It's been a while since my last fortress, but I think I'm going to try for another ridiculous Megaproject.
I plan to mod bones so I can use them for construction, then make a ridiculously large structure entirely out of bones.
A background note: I tried this before, my intention was to more or less build a giant Khornate temple complete with workshops to turn the remains of enemies into magic armor and such, but I got too wrapped up in modding and got bored, so this time I'm gonna stick to just making something big and cool.
LocationI'm up in the air about this. I would like to embark in an evil biome, but I've never been super good with military and I'm not familiar with the latest updates (since 40d) to undead and such. I would appreciate advice on how harder an evil biome would make this.
Functional FortressThere needs to be a part of the fort that is functional no matter what I build, but I don't want to get caught up building a ridiculous below ground fort and not having energy for the main project. I will either need to build a smallish separate fort then concentrate on the parts of the Megaproject that can be used for housing dwarves, or build a somewhat larger separate fortress. I intend to keep the population low so the speed stays good, either through modding or murder.
MilitarySince goblins will be an important bone source there will be no simply turning invaders off and building in peace, the problem is that I suck at running a military in DF. I don't want to get completely sidetracked building a giant army, but I know I'll need one, so I'd appreciate advice on building a tight and efficient military that can still handle invaders.
Bone SourceWhile the bones of my enemies would be the ideal material source I'm not sure I'd get enough of them from enemies alone. The second dwarfiest source would be migrants, but I'm not sure that would work given the ghost and such. I'm hoping I can just give them all a slab then desecrate their corpses all I want, but I'd appreciate any knowledge on the subject you folks can offer. Finally I can get bones through animal husbandry, but a giant fortress made out of cow and capybara bones does not seem very dwarfy, I will have to see what the construction speed is like before I decide if this is necessary.
The MegaprojectI'm still not decided on what to build and am open to suggestions. The ones I'm currently considering are:
- A giant skeleton reclining with a functional fortress in the skull
- A giant tower/temple of doom
I will of course feel the need to work some other cool stuff into this, so I expect pumped magma and water will be used at some point in whatever I create.
ModdingI am not a super proficient DF modder, but I'm hoping that modding a bones so I can use them straight or turn them into blocks then use them shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully this will be the only required modding, I don't want to get bogged down in the raws. Any suggestions that would speed me figuring up how to do this would be welcome.
LoggingIf there's enough interest I intend to keep a journal of this project complete with images for a timelapse, any other suggestions are welcome though.
I'd appreciate some help brainstorming this, I'm open to suggestions and advice on any facet of this project, if you can think of something you'd prefer me to build, or a rule you think I could stick to, or some modding advice I'd love to hear it.