Print

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

[Hyndis]

You can drop in water from above using a pump type system to trickle in water, or even a bucket brigade works fine. Just make sure you have a way to shut off the water coming in from above or else you might find your soldiers swimming in the magma ocean. Briefly.

Retractable bridge linked to a lever covering the 1 tile big hole the water drips onto the magma from works well.

Bonus points if you ring the volcano with fortifications, and patrol marksdwarves around it so they're being pincushioned while being hit with the magma hammer. If you drop the hammer in the middle of the magma tube the walls should be far enough away that your marksdwarves won't be killed by it. You may want to test this with Urist McExpendable to ensure your ranged guys are far enough to not be killed by the explosion from the water hitting the magma surface.

[JmzLost]

I find that the best way for restructuring the landscape is to use ramps. If you channel, then miners have the tendency to channel the tiles from under eachother. If you dig ramps, then they all work on the same level and have no such issues. (well, less )  As channels remove the floor and the rock below, ramps remove the rock being dug and the floor above.

While i find them to be a lot more convenient and safe than channels, ramps also have a few pitfalls:
1) Trees - when digging ramps under a tree, the floor tile the tree rests on cannot be removed. When you ramp below and around such a tree, the floor tile will cave in, potentially causing massive injuries. Always clear the area of trees and make sure none grow on the work site while you are digging.
2) Lack of support: Ramps provide no support for adjacent tiles. Since you relying on the ramps to remove the ceiling above, in cases where there is nothing to dig (say a previously dug tunnel) the floor tiles above will not be removed. You have to remove these orphaned floor tiles BEFORE you ramp around them or they will fall. It is rather easy to overlook and miss them, especially if you are working on large and complex constructions.

These 2 reasons are why I prefer channeling to ramping when working on the surface.  Both methods work for strip mining, ramping tends to be more dangerous for me.  Especially when removing surface tiles, trees tend to pop up while removing large areas.  Ramping will ignore the tree, channeling stops because you can't channel a tree. 

Removing 1 level at a time means if your dwarves channel under each other, they only fall 1 level.  Special care needs to be taken when digging over the top of a pit.

Floor tiles without walls directly under them should be removed first, whichever way you dig.  Channeling and ramping will both leave those floors unsupported, causing cave-ins and possibly dwarven deaths.

When working underground, I tend to dig pits by designating ramps.  This way I don't accidentally channel out the floor over the cavern, or something equally stupid.  Just watch out for removing the bottom of murky pools, or the layer of stone under an aquifer.  Channeling won't give you any warnings about warm or damp stone below the level the channel is designated on, and ramping won't warn you about the level above.

JMZ

[Hyndis]

For digging out huge areas I prefer using up/down stairs.

Designate the entire area as up/down stairs. Once you're done digging it out you can smooth and engrave the walls if you want. Then channel it out one Z level at a time until you reach the floor. Once you reach the floor just remove ramps/stairs, and smooth the floor. Completely safe and requires a minimum of micromanagement.

[Boes]

Depending on how many z-levels you have to work with, carve the side of the mountain to resemble a giant skull.

Edit: Forgot to list the color key to indicate what the block colors mean in the diagram.
Red squares represent a block on the current build level.
Black squares represent a block on the lower (1z down) build level.
Dark red squares represent blocks on the current build level that are on top of a block on the previous (lower) build level.
White squares are air.

Here's an image for a layout to help a bit. Reads left to right, bottom to top. Needs 61 z-levels.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's a great idea for a fort.... I think I'm going to attempt it... the question is.. do you think would be the best material to carve it from.  I was thinking of obsidian but that would be a hell of a block to cast above ground level..

[JAFANZ]

Ice.

or Cotton Candy.

or maybe Steel.