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Author Topic: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics  (Read 8248 times)

Dunamisdeos

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #30 on: August 25, 2017, 02:55:52 pm »

You said "of". I see you meant "or".

Therefore yes, a 3x3 cube of mined out space was what I meant.

::EDIT for below response::
Communication is hard
« Last Edit: August 26, 2017, 10:50:49 am by Dunamisdeos »
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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #31 on: August 25, 2017, 09:19:42 pm »

No, I meant of. Like this:
Bottom:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>...
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>...
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>...
Middle:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX...
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX...
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX...
Top:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<...
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<...
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<...

Regardless, that answers the questions. Thx!

EPM

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #32 on: August 25, 2017, 10:03:51 pm »

#1: The Crosswalks of Pointy Morale, a heavily-recurring tendency of mine to shove weapons unfit for military service into traps and use them like statues in the main intersections to maximize dwarven exposure.

#2: Indoor paved roads for soil floors are a frequent novelty because obsidian casting is a FPS-killing pain in the ass, with some surface roads too, almost always discontinued and arbitrarily ending.

#3: Failed Superweaponry. No fort is complete, in my eyes, without a malfunction-prone megaproject weapon. This is where the experiments and Things I've Never Tried Before malarkey tend to brew.

#4: Encased Trees. Constructing walls around trees, as flush with them as possible, to completely close them inside, is an inexplicable thing I do. I find the idea amusing even if it's pointless.






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Not good with names

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #33 on: August 31, 2017, 11:07:35 pm »

I tend to locate myself on flat lands close to sea level, so most forts have a walled in area for fruit gathering with a simple ramped path downward.  If I get a few years in, the fort tends to have an immediate 1-2 z-levels below the surface for animal grazing (Usually in the footprint of the first year's shelter), with separate entrances for merchants and dwarfs for the main fort below (Usually 20-30 z-levels).

For the past few forts that have made it a couple of years, The dwarves travel down a 1x3 staircase that connects the pastures to the fort, while the merchant entrance winds down around the staircase.  It's 4 tiles wide as the outmost tile is reserved for minecarts that bring surface level material to the workshops, while also allowing dwarves and merchant wagons to pass.  I tend to have workshop area that spans ~5 z-levels, with 6 workshops per room, with quantum stockpiles of material delivered by a maze of minetracks throughout the workshop area.  Basically the goal of every fort is to keep barrels for drink and the barest amount of bins possible (to stop job cancellations).

While I can't say it's terribly practical or easy, it does tend to keep the FPS up and job cancellations low (at least once you get everything set up, expect tons of job cancellations until you can get the cart paths to actually work and get everything, and named creature's teeth/odd body parts tend to require manual dumping). 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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MantisMan

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #34 on: September 08, 2017, 09:34:19 pm »

I've started to refine my fortress builds after getting back into the game, so I'm building up some templates to use. Obviously, the dimensions aren't always perfectly the same, but I try to split things up into different zones or levels.

Here's a gallery to screenshots of my current fortress. It's a bit messy, but the basic ideas are there.
Here's the gallery without any labels on, and here's the gallery with the labels.



Entrance

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I always like to have an above-ground courtyard.

  • An archery tower overlooking my fort entrance so my marksdwarves can plink away at the invading goblins. The entrance is via underground tunnel.
  • Two drawbridges to let me partition the enemies for easy portion sizes.
  • An animal stockpile for the prisoners.
  • Surface Farm plots.
  • Above ground outdoor butchery, tanner's shop, and farmer's workshop for fast milking (with nearby bucket stockpile) and shearing.
  • Block stockpile for surface constructions. Nearby is the initial wood stockpile. If I set the wood stockpile to give to the main wood stockpile, then this serves as a quick indication that more trees need to be cut.
  • Ramp entrance to base, with nearby staircase to the fortifications on top of the walls.

Depot Level

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  • Dwarven Bathtub
  • Cage traps at the turnaround from the main entrance to the fort.
  • Cage traps and hatch covers at the start of the main central stairway.
  • Initial stockpile is set to "everything", then, as I gradually specialize, I set it to feed to other stockpiles. Tends to serve as my finished goods stockpile for the traders after a year or two.
  • Entrance to archery tower.
  • Secondary, trapped entrance to the fort. I'm wondering if I need to build it outside somehow to deal with possible miasma from corpses.



Farm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  • The bottom part of the dwarven bathtub.
  • An underground farm very near the surface, with a seed stockpile right next to it. Recently expanded. Multiple 3-tile farm plots for efficient fertilizing, if I choose to do it.



Food Processing and Production

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The top of this image looks a little empty. That's because that space is where I used to put my dining room in older versions. I think a tavern is equivalent to the dining rooms, but I'm not entirely sure.

  • Prepared Meals (main stockpile for fortress)
  • Drinks (main stockpile for fortress)
  • Goblet stockpile. I kind of threw this in after seeing that this version of the game actually has a use for them now. Not sure if it's really working.
  • Workshops. Kitchens, Farmer's Workshops (for plant processing and thread spinning as opposed to the animal-focused one on the surface), stills, querns and a screw press. All close to each other.
  • Useless food that must be cooked before it can be processed. Includes nuts, flour, sugar, syrup, etc. It's a hard, pain in the neck to get a list and select them from the hundred-odd plants and seeds, so this stockpile is a little underdeveloped.
  • Stockpile for foods that can be eaten raw. I want to prioritize cooking the things that need to be cooked before they're edible before cooking things like peaches and fish.
  • Overflow stockpile to account for overproduction of food. Feeds into other stockpiles.
  • See above.

In retrospect, I could probably just turn off cooking and brewing in the kitchen screen for everything except what I want to be cooked, but the menu for that seems like it's missing something. I can't always tell if the cookable plant could be processed and made better. I'll say that I'm using it like an indicator on how my crop choices are doing.





Health Care / Well / Graveyard

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  • Hospital
  • Well
  • Graveyard
    Spoiler (click to show/hide)
  • Tombs for nobles.





Noble Housing

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not much to say here. Just a simple, expandable web of 3 5x5 rooms for nobles. Smoothing out the floor or giving them a gold statue seems to do the trick if they're not happy with the room yet.

Regular Housing + Jails

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This design is modified from an old "decentralized living" design I found a number of years ago. one full level can fit 36 rooms, with 4 chains for jail cells.

  • Jail chains coming off the central staircase.
  • Note that the halls aren't built into a dead end room. You can expand this design for exploratory mining, or making a big sprawling maze of rooms.





Tavern Level

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One dedicated level for the new Locations. It includes a tavern, library, religious area, and their rental rooms.

  • Tavern with chairs/tables on one side, food/drink stockpiles and chests on the other, to maximize the dance floor area.
  • I keep my Levers over here, since I expect this to be where idle dwarved congregate.
  • I leave some space on the outside to add rooms where people can worship specific gods, if there seems like a need for it.
  • The rental rooms. They're beneath the location that they're assigned to.





Workshop Level

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not much to say here. The workshops are in their own rooms, with a feeder stockpile surrounding them. Just two levels of these are usually enough for me.

  • The outer squares are good for having an expanded feeder stockpile, or for transient workshops that will be demolished later, like the bowyers on the bottom.


Furniture Stockpile

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  • The main central stockpile. I have another one for an internal supply of wood.
  • Smaller offside stockpiles have specialized furniture that I want to know I have at a glance. Here, it's checking how many green glass armour stands and weapon racks I have. Checking for empty bags up top is especially useful.
    Spoiler (click to show/hide)





Military Level

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm still working on refining this level, but I think I've got things that hit most of the bases so far. Note that I think it's always good practice to have one weapon rack on the surface for the military to train at. They're effectively stationed in case something goes wrong, and it prevents cave adaptation.

  • First is a craftsdwarf's workshop with bone and wood stockpiles next to it. The crossbow squads are all made to do bonecarving, they they're continuously cranking out their own training ammo. That's the idea, at least.
  • Ammo stockpile. All types of ammo, all in bins.
  • Two stockpiles. One for armour, one for weapons and trap components. I'm having trouble filtering out the non-dwarf-sized armour, and the "usable, non-usable" filter isn't really working, so it's all one big mess right now. It's probably because I've got humans, elves, and goblins in my military and civ as a result of having the taverns open.
  • An underground weapon rack / armour stand, so that all the squads can have a place to train that's close to their equipment.
  • This stockpile is made for training ammo, and it's supposed to take from the workshop and the main ammo stockpile. No bins, so no canceled jobs from dwarves trying to grab ammo from the same bin at once. That's the idea, at least.


Prisoner Pitting Arena


Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the upper level of the arena. Just a standard mass pitting zone with hatchcovers surrounded by an animal stockpile. Cage traps on the route out if any prisoner excapes, and a nearby garbage dump for faster equipment confiscation.


Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The execution floor. Fortifications included if I want to train marksdwarves on live targets. It's messy because this was an old ore vein I cleared out.

  • Where prisoners fall.
  • Where I station the squad before I begin.
  • The route away. Hatch covers in case they escape. I need to add more cage traps.




End

And, well, that's what I've got so far. There's a lot more streamlining to do, but I think this is a pretty good mix.

Writing this took longer than I expected...
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How I usually build my fort.
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Monomstodir

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #35 on: September 09, 2017, 03:56:16 am »

Generally, I have a 3x3 main staircase, and split out each craft to two z each, to allow for any plumbing or extra storage. All dwarves get their own room - my apartments follow a rotational symmetry plan, and everyone gets a bed, chest, cabinet and jewelled statue (preferably not of a hateable pest. Give your stonemasons artistic liberty, and they work out their bark scorpion neuroses on every other statue they produce...). Wherever feasible, after a few years, I bring my surface farms inside via a roofed over balcony/sunken courtyard. All fiber animals are slaughtered as soon as I've got a giant cave spider caged.

I suspect my catacombs are also deserving of note. I line my mined-out veins with glass coffins, and when a vein is fully occupied, wall it off and flood it with magma. On embarks with no magma higher than the sea, pumping the magma up can be a challenge and a direct connection to a mag a tube is preferable, but they deserve a !!fun!! afterlife
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bloop_bleep

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #36 on: September 09, 2017, 01:50:28 pm »

Generally, I have a 3x3 main staircase, and split out each craft to two z each, to allow for any plumbing or extra storage. All dwarves get their own room - my apartments follow a rotational symmetry plan, and everyone gets a bed, chest, cabinet and jewelled statue (preferably not of a hateable pest. Give your stonemasons artistic liberty, and they work out their bark scorpion neuroses on every other statue they produce...). Wherever feasible, after a few years, I bring my surface farms inside via a roofed over balcony/sunken courtyard. All fiber animals are slaughtered as soon as I've got a giant cave spider caged.

I suspect my catacombs are also deserving of note. I line my mined-out veins with glass coffins, and when a vein is fully occupied, wall it off and flood it with magma. On embarks with no magma higher than the sea, pumping the magma up can be a challenge and a direct connection to a mag a tube is preferable, but they deserve a !!fun!! afterlife
Resting eternally in a vein of ore surrounded by molten rock is something every dwarf hopes for.
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Monomstodir

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #37 on: September 10, 2017, 04:06:59 am »

The theology of PatternedIron fortress can be summed up as "something, something, volcanic metamorphoricalism, something, ciiiiiiiircle of liiiiiife"
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StagnantSoul

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #38 on: September 10, 2017, 02:56:39 pm »

I always make a long hallway, with symmetrical 3x8 hallways branching off of it to either side, that lead to 6x12 rooms. These line the hallway and are where most of the lesser work goes, like smelters and stone cutters etc. The space between the main hallway and those rooms is often used as stockpile zones as well. The more important things like dining rooms and forging areas etc are always new, but the menial work area is always that.
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EPM

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #39 on: September 13, 2017, 01:43:58 pm »

I hadn't realized this at first until reading more of these to compare to, but I greatly prefer embarks with cliffs and hills over a flat area as is evidently common. It then becomes a relatively simple matter of removing the natural ramps to isolate the wagon and fort entrance.

The result is basically a termite mound, ideally with a volcano core, overlooking the field of deathtraps awaiting invaders.
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MehMuffin

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #40 on: September 15, 2017, 06:11:52 pm »

There's nothing only I have done, and always have done in all my forts, but... somewhat vertically stacked partially floating workshops for the purpose of faster production seem rather uncommon elsewhere, I guess.

I sorta know what you mean by vertically stacked partially floating workshops but I don't really. Is there a map/save/diagram you could point me to as to what this means?

I ask mostly because I get very nutty with efficiency in a lot of my forts and try keeping them in 20x20x20 or similar cubes with long tunnels branching out elsewhere.
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: Your fortress architectural common features, aka Overseer's tics
« Reply #41 on: September 16, 2017, 05:49:56 am »

Sure. Deathgame map uses these, for instance.

Next step would be obsidian-casting workshops, I guess.
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