@DarkFox That's good to hear, it wasn't shitty enough as it was.

@Powderhorn @StenSaksTapir

I remember following this back on the Bay12 forums, this is one of the most epic fortresses ever. Props to @BlindiRL for the video! Great work!

It's definitely a lot to remember! That said though the more you play, the more a lot of it becomes second nature. If you ever have questions, don't hesitate to ask! I personally have been playing for .. holy crap, 15 years now. There's so much that's just second nature to me now, but I also learned from others over time. I'm happy to help others learn as well.

This was my first ever exposure to Battletech, and 35 years later I still love the franchise. This looks awesome.

Ahhh sounds like either you don't have a Trade Depot built, or they can't find a way to it. Trade wagons for example are 3 tiles wide, so need an entrance that is at least 3 tiles wide for them to navigate through. Wagons also can not go up or down stairs. They can however travel up/down ramps.

I usually do what you're suggesting, have a massive sprawling underground fortress, but also a smaller walled enclosure on the surface that protects the underground, as well as housing a trade depot and barracks (so that my military is nearby to any potential action).

I have an underground area here, mostly stockpiles and offices, but also a proper great hall for whoever the eventual baron will be, and a cathedral for the religion. I'm trying to build up in this one though for the living quarters and day to day stuff, should be an interesting change of pace.

ETA: The sieges are usually dependent on how much wealth you export from your fortress, so if you don't get traders, then that makes sense. If you DO get traders and want to get attacked, trade a bunch of lavishly prepared meals.

OOC: This fort was started when a friend who is new to DF confessed to having some confusion on how they should embark. What to look for, what the stuff on the screen meant, etc. While I used my "Small Volcanic Island" world-gen, I wasn't able to find a great volcano + river start, so opted for this one bordering on a glacier instead. So far I really like this map, and the only real accident we've had so far was our ONLY artifact creator, a child, got himself encased in ice when the moat started being dug. Since that time, at least THREE different agents have showed up at our fort, intent on stealing that artifact. Only one has escaped, the rest can be seen in the refuse stockpile on the bottom left.

Thank you!

The games that best compare to DF were almost all inspired by DF in the first place, but that said, I usually sell it as "Rimworld, but with hundreds of people, and even more detail".

I used to use Dwarf Therapist all the time, but after a while there was a manager option in DFHack starting in like, .40 or .44, and now in the Steam era (.50) I haven't bothered at all. A lot of things default to "everybody does this", and you can set categories of work and fairly easily pick and choose if everybody does them, or if certain specific people do. When choosing specific people, it shows you who has relevant skills, usually sorted by best at the top. Hope this helps.

Strong think this is the milk of human kangarooman kindness. Mack Beth say milk make dwarves strong. Strong find milk, drink milk!

If we substitute the word "recruits" for "children", this was also how we approached Dwarven Day Care

Loving the style and the simple palette!

Despite playing since 2008, I've only accessed the hidden fun stuff once, and mostly because I set out to do it. I too tend to keep creating new forts over and over to try to get things perfect. Then I save, and when I come back I never remember what I was doing, so I just start over again. :) Doing that for all these years, my early game is down to a science now (in terms of setting up manager, work orders, quantum stockpiles, etc. The only thing that really changes from play to play is how I design the fortress. Surprisingly still not tired of doing it after all these years.

It's as active as anybody feels to make it, feel free to post your fortresses, and welcome!

Or "Just google it"

not including calls to kbin.social? Curious how they factor in, since they seem to be getting pretty big.

Ad companies can't handle the idea that people don't want to be hit with ads every 5 minutes. "Well, it's just BAD ads"... no, it's having my experience constantly interrupted.

Dude, it'll be totally radical this time around! No psych!

The ones who stay probably do see themselves as powerless, which is a pretty self-fulfilling prophecy.

...but most people with any shred of empathy would be pushing for that in his shoes.

Empathy? In late-stage capitalism? 😏

I mean, so... I'm a software engineer who used to specialize in automation. I ended up having a crisis of conscience decades back, realizing that I was putting people out of work. "Hey, good job on that project, our client can afford to let 30 people go now!" never really felt like great praise to me. It actually felt really really shitty knowing the work I was doing was making it possible for the "nobility" to further gain back control of the "serfs".

I figured that the only way this could ever benefit society as a whole instead of shareholders and owners would be if we moved more to a society with things like UBI, with perhaps the people who end up getting something extra being the ones who actually DO the dirty jobs and provide actual worth to society, instead of becoming obscenely wealthy at the expense of empathy and good human spirit. Unfortunately, at least here in the states, anything that smacks of "socialism" automatically equals dictatorship (glossing over that capitalism offers just as many examples of being abused by the "ruling" class). So there's the whole zeitgeist to battle against before the comfortable and less-informed majority will even listen to anything that's in their best interest.

As you say, interesting times indeed. I'm not hopeful that we'll see that sort of shift in my lifetime however, sigh....