User talk:Kwieland

Hey, I noticed a few questions on your page, I hope you don't mind if I try and answer a few here. =]

1. Why do dwarfs starve to death in the prison? Shouldn't they be fed?

I think they can get food for themselves if it's in reach (dwarves chained up can move to adjacent tiles, I think, so if you have a food storage next to them I think they might be fine.)

I should have been more specific. I had all metal cages instead of chains. The one dwarf was put in a cage for 120 days or something like that. He didn't make it. I would have thought the "health care" would have eventually fed him?

I think Health care applies only to dwarves that are wounded in some way, in which case they are dragged to a bed, and then their needs are cared for. As far as I know, starvation doesn't cause wounds or injury, but just outright kills people after a while... so the dwarf would never trigger a health care request, as it were. Besides, who cares about people in prison? They don't want to feel the Hammerer's onslaught themselves.

6. Why do dwarfs leave their clothes all over? Will they use furniture if I put it in their room? If so, what kinds?

I think worn clothes are often dropped by dwarves, especially if they replace them. Wrestlers often tear off each other's clothes too. I think they will use furniture such as chests and things if they have spare time, I've seen people "Storing Owned Item".

I've seen that as well. How do they get new clothes, though? For instance, if I change their military preferences to Plate, does the new plate mail belong to them? For weapons they drop them, so they don't own them, right? Is it just the basic socks/shoes/clothes that they own?

Clothing, such as shirts, thongs, shoes, gloves and the like, anything that would be put on at the "Clothes" armour level, that is generally owned by a dwarf, and when they acquire something new it becomes marked as theirs. Armour and weapons, however, are assumed to belong to the fortress as a whole, and I don't think I've ever seen an owned one.

8. Why are walls made of materials lava proof, but floodgates are not? What are the lava safe rocks? Why not obsidian?

I think currently all constructions are lavaproof, something yet to be implemented.

Bauxite is, to my knowledge, the only lava-safe rock, other than special things.

Since obsidian is cooled magma, it makes sense it wouldn't be lava-safe, as it must melt. Otherwise all lava would be solid.

I don't think the logic works that way. If you look at the melting/temperatures, obsidian [[1]] melts at 1650 C while [[2]] is only 700-1200 C. Think about using cotton or wood hot-pad holders? Anyway...

10. Why does the text get smaller when I make the grid larger?

Did you increase the size of the window too? Increasing the grid splits up the standard window into more "blocks" to fit things in, so the text will be fitting into a smaller area.

Do you mean increase the resolution? All the window info is confusing to me. I run in full screen, with a monitor resolution of 1680 x 1050.

The way I understand it, the window is split into two different constraints: its resolution, which is the number of pixels it uses on the screen, and grid size, which divides the whole area of the window (or full-screen window) into a grid of the given dimensions. So a 400 by 400 window with a grid size of 10 by 10 would give you 10 characters across and 10 down, each 40 pixels in size. Each character can hold one, well, character, and that's scaled to the maximum fitting size. At least, that's the way I understand it.

Thus, increasing the grid size will mean more of these blocks are sharing the same total area, so individually they're smaller. This means the text is fitting into a smaller area, and is scaled down.

12. Why can't you train other animals (fox/wolf) to be hunting/war animals?

They currently don't have the tag, though that can be added in by editing the raws if you like.

13. Why are my nobels demanding stuff I don't have?

They demand according to their preferences. There's no guarantee you can fulfill them, easily or at all - but that adds to the fun of DF, doesn't it?

I see. I read somewhere that they don't demand anything you don't have. But that isn't correct. The funny thing is that after a while, they "forget" their demands if you don't meet them. So, as long as they are happy with other things, why bother?

Nobles who don't get what they want get unhappy. Unhappy dwarves are prone to tantrumming. But if they're happy, then no matter. =]

14. How many metal bars does armor costs?

From Armor, plate is 3, chain and greaves 2, everything else 1, although "pairs" such as gauntlets are made in twos for 1 bar.

So, if I wanted to train a legendary armorsmith, have them make tons of copper helms? Then, train a furnace operator by having them melt them all back down? What is the loss on melting?

From Melt item: For every unit of material size an item has, 1/10th of a bar of that item's metal type will be recovered. These fractional bars are "stored" at each smelter; when a full bar's worth of one type of metal has been melted, one bar will be produced."

Leggings are apparently pretty good, returning half a bar per bar expended. Picks and battle axes are 0.4 bars each.

17. Why do neck/brain injuries result in dwarfs in vegetable state?

Is that not realistic? People with brain injuries are usually badly effected, and a neck injury makes it dangerous to move.

Realistic, maybe. People can lead semi-normal lives without a leg/arm. Total paralysis (maybe see [[3]]?)is fairly uncommon in the US - one in 61 000. So having three in 200 seems a bit out of wack. But, then again, we aren't exactly laboring/waring...

Maybe. Do take into account dwarves' lack of modern healthcare, though... and the fact they may have rather different skeletons/nerve systems. Want to try dissecting a dwarf to find out? He'll struggle...

18. Why don't levers show what they are linked to?

This is overcomeable by using notes. They do show what they aren't linked to, so elimination can be used, but that is rather slow.

Good idea. I find that making notes is a rather cumbersome process. Sigh.

20. Why do dwarfs wander halfway across the map for a stone when one is right next to the workshop/catapult? Along with this, it looks like the search algorithm just looks for the closest, not the closest walkable distance. For instance, if I have a catapult next to a wall and one stone on the other side of the wall but one three tiles away on the catapult, it will walk all the way around the wall (distance of 20 or more) just to get THE ONE.

Aye, they do choose the closest thing. Forbidding items can help with this.

Yeah, maybe I'll have to start forbidding after exploratory digging. Right now I've resorted to locking them in rooms

Hope that made sense, and is of some vague help. Emmanovi 19:40, 16 February 2009 (EST)

Thanks Emmanovi, all comments are welcome. I've put some additional comments above.--Kwieland 09:21, 17 February 2009 (EST)

About your starving hammerdwarf... was he by any chance a little bit insane, specifically a bit depressed... melancholy? That, I think, stops them eating. Emmanovi 13:58, 19 February 2009 (EST)