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[monk12]

An idea I've been toying with lately is the concept of a fortress within a fortress. Basically, you dig deeply and build out a tiny fortress with a food stockpile, small meeting hall, small dormitory, and enough space for a few workshops. The idea here is that this entire fortress is very compact and is the active portion of the fortress during your first formative year or two, able to house a dozen or so dwarves comfortably and more than that in a pinch. After you've dug up and created the rest of your fortress, the minifort is abandoned and designated as the emergency shelter. In the event of an emergency, dwarves can retreat there and secure from megabeasts/goblings/FB's/Hell and form the seed for a new fortress.

My question to you, oh dwellers of the fortress, is what should be incorporated into the design of this minifort, what should be cut to save space, and how little can the space for all this be? I figure you can save food stockpile space by replacing it with muddy ground for plump helmets, and there definitely needs to be a room for creating weapons should the worst happen. Space for nice statues and engravings is a plus to prevent tantrum spirals. What do y'all think?

[AngleWyrm]

If you need it, chances are a tantrum spiral is already in progress. So a dungeon to house your berzerking dwarves seems like a good way to cut down on friendly fire.

[Xerillum]

Remember to put in a mining pick.

[Trekkin]

I've gotten forts for 200 dwarves to fit in an 11x11x11 space, so I guess 11x11x9?

If you do go the every-workshop-and-farms-too route, segregate a few dwarves into it at the start. That way when the tantrum spiral hits the collective psyche you can just seal up the box, wait until everyone outside is dead, and keep working.

[MarcAFK]

Just keep one guy with a pick and a 1x1 plot plump helmet farm sealed in permenantly. make sure he has no friends, use a fresh immigrant or start the shelter straight away with one of your first 7. Call him Urist Omega.  The last.. or the great.
Ocassionally drop some masterwork gold.platnium furniture inside with him and let him make himself a grand palace.

[Zaik]

I've done this once for a ballista battery where i'd PLANNED on having the siege operators be a military squad and equipping them with steel/admantine armor and no weapons, and stationing them inside the bunker, then locking the door so noone could get in/out, then deactivating them and having them man the ballistas.

I had a bedroom for each, a large dining hall, food/booze stockpiles a level below the battery, and a huge ammo stockpile above.

It was a great plan, but i was testing it during a goblin siege and forgot to set them to actually fire so they just sat in the ballistas until the goblin crossbowmen shot at them and killed one. I never did finish it.

[Kurouma]

I like this idea. This is how my last fortress fell; I hadn't planned out a bunker and the idea struck me just after goblins stormed the place (it was an epic battle; I think it's here somewhere... http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15096.msg1533344#msg1533344). But basically I had a few workshops, metal stuff mainly, down near my advance mines and managed to wall myself in a tunnel with miners and a couple others. Long story short, failed pretty quickly - forgotten beast.

To be honest, I think what I would do would be to embark with two (+1 for accident insurance?) picks, leave one somewhere near the surface, and then seal (wall off) my starting 7 down in a bunker as my little time capsule, and let the waves of immigrants populate the upper fortress.
Or have each wave sealed off in a little bunker of their own...hmm...I smell a challenge coming on. Just gotta make sure they have picks!

Of course that would mean no meetings with the outpost liaison. Unless your expedition leader gets left out, or swapped for someone.

[Tsarwash]

Have a look at Ardentdikes, in the succession subforum. Basically, I took over of this very grand palace, killed a forgotten beastie, and all of the dwarves started dying of rot soon afterwards. My quarantine did not work, and the cause of the disease was being spread all across the palace, so my successor decided to carve a minature emergency fort, and flood the main one with mamga to cleanse it. It's around about half way through now. 

[DennyTom]

All you need is to survive until next immigrant wave. Make a small room with quantum stockpile of food and booze, maybe a well, mini farm, huge quantum stockpile of stone, place for one or two workshops, bed and furniture for one dwarf. Seal him there. Let him farm his food and make a little craft to keep him form depression. In a calm times clean his craft, resupply if needed and change dwarf if morale is a problem.

Also making an emergency stash - some wood, iron, seeds, rare materials for unexpected artifact craves, basic tools, an anvil, etc - for quick fort restart.


I love the idea of magma cleansing the outer space.

[monk12]

Ooooh, magma cleansing is a good idea. Embark on a bounty of magmasafe rock to make your furniture out of in order to minimize losses, add in a clever plumbing system to quickly flood/drain the fortress with magma.

If I was feeling particularly clever, I'd devise a way to magmaflood certain areas of the fortress at will. An airlock system coupled to the magmaducts so that in the event of contamination, the entire fortress could be sealed into individual compartments which would then be individually inspected for contagion. Any affected areas/dwarves could be purified without risk to the fortress at large.

Thanks for the ideas everyone, I'll be incorporating many of them into my next (.13) fortress. I'm not a fan of the idea of segregating the fortress completely; I'll probably attempt it, but not this next fortress. Ideally this will be a system where as many dwarves as possible can pile in before the calamity forces the bridges raised and doors locked, where they then hunker down as long as possible, rearming and regrouping. Magma purification is particularly attractive since it allows the bunker to be functional for bioterror threats.

Keep the thoughts flowin!