Print

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

[Lianris]

The idea is to make a giant chess board out of obsidian and marble, with pipes for water on each tile. Basically, the idea is that you would have floodgates blocking off each tile from each other one, and when you piped water in, you would then pull a lever to open the wall of floodgates blocking another tile up, and by doing so, flush the "pieces" into another spot. For pieces, you would station some dwarves on one side, and just as many monsters on the other one, be they goblins, orcs, or some other baddie you want to fight. You would then play it like chess. But with killing.

Silly? Yes. Simple? Maybe. Needs more magma? Probably. My first megaproject idea? Yes.

Oh, and this could be a training regime for the most hardcore of dwarven marines.

[Stromko]

Cage up various invaders to fill the spots on one side, with a legendary bow-user for the Queen, legendary melee fighters for the back ranks (rook, bishop, etc), and a Local Leader for the King spot. Regular invaders for the pawn row.

Place either champion soldiers, possibly also your real King and Queen, on your own back row with a combination of stationing them or assigning them levers to pull. Place Recruits on the pawn row.

Or have your side be all nobles and the other side be all champion invaders. You know, for Dwarven efficiency.

[Lianris]

YES. Thank you for improving my idea, now it is awesome. Someone has to make this, 'cause I'm way too lazy.

[Stromko]

And make sure to lock the chess room up tightly before the critters are loosed, because your fortress doesn't need quitters!

You could do this project as a background task and not really the primary purpose of the fort, simply have a ridiculous number of cage traps and channel invaders through them before your military or other traps get a chance to thin the herd or cause any injuries that would 'unfairly' bias the chess (death)match.

I'm of the opinion that not all megaprojects need hydraulics (pumps and hatches and all that), simply making it a highly formalized arena like my suggestion makes it much less intimidating to try I think. Of course, pressurized magma, flinger-bridges, and spike traps make things more interesting.

[Puzzlemaker]

I once made a trap that automatically flushed goblins down, and the only way back into my fort being through an array of traps.

It's quite fun to make bets with yourself to see how far they would make it.  Bridges over lava controlled by pressure plates, weapon traps, bridges -o- doom, quite fun.

[IceShade]

You'll have to be fairly quick though, if you don't want your dwarves to starve/dehydrate/sleep underwater.. unless you're planning on flooding barrels of food and drinks along with it.