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[jonanlsh]

@Centrigrade

beautifully done, if slightly excessive.

[Centigrade]

@Centrigrade

beautifully done, if slightly excessive.

Squares are the art. Suffer not the octogone.

[Catsup]

hmm, im starting to notice most ppl like to build alot on 1 Z level. Am i the only one who hates using planar space too much?

[Centigrade]

hmm, im starting to notice most ppl like to build alot on 1 Z level. Am i the only one who hates using planar space too much?

Most of my fort spans several z-levels, but since a single room can only be designated on one z-level you're stuck with having a lot of space used up by your dining hall.

When realizing that, I just went ahead and made a huge thing that should never need to be expanded. In my design, the four single-staircases lead up and down through several layers of decentralized stockpiles.

[Shininglight]

I feel painfully inadequate now. All of my forts look NOTHING like what i see here, most of them are pretty much random as i go, no waterfalls, no windmills because i have no clue how to work the power system. Good Armok i need to play this game more and get better.

[Mr Space Cat]

I feel painfully inadequate now. All of my forts look NOTHING like what i see here, most of them are pretty much random as i go, no waterfalls, no windmills because i have no clue how to work the power system. Good Armok i need to play this game more and get better.

Get better? At a sandbox game? Do you even lift imaginate?

Poor references at memes aside, truly dwarven forts are holes in the ground hastily dug out with no sense of aesthetics or efficiency, and barely clinging to life as perils of zambies, goblins, and dwarven stupidity assault the hand crafted rough-sand walls from all sides. Go check out the !!DRUNKFORTRESS!! succession fortress for the ultimate dwarf experience.

Anyway, time I contribute to this thread. Behold, the half-finished mess that is Axehole the not-so-starfort-like star-fort!

Spoiler: The first floor, with the workshops, barrackses, and pathing nightmare for enemy troops. (click to show/hide)

The first floor is primarily military, with the walls and long twisting paths around the perimeter of the fort were set up to help control enemy troop movement and provide some shelter from enemy archers when the melee dwarves need to fight out in the two courtyards. Copper menacing spike traps are being set up and linked to a lever for when inevitable zombie, elf, and goblin floods need to be reduced.

Once enemy troops get through the maze into the courtyards they are shot at from the archers a z-level above. If troops get into the three-tile-wide hallway the ballistae is supposed to shoot at them, although so far it's seen no real use.  It looks cool though. Ammo for the weapon is kept stocked around it. hostiles must then fight their way through the dual barracks on each side, where dwarf military is constantly training. The fortifications can be accessed through these barracks, and once all archers are at their post I can simply lock the doors to keep them at their post.Armor and weapon stocks are located under the fortifications, in those branching areas.

The hospital is built around the ballista pillbox, possibly the safest area in the fort. It can only be accessed through the stairs from the dining room located above. If enemy troops get that deep into the fort then it's already been lost. Small cloth and soap stockpiles are kept along the pillbox there.

The workshops are small and relatively few, usually one per type, except for those five mason shops by the stairs there. The masons are kept on constant duty pumping out marble and limestone blocks to keep Axehole expanding, generally they've kept up with demand. Sometimes they burn through the rocks too fast though, and progress is temporarily halted as the stockpile for economic rock is refilled by the hauling peasants. In terms of efficiency it's ok I guess, though the stockpiles are kept several layers down. I still need to floor the paths around the workshops, but it's a minor detail.

Spoiler: The dining room, food stockpiles and food preparation shops. (click to show/hide)

Obligatory legendary dining room and food/booze stocks are kept here. Plants are stocked by the stills while meat, eggs, and errything else is by the kitchens. Lever controls are kept by the dining room, sealed by doors in case of the mythical gremlins I've heard about. The access to the hospital is in the midst of the dining room, for extra dramatic effect. I love the thought of injured dwarves being hauled through the dining hall medical-drama-style, interrupting all festivities in dramatic and/or silly fashion.

There's a bypass for the caravans that travels along the ballista protected hallway below. In times of sieges the marble bridge can seal access, and archers can shoot at anyone on the bypass to delay them.

There's the fortifications I was talking about too, with ammo stocks as well.

Those dwarves in the middle are all gathered around the single tile prison that is the artifact adamantine cage "The Shell of Zeal". Nothing special, just adamantine with rings of adamantine. I don't know why so many idlers hang around that and not the dining hall itself. I guess they like the shinies.

Spoiler: The miscellaneous stockpile floor. Oh, and there's some dorms too I guess. (click to show/hide)

Stocks for leather, cloth, furniture and stuff. Also the temporary dorms from the first year, still serving all 135 or so dwarves after five or six years since Axehole's founding. Bedrooms keep getting delayed as other building projects claim the block supply, although I'm hoping to (eventually) build bedrooms over the walls of the maze, on the level of the dining hall, so the fort looks slightly more rounded.

Spoiler: The farms and resevoir (click to show/hide)

The slightly flooded spaces there in the middle were errors on my part when trying to "muddify" the original space for the farm plots. I left the floodgates open too long and never bothered to get the water out. Replacement plots and stockpiles for animals to be trained were dug out instead. The resevoir feeds the wells for the hospital above.

Will add further interesting details in later posts. I'm pleased with the design, in terms of military-esque design there's many chokepoints and it uses space efficiently while still having interesting shapes.

[Loud Whispers]

Looks more like a tombstone than a star. Creepy.

[Tally]

Looks more like a tombstone than a star. Creepy.

Isn't every fortress a sprawling tombstone though?

[Eric Blank]

Yes, but even dwarves usually don't build the overarching layout of their fortresses to look like a tombstone when viewed from above.

[mobucks]

I've been toying with the idea to make real "mountain halls" with each working z-level actually have about 10-15 Z of empty ceiling above it, spaced with pillars and leaving nooks along high walls with statues ect. Would certainly keep my doctors busy with all the channeling, and also give almost zero idle dwarves. I'm just not sure about the exact layout and how caverns might interfere. Mass channeling jobs also annihilate my FPS.

[Shininglight]

How the heck would you channel that properly from the top? I have enough trouble doing a 2 z-level dining room with a throne, and only a 20/60 at that.

[Mr Space Cat]

Looks more like a tombstone than a star. Creepy.

...I never noticed that. Kinda awesome.

On graph paper it looked more square, I suspect the more rectangular tile-set made it come out more, y'know, tombstoney.

[DS]

How the heck would you channel that properly from the top? I have enough trouble doing a 2 z-level dining room with a throne, and only a 20/60 at that.

It just requires adequate planning, that's all.

1. Decide how many z-levels you want between the floor and ceiling, and how broad you want the base of the room to be.
2. Find a space underground that fits the required dimensions. To mark the space, designate the outline of the base of the chamber.
3. Make a decision about various features of the room that will need to be carved out over the course of excavation, for example: pillars, buttresses, interior structures, the slope of the walls if the ceiling is a different width than the floor, etc. If necessary, designate the outlines of these structures to remind yourself of their placement later on.
4. Dig out the topmost level.
5. Channel out the floor, and dig outward if the level you are excavating is wider than the one beneath it.
6. Repeat step 5 until you reach the bottom floor.

This method can be used to dig out caverns of any size or shape, provided you are patient enough. However, as mobucks observed, accidents happen. In my experience, miners in these projects tend to possess high mortality rates, especially when surrounded by dozens of raw stone boulders per tile (cave-ins cause dust explosions which blast the stones into the miners... the results are not pretty). Also, FPS is of course a concern.

[Necrisha]

So in a situation like that spending time to clear the floor in-between digging levels might be a good idea. Generally you want to make damn sure your dorfs have finished off the above level before designating the next round of channelling. That might prove to be extra handy if you decide to smooth walls...

[Matoro]

Woah, that's great. Especially that design of noble rooms is very clever. Three rooms but doesn't consume much space. For normal bedrooms, I usually make 1x4 sized rooms with door, bed, coffer and cabinet to everyone but nobles.