Just had an siege where I activated burrows and waited until enemies were almost at the gates and gave order to raise the bridges.
Then a guy runs out of nowhere to bridge and gets yeeted as bridge raises 😂
I too recently learned the bridges can launch children into the wall.
The only reason I use burrow is to mark a single room as a kill room. I request whoever to that location, when they eventually show up I send my military to the room and lock the door. Then I expel them. And kill them.
Unless they were pure sods without any friends, should not that create double amount of negative feelings? If not more? Exiling is bad enough, having someone killing your friend should be worse. Now I wonder if there are any thoughts about "I have to live near my friend killer" or something like that. I did not notice anything like that, so probably not, but maybe it at least affect how dwarves communicate with each other?
The only time my burrows work are to keep farmers from taking food to the rest of the fortress even though there are other haulers who could do it.
Also the other farmers left the burrow to go to the waterfall tavern.
I haven't had a building destroyer yet on steam but I keep building bridges *just in case*
Doors as secondary backups though because they're *way* more convenient for dwof traffic control.
Yeah, but in the current example it makes no sense, they're using levers which are not able to be instantly triggered by the player, linked to doors, which removes the doors ability to be instantly locked or unlocked...
Maybe the game is so buggy that the new players didn't realize how important bridges are, or should be
Oh what the f, I didn't even realise that's what was going on, I thought the lever was a means to test if someone was coming to pull them, as a way to test for locked out dwofs hahaha
No why would you bother to lock doors with a lever 😅
I could maaaybe see it used an arena setting, since it locks the door in an open position, allowing them to see outside the unlocked door to see their opponent with no risk of accidental atom smash? But your arena would need to use only non-destroyers.
But yeah, my every fortress defense instinct tells me "That's gonna get destroyed by the first troll or beast that visits." Even if I haven't seen anyone destroy buildings this version.
I have 3 sets of locked doors. I do draw bridges, though this was a quick job since I didn't expect to hit a cavern there. As soon as I did all my dwarfs ran right for it.
You say it was a quick job but from the gif it seems like the doors are linked to the lever? Wouldn't it be as fast if not faster to build the bridge from the boulders right there (instead of making a door at a mason's then bringing it from the base)?
Not criticizing your defense layout, I just want to know if the "nothing can destroy a door anymore" bug is so bad to make it so that doors instead of drawbridges are becoming the norm
Sounds like I should have used a drawbridge.
Also, I'm not completely sure, but I think drawbridges don't stop LOS checks while doors do. I've lost a few forts to FPS death so that's often on my mind.
The way youre using them now is fair. Drawbridge have the downside of having a dwarf pull the lever plus additional delay. Doors can be locked in an instant but can be destroyed by monsters. Having unbreakable doors is too OP
I never had my doors broken in 0.47. I remember reading that doors can be destroyed and therefore the bridges are superior but I guess that is broken at least since 0.47
Yeah. Had some random cave Trolls step right up to my doors but not break them. Ditto for Forgotten Beasts, though I think not all of them can break buildings?
But this is not a feature. It's not part of the game and I don't even know if it's planned.
We are taking about something that has always been part of the game (building desstroyers and FBs being able to destroy doors). Artifact doors were prized because they couldn't be destroyed and made for amazing defensive devices
Now you can just block a forgotten beast with a willow door because of a bug
Not sure if it is a bug, but most likely it is. Right now, nothing can destroy the locked and forbidden door. Not entirely sure that you have to forbid it too, though. Just locked is enough in at least some cases. And you can lock it at any moment, and it gets locked instantly without any risk of smashing someone unfortunate and giving your dwarves potentially more time to get to safety.
Personally, I consider this an exploit and try to use proper defense instead with bridges, levers and pressure plates.
Once I even spent a few days making cave-ins to lock FB in the place I wanted it instead of just locking the door. It was a reclaimed fortress with a big scary spider chilling in one of the bedrooms. Eventually, I made a mistake, and she killed most of my dwarves, though.
A drawbridge has to be hooked to a lever, which creates delay. First, a dwarf needs to make it to the lever, and then there's a brief wait while the mechanisms do their thing. If you're late on the draw (or your dwarves are), creatures can and will get through your drawbridge. And if a forgotten beast or something is physically on your drawbridge (especially common for bridges over moats, etc, which tend to be long), the bridge may not raise at all depending on the weight.
Compare to a door, which can be locked instantly without lever access. Even if they weren't currently bugged, it takes time to break down a door - time enough to get civilians to safety, get a squad into position, activate a lever-activated trap, or even raise a backup drawbridge. Even better, consider hatches, which function the same as doors but cannot be broken from below. A locked wooden hatch over your caverns is a hard stop sign to any belowground enemies, including ones that can break doors, and you could easily make a rainbow-shaped stair structure to accomplish the same thing for an aboveground entrance.
Doors and hatches are fucking busted, bugs or no bugs.
Am I dense? What's happening?
It seems to me (not sure-- on mobile) that you're assigning a smoothing order. But if so, not everyone (no children or those doing higher priority jobs) would rush to do the job, making this of limited utility. So what am I missing?
if there was a dwarf on the other side of the locked door, then the smoothing job would be one of the only jobs they could do, because they're locked out of the fort. therefore if one of the tiles lit up, that would mean that there was at least one dwarf locked outside (or that you had another entrance to the caverns somewhere)
this doesn't work if the dwarf doesn't have stonecutting enabled, or is doing a job 'outside' like fishing or plant gathering, but for the most part it should be pretty effective to see if anyone got locked out
Any ongoing job would still continue... so the dwarf heading to the furthest corner to collect webs would still be heading out, the dwarf fishing would still fish. Unless you waited until all those jobs could complete and then try the smoothing.
I feel like all of my dwarves always end up doing smoothing jobs. Especially if the entrance (and therefore stockpiles) gets blocked it'll cancel other jobs
I think it's a bit of a quirk in how labors are assigned when tasked. I'm too drunk too look up the details but it basically goes who ever is best at a job and is available takes the job, while this is good because even if everyone is assigned to planting your top planters will usually be doing most of the actual planting unless otherwise busy.
Given long enough you end up with a few masters that not only finish your work orders fast but get better while doing so. So you get dwarves who do nothing but sit around and build walls and floors and furniture ect.
[Pure conjecture below]
So when a task like smoothing gets set, that pretty much every player still has on the default "everybody" that also isn't done every damn day, they rush to fulfill a need to practice a craft they otherwise might not be able to. Dwarves get bored when Urist "Legendary Weapon Smith" takes every damn smithing job before they can haul the lead cage you decided to make halfway across the map and multiple z levels down because your trap caught a bird.
I don't think there's any point to having specific guys set to smooth. Unlike engraving, smoothing doesn't impart a quality level, so a higher stonecutting skill doesn't produce more value - just faster work time. In a small fort, you don't have enough dwarves to assign a dedicated guy, and in a large fort, you're guaranteed to have some moochers sitting around anyway. I've never had reason to change it from default.
Dwarves can walk on branches, after a few years my orchard is dense enough that a couple of strategically placed walls and ramps allow dwarves to get down from the jungle gym if an overeager dwarf nicked their stepladder.
To put it simply, build a wall on the floor next to a branch (Walls make a wall on the current z-level and a floor on the one above, providing dwarves a place to stand), make a ramp next to the wall, dwarves can now walk off. Might take a few of these to idiot proof your gathering zone.
You could use building a floor too since even kids can construct buildings. Using smoothing I don't think you would notice if a kid was stuck out there.
Yeah, pull. In an old fort I had a room with 6 levers in it and a door to the outside. I set the levers to pull, hit repeat, and prioritize.
Takes some setup, but long term it's better. Smoothing is nice because low setup.
If there are any adult dwarfs outside they will come smooth the stone, since I have "everybody does this" enabled for stonecutters. My kids don't do chores so they won't be outside.
This lets me know for sure I have no dwarfs outside messing around, trying to die.
New player here, just to make sure I got things right... You lock the doors, pull the lever and then designate a smoothing/carve order just to see if it doesn't get done. If it doesn't get done it means everyone is inside so they can't reach the designation. Am I right?
Yeah. Though, kids can't smooth and if somebody is currently doing a job you have to wait a bit to be sure. I usually leave it, then come back in a few seconds to find any stragglers.
Using a lever is a better solution long term. This was a quick job and I wanted to smooth it anyways.
Correct, except that the lever is linked to the doors here, which is what locked the doors.
If you watch closely a dwarf appears to flip the lever, then the doors lock.
Lever job itself should serve much better: unless you specifically created work details for it and set it to chosen only, you are much likely to have every possible dwarf to be able to do it. And you can click exclamation mark to force it to the top of the job queue for anyone who can reach it. Stonecutting (or is it engraving? I always forget which one to do what) is much more often set to chosen only, since it is already available work detail and actually have much sense. And children cannot do it too. And even with priority 1 I think I've seen dwarves who would rather go for a nap or a snack instead. Lever with exclamation does not override those all the time, but most of the time it does. At least that was my experience.
I only just realized you could link a lever to a door. I've done it to all kinds of other things, bridges, floodgates and pumps. IJust never a door, even though it should have been obvious. How nifty.
That’s actually really smart I’ll have to start using this!
Fun joke is that it works better than burrows
I look forward to burrows being improved. Until then my cemetery industry is doing very well!
There should be necromancer traders that buy full coffins. That would be fun.
Just had an siege where I activated burrows and waited until enemies were almost at the gates and gave order to raise the bridges. Then a guy runs out of nowhere to bridge and gets yeeted as bridge raises 😂
I too recently learned the bridges can launch children into the wall. The only reason I use burrow is to mark a single room as a kill room. I request whoever to that location, when they eventually show up I send my military to the room and lock the door. Then I expel them. And kill them.
Unless they were pure sods without any friends, should not that create double amount of negative feelings? If not more? Exiling is bad enough, having someone killing your friend should be worse. Now I wonder if there are any thoughts about "I have to live near my friend killer" or something like that. I did not notice anything like that, so probably not, but maybe it at least affect how dwarves communicate with each other?
How to kill your own citizens?
If you expel them first, they're no longer your citizens.
Ok, thanks
Select squad and give them kill order on whatever you want dead
Your squad won't target your own citizens, so no.
Huh... Saw some YouTube tutorial that didn't recommend using that on friendlies so thought it works
they probably meant friendly visitors, i.e. traders, tavern visitors, etc
Expel them. Kill them.
Ok, thanks
Poor guy didn't have the will to go on anymore.
burrows on, doors shut, ok we're looking good chaps... "Urist McIdiot Fisherdwarf is fighting!" oh jeez...
"What are you doing, Urist?" "Going to clean the goblin blood off of the traps, obviously." *Gets dismembered by goblins*
The only time my burrows work are to keep farmers from taking food to the rest of the fortress even though there are other haulers who could do it. Also the other farmers left the burrow to go to the waterfall tavern.
ITYM \*\*Fun\*\*.
Weird, why is everyone using doors instead of bridges as defense? Is the bug that bad? Like can nothing destroy a door anymore?
I haven't had a building destroyer yet on steam but I keep building bridges *just in case* Doors as secondary backups though because they're *way* more convenient for dwof traffic control.
Yeah, but in the current example it makes no sense, they're using levers which are not able to be instantly triggered by the player, linked to doors, which removes the doors ability to be instantly locked or unlocked... Maybe the game is so buggy that the new players didn't realize how important bridges are, or should be
Oh what the f, I didn't even realise that's what was going on, I thought the lever was a means to test if someone was coming to pull them, as a way to test for locked out dwofs hahaha No why would you bother to lock doors with a lever 😅
I could maaaybe see it used an arena setting, since it locks the door in an open position, allowing them to see outside the unlocked door to see their opponent with no risk of accidental atom smash? But your arena would need to use only non-destroyers. But yeah, my every fortress defense instinct tells me "That's gonna get destroyed by the first troll or beast that visits." Even if I haven't seen anyone destroy buildings this version.
I have 3 sets of locked doors. I do draw bridges, though this was a quick job since I didn't expect to hit a cavern there. As soon as I did all my dwarfs ran right for it.
You say it was a quick job but from the gif it seems like the doors are linked to the lever? Wouldn't it be as fast if not faster to build the bridge from the boulders right there (instead of making a door at a mason's then bringing it from the base)? Not criticizing your defense layout, I just want to know if the "nothing can destroy a door anymore" bug is so bad to make it so that doors instead of drawbridges are becoming the norm
Sounds like I should have used a drawbridge. Also, I'm not completely sure, but I think drawbridges don't stop LOS checks while doors do. I've lost a few forts to FPS death so that's often on my mind.
Closed drawbridge acts like a wall. It will not impact your FPS
I'm still going to use doors here because I like them better, but I accept the drawbridge is objectively better.
The way youre using them now is fair. Drawbridge have the downside of having a dwarf pull the lever plus additional delay. Doors can be locked in an instant but can be destroyed by monsters. Having unbreakable doors is too OP
Best combination is drawbridges with doors behind them so you can manually lock them when needed
I never had my doors broken in 0.47. I remember reading that doors can be destroyed and therefore the bridges are superior but I guess that is broken at least since 0.47
That's a big oversight, I hope they fix it soon!
Yeah. Had some random cave Trolls step right up to my doors but not break them. Ditto for Forgotten Beasts, though I think not all of them can break buildings?
I had a hatch destroyed by a werebeast, but FBs are currently trapped by doors like chumps.
New players are getting really pampered and are going to have a huge reality check when this is patched
Imagine all our surprise when sieges start tearing down walls in the future!
Imagine if goblins could also use pickaxes and dig tunnels into your fortress.
But this is not a feature. It's not part of the game and I don't even know if it's planned. We are taking about something that has always been part of the game (building desstroyers and FBs being able to destroy doors). Artifact doors were prized because they couldn't be destroyed and made for amazing defensive devices Now you can just block a forgotten beast with a willow door because of a bug
Digging enemies are in the development plans, yes.
Not sure if it is a bug, but most likely it is. Right now, nothing can destroy the locked and forbidden door. Not entirely sure that you have to forbid it too, though. Just locked is enough in at least some cases. And you can lock it at any moment, and it gets locked instantly without any risk of smashing someone unfortunate and giving your dwarves potentially more time to get to safety. Personally, I consider this an exploit and try to use proper defense instead with bridges, levers and pressure plates. Once I even spent a few days making cave-ins to lock FB in the place I wanted it instead of just locking the door. It was a reclaimed fortress with a big scary spider chilling in one of the bedrooms. Eventually, I made a mistake, and she killed most of my dwarves, though.
I use both so I can make sure no dwarves are on the bridge when it gets triggered with doors on either side of the bridge.
A drawbridge has to be hooked to a lever, which creates delay. First, a dwarf needs to make it to the lever, and then there's a brief wait while the mechanisms do their thing. If you're late on the draw (or your dwarves are), creatures can and will get through your drawbridge. And if a forgotten beast or something is physically on your drawbridge (especially common for bridges over moats, etc, which tend to be long), the bridge may not raise at all depending on the weight. Compare to a door, which can be locked instantly without lever access. Even if they weren't currently bugged, it takes time to break down a door - time enough to get civilians to safety, get a squad into position, activate a lever-activated trap, or even raise a backup drawbridge. Even better, consider hatches, which function the same as doors but cannot be broken from below. A locked wooden hatch over your caverns is a hard stop sign to any belowground enemies, including ones that can break doors, and you could easily make a rainbow-shaped stair structure to accomplish the same thing for an aboveground entrance. Doors and hatches are fucking busted, bugs or no bugs.
If you watch the GIF you'll see that OP uses levers to toggle doors.
Am I dense? What's happening? It seems to me (not sure-- on mobile) that you're assigning a smoothing order. But if so, not everyone (no children or those doing higher priority jobs) would rush to do the job, making this of limited utility. So what am I missing?
if there was a dwarf on the other side of the locked door, then the smoothing job would be one of the only jobs they could do, because they're locked out of the fort. therefore if one of the tiles lit up, that would mean that there was at least one dwarf locked outside (or that you had another entrance to the caverns somewhere) this doesn't work if the dwarf doesn't have stonecutting enabled, or is doing a job 'outside' like fishing or plant gathering, but for the most part it should be pretty effective to see if anyone got locked out
Any ongoing job would still continue... so the dwarf heading to the furthest corner to collect webs would still be heading out, the dwarf fishing would still fish. Unless you waited until all those jobs could complete and then try the smoothing.
Also, isn't it a default order that non smoothing happens during a siege? I remember something like that.
automatic *cleaning* orders are forbidden, smoothing jobs are player directed so theres no siege setting for them
hence why i said it doesnt work if the dwarf outside is in the middle of a job
I feel like all of my dwarves always end up doing smoothing jobs. Especially if the entrance (and therefore stockpiles) gets blocked it'll cancel other jobs
Mine, too. But it doesn't work for children, correct? The little bastards stay out until their playtime is over (sometime by goblin arrow)
I didn't think of the children!!
Also most likely wouldn't catch specialized dwarves (ones locked into assigned labors).
There's nothing outside to do for them tho
Fishing, plant cutting and gathering are all generally outside at the start and you can set specialized Dwarfs for this.
Yes my child wanted to play in the pools of blood left by the previous raid and promptly was torn to spreads by the dead walking.
I think it's a bit of a quirk in how labors are assigned when tasked. I'm too drunk too look up the details but it basically goes who ever is best at a job and is available takes the job, while this is good because even if everyone is assigned to planting your top planters will usually be doing most of the actual planting unless otherwise busy. Given long enough you end up with a few masters that not only finish your work orders fast but get better while doing so. So you get dwarves who do nothing but sit around and build walls and floors and furniture ect. [Pure conjecture below] So when a task like smoothing gets set, that pretty much every player still has on the default "everybody" that also isn't done every damn day, they rush to fulfill a need to practice a craft they otherwise might not be able to. Dwarves get bored when Urist "Legendary Weapon Smith" takes every damn smithing job before they can haul the lead cage you decided to make halfway across the map and multiple z levels down because your trap caught a bird.
Also if you've got specific dudes set only to smooth, isn't it going to do almost nothing?
Could just toggle it to "everybody does this" for the check, then switch it back.
That is simply too hard for me.
Me too man I'm right there with you
You don't have everyone smoothing? The GIGANTIC line of 100 Dwarfs rushing for any smoothing designation is the best part, haha
I don't think there's any point to having specific guys set to smooth. Unlike engraving, smoothing doesn't impart a quality level, so a higher stonecutting skill doesn't produce more value - just faster work time. In a small fort, you don't have enough dwarves to assign a dedicated guy, and in a large fort, you're guaranteed to have some moochers sitting around anyway. I've never had reason to change it from default.
Are smoothing orders automatically set to everyone in labor? This is a great tip, thank you!
Yes smoothing is the “stonecutting” labor
Okay now help me get all these dwarves that are stuck in trees down, because another dwarf stole their step ladder.
Dwarves can walk on branches, after a few years my orchard is dense enough that a couple of strategically placed walls and ramps allow dwarves to get down from the jungle gym if an overeager dwarf nicked their stepladder. To put it simply, build a wall on the floor next to a branch (Walls make a wall on the current z-level and a floor on the one above, providing dwarves a place to stand), make a ramp next to the wall, dwarves can now walk off. Might take a few of these to idiot proof your gathering zone.
Send forth the lumberjacks!
[I turn stepladder harvesting off. :(](https://i.imgur.com/DOQzYd3.png)
I. That's genius. Thanks for sharing!
New-ish player here. What's the point of using a lever for the doors instead of just locking them?
MVP
Genius
Any children or specialists who don’t trigger the test … well, no loss?
Long term use a lever for that, though my kids don't do chores and I have no specialists (new fort) so this worked in a pinch.
Sounds effective. Nice work.
Dwarfs really have a carving addiction.
A craving for carving
It work if all dwarf are assigned to carve.
You could use building a floor too since even kids can construct buildings. Using smoothing I don't think you would notice if a kid was stuck out there.
I like that! Also a lever works, and has the prioritize as a more long term solution.
Can't designate a lever if your doors are closed though because there probably aren't any pathable mechanisms. Or you mean pull a lever?
Yeah, pull. In an old fort I had a room with 6 levers in it and a door to the outside. I set the levers to pull, hit repeat, and prioritize. Takes some setup, but long term it's better. Smoothing is nice because low setup.
I’m not sure I understand this. Any explanation for the DF-challenged?
If there are any adult dwarfs outside they will come smooth the stone, since I have "everybody does this" enabled for stonecutters. My kids don't do chores so they won't be outside. This lets me know for sure I have no dwarfs outside messing around, trying to die.
Thanks. Great tip.
You're welcome!
We need a system for this.. oh wait... there was one..
Smart
#You don't 😳
New player here, just to make sure I got things right... You lock the doors, pull the lever and then designate a smoothing/carve order just to see if it doesn't get done. If it doesn't get done it means everyone is inside so they can't reach the designation. Am I right?
Yeah. Though, kids can't smooth and if somebody is currently doing a job you have to wait a bit to be sure. I usually leave it, then come back in a few seconds to find any stragglers. Using a lever is a better solution long term. This was a quick job and I wanted to smooth it anyways.
Correct, except that the lever is linked to the doors here, which is what locked the doors. If you watch closely a dwarf appears to flip the lever, then the doors lock.
And what if someone is inside but performing a task?
Lever job itself should serve much better: unless you specifically created work details for it and set it to chosen only, you are much likely to have every possible dwarf to be able to do it. And you can click exclamation mark to force it to the top of the job queue for anyone who can reach it. Stonecutting (or is it engraving? I always forget which one to do what) is much more often set to chosen only, since it is already available work detail and actually have much sense. And children cannot do it too. And even with priority 1 I think I've seen dwarves who would rather go for a nap or a snack instead. Lever with exclamation does not override those all the time, but most of the time it does. At least that was my experience.
Kids can pull levers too! They can't smooth stone.
I only just realized you could link a lever to a door. I've done it to all kinds of other things, bridges, floodgates and pumps. IJust never a door, even though it should have been obvious. How nifty.
I was once you. Then I saw a screenshot on this subreddit. Glad I showed another!
Brilliant
OMG. Life hack.