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[Hans Lemurson]

I've been working on making a number of above-ground structures, but I've been greatly annoyed by my inability to designate constructions in currently unreachable places (like +1z).  For personal reasons I'm trying to use only separate up and down stairs (rather than up/down combos) but it's gotten fairly frustrating to have to wait for each and every piece to be completed before I can add onto it.

What are some good techniques or tools that can be used to easily build large multi-z Constructions?

(I know quickfort exists, but I've never really touched it.  Does it work for constructions?  Are there any hacks for designating inaccessible constructions?)

[delphonso]

Keeping it vanilla, bridges can be used to build temporary floors easier, though beware they cannot support weight (adjacent walls, etc, will fall if they have nothing else to hang onto).

Keep in mind blocks are much faster to build with, both wooden and stone.

A ramp and wall tower (like what you find in adventure mode) might be useful as a central structure with floors branching off all over to reach the real construction.

Plan ahead... it's hard to adjust or redo constructions.

[FantasticDorf]

Walls are superior floor tiles in construction because when used as a roof or the base of a central room, they can be used to change the structure of a building without repetition of the layout as well as support lots of other things like fortifications and add artificial height.

• They can also support adding actual floor tiles for aesthetic sensibilities or the use of paths.

• Carved wall block fortifications are murder holes, while constructed fortifications are bastions, the difference is often very important to be aware of when constructing enclosed castles and such, or just making a zig-zaggy mess on the outside for invaders to path through.

So if i was using wall-blocks as a roof,  id do it in a way that creates a 1xhowevermany path inbetween blocks of 3x3, filling in the empty space with walls, then removing the floors to replace with walls until its solid and i've blocked myself up back into my stairwell, often time consuming but very reliable. I've made many-such detailed castles this way. Getting a picture is painful, because the dfhack stonesense barely refuses to work on this old DF masterwork version but here's a enclosed view of my DF masterwork castle, currently peering in at my 5 stories tall with kings quarters at the top (currently all black because it can't render the pure-gold boulder, but it has fine gem-windows)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The base is 10x10, but the additional shaping of it come from the aboveground build over traphalls, where above that is the dog-lookout posts and the additional little area-space for fighting flying monsters (which in masterwork, in sieges there were a fair-few that didn't want to use the traphall at all)

[PatrikLundell]

As mentioned, bridges can be used as scaffolding to allow you to extend walls upwards in parallel, rather than have dorfs walk on top of the existing wall placing one piece of wall at a time (you can't designate more than one at a time, or you'll get sections blocked by pieces that were placed earlier [not fully correct, you can designate and then suspend all jobs except the end point ones, unsuspending one job at a time as the previous one is built]).

Also note that you need to build corners first or you can't reach them. If you want to have your construction jut out you need to create a temporary floor to be able to place the corner (and make sure the wall tile beside it has been placed before that temporary floor is removed, or you'll get a cave-in when removing the floor which is the only thing supporting the corner).

Also note that there's a bug with stair removal where moronic dorfs stand on the stair tile they're removing and then fall, even if there's a perfectly safe tile beside it. This can happen when the distance required to travel to the safe tile is longer than to the tile itself.

[Hans Lemurson]

What I basically want to do is construct a bunch of 3-story apartment buildings, so I'm not looking for anything fancy like "ideas for building a castle". 

I just want to know how I can build a 3-story building without having to give constant attention while wait for each level and part to be completed one at a time before I can place the next.  I'm looking for construction techniques that will make my life easier, not that will produce fancy results.  Don't care about fancy, just want to minimize my hassle.

"Bridges as scaffolding" seems like good advice.
"Build corners first" is also important, since although dwarves can walk through corners...they can't build through them.

But what about getting multiple levels built quickly?  I can't build z+3 until I've built z+2, which requires z+1, which requires z+0.  It's annoying to have to watch and wait until my swarm of builders is done before I can even start issuing orders for the next floor.  Is there any way I can lay out the orders for multiple stories at once?

[Salmeuk]

easy stuff, really. you will still run about 10x designation phases with my method, but it will save you trouble as long as you keep your design simple. Oh, and I should note - I used vanilla construction methods for about a decade before switching over to DFhack, which lets you designated up to 10 x 10 of any given construction, and I would never go back.the vanilla 'tile by tile' method is far too aggravating nowadays.

Regardless, build your first layer of stone wall:

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000000000000000
0             0
0             0
0             0
0             0
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0             0
0             0
000000000000000

Surround the outside with up-down staircases, also constructed.

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X000000000000000X
X0             0X
X0             0X
X0             0X
X0             0X
X0             0X
X0             0X
X000000000000000X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Simply build the same exact thing on top, until you reach your intended height. The fact that each part of the stone wall is touching a tower of scaffolding means that you won't run into random cave-ins unless you are being super-thoughtless.

Finally, build a roof in whatever way you wish, I like using ramps, and simply deconstruct the scaffolding (updown stairs) layer by layer. Use cut stone blocks for extra speed in this endeavour. The desconstruction is the fastest part of this method.

While this is quite a bit more work than simply building an internal floor and growing outward from that, this method allows you to create internal spaces that are multi-z-levels high without a whole bunch of extra designation steps. This method also allows you to create tall, single-block wide walls, without having to build a walkway on each given floor.

One downside is all this extra construction does take a long time. But it saves you, personally, a bunch of annoying designations so that's why I stick with it. I tend to keep ~10 or 20 dwarves completely free of other work while building, otherwise it does take a veeeery long time for the largest constructions. Also, if you build the scaffolding out of the stone you will use for your next project, this method is essentially waste free. otherwise, you can dump / destroy the remaining blocks at the end of the process.

I know you mentioned not using up down stairs for personal reasons, however, maybe reconsider. individual staircases can be a headache.

[Hans Lemurson]

I just don't like Up/Down staircases as a regular part of my fortress, but scaffolding is a good idea.

I was thinking that maybe I should just construct some scaffolding towers next to each building to get up to the desired height, and then order all of the Floors to be constructed on all the levels.  Create holes in the floor designations to accommodate the Up and Down stairs, and then when the floors are complete, designate the exterior Walls to be built.

Do block-based Constructions deconstruct quicker than rough/log based constructions?  I've always found it weird how it takes longer to remove a wall/floor than it did to build it in the first place.

[delphonso]

Yeah, blocks are faster to both build and take down.

[Thisfox]

Blocks also are smoother: It's harder for someone to climb a wall constructed from a block than it is if they climb the same wall constructed from a rock.

When I scaffold walls in the caverns, I tend to build the whole updown scaffold with blocks up to the ceiling of the caverns, then build the wall from the top down, deconstructing the scaffold and using it to construct the next wall down as I go. Nice and fast and effective. Not so useful when you need something to support the building while you build it top down though.