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I think my first major project was probably the minecart & lock system I set up to stage an Undead Vs Clown battle. It was the first major minecart work I'd ever done, a little complicated to set it up so that the necromancers could animate the corpses without either the corpses escaping, or the demons killing the necromancers.

[superbob]

I think the closest thing to an actual project, as opposed to developing some basic facilities in a more or less fancy fashion, was my obsidian farming operation.

Essentially, a 44x44x4 chamber hooked to a volcano via a excessively elaborate system of pumps, magma-proof bridges and staging chambers, with a complementary system for supplying and draining water.

Underneath the chamber was a cart depot connected by a 3x3 grid of staircases, which allowed the obsidian to be quickly loaded into carts and moved to the main fortress. Also, the rail system claimed many more casualties than the casting chamber.

Aside from that, I also enjoyed putting together a system that could instantly dump an even larger amount of magma down on my fortress entrance hall, and if that didn't work, I could pull another lever to drop the container that held the magma. Then there was one more lever in the room, which allowed me to cave in the mayor's quarters, which happened to be suspended by a few supports just above the magma tank.

[EvilBob22]

The first big project I did was either right before or right after DF2010 came out: I did a 34x34 green glass tower, moving everything above ground.  Or at least I tried to; the fort eventually fell before everything was finished.  (I didn't calculate it before hand, but I was looking at a 20+ level tower, and 34x34x20 = 23,120 glass blocks.)

[Urist McShire]

I suppose my first actual project, besides learning the basics to DF as everybody has to, was setting up a well that received its waters from a brook on the map, and the one immediately after that was building a wall and archer towers to stave off continuous necromancer/undead attacks.

My fortress did not fall, but was forced to remain underground for several years as I dug and dug, finding seams of hematite and not finding anything that could be used to burn and smelt it into usable iron in order to fight off the undead menace. Therefore, walls and towers.

[fucduck]

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[Mithril Leaf]

My first real project was what I liked to call the Kitchen Commune. It was a fort where I produced as much food as possible, in as expensive meals as possible. Talking a 50x50 area dedicated to farming, another 30x30 of underground grassland for pasturing, hundreds of every type of domestic fowl, even got some cave crocodiles breeding towards the end. Sadly, it died an FPS death, but I still fondly remember buying literally everything every caravan brought me, and it gave me a love of turkeys I carry to this day. Those things fed the world.

[Arcvasti]

Mine was an aquifer fed drowning chamber. Enemies were dropped down into a chamber that I filled with aquifer water. First time I'd used pumps or embarked on an aquifer. It later got used to kill my loyalty cascaded legendary military before they could wreck that fort.

[granzteel]

Mine was a skyway for archers.  Several pillboxes, linked together with series of roofed passages that only touched the ground in the center of my main fortress.  Two different archery ranges, one in the main fortress, one above the trap corridors/melee training area entrance pillbox.

We have the same project, except mine has to be built on ice

[Raptomex]

Once I got the basic aspects of survival down my first order of business was to build a floodgate and control water. I was able to do it but the overall plan wasn't what I wanted but the goal was achieved.

[Ai Shizuka]

My first noteworthy project was in 40d. A pump stack to bring magma to the surface from 130 levels below.

Then, in DF2012, I actually bothered to kill the HFS for the first time, with a nice complex of various cave-in traps, upright spikes, 40-50 war grizzly bears and a couple squads of legendary soldiers at the end.

I usually get bored of my forts in 5-6 years tops, so I rarely engage in big projects.

[Meneth]

I guess mine would be an impulse-ramp minecart magma delivery system. It took at least three different forts and lots of trial and error before I finally made it work. Then I found out how annoyingly slow it was.

Next fort I made a regular reactor-powered pump stack instead. Much faster to build and operate. However, being made of wood, it caused !!Fun!! within 5 seconds of being turned on.

Final version is made of green glass and dolomite, and it's worked out pretty well so far.

[KiBoy]

My first 'major' project is happening in my current fortress, Bluetower.

Bluetower, for a reason, khe khe khe. I'm building a round, gigantic microcline tower. It is so big that I already used up a THOUSAND MICROCLINE BLOCKS and the first floor isn't finished yet! And the constant ambushes aren't helping...

[Melting Sky]

I'm not sure if it really counts as a major project in the grand scheme of things but the trapped catwalk, dodge pit system in the entrance to my second fortress was a big project for me when I did it. It's about 8 floors deep, has retractable bridges running up both sides to keep it from bottle necking traffic in peace times and a winding 3 tile wide path to the depot that goes around it for wagon access. There are fortifications over looking it for archers to be stationed. The collection pit empties into an arena with drawbridge access which has another set of fortifications carved into the walls for archer practice or removal of stubborn arena contestants. The whole thing is contained within a drawbridge airlock. It was a simple but very efficient design. I remember being very happy with it when it was finally finished. I only maimed one miner which is amazing since I didn't understand quite how channeling worked beforehand.

At the time it was the only deep multi Z level construction project I had ever put together so just digging out a structure that filled 8 vertical floors was a first for me and in the early days it was essentially our entire defense system. Nothing ever made it through. These days it mostly serves as a prisoner disposal system in the form of an arena and a live military training area since its been years since anything has made it past the fortress's front lawn into the gauntlet.

[Graknorke]

Probably either when I walled off a huger portion of the map for aboveground activity purposes, or the time I made a huge water cistern for drinking and a pump stack to send it pressurised out of the front entrance. I was doing both at the same time, so yeah. Worked out nicely though, since it meant I could break up sieges that came towards the entrance before I dropped the bridge and sent out the military.

[KingBacon]

I tried building a volcano base and wound up learning a bunch about magma management. I lost that fort to magma mist and spontaneously spawning magma on the inner catwalks. Tantrums followed by gobblos through the front gate...

Advice: if you are draining a volcano, make sure the pumps are 10 z levels below the level you want drained off.