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What's your favorite hammer?

Aroth Ilon, Rakust's hammer
Tirdugnakuth, Olin's hammer
Nazomkatdir, Zaneg's hammer
Udartangak, Dobar's hammer

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Author Topic: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress  (Read 6031 times)

NordicNooob

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Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« on: July 17, 2020, 03:17:52 pm »

By popular demand,* Angelcrux now has its own thread!


Art:
Spoiler: The Four Hammers (click to show/hide)

If you've no clue what this fort is, you may wish to read the first few updates (over on the "what's going on in your fort?" thread), which give a good overview of the fort's conception and history. You might also wish to not read anything about Angelcrux if you don't know all of the game's spoilers and don't want them spoiled for you.


For those who don't want to read them, I'll summarize the fort's history that took place during those posts, as well as give a quick overview of its embark.

Spoiler: Angelcrux's world (click to show/hide)
The fort sits in a terrifying glacier with thralling clouds, reanimation, three nearby necromancers, and no ores to speak of, and also happens to sit under a vault.

Angelcrux had a fairly straightforward history during the fortress thread posts.

I have made a few minor mods to my game, mostly for immersion reasons.
Spoiler: Raws mods (click to show/hide)

Past the mods, I have been using a few somewhat cheaty things to improve my game experience, make things more fun, and generally avoid annoyances.

Important things to remember:

Spoiler: People (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Items (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Gods (click to show/hide)


Spoiler: Other (click to show/hide)

Footnotes:
Also known as "lack of vehement objection"
You'd think a god of minerals wouldn't be so popular in a fortress cursed to not have any, but who knows, maybe he's responsible for blessing dwarves with the knowledge of the melt glitch. Actually huh, that's my new justification for it. It's the power of Moldath.
Yes, I'm as confused as you are.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2020, 10:52:39 pm by NordicNooob »
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Salmeuk

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2020, 05:35:54 am »

 

But! If I can have an apprentice training program by locking two dwarves in a guildhall together, I can quickly and effectively train up a new generation of workers so that I can preserve skill over the ages. I've already tested the effectiveness of such a plan with weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, and architecture, and have been able to turn the entire fort legendary in a matter of just a few years. It seems like a master/apprentice program will be more effective than locking two unskilled dwarves together and letting them figure things out, but both should be usable if I have unexpected deaths of my artisan workers rather than them passing of the predictable calamity of time.


Wow, that's super interesting! I should give that a try in my own fortress, though it isn't nearly at the age of Angelcrux.

Regarding your modded raws, would you post the bugbear file? I like the idea of buffed goblin replacements.

...

How many kills does Alroth Ilon have? Slade warhammer is a top tier, if not the top tier, artifact.
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NordicNooob

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #2 on: July 18, 2020, 02:21:04 pm »

Wow, that's super interesting! I should give that a try in my own fortress, though it isn't nearly at the age of Angelcrux.

Regarding your modded raws, would you post the bugbear file? I like the idea of buffed goblin replacements.

...

How many kills does Alroth Ilon have? Slade warhammer is a top tier, if not the top tier, artifact.
1. Depends on what your fort's timescale is. For most regular crafting skills, good old spamming items is faster, but in Angelcrux I work on a much larger timescale than most other forts. That said, for some reaallly slow and annoying to grind skills, guildhalls seem like a great way to train them.

2. Here. Not entirely sure if I even did the fur right (there's not much way of telling if something has hair or not in-game, nor do I really care enough to check), but that's the entire bugbear entry for the raws. Just replace goblins with them in creature_standard. Two quick notes, though:
   a. I forgot their exact size. They're actually 80k size, not 85k.
   b. I also changed some color descriptors up, so that bugbears are somewhat differently colored than goblins.

3. Like a hundred. I haven't done a ton of fighting in Angelcrux, most of the kills are just from when Rakust gets sent onto risen-ram-wool cleanup duty. Only a handful are actually something other than reanimated animal bits that couldn't even hurt a civilian. A few (5? 6?) are from storming the vault, but hammers aren't great at killing (Rakust's edged-weapon wielding comrades did most of the killing). Also I think Rakust went to go get a drink or sleep or something halfway through the fight. Honestly though, Rakust's squad is more the cleanup crew than the shock troopers.
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Superdorf

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2020, 10:05:03 pm »

The greatest hammer ever made-- a triumph of dwarfish craft and infernal stone--
--and you use it for squashing down uppity clumps of sheep-hair.

I salute you, sir. :))
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delphonso

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #4 on: July 19, 2020, 10:19:03 pm »

PTW. Enjoyed seeing the posts in the other thread.

NordicNooob

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #5 on: July 20, 2020, 02:39:19 am »

Angelcrux, Update Eleven: Casted Fates

"If only Urvad were here to see this" remarked Libash, the fortress's new mechanic. The efforts of the past year's labor was finally bearing its first fruit.


Olin and Sazir dug away at the freshly casted obsidian, leaving rough boulders in their wake, ready to be hauled. Most of the rest of the fortress was busy doing said hauling, lugging them into a wooden minecart that rocketed the boulders back to Feb's masonry circle. Whenever the duo ran out of fresh obsidian to mine, the gates closed and a torrent of magma would be unleashed into the room before being rapidly cooled by water from above. It was a freakishly effective contraption, and would be an incredibly value asset in the years to come. Building materials were hard to come by in Angelcrux, to the point that common gabbro had started to become a carefully rationed material. Even wood was in short supply due to the massive undertaking to prevent excessive brush in the caverns.

But now... with an obsidian caster, magma pumped up from the magma sea could easily be turned into fresh boulders ready for working. Angelcrux was almost ready, but there was still something missing.

Elsewhere...

"Die, monster! Your kind cannot be allowed to exist here! In the name of the Heliotrope Empires, you will be slain!"

The small party of humans charged into battle, led by the rather zealous one that was doing all the talking. Molu sighed, and responded, resigned and a mite frustrated.

"Yøu have no reason to slæ me. I have rĕsiđed here, soliŧary, for two çenturies! What grüdge do you høld!"*

"Your mind tricks will not work on us, beast! You are an abomination and must be destroyed!"

Molu decided not to argue this time, seeing as there wasn't much point. The hypocrisy of the Heliotrope Empires was well known among the goblins, allowing necromancers to walk freely among them yet spurning foreigners and oddities as evil that must be destroyed. Molu was, of course, a demon. He had hermetically resided in Terrorfortunes for the last two centuries after losing his empire to constant human-instigated conflicts.

Molu crushed the skull of the first human in before sending the second flying backwards with a mighty blow to the chest. He was a demon, and had little idea what these humans were trying, attacking him without a full war party.* In under a minute his three assailants lay dead on the ground. And then he heard something else.

"Ŵho are yøu? Do you ŵish to slæ me as ŵell?"

A gruff voice responded.

"I am not. I come here on behalf of the dwarves. Their queen, Atir, has sent me personally."

It was then the speaker revealed themselves, coming out from the only cover around: a lone tree. He was... a bugbear. Not unexpected, of course. Bugbears were the most suited for such a harsh land, and due to their size and stamina, made excellent scouts and messangers. Diplomats less so, but Molu knew not to disregard the speech of his onetime serfs.

"Gø on, thĕn. Ŵhat cøuld the dwarvzĕ ŵant with me, and ŵhat ŵøuld I ŵant from thĕm?" he replied.

"They seek the downfall of those who would oppose them, and believe that you share a common foe with them."

Molu responded, skeptical.

"A shared ænemy. Wørking with dwarvzĕ. I am gaining little for such a large expenditure, đa?"

The bugbear was quick to answer. "The Heliotrope Empires. They have long plagued the world, and their necromancers have continuously besieged the final dwarven stronghold. I understand they're no friend to you, given that fearsome exchange. As for what you would receive... there is much. Titles, fame, but also..."

The bugbear took a moment to retrieve something from his knapsack.

"The path to power."

The bugbear held a sword, moving closer before offering it to Molu. The sword itself was... magnificent, of the finest craftsdwarfship. And terrifying, for Molu knew it well. It was forged from the metal only the guardians of his True Name wielded. If the dwarves had it... that meant they had the slab as well. Any diplomacy was a mere act of mercy. The sword was not a gift, but a threat. Not that this diplomat knew, bugbears were hardly renowned for their knowledge of metal. Clever. He chose his words carefully, hiding the revelation lest it give this negotiator power over him.

"Đen I accept this gįft, and will head to the dwarvzĕ."

The bugbear seemed surprised at how easy this had been, stammering a quick reply.

"I'll escort you to them, then! They will be most pleased with this!"

Molu left out that he knew exactly the way, and followed dutifully. He would speak with these dwarves himself and find out their real intentions.*

They traveled for two days and nights with only one short rest for the bugbear (whose name Molu never bothered to ask) to sleep. As soon as the vault's spire came into view, the strange diplomat slinked off, giving some excuse about never really liking dwarves and pointing Molu towards a barely-visible hole in the ground near the base of the spire. Molu went down the staircase and entered into a long, straight, and narrow hallway, where a singular dwarf stood, resting a remarkably large hammer over his shoulder and wearing stunning armor forged from a combination of adamantine and more of the twinkling metal from his vault. These were the dwarves that would know his Name, then. The dwarf spoke.

"Atir really did it, then. You must be Molu. Welcome to Angelcrux."

Molu was disappointed to hear his name. He knows. He must know. Regardless, Molu outwardly ignored the remark.

"I am here, đa. You dĕsire my power as I dø yours. Ŵhat are yøu to yoür førtress?"

"My name is Rakust Claspsoard, second eldest son of Solon Romancerims and Bembul Torchstatic. I am commander of the fortress military and wielder of Aroth Ilon, first of the legendary hammers. As the highest ranking member of the fort currently here, it's my job to greet you."

Molu went for flattery, actual impressiveness of his getup notwithstanding.

"Impressive, da. You know me already, so that concludes our introductions."

Rakust replied in turn, apparently satisfied.

"Then I'll get straight to the point: will you join us?"

Molu mulled over the question briefly before responding with his only real choice. Even if these dwarves did not know his True Name, this Rakust seemed a very powerful warrior, and his subordinates were likely nearly just as strong. It would be beneficial to learn more about these dwarves, to work with them to destroy the humans, and perhaps make a name for himself at the center of a new empire.

"Đa. I will join your little førtress. But first, you must break my cürse. I am Molu Metebásko Rohir Imthor, Molu Webbedtroubles the Demon of Turmoil. Face Turmoil and Prevail, and I will be your Älly."

Then everything lit itself on fire. Again.*

DEMOGRAPHICS:
Angelcrux stands at 85* population and 150 million wealth, and is 79 years old.

Deaths (??):
I don't even know, man. A few?
Notable, that I know of: Udil, a child. Not present in the fort and viewing through relationships shows his upper body gone. Atir, the queen, is "travelling" but still alive, and Morul, the fortress smith, has simply vanished without a trace, likely due to his status as liaison. Will I get one of my own dwarves as the trade liaison next year? Has that even ever happened before?

Happiness: 50 fine, 35 ecstatic

Pixel Sketch!

These next few updates (probably just this one and the next, actually) might be a bit roleplay heavy, since I've got a lot of world to set up and also just generally some exposition stuff that hasn't really been mentioned in my fort-centric updates. Also I'll see what I can do about keeping up the little sketches. Most of them probably won't be directly related to what's going on (I have plenty of interesting artifacts to show off!) but I felt like Molu needed a special introduction to remember him by. My sketches aren't of particularly high quality, of course, but I figure it lets me (and everybody else) know what to think of when I'm considering a specific artifact or creature/dwarf, and also I figure I'll get better with practice, which is already showing because before I started these I literally could not understand how to make armor, much less a humanoid in said armor. I'll see what I can do in terms of effort, as you can imagine the writing, the playing of a particularly difficult fort, the little sketches, and the messing around with images is quite a bit more intensive than just saying "yooo my fort just got ruined by zombies" like I was in the first few updates I made. Might either drastically tone down update effort or update frequency (probably the latter, I've been enjoying this) when I'm back at uni, but that's not for another month, so we're good for now.

Footnotes:
I am absolutely going to abuse the Russian/Nordic diacritics. Dude's literally a bear.
Fun fact, Molu's special ability is webs.
So, let me explain what's going on here. I chose a bugbear adventurer (gotta be the same civ as to not be hostile to the guy right away), popped over to Molu's camp (where he has indeed sat there alone for 200 years), gifted him a title (expedition leader of my fort) to make him not hostile to my fortress, gifted him the sword to hopefully get him to join me (which worked somehow, even though it probably shouldn't have, I don't really understand this part with the gifting and didn't invent this), and then meandered on back to the fort. I exiled the adventurer (whose name I actually don't remember, he was that unremarkable) right away after unretiring, since I didn't really want a bugbear in the fort, but it means that Molu is now part of the fort and will petition for citizenship in two years. For some reason his title is still master, even though that wasn't even the title he held while at his camp: his old civ is in ruins since he lost a war against the humans and then escaped prison, becoming chancellor rather than reclaiming master.
Throwback to that one time.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
« Last Edit: December 21, 2020, 10:53:10 pm by NordicNooob »
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NordicNooob

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #6 on: July 31, 2020, 11:41:12 am »

Angelcrux, Update Twelve: Turmoil
Last time on Angelcrux: Molu Webbedtroubles, bear demon, joins the fort! (via adventure mode shenanigans) Then everything implodes because of unretiring the fort.

First off, screw it. I'm not even gonna try to roleplay this update. Too much what's been going on is bugs and me working around said bugs. And also it's just a bloody mess.

Before I get started with all that "dealing with the fort imploding," you need to understand what exactly has imploded. Instantly after unretire, everything is shit, which has already been established. There's several key factors in what's going wrong:
  • Most importantly, there are like fourty new random merchants that are now citizens. Which is bad.
  • Second most importantly, there are soot thralls all over the place. Three are inside the inner sanctum that is the main fortress, and there's maybe a dozen on the surface and half as many in random locations in the caverns. This is bad because many of the new merchant citizens are right next to them. Most of the thralls appear to be merchants as well, perhaps ones that got sooted and then left the map.
  • Next: the merchants brought their horses, which are loaded with junk. More thrall candidates and an absurd amount of useless items that I don't want.
  • Half the fort's furniture deconstructed. Seems to just be containers (coffers and cabinets), but still. Ugh. The artifact bed and cabinet I had in Atir's royal chambers also deconstructed, but also randomized their location. The cabinet is now on the surface.
  • Not really a problem I can deal with, but also all the stone under my stockpiles turned to rock salt in spite of the gabbro and granite layer stone.
  • Another minor issue is that all my minecarts loaded with slade unloaded their cargo. The slade is still on the same tile, just not loaded into the carts.
  • All the fortress nobility is gone. Just two dwarves, but I liked those dwarves! Plus they were the fortress engraver and the fortress smith, the former of which is incredibly annoying to replace.
  • Oh right, and we're out of booze.* All the food/drink pots upturned themselves. Also like five years of prepared meals up and vanished, which isn't really a problem, honestly.

The first season was the worst. Right out of the gate, I lost a soldier (Oddom, a swordsdwarf) to a soot cloud when he ran out onto the surface trying to get booze from one of the pack animals that had already dropped their pile of junk onto the ground. After cage-trapping Oddom, I rushed everybody else to action, operating basically every soldier as their own squad since I had to protect or attack basically every location in and around the fortress. Citizens were often caught up in the melees, typically resulting in deaths. Most of the time they could handle themselves, but the marksdwarves had no melee skills or effective weaponry, and once even a well-trained citizen was thralled. Fortunately, they aren't that well trained, Rakust's squadmates were able to put the citizen (Iton) down without further incident other than a few weak reanimated things popping up elsewhere since they were no longer actively under watch by a hammerdwarf.

Rakust himself wasn't present because I had him guarding the entrance rather than just closing the gates, for two reasons. First, I exiled every one of the false citizens, and they needed a way out. Second, there were plenty of thralls on the surface that would have caused an undeadsplosion there if I didn't handle it then and there, especially because of how likely the fleeing merchant citizens were to get thralled (or just straight killed and reanimated) if I didn't help them escape.

With everything somewhat handled, there was one more matter to tidy up before moving on to my former plans (and also repopulating the fort). The fort itself. All of the merchant's garbage was bugged, and so unhaulable and undumpable, since it wasn't technically "my" stuff. Which led to all the food on each of them coating the fort in miasma until it rotted away. Not good for stress, but it's not like Angelcrux can't handle a bit of stress now and then.

To alleviate the issue, I basically I just went through stocks, marked everything not particularly useful for dumping, un-designated everything on the surface, and let the fort haul garbage into the garbage compactor for a season. When everything not bugged was cleaned up, I autodumped the rest and called it a day. There's still a bit of junk from merchants laying around (the surface stuff and the few items that I decided were useful), but I'll just have to go around and manually find the piles of that stuff, since stocks can't differentiate between my stuff and bugged merchant stuff.

Oh right, and I used the opporitunity to purge a large portion of my own garbage and re-make most of the fort's items as twinkling metal. Wheelbarrows, mugs, chains, crutches, buckets, splints, quivers, and crossbows were all purged and are in the process of being replaced, and also I'm sick of dealing with clothes so I've also given orders for basic suits of armor for everybody, which shouldn't impact speed a ton both since a good chunk of the fort is legendary armor user (or close to it) and also because divine metal is quite light.

And so concludes the retire incident and its aftermath. Smooth sailing again, finally!

DEMOGRAPHICS:
Angelcrux stands at 36 population and 150 million wealth, and is 80 years old.

Births (2):
Litast Workchucks
Nil Whipbound

Deaths (5?):
Oddom Tekkudodgub, Sword 12-
Iteb Channeledsigned, Crossbow 42-
Iton Idennish, Peasant
Tun Solonruthosh, Crossbow 32
Nil Nishostath, Crossbow 30

Happiness: 5 fine, 2 happy, 29 ecstatic

Pixel Sketch!
And since that's just a tiny little helmet, here's a bonus:
Spoiler: Redesign of Aroth Ilon (click to show/hide)


Commentary:
This was a rather bloody mess, but somehow doesn't get the crown for highest death toll in a singular incident. RIP my marksdwarves (they died so much because all my other citizens are actually armed and trained with a melee weapon, whereas my marksdwarves don't have any real skill other than their crossbow/archery skill. Lesson learned: don't use marksdwarves in a reanimating biome. Poor lads/lasses have been getting picked off for ages, and I've yet to really need them. Only three left, but they've served the fort well with their artifacts (and also as grunt laborers). All in all, this incident was rather relieving: my previous experiences with thralls led me to believe that melee combat was suicide, but here I was able to fight off at least a dozen without any thrallings of my skilled soldiers, even one of which might've spelled doom for the fortress.
Also Rakust almost died guarding the surface, a large number of zombies engaged him at once, bringing him to over-exerted before I got a backup swordsdwarf up there.
Footnotes:
See blue footnote, update 11.

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NordicNooob

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2020, 11:36:06 pm »

Angelcrux, Update Thirteen: Titles are Overrated
Previously: Trudging through the mess that is unretiring a fortress, Angelcrux fought off a lot of zombies. Things stabilized!

At last, I can say it: things are looking up in Angelcrux! Almost a decade has passed since Molu Webbedtrouble's curse was beaten, and the fort remains standing and steadfast. Also as expected:
Spoiler: *maniacal laughter* (click to show/hide)
Molu's citizenship came with some new work to do. First, Molu had to be trained in armorsmithing. Sazir might be a master smith, but even he doesn't know how to size armor for such a beast. Molu forged his masterwork adamantine armor himself*. He's just using a standard old masterwork adamantine great axe.
Of particular note is his shield:
You do not want to be shield bashed by Molu Webbedtroubles. Or really just be on the battlefield with him at all, friend or foe. Remember he's a webber*. He's dangerous even to my dwarves.

Past my pet project of making Molu into an unbeatable soldier*, I've had some other entertaining shenanigans happening. Mezbuth, the old fortress smith and dwarf who claimed outpost liaison, is indeed our outpost liaison.
He's even still armed in his twinkling metal getup (and obviously a legendary soldier), so he won't fall so easy to the stray zombie like the former outpost liaisons. No sign of queen Atir, unfortunately, but she's still in my civilian squad listed as travelling, so I have good knowledge that she's alive out there.

Population-wise, we're quite well-off. New professions (and old ones I've needed again after a long lull in activity) are getting filled in, and for the first time in a while the fort has no spare hands. Well, spare in that everybody technically has a job. Some dwarves do barely any work: Feb the mason only sees work when there's a death, and Iton, the carpenter, hasn't seen any jobs in decades outside of architecture, which was offloaded to peasants when I trained almost everybody in the fort to legendary +5 via a guildhall.

Oh right, population, not jobs. We stand 38 strong, mostly cause I haven't been bothered to run the honeymoon suites. Tragically, we're down to only one founder left alive. Nish and Tholtig, farmer and medic, both passed away last year. Iton (same old carpenter) is the only chap left, but he's got a few more years on him before he drops. Probably. He's 151. Iton is also just the last dwarf alive that externally came to the fort, since I also had a migrant wave to help me get established and all of those migrants are dead too. Sad days, but you know what they say: it was inevitable.

On a more positive note, there's a record number of married couples in the fort: six. Mostly without my coercion, even! Most recently, Olin and Ustuth got married. Olin's a favorite dwarf of mine. She's not particularly good at anything, being the fortress miner, but she was a marksdwarf till her leg got ripped off by a demon during the demon incident and has been tossed around a few jobs by me, trying to find her a spot. Interesting enough, eh. Oh, and Ustuth is commander of the swordsdwarves.

Speaking of the swordsdwarves, I'm fuming. In the chaos of unretiring, when Inod (other swordsdwarf) died to the thralling cloud, his artifact longsword was misplaced and seems to be flat out gone. Quite the unfortunate loss, but there's still several twinkling metal long swords to be passed around, and really it's not like I'll be fighting much any time soon. If nothing else, Angelcrux is patient. We'll get more.

I do have another favorite dwarf: Reg Cobaltmansion. She's quite young (having grown to adulthood shortly after Molu became a citizen), and there's just something about her. She's utterly unremarkable. A daughter of Dobar and Zaneg (first married couple born in the fort, and part of my hammer squad; I think they're the most common parents nowadays), she has no unique parentage, she's some weird number child (not the youngest--she can't even claim that underdog title!), she's got no particularly endearing traits, she made some shoddy artifact typical of children that I don't even remember because of the poor timing for when she was born, and... yeah. There is nothing remarkable about her. She's just a dwarf doing her thing. I'm currently letting her get the tar beat out of her by Molu, since he needs a sparring partner to train fast. Isn't she great?

In more game-y news, FPS improved quite a bit after retire, but has slumped recently. As it stands I'm getting around 110-120, but was able to get 160 just after the retire bugs were quelled. Not sure what's causing the drop. I do have some dwarves doing things, and Molu's sparring* is a small drop,  and there's a bit much in way of items still, but it's a rather drastic drop for those little things. It's always finicky about this stuff, it'll probably fix itself sometime along the road just to spite me. Or I'll figure out what's causing the problems.

So yeah. Things keep on moving. I've not started the project I've been planning to start for bloody decades* since I want the population to fully recover and get mostly grown up before I hop to it. No good having a lack of laborers.

DEMOGRAPHICS
Angelcrux stands at 38 population and 224 million* wealth, and is 90 years old.

Births (5):
Tobul Squirtedtin
Fikod Moarytrade
Tosid Groovedbridge
Dishmab Oneabbeys
Id Bravewound

Deaths (2):
Nish Vaultchains, Artisan Farmer
Tholtig Searchseal, Noble Medic

Happiness: 6 fine, 2 happy, 29 ecstatic

Art

Footnotes
It cost over 80 wafers to fully arm him in masterworks, I just got unlucky with getting a masterwork mail shirt and that cost me a ton of wafers not even considering the other pieces. I'll just chalk it up to the armor being bloody huge. Ain't using those wafers anyways.
So he liked to remind me every time some little bit reanimated from the butcher's, by webbing half the fort (who is always hauling meat and whatnot away whenever these things happen) in order to kill the thing. Pre-petition he had hauling labors enabled, which I couldn't toggle.
Literally, I think he's only killable with lame stuff like thrall clouds, minecart traps, spike traps, or obsidian casting, all of which are unfortunately a possibility in this fort.
You'd be surprised how much sparring hurts FPS, it's why I don't train my squads much any more.
Stuff keeps coming up! Its been on the docket since a bit before the demon incident and I hate not being able to just get it over with!
Rapidly fluctuating, I'm in the middle of a forge/melt loop to get more twinkling metal, which has drastically increased my wealth
due to excess masterworks not getting melted.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2020, 11:56:21 am by NordicNooob »
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NordicNooob

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2020, 06:24:40 pm »


Angelcrux, Update Fourteen: Malfunctioning Minecarts
Previously: Angelcrux took a break to recover from losses incurred during the unretire incident. Molu, demon citizen, is now an epic warrior.

At long last, the first phase of the project is underway! It has gone very poorly. This part consists entirely of a much grander minecart system than the previous one installed to bring obsidian to the masonry. I want large amounts of obsidian at the top of the vault for the main project. Due to the long distance between the obsidian generator and the vault, multiple minecarts are desirable to be able to run on the same track. So I designed a few memory cells to allow carts to exit onto a main thoroughfare, send a signal that allows their stop to be labelled as open, which makes the next inbound cart enter that stop. The cart entering sends another updating signal to the memory, telling it that the stop is closed and unpowering the rollers that would otherwise direct the next cart into the stop.

Unfortunately, the first round of testing was extremely unsuccessful. Not only did the test fail, but the new fortress medic, Ilral, was killed when they tried to retrieve a stopped minecart and return it to its starting position. Due to an incredibly niche rule about upwards track ramp turns (doesn't apply to downward ones, even), a large portion of the upwards track within the vault will have to be demolished (probably via cave-in, I'll just disconnect it) and rebuilt, which is frustrating as it was the most tedious part of the build.

In addition, I've found the main contraption to be mostly unnecessary and somewhat inoperable, and much more easily accomplished as well, all without even having an actual test on the mechanism (since the first test didn't get that far past showing that the outgoing memory function works). Due to dwarves being able to differentiate between minecarts, the auto-sorting mechanism is useless: dwarves won't accept cart B being sorted into cart A's spot for loading, and such a situation is easily achieved if cart B is pushed out of the station first and then cart A gets pushed out after, freeing A's sorting spot for B to enter it. To solve this, an elaborate system using doors, rollers, and pressure plates could be set up to only launch the carts if all carts whose stops would be freed up first have been launched. This would work, but it would also slow down hauling a fair amount due to some carts having to wait for all the previous carts to be launched in order to launch themselves. Also it'd require more memory cells, I think.

Or... I could achieve the same effect with a little bit of dwarven muscle (of which there is no shortage of in Angelcrux, civilian training means everybody has ungodly strength). After all four tracks merge into one, they can follow their route and return empty, into a fifth track stop that dead ends. From there, dwarves will pick up the stopped carts and move them the short distance to their original starting position. This idea is much smaller, needs no power, still retains a fully-automatic system, and is pretty much just as fast. It's also still expandable, and much easier to expand at that! The current system will still somewhat work as this concept would due to the malfunctions (outgoing carts are never stopped and the memory cells won't stop any carts from entering the final stop if all the other three are noted as occupied), but it is much messier and should be simplified for such a large and important minecart route.

Past the two main fixes to the minecart sorter and upwards ramp, I'll also install pressure plate+door as extra safeguards to prevent dwarves from wandering on the tracks. All future tests will also be done with empty carts, just in case. I suppose this whole venture has been educational, though. I now have an easy design for large-scale minecart hauling, have learned a few bugs, and am familiar with the basics of computational logic.

In other news, Molu's civilization (The Tight Curses, which I had thought were mostly destroyed, are apparently not so destroyed) has begun besieging us. They might tone their next invasions down due to heavy losses, though. Their first invasion had about 2000 soldiers. 1500 were turned by a thralling cloud and fled, and then the temporary battle area for Molu to fight was completed, and I was able to let the last 500 in to do battle with Molu. Or, was about to. They all got turned by a second thralling cloud. The next sieges have all been much smaller but all suffered similar fates.

Not much else has been going on other than the minecart project and a few sieges (which had tapered off a few decades back, and they were previously necromancer sieges anyways). One birth, no new artifacts, no real developments elsewhere. I am considering dismantling much of the fort's old and unused contraptions, like the minecart crushers and a few gates that I won't be needing.

So, things haven't been going great. Thanks, minecarts! We'll get there eventually, and Angelcrux is nothing if not patient. The only particularly good news is that the fort is has celebrated its 100th birthday over this update. To another hundred years!


DEMOGRAPHICS
Angelcrux stands at 38 population and 249 million wealth, and is 101 years old.

Births (1):
Logem Bridgescribed

Deaths (1):
Ilral Specialceiling, Noble Medic

Happiness: 3 fine, 1 quite content, 1 happy, 33 ecstatic

Art



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NordicNooob

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #9 on: November 28, 2020, 01:01:28 am »

Update 14.5: Not Dead!
Previously: I tried to do stuff with minecarts and failed.

Now: I do stuff with minecarts and succeed!

This is mostly a post to let you know that Angelcrux is indeed not dead, and was merely on hiatus for the semester. Outside of final exams, that semester is now over (shortened semester due to you-know-what, which also means I'll have a greatly extended break of almost two months), and I'll be able to resume fervently playing this fortress. I'll get to an actual update soon enough, but won't promise any times.

In terms of what's been going on in the fort all this time: not much. All that's happened is me finally finishing the minecart hauler with the improved design, after another (thankfully less serious) oversight, in that the carts were doing jumps when going up into the fixed turns, slamming into the stopper wall and losing all their velocity. This was fixed by roofing those turns over, which was easy since most of them already had walls for access from the impulse ramps. This was all done today, except for me disconnecting the old, messed up chunk of the minecart ramp, which was like two deconstruct orders before I decided I didn't really feel like playing and quit. I didn't end up destroying the old chunk, either, mainly because it's connected to the vault wall and is therefore a huge PITA to fully destroy.

For those who like math: Ultimately, the finished cart hauler can hold eight minecarts and flings them all the way from the obsidian farm to the drop-off point and back in about 6 seconds at 150 FPS*. Give a few extra seconds for hauling (I'll say 4 seconds to haul the cart back in place and stick a rock in it, assuming there's continuous work in the area) that means we'll be moving a rock right to where we need it in 0.15 days, which sets our pace at about 30 rocks a day if my napkin math and rough estimates are correct enough. My Actual Real Numbers™ for how many blocks I'll need to get the project done are back at my dorm, but I recall the number being around 20k, so we'll go with that. 20,000 blocks per day / (30 rocks * 4 block multiplier) = 167 days. I'll round up to a full year, possibly a lot more than that seeing as I may be unable to keep pace with my obsidian farm even in spite of it being a rapid-fire design that's four times larger than normal. And there's my estimate for how long phase two will take.

In addition to all that sweet hauling and block-making I have a hammer to attend to. Things are about to get frantic for the first time in decades. It's time to put Angelcrux back into gear!

Edit that's not worth making a new post for: all that math is wrong.
1. Mining is the bottleneck, and by a lot. Would draft more miners, but all my unprofessioned fodder is waiting on moods before I use them for real jobs. In reality I'll have about 1 cart going at a time, maybe 2.
2. This won't be an issue at all, since I can still get stone to the construction site way faster than I can use it.
3. The project won't take 20k blocks, it'll take 11,876 blocks.
4. I can no longer put a timestamp on this phase because of the unreliable mining rate. The timestamp won't bloody matter anyways; I plan to start using the blocks before I have all of them.
5. Not math related, but I also tidied up all my old posts, fixing little errors like how I had Aroth Ilon referenced as Alroth Ilon, and how I had a "People" tab and a "Dwarves" tab in the important things to remember section of the intro.


Footnotes
At this FPS, a day is about 8 seconds
« Last Edit: November 29, 2020, 01:41:13 am by NordicNooob »
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King Zultan

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #10 on: December 03, 2020, 07:08:26 am »

PTW

Missed the thread when you made it, but I'm glad I saw it as this fort has some interesting things going on.
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but anyway, if you'll excuse me, I need to commit sebbaku.
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NordicNooob

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2020, 03:38:26 pm »

Angelcrux, Update Fifteen: Toil and Trouble
Previously in Angelcrux: the minecart obsidian hauler was finally completed, and is ready for industrial-scale usage.

Angelcrux has been very busy.

Shortly after the completion of the minecart system, in the year 393, Angelcrux finally faced a real army.
Spoiler: This is most of them. (click to show/hide)
Around 2400 trolls, with a small group of ~30 goblins accompanying the army of brutes. The exact numbers aren't particularly important, nor do I have them, since predictably this kind of giant army is a messy affair in exact headcounts. Obviously I couldn't just sit around with such a massive army on my doorstep, as unlike previous armies, this one was big enough to utterly destroy my FPS. The solution was quite simple: send Molu.

Naturally, I've been utterly unprepared for actually dealing with such an army. Not that I don't have possibly the most powerful single warrior ever, but I just completely lack a proper space for fighting such a foe. A while back I dug a temporary battle chamber with the intent of being able to face off against a few hundred goblins, but it hardly passes for a real battle chamber, since it's literally just a zig-zagging pathway. Also there's still a 1x1 entryway even if the path itself is 3x3.
The trolls trickle in at first, limited by the width of the passage, and then they utterly disregard the realistic capacities of each tile and pile on top of each other in a massive tide of gray bodies, too many to count in one tile quite often.

Molu engages. Well, he's already been fighting (leaving a wake of zombies in his path, mostly dissected bits), but now he actually encounters the absurd pile of trolls.
And this is about what the battlefield looks like. For the next three weeks, Molu fights a pitched battle, outnumbered a thousand to one (normally only fighting a few hundred trolls at once, though). The battlefield remains in stasis. I go to sleep. I wake up. The battle is still happening. Trolls are getting exhausted just because they've been trying to hit Molu for so long. Trolls are going insane because they've been watching their comrades get slaughtered for weeks on end as little bits and pieces of the dead rise up to nibble at their big troll toes. And then... they rout. I don't have any images of the rout since I was just idling the game at this point and didn't see it myself, but they rout. Of the army, about 1,600 trolls died, along with most of the goblins. Only ~900 trolls died by Molu's hand, surprisingly. I'm still not sure what killed the others, but I suspect mostly risen zombies, maybe coupled with a few insanity deaths that I didn't witness. Which left me the lucky winner of fifteen hundred dead trolls. In a reanimating biome. Whoopie.

The battle took about three weeks,* but this part... it took a year for most of the reanimated bits to stop. I ordered Molu to drop his axe early on, since he's about as effective unarmed as he is armed, and much more likely to deal blunt damage this way. By the end of it all, well...
Spoiler: Yeah. (click to show/hide)
Ten thousand kills, almost exactly.* FPS is finally somewhat alright at this point, chugging along at ~30, but it's still nowhere near what it used to be. I send in the regulars to wrap things up, finally. I refrained from doing so previously due to the webs, since even just one mostly complete hunk of troll could be lethal to one of my webbed soldiers, and at this point they're close to irreplaceable. I'm still missing that fourth swordsdwarf from when Oddom got caught on the surface thirty years ago, y'know!

Cleanup is... arduous. I poke holes in the zig-zag to make hauling faster, make an atom smasher, and let my eleven regulars get to work.
The process is made slower by four more sieges interrupting the whole thing, all of which are a mite too large for only eleven soldiers to handle. Two of them were of monumental scale but dissipated with little combat due to abominable soot, and two were routed via Molu. It takes four years going on like this, but cleanup finally gets finished, and FPS recovers to a manageable 80-90 range.

The rest of the fort has not been idling while my military did all that. I've finally begun taking back the surface!
There's... not much more to say about it. I'm making a big sky platform to keep the thralling clouds at bay so that I can finally work on the surface, clean things up, and do other megaprojects, one of which is already planned and will be way bigger than anything else I've undertaken. For some reason clouds have refused to exist on the platform at all, which isn't consistent with my understanding of their behavior from the wiki, but I expect there should be a solution that won't be too hard to implement compared to actually building the giant sky platform, and for now I don't mind not having worry about my very valuable citizens* getting thralled. Otherwise, I guess the way I'm going about it is unique: I can't really determine the problem because I haven't actually made much of the platform, only the floors are actually getting made right now. All the bridges will have their architecture complete, but not the masonry until the entire thing is ready, so that I don't get clouds harassing my workers. The two completed bridges were accidental and a byproduct of me trying to get an extra mason's shop built.

Overall, it's quite the massive undertaking for such a small fort (not even considering the minecart hauler and obsidian generator that it needed to get going), but Angelcrux kind of operates on a different time scale so in reality I suppose it's not that bad.

Between the corpses and the above ground construction stress has been reaching disturbing levels in the fort. It's only ever been worse during the cavern cleanup stage, and even then doubtfully so, since a lot of Angelcrux's residents are delicate to stress at this point due to like, a hundred years of random trauma. Two dwarves are stressed, both of which are somewhat alarming cases due to their mental fragility. Many more are suffering from a lack of focus, but that's not really a problem as much as it is an annoyance.

Other unfortunate news is twofold: the death of Reg, and the death of Iton.

Reg was Molu's sparring partner, and died in a preventable accident: I atom smashed her with a 1-wide drawbridge just before the Molu vs 2000 trolls fight. Thought I still had individual unit select but I apparently moved the entire squad, and the bridge raised at exactly the wrong time. Kind of a fittingly ironic death, she was sort of doomed to be an unremarkable dwarf by nothing other than happenstance.

And then Iton. Iton passed of age. Not uncommon, but it's notable in that he was the last of the living founders. There is still one dwarf who knows the outside world, but they were not one of the starting seven. Iton was the fortress carpenter, a pretty useless role at this point in the fort's life.

Finally, some more good news. Udartangak, the Rainy Spot, has been created from the last ingot of slade recovered from the vault. All four hammerdwarves are now armed with artifact slade hammers. Additionally, a child with preference for greataxes has been born, so an artifact greataxe will soon be available for Molu. Supplying Molu with an epic greataxe is, in hindsight, probably much more important than arming my very much mortal hammerdwarves with anvils on sticks, and slade happens to be quite good for edged weapons as well, especially those with some bulk behind them. Oh well! I'll figure something out.

DEMOGRAPHICS
Angelcrux stands at 40 population and 258 million wealth, and is 108 years old.

Births (4):
Atir Syruppuzzles (391)
Asmel Whirledglove (394)
Solon Tradeobey (396)
Sarvesh Pageyells (398)

Deaths (2):
Reg Cobaltmansions (393)
Iton Shootgorged (398)

Happiness: 2 unhappy, 7 fine, 2 happy, 29 ecstatic
Spoiler:  The z menu (click to show/hide)

Art
Spoiler: The Four Hammers (click to show/hide)
Also screw it, I want to do one of the little vote things! Vote on your favorite one of the hammers!

Footnotes
Way faster than I expected, but basically every hit of Molu's ruined whatever it hit and also Molu attacks pretty bloody fast courtesy of being an epic tier fighter, so.
He got four more kills after this, but that was it.
Valuable in the sense that it takes over a decade to replace a death with a functioning worker, not that all the dwarves I'm sending out have valuable skills.
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Spriggans

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #12 on: December 10, 2020, 05:19:51 am »

Wow ! :o


Molu reached some Spartan VS Persian levels of outnumbered-ness there, and yet still won casually !
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NordicNooob

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #13 on: December 21, 2020, 10:50:12 pm »

Angelcrux, Update Sixteen: Business As Usual
Previously in Angelcrux: Molu murders 2,000 trolls alone, a megaproject roofing over the entire embark to prevent evil clouds is started.

Angelcrux is pretty much just going along its merry way as of now. Nothing particularly interesting is newly developing, but I've been tending to various day-to-day things that need doing, and likely still will be for a while.
Here's about what I've done:
  • Finished the giant roof, and has been done for almost a decade at this point. Pretty big project and very important for the fort's future, but it's hardly an interesting one. I'll have to modify it later, as goblin sieges kept spawning on top of it rather than at the actual borders. By removing a few of the edge bridges I made a quick fix, but I'll have to implement something real eventually so that there's not a few puffs of soot in the gaps every now and then.
  • Expanded the tombs. Not very important, but I do like how the sprawling crypt is coming together.
  • Re-organized the civilian squads into employed, jobless, and couples, and made sure nobody is in the broken squad that has the queen in it, meaning I can't change its orders.
  • Upped the melt loop to gain massive amounts of twinkling metal, turning the entire fort into moderate skill smiths and doubling the fort's wealth as a byproduct.
  • Constructed an actual siege cleaner in place of the zig-zagging hallway. It's not much, but it'll do.
  • Sealed off various unused parts of the fort.
  • Executed the remaining animals in the fort. The cats have proved unnecessary and I have reliable trade if I need animal cloth for strange moods, but I still have a fairly large stockpile of cloth and it should be a few decades before it decays. I can buy animals if I need them again.
  • Wagon access has finally been opened up for caravans, since I'm starting to actually need imports.
Again, not very interesting.

In the background, some almost equally generic things have been going on:
  • Bembul, the last dwarf of the founding generation, died of age.
  • Sieges have continued. Some are a few hundred in size, some are only a few dozen, but none pose any real threat, only an annoyance. I don't think any size would pose a real threat at this point, seeing Molu's performance. Seeing as I didn't get any footage of Molu vs 2000 trolls and that I've been obsessing over him ever since he joined the fort, I probably owe you some combat footage. Here* is a 6-minute video of him ruining a siege of about 200. There's big breaks in the combat at 1-2 mins and at 3-4 mins, but enough stuff happened that I didn't bother cropping anything out entirely. It's also hideously low quality since I thought I was going to have to worry about file size, but if you're a graphics snob you're probably not playing Dwarf Fortress.
  • During a siege cleanup, one of the swordsdwarves threw the first tantrum the fort has ever had. I put an end to that with a quick break.
  • Several small incidents have occurred, taking out quite a few dwarves. A young child was killed by a troll that reanimated just before I locked the door on my atom smasher, a construction worker was pushed off the roof construction site and fell 30z to their death, and two dwarves were sooted when I was re-organizing equipment.

DEMOGRAPHICS
Angelcrux stands at 40 population and 538 million wealth, and is 126 years old.

Births (6):
Mistem Romancebridge (401)
Kogan Worthyquakes (402)
Olin Wetwires (410)
Urdim Kniferooted (412)
Tosid Workedtrusses (414)
Tulon Mirrorplaited (414)

Deaths (6):
Dishmab Oneabbeys (401)
Fikod Minedwhipped (402)
Bembul Torchstatic (409)
Olin Wetwires (411)
Feb Boatsrasped (411)
Tosid Groovedbridge (411)

Happiness: 4 fine, 3 quite content, 3 happy, 30 ecstatic
Spoiler:  The z menu (click to show/hide)

Chapter Pixel Sketch

Footnotes
If anybody knows a good way to embed decent length videos into this forum I'd love to hear it, this was my last resort.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2020, 10:54:16 pm by NordicNooob »
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Schmaven

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Re: Angelcrux: A Dwarven Fortress
« Reply #14 on: March 06, 2021, 10:23:02 am »

That siege had no chance there.  I can only imagine their terror as early in the video, one of the waves of invaders approaches the corner as webs blast past it over the corpses.  And then to add insult to injury, they're all reanimating on top of the following waves.  I'm curious though, with being outnumbered against so many archers - did Molu suffer any damage from the hail of arrows - bruising or anything?  The eyes always seem vulnerable.
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