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[sandant]

Break out your picks, check your food stockpiles, and prepare to ignore those nobles because its mega-project time. That all sounded very inspiring however I admit that I am fairly new to the whole mega-project thing, I have only made one before and that was a Colosseum, the reason for that was I had an over-abundance of captured cave creatures (Crundles, Crundles everywhere), and an over abundance of goblin prisoners, the Colosseum solved both issues. So I like my projects to be practical and cool, so I have an idea for both. I am going to make a castle, underground, on a pillar of rock, in a giant cavern of nothing other than the castle (More of a mini fortress really) on a pillar of rock, with one drawbridge linking it to the fortress and the rest of the underground. Now I have puzzled for a bit on how to go about this and I think that I have made a game plan that works. I am going to approach it like a sculptor approaches a block of marble, I am going to carve out a big, and I mean BIG room, this will be the "top" of the block of marble, and I am simply going to carve down carving out both the cavern and the castle. The castle when I am done will be a solid block of rock in a castle shape, I won't bother hollowing out any rooms during the initial carving process I am going to then simply carve my way into the block and make all the rooms I desire, including a massive, albeit spartan bedroom complex, a food storage, and a basic material/ workshop area to avoid mood failure and tantrum spirals, the purpose of this castle is to be my ark. It is a bastion and a fall-back point, and when the time comes, my Alamo against the demons, It will be militarized, two large towers for Marksdwarfs, and a good old fashion ballista battery. I want it to be my emergency fall-back point if the fortress proper is ever breached. This will be a big project, but luckily if I mess up I can mend a lot of the damage by building stone walls, and difficult constructions like the towers can be built from scratch later if I'm having trouble.

So leave your thoughts, anything is appreciated, and if you have a mega project brewing or one that you feel proud of feel free to share, I am just fishing for ideas right now.

[itg]

Sounds great! My only suggestion is to engrave the outside walls as you go.

As for megaprojects of my own, I'll refer you to the link in my sig. I drained the magma sea and I am currently about 80% done with a huge sub-magma arcology made entirely of clear glass. I Intend to post an update with more pictures soon.

[DS]

I am going to approach it like a sculptor approaches a block of marble, I am going to carve out a big, and I mean BIG room, this will be the "top" of the block of marble, and I am simply going to carve down carving out both the cavern and the castle. The castle when I am done will be a solid block of rock in a castle shape, I won't bother hollowing out any rooms during the initial carving process I am going to then simply carve my way into the block and make all the rooms I desire...

That's precisely the way to do it.

Your first concern should be to visualize the scope. After you have found an embark site you like, lay out your plans at the largest scale - that is, the outline of the cavern itself, either planned out on paper (this is a good way to view z-levels) or outlined using designations. The space you set aside consists of both the negative space of the cavern and the space contained by the castle. This may seem like a no-brained, but with a project this large, all the effort you put into planning will make everything easier along the way. You definitely don't want to get all the way through your excavation, only to find out your carved castle is too small.

Consider how many miners you will devote to this project, and how many years it will take. You want to make sure your design is something you will be happy with, so be as extravagant and creative as you possibly can be. I've attempted several excavation megaprojects, but only one (linked in my signature) has been completed - the rest were aborted partway through due to tantrum spirals or my own dissatisfaction with how the project was progressing.

Don't forget to consider the floor of the cavern. Is it water? Magma? The cavern itself? Or is it a zombie-infested refuse pit? With a project this large, there are many, many options. Consider as many of them as you can in advance, unless you feel like improvising the whole thing as you go.

[sandant]

My biggest problem thus far has been my miners finding sick joy in trapping themselves, and digging channels in such a way to leave pillars of rocks that essentially have to be caved-in.

[DS]

Are you designating layer by layer? Many accidents can and, statistically, will happen if you to designate an entire three-dimensional area to be excavated all at once.

If you are indeed digging out a single layer at a time, I'd recommend using ramps instead of channels. They are generally safer, although channels might be better in highly specific situations.

[sandant]

Layer by layer, however I had a cave in of a single tile that managed to cascade a 1 square wide hole 10 Z-Levels deep  . I will have to try the Ramp trick though.

[DS]

Right, accidents happen. One of the advantages of ramps over channels is that you can see the layer that will be excavated as you're designating the ramps, as opposed to channelling, where you're viewing one layer above the one that will be excavated. This cuts down on unnecessarily fun surprises.