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Author Topic: How to safely collapse floor tiles  (Read 3977 times)

PsychicKid

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How to safely collapse floor tiles
« on: April 04, 2012, 02:15:49 pm »

This is my situation: http://i.imgur.com/ymndU.jpg (more or less, now there are gold statues on the horizontal 1-tile-tall floor tiles and all are in place)

Obviously, the drawbridges on the left and right fall down to connect to the floor in the middle. The problem is, there is a magma crab that is currently named living in the volcano caldera that keeps shooting crap at cats, dogs, and dorfs. He's already injured my important mechanic, so I aim to kill him by collapsing the middle "island" onto him when he scurries into the middle. If I deconstruct the single tiles just above and below the donkey, then the middle chunk will completely fall into the lava. But, cave-in dust will knock any dorf who does it into the lava. Is there anyway to safely deconstruct it and not have my dorf die? Like, if I surrounded the walkway with walls? Or is there a way to remote-collapse it?

Thanks.
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Sphalerite

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Re: How to safely collapse floor tiles
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2012, 02:18:06 pm »

Build a support on one of the tiles of the piece you want to collapse.  On the next level up, build a floor that attaches the top of the support to some nearby fixed terrain.

Build a lever and link it to the support.

Remove the connecting pieces.  The floor you want to drop is now supported only by that support.  Make sure no dwarves are nearby, and pull the lever.
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

PsychicKid

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Re: How to safely collapse floor tiles
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2012, 02:23:49 pm »

Build a support on one of the tiles of the piece you want to collapse.  On the next level up, build a floor that attaches the top of the support to some nearby fixed terrain.

Build a lever and link it to the support.

Remove the connecting pieces.  The floor you want to drop is now supported only by that support.  Make sure no dwarves are nearby, and pull the lever.

So if I understand this correctly, after doing this the support is  holding the middle "island" aloft because the floor on top of the support is hooked to the fixed terrain? Then destroying the support via lever will "free" the island letting it fall?
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Sphalerite

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Re: How to safely collapse floor tiles
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2012, 02:53:22 pm »

Yep.  Supports can hold something from below or from above.  When you pull the lever connected to the support, the floor will no longer be connected and will fall.
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

PsychicKid

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Re: How to safely collapse floor tiles
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2012, 03:44:38 pm »

Well, a fire-breathing titan has appeared to ruin everything. It's preventing me from properly linking the lever to the support. I managed to hastily get the mechanics installed into the support, but now when I try to link it to the lever, he keeps saying he can't find the path, but the lever is indoors. Does the fact that the path to the support is blocked have any affect on it, despite it being linked already there?
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NecroRebel

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Re: How to safely collapse floor tiles
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2012, 03:52:29 pm »

Well, a fire-breathing titan has appeared to ruin everything. It's preventing me from properly linking the lever to the support. I managed to hastily get the mechanics installed into the support, but now when I try to link it to the lever, he keeps saying he can't find the path, but the lever is indoors. Does the fact that the path to the support is blocked have any affect on it, despite it being linked already there?
Yes, to link a lever to an item, the mechanic has to connect the mechanisms at both ends during the same job, without getting interrupted.
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PsychicKid

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Re: How to safely collapse floor tiles
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2012, 04:12:36 pm »

It only took 6 months but I finally did it, killing the magma crab with a lucky shot and the titan that was on top of the bridge island. Well, except the titan is now swimming in the volcano on fire. A dorf that had been on fire for about 2 months finally died, exploding some wine barrels in the food storage, taking out some other dorfs. All in all I've lost about 20 dorfs to the titan setting everything on fire. The children are also tantrumming because their clothing has vanished, even though I crapped out like 30 shirts and 30 dresses for the ungrateful little cretins. I guess they just won't put them on.
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