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[Aaarrgh!]

Hi there, I have a few ideas for my fortress and would like your opinions on whether they would work.


Feeder chute: For fast downwards cargo transport, wood harvesting from the surface or getting ore to the magma smelters for example.  The receptacle takes the form of a retracting bridge covering a long shaft connected to a lever next to a stockpile. When the stockpile is full, I mark them for dump onto the bridge, and pull the lever. At the bottom, there is another bridge in the level above connected to a plate. When a dwarf comes to collect the cargo through a set of stairs, he triggers the plate and causes the cargo to drop through - in this way the stairs are never actually used. I only need to work out an equivalent for horizontal travel - something using mine carts?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fortress purge system: For when all of my traps, my best defence layouts, and drawbridges, doors, and stairs have been penetrated and perforated - in short, when I'm screwed. A deep reservoir fed by my farm irrigation system is dug next to my various rooms with ceiling grates linking them and drawbridges used to control flow. A second drainage shaft is also dug, so that when my problems have, ah, gone away, the water can be flushed out into magma. In case of amphibious FBs, the grate can be lifted to flush it out, too.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Merendel]

For the feeder chute I would recomend forgowing the upper level bridge and just setup a minecart stop quantum stockpile system to auto dump down the chute.  Keep the lower bridge/hatch as that can still be useful to limit the incidents of dwarves geting hit on the head with falling supplies.   The advantage of this approach is you never have to send a bunch of dwarves up to dump the supplies down the hole the haulers that bring the wood to the stockpile auto handle everything.   Just make sure that there is a wood stockpile on the level below the chute so dwarves dont try to haul the wood back up to the top.

as to the fortress purge... you panzy, and you call your self a dwarf.   Real dwarfs would build that with magma not water.  generaly a system of blukheads so you can seal off problem sections of your fortress are more than sufficent.   Something nasty got into your dining room? seal it off and dig out another.  you can always send your military in to deal with it or find a way to channle magma into the room at a later time without dealing with fort wide flooding devices.

[Quietust]

For the feeder chute, a retracting bridge at the top will not work because it will act as a "bridge-a-pult".

For the fortress purge system, draining water into magma doesn't actually work because it'll just create an obsidian plug - if you want to get rid of the water, you'll need to drain it off the edge of the map.

[i2amroy]

For the feeder chute, a retracting bridge at the top will not work because it will act as a "bridge-a-pult".

This means that you need to use hatch covers instead, which will not act as miniature catapults.

[Aaarrgh!]

"For the feeder chute, a retracting bridge at the top will not work because it will act as a "bridge-a-pult"."
How? When retracting bridges retract, they vanish - it's the drawbridges that form walls.


For the fortress purge system, draining water into magma doesn't actually work because it'll just create an obsidian plug - if you want to get rid of the water, you'll need to drain it off the edge of the map.
Not if I drain it into the semi-molten rock, it won't. Speaking of which, I'll try to integrate an obsidian creator into the drainage system.


For the feeder chute I would recommend forgoing the upper level bridge and just setting up a minecart stop quantum stockpile system to auto dump down the chute.  Keep the lower bridge/hatch as that can still be useful to limit the incidents of dwarves getting hit on the head with falling supplies.   The advantage of this approach is you never have to send a bunch of dwarves up to dump the supplies down the hole the haulers that bring the wood to the stockpile auto handle everything.   
I don't understand minecarts terribly well, which is why I don't use them unless I'm certain that I know how they will work.
Just make sure that there is a wood stockpile on the level below the chute so dwarves don't try to haul the wood back up to the top.

As the whole point of the chute is to bring in cargo from upper levels to stockpiles below, I don't think that I''l have a problem.
As to the fortress purge... you pansy, and you call yourself a dwarf.   Real dwarfs would build that with magma not water. 

...Magma which would incinerate all of the buildings in the room.
Generally a system of bulkheads so you can seal off problem sections of your fortress are more than sufficient.   Something nasty got into your dining room? Seal it off and dig out another.  You can always send your military in to deal with it or find a way to channel magma into the room at a later time without dealing with fort wide flooding devices.

I'm planning a bulkhead system. As to 'fort-wide flooding', my poorly drawn diagram shows different ceiling grates for different rooms, though that was hard to convey in 2D. Nevertheless, every room, corridor, and stairwell should have it's own drain and flood openings, and are sealed off by doors and drawbridges. I am not looking forward to the lever network for those, let me tell you.

[Quietust]

"For the feeder chute, a retracting bridge at the top will not work because it will act as a "bridge-a-pult"."
How? When retracting bridges retract, they vanish - it's the drawbridges that form walls.

Flinging items has nothing to do with forming walls - both raising and retracting bridges "flingify" stuff on them when they operate (the only difference is that lowering drawbridges atomsmash instead of flinging).

Read this thread - though it started in 40d, it finished in version 0.31 and is likely still true in version 0.34.

For the fortress purge system, draining water into magma doesn't actually work because it'll just create an obsidian plug - if you want to get rid of the water, you'll need to drain it off the edge of the map
Not if I drain it into the semi-molten rock, it won't. Speaking of which, I'll try to integrate an obsidian creator into the drainage system.

I wasn't aware that semi-molten rock absorbed water. In fact, I just tested it in 0.34.11 and it doesn't absorb water. Strangely, it doesn't absorb items either (though I know for a fact that "magma flow" tiles in 40d did absorb items, and those same tiles are used in 0.31 and later for floors above SMR)...

[Aaarrgh!]

For the fortress purge system, draining water into magma doesn't actually work because it'll just create an obsidian plug - if you want to get rid of the water, you'll need to drain it off the edge of the map
Not if I drain it into the semi-molten rock, it won't. Speaking of which, I'll try to integrate an obsidian creator into the drainage system.

I wasn't aware that semi-molten rock absorbed water. In fact, I just tested it in 0.34.11 and it doesn't absorb water. Strangely, it doesn't absorb items either (though I'm fairly certain that it used to in 0.31)...

*Blinks* But I thought that that was the point of the SMR - it destroys everything to stop anything from penetrating the lowest level. I even remember a thread on this very forum about trying and failing to get through it by putting dorfs in a channelled-around 'submarine' and caving in the floor below.

[Quietust]

SMR only absorbs cave-ins - it doesn't absorb magma (obviously), it doesn't absorb creatures (since dwarves can walk on it), it doesn't absorb water, and it doesn't even absorb items (unlike in 40d)...

[edit] Just did a test in 40d, and back then it would only absorb items if it had magma on top of it - if a magma pipe was completely drained (in my case, by using the DFHack "liquids" command), items dropped into it would not vanish. Perhaps the same is true in 0.31 and later...

[i2amroy]

[edit] Just did a test in 40d, and back then it would only absorb items if it had magma on top of it - if a magma pipe was completely drained (in my case, by using the DFHack "liquids" command), items dropped into it would not vanish. Perhaps the same is true in 0.31 and later...

I'm fairly certain that if it has magma on top of it then it instantly destroys any item that lands on it (I've been throwing corpses into magma for quite a while and they will last all of the way down to the bottom at which point they are instantly destroyed).

[Aaarrgh!]

I'm fairly certain that if it has magma on top of it then it instantly destroys any item that lands on it (I've been throwing corpses into magma for quite a while and they will last all of the way down to the bottom at which point they are instantly destroyed).

So if I dig into the magma sea, the obsidian blocks will sink into the SMR and be vapourised? If not, that sea is going to fill up fast.

[Aaarrgh!]

Flinging items has nothing to do with forming walls - both raising and retracting bridges "flingify" stuff on them when they operate (the only difference is that lowering drawbridges atomsmash instead of flinging).

Then I'll build walls and doors around the bridge, so that the items can only go down.

[Aaarrgh!]

Update - I recently started a new fortress, and just tested the purge system on my farm - I must say, it works much better than my normal irrigation methods, though it took a very long time to set up (dig out shaft, dig out flood pipes to every room, construct huge irrigation network to control flow and link them to levers). I am also using feeder chutes with mine carts set to auto-dump from a stockpile for my magma smelters, and those are working very well, though I stripped out the bridges as nearly no one is down there anyway.

[Vndetta]

EDIT: Sorry, disregard, redundant post. My reading skills were not up to par it seems