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Author Topic: Installing utilities in the middle of a play  (Read 1765 times)

Azerty

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Installing utilities in the middle of a play
« on: August 28, 2013, 11:40:20 am »

Hello,

This is my first post.

After more than a year to lurk on this forum and MagmaWiki, I decided to download Dwarf Fortress a month ago and started a fortress named "Breachcrafted" on the "Everlasting Planes".

After discovering that, with the present interface, managing a fortress is pretty difficult with 20 dwarves and after a wave of migrants put this number to 49, I said myseld I should have downloaded utilities such as DwarfTherapist before beginning playing.

Can utilities be downloaded while a fortress is being develloped?

Another question: how deep are the coal veins? I find mainly chalk, gneiss, magnetite and tetrahedrite while mining (the deepest point where my dwarves dug is at -10) and the lack of coal keep me from making the iron weapons needed for my army.
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jcochran

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Re: Installing utilities in the middle of a play
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2013, 12:04:19 pm »

You can download and use Dwarf Therapist at any time.
As for coal... Good luck on that. Coal and other minerals are not always available. Frankly, it seems that coal is fairly rare.

I would also suggest that you get dfhack (it too can be installed with an existing fortress).

It can be used to "peek" at what you haven't mined yet, but frankly its most valuable ability are the workflow, seedwatch, and autobutcher plugins. With workflow you setup various workshops to produce things on a repeating basis. Then tell workflow how much of each item you want. From there, the repeating jobs are suspended and unsuspended as needed to keep your stock of that item within the specified limits. Seedwatch allows you to specify how many seeds of each type you want, and it will then enable/disable cooking using those seeds as ingredients. And autobutcher can keep track of your animals and when the specified limits are exceeded, send 'em on their way to the great pasture in the sky via the butcher shop.

Keeping those background/maintenance activities out of the way means that you can concentrate on designing and building your fortress... plus the odd siege, forgotten beast, noble mandates and other !!fun!! things.
 
« Last Edit: August 28, 2013, 12:13:45 pm by jcochran »
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Anathe

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Re: Installing utilities in the middle of a play
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2013, 12:10:56 pm »

Gonna have to get burning wood. Or tap some magma.
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_Ivan_

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Re: Installing utilities in the middle of a play
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2013, 12:19:40 pm »

Yes, use Dwarf Therapist. You can load it up any time DF is running and it makes life a million times easier. DFhack and a number of plugins is also very recommended. It's saved my fort from a killer bug or two and the plugins come with a lot of conveniences.

Wood -> Ashery = Charcoal so you wont have to dig aimlessly for coal until you find some. It's also very likely there is no coal at all. You will need an ashery anyway when you make lye for soap. Start small or your dwarves will be overloaded with hauling jobs and nothing will get done.
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Hetairos

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Re: Installing utilities in the middle of a play
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2013, 02:28:24 pm »

DFHack is kind of indispensable now due to this fix for a major bug, as well as a number of other reasons others have mentioned.

Coal veins are only present in sedimentary rock, and those are situated just beneath the soil. Chalk is sedimentary, if there is no coal there, it's nowhere to be found, especially not in metamorphic gneiss. Charcoal can be made in a wood furnace; you could also request some coal from the mountainhome.

But with magnetite, chalk and fuel you don't have to settle for iron weapons - your soldiers could get steel gear instead, far superior to iron.

Azerty

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Re: Installing utilities in the middle of a play
« Reply #5 on: August 29, 2013, 04:32:37 am »

But with magnetite, chalk and fuel you don't have to settle for iron weapons - your soldiers could get steel gear instead, far superior to iron.

I already knew about steel-making but I wanted to have some basic defense.
By the way I used this tutorial
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"Just tell me about the bits with the forest-defending part, the sociopath part is pretty normal dwarf behavior."

Drazinononda

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Re: Installing utilities in the middle of a play
« Reply #6 on: August 29, 2013, 12:14:57 pm »

Wood -> Ashery Wood Furnace = Charcoal

FTFY
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Children you rescue shouldn't behave like rabid beasts.  I guess your regular companions shouldn't act like rabid beasts either.
I think that's a little more impossible than I'm likely to have time for.