Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 51: In Which Stockpiles Are Analyzed

Episode Date: May 23, 2021

This episode we're talking a lot about how we deal with stockpiles and getting resources to our workshops. Bay 12 Games ReportFuture of the FortressSupport Dwarf Fortress at Bay12Games.comSupport Dwarf Fortress Roundtable on Patreon Featured Image is "Warehouse at Hackeberga Castle" by Mackmyra Svensk Whisky AB is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Any comment made by any host of Dwarf Fortress Roundtable reflects the opinions of that individual host and not that of the Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast as a whole. Some of the hosts like Dwarth therapist very much. Welcome to Dwar Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarf Fortress Roundtable. Morphy. That's an old chestnut. The old chestnut. The old chestnut. The podcast that you've come to know and love. Oh, yeah. I'm Jonathan, by the way. And I'm Roland, by the way. And I'm both Roland and Jonathan. So what's up, guys? It's been a couple weeks. Last week we weren't able to be here because of scheduling and Mother's Day and all that kind of stuff. But we are back. Hopefully the folks out

there aren't too disappointed that there's not an episode that was dropped last week. And we thank you for your patience. Yes, yes. Did Jess have a much chance to play over the last couple weeks? Anything exciting happened in your fortresses? I still got the king, so I'm excited. I haven't killed that fortress yet. So that's been pretty exciting.

Yeah. I mean, it's still chugging along. I mean, I'm not being too insane with it, but yeah, they're all still alive. I'm not sure what to make of that. Have you noted any difference between the fortress operation whenever they have royalty there? You know, not just royalty, but when they have the king there, as opposed to just in the other fortress? They're all on their absolute best behavior. Really?

Actually, I don't know. I haven't really had any problems with their behaviors. I know I'm not sure if that's just residual delight of the stress changes that have been pretty good or if it's, you know, I'm not sure why. But yeah, everyone's been pretty cool, and I haven't been particularly thoughtful about how I'm managing them all, and everyone seems to be in good spirits. So that's wonderful, and they have really crappy bedrooms. And there's bits of rockling absolutely everywhere, because we haven't sorted that out either, so. Is it a fairly healthy fortress? Yeah, so there's 81 of them. Lots of babies, baronesses, got consorts.

I've got Baroness Consort, Baroness, a whole bunch of other random people, and yeah, the king. And it's really something. It's coming along. I haven't been able to get the king's bedroom up to the royal standards yet, even though I seem to be throwing everything I have at it. And I'm not totally sure how to view like the current value of something. So that's all still works in progress. I think you can go to the Well actually that's a good question

If it's for a meeting area Then you can go to the examine locations Yes To find out what the value of the room is But I don't know about a bedroom And I reckon is that Which one is it? Is it gosh I can't remember I mean personally if

Is it R capital R? I think it is It's capital R That's what it is Yeah yeah It's somewhere where what's the screen called like nobility and status that's the same place where you appoint like a bookkeeper and stuff and it tells you what you need right that's an n key yeah yeah that one it does it just says it needs the opulent and no does it say it needs the king wants the king requires an opulent or has an opulent throne room but needs a royal throne room so which is better opulent or royal royal royal uh royal is better And I think I seem to remember reading that there was a big gap between what was opulent and what was royal. So if I go to a bedroom here and I do the examine thing and I don't see here.

Are you talking about capital R that lists out all the rooms in the building in the thing? Ah, that is interesting. Yeah. Which is cool. So I pull capital R up and then I look at it and I see, oh, the mayor has an opulent throne room. That's great. the king says throne room and then a small s with brackets and then it's red which seems angry and then I hit enter and I just got a blank screen so I can't get past anything on that one so I guess

I'm going to say it's probably user error but I haven't figured it out yet so I'm going to stay with it yeah he's going to be sad I don't want to lose my kingdom over this but oh yeah we'll figure it out yeah view building information yeah it just has a blank empty space there Yeah, it's tricky. So that's the thing that's happening for me. So hopefully I can figure out how to get them sorted out first and then we'll be good. I'm going to put in my research for notes for next time to see if I can find out how to do that because I've not run into that before. I've never looked for it, but I've never run into how you actually find the value of the things in a bedroom.

Yeah, capital R seems to Seems to be pretty cool But then Looks like it's a place that it should be Yeah So when I But if again, if you hit if you hit a Enter

To examine To get a blank screen? Yeah, brilliant. Awesome I noted though that at the top of the screen there It says whenever I hit the Enter key on one of my unfulfilled offices It said that it was a

That it just said bed at the top of the screen So Bed. Just one bed. Just bed. Well, that's all that's really in there. I feel like there's so much more here that I've not managed to figure out. For our first live stream, we're getting riveting listening.

We are. Everyone's probably just like, people are just like reaching for their wallets right now. Quick, throw more money at this podcast. They're delivering great content. This groundbreaking stuff. Let's listen in real time while they try to figure out. tasks. How do I build a workshop? Yeah. So it's pretty cool. As I said, I'm really stoked because I've got a king here and yeah, I'm kind of motivated to actually keep this fortress alive.

And yeah, and then people are dying of thirst and I don't know why because we've got a well and lots of alcohol. So who knows? It's just a real roller coaster ride this game, as always, which we know. Nice. Yeah. Also, by the way, our one viewer Hi, by the way. Great job that you're here. We're very happy about it. Thank you. It's saying that he just laid down gold floors and a few golden statues and got a royal bedroom.

Very awesome. Thank you. That is so cool. I'm going to do that. That is nice. That is nice. This segment is brought to you by Blood Toes. Creator of Deucer Memon, worked strong, in the village of

Sizuk-Sum, worked strong is a giant flying squirrel bone weapon rack. All craft's warship is of the highest quality. It is encircled with bands of giant flying squirrel bone. On the item is an image of flasks in pink tourmaline. So we've got future of the fortress, which is great, because that implies there's a future of the fortress. That's cool. And we have the report. You know, I'd be honest.

I haven't been reading a lot of the dev notes for stuff lately because I'm just kind of like, let's get the update out there and then I'll figure it out. Almost like, is it spoilers? I don't know. It almost feels like it's, it feels like it could be a little spoilery now. Now I'm kind of like. Spoidery.

Yeah, like for the rest of 2021, I just kind of want to, you know, I'm like just, I'm, I figure like I might maybe loosely check in on some of the patch notes, but I don't want to spoil anything. So I don't know. I don't know if it's so much that in my, the reports seem to be a different version of the same thing coming up. It's in essence working on the next thing and working on the next thing. But since we can't see the list, that doesn't give us much sense of progress, the list of what the next things are. Yeah, like what's what's, what's, yeah, a roadmap.

Is that what you're kind of, yeah, well, at least a roadmap for the Steam release. I'm sure that he has at least something in mind. And I would really like to know if he's actually going to try to get Adventure Mode converted before Steam comes out. I've, what do you guys get the feeling for that? I feel like that's almost a huge pill to swallow. I feel like there's so much in adventure mode that, I don't know. I mean, I feel like there's just a lot more that can go wrong in adventure mode. Because if you start, you know, it's like one thing to kind of generate the world.

And yeah, I have it playing in the background and weird stuff can happen. And the player might not see it. And when you're in your fortress, you're pretty much focused on building your fortress. I feel like there's so many more variables of things that he has to worry about to get adventurer mode working right. I wonder if that's even possible in this. But, I mean, hey, the guy's kind of like a coding wizard, so you never know what he's going to pull off.

I think my point is I really hope that that doesn't make it take another two years for the release. Well, at least he's not talking about putting it on the blockchain. So that's great. How would you apply? Yeah, it would be interesting to see how you would apply blockchain to, that's how the Dwarfortress saves should be kept. With a blockchain. You have to buy dwarf tokens in order to do it.

And that's how we're going to fund the game from now. Non-fungible dwarves. No, thank you. No, thank you. Oh, instead of artifacts, dwarves create NFTs. Yeah. That's it. That's the future of the fortress.

No charge for that advice, Tarn. It's free to you, buddy. There's also the mission status statement, which I enjoy putting electronic, dramatic music behind. And now for the mission status from Threato, as read by Eurist Sadism Spikes. Do you ever get tired of jobs never being finished and of always having to tell your dwarfs

which labors they are allowed to accomplish? Now all dwarfs will. pick up the slack. Even children will have menial tasks to perform and keep the fortress running smoothly. All for the call of industry and the greater good. But nothing will be more difficult for those of you that desire greater control over how things get done. For everything will be easier and simpler. Fear not for change like death is the vehicle for a greater rebirth. Congratulations to the generous, Frito. That is a, the portending a big change.

Right? I mean, what it's basically saying is that we're going to go from assigning jobs to dwarves to having auto labor. Yeah, but isn't we true auto labor? is it true auto labor or is it more like yeah there's like dirt here and the job assignment is now a bit smoother because I can I don't think we we get like actual auto labor in the game I maybe he does indicate though that and I quote nothing will be more difficult for those of you that desire greater control over how things get done for everything will be easier and simpler so yeah maybe they're going to do that

sort of task scheduling thing that some of us do with the dea hack i'm i'm a big fan of auto labor and i know we've talked about that before and that it's you know i think the cons of auto labor are you don't have dors necessarily becoming legendary at making mugs or whatever because they can make mugs and polish a floor and it's just kind of tasks just sort of get assigned but on the other hand I don't have to use that crappy spreadsheet thing that I hate so much whatever that app is that everyone loves that I cannot wrap my head yeah I can't wrap my head around that thing sorry to crap on it I just I can't do it it's too much like work yeah but I you know I get it I get it um but yeah so I mean anything like a happy medium because sometimes auto labor feels a bit

to autopilot and you do lose some control but you know I don't want to be writing word macros from my doors so yeah a happy medium would be really cool I mean

I just have to wait and see yeah yeah I mean maybe they introduce auto labor for menial jobs like cleaning hauling stuff like that but like major jobs where you can actually get skills in you still have

the assignment version so that you don't have a dwarf that is doing everything but getting legendary in his actual job. Because that would be helpful. Military is the one that I think is useful. And I think auto labor deals with that. What do you mean about military? So I think my military dwarfs stay in the military and they don't go off and polish the floor. If I commit them to the military, I think they stay with it. they don't join the pools of auto labor. Yeah. I think that's the way that works.

I think there is, I think there's, well, as long as they're on duty, they're not going to, to go polish the floor. Yeah. And if, uh, I think if they're off duty, they will though. Yeah, I never let him rest. I work him to death. I'm really, really, rest. Nah, I don't, they, whatever.

They're just, it's not my problem. You're from the Kim Jong-un school of, of, of military training. Like, fellas, if you don't like being in the military, you can just go join another fort. It's not a, this is not a democracy in this fort. I don't, they don't take too kindly to voting and challenging authority. Here, meet my anti-aircraft artillery shell. Lock in a room and you starve to death. It's simple but effective.

Beatings will continue until the morale improves. That's the school I thought that I'm going for here. Got another question. Yeah, go for it. No, no, you go ahead, man. No, I was about to ask, I'm, I'm intact. I'm in go mode here. I'm in like, you're here.

I'm going to ask all my stupid door fortress questions. You guys can answer them for me. When you're, you've, let's say, you've got a robust metal industry. You're very excited about it, but you are confronted with the problem, which is trees are the only way you can fuel your furnace. Because I, you know, in this fort, I haven't found any coal and I haven't found any. lignite. So I guess my options are cut down the trees or try to go find lava. Is there anything I'm missing there? Or is that pretty much what you guys? Yeah, that's pretty much it, honestly. Well, but when you say cut down trees, are you including the fungi wood? Because if you go down to

the caverns, you can usually get a good supply of fungi wood there. And that burns just like regular wood, right? Yeah, that's correct. Does that, though, does that piss off the elves, the fungi wood, or do they just not care? No, I don't think cutting stuff in the cavern like they don't care about that. They only care about normal above ground trees with actual leaves, you know? Because they're really mad at me for cutting down the trees.

And of course, I really don't care about the elves and I'm not particularly threatened by them. Have you guys ever been beaten by elves? Oh, that's a good question. Who has lost to the elves? There was this dream I had I mean I want to hear from somebody

if they've been beat by elves I tend not to get into conflict with them because it feels a bit unfair so I just kind of try to placate them and yeah you guys are the best maybe like what about taking the fight to them

is that a risk at all you have to think of one thing which is the elves are really good at taming animals especially large animals off-screen do a lot of damage simply because their physical strength is so high. So a war tiger is like a very boring, lame war animal on screen, but if you send it off-screen, it suddenly becomes a very ferocious killer machine.

And the bigger an animal is, the more terrifying it becomes off-screen. So now the thing is, when you're elves, have the ability to tame and war-trained polar bears, for example, then you are going to have a problem when you are sending people to them. But if they come to you and put the polar bears in your actual fortress where kind of a different way of combat is being made, then they're not an enormous threat, like they are off-screen. So it really depends on what kind of war-earned.

animals they use, I noticed. I see. Okay. And when you mean off-screen, what do you mean, like, if I'm not actively fighting them, or what do you mean? Off-screen just means for me that, for example, you take your military and send them out to ambush somebody's place. Your combat is a tiny bit different, and suddenly, like, physical strength is being handled differently. Gotcha. That makes sense. that's why the elves in world gen are actually really really terrifying not only because they actually eat corpses but because they can win fights against dwarves yeah because you know if you have it on screen your dwarfs usually win because they have armor and they're stronger they can punch through the elves armor but in world gen it just works a bit differently uh okay so i really do need to be somewhat cognizant of these elves not just not let hubris get in the way of my

decision so I'll keep them at arms arm's length or elves length I mean as long as they come to you you should be fine but going after them I would tell you to get some big animals to war train them and send them off you know like like giant polar bears. They're pretty cool. What is you guys take on on these beasts of burden? I've only been able to make war dogs. That's the most I've been able to do and I haven't modded the game or anything. Well, I personally really like war animals. I mean, okay, sure, they have a very limited use. When you have something like a war elephant, you have a problem just keeping that thing alive because it eats so much grass

will basically clean out the entirety of your map but other than that they're pretty great like I had a war elephant once and I cabbed it in a pasture and I had to mod the game so that my what's it called? My grazing coefficient number was higher so I could actually keep the elephant locked up and didn't have to put him in a pasture

that is like 200 blocks. Whoa. What's grazing coefficient? Oh. Is that how much food they eat? It's like how much grass. Okay, how do I explain this? It's like how efficient is the grazing technique.

Is it in essence how quickly the animal is going to clear out your grazing pasture? I feel like that must be what it is. Yeah, yeah. It stands in relation to that. So a higher grazing coefficient means that they don't need as like huge pastures and can be fed by in like smaller pastures instead. So upping the number is really great when you have like large animals because they will eat your hair of your head in like two seconds. So yeah, I never got an elephant. You would do a lot of that though, right?

You purchase a lot of animals from the elves. Ah, do you do that? Oh, yes. Oh, that's cool. Yes. That is basically the only reason why I tend to keep somewhat friendly relations with the elves simply because they have really cool animals. And, you know, I can't be mad at them when they just brought me a grizzly bear.

And I'm like, oh, yes, oh, yes. So I hope that they return. next year with a different gender grizzly bears, so I have a breeding pair, which sometimes happens, sometimes it doesn't, but it is always great when you have like exotic animals from somewhere over the world, and you can breed them, and especially when they are war-trainable and fairly large. That's great. come out to Brandon Wright's cake of craft tavern located in the fourth underground level of Suzukiism

it's still under construction but they have a six by three dance floor and the smiles are free all visitors welcome so we were talking about some things that we were going to do with our forts and one of them was you were going to try to find the circus

and you were going to try to mine some adamanty that's right how's that going well we had a user right into to ERIS at DF roundtable dot com that's UR-I-ST at D-F roundtable.com

that's how you contact us if you want to send us an email but a user asks us to talk about stockpiles and stockpile design and things like that yeah let's do it so I know that we've covered that a little bit in the past but I've never actually figured out how to do it well

so I thought that was that that's what I would work on in our time between episodes. And I did somewhat. So I did get, my biggest problem with the stockpiles is, is I guess twofold. One is that my farmers, whenever I'm trying to grow plump helmets, they always, they can never find the seeds, even though I know dang well that they have seeds available to them. They always cancel the jobs because they can't, they can't find seeds for, or spawn for planting, planting mushrooms. And my other The other problem is that for whatever reason, the people who build a lot of stone things, and I do focus for whatever reason on building stone trinkets and stone furniture and all that,

because I guess because the stone's plentiful. My people tend to go way far away in getting stone whenever they have a stockpile that's closer to them that they probably should be pulling from. So I went to the Dwarfortress Wiki, and DwarFortress Wiki has an excellent article on stockpile design. So one thing that I had never done before is I'd never really attached a workshop to a particular stockpile. And I'm still not sure that I successfully did that. So tell me, I couldn't find anything that says, hey, workshop, pull only from this particular stockpile. But I did find it the other way around.

where a stockpile feeds a particular workshop. If you have a stockpile feeding a workshop, will that stockpile only feed that particular workshop? Now, let me say it again. I said that wrong. If you attach a stockpile to a workshop, will that workshop only draw from that stockpile? Yes. Okay.

Interesting. Okay. You can't just have the door store certain things in that stockpile. So if you had a stockpile for bars and blocks and you told the workshop to only take from that stockpile, but they were putting it in a different, but they were putting your bars and blocks in a different stockpile. You might get stuck where no one's ever going to be able to make anything because they wouldn't go to the different stockpile. Yeah. They have been putting this stuff.

Yes, you have to be. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you have to be a little careful. Yeah. But the main thing that would solve, though, is my Mason's going 20 steps away whenever they have. have a stockpile of stones that are perfectly good five steps away. Hmm, yeah, that is kind of weird. That's true.

Yeah, I haven't gotten too careful with those. So my stockpile strategy is very basic. I tend to just make one, I usually make like one huge warehouse floor, and then I build lots of different stockpiles in that warehouse floor, and then it lets me check on stockpiles really easily, and I don't have to worry that we've run out of food or whatever. And usually next to the dining room, I make a special stockpile for food. And then I make a special one for alcohol.

So I can kind of visually keep tabs on how that stuff's going. And then that's pretty much as detailed as I get with my stockpiles. I don't do much more than that. If I'm in a panic situation where I'm playing like in an old world and I'm worried that I'm going to get invaded really quickly, I'll make an everything stockpile inside and just have them bring all the wagon stuff in. and then walled myself in and then figure the rest out later. That's something I've done too. Well, I certainly do that.

That's one among the first things that I do because of what I learned on the quick start, the fortress quick start. But, yeah, one of the first things I do is create an everything stockpile that has everything except stone and wood, refuse, and corpses, I think. Hide your assets. Yeah, well, that's it, right? So, and really, you don't have to put everything in it. As long as you know what's on your wagon, then just put a stockpile that it contains everything that's on your wagon.

If you don't have, you know, if you don't have furniture on your wagon, then there's no sense in putting a furniture stock, including furniture in your general purpose stockpile, when the point of it is is to just get your dwarves out of the open. Yeah, that is true. That makes sense to me. You know, one thing I'm really looking forward to in the Steam version is, the um a little flexibility around I guy and I say this because I was digging out a big store rooms thing right now and you know when you hit warm stone and and it wants to pause the game and there's a centering bug so it'll obviously so it'll oftentimes like pause the game and then zoom to the wrong place and then if you're doing a big thing it's like you're just basically just have to kind of sit and stare off into space will it clears its queue of digging or whatever that's annoying and I'm looking forward to that being fixed with Steam release. That seems like something that's probably from like text will be text or one of the add-ons rather than something bugged in the game.

Yeah. When it comes to stockpile design, apparently I overshoot a little bit if I hear you too. But because you see when you want to make a stockpile, then it like tells you what kind of stockpile you want, like gem, stone, blah, blah, blah. and I tend to do a stockpile for everything, at least once somewhere in the fortress, simply so that I have everything like need. Okay, not need and orderly. It's still my fortress, am I right?

But at least I can like look at it and see like, oh, okay, we have a lot of wool. We have a lot of cloth. And maybe I should start my clothing now or, wow, these are a lot of seats. I don't have so many drinks. For example, also, I have a weird thing where I put a very small drink stockpile into my tavern, simply so that people don't have to run around the entirety of my fortress. Yeah, I do that too. Yeah, and that thing is always linked with a take from to my main drink stockpile that is up in the kitchen area.

and so that my is there a particular reason why you thought you were about to say the reason yeah because the reason is um that way um i have a large drink stockpile somewhere else um and my small stockpile is continually being filled with new alcohol whenever something is being emptied so that's pretty cool so i have like maybe four four, five, six different barrels of alcohol. And when one runs out, immediately a new job gets queued so that one dwarf gets up to the kitchen area and gets a new barrel of drink.

So that's very practical in my opinion. What else do I do? For example, a furniture stockpire. I really like making furniture, but I don't apparently like putting the furniture into my fortress. So my furniture stockpile is large and always fill to the brim with furniture that I'm not going to use. Yeah, that's probably not how you should play the game. But hey.

That's how I make my money, you know? Yeah, but I notice that stone furniture is just really heavy. And you can only sell so much before the trader goes like, no, my pack animals. you're breaking their backs, please, stop. So, yeah, that's, that's, I should probably sell more, but, you know. I don't know, I don't tend to run into that very often. Occasionally I will, but typically I, I don't run into the problem of having too much for them to carry back out of there. And I do a lot of stone furniture and, and such.

I've had that problem when I, when I make a lot of stuff out of gold. like I made a whole bunch of stuff like gold chairs or whatever gold doors and then yeah they got really mad and we're just like oh I can't take anything and I think part of it was that I guess their wagons couldn't reach my sight

so they were like lugging stuff in on donkeys or whatever and so then I cut down a whole bunch of trees and made it easier for them and then they seemed to be happier so I don't know if that's a thing that you guys have run into but interesting oh yeah one thing i started doing as well is for example my my clothing is my clothing and cloth cloth cloth stockpals are more elaborate simply because i tend to have a unfinished

cloth meaning it's just like wool yarn and stuff like that and then i have a processed cloth thing so that the unprocessed thing takes from everywhere then only gives to like specific workshops like maybe two maybe three and those only give to that one specific other cloth stockpile and that works fairly well simply because I can have a dude that is just hauling stuff while I have a different dude that is just working on it and that's pretty neat very practical. I ran into a lot of stockpile issues whenever I was trying to make soap.

I had a lot of problems with supplying the ash and the fat. Oh, yeah. And I would have both of those things, but it seems like I never quite figured out the timing that you had to set up. I guess if you have a lot of stockpiles that have a lot of lye and a lot of fat already, then you're not going to run into it.

But I don't know, it seems like they were making soap faster than I could produce the ingredients to do the soap. Yeah, it's a little flaky, isn't it? Soap's a funny one. Indeed. Soap's very funny. So my other issue that I have with stockpiles that I'm really trying to fix is the canceling jobs

because the farmers can't find seed. I read about a process by doing a two stockpile system where you have a feeder stockpile and I should say that all of these is assuming that you've restricted these particular stockpiles to having seeds only. and you put them, I guess, near your still and near your farms. But you have one stockpile that is a feeder stockpile that takes from anywhere but does not allow barrels. So you have another stockpile that only takes from the feeder stockpile and does allow barrels. And they say the reason that you do that is because otherwise you can have a lot, apparently,

a lot of situations where dwarves are stupid and they pick up a barrel whenever someone eats a plump helmet in the tavern, they will go to the stockpile, grab a barrel, take the barrel to the tavern, put the plump helmet spawn into the barrel, and then return the barrel to the stockpile. I see. That is stupid, yeah. It is stupid, but it is the mechanic of it. So when that happens, not just whenever the barrel is gone from the stockpile, but as soon as the

order comes for the person to come get the barrel to take the barrel to take. to the tavern. Yeah, they can put anything in it anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Or take it out. So those seeds that are in that barrel are unavailable. So a way to prevent that from happening is to do the feeder stockpile that doesn't contain any barrels and have that take from anywhere and then only have your main stockpile take from the feeder stockpile.

Yeah, that's smart. That way, that's smart. That way, whenever they pick up a barrel to take it, they are never taking it more than a couple. steps to the feeder stockpile. Yeah, yeah. You're trying to outsmart the doors. So you can still have it happen if the timing's perfect, but it's going to be two steps rather than, you know, 200 steps to get the barrel down to the tavern.

Smart. Yeah. Again, that is on the Dwar Fortress Wiki's stockpile design page, which is really interesting. I always wonder, whenever I hear things like that, do you think that's by design or is it just a happy accident? A happy accident. You mean the idiocy of the dwarves? Or an unhappy accident.

Was this the designer's intent for us to do this? I expect it just turned out that way and he's just not gotten around to fixing it. Yeah. Yeah, there's all sorts of funny stuff like that. Yeah. I suspect that by the time that it was, you know, if it's anything like the software that I work around, And by the time it was noticed that it was a problem, the procedural code was too well embedded in the system and changing it would probably break lots of other stuff. That's the truth of software development, isn't it?

Well, we're too far down that road, so we're doing it. It looks like there's a lot of stuff changing with stockpiles in some of the patch notes that I'm totally not looking at. But it does look like there's a lot of changes around stockpiles and barrels and bins and that. kind of thing. So maybe the way that we're thinking about the stuff will change soon next year when Steam comes out. I mean, hopefully some glitchiness will be gone. But I think, for example, the whole, oh yeah, I can't access this barrel because the dude that is on the other side of the fortress wants to access it. I can't believe that will like vanish simply because it's so deep embedded, so that might be one of those things that stays, but...

You know, it is a little endearing, actually. I don't know that I dislike it. It's just like a quirk of dwarves. Well, it's workable. It's, you can figure it out. You know what I mean? Like, that's, at least it's not like a game breaker. You know, those ways around it.

That's true. It's not like the one where they would hop on the children and would ride the mother like a horse until she died. That was my favorite game breaker of recent times. You remember that? That was in like, 4703 or something like that, where the children would mount the mother until she died. Yeah, it's hilarious. Good times. I think that was not as intended. Oh, one of the only things why I really, really care about actually linked stockpiles is just my kitchen. I don't know why, but I think I'm obsessed with Door Fortress food. The thing about

the kitchen is right when you want to make a lavish meal you need several ingredients and of course those ingredients have to be like pushed to your kitchen so getting those ingredients to your kitchen is apparently really really hard for your drawers oh yes because what they really like to do instead of taking like three different things is just taking a full barrel of stuff and then making like cat tallow roast that is just cat tallow like four times over that's great but I don't like it so what you want to do is you want a kitchen that is just taking from a stockpile where you don't allow barrels in and the stockpile is just a oh dude that's brilliant yeah four or five blocks wide so you only have like four or five items in it and usually

And there's always going to be a variety, yeah. Yes, yes, exactly. So, and it is very unusual that you actually have like four of the same item in there. I most often see just four different items, and then they take from that, take those four different items and put it into the kitchen. The only downside is I feel like it is taking way, way longer to actually produce a lavish meal simply because somebody has to, push like the four ingredients into the stockpile and only then food can be made. But on the other hand, you actually get like actual food that isn't just like cat, hello, four times over.

So I think it's good. You know, I can work with that. Yeah, yeah. I just noticed that on my game, my dwarves are slaughtering flying squirrels. Hmm. I've got a hunter that's going after the four. flying squirrels that were on the map that weren't hurting anybody. They'll kill themselves sometimes to do that.

They have a strong compulsion to hunt those guys, too. The flying scrolls in particular or just they get obsessed about particular animals? No, sometimes you get a dwarf and they'll just get a, like, they'll just be out for whatever. Yeah, for like a month. They'll just obsessively kill that thing, even to their own peril. Yeah, that's very funny, especially if it's something dumb like a porcupine. Yeah, I tracked this porcupine for three months. Yeah. I've killed it.

But in doing so, I've drowned myself in the river. The end. This segment is brought to you by Lucas, creator of Tibul Solon-Ebrook, Tibul-Flagg Ashes, in the village of Sizuksum. Tibul-Flagg Ashes is a granite coffin. All craft's gauph ship is of the highest quality. It menaces with spikes of granite. On the item is an image of sword west, the master of throwers, the cryolite slab in granite. Okay, let's go over the email, the mail and the messaging from our listeners. Yes.

If you would like to contact us, you can either go to the website and put a comment on a episode of your choice. If you'd like to send us an email, you can do so. Urist at D-F Roundtable.com. That's U-R-I-S-T at D-F Roundtable.com. We've got mail. So Mitchell Peterson wrote in and told us that he enjoys the podcast. And he also, like Tony, or at least, I guess, Tony, do you play much Rimmerald? I know you talk about it often.

I've talked about it. I haven't played it for a long time, not since I found the Door Fortress. Yeah. But yeah, Mitchell is one of those folks who is discovered Dwarfurtress after playing some Remworld. So he thinks that if you play Rimworld before moving to Dwell Fortress, the Dwell Fortress will be easier for you to understand. I agree with him. Absolutely agree with him. Yeah, it's a great way to get a sense of how things work.

And what's cool about Rimworld is some of the concepts are a lot easier to get into. it's a much more ruthless game I think but the concepts are presented to you in an easier to digest way and it kind of introduces the concept of stockpiles and workshops and that kind of thing and you know that sort of I mean it micromanagey but in a positive way

that you don't get with other games like if you're playing Apex Legends or whatever you're probably going to have a hard time with this game but if you're coming from Rimworld it's probably going to feel pretty good Yeah, he also says that he hasn't found it to be that difficult of a game to play. It is not a difficult game. Door Fortress is not a difficult game.

The gameplay itself is not difficult. Getting to where you can move around and navigate is probably the more difficult part of it. What I think is people like to talk about Door Fortress, and they've read that article in Medium or whatever that says it's hard to play. And so they're like, I know something about Door Fortress, and the thing that I know about it is that it's hard to play. And so people will tell you that it's hard to play. And that is without having ever touched it. And I think it is kind of hard to play if you pull up the Aski version and you haven't looked at anything or read anything. I wouldn't say that it holds your hand and guides you.

But once you figure out the basics and use some sort of a walkthrough, it's not very complicated. No, it's not, especially if you're like, oh, yeah, dwarves need food. Farming makes food. Like the general ideas behind it are fairly simple. the way how to do it, that can be quite elaborate. Yeah. Also, like, the whole layout of the game, like the UI, that is what's hard. Yeah, I mean, and you can make it as hard as you want it to be.

Like, you can go do that stuff that Nate's doing with mine card shotguns. Yeah, like, you can do that. And that's what's awesome. Or you can not, you know, and you can just kind of take. it easy and make soap and pat yourself on the back for having solved one of life's most complicated things. And then you feel really good about it. And you're like, I can make soap anytime now. Well, thanks, Mitchell, for sending in the email. And we agree. Charlie Hinton made a comment to one of the episodes, I think it was episode 49. We were talking about reclaiming objects.

I was sad that you couldn't just tell it to go out and reclaim every bolt that is on the screen without having to go track them down. It looks like I may have missed something, which is not surprising. Charlie indicates that you can use DBC, the command chain, to change forbidden items to claimable, apparently all at once. And it also allows you to designate areas as well as individual objects for reclaiming them. So I've got to check that out. that way I'd love to talk about that with you guys because I've had some experiences doing that and I ruined a fortress over it because I think I made too many things claimable and so I like un forbid everything including stuff that was like stuck in trees and then basically all the FPS like ground a halt and the fortress died because they couldn't get whatever it was from a tree and I just didn't figure it out in time I've had some challenges so I need more information on that one before I know what's going on. Thanks, Charlie, for sending the email. Finally, this episode, we had a message from Drunk Raccoons.

This was in response to episode 50. And Drunk Raccoons says, Dwar Fortress Rap, it has to happen. That is funny. I think if you're listening, we would love to hear it. Let us know when it's done, and we'd be happy to play it on the podcast. I fear that he wants us. Oh, what? It's got to be German rap.

Oh, no. German. No. So, yeah, so once again, if you want to send an email, send it to Eurist at D-F-R-R-Table.com. That's U-R-I-S-T at D-F-R-Rontable.com. You'll hear that address again in the outro. Okay. Have you guys got anything else to add today?

Nothing. Nothing, but I've got great ideas for our next podcast. We're going to talk about traps. We're going to talk about Not going to talk about archers We're going to resist It's a great idea Yeah

I feel like traps We've got We've got some rich stuff to talk about And I'm playing around with stuff So we're going to We're going to be coming in hot on that one So it's going to be great I don't think we've talked much about traps really

Oh no We've got a whole world A traps ahead of us here All right So our plan for our two weeks from today Is to talk about traps And I want to say If you have questions

or thoughts or things that you'd want us to talk about and research and yeah send us questions or thoughts or concerns or whatever about traps because I think I'd like to make it a good discussion on that and your feedback is welcome so that's going to wrap up this episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable thanks everyone for stopping in catch in a couple weeks and we'll catch you in a couple weeks um okay uh goodbye until next time That was a breath. Pip-pip and Toot-Loo. Attention members and guests, Christopher Harris brings you the sepia Glenn.

The newest Guild Hall in Suzuki, representing the Farmer Guild, the Flaxen Hall. Come learn and enjoy fellowship. This has been the Dwarfortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFRoundable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion. in the comments section for this episode. While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable

or find us in the podcast service of your choice. You can find video content on our YouTube channel and you can send us an email at Urest at DFRoundable.com. That's UR-I-ST at D-F Roundtable.com. Please consider donating to the creators of Dwarfortress at Bay12 Games.com. If you'd like to help support this podcast, you can find us at patreon.com

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