DF: Palelabor 56k (Go Away- Restarted Game, New Thread!)

[Covenant]

It's not really breaking SoD. If an enemy was faced with a sheer cliff-face and didn't know which entrance was the proper one, they would reliably have a hard time finding the way in. Goblins may not be smart enough to send advance scouts!

But, okay, I understand. We can still make an indoor magma moat, can't we?

[Stark]

Awesome. So simply building a one-square tunnel like an S-bend that leads a killzone would work once we close the front door? Seems like a less effort-intensive method than experimenting with lots of crazy and useless caves.

EDIT - wow, it sounds like the pathing AI is hopeless (sorry, going into a cave and dying, then going in again, is retarded, moreso when there's other goals around). In that case, it's going to be hard NOT making an impervious defence without deliberately crippling yourself.

How long does it take to manufacture/install traps? I'm not really happy with the idea of digging a holy, filling it with expensive traps and then laughing at the lame AI. Nobody is levelling out of that!

[Covenant]

Here's a less IC breaking thing--could we cut out the front of the cliff on both sides of the entrance and build up a big line of arrow-slits? We could fire at them long before they even get near to entry, and then the dwarves could turn to their left or right, man the interior slits, and continue firing as they try to cross our moat.

[Stark]

Since the gobbos can't break doors, just put doors on the front and offer them a second way in, both small and jam it with traps as time permits. Since it actually DOES let them in EVENTUALLY we won't have as much sploit-guilt.

[Duckie]

Yes, however, the idea that the enemy would not break down the main gate when the S-bend proved a bad idea is a bit silly. However, I intend to construct fortifications similar to that idea, with the exception that there will be a possibility of goblins actually entering the base. A dead end S-Bend with the illusion of being able to get in provided by firing ports and an invincible-to-light infantry sealed stone door is a bit exploitive of the currently sub-par siege AI.

Goblins may be dumb but they certainly are sentient enough to know when to retreat for their worthless lives and how to skulk through obstacles like doors.

However, once they start to actually siege with small armies of a few score goblins, beak dog riders, and especially trolls, the AI exploitive capability drops significantly, as the Trolls are tough enough to break the gates/doors.

[Stark]

Oh hey I'm all for letting the s-bend actually enter the base: just at a place of our choosing, and single file. It's a legitimate, non-AI sploiting tactic, and I'm not going to encourage a fake entrance full of nothing but traps to kill the poor hopeless buggers. We need all the warrior levels the gobbos want to give us, we just want good odds beforehand.

It sounds like you've got it all under control defence-wise,though.

[Duckie]

Oh hey I'm all for letting the s-bend actually enter the base: just at a place of our choosing, and single file. It's a legitimate, non-AI sploiting tactic, and I'm not going to encourage a fake entrance full of nothing but traps to kill the poor hopeless buggers. We need all the warrior levels the gobbos want to give us, we just want good odds beforehand.

Oh indeed, if I were to do the fortress again I would dig all the way to the river in a single file, bridge the river, and then trap the hell out of the entrance adding tunnels from my fortress' over-the-river end with no way in from the outside to it. Use them to shoot out at the enemy. Now that is a defense, my friend. However, I don't want to actually utilize the AI's lack of intelligence against it. There's a fine line between a good defensive line utilizing sensible things such as firing ports, chokepoints and rabid attack dogs and a defensive line exploiting AI tendencies like their inability to unlock doors short of a 12 foot tall monster capable of ripping bridges in half.

It sounds like you've got it all under control defence-wise,though.

Not so much right now, and the fact that our fortress is built right fucking close to the wall due to my newbieness when I started just a few days ago is a bit bugging me. It's why I was trying to think of a way to collapse the damn thing (caveins aren't reliable enough in filling the entire thing) and restructure it as a 1-wide corridor filled with nasty ideas like ballistae, crossbow firing ports and pressure plates.

If anyone has a good suggestion on how to do that, I'd like to hear it. Rewalling is desperately needed as a function, we should be able to tear it down and rebuild it as a trench.

[Stark]

Well later on you can just up and move all the shit to new rooms, leaving the current area empty. It's a pretty grandiose defence, not really suited to the twenty-odd guys we've got now. At worst it'll be a pile of rooms to fill with traps later. Until the serious attacks come I don't think it'll be a problem, though.

[Duckie]

Well yeah but the 1-corridor wide thing is a very key part. Goblins walking through an empty outpost is good for us. Goblins walking single file, tripping over eachother in a tiny cleft we chipped to the cave river in order to set up our fortress behind a retractable bridge is even better.

Ah well, coulda' shoulda' woulda'. While I will be studying the layout of the fortress to determine feasability in conversion to a defensive buffer and refrain from expanding any more in the current cis-caveriver region in favour of expanding greatly in the transcaveriver. There's always room for improvement, like the fact that I pussied out and did not select the location with bellicose undead elephant hordes.

Cause you guys know that would have been awesome. I kick myself every day for not restarting once I saw how pathetic this "Untamed Wilderness" was and selecting one with zombie warthogs and fuckin' skeletal deer.

[GuppyShark]

Goblins walking through an empty outpost is good for us. Goblins walking single file, tripping over eachother in a tiny cleft we chipped to the cave river in order to set up our fortress behind a retractable bridge is even better.

We could always dig a ditch and create a 'loop' of water around the front of the cave, and build a bridge over that.

[Duckie]

Goblins walking through an empty outpost is good for us. Goblins walking single file, tripping over eachother in a tiny cleft we chipped to the cave river in order to set up our fortress behind a retractable bridge is even better.

We could always dig a ditch and create a 'loop' of water around the front of the cave, and build a bridge over that.

Or better yet, we could flood the entire front cave (essentially turning it into a big ditch full of water) and build a tiny rickety bridge over it! Then we can use the unflooded areas, conveniently walled off via strategic repeated caveins until a block of rock falls in the correct spot (making sure to evacuate the miner each time)!

This is a good idea. God damn I am a genius! We could even use the very same water to link into a moat. Unfortunately, the bridge must be at least 3 wide or our trade depot must be on the other side of it, as mule and horse teams bringing 3x3 wagons is essential for trade.

Perhaps we could have three 1-wide bridges and retract two of them in case of war? The remaining bridge would give us nearly 50 squares worth of fun. However, on the downside, trapping the surface of a bridge is probably not possible. I will have to look it up / try in another file.

[Covenant]

Goblins walking through an empty outpost is good for us. Goblins walking single file, tripping over eachother in a tiny cleft we chipped to the cave river in order to set up our fortress behind a retractable bridge is even better.

We could always dig a ditch and create a 'loop' of water around the front of the cave, and build a bridge over that.

==DAMN, you beat me to it!=

Or build a bunker.

Why redo the whole thing? Have all the fancy shit in the keep, which is accessible to the main 'civilian' fortess via a single file S-bend or directly to the outside via a single-file line with the occasional S bend off and onto it again This gives us a lengthy snaking corridor that is easy to control, yet the advantages of a base close to the front, where we can keep a variety of low-value things such as shops (not anvils), barracks rooms, and kennels full of attack dogs.

And we'd dig a new area -> that way over the bridge and possibly over whatever else is out there and put our main base behind that. It would be self-sufficent via a channel of water allowing us to do all our work down there, and we'd only have traffic to-and-fro from dedicated haulers. But a large enough stockpile of wood, food and stone will keep us from needing to spam haulers. We could also did a massively long corridor perpendicular to our keep and use that as a refuse pile, so there'd never even be a need to have that area accessible by the outside. It would be our Ceyenne Mountain Complex. Dwarven NORAD.

Also, I would leave the Depo outside. You don't want them tracking in Hydras or Elephants or something.

[Duckie]

And we'd dig a new area -> that way over the bridge and possibly over whatever else is out there and put our main base behind that. It would be self-sufficent via a channel of water allowing us to do all our work down there, and we'd only have traffic to-and-fro from dedicated haulers. But a large enough stockpile of wood, food and stone will keep us from needing to spam haulers.

Heh, we could do better than that. Stone isn't self-renewing, but it is basically inexhaustable. Wood can be grown in mushroom forests on the far side of the river (Tower Caps are basically underground trees that eat like fungi instead of plants), as can huge irrigated farms for food. We could have a self-sufficient fortress if we wanted, but of course where's the fun in starving invaders out in a siege? Glorious combat is more entertaining than "Goblins outside have massed to 100, gotten bored, and walked off. Score 1 for raised drawbridge!"

(Of course, Trolls could potentially wade through the river and break the bridge, making a hole in our defenses open, allowing them in (and the goblins and such, if they don't drown trying to cross. Another possibility would be Kobold or Goblin thieves infiltrating and pulling the lever to lower the bridge, although the current AI is not that cunning as far as I know to do so intentionally. And to a Collosus or Dragon that defense is rather useless except for the current exploit that lowering a drawbridge instagibs anything, even the equivalent of a Balrog. But overall Vault 11 Palelabor would be far more boring than Palelabor The Bloody. The Manual of Dwarf Fortress says "Losing is fun", and I extend that to losing some of you ingrates )

Also, I would leave the Depo outside. You don't want them tracking in Hydras or Elephants or something.

While not opposed as such to merely leaving the trade depot outside, I object to the implied idea of letting caravans fight off enemies themselves. Trade Caravans are notably vulnerable even to wild animals, let alone armies. If we don't protect the caravans once they enter our territory, they'll stop coming. And if we let enough of them die, they could get pretty pissed at us. I don't know about you, but dudes twice as tall as us swinging weapons bigger than we are sounds pretty scary. Worse than goblins, at least.

[Nephtys]

One interesting defense system for both internal and external defense is... the Bridge of Death. Let me explain.

Drawbridges it seems, don't have to be placed on water. They can go into hallways just fine. So? Make a long hallway as a chokepoint, it can be 2 or 3 wide even if this is for the main entrance. Build a huge drawbridge that's as long as can be, the tie it to a mechanism lever conveniently placed at every guardhouse or populated area. Keep the bridge up at normal times.

If bad stuff appears, squish it with the damn bridge.

[Duckie]

One interesting defense system for both internal and external defense is... the Bridge of Death. Let me explain.

Drawbridges it seems, don't have to be placed on water. They can go into hallways just fine. So? Make a long hallway as a chokepoint, it can be 2 or 3 wide even if this is for the main entrance. Build a huge drawbridge that's as long as can be, the tie it to a mechanism lever conveniently placed at every guardhouse or populated area. Keep the bridge up at normal times.

If bad stuff appears, squish it with the damn bridge.

I object on the moral grounds that the AI does not have the current knowledge that drawbridges can be lowered on their head (and thus the sense to avoid standing under it) and that the drawbridge is instant death (which makes sense for goblins and foul blendecs and maybe even trolls. For Zombie Elephants or Skeletal Giant Leopards a 6-headed Hydra or Tentacle Demons? Not so much.))

While valid in that it is realistic, it somewhat sidesteps the entire idea of fighting, similar to constructing a magma channel that incinerates the entire outside area upon your lever pull*, and a second pull to dump water from the river outside if the magma fluid dynamics fuck up and it permafloods. While perhaps in somewhere full of evil like Boatmurdered where the gates were permanently slicked in blood and the fortress was under attack more often than not from internal madness and outside evil... our location is rather pathetic. Our death count is a ridiculous 0.00099 deaths per day**, and Spanky died because of his own mental conditions, not because of any outside influence except that of the Random Number God ARMOK himself. I'd feel bad if we escalated to abusing the poor AI like that.

*Ignoring the fact that realism is broken by the current lack of realistic fluid dynamics (which Toady plans to address in one of the next few versions) exemplified by the fact that all rivers, magma or water, have infinite volume constrained only by their current flow borders and one could concievably fill an infinite area full of magma by constructing a magma channel to the river and dumping magma out all day. It would flow uphill, downhill, and never run out.

** Actually, in absolute terms we have -0.030754 deaths per day if one counts immigration. As far as I'm concerned, population growth is more important than fatalities. If 5 people die to make us safe and 12 people arrive because the dwarf trade caravan reports to Urist Lam that we're doing great, that's +7, not -5.

EDIT: My goal to "Build a Lava Cannon Doomsday Device" is thus for a more of a last ditch "Everybody in SDN is dead except for nobles hiding in their bedrooms let's have this unnamed peasant pull the lever and incinerate the world out of spite" and for a "This is awesomely awesome" sort of engineering project for vanity (vanity projects are a requirement in dwarf fortress to pass the time).

[Ford Prefect]

We'll kill them with our weapons, our tools and our hands. That's the dwarf way.

[Duckie]

Guys, important announcement. Sorry for the length, if you don't want to read this much, read only the bold parts for a short version. After getting home from POTC3 (which was okay, despite raging plotholes), and having played and taken screenshots of 2 more years of Palelabor, I can safely say that this location is boring. I haven't seen anything deadly, and nobody died except Tasoth's pet mule and one of rhoenix's exponentially multiplying kittens (which fell into the river during a flood, although HSTRG did fall in too he swam to safety quickly). That's fuckin' it. I'm pretty annoyed, the Random Number God seems to have blessed us with peace and prosperity.

Which as you know, makes a shit-poor story.

I don't reload in bad situations (thus my outraged and rather tame sounding shout of "Aw you gotta be kidding me" when the cave-in managed to not land on any of my wood stockpile or ore stockpile right under it and landed instead on the anvil at the edge of the collapse zone inside of the forge in defiance of all trajectory probability), but I'm vaguely considering restarting the fortress.

With that in mind, I would like to announce: The Dwarf Fortress Palelabor thread is now taking a vote. I know it's my game, and I could do this by fiat, but you all are so kind in allowing me to have the fun of naming my dudes after you, reporting my progress, and many of you are following this thread. So we're taking a vote, since I don't want to alienate the audience.:

MOTION: To restart Palelabor (it will because of the game engine have a new name but we don't have to accept it if it sucks like Ballscratch or something) in a more dangerous area (ideally a zombie infested tropical swamp) utilizing the same Original 7 and naming each immigrant in the correct order (the issue of Spanky will be considered later)
[_] Yes, we need the zombie elephants, sieges more than once a decade, and inexplicably common mental illnesses for the lulz
[_] No, Palelabor is about community and building a fortress, not lulz.

RULES: This vote will actually be listened to unlike other votes such as the metal forging one where it's more of a "see if you can remind me of something I'm missing here so I can make sure this is the best option" brainstorming thing. It must pass with 66% voting "Yes" or "Abstain". People not voting is not the same as abstaining, the latter being a statement that one does not mind either option, the former a mere indication you didn't check the thread in the voting period.

SECONDARY MOTION: If yes, shall new helpless immigrants trying to trudge across the swamp be named after they arrive instead of the current upon spawning at the map edge? This means that fatalities of SDN personae before arrival will not occur, which is the greatest mortality threat to dwarfs in a bad area (look at how long that damn road is for Palelabor. An elephant can run you down and kill you 4 times in that length).
[_] Yes, the game is no fun if SDN people die instantly in some cases. They should be allowed to actually live and do stuff, even if they do die later, even if total wipes on immigration parties that might occur due to misfortune could delay entry of SDN citizens into Palelabor
[_] No, it's more funny to watch ourselves get eviscerated in the short term even if it means the game might run out of SDN personae quickly.

Let me summarize for you the pros and cons of moving Palelabor into a tropical undead swamp of terror

Pro- More awesomeness. Palelabor, for all my attempts to liven the descriptions up, is a very boring-ass place. Nothing happens.

Pro- Zombie fuckin' elephants.

Pro- More frequent sieges, attacks by river creatures, insanity, and so forth. Action is more exciting.

Pro- More death, injury, and bloodshed. You can expect even in death to delight in how your dwarf's arm was broken and he spent his days in bed unconcious until the goblins broke in during the siege and he was decapitated after a heroic struggle, killing two of the villains. You can expect triage of the wounded to avoid them going bezerk PTSD and injuring someoen else. You can expect actual consequences for mistakes like losing the anvil or not having a lot of food instead of the current "Oops, oh well".

Pro- More hilarity. You can expect 1-legged wardogs and parapalegic Captains of the Guard surviving fights only to live tortured and macabre lives as cripples and other injury related war tales. You can expect dwarfs going insane and skinning their friends to create legendary pairs of trousers. You can expect kittens to somehow miraculously defeat invaders. You can expect random attacks by crocodiles from the cave river with farmers wrestling them and subsequently surviving unharmed only to drown because they fall off the bridge.

Pro- Despite the dangerous nature, we will have my newfound defense tactics, since our home will be located beyond the river.

Pro- The metalsmith's high chance of death marching through an undead infested swamp means the anvil will remain lost for accuracy. That proves I'm not doing this because of the annoyance of not having any metal, although that is really inconvenient.

Pro/Con- People will die, and this means your overall participation in the Fortress via your dwarf may fall, although dead people are still allowed to talk in the thread.

Con- More deaths means that the number of named SDN characters might sooner or later grow critically low especially if we suffer a really bad pyrrhic victory, forcing 'reincarnation' of dead personae (ugh) or forcible drafting of SDN users via some scheme (bleh). Alternatively, we could, if all SDN characters die, call it a day and abandon the fortress. I do not plan for this to occur within any short span of time, but bad luck and attrition may defeat us (us being named characters) before we can actually kill the Goblin King or destroy a Dragon or something else epic in scale like Palelabor would allow... eventually...

Con- The game engine will rename Urist Lam, Ugraddur Alat, and Palelabor itself, among other things, because we're technically a new fortress. Yeah, I know, that last one sounds to me like a deal breaker because god knows we'll end up with something like "Ballscratcher" or "Pregnantwheat" or some shit. If it's not as good or better than Palelabor or if we want to keep it out of patriotic pride, I'll refuse to accept it and photoshop the name to correct it, okay?

I asked in the beginning if you guys wanted a dysfunctional fortress or a zombie infested death pit and most of you indicated the former, but if I had said a boring, static fortress or a dysfunctional zombie death pit I would assume you all would pick the latter.

So prove or disprove me. This poll will go for the next 3 days. I am not creating a new thread or making a real poll because I don't want stealth votes, I want honest opinions from people on what they think would be a more entertaining game. I trust you all can live without Palelabor for that long, by the way, as I will stop playing and reporting until we decide. At midnight, Central Standard Time (Daylight Savings included), I will count the votes, and if more than 33% of the posts do not agree with my rationale or indicate that they don't care ether way, then we'll go on playing in the current location. The secondary vote on immigration reform will be done by majority only, since I think it's sensible and non-controversial enough.

If not, brace for epic. We're talking man riding an H-Bomb like a surfboard playing two electric guitars at once (one with his hands, one with his mouth) while simultaneously beating a midget with his dick like a stagecoach driver's whip and defeating a tag team of Teddy Roosevelt and Mecha-Kaiser Wilhelm in a knock-down drag-out steel cage match fight epic

[Ford Prefect]

I will miss Palelabor, and miss the quiet serenity of the place. However, I am a dwarf, and warmth and comfort are alien to me. The Lord Mason casts his vote in favour of relocating, and allowing denizens a chance of life, rather than killing them instantly.

[GuppyShark]

Palelabor showed us that we could prosper, despite misfortune. Reading this thread has become one of the highlights of my workday.

However, if the foul goblinkin that surround Palelabor fear to engage us, then we can leave the fortress behind as a testament to our might and establish a new settlement!

I vote for the new fortress, and the naming of SDN denizens once they have arrived in the (temporary) safety of our fortress. There are few enough of us as it is. A prosperous fortress can have hundreds of dwarves within.

[Stark]

We grow only through challenge! Surely relocating to a more dangerous locale will do naught but give opportunities for glory.

[Nephtys]

Clearly, the only alternative is to make a new fortress. A fortress of DEATH.

With Magma-Pumped Steam Forcefield Rooms defending our fair keep, we will fight the Undead Elephant Menace, and make flutes and other cute things out of merchant corpses!

Edit: Also, How about we make an alternate thread regarding DF and Strategems, so this thread can be explicitly story-related? How's that sound?

And may I suggest an alternative to relocation? An immediate announcement of Palelabor's IMPERIAL ASPIRATIONS, and the unrestricted digging deeper into the mountain, to conquer all of it's other inhabitants?

[Cincinnatus]

I heard zombie elephants are giant pussies. I vote yes for relocating and for immigration reform.

I also agree with Nephtys that we should make a separate pure DF thread.

[bilateralrope]

Yes to making a new fortress. It should be more fun in the zombie infested areas.

Yes to naming citizens after they arrive.

[Covenant]

Plus, a more violent location will also allow us to more freely utilize a wide variety of defensive measures that might otherwise be considered lame. Since we'll need to worry about the location eating us as well as the goblins, ghosts, skeletons and so on, we'll have lots of fodder for an interesting thread and we'll be able to take the gloves off and really beat the shit out of the game--or try to.

[Duckie]

Clearly, the only alternative is to make a new fortress. A fortress of DEATH.

Vetoed, I will remain in command, not the bookworm.

With Magma-Pumped Steam Forcefield Rooms defending our fair keep, we will fight the Undead Elephant Menace, and make flutes and other cute things out of merchant corpses!

Now that's talking. But I wanted Lyres more than Flutes.

Edit: Also, How about we make an alternate thread regarding DF and Strategems, so this thread can be explicitly story-related? How's that sound?

Sounds fair. I intended to start a new thread anyhow, called "Dwarf Fortress Palelabor 2: Electric Boogaloo", so anyone can found a Dwarf Fortress General thread and discuss this game if they want. I myself don't particularly see a need for it yet but feel free.

And may I suggest an alternative to relocation? An immediate announcement of Palelabor's IMPERIAL ASPIRATIONS, and the unrestricted digging deeper into the mountain, to conquer all of it's other inhabitants?

Releasing the... er, inhabitants of the areas, ah, beyond the Magma (ignoring the fact we have not any steel with which to make a bridge) might not particularly be a good idea for Palelabor. While the ensuing turning of every living thing from dwarf to cat to mayfly into gory wallpaper would be amusing for the several minutes it would take to end, it would not really be entertaining in the long run. Utilize the Dwarf Fortress Wiki, search for "Cavern Map" if you want to be spoiled on what lies deep in the mountain.

And I'm not talking about lizardmen in the water or batmen in the caves, nor even magma monsters, my comrades.

Since a Quorum for the results to be accepted (7 people, the number of Dwarves needed to make an outpost) has now been met, I consider the vote legitimite, but I plan to run the vote until the following conditions are met:
EITHER
A: The time is at or beyond Midnight, the changeover between 11 and 12 June
B: An ironclad or nearly ironclad supermajority is confirmed comprising a majority of dwarves voted.
C: 12 hours pass without any votes

A is obvious, and C is meant to keep me and you guys from getting bored waiting since if nobody votes in half a day, the poll's probably decided (although I would for one be shocked if the council did not approve of this noble venture)

As for B, since Patricians, due to horrid lack of fairness in this quasidemocracy, count for 50% more than plebians (who only have 2 to the Patrician 3), and nobility and myself 66% more than a patrician, there are a total of 94 current votes in the Council of Dwarves. I hold 5 of them, meaning that 89 valid votes may be cast. 17 Plebians and 5 Patricians have cast their vote in favour, meaning that of all dwarves there have been exactly 53 votes cast in favour and 41 undecideds. This is a 56% yes vote, so far. If and when the votes in favour reach 63 (which would at minimum be 3 Patricians and 1 Plebian), an ironclad supermajority of just over 66% of the popular* (tm) vote will be assured and further voting would be unnescessary.

As to why it has to be that complex, with 94 weighted votes distributed among dwarves unequally instead of popular acclamation or, god forbid, me just doing it myself and telling you guys to deal with it, I figure it's amusing this way and mimics the opacity and silliness inherent in this game. It also gives me by way of bureaucratic stalling a chance to stop playing and do other important stuff with my life, since the game is so addicting I need an excuse.

Plus, it's not like the vote matters. I can dissolve parliament as I please.