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[Danjen]

I need some ideas and features for a megaproject in DF2010. Now, what I've been thinking of is a sort of plumbing system for both water and magma. I don't mean like an obsidian caster, either. I mean like a full fledged sewer system with control stations, grating over the water or magma, and snakelike tunnels everywhere. Beyond that, I don't know how best to incorporate this. Perhaps this will be more of an underground city than a mere fort. The entrance to the tunnels below would be a large, foreboding archway (at least 7-9 tiles wide) that slowly descends into the earth. It would be lightly guarded. At the bottom of this large ramp would be a branch towards a quarry, the city entrance, and some other stuff.

The entrance would be a grand wall of stone and iron, maybe 3 z levels tall. It would be 4 or 5 tiles wide, and topped with fortifications for dwarves. It would only reach about 2/3s to the roof. It would have a small pit outside it, maybe 4 wide, 2 deep, and acts as a drain for the wall's true purpose: magma. The inside of the wall would act as a small magma reservoir, and a lever would open several floodgates, washing away any frontal attackers, and being returned to the pit where it would rejoin the main magma channel.

Also, is it also possible to entirely disable caverns? Or how about just pushing them down a few dozen z-levels?

Anyways, do you guys have anything neat to contribute that might work in a fort like this?

[Mawootad]

You can completely disable caverns.  However, as far as I can tell, 1 layer of caverns is required for the existence of underground crops of any kind.  Meaning that you'll have to build a tower or a greenhouse if you want alcohol for your fortress but don't want to deal with caverns (not to mention that you'll have to go above ground for lumber).  I think there's also an advanced map generation input that controls number of layers, so that should give you all the space you need.

Also, you'll want a river (or just a LOT of water) for all of the self-powering power plants you'll need.

[shadowform]

Getting large areas of rock is erratic now.  Sometimes I'll end up with 150 Z-levels beneath ground and a nice, 100 by 150 tile area spanning a good 20 Z-levels to build a nice palace, other times you'll have to work with a few 40x40x3 pockets spread out around the map.

Just keep genning forts and looking for a good area, but don't get discouraged.

[Danjen]

You can completely disable caverns.  However, as far as I can tell, 1 layer of caverns is required for the existence of underground crops of any kind.  Meaning that you'll have to build a tower or a greenhouse if you want alcohol for your fortress but don't want to deal with caverns (not to mention that you'll have to go above ground for lumber).  I think there's also an advanced map generation input that controls number of layers, so that should give you all the space you need.

That would be the Cavern Layer Number option, yes? Would you know what the Z Levels Above Layer N option does? I haven't really picked up on what it does, but it seems like it would control how thick each rock layer is.

Also, you'll want a river (or just a LOT of water) for all of the self-powering power plants you'll need.

I'll probably take the (Fun) choice of form over function here, so I'll probably end up damming an underwater river and making a few rows of water wheels.

Getting large areas of rock is erratic now.  Sometimes I'll end up with 150 Z-levels beneath ground and a nice, 100 by 150 tile area spanning a good 20 Z-levels to build a nice palace, other times you'll have to work with a few 40x40x3 pockets spread out around the map.

Just keep genning forts and looking for a good area, but don't get discouraged.

Hm, has a revealer tool been released for the DF2010 yet? That might help speed things along.

[NecroRebel]

The Cavern Layer option does indeed control how many cavern layers there are, while the Magma Layer I believe it's called controls whether or not there's a magma sea below the bottomost cavern, and the Bottom Layer controls the <redacted> layer below the magma sea and (probably, though I've not tested it myself) the appearance of adamantine.

There's not really such a thing as an underground river anymore, though you can reasonably easily make one just by finding an underground water feature connected to the map edge and connecting it to another, different map edge. It'll constantly drain out the second map edge and constantly fill through the original map edge, so you can get a flow like that to run water wheels off of.

Reveal2 works on DF2010, though you've got to do a bit of playing with the ini file to get it to work. The fix is on the wiki's 2010 Utilities page.

[LoneJedi7]

You can completely disable caverns. 

now where would be the fun in that...?

[Bishop36]

Dig your own larger and more complex carverns.

[Max White]

You could always make it a little more interesting by linking flood gates to random pressure plates through out the fortress, therefor flooding and draining rooms randomly, and sometimes leading to living areas/workshops getting submerged. This then gives you the challenge of trying to deal with such events, and makes the place REALLY interesting in adventure mode.

[Dave Mongoose]

You can minimise caverns without removing them entirely by setting the maximums for 'cavern layer openness' and 'cavern layer passage density' to something very low (like 0) in world gen options.

[Danjen]

Ah yes, because that would affect their sprawlitude. That might a good way to go.