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[DisgruntledPeasant]

Ok I got Bastion today (fantastic game, buy it), and being the Dwarf Fortress addict I have recently become I couldnt help think it would be badass to build a sky fortress composed of floating platforms!

Im going to attempt to build one, and im hoping some of you might have some pointers tips and ideas for me!

Obviously it cannot actually be floating,  the fun involved there will be fatal,  but with very tall towers of supports I could hold up large platforms,  I could connect them with retracting bridges so i can cut off areas if i wish so,  and with clever use of mechanisms I could build a 'control room' where I can collapse platforms at will,  making for a very dramatic siege defence.

Actually getting the thing started is going to be a massive pain though,  my current idea is to simply build a very tall central tower to act as the 'base' of the entire structure, and the only means of getting in and out (and more importantly, to the mines),  then just see where I can go from there.

[Kentti]

If I recall correctly, you can turn cave-ins off in init files if you want to have a true floating fortress but then you couldn't collapse parts of it.

For tips: lots of miners and masons.

[Necro910]

If you build a support at the top Z-level, it will attach to the sky. You can make your steampunk fantasy now 

Just thinking, is there a steampunk mod?

[ASCIt]

There should be.

Actually, you could always incorporate a massive stairway as a main entrance instead of a central tower, and use that as a support, leaving the rest of the fort in the air.

[Tevish Szat]

That would actually be a good way to get the illusion of floating.   after all, we couldn't fly it over to the goblin tower and bombard them with magma from the sky in the best of circumstances, why not use the entrance to "tether" the sky castle?

[Di]

If you build a support at the top Z-level, it will attach to the sky. You can make your steampunk fantasy now 

It'll hold only tiles below it, anything built next to it or walls attached to this only will fall down, so go with single stair.

[Azated]

If you build a support at the top Z-level, it will attach to the sky.

Now I can finally send my dwarves to heaven, literally.

[Wayward Device]

I'm gonna assume that since you have had an awesome idea, you're going to at it like a crazy man(or woman or whatever  you like). So, first of all, you are going to need an embark with 100Z-levels above ground. Also, you gotta thing about what materials you're going to build it out of. Clear glass is doable, but this really means your going to have to have at least one one whole flat Z of soil to turn into a tree farm and five or six dwarfs dedicated to plant gathering/wood chopping tending it 24/7. Metals are actually easy by comparison, just search around for an embark with a ton of what you want, standard procedure. For great convenience, you mike want to look for a site with a volcano* and a river, since you definately want to run water and magma to the skyfort. I just can't imagine someone building a sky for without them. Turn mineral scarcity to 1000, you are going to want those materials, turn invaders off until you feel you have enough stuff in place. Oh, make sure you have only one cavern and fiddle with the distances between layers to make them all more shallow. This means that if you can't find a volcano, the magma sea will still be like 30Zs bellow or whatever, depending on how many layers you got rid of. This will also serve a FPS gain to balance out all the sky Z levels. Dig out a basic fort to start with, get production of your chosen materials underway, build the stairway and magma/water pumpstacks up. Get on with building you're sky fort. Report back with progress.

*A good way to get a flat volcanic sinkhole with magma at ground level is, well obviously, set the volcano number really high and set erosion to the max value (1000 IIRC). This should help.

[Itnetlolor]

If you want some do's and don'ts on floating constructions, take a good read through or survey the DFMA of my airship megaproject.

I started that off poorly (then again, I was also going a more realistic route of constructing the ship, more for storytelling reasons), and not until near the end did I actually get something consistently working. Oh, and I also had [CAVE-INS:OFF] during my work through, and abided by the limits of not abusing no cave-ins.

Then again, this was also my first megaproject, and I didn't have much experience in DF when I started it.

EDIT:
Of course, whenever the next release comes along, I'm going to attempt making it's successor (which will be bigger, more fancy, and hopefully, more fully-featured and capable of hauling a true army; rendering the previous sky-fortress a mere sky-keep). This time, knowing better what to do, and how to go about it, and with possibly a better site and preparation.

Alternatively, we can always go about making something reminiscent of the Sky-Fortress Bahamut from FFXII, or the other one from Here & There, Then & Now (steam-powered all the way; utterly massive boiler needed) in DF. That would have to be a community megaproject however (succession fort).

[DisgruntledPeasant]

Thanks for the replies everyone, some great tips in there!

I'm going to do this properly, and plan out quite a few things before I begin,  i'm going to try and recreate Bastion's settings in quite a few ways, but im going to take a lot of liberties to translate it all into a dwarfy context.
The wilds that you explore in bastion are a terribly chaotic jungle, so my embark location will be a suitably savage jungle (which will be hard, but when did difficulty dissuade a dwarf?)  the city itself will float above,  and underground I will build the gasfella mines!


I'm going to have a bit of fun (of both the dwarfy and non-dwarfy kind) segragating my dwarves into castes, following themes of the game, with the masons(builders), breakers(archer/hunters), gasfellas(miners), Brushers (spearmen/hunters) and all the rest.

The city itself will be the main focus,  I will try to burrow diferent groups to their respective parts of the city,  but the Bastion itself will be in a central location and will be off-limits for the majority of the time, stockpiled with plenty of food and will be a near-impenitrable last resort,  in an emergency every dwarf will be burrowed to it so they all flock inside,  it can be sealed off and in the case of a dire emergency we can pull the calamity lever, which will collapse the tunnels undergound and all of the city save for the bastion itself,  then we rebuild.

I will dangerroom a single dwarf (I tend not to use the things, but I feel this calls for it), give him all the best gear I produce and name him "The Kid", he will be the great protector of the Bastion.   He shall be a legendary Hammerdwarf, its a shame that dwarf AI doesnt allow me to load one of each weapon onto him, and for him to choose the best weapon for each situation...