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DWARF FORTRESS
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Redeye
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bulkor wrote:
... my current dumb idea is to develop an amphibious fighting force by semi-flooding a room (with water at a height of 2 or 3) and then stationing my military in it for weeks at a time.



Dwarf Marines?

Defensively flood the fortress to put invaders at a disadvantage?
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, upgrading your Swimming skill gets you outrageous stat gains -- my dwarf, who was already pretty super-dwarven, was a Novice Swimmer by the time he died, so that's 2 skill upgrades in a relatively short time. If your strategy worked, you would have a Strong, Agile and Tough military in a relatively short time.

Optimally, you would then outfit them with steel plate, steel shields and wooden swords, severely reducing the chance that they would injure themselves while sparring. Once their Sword, Shield Use and Armor Use got high enough, you could turn off sparring and give them steel swords. What really needs to happen is for Toady to have special cases for sparring so that if you have wooden weapons available, they swap out their actual, deadly weapons for the training weapons when fighting amongst themselves.

I'm pretty much not playing until the farm issue gets resolved -- it would be just too much trouble to re-situate all my farms at this point.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So in addition to the farm bug there's been a fix to world generation which produces less economic ore and more of other things. I guess this means I should wait until the next release, since I'll just be regenerating my world anyway. I just hope I'm trading those screens and screens of magnetite for something worthwhile. It's probably just as well, though, since the third siege just showed up and I'm pretty sure I'd be hosed if they weren't bugged. I think I need to look into flooding defenses or moats or something.

My idea with swimming was partly to increase skills--I could've semi-flooded the barracks, if I wasn't already stashing all the equipment and ammo there--but also because I like the goofiness of fighting sea creatures. As it is, though, dwarves without swimming ability just can't move once they're in the water. That lack of swimming ability won't stop them from diving down a level to strangle a zombie bluefish, though.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 2:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

so i'm playing df again (despite being right at the end of finals period) and i've got what appears to be a gnarly bug that isn't mentioned anywhere. i've got lots and lots of coal, but no wood. i build smelters to try and process that coal, but they don't even give me the option of making coke. will that option not appear unless i have fuel (shouldn't be the case, as i get options for smelting other ores), or is there something I have to do to trigger being able to make coke, or did i find a new bug Sad ?
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 11:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's not a bug; making coke from coal counts as smelting, so it takes fuel. You need a piece of charcoal (or magma, I guess) to make your first batch. After that you can just use coke.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 4:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interview with Tarn Adams (mp3 format).

I haven't gotten much done recently, my main fort is still poking along mainly because I actually need more immigrants than I've been getting, which is a first for me and as good an indicator as any that farming and food production is far more generous in the reworked version. For those starting out, I would say maybe the most important thing is making sure that you have some sort of water source, along the lines of a river, although if you're willing to work around it, an aquifer would be fine as well. There are just too many problems associated with not having a source of water, especially when you have to deal with injured or jailed dwarves.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 4:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Graphical version!
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Although that doesn't really address the issue that most people have with the game, which is the interface (although the graphics thing does come up a lot, I think it's less of a fundamental issue than UI, especially since people are releasing tilesets and whatnot for it).

There's an interface section in the interview linked above and what Tarn has to say about it is that with the game still being in alpha, there's a decision between working on polish when there's so many parts of the game that are going to be completely gutted and rewritten at this point, so he felt that the way to go is to have a baseline of super-basic functionality and not spend a lot of time going back and forth on UI until he gets closer to Version 1.0 (he feels like they're 25% there or something along those lines).

Overall, the interview is pretty impressive in that Tarn comes across as a very well-grounded and well, normal person*, which I wouldn't have particularly predicted given the nature of his game (as he puts it when talking about interface, he says "It's not like I'm some autistic savant that doesn't understand the concept of what an interface is."). His reaction to the "geek" question is an excellent one.

* - For instance, that music playing during the intro sequence is him playing a sarod. And the looping music that you probably turned off is him as well. And he did the ASCII animation intro.

ETA: His favorite games are, of course, Ultima 4-7 and Daggerfall (he says Morrowind is too pretty and scripted for him, although he still liked it).
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This game really needs to be streamlined for UI though. It's killing it before it's alive.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
This game really needs to be streamlined for UI though. It's killing it before it's alive.


Well, his whole point is that it's not alive yet. It's in gestation. Essentially, the people playing it are acting as a large focus-testing group during development. Also, I don't think Tarn really cares so long as he's able to make the game he wants, even if it takes a decade and is borderline-unplayable for a significant period of time.

That said, the UI isn't that horrible. If you take an hour to sit down and chug through it, it'll all make sense. Seriously, something like Alpha Centauri isn't really that more cluttered than DF.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 5:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, I don't know, I've sunk the past two days into this game pretty much. I'm currently in the middle of my second winter and have a population of 32 (I use to have 33, but suddenly I got a message that the ranger I had gotten in was "struck down" and... I don't know where that happen or how).

Anyways, I can't seem to make animal traps. I figured out that this pretty much relates to the fact that I need to make spiked balls and stuff, and also that I need to be able to MAKE these things. Like, I don't think I can sharpen wood or something. Is that possible? If I set up my wood working shop to make either animal traps or sharp balls, my wood workers just kind of ignore these tasks and I have no idea why. So... like, what's up?

Also, my fort design is very spread out. I have all my works and shops on one level and I have the sleeping areas there as well. I set up the first seven dwarfs with their own rooms, but then got bored so set up all my other migrants into rooms with 6 beds each (each assigned to individual dwarfs).

I also have the very, very lightest of equipped 3 person militia. I think I need to figure out what/how to make an army. Though, I do have a ballista just in case, and tons of traps around my doors (so far I've managed to kill a goat with one, that's it).

Honestly things are pretty self sustained and boring with the occasional poking around of a batman not much else.

Quick Question: How do you build things UP. I understand how to build up inside of a mountain for instance, but how do you just build, like, up on a fortification or something?
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

my proficient Potash maker has gone insane. Stark. Raving. Mad.

What the hell do I do with him? I don't want him to break shit on me.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
my proficient Potash maker has gone insane. Stark. Raving. Mad.

What the hell do I do with him? I don't want him to break shit on me.



Time for him to go hunting!
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, hunting is probably what killed your ranger. The hunting AI is pretty horrible, so right now you're better off turning the hunting labor off for anyone you don't want to die.

Your sheriff can probably take care of the crazy guy if he actually breaks something, but he's more likely to just starve or dehydrate himself. It'd be good to look at his thoughts to figure out what drove him crazy, though.

To build up you need a ramp or a stairway so the dwarves can get up on top of the wall or whatever, and then you can have them build more ramps or walls on top of the existing stuff.

I'd actually like to hear other people's (Scratch?) advice about militaries, because in my experience everything just dies to (cross)bowmen so you're better off with traps and fortifications instead.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 2:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Dwarf Fortress Wiki is an invaluable resource. For instance, here's the page on digging. Basically to build "up" in open space, you need to build a ramp or stairs, which are under [b]uild -> [C]onstruction. The best way to do this is to build a stair or ramp with a bunch of walls around it -- the tops of the walls will then be floor on the next z-level up, on top of which you can build more walls, stairs, etc. To enclose open space, what you need to do is build a floor (in that same Construction menu) on the z-level above it, which then becomes a ceiling, making the square below it Inside.

As for making traps, it sounds like you're confused between two kinds of traps -- there's Animal Traps and regular Traps. The first are made with a cage and a mechanism. You can make a cage out of wood or metal at the appropriate workshops. The second are made with some sort of weapon and a mechanism. Both types require somebody with the Mechanic labor skill turned on. I don't actually have much experience with Animal Traps, which require dwarves with the Trapper skill to build and operate.

NOTE: You can always just go and turn on a dwarf's skill even if they're not trained in it. They'll be super-shitty in it; however, eventually they'll start levelling up that skill and be somewhat decent in it. I like to do this with peasants, turn on only one skill and eventually they'll 'graduate' into becoming a skilled dwarf.

I'm not sure why your guys aren't building your wooden trap components, it may just be taking them a while or they could be doing something else? I don't generally build wood components because the damage is so incredibly reduced by the material -- I would suggest just building stonefall traps (mechanism + rock) at the beginning since they're reasonably effective for little effort on your part and then upgrade to metal trap components once you've got your metalworking sussed.

And yeah, the new version is a little laid-back right now. I think the goblin sieges actually work now, so that might be a nice kick in the pants when they show up, plus there's other nasties that can show up randomly as well. Eventually Tarn will implement the Army Arc and who knows what'll happen then.

I'll do a military post later -- I'm still working on it and I don't feel qualified to expound on the subject when I haven't had to deal with a single goblin attack yet.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 11:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I pretty much have the DF:Wiki open while playing DF as a reference book, or I'd be screwed.

Also, I was trying to build animal traps so that I can catch them and then turn them into leather/meat. Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way then?

And, shortly after my last post I finally hit a huge deposit of metal ore (which previously I'd only found some nice pretty stone and some gems and a lot of silver). Not having an anvil is really pissing me off. The only other time I've seen one in a caravan it was way too expensive. I may... may just have enough trinkets to sell when the dwarves come back in the fall and should have one since I put the priority up (but I don't know if I'll have enough for their 180% mark up).

Also, even though I'm offering elves quite a bit over the value of the items I'm trying to buy from them they always get insulted and leave when I make them an offer. Do I just have to offer them shit way over value or something?
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Animal traps work OK, but you always get "vermin"-sized animals: rats and small birds which aren't worth much meat or skin or bone. Catching bigger animals actually involves setting up a cage trap and getting them to walk over it somehow, which is usually a big hassle. If you want animal products you're probably better off slaughtering horses and kittens.

Anvils are really worth bringing along in your initial supplies. I tried a run or two without one, figuring that on aquifer maps I wouldn't need it until the second or third year anyway, but as you noticed the price hike that you get when requesting one makes things really difficult. The only suggestion I have for trading is that caravans will pay surprisingly large amounts of money for food, like several hundred monies for a 10-stack of well-made biscuits or what have you.

The elves are probably pissed because you tried to sell them something made from wood or animal products. They will also flip out if you try to sell them something with blood spatter on it, like some shoes you pried off a dead goblin.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bulkor wrote:
Animal traps work OK, but you always get "vermin"-sized animals: rats and small birds which aren't worth much meat or skin or bone. Catching bigger animals actually involves setting up a cage trap and getting them to walk over it somehow, which is usually a big hassle. If you want animal products you're probably better off slaughtering horses and kittens.


Can't you use the stuff from animal traps as bait for the bigger cage traps?

For that matter, is there a way to mash up and boil lots of animal mass to get glue, soap, and candles?

Quote:

Anvils are really worth bringing along in your initial supplies. I tried a run or two without one, figuring that on aquifer maps I wouldn't need it until the second or third year anyway, but as you noticed the price hike that you get when requesting one makes things really difficult. The only suggestion I have for trading is that caravans will pay surprisingly large amounts of money for food, like several hundred monies for a 10-stack of well-made biscuits or what have you.


If there are zero survivors from a caravan, will word get out?
Like a revenge-siege?

Floodplain/hollow out a parking area...

Quote:
If you want animal products you're probably better off slaughtering horses and kittens.


Here kitty kitty.


I really want to play DF, but I think I'll wait at least until a couple more updates.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I'm guessing that the elves are pissed because you're offering something that involves animal material (the weirdest one of these being obsidian short swords, which are on the verboten list because they apparently have wooden handles). If you're not offering these items, you're probably not giving them enough of a profit. When your negotiator has shitty trading skills, it gets pretty nuts, with the various caravans wanting profits that are well into the hundreds.

In terms of the anvil, get somebody working on stone crafts. Just make a shitton of them and you should be able to get at least the anvil from the caravan (if nothing else). I haven't tried drowning/burning/etc. the caravan in the reworked version, so I have no idea what might happen. Usually they didn't do anything with the standard dwarven caravan, although if you do it to the Elves and the Humans, they'd eventually send armies after you.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

FYI: Chalk Mechanisms are worth a ton of money for being fairly simple to make... if you can find chalk.

I spent most of today teaching my wife how to play this and she loves it. She also happen to pick a spot that has her mining a mountain of Chalk, Platinum, and Iron. Crazy luck I guess.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
FYI: Chalk Mechanisms are worth a ton of money for being fairly simple to make... if you can find chalk.

I spent most of today teaching my wife how to play this and she loves it. She also happen to pick a spot that has her mining a mountain of Chalk, Platinum, and Iron. Crazy luck I guess.



It would be cool if you could strike oil.

Like a gusher and the guys in the shaft would drown in Black Gold.

Then maybe it would catch fire and the smoke would fill the DF and suffocate the whole colony.
Then, with the air used up, the oil fire would be extinguished.

Perhaps a later group could happen upon the colony and find the corpses, including several "Oil Mummies" floating in a mineshaft.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 11:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What the hell can you do with a mini-forge?
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 11:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nothing. It's a toy, basically. Worth nothing except as a luxury good that sits around and as possible trading fodder. Same with instruments, etc.

I'm starting to hit the "scramble" mode of my fort, where I'm working on moving all the crap out of the trading depot from the elven caravan and then a new wave of immigrants show up taking my no. of dwarves from 15 to 39 and I need to set up new bedrooms which means making a shitton of beds which means cutting down a bunch of wood and maybe find a vein of tin or copper ore so I can make some bins and free up some space in my stockpiles and keep on top of turning food into meals and making some booze if we have spare barrels only all the wood is being turned into beds and oh shit here comes the human caravan make some crafts quick.

Which doesn't even mention getting my scant excuse for a military set up and rejiggering my fort design for Maximum Defense (rewalling here is really a boon, I plan to entirely wall off my initial entrance once I've designed and dug out my new one).

BTW, I figured out an extremely nice way to set up magma forges and smelters for those of you who have magma on your maps. I'll post it if anybody's interested.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, like this neat looking 3D visualization program called 3Dwarf came out. I wanted to try to capture my fortress in 3D and post it here, but I can't get the program to run stably enough to move the camera how I want. I figured I'd let others know about it anyways and post some 3D images of their forts.

Also, after about 30 hours with my fort and into the third summer, I think I want to restart the fort. Most of my dwarfs are chronically depressed for some reason, and my orginization is really awful because I didn't know how things were going to work out later. Also, my location is pretty boring Sad
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 6:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
...
Also, after about 30 hours with my fort and into the third summer, I think I want to restart the fort. Most of my dwarfs are chronically depressed for some reason, and my orginization is really awful because I didn't know how things were going to work out later. Also, my location is pretty boring Sad


Have them go out in a blaze of glory as Highwaymen.

Attack a caravan or else send them all Hunting.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 6:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
Also, after about 30 hours with my fort and into the third summer, I think I want to restart the fort. Most of my dwarfs are chronically depressed for some reason, and my orginization is really awful because I didn't know how things were going to work out later. Also, my location is pretty boring :(


Yeah, the desire to start over and reorganize things "right" is a pretty strong urge, especially when you're just starting out.

In terms of your dwarfs being depressed, did you know that you can check their thoughts? Go to [v]iew a dwarf, then check [p]references, then [z] to look at thoughts and preferences, then [Enter] to check thoughts. It'll tell you what specific events have made the individual dwarf happy or sad recently, as well as what personal preferences that dwarf might have if you want to specifically leverage those.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I read on the DF Wiki that once you have a dwarf that flashes a blue downward arrow they won't ever get rid of it and will eventually spiral into a manic depression and possibly commit suicide. So I figured there was no point.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hunh. I thought a downward arrow meant that they were thirsty. How long ago was this? Which page?
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scratchmonkey wrote:
Hunh. I thought a downward arrow meant that they were thirsty. How long ago was this? Which page?

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Status_icons

And you're right! I was mixed up. HUH! I just have a lot of thirsty dwarfs.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, you need to check and see whether there's a water source on your map -- if you're in one of those regions without a river or stream, lakes and pools can dry up/freeze in summer/winter, preventing dwarfs from drinking from them. In this situation you need to have a lot of booze -- since dwarfs will preferentially drink that over water -- or have some sort of underground cistern set up that you drained the pools/lakes into.

Without either of these, your dwarfs will all eventually die from thirst*. I made a bunch of posts about this a page or two ago when the new version came out because not having water is a major obstacle in the new version.

* - And if you only have booze, any injured dwarfs will die of thirst as well, because dwarfs who are providing Health Care will only bring water, not alcohol.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

No, I have a brook that I've zoned for drinking. There shouldn't be any issue with that. I also only ran out of booze once, and that was because no one was using the still. After they ran out they started working it until I was up to 40 units then they stopped again.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, they probably ran out of barrels to put the booze into. Barrels are usually one of the more constrained resources, since making them out of wood is kind of bad since you really probably need that wood for making beds and/or fuel, especially on a sparse map. If you have a magma source and major malachite/casserite veins, you can start making barrels (and bins) out of cheap metals, which is preferable to using up all that wood.
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

With Z Levels now, I have tons of wood. And, there shouldn't have been a barrel problem because you get that "Dwarf at Still stopped task: Needs Barrel" which I never got and I've made more barrels. They just don't like to brew.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

How many dwarfs do you have? It could be that the only dwarfs with their Brewing skill on are On Break, Eating, Drinking or Sleeping.
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

34 (one is a baby though). Also, I have like 5 with brewing turned on, so that shouldn't really be a problem. Perhaps I really need to regulate/turn off hauling on more people. It seems like, if given the option, dwarfs love to haul shit.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, that's almost certainly what's going on then. When I have dwarfs who really should be only doing one thing, and that thing is important, like Miners early in the game, Metalsmiths when you've got your forges running and Farmers pretty much anytime, I go in and turn off all the labor except the ones that I want them doing, including Health Care. At the beginning, this is a great idea to do this as soon as you can, i.e. do this with every starting dwarf and then with everyone as soon as they show up, this way you can make sure that the high-priority tasks are always, well, high-priority. Usually I only have peasants and dwarfs with relatively useless skills like craftsdwarfs, fisherdwarfs, hunters, siege engineers, etc. with hauling still on.

It also helps if you don't do anything with your leftover rock. I just leave it lying all over my fort and yeah, it looks messy; however, it doesn't prevent anything get done and I don't have to waste hundreds upon hundreds of dwarf-hours moving the rock to a stockpile or dump. The only drawback to this is that if you have rock in a stockpile, it'll take up space that you'd probably want to use for storing shit. The solution to this is to dig all of your stockpile rooms out of dirt or sand, because no rock gets left behind. It's also way quicker, which can be very handy in the early part of the game.
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Bulkor
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another, buggier solution (and therefore one which won't be this good forever) is to look at objects with "k" and then use "d" to mark them for dumping. Dwarves will move that stuff to an activity zone you've marked as a garbage dump. The buggy part is that there's currently no limit to how much crap they'll put in one spot; a one-square garbage dump can hold a hundred pieces of stone. But even without that silliness, it'll still be a good way to clean out specific areas or move specific chunks of stone.
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skonrad
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 4:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've just started playing this and I'm pretty enthralled. I've done a really terrible job of building my fortress up and all of my dwarves have pretty haphazard skill sets except for my miners who have suddenly stopped working for some reason I can't figure out. I figure I'll sink about 10 more hours into this fortress before I restart (I want to figure out how to use some more of the building options and work through some of my general confusion).

One thing that kind of surprised me was how fast settlers came to my camp. From what I'd been reading I thought it was going to be a few more hours before I'd hit 20 settlers, but I'm about 2.5-3 hours into the game with 25 or so, which is a bit overwhelming to start with. I'm fairly certain some of them are going to die through the winter. Primarily because I have no booze.

I should also mention that the first thing I tasked my dwarves with was mining to the location of a pool inside the mountain for some reason, which then promptly flooded some land just outside of my fortress making it available for farming after it dried up, which was interesting. The flood almost made it to where my encampment wagon was initially placed, but it got too dispersed about three squares away from it. I'm now interested in the possibility of channeling full ponds from one location to another and possibly making an underground reservoir containing the liquid from multiple ponds.
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 4:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just be careful with doing so -- if you make u-bends, you will wind up triggering a bug that will create infinite water, flooding the entire world. However, you will have to do something like this to make sure that you still have water during the winter months if water freezes on your map (or during summer months, if the water dries up).

And yes, immigrants show up in greater numbers and far sooner than they did in previous versions. I believe that it's still based on fortress wealth, so if you've created anything that's particularly valuable, hordes of dwarfs will show up.
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skonrad
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 4:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow -- even the bugs are endearing!

I've done absurd amounts of mining, but I've barely made any actual items other than beds chairs, tables, charcoal and a ton of mechanical components, so I'm not sure what would be making the value of the fortress seem so high.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 6:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It could depend on the rock that you're using to make stuff out of. I know somebody before said that they were making chalk mechanisms and they were going for an insane amount of money.

I've been letting Angband take up all of my DF time.
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Bulkor
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 10:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

New version was released today. It's the first one for the army arc but there aren't actually armies in fortress mode yet. The biggest thing seems to be that world creation now incorporates a whole lot more legends and history and whatnot, but I'm still using my old save for now.

Had my first siege on this fort, a small party of 15 goblins. They were all using melee weapons, though, so they got gunned down by four marksdwarves behind fortifications without even making it to the first line of traps. Considering they pulled this off with wooden bolts (I did have plenty of iron bolts made, they just didn't grab any) this has confirmed my belief that crossbows are the way to go. Unarmed sparring is a good way to raise stats, though.

A baronness showed up at the head of a recent wave of immigrants, and that wave bumped her up to countess before she was in the front door. So we're a county now! No idea what that means. I also have the economy running now, so a lot of dwarves that can't pay rent are sleeping in the barracks. I don't know why the barracks--I left plenty of un-zoned beds in other areas.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think beds in the barracks are the only beds that are reserved for dwarves who can't pay rent and these are probably the dwarves who don't have enough money to sleep anywhere except the "dwarf shelter" of the barracks.

I wound up building a lot of "holes" which were basically one square with a bed, often without a door, creating a kind of dwarfen slum.
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Redeye
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scratchmonkey wrote:
I think beds in the barracks are the only beds that are reserved for dwarves who can't pay rent and these are probably the dwarves who don't have enough money to sleep anywhere except the "dwarf shelter" of the barracks.

I wound up building a lot of "holes" which were basically one square with a bed, often without a door, creating a kind of dwarfen slum.


Can you finish and engrave the Dwarfslum, maybe add a fountain and aquarium for extra happiness?

Maybe even go for a Pod Hotel for dwarves.
It would be neat if barrels could be hybridized with coffins and then scaled up a little in size, then designated as beds.
Containerize the Dwarves.
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Bulkor
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, in a rare appeal to aesthetics I'd decided that the dwarf shelters should be in areas less likely to result in giant dogpiles of sparring dwarves swarming over the part-time workers as they slept, but it looks like beds outside of barracks don't count.

I'm re-walling a bunch of small spaces right now for use as cheap bedrooms, but I'm going to have to do a lot of really annoying micromanagement to keep the quality of beds and doors down. Even a one-square room will go for 90-something monies if it's got an exceptional-quality door.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 12:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Don't put any doors on 'em -- you can manually set the size of the rooms so that it just includes the bed, I think.
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skonrad
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 10:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Last night I went for a beer and accidentally let Dwarf Fortress keep running. When I came back about half of my dwarves were dead and my carpenter had gone insane and seemed to be running around killing people (I'm still not sure if that's the case -- I get messages that person X has been struck down, and they were near the carpenter). I cleared the corpses and found some more water for them, but at that point all the dwarves doing work died. The only ones who didn't were a ranger (who was the only content one) and this carpenter.

Two minutes later a new load of dwarves showed up, reboosting my population to about 20.

As soon as they got in they started getting struck down. I started thinking about it, and I realized my carpenter's kill count is probably around 10 or 15 if he has actually been killing them.

The thing is, I figure the girl has earned the right to turn this fort into a dungeon of horrors, so I'll probably just restart a bit earlier than I was planning to.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 12:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Did the carpenter's symbol change to a '@' sign? If so, this means that they went beserk and just started slaughtering everything that they see. If you don't have any military/Fortress Guards, other dwarfs will do nothing except run away or fight for their lives if they happen to be under attack -- and since berserk dwarves are stronger and nastier than regular dwarves AND carpenters are typically strong from their line of work AND they have an axe, well, you really need some war dogs/trained soldiers to take him down.
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skonrad
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 1:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

She was definitely berserk then -- lesson learned for the next round.
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Bulkor
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 8:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What'd she go crazy from? Couldn't find the materials for an artifact?

So, it turns out that while you can zone bedrooms down to just include the bed, they still count the door somehow. And probably the walls. I need to dig out some rooms that aren't in magnetite deposits, because evidently that's quality real estate. Some guys are still sleeping in the barracks despite earning more than enough to rent a room; maybe they're just saving up for that narrow cave spider silk sock they'll never wear. Man, do I hate the dwarven economy.
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