User:Cheepicus

I am a player of moderate experience. I've been trying to branch out more lately.

Starting Build

For a long time my starting build has been pretty stable.

Dwarfs

• Miner 5 / Armorer 5
• Miner 5 / Weaponsmith 5
• Miner 5 / Cook 5
  • These miners dig out the basic structure of the framework (stockpile space, stink room, central shaft, barracks, entryway, magma supply, dining hall), then have hauling turned off to do the main exploratory mining, which is usually 2x2 shafts down the middle of each 48x48 map region, joined to the central shaft on the z-level closest to the metal stockpiles. Once I have a good backlog of ore (i.e. low-hanging fruit all plucked) they drop the Mining career as by that time I will be getting more serious about the military and getting oodles of food in trade. A new generation of miners usually does the living pods and starts the more extensive phase of exploratory mining and tree farm rooms or other big dumb projects.
  • Having tried it with 2-5 starting miners, 3 seems to be the right number for me.
  • However, mining as a starting skill seems a bit dubious. I could give these guys other skills that will be valuable later on, or important backups (broker, brewer, carpenter). Backups sound better. Enough migrants are worthless as it is.
• Metalsmith 5 / Metal Crafter 5 / Miner 0 / Mason 0 / Architect 0
  • This guy gets a pick to help hollow out the initial space to get everything inside. Then he drops Mining. When magma is up he does a bit of Furnace Operator, which is reassigned to the first two worthless migrants. When crafting starts he loses Mason and Architect.
• Carpenter 5 / Mason 5
  • IKEA dwarf. Ideally, makes every single piece of furniture in the fort. I like to set the wood stockpile to wood + beds.
  • I love/hate having these on the same dwarf. It's rare that I really need to parallelize bed making with furniture making, but sometimes I forget and load them both up.
  • If magma/glassmaking is an option, this guy becomes Carpenter/Glassmaker and I don't need skilled masonry. But then I'm less sure I want them on the same dwarf, since glassmaking will be running more.
• Grower 5 / Brewer 5 Can't see this guy changing.
• Mechanic 4 / Brokerstuff 6 / Architect 0
  • This guy becomes the Record Keeper, and usually Mayor. Lots of toggling Record Keeping on/off when caravans arrive.
  • Maybe I should assign an early peasant to Record Keeper instead. Slightly less annoying, on the other hand do I need another useless purple dwarf?

Equipment

• 1 anvil, 0 axes, 0 cats, 4 picks.
• 2 dogs. Lately, 4.
• 0 plump helmets.
• 12ish plump helmet spawn, 1 of each other seed. I've never done dying or outdoor farming.
• 1 of each food costing 2 or 4. Not 6 ... rather have 2 wood.
• Scads of wood.
• I don't start with bauxite and don't really see the use of it for standard dealing with magma.

Current Fortress

The idea for my next fortress is to have it centered on a giant, universal stockpile (no bins!), fringed at the edges with workshops. This is a conduct/challenge/amusement, not an awesome idea for an efficient fortress. The trade depot should be in the middle of the universal stockpile (so, open to the outside all the time!), and living arrangements will be organized by 'guilds'. I.e. one dining and bedroom complex for each industry, tables and beds all manually assigned (blerg). Stinky stockpiles can be separate.

Previous Fortresses

Targetarch

On embark.

Oops.

A sand/magma/aquifer fortress, was amusingly saved from flooding (embarrassingly noobish mistake) but then became boring. Really if I want to play a no stone-layer fortress, I'll probably have to forgo magma, or do it as a conduct.

Centering the fortress around the top room of a magma pipe is still interesting to me. Or maybe it's that flooding them is such fun.