Hi folks, I have some questions about some construction ideas I have, which I think I will struggle to implement:
1/ Radio telescope design(ation): I am a bit concerned that it might not sound very dwarfy, but I want to make my fourth fortress a huge tilted radio telescope. I just feel like it, I don't know why. Huge enough for the original seven astrophysicist dwarves to live inside the supporting towers and the space behind the dish in comfort forever, without having to leave the Astronomy compound, idly gazing at the stars, eating animals and drinking booze.
To try and get the hang of building (semi)spherical structures, I have just begun work on a 17-square diameter mini-dish in my 3rd fort. Does anyone have a smart suggestion for planning the construction? I am using MSPaint at 8 x zoom at the moment to draw circles, but z-level wise it would be nice if I could layer those BMP files on top of one another to check how the hell I should make my scaffholding for the frame (beginning with 2 free-standing perpendicular intersecting circles).
Also, if I irrigate the top of my supporting towers, will they support plant life? If I have to start the project at ground level being the top of my towers, then just digging out space for the dish and the area around my towers will take forever.... I do want a roof-top garden though.
2/ Space elevators and civil war: My idea for my fifth fortress is a DF homage to the Iain Banks novel Feersum Endjinn. I am going to (try) carve/sculpt my fortress as lots of massive ASCII-shaped-furniture mini-fortresses arranged in a few even more massive rooms. These shapes should be dug rather than constructed, for an appropriate level of solidness. All the stone I make carving those rooms out of the ground will go to building the Fast-Tower, which will basically be as big a tower as I have space for, with spiralling ramps, a huge entirely hollow section, and a kill the fortress lever at the top (I cant simulate moving away from the sun, but enough magma should simulate moving accidentaly towards it, right?)
So, with burrows implemented in next version, will it be possible to enduce civil war amongst your dwarves? I would love to have at least 2 antagonisitic dwarf factions living in different parts of the Fastness. I would settle for getting one faction to have a tantrum spiral whilst I open access to the other faction, but civil war would be best...
tl;dr versions:
1/Does anyone know of some cute software for drafting relatively complicated cube-based 3D construction designs? Can irrigated constructions support plant life?
2/With the forthcoming burrows implementation, could we have dwarf civil war within one fort?
Cheers,
vp
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Topic: Civil war, space elevators and radio telescope design (Read 609 times)