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[chewd]

I just thought i'd post a useful fortress layout ive been toying with. Maybe some of you guys have already discovered this... maybe not. As always comments and suggestions are welcome.

Basically what ive been doing in my last few forts is this... Right off the bat I dig a downward-spiraling hallway which is wide enough for the caravan. I'll dig it all the way down to the lowest level i intend to use (usually 2 or 3 z-levels up from the very bottom level) and then i'll dig out a largish room in the center of the corkscrew.

I will then dig a stairway all the way from the surface down to that room, and then i dig out the stairs leaving a clear hole all the way down.

After all that i build the trade depot under the hole, so anything dropped into the hole will land on the trade depot. In my most recent fortress, i worked it out such that the drop hole surfaced right next to my main entrance. Doing so made cleaning up after a siege a snap! And all the goods wind up on the trade depot where you can trade them without ever having to touch them again.

Furthermore, any other levels where tradegoods are made can be connected to that hole & you can dump your mugs right down the hole onto the depot.

It also speeds up stone clearance quite a bit..

The only problem ive had is that dwarfs dont seem to take z-levels into account properly when choosing where to dump something. They sometimes pick up something on the surface & walk all the way down 5 levels (right past 5 dump locations) to dump it. My work around has been to only dump on one level at a time & de-activate all the other dump sites.

Anyone else using this system? Any pointers on further optimizing it?

[Zaranthan]

Sounds like the grand stairway from Nist Akath, only more functional. Awesome.

[BurnedToast]

That's quite a clever idea. I've toyed with using holes to make cleanup easier but I'd never considered just dropping everything straight onto the trade depot.

The only thought I have is without bins, it must be a pain to mark everything to be traded. Not having to haul it may make up for that though, I suppose.

Perhaps dropping everything into a very large finished goods stockpile right next to the trade depot so it all gets sorted out into bins?

[Ampersand]

Add a pumping system to flood the depot area and wash undesirables[elves], down a drain.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

i would gladly use a little more time to select stuff in rl then using more dwarf work to move a few bins to the trade depot.

[chewd]

The only thought I have is without bins, it must be a pain to mark everything to be traded. Not having to haul it may make up for that though, I suppose.

Well i dont sell the stuff by the bin anyway. I always go through and select all the tradegoods one by one... the bins are just for easier storage & haulage. i never let the caravan have the bins... thats valuable wood!

It is a bit of a tedious process... but ive hacked together a few hotkeys on my nostromo that makes pretty quick work of it.

[chewd]

Add a pumping system to flood the depot area and wash undesirables[elves], down a drain.

Yea, thats part of my plan for the next version, flooding the whole corkscrew and depot chamber from a huge cistern positioned above. As it is, ive just been using my standard floodable trap-entrance technique on the surface... but i do plan on integrating them.

One thing that ive been trying to do (and im not really sure why) is making sure the corkscrew is not connected to the rest of the fortress anywhere but through the depot room. The idea being i'd use the corkscrew as a chokepoint and line it with traps, but my current fort doesnt give me any good way to implement a flooding system.

Another idea ive been thinking about is making the corkscrew passages 2 z-levels deep and then putting arrow slits in key positions.

The whole thing sprang from me deciding to make that caravan come into the very belly of my fortress.. where the goods are. Afterall, theyre the ones with horses & carts, why should my dwarves do all the hauling for them?

Ive been thinking of taking it to the extreme & forcing them through a huge maze just to see how far they'll go. Think i can make one that takes them over a year to traverse?

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

idea! instead of just going down also have a tower all the way up so the caravan have to go up to the top z level then all the way to the bottom z level. also trap the whole length of it and no siege will ever get through and chain war dogs at every turn.

[Martin]

idea! instead of just going down also have a tower all the way up so the caravan have to go up to the top z level then all the way to the bottom z level. also trap the whole length of it and no siege will ever get through and chain war dogs at every turn.

I made a tower very similar to this. I didn't have all the traps - some near the bottom, but between the fortress and the spiral ramp was a 2-wide corridor with fortification to the ramp that I could station my soldiers. The only entrance was at the bottom, so invaders had to walk all the way down and around and my guys would be shooting at them the whole time. With stairs, a handful of dwarves could pelt a whole siege force the whole way down. A channel with retracting bridge was on each wall so after the battle I could close a drawbridge at the top, seal off everything, extend all the bridges from the corridor to the ramp and haul in all the crap.

At the very bottom was the trap of last resort - the entire bottom level of the spiral were bridges that I could retract and dump everyone onto spikes. It all worked great, but actually made the fortress totally unsiegable. I had one siege that was very heavy in bow gobbos which was challenging, but the rest were cake. I'd let them all walk down the ramp, lock the top, lock the bottom, and it was just a giant shooting gallery.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

of course fortifications! thats what i forgot. here is my finalized idea for a level. it will be able to spiral down or up as far as you want just shift it to the new way and there you have it!☺☻☺☻
▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
▒▲▲▲#+▒▒
▒ ^^^ #X+▒
▒ ^^^ ##+▒
▒ ^^^▼#+▒
▒ ^^^▼#+▒
▒ ^^^▼#+▒
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[Carusun]

I had an idea quite similar to this in my second fortress; I'll have to look into adding the extra defensive fortifications...

[winner]

you could make it a double helix so the enemy has to go up and them back down while your dwarves shoot from the center.

[ZergSpartan]

I made a nice fortress that centered around corkscrewing around a bottomless pit. Fortification "windows", bridging over the pit multiple times, a waterfall into the pit. Well it was nice until I tried to add a magmafall, after that alot of dwarves just burned to death.