Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 60: In Which FPS Death Is Averted and Mixed Squads Are Judged

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Hey there folks another beautiful autumn day in the world of Dwarf Fortress. hope you enjoy the banter. Paranoid Metroid and Roland's bloodlineBlindIRL reviews patrol setup

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfie. I'm Jonathan. I'm Roland. I'm Tony. And this is our 60th episode that we are recording now. Amazing. You wouldn't have thought it was possible. We're planning on continuing the last couple of questions for the Q&A that we had started on our last

episode today. Have you guys been playing much since the last episode? Not too much. I did a little bit of, well, tidy up work here with our fort that we have been chronicling the super old world that's really hard. But I hit FPS death on it, so I was hoping maybe you guys would have some suggestions for quick and easy things to check to alleviate FPS death. Sure. 197 FPS death to you? It's paused. It is paused.

So when I end pause, you will watch. And down we go in very, very, very fast order. It looks like there might be some pathing problems. Oh, yeah, you're down to 11. Oh, yeah. Oh, 11. Yeah, okay, I can see that. How many animals do you have, by the way?

Well, that's a good question. So animals, let's check that out. because if animals have pathing issues they might actually be the problem we have quite a few animals here yeah you have a lot of animals by my dude should we should we dispatch few of these animals I mean it depends if you do have locked doors then some animals will repeatedly try to pass through the door and then clutter your entire PC

okay I don't think we've got any of those the the option without killing animals is obviously putting them into cages but uh you you can you can do whatever but sometimes put the animals in cages okay yeah tony with you slaughtering all of your puppies i'm not going to take any crap anymore about making cat soap it's let's just be reasonable here there's plenty of other creatures in this thing that's this yak bowl we don't need yumbas and yak bulls that's just annoying so i'm going to let them get to that and we'll see if that does it, but look, you can see there's a lot of pathing spam. So obviously, I think maybe something's gone wrong. Yeah, yeah, it could be that simply because when I have egg layers

and they have fertile eggs and they hatch and the chickens want to get out of the coup, for example, but my door's locked. Then they will keep running into my door until my FBS is basically zero and it gets worse when I do assign them to somewhere else because the animals have a natural need to get to where you actually want them to be except for cats but that's a different story so you tell them you don't have to be in this room you have to be in the other but both doors are locked so they smash their faces into the door in the hopes that it then opens but the only thing that happens is your FPS going down to absolute zero. Oh, no, that's not good.

Okay, yeah, I know there's no lock doors. I've had some challenges with lock doors before. It looks like you're at 21 at this moment. And I have been running 21 to 25 with my fortress for probably a week now. Oh, okay. See, you're not feeling this is very FPS death AT. Well, look, see, it's 18 now, 17. Well, it would be nicer if it was faster.

And if you're used to running it like 500 frames per second, like whenever you have, you know, the unregulated frames, yeah, it's going to seem slow. I have gotten used to it, though. It's just things take longer in my fortress now. And it doesn't seem to be going anywhere south of 20-something very quickly. I feel like my problems are that this, you know, like this guy's trying to hunt for small creatures, but he can't find a path. So I feel like something's gone wrong. Can you click A for us for a second as an announcement? Can you go up on one page?

That's not too many. It's not too many. I mean, it's spammy, but it's not too spammy. Seems to be tied to this guy. Oh, no. Let's figure out where he is. Maybe he's got himself into a bit of a jam. After we do that, I've got another thing that I'd like to look at.

Yeah, let's talk about it. will I dither. Do you have a dump setup and do you have in DFHack turned on the auto dump? What it will do is it will collect old clothing that are worn and confiscate them from dwarfs who like to hold

on to things even though they're trashed? I do have a dump. It will confiscate them and automatically put them in the dump so that you can atom smasher. I said, do you have a dump? What I meant was, do you have an atom smasher? I've started to set one up here. Let's see, is it working? That's become one of the first things that I do

is set up a three-tile atom smasher just for that purpose. It's really handy, too, whenever you start to have attacks and your fortress fields get littered with goblinite. Because anytime that there's a battle, you have about half the things in it are all worn because they get damaged during the fights. So I will always claim them and dump them or claim them and melt them, depending on if it's metal or not.

So here's an interesting, maybe this would be a bug. The guy that's giving me all of the can't find path and pathing problems currently is exploring a different site, not part of the fortress. Oh. Huh. He seems to be exploring a place called muted mirror,

yet he is busy trying to hunt for small creatures. So that's serious. Are you attached to this dwarf? I'd like to kill him. Well, let's just spell him. Okay, yeah, let's do that. Can you even expel him if he's not there? Yeah, that's what I wonder.

Let's see. Well, is he actually off-map, or is he really on-map? That's the question. It says he's cleaning now. How can you, dude? Oh, look. I think we found our problem. He's trapped in the caverns because he's an idiot.

That shouldn't do the pathing issue. Well, I think he can't do anything. And so I think he's stuck here, and he's supposed to be, look, he's got his top task here is Explore Mute Mirror. Wait, wait. Other people are in there as well. See, he's not a problem. Why are they both in here trying to do this thing? I think you have a very different problem going on. I think there's definitely some trouble here with these characters.

Let's get them out of there. Let's figure out how we can do that. Right. So let this be a cautionary tale in Door Fortress bug fixing. idiot fixing, I guess in this case. So how have you guys been? Well, Tony is trying to get his dwarfs to find their way out of the cavern.

Why don't you talk about the stream series that you've set up with a paranoid Metroid? Yes, I would love to. Okay, so it basically went like this. He set up everything and started the fortress. He generated a world specifically for it. I watched a stream. and it took him, what, like three hours

just to get the first thing started simply because he was really making sure everything was right. And I have to say, I admire that. I really admire that. The amount of detail he did in this setup was amazing. You know, I go through and bark like, yeah, whatever, give me some pickax. It's not sure, sure, yeah, let's say, whatever.

right and he went into every single dwarf and was like what is your personality and let's give you a job that fits and I'm like what my god oh no and um he even did it for the military right he went through and looked into who is good for the military who is very fitting to be a military dwarf but he forgot to assign a specific uniform so it was just mixed and also I had to disband it And then I felt really shabby because I didn't put these exact people right back. So instead took people that actually had knowledge for spears as a preference. And I felt chabby for it. You know, I'm like, yeah, whatever.

And he goes through and is like, yeah, no, this person has like easily stressed or whatever. And I'm like, oh, you can play the game like that, okay. Have you spoken to Paranoid Metroid since you have destroyed his original squads? No, no, that was just like one or two hours earlier. I have not spoken to him. I'm a little bit scared, to be honest. He spent all that time getting their personalities, right, and then you kill him in the first thing by sending him off to some death mission.

Nice. No, no, no, no. They're not send off, but, I mean, I gave them spheres. They have steel spears. I made a metal industry. He can't be too mad at me, right? As long as those doors wanted that, Roland, as long as they wanted to do that. That feels like a lot of pressure because, like, if you're playing in the big leagues,

and I think that's the big league. The big leagues. It's a lot of pressure, you know, the professional door for the players, like, somebody who's not messing around. Culture differences, culture, culture alert. That's right. Culture alert. The big leagues in America is the top tier of professional sports level, like Major League Baseball, the National Football League.

National Basketball Association probably like like what's the soccer league in England that's the has the Manchester United and has the

the relegation and all that is that so just it's not just association football is it yeah there's you can get relegated to the lower leagues and stuff like that yeah so the big leagues is is the the top gender

not Bundesliga it'd be like want something that's not that for talking German sports. Anyway, this is fascinating stuff. The online part is I don't know anything at all about sports. So I just using it as a way to describe overall competence. I'm a bit of a sports. Yeah, I'm a bit of a sports fan.

Oh, you are? Okay. All right. Mostly football and basketball. Okay. So, yeah. Cool. Okay.

Yeah. Anyway, back to back off, back on topic. Yeah. I lost my train of thought. Where's the whiskey? Right. Yeah, it's morning here. So I'm going to give that a miss.

Okay, yeah. So I've got, I think we've got some Dorvan works coming to rescue these guys that are trapped in the caverns. I don't understand how they got into the caverns because I thought I'd done a pretty good job of closing them off. So I think that's going to be a, what do you call it, one of those happy accidents that may happen in the future if we get a forgotten beast. that may come and pay us a visit. So to let folks know, Paranoid Metroid posted on his channel the first set-up video of the Bloodline Fortress that he had a role under playing.

I can only say you should watch it because it is very interesting, yes. It is. Yeah, I mean, if you're doing the character development for them, that certainly is taking things to a level beyond what I've done. I think that's pretty neat. But I'll put in the show notes

both the links to Paranoid Metroids and so I'll post links to Rowland's YouTube channel. I'm still pretty stoked about the stuff that Paranoid Metroid's putting out there because he's really nailed the good production coupled with very short and informative like, you know, very short and informative context. Like he doesn't try to boil the ocean with the video.

It's like, here's how we're going to do this. and then it kind of gets right to it and does it in a very clear and concise, well-edited way. So, man, what a good use of his time. So thanks, buddy. This segment is made possible by a grant from Logan Hastings, creator of B.R. Onal, the earth of mirroring, a bronze anvil. All craft's dwarf ship is of the highest quality. It is studded with bronze and decorated with giant cave spider silk and apple wood.

This object menaces with spikes of dog leather, mule leather, and shale. On the item is an image of smooth pebbles and tiger iron. Also on the item is an image of thin ankles the bulky cave spider silk shoe and catbone. Let's go over these questions that we had that were Q&A because otherwise I think we're going to get sidetracked and forget to do it. Fantastic. So continuing where we left off last week, Eshep sent an email. saying he's yet to find something that he needed Dwarf Therapist.

It's our never-ending conversation about whether Dwarf Therapist is a savior of mankind or if it's the bane of human existence. So for simple tasks, I'll just go ahead and read it here. I've yet to find something for which I needed therapist. For simple tasks of managing who does what jobs or just a quick rolls at a glance, I prefer to use dwarf manipulator.

It's quick, simple, and doesn't distract me from the game. Should be enabled by default with DF hack. If not, it's just enable manipulator in your DF hackinet. To find it in-game, simply press L for labors from the unit screen. What? Yeah, dwarf manipulator. I've not actually used this before. What is it?

I don't, I'm, what? From the unit screen? Let's do that. There's some my asthma. Made a big mistake. Now, everybody's going into the caverns. This isn't really what I wanted. My FPS problem is gone.

So that's great. It's going on. That's what it was. Cool. Yeah, so that was cool. So that got us back up a little higher. That's swell. Anyway, I hope everyone has a nice time out there.

So we're going to units. Okay. Hit you for units, yeah. Mm-hmm. And then what was the... And then he says hit L for... L. Managed labor.

Oh, my God. This looks like the hard mode for... I've accidentally gotten here before. Oh, wow. Okay. I feel like I'm on a BBS back in the 1980s here. If you want to do it a little bit... So for those who are not watching the stream

and have not been on this page before. Have you ever looked at the Matrix ScreenSaver? Yeah. It looks a lot like if you took the health chart and put it on steroids. I mean, I find a... pretty cool, but I don't know what, well... Like all things, dual fortress, you're not going to understand it on your first glance. No one's a druid.

Yeah, that's impossible usually. I can see here that I don't have any druids. And this is the first time I've ever seen that in the context of Door Fortress. Druids? Well, no, they're an elvish thing. Well, everyone here is definitely not a druid. I don't know why it's... That's good.

That's good. I'm glad they're not druid. I don't like druid. But it kind of reminds me of an in-game dwarf therapist. This is kind of cool. Yeah, it is. Exactly that, huh? It's basically a more interesting way.

Look, this guy's goals. So to be a father. Well, that's fun. Create art work. That's pretty neat. You can see what all these people want. I guess I can see some value. I mean, I think this is kind of cool.

Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive. I'm afraid that's asking a lot. That's that poor bastard who was stuck in your cage. Well, stay alive might be the start of a necromancer, you know, because he becomes obsessed with his own mortality at some point.

Or it could be the start of a Bee Gees song. It's true. Oh, Lord God. Ouch. I'm sure to kill this guy straight for that. I'm locking in the caverns just because that. You can go figure out how to stay alive there. All right.

Well, I'm just going to be a moron and put a door in. Well, cool. troll is going to kick down. So thank you, Eishap, for sending us that comment and, boom, learn something new today. So my day is worthwhile. I like it. I like it. As a non, I don't know what any, oh, not Carpenter, not Boyer.

Oh, okay, sure, sure. This seems great for people who don't want to use therapists. Keith Richardson writes in, and this is with regard to clothing production, because we, spent a little bit of time on an episode I don't exactly remember which one it was, but talking about the varieties of clothing and how we would like to see more of that. Regarding clothing production,

Dwar Fortress is amazing in its detail, but this is often my kryptonite as well. Once I can produce enough cloth to actually make clothing, I'm immediately intimidated by the daunting task of clothing every dwarf, left shoe, right shoe, gloves, socks, etc. Typically, I set my production using the manager. In other words, if you have materials, make until you have this many. Setting this up for

each clothing piece seems like an impossible task. What methods do you use to keep your dwarf clothed? That is such a good question. Hmm. I usually just do the very basics. So I do robes. I do pants and I do shoes and it stops there. I don't do anything else. and if they bring something through the caravan or they make like an artifact they bring it because some migrant arrived and that died in my caverns which never happened before then they get some extra stuff but usually I don't go beyond that because now they're fully closed and they don't need any specials you know they they don't run around coming like no I need a cab no I need like something glove-like or I need socks they don't really need that

they just wanted to be generally clothed so I just do the very minimum I mean sure that that means I'm kind of lazy but ultimately I just have to do three things

like a robe trousers and shoes and so that's pretty easy to do is it? Yeah what do you do Tony? uh i don't i ignore it because i have not figured out the clothing thing probably so i

got a bunch of naked doors running i i kind of just let them deal with it oh no yeah i'm one step better than that though i'm just just one small step i get a little overwhelmed at it i'm like god i don't know like how many side do socks and lord it's just it starts to feel kind of hard And so I'm like, well, hopefully they don't, you know, freak out and start killing everybody over not being able to have warm socks. But, yeah. Once I note that my dwarves are wearing a lot of shabby clothing and stuff, at that point, the next caravan that comes in, I will just, you know, buy up all their clothing and put them in a stockpile and let the people go to town. So that's a very lazy way to do it. But it seems to work.

I will always build a loom and a clothier so that we can make some silk cloth. And whenever, that way, if someone goes into a strange mood and wants to make a really fancy piece of clothing, then they'll give them the opportunity to that seems to always be one of my earliest strange moods is to make some fancy piece of clothing. Those are always fun. My mary usually will get it. That, to me, is the thing, because I could, I've set up the loom and the clotheaer and I do all that stuff. Then I'm like, oh, okay, a robe and maybe a hat.

Once they, you have the loom set up and correct me if I'm wrong, rolling. Once they have the loom set up, they will automatically make thread and cloth out of silk that they collect. And then if you also shear an animal that you can get like wool from, they will automatically create yarn from the wool. And then we'll make a bolt of cloth out of it. And then you can use that in the clothing workshop. I think it's a lot like if you have a fish cleaning, whatever the fishery set up,

whenever the fishers bring in their fish, they automatically get cleaned. Like whenever you have a butcher's shop, whenever a hunters go out and kill something, they automatically get butchered. You don't have to think about it once you get that set up. Yeah. That is correct. It's like, okay. Yeah.

So that's what the loom. I think the loom is very much like that. There's something to do with the farmer's workshop that has to do with, I think, processing plants for thread or something like that. I think that's a little more involved. Yeah. And if you want to shear an animal, you also need a farmer's workshop. That's right. Yeah.

But I usually have all three kinds of cloth, like silk, plant, and... There's yarn, cloth, and silk, exactly. So I always have like two or three options open. So I always go with the rope, silk robe, because, you know, that's cool. Also a bit Roman. Then I do cloth trousers because I imagine them to be a bit thicker. And if I'm in a cold area, I try to go for wool trousers for warmth. And then I do leather shoes because I might be imagining this, but I think.

think that leather shoes do keep better in like how's that like they they they keep longer a better durability yes durability thank you i like to imagine they have a better durability than just uh like a silk shoe so i always do like leather shoes all right well i'm inspired and i'm going to have a clothing workshop section built here so we can get to the bottom of this. So we need a tanner's workshop. Dwar fortress is the haven for micromanagers, but that's one thing that I don't care to micromanage is my dwar's clothing. I just let them wear what they want to wear. And I spend my time micromanaging other things like archers.

I'm obsessed with archers. Don't you still have to micromanage the making of all the clothing? Or are you saying you actually manage to set it and forget it with that as well? I just buy a crap load of clothing from the caravans as they come in and just let them sit in a stockpile and they go grab what they want. If I make a bunch of cloth robes, so somebody's probably going to come do that. Oh, yes, you don't have to be playing a cloth a lot. I micromanage my bedrooms to the intth.

I want to make sure that there is at least one bedroom for every. every dwarf in my place, and I want them all to be, if not royal bedrooms, at least, you know, everyone gets a throne room. Damn, really? That's pretty nice. That's very kind of you. Crazy. Yeah, I make sure that I, that all of my bedrooms have masterworks in beds, coffers, and cabinets,

and I will put pedestals and artifacts in everybody's rooms. Yeah, every bedroom gets engraved floors. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I only can't do that for the dormitories. Everybody loves sleeping in a wonderful bedroom. You can always look at their thoughts and talk about how wonderfully happy they were about being in a wonderful bedroom.

Well, that makes sense. I mean, I imagine these fortresses are pretty dank and unpleasant. It's pretty easy to set up, too. So thank you, Keith Richardson. More food for thought, and you've planted a bug in Tony's ear to. to work on his clothing industry. So there we go. Now they'll have silk robes and leather boots.

That's fantastic. Super, super, super. Woo-hoo. Dwarf Fortress Roundtable is brought to you in part by Jack Dittlin, creator of Nullivan Umban Sanad. Tumpurries the ambiguity of morning, a Goshenite table. All crafts' dwarf ship is of the highest quality. It is encircled with bands of tapered baguette-cut Goshenites.

This object is adorned with hanging rings of silver. On the item is an image of dwarves in Goshenite. The dwarves are traveling. The artwork relates to the foundation of Trade Whispered by the Dreamy Tour of the Fleshy Hairy Swords in the Year 1. Moving on to another topic here, on November 4th, a video was released of blind working over a video apparently that Zach had done a playthrough of

that details the day-to-day operations of the military menu and look pretty cool my first thought was that hey are they accepting applications for for beta testing of the new door fortress that want to get out on that it's beta time yeah yeah but i read a little closer and it was blind doing commentary on something that that Zach had done. But I'll link that in the show notes as well. But the thing that I really liked about it, the thing that I'm most excited about,

and what is going to change the way I run my fortresses, is the ease with which you can set up patrols for your military. It is clicking to add waypoints. Now, correct me, I may be wrong. You may be able to do that now. But it looks like simplicity to, to create waypoints so you can have your squads when they're on duty to patrol around the perimeter

of your wall and to go back and forth on your gate. Yeah, that's true. I think you can do that now, can you? You can do patrol routes and things now. I think it's just complicated so people... It is. Other than paranoid Metroid probably don't do it. Hey, Tony, Claudius Stutt,

asks what graphics pack we're running in Steam. Is this Vettlinger? This is Vettlinger? Yep. That's right. The big V. Cool. So, yeah, that's a vetlinger. I tend to run Phoebus just because, yeah. Yeah. I like the Vetlinger one. I like the Meph one as well. So it's always a really noise on the edge. I like the Vettlinger because the tile set's just a bit brighter.

And I noticed that Meph, I think the contrast is just, it's a bit dark and similar for my old aging eyes for something a bit more. more contrast. Both Fetlinger and Meph and Maydays pack is very detailed. Yeah. Well, totally. Everything looks really good.

They've all done a really, oh-oh. What's that? Uh-oh? You heard of a oh? We've got a forgotten beast has come towering theropod with external ribs.

It has a long straight horn and a gaunt appearance. It's tote feathers or downy. Beware it's poisonous bite. Oh, well. nah that's going to be fine it has no wings i think it's just going to i think it's all just going to blow away we'll just send the dwarves to the tavern and grab a pint and wait for all of this to blow it and it's gone so that was easy i get a lot of those where they come in and they're like no we're done it just seems like things are going to get really bad and then

they're then they go as fast as they came i'm invincible this fort will never ever fall he says yes as if to invite you know a pack of colossuses colossus's colossi colossuses never never going to happen this is the but mind you this is the world that I've never survived more than a year in so it's extraordinary that we've made it this far I'm assuming that I have made a particularly easy world because my fortress that I'm running now, Pickhour, is like on year nine or so. And it is going along fine.

I've fought off several goblin sieges. I don't know what happened to the elves. I know that I talked about the elves ambushing me every year for a while. Well, they've stopped that. I don't know if they're all dead or what it is, but they've stopped ambushing me. But I've taken care of several forgotten beasts, several night creatures.

Yeah, it's... The only thing that I haven't run into yet is undead. So looking forward to that. Oh, my God. I've got five melee squads and one archery squad. Damn, okay. And I found... Completely filled.

Yes, yes. My fortress has 170 people in it. Holy smacks. Yeah, and like I said, I'm running at about 25 frames per second, and it seems to be stable at that. And with that many dwarves, It's, it's, it, I'm not unhappy with that performance. The problem with the fortress is that I'm having trouble keeping it together with organization, as happens, with whenever you have a big fortress like that, right? So I have found that one of the best ways to train your archers is not even with archery ranges, is to send them down to the caverns to kill crundles.

That is the best way. Yeah. That's awesome. I read on, I think it was on the, either the wiki or. some, or maybe it was a Reddit post, but apparently one shot, you know, they gain experience by shooting their bows, and whether it's into a target or at an enemy, apparently you get like orders of magnitude more experience for shooting at enemies than you do from shooting at targets.

That is true. So, and crundles, I mean, you can step on a crundle and that's going to die. So they're not at much danger, even if they have to hit it over the head with their, with their bow, that's fine. They're going to live through it. so yeah I am pretty much I've got an archery range they don't they use it sometimes they don't use it as much as I would like them to but I don't really care that much because any time that I see that the people who are harvesting tower caps in the in the caverns when I see that they get interrupted by a crundle I send my archery squad down there to to take care of them and whenever I get attacked by goblins they seem to hold their own and I will lose one or two archers in a siege, but

not really that many. I have them hang behind, send my other five squadrons of melee people to attack the goblins and, yeah, it works pretty well. This segment is brought to you by Potato Bomb, Creator of Disorbiton, entrance com, a silver animal

trap. All craft's dwarf ship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with rectangular praise cabachons, decorated with beak dog bone and encircled with bands of octagon cut praises. This object is adorned with hanging rings of hoary marmot leather and menaces with spikes of violet spesartine. On the item is an image of dwarves in silver. The dwarves are traveling.

The artwork relates to the foundation of pick hour by the roughness of ankles of the fleshy hairy swords in the early spring of the year five. Also on the item is an image of the fenced neutralization the steel pick in year. the steel pick in yak leather Tony, do you have a squad? Yeah, look, we got a couple squads. Show us so I can judge. Oh, would you like to see the military? Would you like to see the cunning channels

or the doors of robustness? I would like to see what kind of equipment you have given them. You did uniforms or not. I am never going to show you. going to show you my squads, ma'am. Oh, no, you did not. You did not.

Look at that. They've got all kinds of stuff. Look at that. They're all well equipped. We've got sword stores and axe stores. And everybody's happy. Nightmare. All happy.

My nightmare. You're doing bait. But everybody's getting a cunning and robust. They've got uniforms, I think. So, for the. those who are not seeing the live stream, Roland is horrified that Tony has mixed weapon-type squads. Yeah, that is...

You know what? I like to give them freedom and choice, and I feel like, you know, if you mix it up, everyone can learn from each other. I think that's important. So they've got... So it would be nice to see some dwarven science.

What's that, Tony? I said, well, it's nice. You know, you can see what your buddy with the axe can do. And yeah, yeah, that's how you learn. It would be nice to have some Dwarven science happen if we could take a save that was manipulated such that you have squads that you're setting up and maybe have a siege going on so that you can have some sort of objective statistical analysis of performance between, you know, a brand new set of all hammer dwarves or a brand new set of a squad. that has mixed, you know, own preference melee weapons and maybe see what they look like after a little bit of experiences game

because I do like, and now I realize that objectively, it's probably better to have your 10 hammers, 10 maseman and such. But I do like the variety of having swords and flails and morning stars and all that. so yeah everybody's got iron i like to see them have their own choice the the questionable person here is this wrestler that's carrying a date palm wood spear

i don't know that that's a good idea but he is a wrestler so he's trying he's trying or she she's also wearing a honey badger leather dress which sounds nice but yeah everybody's got iron one of the things you can specify i think is is metal that you can force them to use metal uh weapons I mean, I'm just going to say this. You can make some... Okay, listen, listen, okay. This will sound insane, but listen, listen. You can make a uniform for spears and one for hammers and one for swords,

then make three different squads and don't fill them up. So you still have like two spears and three hammers, like six swords. but what's my what's my what's my what's the net positive for the work that goes into it

like the net positive is you get no cross training so if you give everybody their own room to train in they only train their respective weapons and nothing else

I thought crossfit was what all the kids were doing these days that's why I get what you're saying there, Alan. I get what you're saying. I'm just, uh, yeah. I think you're saying it's like, oh, God, this guy's got a crossbow. Why is he even in here? Um, yeah, I think it's like, I think you're making a roll his point there for him, Tony. If you're all, yeah, no, this is actually not the training room.

But, um, I don't know where they are. There's not, nobody's training in here. I don't know where they've gone scumbags. Um, yeah, I think, I get your point. It's like basically, if you've got everybody that's a Speerdorf, they're training with Speardorbs, so there's Speardorrs. That's better, which I can totally get at that point. Paranoid Metroid made the comment that he realizes how much he sounds like a

how it's made narrator. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, if that's the way you want to go with the videos, that's fine. But I don't think you sound inherently like a how it's made narrator. Well, not in the,

in the fortress, the bloodline fortress stream. You do kind of sound like that in the micro lessons, but I think that's the whole point of the micro lessons. So, yeah. Go with what you love, because if you're going to do it for a while, you don't want to get sick of it. And SP, yes, adamantine Spears.

Those would rock. I wish Spears had reach. Yeah, we need reach with Spears. They should be able to throw those things. I've got some really unusual visitors here. I've got a goblin criminal pale corpse. I'm not used to those kind of visitors in my 14. what's he doing he's just

I think he's just having a good time really is that your tavern yeah and then there's a human bitter zombie which okay all right huh I'm interested in that I don't so the this is a humanoid driven to cruelty

by its evil nature well she seems better now though I guess goblin criminal pale corpse okay I mean what do I do goblin beast hunter Why are they here? I would have thought these would be the kind of things that would want to be killy,

but they seem pretty chill. Now, maybe they're on a mission, you know, mission to retrieve your artifacts in a sneaky manner if you get my drift. Ah, I see. Well, there's a lot of people in here,

so it's going to be hard to steal stuff, I think. Well, your dwarves don't have to be welcoming. You can send your squads after those guys. Mm-hmm. Well, if they're, I mean, you know, I don't really want to yuck their yums. They seem okay. I've built a library.

Maybe we can all get along. You know, maybe this is like the, you know, this is the start of sorting out this crazy evil world, which I don't know what I'll, like, I'm looking at the world map right now. I am not good at reading Door Fortress World Maps. I haven't even tried to start. The caravans tell me that they have added changes to my world. I just ignore it. Yeah, I know the Omega is a door fortress and the AE thing is the elf stuff. I know that part.

But, you know, I don't know what the little candy can. canes are, and sometimes the colors go a little bit. I mean, you know, the capital I is the tower. But I don't know what the little red and green Christmasy candy canes are. I'm not sure what any of that stuff is. I would love a key. Maybe there is a key. Is there a key?

On Dwarfortress Wiki there is. Oh, cool. Yeah. Look up, I think it's under the World Map page on the Dwar Fortress Wiki. Yeah, I was trying to decide if I would do that or just wait for the update. Hey, so I built an archery tower. Hey, you know, you go up from under the ground and it goes up one level and I've got the fortifications and all that. I haven't managed to get my archers to stay in there, which is why I'm interested in the patrol thing.

I might have them patrol my archery towers. And, you know, it's more of a vanity project than anything else because I don't really know how useful an actual archery tower would be. Well, if they've got iron crossbows, when they throw them off the top, the gravity can do a lot of damage when the crossbow hits the, attacking enemies. I've not run into that problem so far. Yeah. My archers have been fairly well behaved, so I don't know, I don't know why. I joke.

That was user error, I'm sure. I've also got another decorative work. You know, I built the pyramid over my courtyard, and my fortress, strangely enough, is still surviving and actually thriving. So now I'm building a giant sphere on the outside of the my fortress just for the to give the dwarves something to do because I've not really figured out

what I want the purpose. Well, actually, it's not that I haven't figured out the purpose. I just keep expecting something horrible to happen to bring my fortress down and it's just not happening. So we're going to build a giant ball outside of our fortress entrance. Don't worry. And I will post a picture of that on the,

uh, on maybe an upcoming episode. featured picture. All right. Yeah, SP noted that keeping the archers in place with a barrow is the best way to do that, which I agree. But it's an additional thing that I have to remember that I've got a barrow for them. So I'm thinking that a patrol, scheduling a patrol might, you could probably schedule barrows too, can you?

Can you schedule barrows? schedule as in make them there at specific points of time yeah yes yeah okay so I need to do that then yeah put them in a barrel whenever they're on duty and however

if they're assigned to a barrow will they leave the barrow if I tell the squad to attack an enemy I think that overrides it yeah not sure though I have not fiddled with that too much.

I just don't get it. For me, the burrow comes out only when I'm in panic mode when it's... Yeah, me too. Me too. It's just like, quick run! The civilian alert barrow

that's inevitably named Bugout. Yeah, exactly. Panic, I think, is what I've helpedfully called mine. Yeah. So, yeah, SP says that it confirms that active military will run out of the barrow.

And yeah, uh, S.P. says to have them patrol the barrow, which, yeah, again, I want to experiment with patrolling because that will change the way I play the game, I think. One of the things I love to do with RTS games like Empire Earth and Age of Empires and so on was to set up patrols around the perimeter of my area that I had that I was working with, because it would always give me, you know, early warning and, and, I would have all of my armies pretty much patrolling at all times. Hmm. Interesting. So that no matter where the attack came from,

it guaranteed that I would have somebody nearby to engage quickly, and then I could run everybody else up there. That seems like a good idea. So I think that we're going to do maybe one more episode before we go on our winter break. That sounds good. So let's get those 2021 questions in. Ah, release. Release schedule, release predictions.

I predict February 2022. 2020. I predict that we're going to see the seam release for New Year's of 2022. Are you talking January or December 31st, 2022? No, I'm saying New Year's Day. Oh, that's bullish. you know there's no penalty

to me being wrong so that's true it's true yeah Tarn's not going to just be like all right man I'm not releasing it now screw you well my prediction is

both brothers will be put into mechanical body suits live for 300 more years and the steam release will come out 2,222, January 18.

And it's still going to run on a single thread. Obviously, yeah. Well, I hope he compels it for the MacM1. The MacM Quantum Computer Engine. Yeah, I really would like to see it compile for that because those things are just, like, if you're going single, if you're going to go single core processing, nothing is faster than those machines. And so it's like, come on, man. This game is built. Apple basically should be working with Tarn at this point.

Camzik's legendary says that they had a dream last night that it was going to be released on April 4th, 2022. Okay. And dream. I like that. Maybe February 2nd, 2020. Because then it can be 2222. Okay.

So. What does this mean, guys? A stray hen, tame has been found dead, contorted in fear. that feels like something bad has happened it sounds like they saw one of your goblin guests contorted in fear yeah do you see I've got I've got it I've got it up on this one right now I've never seen this before

yeah same a hen has been found dead contorted in fear what caused that more hen to do that the only thing that I think can't think of is one of the intelligent undead in your fortress did that because they sometimes come with special powers, right? So I can't imagine that happening, but I have never seen that.

That is amazing. Yeah, so that's a new one. And look, it's in the, I think it was up in my chicken coop or whatever this thing is. So that's, so, hey, there's a first for everyone. You need to put up Dwarven security cameras, man. Well, I really do.

Aren't those dogs? Yeah, but you can't play the dog back. No, it was just, well, that's true. You know, you definitely can't do that. It would be good to be able to go back and see what happened there. Yeah, I would love it. I mean, I guess contorted in fear is pretty, um, yeah, that's pretty scary. S.P. says that it was the basilisk.

Apparently of the basilisk in the fortress. In the, in the bathroom, right? Do you have a basaltice to the fortress? Let's see. What have I got? No, I don't have anything. I've got a ghostly wood burner hanging out. having fun.

Oh. Well, that could do it. Why? Why? Oh, that's a ghost. Okay. I need to do it. Yeah, if it's a violent ghost. That's the problem. But he's in the cabins now. But anyway, we're going to make it too much.

Yeah, it's one of those people that couldn't find his way out. Hmm. I guess you need to build yourself a slab if you can't find the body. Yeah, I think that's what we're going to have to do here. Yeah. Okay, guys. All right. We did it. Yeah, so we will see y'all in a couple weeks.

everybody, thanks for looking in at the live stream, and thanks for tuning in to the podcast. Terrific. And until next time, this is Dwarf Fortress Roundtable and happy fortressing, guys. See ya. See ya.

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