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[urmane]

One serious question - to make protected aboveground plots, can I channel a carefully-aligned rectangle, starting farther up the slope from my main entrance, going down to meet an existing corridor in my fortress, and then destroy the ramps once it meets?  I haven't done channels or ramps in any depth yet (nyuk nyuk), and don't want to create a permanent security hole.

One silly question - can I drain these bunch of underwater pools into the cavern down below?  I haven't even worked out how to do it, but it sure sounds fun.  I think I have a path to consolidate them to a shaft (well, up/down stairs) that I can take down to the cavern.  Two sub questions for that, tho:
1. if the water has a path to go down (ie the stairs), will it go sideways, as well?  (Or do I need to prevent that, say with an area that's only accessed with ramps from above level)
2. Similar question, actually - there's one Z level that's very opened; I could put the up/down staircase straight through it, unless the water's going to spill out sideways - thoughts?

[smakemupagus]

Serious question:  Yes, it's possible, although channeling type projects can be a little bit hazardous until you learn the situations that cause cave ins (one example is if a tree prevents you from channeling a single square on z+1, then you come back later on level z0 and dig under the otherwise unsupported square.)  You'll probably eventually learn how to prevent those mistakes.  If you're like the rest of us you'll still continue to make the mistakes anyway but that's a different story.   Channeling 1 level at a time into solid ground is generally safe.  Channeling into open spaces is safe if you're careful.  Designating to Channel more than one level at a time is probably not safe.

Silly question:  Sure.  Yes, it will spread, or at least spray around.  Mist from waterfalls makes dwarves happy.  Water from waterfalls can make dwarves dead, of course, but often there is a happy medium.  Go ahead and experiment   But to do it more safely, you're right to use a separate stairs as plumbing, and consider sealing it off with floors or hatches once complete so your guys don't walk down it.  Depending on what kind of water source (infinite vs. finite) you're tapping, you might want floodgates or hatches to control the flow.

[greycat]

One serious question - to make protected aboveground plots, can I channel a carefully-aligned rectangle, starting farther up the slope from my main entrance, going down to meet an existing corridor in my fortress, and then destroy the ramps once it meets?

To protect from flyers you'd still need to build a "roof" (a floor) over it.  You might as well save yourself the hassle of channeling, and just build walls and a roof around the farm plots above ground.  Presumably you'd have a staircase leading up to it from inside the fortress.

[urmane]

Whoo-hoo!  I now have a five story waterfall in the cavern!

At least temporarily.  I was able to tunnel in from outside the mountain, snake a tunnel past all the muddy pools on their lowest layer, then tunnel straight down to the z above the cavern, and put a few short tunnel to be up and diagonal from the roof of the cavern, without touching the fortress (well, I made one mistake, which I floored over, but it still leaked a bit.)  I then walled off the opening of the tunnel, and channeled from above to connect the pools with the upper tunnel (it's a sloped mountain - all the pool edge are accessible from open grass).  I also put another tunnel from my fortress to above/diagonal the end of the water tunnel, and a channel opened that tunnel into the open cavern roof.  Walled off that last tunnel to prevent flyers.

I'm now watching everything drain beautifully and mist up all the open cavern down to the water at the bottom :-)  Thanks for the advice!

PS: apparently sealing is not perfect - the water leaks from the walled off opening of the tunnel (will channel down next time), and the floor covering the mistake is leaking.  Hopefully the bottom plug won't, as the tunnel slopes down the ramp at that point.  Fun!