inside the door will be a pressure plate that will trigger a permanent switch which will lock the dwarf inside. The next dwarf will recalculate path, hit the next room, and similarly get locked in. This is repeated with all the migrants. A lever allows a separate door to be opened, freeing the migrant(s) from the room(s) so they can proceed to the bunker they've been assigned to via burrow, they cross another pressure plate which resets their room for use by the next migrant wave. I think it'll work provided that they don't pause to recalculate path for just enough time that two dwarves end up only a tile apart from each other and wind up in the same room. Animals path at different rates, but it's fine if they end up with a dwarf - they can be easily separated when they exit. Each room will be stocked with a bed, food, and booze (or a well) to allow time to get everyone sorted. Pretty much everything comes down to pathing working right here.

[Sallen]

If I understood correctly a (possibly traitorous) migrant is going to relay Morul's letters as well? ~. .~

All this somehow reminds me of The Clockwork Rocket, by Greg Egan. Awesome stuff.

[Puzzlemaker]

You may not have to do a pump stack for magma.  You could use minecarts and just have them filled with magma and bring them to the surface and dump them into a pit.  Should be a lot easier then a giant pumpstack.

Another option for sorting is to use bedrooms.  When they try to path to a bedroom to claim it, it locks them in, then you can sort them that way.  May be simpler then those pathing tricks.

You may be able to cut down on levers by building them, flipping it to the position you want, and then deconstructing the lever.  Whatever it was attatched to will stay in whatever position it was set to, I believe.  It would mean that if you need to shut something down you would have to build a lever, however...

Will the shipping lines loop through each bunker, round robin, everyone takes what they need and then the cart continues to the next?  Would it be possible to use one cart for multiple types, for simplicities sake?  How will the supply web (not chain in this case) look like, physically?

[Martin]

I need to keep almost all of the levers in place. Entrance/escape from a bunker is only possible from an outside lever hooked to a drawbridge, also used to gain access to the various pits in case something/someone falls in. Additional measures also hooked to levers in case I need to do maintenance anywhere. I expect I'll cock some stuff up along the way and need to fix it after a bunker has been occupied.


Bedrooms is a good idea. Was hoping to not let them mingle so long, but it's a lot simpler, more reliable, and automatically segregates the pets pretty well.


Yeah, the plan on the carts is that each line touches each bunker in two places - in case I need separate instructions for load/unload. Consider the cook who may load up the cart with more food than the downstream dwarves need and then receives a cart full of food - which he'll just add more to. This way the first stop can let him unload into a linked stockpile, which in turn is linked to the trade depot line and a load order - the excess goes off to be traded. The cart gets kicked to the 2nd stop which gets the load order and loads up with new food. I doesn't appear that food rots when in a cart, but that was another consideration. With 30+ stops, it'll take about 3 seasons to make it all the way around with a 1 week stop at each bunker, which means everyone has to have a decent sized stockpile if theres' just one cart. I'm almost certainly going to have two carts going around though - but I need to develop a way to make sure that they don't get too close to each other. If they're within 100 ticks of each other, they run the risk of the 2nd one getting trapped. I'll probably just test that in the fortress with an empty cart and see how it goes. Each cart will hopefully take multiple items, but I'm trying to keep it down to about 4 given the conditions are 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%. The food/booze cart would also haul back empty bags and barrels to those that need them, etc. It'll be tricky to get the balance right, but I did a test layout in my minecart test fort with 4 bunkers identically set up to these, down to water supply, and it worked really well. The biggest problem is the children are constantly getting run over. I have  a plan to minimize that, but I don't think it can be fully prevented. I can't have a pit immediately next to a stop, which was my solution, so there's always a chance a kid will be standing on the first tile the cart moves to.


Once I get a layer actually doing something, I'll upload the map so you can see the supply chain. It may just be farm/miller/thresher/brewer/cook to start.

[GoldenShadow]

How about a hybrid cart track.
Its uses a combination of pushed and guided carts. For this example, we will have one bunker that makes food and distributed to 4 other bunkers evenly. It should minimize any accidents. Carts will be guided as they move through the pedestrian areas.
Food Distribution route:
Bunker 1:
Stop 1: High Friction track stop. Guide to center of bunker always.
Stop 2: Guide to edge of bunker when 100% full of desired items. Take items from the main food stockpile.
Stop 3: Push towards next bunker always
Bunker 2:
Stop 4: High Friction track stop. Guide to center of bunker always.
Stop 5: Guide to edge of bunker when 75% full of desired items. Gives items to bunker 2's food stockpile.
Stop 6: Push towards next bunker always
Bunker 3:
Stop 7: High Friction track stop. Guide to center of bunker always.
Stop 8: Guide to edge of bunker when 50% full of desired items. Gives items to bunker 3's food stockpile.
Stop 9: Push towards next bunker always
Bunker 4:
Stop 10: High Friction track stop. Guide to center of bunker always.
Stop 12: Guide to edge of bunker when 25% full of desired items. Gives items to bunker 4's food stockpile.
Stop 12: Push towards next bunker always
Bunker 5:
Stop 13: High Friction track stop. Guide to center of bunker for unloading.
Stop 14: Guide to edge of bunker when empty of desired items. Gives items to bunker 5's food stockpile.
Stop 15: Push towards next bunker always. >Back to Stop 1

Just thought of this. Add a condition that the carts will always be guided to the exit after X number of days in case some receiving stockpile is too full to empty the minecart enough. You could also have this receiving stockpile have a tiny automatic quantum dumper to condense your storage needs down.