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Setting up a proper uniform set for your military dwarves is not easy. Happily for all involved, I made a post on the bay12forums which just tells you exactly what you need to do: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=124872.msg4185859#msg4185859. That post was part of a discussion about how to get marksdwarfs to use their melee weapons, but the spoilered bit is a step by step guide on how to properly equip uniforms. Feel free to ignore the parts that focus too terribly on crossbows and axes, though I do feel that remains the optimal setup for any military squad. I have reproduced the spoilered, step by step guide: Step 1. Escape out of any screens, then hit (z): status. Go to the stocks, and navigate down to one of the clothing options: headwear, bodywear, legwear, footwear, handwear. Ensure that in at least one of these categories, there is a type of clothing item that has as many free units as dwarfs you wish to equip; for example, if you want to equip six dwarfs, make sure there are six free shirts, or trousers, or cloaks, or whatever. If you do not have at least that many clothing items available, buy or create some then come back to this guide. I will refer to this item as, "S1 clothing," throughout this guide. Step 2. Escape out of any screens, then hit (m)ilitary. Hit (u)niforms, then hit (c): add uniform, and (N)ame this uniform whatever you like. I will refer to this uniform as, "S1 Naked," throughout this guide. Using the hotkeys visible on this screen, add the "S1 clothing item" to "S1 Naked," and do not add anything else. Make sure to also hit (r)eplace civilian clothes. Step 3. Escape out of any screens, then hit (m)ilitary. Hit (u)niforms, then hit (c): add uniform, and (N)ame this uniform whatever you like. I will refer to this uniform as, "S1 Uniform," throughout this guide. Using the hotkeys visible on this screen, add whatever uniform items you are going to use for the squad's combat uniform, and make sure you equip everything in the right order. I am not going to walk you through permit, size, shape, and other things specific to armour items: that is a guide unto itself. Just make sure that you assign the "shields," before the "crossbows," in the list, and the "crossbows," before the "battle axes," in the list. To my knowledge the optimal choices for each of these would be adamantine shields, platinum crossbows, and adamantine battle axes, but the material is not relevant to this guide. Step 4. Escape out of any screens, and find a place where your dwarfs will do their changing between the two uniforms you have created and any civilian clothes they might have. Make sure that this space can be sealed off completely from the rest of your fortress, such as with a door. You are going to define two burrows and two stockpiles in this area. I will call them "B1," "B2," "P1," and "P2," in this guide. Define an armor stockpile, "P1," which will only hold the specific "clothing item," that you chose for "S1 Naked," perhaps whatever other clothes your future military dwarfs are wearing. Step 5. Define the first burrow, "B1," to cover the first stockpile, "P1," and assign your future military dwarfs to this burrow. Wait a little bit for any hauling necessary to put the necessary quantity of "clothing item," in the stockpile, "P1," and visually check to make sure you have the minimum number you need before proceeding to Step 6. Step 6. Remove any labors that your military dwarfs might have, and they should go to B1 unless they are injured or trapped somewhere else at the time. If either of these is the case, then either fix those dwarfs or pick different ones. The purpose of B1 and P1 is so that you can order your dwarfs to go directly to that stockpile and limit the things they can interact with to only those things in that stockpile. Step 7. Escape out of any screens. Go to the (m)ilitary screen, and add the dwarfs in B1 to a squad, which I will call in this guide "S1," but which you can name whatever you like. If you do not have a squad, create one; if you do not have a militia captain or a militia commander, assign one from the nobles screen, then create the squad, then assign the dwarfs to it. Step 8. Assign the uniform, "S1 Naked," to the squad, "S1," by first going to the (e)quip screen, and then selecting (U): Assign Uniform, and making sure you use Shift+Enter rather than Enter to assign the uniform to the entire squad. Step 9. Escape out of any screens. Go to the (m)ilitary screen, then to the (s)chedule screen, and make sure the squad, "S1," is set to Training for the present month. You should probably just set them to train every month while you're at it. You should also probably break up that training order to include multiple orders for a minimum of two dwarfs, but the reasons why are beyond the scope of this guide. While you are in the schedule screen, set your orders for dwarfs to (u): Inactive = Uniformed. This last bit should prevent the dwarfs from ever equipping civilian clothes, which might potentially mess up your equipment order for armours. Step 10. Escape out of any screens and unpause the game if necessary. Open the (s)quads interface, and make sure the squad status for the squad, "S1," is set to (t)raining/active. The dwarfs in the squad, "S1," should dump what they are wearing and put on the uniform, "S1 Naked," consisting of one "clothing item" for each dwarf. Step 11. Escape out of any screens and select (v)iew, and then visually check the (i)nventory of each of your military dwarfs to guarantee that he is only wearing the single "clothing item" from the uniform, "S1 Naked," and nothing else. If he is wearing anything else, then you will need to create a garbage dump activity zone within the first burrow, "B1," and order the individual items he has equipped to be dumped. Proceed to step 12 only after the dwarfs are properly equipped with only the single "clothing item," from the uniform, "S1 Naked," to guarantee no problems. Step 12. Define a second armor stockpile, "P2," within your equipment changing area, and set it to only accept the specific types and materials of items you have designated for your combat uniform, "S2 Uniform," and wait for your haulers to deliver the items. Proceed to step 13 only after you have ensured that all equipment necessary to fully outfit your squad, "S1," in their combat uniform, "S1 Uniform," at which point you may also lock the door to the equipment changing area. Step 13. Define your second burrow, "B2," such that it encompasses both your first stockpile, "P1," and your second stockpile, "P2," and assign your military dwarfs, "S1," to this second burrow. Step 14. Escape out of any screens, and go to the (m)ilitary screen. Assign the combat uniform, "S1 Uniform," to the squad, "S1," and then unpause the game. Your military dwarfs should now dump their "clothing item," from the uniform, "S1 Naked," and equip the items from the uniform, "S1 Uniform," in the proper order. Double check that your dwarfs are properly equipped. If you followed the steps in this guide correctly, then the (i)nventory list for each dwarf should be functionally identical: the only differences for each dwarf should be the quality of the items equipped, but their order in the (i)nventory should be identical. If for some reason your dwarfs have not equipped things in the right order, then depending on how you layered their armour this might cause some things to simply not be equipped or to be ineffective. For the purpose of ensuring that your marksdwarf squad uses their axes (or spears or swords), rather than their crossbows, in melee, the only relevant concern is that the shields appear before the crossbows, and that the crossbows appear before the edged melee weapon. If you try this guide a few times, and it still leaves you with half-equipped dwarfs, then an even more elaborate method is to create a series of uniforms, where the first contains the first item you want your dwarfs to equip, e.g., a steel helm, the second contains both the first item and the second item, e.g., a steel helm and a leather hood, and so on, with each sequential uniform having one more item, until your final uniform is what you want the dwarfs to wear. You would then, over the course of several in-game months, slowly order the dwarfs to shift from one uniform to the next in the list, until eventually you end up with something like the uniform I described earlier in this post for my own military dwarfs. If you're still lost, then I cannot help you. Addamere fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 08:53
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Equipping dwarves is indeed super loving annoying, but by and large I've gotten them to wear the right gear: a full metal ensemble with a hood and cloak to boot (the wiki says you can layer something like 6 cloaks and hoods but I don't really have the leather to do that and it's hard enough as it is getting them to wear one of the drat things). The only exception is four dwarves in one of my squads who refuse to put on their metal gauntlets - there are about two dozen spare ones available - and of course every single battle their hands/arms are the first things to get smashed/torn/wrenched away.  Also I can see in their inventories that they have both their metal and leather gear equipped. It's just that I almost never see attacks getting deflected by the metal armour, even with high armour skill dwarves. It's usually the hoods and cloaks that crop up in the combat log, which is why I'm hoping that it's simply reporting the last layer to be struck, meaning the metal armour was beaten as well, and their heavy-rear end breastplates and whatnot are not just useless adornments. It's certainly true that when they're not wearing leather, I see a lot more metal armour reports instead. By the way, why did the developer think it was a good idea for dwarves to carry bins loaded with gear around when picking up one item? It seems like part of the reason it's so frustraingly difficult getting dwarves to equip themselves in a correct and prompt manner is that some rear end in a top hat is carting a bin full of spears and swords from the armoury stockpile around just so he can fetch a copper axe some idiot woodcutter dropped when he got shanked 80 levels down. EDIT: Come to think of it, it's really kind of dumb there isn't a specialized woodcutting axe that doesn't share a stockpile with military weapons. Drunk in Space fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 10:33
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Hot Sexy Jupiter posted:By the way, why did the developer think it was a good idea for dwarves to carry bins loaded with gear around when picking up one item? Why did the developer think it was a good idea for carp and elephants to be terrifying murder beasts? Why did the developer think it was a good idea to model every different type of creature's blood as separate liquids? There are just so many questions.
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Mar 15, 2014 10:40
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But at least with those things they just add extra detail or challenge to the game. Superfluous or overly difficult perhaps (I had elephants on my previous embark site and I never had trouble with them personally), but not especially egregious. Tying up containers full of stuff other dwarves need just to fetch one item seems like a really bad design decision, full stop.
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Mar 15, 2014 10:49
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Hot Sexy Jupiter posted:But at least with those things they just add extra detail or challenge to the game. Superfluous or overly difficult perhaps (I had elephants on my previous embark site and I never had trouble with them personally), but not especially egregious. Tying up containers full of stuff other dwarves need just to fetch one item seems like a really bad design decision, full stop. Yes?  Welcome to Dwarf Fortress.
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Mar 15, 2014 11:07
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Nietzschean posted:Why did the developer think it was a good idea to model every different type of creature's blood as separate liquids? Transfusions in a future update.
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Mar 15, 2014 11:24
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Shibawanko posted:Transfusions in a future update. "It's time to test what happens when we exchange this dwarf's blood with carp blood"
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Mar 15, 2014 11:28
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Nietzschean posted:Why did the developer think it was a good idea for carp and elephants to be terrifying murder beasts? Toady basically has one rule for creating Dwarf Fortress: more is more.
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Mar 15, 2014 11:38
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Nietzschean posted:I made a post on the bay12forums which just tells you exactly what you need to do: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=124872.msg4185859#msg4185859. That's an awesome guide, Nietzschean. Thank you. For posterity (and my own reference) I'm going to include here the list of ideal armor layering you put in the above post. EDIT: Oh, and I will try to remember that it's important stick to this particular order when specifying uniforms, as well. Nietzschean posted:steel helm EDIT: VVVVVVVVV Thanks for the material updates, Nietzschean. Ghostwoods fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 12:44
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At the time when I made that post, there was some argument as to whether Adamantine or Steel was the preferred all-around armour, but the layering order is correct. The axe should definitely be Adamantine in order to be the best; also, the crossbow and shield should be made of silver, so that their bashing damage is improved. Those last two upgrades are very minor, since the material used in the crossbow and shield do not in any way influence their primary use (shooting and blocking): at least in vanilla, crossbows made of any material are identical as ranged weapons, and shields made of any material are equally good at blocking. You could also upgrade the socks to Adamantine for a provably superior, if marginal upgrade; but, I think everyone here would agree that would be wasteful since even clothes made out of Adamantine eventually degrade.
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Mar 15, 2014 14:56
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Metal clothes only work by kind of accident right now. The ELASTICITY_WOVEN_THREAD tag that all ordinary clothes have caps the garment material's shear strength values to 20,000 yield and 30,000 break, only marginally stronger than bare skin. The only defense they give is an unusual amount of momentum reduction after the layer gets defeated, thanks to the titanic IMPACT_YIELD they have. It's a weird quirk in the momentum system that I'd have to explain with a wall of text.
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Mar 15, 2014 15:25
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Nietzschean posted:Why did the developer think it was a good idea to model every different type of creature's blood as separate liquids? So you can make each creature bleed different stuff. That way you can have a creature bleed blood that causes any dwarf that touches it to become covered in boils and attack anything nearby in a fit of rage. Syndromes are fun.
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Mar 15, 2014 15:26
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scamtank posted:Metal clothes only work by kind of accident right now. The ELASTICITY_WOVEN_THREAD tag that all ordinary clothes have caps the garment material's shear strength values to 20,000 yield and 30,000 break, only marginally stronger than bare skin. I would read it. By the way, no fun text in the thread name? I was hoping Dwarf Fortress: A section of the thread has collapsed! would make a comback. Zesty fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 15:34
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I couldn't come up with a funny joke when I was posting this. We can bother a moderator about it. The skinny of it is that cutting hits need momentum to first dent things (compare shear yields, then use momentum to make the dent), then start a cut (compare shear fractures, then use momentum to make the nick) and then actually saw through the layer, be it armor or meat (same as the previous, but multiplied by layer thickness). If at any point the weapon's yield or fracture strength loses to the defending material or doesn't have enough steam to see it through, it must try again with the starting amount of momentum, but using blunt force instead. Blunt hits first need to pass what I call the "punching a wall" check. If the armor layer's weight (this only applies to worn pieces of armor!) is more than [weapon's volume * weapon's impact yield / 100 * 500], it just bounces off without further ado. If that's passed, the attack must then dent the layer (determined only by layer's thickness and impact yield - the weapon's impact properties do nothing!), then start a crack (determined by layer's thickness and impact fracture minus impact yield) and then have enough force to shatter the layer (same amount of force as cracking). If the attack doesn't have enough momentum to defeat the layer's blunt defense at any point, it stops there and transmits muffled blunt force to the next layer. It's reduced by the ratio of the layer's impact elasticity and 50,000. [IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELD:25000] reduces the momentum to 50%, for example. More than 50000 impact elasticity, as we all know, makes the material give way easily. Supple materials like this only need to pay the very first denting cost before the layer is defeated. The weird part is this: when a hit with a specific amount of momentum defeats a layer somehow, it doesn't lose the amount of momentum it needed to cleave and crush through the thing. Instead, the next layer must face the original amount of strike momentum, minus only a tenth of either the edged or blunt layer denting cost, whichever was higher. In the case of adamantine clothes, the sword may cut through the cloak just fine thanks to the weird "but it's clothes!" force cap, but the amount of force needed the "dent" the adamantine (despite the garments being completely supple and elastic!) drags the hit down enormously with every silk-thin hood, cloak and sock it needs to defeat until it gets to the skin completely exhausted of force. scamtank fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 16:43
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That's a lot to process. Does that mean I would be better off with metal clothing than armor in some cases?
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Mar 15, 2014 18:33
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Whats a tower do when you embark near it? I thought those were all controlled by Necromancers, but in that case shouldn't it have a red line next to it indicating hostility? Is it abandoned or does the red line just not show up for towers because they aren't a proper civ or something?
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Mar 15, 2014 18:53
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I believe that may mean that the necromancer in the tower is not hostile to you at the moment. It is possible to encounter goblin civs, for example, who are not hostile initially, as seen in that picture. Edit: Actually I'm blind, the goblins are hostile to you there but you can find non-hostile ones, or at least I have. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 19:29
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Met posted:That's a lot to process. Does that mean I would be better off with metal clothing than armor in some cases? If the shirts and cloaks and other clothes had ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL (strain at yield set to 50000, but other material strengths maintained), they'd all pull the weight of chain mail and then some. As it stands? If you pile on the theoretical maximum compared to a standard chain & plate mail combo, possibly. I haven't tested it at all personally.
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Mar 15, 2014 19:31
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   While reading http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~ekalnay/pubs/handy-paper-for-submission-2.pdf "A Minimal Model for Human-Nature Interaction" which talks about societal collapse scenarios, I laughed when it reminded me so much of DF. I thought the thread might get a kick out of the model since it seems very applicable to DF's world.
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Mar 15, 2014 21:34
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I am a bit of a dwarf sperg, but what the hell are those graphs.
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Mar 15, 2014 21:55
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Economic cycle charts, as far as I can tell. Charting the overall strength of the economy (which is a rough approximation of productivity) as well as contributors (such as worker pool availability). Dwarf fortress would, obviously, function similarly to reality in some ways, as it has consumer classes, a producer class, and all sorts of fun spanners to throw in the works. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 22:00
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Internet Kraken posted:Whats a tower do when you embark near it? I thought those were all controlled by Necromancers, but in that case shouldn't it have a red line next to it indicating hostility? The red line means that civ is currently hostile to you, goblins and the half elves it looks like.
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Mar 15, 2014 22:01
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The red line is for unreconciliable differences, I think. Babysnatching and the like come before you can even start arguing about ethics. If they're at war for normal people reasons, it reads there plainly. In any case, towers aren't really civilizations and don't subscribe to normal diplomacy. Imports: Zombies. Exports: Exorcism. scamtank fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 22:11
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I'm still kinda new to DF, I just had a few necromancers show up outside my fort, am I in for FUN?
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Mar 16, 2014 01:39
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No, they're harmless, see if you can coax them into your refuse pit, they'll clear it out for you and be on their way. Win/win!
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Mar 16, 2014 01:41
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Bad Munki posted:No, they're harmless, see if you can coax them into your refuse pit, they'll clear it out for you and be on their way. Win/win! Welp my fortress just went from 75 dwarves to 6 dwarves. Iv sealed off the lower levels were the necromancers went to and am waiting for more migrants to start rebuilding.
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Mar 16, 2014 06:45
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Honestly a good dwarf genocide, where I end up with only a few survivors, tends to be good for my fortress. After some gameyears of playing it tends to become a chaotic mess where I don't remember who does what and where they live. Then when migrants show up again I can neatly categorize them according to profession and bedroom, and they have a whole prebuilt fortress to themselves.
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Mar 16, 2014 08:35
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Exactly, it's like Logan's Run. Dropping dwarves in lava is very important for efficiency. And you've just given me a great idea for a fort: outdoor, jungle, step pyramids. For some reason I really enjoy building remakes of ancient civilizations in this, I already made a 200 dwarf Egyptian style city with a great pyramid and lashers to keep the unruly dwarves in line.
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Mar 16, 2014 11:53
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I had an interesting encounter with df's water physics yesterday. I dug a pipe underground connecting my hospital to the brook. Sadly, the floodgate I installed was by-passed by poor digging management on my side, and I flooded the hospital (I managed to get the door forbidden and tightly closed before it spread to the rest of the fortress: I didn't realise doors were water tight!) My recovery plan was to dig a pit, drain some water into it and while the water level was low, install a new floodgate in the correct spot. This plan sort of worked, but cost me a few miners, and the water level never got low enough in the pipe for me to install the gate. However, it did get low in the hospital. low enough that the water in the hospital all evaporated and it was fine to use. Can someone explain to me how this works? The brook I'm drawing from is still above my hospital (in terms of elevation), why did the water pressure just stop? Is there anything I need to avoid which could remind the game to drown my hospital?
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Mar 16, 2014 12:48
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I think water pressure has trouble with diagonals.
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Mar 16, 2014 12:51
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Bitter Mushroom posted:Exactly, it's like Logan's Run. Dropping dwarves in lava is very important for efficiency. And you've just given me a great idea for a fort: outdoor, jungle, step pyramids. For some reason I really enjoy building remakes of ancient civilizations in this, I already made a 200 dwarf Egyptian style city with a great pyramid and lashers to keep the unruly dwarves in line. Try Ziggurats. Then you can perform bloody Elf sacrifices on the top of them to Armok.
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Mar 16, 2014 13:27
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Bitter Mushroom posted:Exactly, it's like Logan's Run. Dropping dwarves in lava is very important for efficiency. And you've just given me a great idea for a fort: outdoor, jungle, step pyramids. For some reason I really enjoy building remakes of ancient civilizations in this, I already made a 200 dwarf Egyptian style city with a great pyramid and lashers to keep the unruly dwarves in line. It's weird when that stagnation happens. In theory, I have a ton of skilled dwarves walking around, but it gets harder and harder to make them do what you want when you want it. The hospital and healthcare services in general are a casualty when my fortress becomes bigger and bigger and urgent tasks get queued to some dwarf halfway across the map. It helps to just kill off the dwarven apparatchiks that clog up the system, magma dump all of the stuff you dont need and start off with a new strain of dwarves.
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Mar 16, 2014 13:38
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Or just turn on fastdwarf and stop giving a poo poo! (don't do this if you have a fishery or you'll rapidly accumulate 1000+ raw fish)
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Mar 16, 2014 14:13
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DDDEEEVVVLLLOOOGGGToady One posted:I went ahead and loosened up the artificial restrictions I had in place in terms of which types of civilizations could attack which sites, in that they are gone. It is all based on ethics now, so that humans and goblins are much more likely to fight their own same-culture sites, whereas the dwarves don't march off and attack anybody without cause (but they'll proactively defend themselves once they are at war). We'll see if that explodes in some way. I also finalized abstract tribute/homage agreements, which don't do much of anything but stop certain fights from happening at this point, but that's okay.
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Mar 16, 2014 14:39
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That is a solid guide for equipping squads, I've lost a couple forts to naked defense forces getting mutilated. Thanks for posting it!
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Mar 16, 2014 19:14
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But using adamantine for cloaks seems so wasteful if it's just going to wear down and become useless after a while. And there's no way to prevent wear right?
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Mar 16, 2014 19:18
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Shibawanko posted:But using adamantine for cloaks seems so wasteful if it's just going to wear down and become useless after a while. And there's no way to prevent wear right? I'm pretty sure that you can't prevent wear, so adamantine clothing is a really expensive investment.
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Mar 16, 2014 19:34
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Shibawanko posted:But using adamantine for cloaks seems so wasteful if it's just going to wear down and become useless after a while. And there's no way to prevent wear right? Artifacts are immune to wear, but that's probably not a useful approach: trick game into believing that you have twenty artifact adamantine cloaks ... fortress wealth rises by several billion ... next migration wave includes 206 cheesemakers.
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Mar 16, 2014 19:36
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I think the bottom line with this game is just that melee combat should be avoided completely if you want to keep your fort happy and safe. You don't even need a lot of armor, just concentrate on hermetically sealing your fort off and reducing dependency on the outside world and give your marksguys a place to shoot from behind fortifications. Of course elite goblin bowmen will still kill them through fortifications, but everything else should be easy game this way.
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Mar 16, 2014 19:50
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Shibawanko posted:But using adamantine for cloaks seems so wasteful if it's just going to wear down and become useless after a while. And there's no way to prevent wear right? Yeah, it's an enormous waste. You'd have to be drunk and mad to do so. Nobody asked if it was a sane thing to do, though! As far as I know, wear is controlled by the ARMORLEVEL tag. It doesn't contribute to actual protective level anymore, but it dictates what the AI will do with it. Level 0 is civilian crap that wears out with use, 1-3 are varying grades of martial gear. The tag [METAL_ARMOR_LEVELS] gives the garment +1 to its armor level if it's made from metal instead of leather or cloth. Now, the million dollar question is whether it applies to armor level zero or if adamantine cloth is some kind of a weird kludged exception that doesn't count or not.
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Mar 16, 2014 19:51
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