40d:Design strategies

Entrance Designs

Flooded Entrance

Using a chamber as your entrance alongside a chamber full of water and some machinery you can flood or drain the entrance at will.

The basic premise requires two levers, two screw pumps and two gear assemblies. The amount of power required and the number of additional components needed to get the power to the screw pumps varies depending on distance/setup. One pump is placed to draw from chamber 1 and dump into chamber 2. The other is set in reverse. A gear assembly is placed next to each pump and connected to the main power system. Each gear is linked to a lever. Now at the flip of a switch you can submerge your entrance with water or magma for easy, secure defense against creatures that aren't amphibious or magma-dwelling, depending.

The picture above shows the design in action. The green pump is currently on while the red has been disconnected through the grey marked axle. The yellow X is just to mark that there is a channel under the axle.

3D Map Format

For more information on how to dig passages and structures in a 3D map, check Digging.

Interior Design

It may seem obvious to experienced players but it should be stated explicitly: for maximal efficiency your dwarves should spend the least amount of time moving about and the most time doing productive things. Fortress interior design is critical to productivity.

Workshop Logistics

At a certain point, the most important thing for your fortress is not that you have workshops, but that they are placed efficiently:

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...............
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The idea is that there is a wide hallway at the bottom for easy access for haulers. The workshops are at the top because much less dwarf-hours will be spent moving to the workshop itself than haulers moving to the stockpiles. You pair workshops that have similar inputs or similar outputs or where the output of one is the input of another. Examples: Pair a mechanic's workshop with a mason's workshop because both consume stone and produce furniture. If multiple inputs are required, it is better to split the 3x6 space into specialized stockpiles rather than having a single 'input' stockpile because you want to make sure that there is always some of every input. Use the 'take from stockpile' interface to fill these subsidiary stockpiles from your main stockpile and vice versa.

Another good way to do this is with the stockpiles on the next Z-level, making it slightly more efficient, like this:

Level 0:

===============
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=WWWWWW=WWWWWW=
...>......>....
===============

Level -1:

===============
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=..<...=..<...=
=oooooo=oooooo=
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...............
...............
...............
===============

Alternatively, you can employ a "work site" methodology where workshops are constructed and destroyed as necessary. For example, if you mine out a huge dining hall and it is completely filled with stone, build a masonry shop in the hall to manufacture tables and chairs. This eliminates the need for a stone hauler because your mason only has to travel a few squares to get raw material. In addition it makes furniture hauling more efficient because the tables and chairs are right next to their eventual location. And of course it clears stone out of your dining hall, eliminate the need for a refuse hauler to dump it all.

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............... ............... ...............

===

The idea is that there is a wide hallway at the bottom for easy access for haulers. The workshops are at the top because much less dwarf-hours will be spent moving to the workshop itself than haulers moving to the stockpiles. You pair workshops that have similar inputs or similar outputs or where the output of one is the input of another. Examples: Pair a mechanic's workshop with a mason's workshop because both consume stone and produce furniture. If multiple inputs are required, it is better to split the 3x6 space into specialized stockpiles rather than having a single 'input' stockpile because you want to make sure that there is always some of every input. Use the 'take from stockpile' interface to fill these subsidiary stockpiles from your main stockpile and vice versa.

Another good way to do this is with the stockpiles on the next Z-level, making it slightly more efficient, like this:

Level 0:

===============
=WWWWWW=WWWWWW=
=WWWWWW=WWWWWW=
=WWWWWW=WWWWWW=
...>......>....
===============

Level -1:

===============
=iiiiii=iiiiii=
=iiiiii=iiiiii=
=iiiiii=iiiiii=
=..<...=..<...=
=oooooo=oooooo=
=oooooo=oooooo=
=oooooo=oooooo=
...............
...............
...............
===============

Miscellaneous Strategies

Use for Soil Layers

Soil layers (such as clay, loam, etc.) - which may at first seem to be of secondary importance - are very useful for large storage areas, as they do not leave rock behind when dug through and may be excavated much faster by comparison. You can also farm on soil tiles without first making them muddy.

Since soil cannot be smoothed or detailed, it is a less than ideal medium to assign rooms in. Workshops do not have happy thoughts for increased surrounding worth, so if proximity to another area is not an issue, soil is a great place to put them.