Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Nobody1225]

So, I've been building fortresses for a while now with an Elven-depot-death-trap (enclosed room with the trade depot, above it is a floor hatch in a chamber filled with water via an aqueduct or screw pump system, and I've got a lever that closes floodgates and opens the hatch, resulting in elf bones and more cloth than I'll need anytime soon), and decided to scale it up for my latest fortress: in front of my fortress entrance, I built a largish maze (not branching or anything, just designed to maximize the time it takes orcish hordes to proceed through it) and built a water chamber on top of it.

Actually, I got a little carried away and turned the water chamber into a 15 z-level hollow pyramid, filled at the top by an aqueduct that I sealed off once the pyramid was full.  And then I waited.

I'm pretty sure that I've done these water death traps on maps that froze before, so I'm not entirely certain why what ensued, ensued, unless my memory is incorrect.

Come winter, I noticed that the entire pyramid had frozen solid.  "Cool", I thought, trying to remember whether I had modded orcs to not show up in winter or not and whether I was about to get pwned (they didn't attack that winter, anyway), "but what happened to the floor hatch?"  It didn't look like I had originally installed it.  It sort of looked...de-constructed.  I assumed water freezing made the floor hatch look that way, and didn't attempt to check if it was, in fact, deconstructed.

Come spring, I was busy managing stockpiles when I started noticing some spam about canceling tasks due to dangerous terrain.  The pyramid had melted, and due to a poor decision on my part on how to have floodgates set when the fortress was not under siege, the entire volume of water was pouring straight down my central shaft.  I frantically ordered my dwarfs to pull the lever to seal the hatch, and when that failed (since it was now deconstructed), I ordered them to set the floodgates in a less fatal configuration, but all for naught.  My last two surviving dorfs were sleeping in their rooms at the time, at the very bottom of the fortress, with a LOT of water outside their doors and guaranteed death if they opened them.  I abandoned.  I'm coming back with an adventurer later.

1.)  Losing is fun.  This was my first truly spectacular defeat, however, aside from tunneling into the ocean, which was just a mistake.

2.)  Is freezing supposed to do that?

[Michaelsoftman]

This was my first truly spectacular defeat, however, aside from tunneling into the ocean, which was just a mistake.

Tunneling into the ocean is NEVER a mistake.

[Albedo]

It's not impossible that you were using <q> and hit <x> while too close to that hatch, by mistake.  You wouldn't be the first, or the last.

(Altho' then mechanisms would have been scattered about too... hmmmm...)

Other than that... dunno.

[Nobody1225]

It's not impossible that you were using <q> and hit <x> while too close to that hatch, by mistake.  You wouldn't be the first, or the last.

(Altho' then mechanisms would have been scattered about too... hmmmm...)

Other than that... dunno.

Under normal circumstances, I get that, but once I installed the floor hatch and tied it to a lever, I sealed up the chamber (on that level).  It'd have taken telekinesis or spores for a dwarf to deconstruct it even if I'd given the order.  Unless...can they deconstruct it from underneath the hatch?  When there's no stairway?

[Grimlocke]

Hatches that have frozen water over them do indeed do decontruct, if only you had known it sooner, heehehe...

You will find a very similar topic in general discussion, there the simplest outcome was to use doors or floodgates which dont break as the frozen water doesnt actualy freeze at the buildings site. Though I find it far more dwarfy to use magma to keep it from freezing in the first place 

[BigFatDwarf]

This was my first truly spectacular defeat, however, aside from tunneling into the ocean, which was just a mistake.

Tunneling into the Magma is NEVER a mistake.

Fix'd.