, frequently referenced in various threads, but notably this one.
additional questions about its construction, but I can always add even more POI stuff.
Design plan: Mostly 11x11 (one cursor-jump) rooms (or mutli-room blocks in the same area), in each quadrant of the map, separated by three-wide corridors with stairwells at intersections and (not fully implemented, but you'll see some of it) a repeated and reflected set of ramps diagonally (vert.+horiz.) down the middle of each corridor, to speed Manhattan-Style Travel between Z-levels. The quadrants are bounded by external ditches (near, and very near, the map edge) suitable for stopping as-yet-unimplemented Construction Destroyers (though not sappers and other diggers) and separated along the central axes by zones that (at the surface) give control-freak-friendly through-routes, as allowed, and (below the level I shall be digging the pits down to) various centralised services, such as dining/drinking areas and stockpiles. The accommodation block is one entire floor (expandable to others, when population eventually demands) inefficiently placed near the base of the currently explored column of rock, rather than between the magma workshop area and the surface, where it might have been more useful. (Oh, forgot to mark the Count's quarters. He's got a suite of rooms off to one side, dug into a specific rock that he likes, and equipped with all the necessary max-quality items in the metal that he likes... except for the bed, of course. He likes Lead and I have lead coming out of my ears, so it was no trouble to spam lead chests, cabinets, stands and racks and doors until I could fully equip him out. He's probably not going to suffer from radiation poisoning, any time soon.) The subterranean grazing area is almost one entire floor (or will be, as I dig more out) of soil with cavern-vegetation now on it, along with with some other farm-related rooms (and original stockpiles/emergency workshops in some areas, probably to be moved). The surface is mostly 'claimed', and enclosed by ditches/walls and access-controlled, and at some point I will even entirely roof over it, but it effectively has no value at the moment. But that's not the point.
I have a total of five miners: the original two I embarked with, and three additional ones who immigrated in later years with sufficient mining skills that I didn't want to put them to waste... two of these also have military positions (having come with military skills I also didn't want to ignore) and so are part-time, but they have still become Legendary with their picks and so barring the picks/uniform weapon issues I expect them to be good in a pinch. I have a number of unused picks, available, but I'm happy with the digging process as it is. Spoil-dumping is a major industry in the fortress, naturally.
Can't recall the population count, but I'm approaching 200 or maybe slightly surpassing it, looking at the Accommodation Layer images, and knowing roughly how many I've yet to assign rooms to (I've upped the max limit). This includes babes and children, even before they need a room of their own. I habitually raise the popcaps a tad (200->250? something like that), and find the FPS is surprisingly reasonable (by my expectations, at least, and most of the time I'm paused and micromanaging some aspect, anyway), even though the machine isn't super-fast. (XP, 1GB RAM, forget the fairly important factor of the processor speed but it wasn't even a top-end machine back the few years ago that the OS would indicate.) I believe my design is (or will be, once 'completed') hell on the pathing algorithm, but I don't particularly care because it works Ok for me.
I'm definitely not purely horizontal, but I've also not compressed in the horizontal to go almost purely vertical. Each level has sprawled out (and the future sprawl can often be seen in various digging designations, to be dug as soon as I set up or extend the burrows being used by the miners, as needed, or can be extrapolated from the existing design on other levels), within the nearly-entire-map bounds that I set myself. Defensibility is low, should I get an incursion within my core areas, but surface-level pinch-points and fine lever-room control over viable routes outside of my core complex mean that my dozen or so military units can be set to engage in guerilla warfare, if necessary, and with a set of guard-goslings overseeing all possible incursion points I am not at any great risk of being taken by surprise, and have 75% likelihood of engaging in normal trading/migration cycles even during a major siege.
Above-ground constructions (and the furnishing of various rooms, bridge composition, lever type, etc) is often obsessively monolithic: i.e. of a particular type of stone block, according to a design pattern of choice, or of particular items made of a particular stone (and often quality as well). In one part of the project, I sought out 64 mechanisms of identical material and quality merely to be the hidden linkage components, and easily found a type already having been mass-produced, and thus didn't need to be actively pursue their creation, but I could have. Each six-block of bedrooms has been deliberately given single-woodtype beds in each component room (though not always of identical quality). I hit a snag with an unforeseen aquifer in the Sandstone layers, which means there's some surface walls as yet unbuilt (next to ditches that do everything but block sight and ranged-combat potential), but other than that I'm willing to go to great lengths to maintain this standard. (May switch existing sandstone block walls to something else, eventually, and cut my losses. My fort's design isn't completely conducive to allowing limited flooding to get right into the aquifer incursions and sealing them off after robbing them of what I want.) I have good control over my masonic (and mechanism) workshops, should I wish to force them to work on a particular type of stone, and most of my primary masons are top-notch (with others having been seconded to the secondary building efforts, over time).
Worldgen was made with extra-thick Z-differences between caverns, but otherwise based upon the largest worldgen standard. History was let roll until the top-end 1050 date for this particular generation. Neither my site nor my home civ have access to iron, so I'm importing everything steel from the dwarf caravan, that I can, and melting what I don't want in its current state). Humans don't come my way, but the elves do and I'm not averse to trading, right now (might see if I can upset them, later, or they may be unlucky and arrive alongside invaders at a future date).
Upon the hostile front, goblins have been my way, in the early years, and I have made various kills and taken various prisoners, who are yet to be used for live-training, but are readied for that (a proto-Danger Room is set up, but not made active, training generally going well without it). They haven't been back for a couple of years. Wildlife is (largely) zombie grazers, with the occasional non-zombie herd, and I usually shoot at them or send in the mêlée troops if my dwarves get bothered and cancel jobs, or if I just feel like it. Three or four FBs have wandered through the caverns (which I'm not using, for now, except for claiming a bit of air-space for my archery range) but I've not interacted directly for them, and the cavern-wells were sealed off in favour of a cistern-supply prior to pterodactyl FB arriving, so it won't fly in by accident) but a Brush Titan made of amber wandered in on the surface and I used it for target practice until I decided to let the archers finish it off by crossbow-hammering.
Hmmm.. some summary. Could do with summarising.
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Topic: Argument for horizontal fortresses (Read 9113 times)