User:Kydo

Who I Am

I am Kydo, a DF player who enjoys this website a lot and is interested in helping. Mostly with grammatical corrections. (If you see any issues on my page, please point them out to me. Everyone makes mistakes. That's why I'm here.) My real name is Jeff. Not that it matters. In rl, I'm an artist with two years of college under his belt... And no money to complete the rest of the degree. I'm a gamer, I play D&D and dabble in tabletop RPG design, I play videogames excessively, and it all tends to get in the way of my art, really. This is probably just another diversion, I suppose. Oh. And I'm a MAN. Let's make that clear.

I have a DA page if you wish to talk to me about art or what-not. Kydo

Observations

Just a collection of things I've noticed. Read it or not, I don't care. Basically just stuff I want to add as little side-notes to other articles, but am too shy to actually do. I think I'll wait until I understand the editor a bit lot more.

Dead Wagons

Wagons of death

Okay, so this illustrates something a little off.

The wagon you start off with is stationary. All it can do is be deconstructed. It doesn't do THAT when you take the thing apart. You just get two pieces of wood.

The wagons traders use are obviously different. For one thing, they move, with two horse-like animals pulling them. (Sometimes they're camels, oxes, donkeys, etc.) They have a width of 3x3 tiles, and cannot pass over a great many objects in the environment. The Depot Accessibility Display shows only the places the center tile can pass over. So long as there's green, the wagon can get there.

The difference between trade wagons and the starting wagon becomes more apparent, in that upon entering the depot, they can be stacked two high, and seem to completely deconstruct themselves from existence.

In the trading article, it claims you can steal from a caravan without marking the objects as stolen, by deconstructing the depot with the traders inside. And it works! Very well! Someone noted that surrounding nations keep track of sent and returned wealth and will still probably invade. I'm tempted to note that dwarfs will never siege dwarfs, meaning you can HEAVILY exploit the trade caravan by deconstructing every time they show up, with NO repercussions... But it also causes the above glitchyness. The wagons, which at the time of depot deconstruction didn't even appear to exist, are now listed as dead, and still do not appear on the map.

When the caravan leaves, the wagons will reappear from the location they originally disappeared on, and wander off the field, leaving their goods behind, and for some reason, remaining in your units list as deceased creatures, despite already having watched them leave your map!

Reconstructing the depot, before or after they leave, even if it's in the same spot, will not "revive" them. Nor will it remove the "deceased" status.

The reason is that the starting wagon is a building, while the wagons the traders use are a creature.

creature_equipment.txt

[OBJECT:CREATURE]

[CREATURE:EQUIPMENT_WAGON]

[NAME:wagon:wagons:wagon]

[TILE:'W'][COLOR:6:0:0]

[EQUIPMENT_WAGON][COMMON_DOMESTIC]

[NOT_BUTCHERABLE]

[HAS_RACEGLOSS:WOOD]

[ITEMCORPSE:WOOD:NO_SUBTYPE:WOOD:USE_RACEGLOSS]

[NOSMELLYROT]

[BODY:WAGON]

[SIZE:12]

[ALL_ACTIVE]

[NO_GENDER]

[MATERIAL:WOOD:USE_RACEGLOSS]

[TRADE_CAPACITY:15000]

[MUNDANE]

TADA! That's why, when you press D to check depot accessibility, it only shows where that center tile can step. That center tile IS the wagon!

3x3x3 CUBES

Okay, so I've noticed that a lot of things in this game seem to have 3x3 boxes associated with them. But recently, I've encountered some evidence that points toward these being CUBES, not flat squares.

Restraints, for example. If you put a staircase next to a restraint, and a dog on that restraint, it is perfectly possible for the dog to walk up that staircase, and around in a 3x3 square above the restraint. They can also go down. They don't seem to like to, and tend to need something pushing/drawing them (Water/goblins) to do it, but they can and will.

On the same line, I had a cage full of puppies built directly beneath my kennels. I qued a dog to be trained, and for one to be released. The dog was released, but I'd forgotten to make the door pet-passable. In any case, the dwarf went through the door, hauling the dog, the dog stayed in the room, the dwarf walked across the room, hauling the dog through the floor somehow, and trained it through the floor as well. This leads me to think that animal hauling is an action defined by a 3x3x3 cube around the hauler, and training is a cube as well.

Projects

Just whatever things I might be working on. Geology Chart is the only REAL concern at the moment. Whether DFWiki wants it or not; I do.

Industry Flowchart

Yeah, I'm making a flowchart describing the flow of all of the industries together, and how they interact. No easy task. The image is far too large to be reasonably uploaded at the moment, and I'm nowhere near done. Of course, that was kind of predicted.

Requisite Industries These are industries which produce goods needed to produce other goods, and don't really fit inside any of the other industries.
Fuel Industry: 100%
Gem Industry: 0%

Primary Industries These are overarching industries which usually contain several related or overlapping sub-industries. They mostly define the overall branching of where your production effort will be going.
Wood Industry: 0%
Stone Industry: 0%
Metal Industry: 40%
Glass Industry: 70%
Food Industry: 0%

Secondary Industries These are industries which are generally built upon the primary industries, usually more than one.
Crafts Industry: 0%
Clothing Industry: 0%
Soap Industry: 0%
Furniture Industry: 0%

Sub-Industries These are sub-industries within the overall branchings.
Meat Industry: 0%
Plant Industry: 0%
Alcohol Industry: 0%
Weapons Industry: 0%
Armor Industry: 0%

Geology Chart

This is the WIP Geology chart. It's purpose and intent is to describe the relationships between different kinds of minerals and metals as they appear in the environment of Dwarf Fortress. In constructing this, I have learned a lot about the commonalities, and the differences, between the contents of certain kinds of layers. This is partially due to the layout of the wiki as it stands, and partially due to paying attention.

When I started this project, I originally felt that the overall presentation of the stones and such to be absolutely wretched. However, as I've worked with them, I've learned why they were arranged that way. Even so, the whole thing needs massive cleanup for sure, and I think this would be a good first step. This is still mainly for my personal use.

Stone
Sedimentary
Name	State	Found In	Contains Stone	Contains Ore	Contains Gems
Chalk	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary Ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Chert	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Claystone	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Conglomerate	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Puddingstone Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary Ores Template:List	Gems None
Dolomite	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Talc Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentray Ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Flint	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary Ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Limestone	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Calcite Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Galena Malachite Sedimentary Ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Mudstone	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Rock Salt	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Borax Sylvite Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary Ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Sandstone	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Native copper Sedimentary Ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Shale	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Cinnabar Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary Ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Siltstone	Sedimentary	Layer	Stone Sedimentary Stones Template:List	Ores Sedimentary Ores Template:List	Gems Sedimentary Gems Template:ListTemplate:List
Igneous Intrusive
Name	State	Found In	Contains Stone	Contains Ore	Contains Gems
Diorite	Igneous Intrusive	Layer	Stone Pyrolusite Hornblende Orthoclase Microcline	Ores Native gold Tetrahedrite	Gems None
Gabbro	Igneous Intrusive	Layer	Stone Olivine Native platinum Serpentine Chromite Kimberlite Ilmenite Pyrolusite Hornblende Orthoclase Microcline	Ores Garnierite Native gold Tetrahedrite	Gems None
Granite	Igneous Intrusive	Layer	Stone Cryolite Rutile Pyrolusite Pitchblende Hornblende Orthoclase Microcline Mica	Ores Native gold Native silver Horn silver Galena Cassiterite Tetrahedrite Bismuthinite	Gems None
Igneous Extrusive
Name	State	Found In	Contains Stone	Contains Ore	Contains Gems
Andesite	Igneous Extrusive	Layer	Stone Brimstone Realgar Orpiment Stibnite Rutile Hornblende Alunite Microcline	Ores Hematite Native gold Native copper Tetrahedrite Native aluminum Galena	Gems None
Basalt	Igneous Extrusive	Layer	Stone Brimstone Realgar Orpiment Stibnite Rutile Hornblende Alunite Microcline	Ores Hematite Native gold Native copper Tetrahedrite Native aluminum Galena	Gems None
Felsite	Igneous Extrusive	Layer	Stone Brimstone Realgar Orpiment Stibnite Rutile Hornblende Alunite Microcline	Ores * Hematite Native gold Native copper Tetrahedrite Native aluminum Galena	Gems None
Obsidian	Igneous Extrusive	Layer	Stone Brimstone Realgar Orpiment Stibnite Rutile Hornblende Alunite Microcline	Ores Hematite Native gold Native copper Tetrahedrite Native aluminum Galena	Gems None
Rhyolite	Igneous Extrusive	Layer	Stone Brimstone Realgar Orpiment Stibnite Rutile Hornblende Alunite Microcline	Ores Hematite Native gold Native copper Tetrahedrite Native aluminum Galena	Gems None
Metamorphic
Name	State	Found In	Contains Stone	Contains Ore	Contains Gems
Gneiss	Metamorphic	Layer	Stone Graphite	Ores Native silver Horn silver	Gems Template:List
Marble	Metamorphic	Layer	Stone Graphite Calcite	Ores Malachite	Gems Template:List
Phyllite	Metamorphic	Layer	Stone Template:List	Ores Template:List	Gems Template:List
Quartzite	Metamorphic	Layer	Stone Cinnabar Graphite	Ores Template:List	Gems Template:List
Schist	Metamorphic	Layer	Stone Graphite	Ores Template:List	Gems Template:List
Slate	Metamorphic	Layer	Stone Cinnabar	Ores Template:List	Gems Template:List

Design Ideas

Standard key

  Key:
symbol  tile
 ·   -  Empty space
 +   -  Constructed floor, or top of wall section from lower level
 0   -  Isolated wall section
╔╦═╗
╠╬═╣ -  Connected wall 
║║ ║
╚╩═╝
 ╬   -  Fortifications
 X   -  Up/down stairs
 <   -  Up stair
 >   -  Down stair
 ▲   -  Up ramp/slope
 ▼   -  Down ramp/slope
 ,   -  natural ground
 ☺   -  dwarf

Entry Hall

For an underground trading depot...

A six z-level entry hall, 5 wide, 40 long, filled with traps. It is open through all levels, but has a ceiling at the very top. It is lined with fortifications, which are then lined by staircases, which are then lined by platforms full of food, alcohol and bolts. The end result is that my marksdwarves can move almost any direction they want up and down a fortification wall, firing down into a chamber of whatever threat may appear.

z0

    ╔════════════════════╗
    ║++++++++++++++++++++║
    ║XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX║
   ╔╩════════════════════╣
   ║▲                    ╚═══
   ║▲                    ·····
   ║▲                    Bridge     To Depot ->
   ║▲                    ·····
   ║▲                    ╔═══
   ╚╦════════════════════╣
    ║XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX║
    ║++++++++++++++++++++║
    ╚════════════════════╝

z+1 and up

    ╔═══════════════════════╗
    ║+++++++++++++++++++++++║
    ║XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX+║
╔══ ╩╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬X+║
║▲· ·····················╬X+║
║▲· ·····················╬X+║
║▲· ·····················╬X+║
║▲· ·····················╬X+║
║▲· ·····················╬X+║
╚══ ╦╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬X+║
    ║XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX+║
    ║+++++++++++++++++++++++║
    ╚═══════════════════════╝

I generally have the fortress guard barracks underneath this, separating my fortress from my prison, which is underneath THAT.

z-1

    ╔════════════════════╗
    ║XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX║
    ║                    ║
    ║                    ║
  ╔═╝                    ╚═══
  ║>   Room full of beds      To Fortress Spine ->
  ╚═╗                    ╔═══
    ║                    ║
    ║                    ║
    ║XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX║
    ╚════════════════════╝

Then, because the ceiling of my murderous entry hall is generally also the floor of the great outdoors, I also build the keep directly up out of the entrance form. The bottom floor of the keep is usually my barracks for my standing military, but it's also occasionally used for my control room, as there's a bridge at the entrance, and a bridge before the depot, to keep things from getting out. Or in. There's also usually lots of other things I have, like atom smashers and spikes. My keep is generally surrounded by the usual gauntlet of traps and marksdwarves from above. The whole thing can, of course, be streamlined for traders by the pull of a lever! I plan to line their path with statues to show how much cooler than them I am.

Jail Design

I've been looking at better ways of designing prisons in such a way as to more effectively rehabilitate prisoners and catch tantrumers before they cause too much damage. Some things I've noticed...

1. A restraint allows a dwarf a 3x3x3 cube of movement. This means you can have your jail "cells" have 3 rooms on three levels, increasing the number of nice things you can put around your prisoners.
2. Building a well somewhere in your prison complex will decrease the time it takes for water to be delivered to any tantrumers who may have been hurt prior to or during the imprisonment process.
3. Putting a barracks full of soldiers between your prison and the rest of your fortress may help. There are ways of escaping, and I like to be careful.
4. If a dwarf is unhappy for long enough, they'll go insane. Nearing the end of a fortress, dwarves tend to stay sad for a fair while. Any imprisoned dwarves who go nuts can be locked away (somewhat) safely if you put each restraint in it's own chamber with a door.
5. Expanding on the insanity thing, trapping your prison may be helpful, as could guard dogs. Although, I did that more because I had too much of everything. Mostly overkill by that point.
6. Expanding on the "too much of everything" tangent, I also designed my prison with a COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOCKDOWN lever. Just in case of an inmate uprising the game isn't normally capable of generating.
7. Just for the hell of it, I have been thinking about making a specific execution chamber for prisoners I particularly dislike. Is there any way to control what cell a prisoner is placed in? Aside from locking all but one?
8. To reduce the number of dwarves grabbing food/drink/bedding from your prisoners, you can put long hallways with restricted traffic designations. Then only dwarves who are way closer than (random large number) steps from the normal stockpiles or beds will go into the prison.
9. Another surefire way to prevent beds from being inappropriately occupied, is to assign a single low-value bed to all of your dwarves. This, of course, becomes a little silly when the economy activates, but it'll help until then.
10. If you want to be SUPER accurate, you could simply lock the prisoner's cell until he's free to go, but you'll have to keep track of the sentence, or you may find yourself with a pile of miasmiating dwarf-jerky in your prison, pissing off your guards.
11. If I were better at Dwarven computing, I'd try to make a giant adjustable timer that can open a prisoner's cell once their sentence is up.

Ramaban Prison

(Ramaban = Prison Construct)

I am currently making a very large fortress dedicated to the study of dwarven justice, prison, dwarven criminal psychology and general engineering. Mostly, I'm having a lot of bad luck in setting up a functioning fortress to support this, but I guess that just means I'll have guinnae pigs to work with. The current goals were designed to answer questions I've found in regards to prisons and their components from around the wiki. This list is still in the making, and says nothing about the tests I want to run on the military/guard. For example, what would happen if I were to... Say... Free twenty criminals at the same time? Also, I'm working on making the dwarven tantrum engine. It is essentially a sealed off chamber designed to make dwarves angry, commit crimes, and be taken to prison safely, without risking any harm to my fortress.

1. How many bars/rocks/sandbags/logs does it take to make a cage of different materials?
2. Can creatures breed in cages? (I already know this- No, but they can give birth if they were already pregnant.)
3. Do caged criminals need to eat/drink/sleep? If not, this may show an added BENEFIT to using cages in favor of restraints, due to the low maintenance required.
4. Will caged prisoners drown?
5. Will prisoners caged in magma safe materials melt? or burn, for that matter?
6. I must try to get a prisoner to break free from a rope. Beyond that, I've heard a chain of lead can be broken. I want to see if non-weapon-grade chains are breakable.
7. Will prisoners re-tantrum while imprisoned? If they do, what happens next? Do they just get a longer sentence?
8. Find ways of keeping the hammerer buisy.
9. Does a cheery prison actually make any difference at all? I think so, because if they have just a ton of negative thoughts, then the "is happy to be free" thought will become irrelevant as soon as it disappears, leaving the dwarf with nothing but hatred and anger.
10. Outdoor prison, to prevent cave adaptation from long sentences?
11. Prison security control room.
12. The execution chambers. For nobles mostly.
13. Communal prison designs, for the efficient use of food and furniture for prisoner happiness, their benefits, and their drawbacks.
14. If dwarves do retantrum, see if they'll attack other dwarves within reach.
15. Can creatures breed while on restraints? (Yes, absolutely, and excessively.)
16. Can restrained creatures fight?
17. Can prisoner dwarves fight? I don't care if they fight WELL, I just want to know if they can fight spontaneous attacks.
18. That bug where a restraint can be deconstructed, but is still somehow designated to it's animal, and cannot be interacted with any further. Can I replicate it? Can I replicate it on a DWARF?
19. If you put an animal in a cage and deconstruct it, the animal stays in the cage. Does a dwarf?

Fort Okilor (testdrink)

Okay, after reading this, I'm curious as to the exact details on a number of things. I'm setting up an experiment fortress, and putting the results here. I'll be uploading the save file elsewhere, for anyone who wants to see working examples of different well types. It is dedicated to one thing only. Wells. Okay, not just wells, but different ways of building and managing wells, and their properties.

1. The super-deep well. Because of alligator infested above-land, I cannot yet make a well tower to fully test it, but as far as I can tell, there is no limit to the functional depth of a well. The current super-deep well is 13 levels from bottom to top. The bottom level is at 6/7 depth. The well at the top? Perfectly functional. This kind of bothers me, because if I tied a dog to the chain, it wouldn't be able to go any father than 1 tile away. It means a rope's length is defined by it's function, rather than it's own properties.
2. I decided to build another well half way down the same shaft, directly in the path of the one above. It does not block the well above. Both function just fine.
3. I constructed a hatch cover even further below, again, on the same shaft as the first two wells. this, of course, blocked the wells, preventing them from functioning. I then connected the hatch to a lever, and pulled the lever, to see if the wells would suddenly become functional again. They did. That means we could use a one-shot pressure plate to close a hatch directly under a well when it senses overflowing water, preventing further flooding. I guess wells don't obscure because they're just a special hole in the ground. I read that grates, though they do allow water to pass through, will also obstruct a well. This is also confirmed. Personally, I'd say it's because a bucket can't fit between the bars, and leave it at that. Even so, grates can be connected to a lever, like a hatch. Don't know why you'd want grates in a well, but okay!
4. I've made a single large reservoir underneath the residential district, and put a well in several of the larger bedrooms. Multiple wells can draw from one source, no concerns. All a well considers is whether there is a single tile of 7/7 water somewhere below it in a straight line, with nothing obscuring. Also, a wide well reservoir takes FOREVER to fill. It's virtually impossible to accidentally flood your fortress, when it takes a half hour to go from 0/7 to 5/7. Oh also, in doing this, I've discovered that if you leave any stone on the floor of a well, and it accessible to your dwarves, it is elligible to be selected as an item for construction, from workshops AND architecture. My dwarves have been repeatedly opening the side door my miners used to dig out the well, grabbing stone for construction, and getting out before they drown. My dwarves are quickly becoming excellent swimmers, though my fortress' main stairwell is flooding. I've dug a huge sump to deal with that, and once the stone's been cleared out, I'll just lock the door. (hey, if they aren't drowning, why the heck not?)
5. I made a single-tile reservoir for a well, and just filled it from the large one with buckets. Just to see whether even such a small well is functional, given the rate of evaporation. With such a simple well literally directly next to it's source, yes, absolutely. It spams your dwarves with hauling tasks, but it will always be full to what your dwarves need, it will never overflow, it takes up almost no space, dwarves can't die from falling in, (Unless they REALLY suck) and you don't have to mess around with all kinds of complicated things with levers and floodgates and safely mining out filling pipes.
6. I tried to get a dwarf to try and fill a pond well from it's own reservoir. I simply forbade all the other wells' buckets. Sure enough, the carpenter came along with a bucket, took water from the only available well, the one he was filling, walked to the other side of the well, and dumped the water back in. To confirm, if your dwarves are filling a well from it's own reservoir, forbid that well's bucket AND rope. If the rope is still usable, they'll still use the well... Somehow.
7. By this point, a lot of the alligators had just... Kind of... Left? I dunno. There were five, now there's one. None deceased. In any case, it's much safer to go above ground now, even with the carp, so I'm going to make the super deep well into a super deep, super tall well tower. While making the well tower, the remaining alligator was killed by the carp. Okay, so, at 30 levels above water, I'd say wells have no depth limit, because this thing's still active.
8. In doing all of this, I've found a pretty effective way of avoiding flooding your well. Digging out and filling the reservoir first, and not even channeling a hole for the well, completely prevents the well from flooding. So long as you have something, like a flood gate, that can then be used to prevent further flow into the reservoir, it will be filled to 7/7 depth, with no pressure behind it, totally safe to mine into with a channel and build a well on top. It's making sure that there really is no force behind it that gets tricky.
9. Okay, my next idea is just sillyness. I'm going to make a well with a running water fall going down through the well into it's reservoir. Usually, I fill my wells from the side of the bottom level of their reservoir, but I've never filled one directly from above the well opening itself. If this works, it'll be a perpetual motion machine, waterfall and well, all-in-one. Oh, and of course I hit Hematite and lignite in the process of mining this out... Oh well, not like I really plan on playing this fort outside of well construction experiments... Okay, that didn't work. I'm-a gonna' save this now, and put it on DFFD, if anyone wants to see examples of what I've made. (Or if they want to make my perpetual motion machine work) Okilor Example

Preventing dwarves from falling down a well is actually fairly easy, from what I can see. I've had a well in my dining room and nobody's ever (to my knowledge) fallen in. Even so, that's mostly just luck. (And short-lived forts) So, to prevent dwarves and animals from falling into wells:

1. Put it somewhere out of the way. If your dwarves don't have any reason to path over it, they won't fall into it.
2. Surround it with restricted traffic control. Then dwarves will be less likely to actually walk over it, even if they do go through that area.
3. Don't make it a meeting hall, or people will throw parties at it, and dwarves don't really care about traffic, when they're on break/partying/nojob, because they aren't trying to find the fastest rout to their task, because they don't have a task. Also, animals like to ignore traffic control.
4. For the same reasons, don't put it in a meeting hall.
5. Don't put it in a barracks, or around other places where dwarves may be fighting for any reason, as dwarves don't look before they leap. Though, now that I'm thinking about it, it would be funny to watch a bunch of goblins go tumbling down a well... Hm... I'll have to think on that.
6. Making a well so it's at the end of a hall, with only one tile dwarves can stand on next to it, will dramatically decrease the chances of anything ever falling in. because then the only reason anything could have to go there, is to use the well, which does not involve standing ON the well.
7. Making a well's reservoir shallow, but wide, is also a good idea, I think. A wider reservoir holds a LOT of water, and takes a LONG time to dry out. If a reservoir is shallow, that means a dwarf will only fall one level or so, which can only cause momentary unconsciousness at the worst, from what I've seen of simple cave-ins. That means your dwarves won't fall down the well, break their leg and drown. Making an escape rout from a well is probably also a good idea, I think.

I noticed in the Well guide it says murky pools and brooks can be used as water sources for wells. This should probably be stated there, but just building a well over such a thing is a bad idea. Any dwarf who drinks from a well over stagnant water gets a negative thought about the nasty water. That water only becomes not-bad when you channel it to some other place. On the same line, I've also experienced that simply building a well makes salt water drinkable. Which means that desalinating by pump is not a particularly valuable bug, by comparison, though it makes a tiny bit more sense.

Miscellaneous Writing

This is just... Stuff... I wrote about DF.

Who Were The Seven Dwarves?

From the Perspective of Dwarf Fortress

Okay, so, in Dwarf Fortress, you always start with seven dwarves to build the foundation for your fortress. So, I was looking at the way the seven dwarves in Snow White were set up, just because of the reference. Around this point, I thought to myself, "Hey! I should RE-MAKE the house of the seven dwarves! That sounds like a challenge"

As I went, I noticed that the dwarves in Snow White behave a lot like the dwarves in DF. When they noticed their house was disturbed, their first thoughts were "A ghost, or a goblin, maybe a dragon?" which are, of course, present in DF, and fairly well-renowned dwarf-threateners. And when Dopey came hurtling at them covered in pots and pans, I could just imagine Doc shouting "A Bronze Colossus!"

I love the lyrics of High Ho, as well. They speciffically state that they mine thousands of rubies and diamonds to become rich quick, just because they can dig very well... But they don't really know why. They're just dwarves, is all! Which is exactly how the game plays! You try and build the best, most expensive place out there! Why? Because they're dwarves!!!

Doc inspects jewels and seems to be the leader, so I'm thinking he'd be the expedition leader. He probably also has skill as a gemcutter and gemsetter, which is probably his actual profession. Doc's also kinda' rough. He may have been more of a miner than the rest. Or maybe he was a bit of a soldier? He's good at holding a group together, maybe he was just Fortress Guard for a while?

Grumpy is the dorfiest of them all, opposing all things clean, soft, friendly and non-alcoholic. Which leads me to believe that he's probably their head miner, or perhaps their soldier if the need arises, or maybe he was supposed to be the leader and was later replaced by Doc due to a lack of social skills. In fact, I'm almost certain he was a soldier at one point or another.

I'm thinking sneezy is the grower. Just because that'd be hilarious. The guy who has hay-fever being the one who has to grow all of the plants.

Sleepy's probably their mason. Why? Because whenever I actually need my masons to do something, they're all sleeping, eating, drinking or off on break. So, who else would be better suited for the job? Besides, the only "stone" stuff they have is ceramic, which is a pretty hypnotic craft in and of itself. The guy probably makes masterwork cups in his sleep.

Bashful is extremely undwarvenly. But, I suppose I've had a few dwarves who could be seen as socially awkward. He doesn't seem to have any clear or obvious associated craft, so I think he might be a general craftsman, probably the source of all their instruments and fancy engraved furniture.

Happy's probably the woodcutter, just because woodcutters are almost never at the fortress, and no dwarf could stand someone that sunny all the time. Besides, he probably likes long strolls in the wilderness.

Dopey's probably the hauler, as all he ever does is carry things for them. He seems to lack any other skills. Though he may be a cook or a brewer. Perhaps a trapper or fisher. Maybe he just fills in the easy jobs when everyone else is too buisy? In any case, he lacks a beard, which kind of says a LOT.

Dwarves NEED beards. Without a beard, they're like... Not dwarves or something. The community generally responds to the concept of a beardless dwarf, by referring to him as a sexual deviant, a heretic, a rebel, an elven trickster, a goblin spy, or something to those sorts.

Also, these dwarves actually play the instruments they make. Which is a little off. It may be added to DF later, but for the time being, this sets these seven apart from the rest of dwarven culture. And it isn't like one of them plays it as a craft or something, they ALL do it. They sing, too. It's yodeling, which is mildly appropriate, but it's still singing and dancing. Which is... Kinda'... Elf-y...

And the ease at which six of the seven go along with Snow White's human cleanliness is also unnatrually undwarvenly. Dwarves are known to be quite happy, even extatic, when doused in blood, mud, soot and vomit! Also, Grumpy's opposition is part of my basis for him being the dorfiest of the group.

The whole lot of them are cowards to boot. Not a drawbridge or fortification. Not even a trap! It's like they have no interest in combat or self-defense of any sort, aside from running away from their problems!

In fact, it's also rather strange that they all live in a wooden house above ground, a fair distance away from their mine. Dwarves live underground, under the mountains and in volcanos! They come from the MOUNTAINhomes! Why do these seven choose to live, in fact seem delighted to live, beneath the bewildering blue expanse of the sky?

And they all sleep in one, single, oversized bedroom, which is actually some distance above ground! And not a single chest or cabinet, just their beds, lined right up shoulder-to-shoulder. The beds are assigned, so they must each stand as several overlapping rooms. Or perhaps they're rooms of a single tile?

There's something definitely off about this bunch...

So, here's what I think.

These seven were the weirdos in the fortress. The social deviants. One of them shaves, which is a HUGE deal, one of them's always cheery and laughing, one of them's always wasting time, laying around, one of them doesn't have a backbone to stand with, and the grower is definitely in the wrong profession. And the whole lot of 'em sing and dance around and shit. So, what do they do with 'em?

"Hey, guys! Why don't you head out and start a new settlement east of the human city! If you do a good job, it'll improve trade relations, 'cause they won't have to travel so far! Here's a bunch of picks and axes... And some wood! Have a nice day! GET THE FUCK OUT."

And then, aside from the rest of the group...

"Hey, uh... "Grumpy..." We know you're a pretty good guy, so you pro'lly know we're just givin' you bunch the boot, right? Yeah, we're real sorry 'bout that, but... You hang out with them all the time, and you do play that fruity wood organ, so... We're kinda' thinkin there's a little something wrong in that skull o' yours too. At the very least, watch that bunch and help them do a good job. If you do it right, you might be able to make the place a successful trading camp! ...Er... Yeah... Please put that warhammer down..."

The seven dwarves! A bunch of social freaks and their half-normal friend! Grumpy was supposed to be the leader, and wanted to make their settlement into a proper dwarven keep, so as he might go home. However, when the humans responded better to Doc, and Grumpy lost his position, everything changed. They left the mines, built a house and started living a perfectly unnatural lifestyle with a human woman. That's why Grumpy keeps trying to boss poor ol' Doc around. He still wants to make it work right.

So, what IS wrong with Grumpy? Well, first off, he's a friend with each of these other screwy dwarves. Which means he likes something about each of them. Which, in itself, is undwarfy, even if his own behavior is very dwarfy. For another, he's a master of the butt-accordion-flute-organ, which looks like a ridiculously convoluted instrument to play at all, let alone well. It's also the biggest, most attention-catching instrument they have. Also, Grumpy is quite opposed to anything female. He doesn't seem to have anything against Snow White being a human, but is almost outraged by the fact that she's a woman... Which is strange, because there's nothing manlier than a dwarven woman. So, perhaps he's the only dwarf in the universe to be divorsed? Maybe he's always been turned down for dates? He isn't gay, considering his reaction to Snow White's kiss. Maybe he's just like the rest of them, but is trying his damndest to be normal?

The Value and Nature of Dwarven Justice

Eventually, some dwarf is going to get it in his head that he's going to break shit and hurt people to make himself feel better. When he does, things can go VERY wrong. Early on, it could be the only dwarf with a weapon! Later on, it could be a legendary soldier, or perhaps the dwarf winds up killing the world's most popular cheese maker, making everyone quite upset. What do you do with such a dwarf?

Most fortresses have some form of military presence. But remember; these are not friendly people. They're soldiers! Hired murderers! Violent, dangerous, extremist even! If some tantruming dwarf gets on the bad side of your elite marksdwarf, well, Urist McAngrypants isn't going to be walking away from that encounter. And if the dead tantrumer happened to be the world's most popular cheese maker, that will spread an aweful lot of unhappiness through the fortress!

Dead dwarves make angry dwarves, who make dead dwarves. One way or another.

So, a good way of protecting your dwarves from your army is to have some form of justice running.

It starts with your sherrif. At 20 dwarves, you can assign him. He will work alone in his duties, watching over your small settlement.

The next thing you'll want is a jail. A place to put angry dwarves. You can use cages or restraints. Cages are the easiest to make, as it just requires wood. However, they make dwarves EXTREMELY unhappy, which would kind of perpetuate the problem. Restraints allow the dwarves a 3x3x3 CUBE of movement around their restraint. This gives you the ability to make prison a pleasant place, one which fills your dwarf's mind with comfort and wonder, pushing away the anger, hatred, sadness, depression, spite and other vile memories, and bringing the criminal back to a state of productivity.

So justice becomes a method of protecting your angry dwarves from the military, getting tantruming dwarves away from things they could damage, and turning them back to a happy state.

One should take note that chains, though more difficult to construct, are stronger than ropes, which tantruming dwarves have been seen to break free from... Occasionally.

Keep in mind, also, that without any form of prison, justice will be dispensed in the form of a beating, negating the value of making a sherrif at all.

The number of prison cells required is 1 for every 10 dwarves, rounded down to the nearest ten.

Later, at 50 dwarves, your sherrif will be upgraded to captain of the guard. He now has the training and knowledge needed to control a small army of soldiers dedicated to dispensing justice. This is a good idea. As a fortress grows, so does it's army, and it's problems. The faster your fortress guard can get to a problem that's gotten out of hand, the better off you are. A large fortress guard will respond to any problem before it gets truly out of control.

The fortress guard is a pseudo-military organization. They mostly wander your fortress and train in the barracks. Because they have no active duty, and basically only train, they can become pretty capable. Should your military and defenses fail in halting intruders, your fortress guard will attack them inside the fortress. So, in a way, the guard becomes a sort of failsafe for your active defense. Of course, if they happen to be near a military event, they will assist your soldiers in the defense of the fortress. Being less trained in real combat, they're less likely to survive, but every blade helps.

The hammerer is a noble dedicated to enforcing the fortress guard. If your guard is unable to adequately deal with a crime, the hammerer will seek out the troublemaker and beat them with the warhammer. This will most likely kill them. If it does, all of their friends will become upset. If it only injures him, it will make him EVEN MORE upset than he was before, and thus more of a problem.

The hammerer will only act if your fortress guard doesn't respond to a problem for a fair while. If you have no guards, no justice task will be assigned, and the hammerer will have nothing to respond to. However, any major problems WILL result in military action, which basically means death.

So! Make sure your fortress guard is of an adequate scale, are fairly well trained, and have adequate prison space. Make sure your prison is a very nice place. Do these things, and any violent dwarves will be safely imprisoned and rehabilitated rather than killed.

You need 1 fortress guard for every 10 dwarves, not including the captain, who functions as a soldier, meaning you can control him somewhat.

The Royal Guard is made available when you get blueblooded nobles. Barons, Counts, Dukes, Kings and their consorts. The royal guard's purpose is to defend these people specifically. They are a military organization and WILL kill anyone who causes trouble for them. Of course, they will by association, protect anyone around the nobles as well. So they end up becoming an additional full military presence inside your fortress. They also become another reason to keep your fortress guard in tip top order.

You need 1 royal guard for every 20 dwarves.

Nobles like seeing a well-oiled justice system. It makes them feel safe and confident. They couldn't care less about the army, so long as you have enough fortress guard, enough prison space and enough royal guard. Keeping nobles happy is a good idea, as they are dwarves like any other, and will tantrum if made unhappy enough. Of course, the value in this is questionable. Nobles do nothing but the most menial of tasks, which any and all other dwarves can and will do. They eat your food and drink your booze. They demand expensive lodgings. They make export bans and demand specific things be produced. If a banned item is traded, even if by accident, or a production order ignored, even if it's base materials are imposible to procure, the offending dwarf will be given a sentencing. If your gaurd doesn't have enough prison space, or is too buisy to respond in a timely manner, the dwarf may be beaten, or worse, attacked by the hammerer should he be present. Nobles control the economy, demanding taxes from the people who actually do the work, while they themselves do nothing but lounge about, fuck, eat and drink. If a dwarf has little work in his position, he may lose his home, or even the ability to pay for his meals. This makes said dwarf extremely unhappy. It also means that hard-working dwarves may be evicted from the lovely rooms you've built for them ages ago. All in all, it's best to have a fortress guard, but the royal guard and nobles?

Give them a lever to pull, and watch the gore fly.

What Good is Wood?

Early players tend to quickly realize that it is MUCH easier to dig out everything you need, than it is to build walls and floors and the like, and even then, it's easier to build things from the stone you recieved from mining out your accomodations anyways. This leads a lot of newbies to think, "What's wood really for, anyways, aside from beds?"

So, here's what wood is good for.

1. Beds. No, seriously, it's pretty important. You can't assign bedrooms without beds, and nobles want them. The value of nobles, well, that's up to you. At the very least, keep the useful (appointed and dungeon master) nobles happy.

2. Fuel. Again, I'm not kidding. Not every map has magma, and magma has lots of issues. You have to be very careful with it, or you could melt everyting in your fortress. You have to take care when finding it, to avoid flooding. You also need to worry about the creatures that live in magma, and the vermin that appear by finding it. Also, magma tends to be present in rather rugged, difficult areas to survive in, not exactly suitable for newbies. It's pretty hard to farm on a mountainside with no soil or water.

3. In HEAVILY forested areas, wood and stone can essentially become interchangeable, even if you're turning half of it into fuel and trade crafts!

4. Another kind of craft you can make and sell. Also useful if you want to start elven war due to bored soldiers.

5. Makes good training equipment.

6. Good for temporary shit like scaffolding, or stuff you intend to smash into oblivion. Also good if you want to start a controlled fire of some sort.

7. ASHES.

8. Why would anyone want ashes, you ask? Ashes can be made into lye, which is an ingredient in soap.

9. More importantly however, ash and lye can be turned into potash, which can be used to furtilize your farm plots! Keep in mind that you can store more lye in a stockpile than you can potash.

10. Potash can be made into pearlash at a kiln, which is pretty awesome if you have sand. Why?

11. With sand, pearlash and fuel, you can make clear glass. In a heavily forested, sandy area, this means INFINITE WEALTH, as you'll virtually never run out of trees, and CERTAINLY won't run out of sand. Sand bag production can be sped by weaving pigtails grown in the sand and fertilized with extra potash, into bags.

What I'd Like to See in DF

CERAMICS

1. From the kiln, have a "Gather Clay" option. Clay would be gathered from a "Clay Pit" area, in bags. The designation of which should be pretty obvious to understand. Actual clay should be needed. (Really, impurities in clay, unless controlled, can actually ruin the finished product)

2. There should be a separate ceramicist's workshop.

3. You should be able to make a pottery wheel out of stone, wood or metal.

4. You should have the -OPTION- of using a pottery wheel in the ceramicist's workshop. A ceramicist's workshop makes clay items, but a wheel opens the ability to make spun ceramics, which are of a higher quality. (Generally. That's pretty much why we invented the wheel.)

5. At the ceramicist's work shop, you should have the option of making plates, cups, mugs, vases, bowls, pots, statues, pipe sections, silverware, blocks, tiles, tables, chairs, bottles, etc.

6. A ceramicist can take any kind of stone and one piece of raw glass from your fortress and make a glaze from it. For serious. Glazing is badass, and can make a simple ceramic pot into a work of pure GENIUS.

7. Once a ceramicist makes a clay object, it should be placed in some kind of stockpile. I'm thinking bars/blocks? Maybe something new? In any case, they can't be used until tehy're dry, which just means leaving them there a while. Make it a month or something. A dry clay object should only be used once, and then crumble into dust. If they encounter water, they should just melt into a (refuse) clay lump. You should be able to turn dry clay objects back into clay, making storing them in bins a good way of storing clay for later use without bags. (hey, we can do that in reality.)

8. The ceramicist can glaze any dry clay object, increasing the value of the object.

9. Any dry clay object can be engraved and studded/encrusted. (If you make engraving goods possible, you should be able to do that with them too)

10. Any dry clay object can be assigned for firing. (The job is generated automatically from the designation) and a ceramicist will put it into the kiln to be fired. Up to ten items can be fired at once. Firing commences as soon as ten items are in the furnace, or there are no further firing jobs in the que. Firing a clay object makes it resistant to water and crumble-proof. However, they cannot be further decorated.

DINING

1. First off, dwarves should recieve a very minor unhappy thought from eating without proper dining equipment. Like silverware, or a plate, or drinking directly from a barrel.

2. We can already make cups, glasses, flagons and mugs, why not plates, bowls and silverware?

3. Dwarves should recieve an improvement to the value of a happy thought derived from dining. So, a plate improves dinging slightly, silverware improves it a little more, and something to drink from improves drink-realted thoughts.

4. Dining should be a somewhat social event. Dwarves should try to eat at the same table as any friends who might be eating at the same time as them, improving their social skills, and improving their related thoughts.

5. Drinking and eating should be combined, creating a single dining-realted thought, which is simply made more ornate, and more positive, by the number of things affecting it. At the very least, they should be able to do both at the same time if they need to, rather than doing one after the other. I can eat and drink in the same meal, why can't dwarves?

6. Dwarves with "cleaning" enabled should automatically carry their own refuse to the nearest dump before continuing with their own labor, unless their labor is closer than the nearest dump.

ROOMS

1. Give up on item-designated rooms. It's annoying and silly.

2. Rooms should be designated like areas.

3. The potential functions of a room would then be defined by it's contents, specifically furniture.

4. A single room, then, could have multiple functions, without overlapping furniture-room designations.

5. A single communal sleeping hall could be designated without someone claiming the bed it was designated from.

6. Using something similar to the T(ake) command in stockpiles, rooms could be connected as a building. The connecting designation could be called a hallway. So a dwarf could claim, (or be assigned) a building that contains a separate bedroom, dining room, bathroom, etc, with walls, all of them separated by doors.

7. Dwarves should be able to lock/unlock doors that belong to themselves, preventing potential theft. (See justice below for more on that.)

8. Using rooms, stockpiles, areas and connecting building associations, you could build more streamlined workshop areas, with multiple dwarves working in a single small area, taking care of multiple tasks. So you could assign a group of workers to a workshop building, and then their active labors would define their function therein. For example, a hauler bringing charcoal from the wood furnace's output stockpile, a potash maker making potash and lye, a furnace oprator making pearl ash and a glassmaker crafting clear glass items could all simply be assigned to work in that workshop building, and they'd fulfill whatever jobs appeared there without running off to do other things, unless their priorities dictate they drop everything to clean up a corpse or something.

PRIORITIES

1. WE NEED THE ABILITY TO PRIORITIZE OUR DWARVES.

2. A dwarf who has multiple labors activated will do whatever job is nearest, with some random variance. This is not good. A mason could spend YEARS making stone tables without completing a necessary wall, or alternatively, could spend far too much time working on an aesthetic wall, while the fortress goes doorless. Even if you have many masons, ALL of them will work on constructions, rather than manufacturing! At the same time! Building things and making things should be separated, labor-wise.

3. If we could simply numerically weight a dwarf's labors, we could have one mason who prefers to work in the shop, producing objects, and another mason who prefers to construct walls and depots and such. Or, if we have a mason who also does engravings, we should be able to weight him toward one or the other. (Can't assign engravings to a wall that hasn't been built!) Another good thing, we could have dwarves that care more about cleaning up the rotting mule corpse more than they do about smoothing a wall or hauling a chair. We could prioritize the manner in which soldiers fight, for example making archers more likely to beat enemies to death with their weapon, than they are to run off for more ammo.

4. We need to give dwarves the ability to interrupt one task for another. For example, I could have a mason churning out stone objects, but have the masonry labor interruptable by the cleaning labor, should a cleaning job arise. Or, better, have labors interruptable by other labors with a certain priority level or greater. So I could set things like "cleaning", "Health Care" and "Food Hauling" to priority 10, and have all of the other labors interruptable by labors with a priority over 9. And within that, I could have those individual tasks interrupt each other by their own weighted values. This would go a LONG way to improving dwarven AI, simply by giving us individualized control over our entire work force. (Coupled with the streamlined workshop building idea above, this could do some exceptional things)

5. We need to be able to do more with jobs. For example, job orders through the manager should be able to be repeated. That way a specific order can be completed, then reconfirmed, then completed again. The job wouldn't be canceled by a lack of materials, because it would just keep on being reapplied. That way if my production gets out of sync due to, say, a party, dwarves will simply wait for materials to become available and then continue on their merry way without me re-setting the work commands. Also, we should be able to give workshops specific names, so that we can assign manager work orders to specific workshops.

6. The kinds of tasks that count as labors should also be expanded. Sand gathering, for example, should be something that I can dedicate a dwarf to do. At the moment, my item haulers run around hauling crafts for AGES before they ever think of gathering sand. Controlling who can and cannot deconstruct stuff, who's restricted from depot trading if I'm not using my trader, who specifically cannot harvest, designated lever-pullers, designated depot-haulers, designated shop-haulers, animal hauling should relate to animal CAGING as well, trap cleaning should be defined by the cleaning labor or controllable, pond fillers, those kinds of things would be nice.

7. Miners should be programmed to identify the results of mining a tile, and ask confirmation when they see that a collapse would be caused. If a section of tiles is to collapse and a living creature other than a monster/wild animal/enemy is standing on it, he should simply refuse to dig/channel/deconstruct until the allies are safely off (Or out from beneath) that platform.

8. I should be able to set the preferred action direction. It is very annoying when a dwarf traps himself, because he MUST construct a wall from the left.

9. There should be some brains to the preferred action direction, too. Like, if a large mining order is set up in a circle, he should prefer to stand inside or outside of it, depending on how I have it set at the time.

10. We should be able to set up shift schedules for soldiers. Heck, we should be able to set up shift schedules for any designated job! For example, certain plants can only be grown in certain seasons, so tasks which use those plants should be deactivated once out of season, and then reactivated once in-season again. (Also, above-ground plants need seasonal growth patterns)

11. Hauling the rotten moose in my butcher's shop should be more important than the dead roach my cat just dropped at the far end of the mine at the bottom of the fortress.

POSSESSION

1. Currently, the manner in which items are acquired is a little fuzzy. We should at least be able to control the manner in which items in our fortress can be acquired.

2. All items, rooms, anything that can be owned, should have three settings, "Public" allows all dwarves to use the item, but none can own it, "Private" allows individuals to claim items, and "Capital" should allow that item to be traded within the dwraven economic system. Then we could somewhat counteract the negative aspects of the dwarven economy activating, namely EVICTION, by making public-use housing.

3. We should be able to assign anything and everything to a dwarf. It shouldn't just be defined by the furniture in his home when it was assigned to him. I want to be able to assign a single stone cup to a specific dwarf. Then dwarves could keep all acquired items wherever they want, with an obvious massive weighting to keeping stuff in containers in their rooms.

4. Dwarves should be able to steal from each other, from shops, from traders, from stockpiles, from anywhere. Any item that isn't marked as public should be steal-able. The likelihood of theft should increase as happiness decreases. The most likely items to be stolen should be based on their likes. Then we'll have ACTUAL crimes for our guards to deal with.

5. Trading and sale should be different. Individual dwarves should be able to trade items with each other. The higher their social skills are, the more likely they are to get another dwarf to give them a higher value item. They should also be able to spontaneously trade their own posessions with traders at the depot, autonomously of your fortresse's trading operations. Alternatively, individual dwarves should be able to try to simply sell their posessions for coins. They can do both of these things at stores as well. ("Hey there, booze-salesman! Wanna' buy my boot?")

6. Traveling traders and traveling salesmen should be separate types, occupying shops and depots separately. A trade caravan could carry several different groups of traders and salesmen, and each group should have some sort of product theme. The yearly caravan should just be it's own group of course.

7. Dwarves should occasionally change their wearable items, unless they're on active military duty. And be unhappy if they can't.

8. I should be able to give a que of orders to a soldier, as to what specific item he should equip, and in what order. Items that appear in the list should be public, private or owned by him, and not equipped to someone else already. I should also be able to specify item unequip... Kind of like assigning animals to a cage.

ENTERTAINMENT

1. Dwarves are boring. When they go on break, they stand around. When they throw a party, they stand around and abstractly socialize. We need to give them something to DO!

2. Let's make instruments playable. Dwarves who own instruments can play them on their down time, improving a "perform" skill. The higher their perform skill, and the more valuable their instrument, the greater a happy thought nearby dwarves will receive from the music-maker. The performing dwarf should gain a positive thought that grows in magnitude by the number of dwarves entertained. If performing is enabled as a labor, rather than something done by a dwarf on break or partying, other dwarves should occasionally throw him a coin. Dwarves should be able to dance to music. Dwarves should be able to dance with each other. Dwarves should also be able to sing along. Multiple musicians should spontaneously form bands if they befriend each other.

3. Let's make board games. They don't need to be anything in particular, just an abstract "board game" object. Then two non-working dwarves could sit down across from each other with a game, play it, and receive a minor positive or negative thought depending on whether they won or lost. For a bonus, have them keep score, and show how much they won/lost by in their thoughts.

4. On-break dwarves should have the option of going for a stroll around the fortress. This is where a restricted traffic fence around your fortress may prove valuable.

5. Dwarves should be able to visit/invite their friends at their homes, not as a party, but just the two of them chatting it up.

6. Give 'em tobacco and pipes and the like. Hookas, even. C'mon. Something.

7. A dwarven sport would be neat. I'm dying to know how dorfball would be played. For bonus, spectators. For a bigger bonus, in dorfball, the dorfball stick should be used to hit the person holding the dorfball.

8. An actual gladiatorial arena, with spectators, would be kinda' cool. You could train up professional gladiators, and it would make it much easier to deal with all those pesky captured animals.

9. Dwarves should have drinking games. Wastes alcohol, gives happiness and social skills!

10. Buildable stages, that performers can stand on and do their thing. Then you could designate theatres, generating consistent pay for performers.

11. Wandering minstrels.

12. Make a courting system, so jobless dwarves can ask out dwarves they like and go on dates, potentially leading to the lover relationship, with continued dates leading to the married relationship. (Hey, another thing to yell at them forwasting time on!)

13. Hookers?

14. This is REALLY out there, but I wonder if there's some way to make their socialization more specific, like, have them actually talk to each other about things. Then they'd be able to learn about different stuff through rumors and such. There we go! A gossip engine!

PAYMENT

1. How the hell does payment even WORK in the dwarven economy?!

2. We should be able to control the extent to which the DE affects our fortress. For example, using the possession controls as above, I could set an alcohol stockpile to public use, and have the brewery default it's product to public state, making all alcohol free and ownerless. In other words, we should be able to decide if our fortress is capitalist, communist, etc. Or, even COOLER, make it so the dwarves can decide FOR us!

3. In theory, all of the orders that are coming from you, WOULD be coming from the nobility, were they capable of it. So, in theory, they would be the ones paying everyone.

4. There should be an actual process by which the nobility pays dwarves for the jobs they do, and then taxes them through rent, based on the number of dwarves present, their current rate of income, the type of home owned by the dwarf and the general wealth of the fortress.

7. If there is a manager writing out orders and bringing them to workshops, it implies an actual, paid job, to whichever dwarf fills the order. This would make work and equivalent payment exist in the game. It would also give the tax collector the job of carrying payment from the nobility's wealth pile, to the people who did the ordered work. Maybe the manager should be made into a superior method of managing workshop orders somehow, giving us more reason to use it. At the moment, the only benefit is the ability to make HUGE orders, and the fact that the re-que whenever they get cancelled, until they're complete.

FARMING

1. Farming needs to get a bit more detailed. As it stands, I can grow strawberries just about anywhere, any time. Which is ridiculous.

2. First off, all plants need to have a land-type association. For example, certain plants need to be, (or have the option of being) grown in sludge, some go in sand, some like certain types of stone, etc. Also, the ones with multiple land-type associations should be weighted to grow better in certain types, and worse in others.

3. Plants should have light requirements. Some crops, like fungi, would do better with no light, while others, like grape vines, would need a fair bit.

4. Plants need water! Different crops should have different water requirements. First, they'd need a certain amount of water over time. Second, they'd need the water within a certain distance of their stalk. So one plant may need constant water presence within ten tiles of it's stalk, while another needs one portion of water every month within three tiles, while another plant needs 5 portions of water every week directly on it's stalk, etc. Then plants could be watered via creative irrigation methods, or by watering can orders of some sort.

5. The yield of a plant should be based on the skill of the grower who planted it, and the consistency of it's growth requirements being met. A plant should only die if one of it's requirements are completely unfulfilled twice over.

6. Farming equipment. We have fertilizer to increase the yeild, let's elaborate upon that.

7. A cycle or scythe should allow a farmer to harvest a stack of a plant as a single action, while he should carry them individually by hand.

8. A basket should allow a farmer to carry a stack all at once.

9. Beasts of burden, like oxen and horses, could be trained as farm animals, and if equipped with a plow, could be used to aid in crop preparation. Basically, the animal goes on the field and tills the tiles one by one with the farmer. Ground should be re-tilled, every season.

10. A hoe should increase tilling speed.

11. Using room designations as described above, you could control which farmers work where. You could dedicate haulers to specific locations of your farm. You could CONTROL IT.

12. There needs to be more kinds of plants. Seriously. We need plants that only grow underwater, plants that only grow in knee-deep submersion, plants that only grow on adamantium, plants that hang from the ceiling, (There needs to be a ceiling) plants that need headspace, plants designed for aesthetics rather than food, all kinds of plants! Give us variety!

13. Spices! Plants that can be turned into spices. A cook could add a spice randomly to his food, without decreasing the total ingredient number, while increasing the total value.

14. What about plants that can be brewed, like tea or coffee, over a fire?

15. How about plants that spit venomous barbs or paralyzing clouds when things get too close? You could (carefully) plant them in defensive locations as a nasty surprise for invaders!

16. If we made pots, dwarves could choose to grow plants of their own, as decorations or for food of their own!

17. What about smokeable plants, like tobacco?

18. How about a plant that can be turned into poison, for making deadly deadly traps, or poisonous blowdarts?

19. Or decorative plants for flower gardens, making dwarves feel more comfortable. (Which reminds me, benches would be neat)

20. What about a fungus that glows, to light the fortress halls?

21. How about being able to harvest fruits off of trees periodically, and even plant trees ourselves? Coupled with the specific growing conditions, it would make towercap farming more reasonable. Also, we'd be able to grow our own wood with time, should we, say, deforest our land, or start in a region without wood.

22. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, a lot of my problems with farming have more to do with the nature in which plants exist in this game...

COOKING/BREWING

1. Okay, the actual kind of food made by the cook should be random, like crafts. The grade of the meal should just determine the kinds of things it can be randomly generated as and it's quality/skill scale.

2. As I said before, I'd like to see spices in this.

3. If you're cooking, you need heat, which means fire, which means wood or coal. And smoke. Seriously.

4. What kind of food is generated should also be somewhat affected by the ingredients. I mean, how do you make a cookie out of JUST dog meat? Or a stew without liquids?

5. The random ingredient selector should be designed to try to maximize variance, regardless of ingredient availability. Alternatively, giving us the ability to specifically weight certain ingredients would also be nice!

6. A barrel of alcohol should be redistributed into bottles for sale via a bar. Dwarves should prefer to fill a drinking tool with alcohol, and sit down with their drink, rather than dunk their head in the barrel.

7. Alcohol should be treated like a spice, not a minceable item.

8. Cooks should be able to actually use water as an ingredient in multi-ingredient recipes.

9. Good recipes should be memorized and given names, and recur over time.

DECORATION

1. We need a bit more detail in decoration.

2. When a wall is engraved, it's treated as though it were an engraving on a floor tile that nobody can pass over, but only the room on the side the wall tile was engraved from gets the value of the engraving. Only one engraving can be done per wall tile. In adventure mode, you can only examine an engraving on a wall from the side it was engraved from. This means you cannot build a pillar wall engraved on all sides. You cannot build two adjacent rooms with a single separating wall, and completely engrave both sides of it. This needs to be fixed. Engravings should be designated to surfaces, not tiles.

3. We should have the ability to designate engravings upon furniture.

4. We should be able to designate engravings to CEILINGS. Basically, just an extra face on any tile with a floor tile on the z-level directly above it. If that floor tile were to be removed, the engraving and face would disappear with it.

5. We need more decorative items. For example, TORCHES TO LIGHT THE HALLS. Fireplaces to warm dwarves in the cold tundra winters, that kind of stuff.

6. If you can assign an engraving to a face, couldn't you also assign an ITEM to a face? So you could mount torches to walls, or hang a chandelier from a ceiling, or have painters make masterpieces to adorn your stairwells!!

7. I said you could make tiles in ceramics. I envision it as being a halfway between assigning an item and assigning an engraving. It'd be designating a mosaic, and a dwarf would basically use up tiles to create very high value images on the surface chosen.

8. You should be able to jewel encrust any engraving, if the base item is not already encrusted itself.

9. I'd like to see painting in the game, as I mentioned. Painters should be able to do murals, which are higher value than engravings but require maintenance.

10. Painters should be able to illustrate engravings.

11. It'd be cool if we could make stained glass windows with actual historis images.

12. Statues should actually be OF something.

ENGINEERING

1. Pipe sections. We should be able to build them together into tracks, to carry water/magma/steam safely. (Obviously, magma will melt-non-magma-safe materials) I think wooden pipe sections should occasionally drop 1 portion of water to simulate leaking. So we could run a pipe up through several open rooms without water leaking everywhere, or let dwarves walk through a hall that is technically channeling water. We'd be able to pump water through open space by building several pipe sections, rather than fifty-bajillion walls and floor tiles. There's really three ways I can think of to do this. You could make it so the pipe sections turn blue when they have water in them, and k looking at them shows the level, OR, you could just make it so a pipe despawns water with pressure from one end, and spawns it at the other end(s). Or, you could make it so that pipe sections can be connected to built structures, like mechanisms. So, say I built a pump in one place, and a grate at another, and just use two pipe sections to connect them in the same abstract way as mechanisms and levers. Then the pump's output location would be the grate! Input/output controls like this, even with hydrostatic pressure would be easy by simply checking input/output elevations! So piping any given thing to any other given thing would be easy! Heck, making power supply from windmills/water wheels as simple as connecting levers would really improve a lot of problems too! The only problem with it is that I wouldn't get the fun of having piping all over my fortress. And I couldn't do aesthetic stuff with it. Na', scratch it, let's connect pipe sections like axles and such, the first way I wrote. Just make a corner pipe and you're good to go.

2. With ten mechanisms, you should be able to make a clock, which can be used as a timer, and can have a number of time-based functions connected to all kinds of things. For example, every month the timer flips a lever irrigating crops for a moment, and then flips it back. This would remove the need for the enormous computing mechanisms players have been coming up with. (though it's absolutely FASCINATING, and they'll probably keep doing it anyways)

3. With an alchemist's lab, we should be able to make black powder explosives. Potentially useful for mining, war or FUN. And imagine the FUN you can have with timers and pressure plates connected to explosives!

4. I'd like pressure plates to be able to count how many creatures have stepped over it, and have it trigger at a certain number. At the moment, I'm doing this by having the plate drop portions of water into another chamber, with it's own plate in it set to trigger the trap after a certain number of portions filled. Computing, egh.

5. An elevator, or escalator, or something else would be neat... What I'm thinking of is something that allows you to move constructed tiles, like walls, in a specific way. For example, a labyrinth with sliding walls, or a giant bird statue with flapping wings that AREN'T bridges, or a rotating tower.

6. Steam engines would be nice. Option of using fuel or building it over open magma. Either way, requires water be piped in. Periodically spits steam and smoke. If we could make metal pistons, they could be used in it's construction.

7. Connecting a pipe to, and pumping water to a statue, should turn it into a fountain. Doesn't actually USE water, it just needs pressurized water being piped up to it in order to function.

8. Magma-powered furnaces and the like could have magma more safely piped in, rather than the issues of getting it right under the thing with channeling. Again, doesn't USE anything, there is no flow from input to output, just pressure.

9. Piping water to tubs and sinks would allow dwarves to wash themselves with fresh water without hauling buckets around. Positive thought bonus.

10. A water furnace to make hot water. Pumping from a water furnace to tubs and sinks allows them to use hot water. Positive thought bonus. Costs fuel, unless you're fancy with magma.

11. An actual furnace should be able to actually increase air temperature, (What do you mean there isn't any air?! Oh, we'll get to THAT) as should all fire pits, fire places, stoves and torches throughout your fortress. Connecting piping to a furnace allows you to control the temperature output location. You could internally heat your entire fortress. If you were insane. Total temperature output is divided by the number of output points. Again, warm dwarves would be happy dwarves. They should get a negative thought from being heated in an already hot environment.

12. Control panels like levers, but you can control multiple separate actions from the single object. For example, if you want to raise two separate bridges at separate times mechanically, two levers are necessary. With a control panel, a list of it's connected items are shown, and whether they are active/inactive, and you can activate/deactivate whichever ones you want at any given time. All of the actions are done at once by a single dwarf activating the panel once as though it were a lever. However, multiple functions cannot be put to a single command, as compared to a lever which can do a billion things with one pull.

13. Gear assemblies and the like should not vanish when deactivated by a lever. They should simply enter a "disengaged" state. That way, if they're supporting something, it won't come crashing down when you deactivate them.

14. I should be able to attach traps to surfaces, giving an extra sort of sense of how the trap works. So, for instance, I could equip ten crossbows to a wall, and when an enemy steps on the tile the wall is associated to, it would be like an arrow trap out of Indiana Jones.

15. Stonefall traps should only be attached to ceilings.

16. There should be an actual pitfall trap that can only be placed over openings.

17. How about a simple tripwire trap requiring only a rope, which simply causes enemies to fall down when they pass over it?

18. I'd love to see an explosive trap.

19. Clockwork Steampunk! Dwarves are engineers, but they do everything the hard way. Why not make them able to build clockwork soldiers or workers capable of only one task?

20. If we had pistons, we could make a piston pump, which WOULD have pressure behind it, and COULD pump water uphill, but requires much more power.

21. Metal axles.

22. Waterwheels should measure flow speed and give accurate power output.

JUSTICE AND CRIME

1. At the moment, crime is kind of silly. I mean, most "crimes" are just a dwarf who's blamed for not even being given any jobs that couldn't be fulfilled in the first place! I mean, it really only makes sense if a dwarf is tantruming. We need dwarves to actually commit crimes.

2. As I said earlier, unhappier dwarves should be more likely to steal items from other dwarves.

3. A theft crime is only notified if, A: The original owner sees the thief with the stolen item. B: The original owner finds the item in the thief's container. C: The original owner opens the container the item was in, and cannot find it.

4. If the item has not been seen in the possession of the thief, the guard will begin systematically opening the containers of other dwarves. If they find the item, but it is simply laying around, they return it. If they find the item in some OTHER dwarf's possession, (For example, if the thief left it in his friend's house after a party) that dwarf will be blamed. If they find it in the thief's possession, he will be sentenced.

5. Dwarves who grudge at each other should spontaneously break into fights if they are off-duty in the same place.

6. They should also be more likely to steal/vandalize each other's stuff, even if they're happy. And should get a happy thought from it.

7. I think dwarven emotions should be more complex. Dwarves should be able to fight over a woman they've both fallen in love with. (Alternatively, women could fight over a man)

8. Dwarves should be able to cheat on their spouses, not necessarily a crime, but definitely increasing the chances of one if the spouse sees the two together, or if a child is born from it.

9. Unhappy dwarves with absolutely no friends should have a very slight chance of kidnapping/raping. (Tragic and horrifying) Should set off the guard hunting for the missing person/rapist.

10. Dwarves with clashing religious views should be more likely to commit crimes against each other.

11. Dwarves made unhappy by things like "Was Evicted", "Was fined", "was lectured", etc.... Especially if they have little money... Should have a chance of attempting assaults on authority figures like tax collectors and barons, or even the king.

12. Murder should also be possible, of course, if they fight. But murder of a different type, the sneak-up-and-stab-you murder, should also be possible. Unhappy dwarves who have a specific target for their rage may attempt to murder said target in it's sleep, or by shoving them down a well or off a cliff, or by poisoning their food if they can obtain some poison, etc. Assassination should be a MUCH more serious crime than simple murder-by-assault.

13. With all of this potential for crime, your frotress guard, and maybe even your royal guard, will finally have something to DO!

MILITARY

1. Mounts. You got the NPCs to do it, come on man! I mean, really, all you have to do is make the rider flash his mount's icon, and have a related speed buff until he dismounts, at which point the mount animal will simply be spawned next to him, and he'll stop flashing.

2. We need to be able to make armor for our war animals.

3. We should be able to design a squad, assign units to it, and then assign a leader from the contained units. It would be a lot easier than assigning units to units in strange heirarchies.

4. We should be able to set the individual patrols and stations of the dwarves in a squad if we want, that way we can have a full team of dwarves with unique positions and duties, activated at the same time, rather than a mass of dwarves walking the same patrol together. Then it would be easy to put a full military into shift rotation!

5. We need an on/off duty scheduler. Something to automatically change the shifts so they don't get tired, and so they have time to deal with life outside of soldiering.

6. Dual wielding should be set up to function, man. We need unique dual-wielders cooperating with shield users and ranged units.

7. I'd VERY MUCH like the ability to assign specific items to be equipped to specific dwarves and the order they should do it in, without screwing around with commands and stockpiles and stuff.

8. It would be neat if we could assign them a series of different patrols/stations on their shift schedule.

MEDICINE

1. At the moment, dwarven medicine involves pouring a bucket full of water down the throat of an injured dwarf every three weeks for two years, while he lies in bed, doing nothing.

2. Make "Health-Care" into "Nursing" please. That's what it is.

3. Make an actual medicine skill, so that we can make doctors to deal with some of the horrible things that happen to our dwarves, and increase their chances of surviving.

4. We should be able to make anaesthetics to ease suffering.

5. horrible infections from acidic or venomous attacks should be amputatable.

6. Broken bones should be more easily healed with the application of a splint/cast.

7. Bandages (Pig tail) could be used to prevent a dwarf from bleeding to death.

8. Silk thread could be used to stitch wounds shut.

9. Nurses should clean patients if they're vommiting/bleeding/muddy

10. Increases the chances of a severely injured dwarf, like someone who got their leg ripped off, surviving, decreases recovery time.

11. A peg leg and eye patches and things like that can be given to amputees.

12. We should be able to make anti-venom.

13. All of this would be done at a hospital workshop. You designate which injured dwarf be brought to the hospital, and once he's there, you que up all the things that need to be done for him. The last items in the list are "release", which sends him home to recuperate, or "terminate", which just puts him out of his misery.

14. Actually, alchemists should actually handle the while anesthetics/disinfectants thing.

FIRE

1. Dwarves should not walk on fire. By giving any burning tile, or tile with a burning item on it, a traffic value of 100, no dwarf in his right mind would walk on that tile.

2. Dwarves should not pick up fire. If fire automatically caused an item to be forbidden and cancelled any jobs taregting the item it's attached to, no dwarves would pick it up.

3. Dwarves should not eat fire. Again, AUTO-FORBID, TRAFFIC 100.

4. The only thing dwarves should do with fire, is AVOID IT.

5. Things that use fire, like smelters, the ovens a kitchen should have, the torches we should have on the walls, etc., should all give off smoke, of course, to varying degrees.

6. Dwarves should be able to carry lanterns.

7. Fire should spread by wind direction.

8. If something IS on fire, like a dwarf, inactive dwarves should gather water in buckets and DOUSE IT. If a dwarf is on fire, he should try and get inside some water, possibly by throwing himself down a well, but preferrably by jumping in a tub. Fire fighting should be a labor.

9. With air, fire should replace it with smoke, making smoke a horrible thing, representing a gruesome, choking death. Exactly what it is in reality.

ARCHITECTURE

1. Okay, seriously? We've got to talk. What is the point of building a road? You can't place furniture of any kind on them. You can't build workshops on them. You can't build walls on them. You can't build bridges on them. You can't even build TRAPS on the fucking things! Also, the only difference between a dirt road and a paved road, is that a dirt road turns to shit. Roads aren't even an effective method of getting traders to spawn at certain places or take certain paths! Even if you build the road straight to the edge! Even if you build the road straight to where they usually spawn from, it's not even a slight guarantee! Ah, but a FLOOR! You can build certain kinds of furniture on them, AND you can trap them! If you need to do something like build a wall section on the floor-road, you can just designate that one floor tile for destruction. I can even make a floor road out of blocks! Hell, I can build arched bridges and overpasses and all kinds of nifty shit with floor tiles! But walls? Shit, you can't even build them over rocky terrain! Either make a GOOD reason for roads, like a massively increased chance of traders spawning on edge road tiles with depot access, make them more like ground tiles, or get rid of them.

2. Fences. Considering I'd like to see creatures with the ability to jump, why not make fences? We could use them to define corrals for stock animals, like cattle and sheep. We could also use them to restrict wildlife movement. The value? Cheap and very easy to make, a fractional wood cost for long strings of them, and take almost no time to make. Of course, building destroyers could walk right through them. Mostly, I'd like animal pens though.

3. I'd like to be able to use a statue as a support. Simply make it so that floor tiles can be built on, and supported by, statues. Then I can have a carriatid archway, without using an actual pillar, staircase or wall anywhere in the finished construction.

4. Speaking of arches, creatures should have the ability to see across z-levels, and rooms should be able to span z-levels, so that dwarves can admire my MAGNIFICENTLY ENORMOUS architecture.

5. Ladders/ropes. I would love to see the ability to make ladder-style objects. The basic idea would be that I could place a ladder in a location for literal vertical travel. I don't like how staircases work right now, and we'll get to that, but ramps are perfect. Basically, i think stairs, ramps and ladders should have different features. And, hey, I'd be able to make scaffolding out of reusable, pre-constructed components.

6. Speaking of scaffolding, there should be an actual scaffolding object, essentially the same as an up/down staircase, but takes almost no time and no skill to make/remove, and cannot go through floor tiles. I'm tired of essentially building mega-constructions twice over.

7. I'd love to build a functioning gatehouse. You know. WITH A GATE rather than a drawbridge! Something several z-layers tall that can be raised and lowered. I know that's kind of what bars were supposed to represent, but they aren't quite fitting the bill.

8. A proper sloped roofing, or even ANY roofing, tile. Preferably to deal with pooling/flowing rainwater, (Which is another missing element) rather than allowing it to leak through soil/wood roofing.

9. CEMENT. Just to prove we can.

10. Why can't I engrave constructed walls?

11. Why can't I engrave WOODEN constructed walls?

12. Or soap, for that matter! Or lignite! OR METAL!

13. Benches. A multi-tile single chair.

14. Long tables. Seriously.

15. I'd love to be able to designate swimming pools, rather than trapping dwarves in a room filled to 4/7. Then they'd at least admire, and possibly enjoy, the space I've constructed for them. Little cretins.

16. How about a feed troph for animals? I could control what kind of food is placed in it, and then animal caretakers would just bring the food to the troph, and I'd never have to worry about setting up special feeding stockpiles in my corrals or anything. Hell, if we're still designating frooms from furniture, the troph could be the room source/anchor! Then animal caretakers would have something to do.

17. There is no way of removing a carved downward staircase over empty space, unless you feel like having your miners cutting it off and caving it in. Which tends to result in holes punched through floors, dead/injured/unconscious/unhappy dwarves, items being thrown everywhere, and jobs getting cancelled left, right and center.

MANAGEMENT

1. The manager is a cool idea, and if done right, could largely replace a good portion of the micromanagement by putting general work in the hands of the dwarves, automating your fortress, as it were. It just needs a little expansion.

2. First, when you que a new order, you should be able to assign it to a workshop. That way queing the mandated bone crafts doesn't put them in your woodcrafter's workshop, bogging down his orders.

3. The manager should be the only way to guarantee the exact material used for the production.

4. There needs to be a way to make manager orders repeat.

5. In other words, using the manager should be the only way to make large production orders, to specific workshops/dwarves, out of speciffic materials. Otherwise, dealing with the workshop que itself limits you to ten items, which may be set to repeat, can only be qued one at a time, and may be made out of whatever happens to be nearest. So having a manager would become more important, as it would become a more effective method of managing certain things in your fortress.

BURIAL

1. I'd like to see a graveyard designation use not-constructed coffins as though they were bins to store the parts of one specific dwarf. Then it would, in time, and bad luck, eventually fill to a full block of just headstones. More like, you know, a grave yard. That being there, you could still build mausoleums and crypts and the like with your extra coffins. Then we'd have an actual reason to use a graveyard stockpile, rather than making hundreds of free-standing coffins.

2. Cremation should be possible.

3. The friends/family of a dwarf should visit his burial site, and do things like buy flowers to leave on the tomb.

4. We should be able to make tombstones and coffins separately, so coffins could be buried at tombstones, rather than free-standing in a room.

5. We should be able to designate lots of free-standing coffins as a crypt.