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[AdirianSoan]

Technologies in Dwarf Fortress are constantly advancing; some may be considered exploitative in nature, like danger rooms and then the Shaft of Enlightenment (I consider danger rooms and coinstar/popcorn rooms legitimate - it's ninja training for your dwarves - and the Staff of Enlightenment less so), others are just really cool innovations which speed up or simplify fortress design, or enable new feats like GCS silk farming methodologies.  Pump stacks have undergone much improvement since I started playing the game, as one example.

My favorite embark is pure desert, completely flat (I hate having to go up and down Z levels to see what invaders are doing), with at least one aquifer layer, so I find the two-slit aquifer piercing method a vast improvement in my fortresses, and is my own favorite technology.

I may or may not have discovered a way of aiding your defenses against invaders by creating a one-tile gap between invaders and your army to exploit their pathfinding, reducing the number of enemies who can come at you at once (only enemies who see your dwarves will path to them), so that's my less-known technology.  (I can see ways of improving it - iterate between a wall with a gap in front of it dropping enemies into a pit and a single hole they'll try to jump over, causing some of them to collide and fall into a collection pit - but haven't tested that yet.)

[slothen]

I still really like dwarven showers/decontamination zones in high traffic areas.  And death-towers still excite me.

[Max™]

Minecart quantum stockpiles are the most amazing things ever, especially after I had gone through the effort of learning how to get the old hatch/bridge ones working.

As for a less well known technology... uh... not sure if it counts, but I think I invented a bloodcano accidentally?

I was playing in a really nice looking spot, except the gobs were refusing to show up, by the second year I had been busy updating the military gearing, getting artifact micromanagement down better, and decided to set up a trauma chamber to clear out the billion crundles and whatnot I ended up with after I opened the caverns and set up cage traps at various chokepoints.

I had originally built a big drop shaft going through all the main rooms, and decided to set up fortifications around them and repurpose the drop shaft into a waterfall/mist-generator as well.

To keep the drop/disposal capabilities I have a drawbridge under the impact hatch so I can have both open and let water pour through, giving nice thoughts from the mist, or I can close them and splatter stuff, then let the chunks drop into the caverns right?

Well, my first try after getting the waterfall additions done (note that I originally had the bottom bridge set up as an atomsmasher, so it is linked to the same lever as the hatch) had uh... unexpected amazing results.

The room after dropping all the crundles, something like 30 of them:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Naturally it's a mess.

The fall was long enough that chunks actually made it a couple levels up:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Z+1:

Z+2:

Z+3:

So I'm like "ok, I'll drop the trolls/reachers/rutherers/possibly-elk-birds-if-they-don't-fly later, time to clean up", and I have them pull the hatch lever.

The results were... unexpectedly fantastic.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Z+0:

Z+1:

Z+2:

Z+3:

Z+4:

Z+almost all the way up to the waterfall:

The actual waterfall, one level above that picture^:

Yes, a volcano of bodyparts and gore, erupting upwards through multiple levels of living area, is not what I intended, or expected, but I will chalk it up as "happy accident", though it did injure a couple of dwarves when I was trying to figure out what happened and closed the hatch again:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The two flashing dorfs to the right were clunked by corpseparts >.>, but they calmed down once I got the mist going again:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Suffered injuries recently. Was comforted by a lovely waterfall recently."



I did unlink the bridge so it is on a different lever now, because while it was awesome, and I giggled for half an hour every time I thought about it, I don't need a legendary hammerdorf killed by flying bodyparts during another bloodcano.

[khearn]

I think my favorite is the magma piston. Dropping a column of solid rock onto a room full of magma to instantly move it to the top of the column is pretty amazing. And being able to do it over and over is a nice feature. Sure, it's easier to just load up minecarts at the bottom and have your dwarves carry them up, but that's pretty lame. I've only built a piston once, and it was a lot of work, but once it's done it's an infinite supply of magma.

Building it is also a very good learning experience. You'll learn to create a cave-in to clear a hundred levels of floors, learn to figure out how much magma you have to move up in order to catch a certain amount. You'll learn to create repeatable controlled cave-ins, how to handle magma, how to create obsidian. Lots of good stuff.

   Keith

[Tacomagic]

My favorite new technology is kingbu's pump-stack aquifer penetration.  Much faster and less irritating to pull off than the 2-slit method and only requires a little extra setup.  Sadly the original video is gone, but I'm actually in the middle of making a new wiki tutorial for it. I've been using it like crazy since he posted it and I want to share the love.

[Quartz_Mace]

I like to make military choke-points for my battles. The sieges enter to find the 5x5 trade depot, followed by 2-3 layers of traps and a wall. At the wall, there is a diagonal slit in the side of the hallway. When they walk through, they are battered to death by an artifact mechanism weapon trap (or masterwork if I don't have the mechanism) with one whip (to knock them out) and 9 masterwork quality spiked balls to finish them. They then have to pass a 15-20 tile death hallway while Marksdwarves shoot out from behind fortifications. If they've stopped at the wall, I can send in my melee squads to kill them without any disadvantage against ranged troops. If a Goblin siege comes with building destroyers, they'll charge forth into cage traps and be nullified. I always keep at least one row of cage traps to save some prisoners for Dwarven torture and capture Mega and semi-Megabeasts for use, though they rarely show up. I also like to install a cage trap in the wall with an army of all those useless yaks and water buffalo migrants bring, so I can flip a lever and watch them be gored. If I'm really blood thirsty, I'll fill the cage with members of another captured siege or dangerous wildlife. In all honesty, I'm starting to cut down on the use of traps after learning how much deadlier the military is, especially now that sieges tend to wander.
Illustration
X- wall
T- Trade depot
C-cage trap
W-Weapon trap
O- Constructed cage (linked to lever elsewhere)
+-fortifications
N-natural wall
Bottom = entrance
 +++++
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
NWWWWWN
WXXXXXN
NCCCCCN
NCCCCCN
NCCCCCN
NTTTTTTN
NTTTTTTN
OTTTTTTO
NTTTTTTN
NTTTTTTN

Sorry if not everything lines up, hope you get the basic picture. There are two cages because I like to have two stocked with fighters.

[Bumber]

Magma landmines.

[Meneth]

I like the Dwarven Water Reactor. Would be worth trillions if it could be built on Earth.

[gchristopher]

I still really like dwarven showers/decontamination zones in high traffic areas.  And death-towers still excite me.

Has anyone yet designed a "perfect" dwarven decontamination system that doesn't sometimes accumulate or spread contaminants, and is pet-safe? Don't contaminants stick to grates and float in air if the grates are opened? I ran into times where the mist from waterfalls would prematurely transfer contamination to the floor, or there was a risk of dwarves being flushed downward if the waterfall was over stairs (to allow contaminants to flush).

Eventually I transitioned to water trenches that could manually be filled alternately with water and magma, to periodically clear out contaminants. That's not pet-safe, though.

As far as technology goes, I like to use an impulse ramp spiral to lift magma-filled minecarts to the surface, so I don't have to build pump stacks.

[LMeire]

I like making fountains after I've set up everything important; mostly because they look nice and to take advantage of the mist-happy-thoughts, but also because a simple lever-pull can turn a fountain-entryway into a death trap should the goblins send someone competent enough to get that far.

(From the top-down)









(MWDF Orc Fortress, only example of a built and working fountain room I had on hand.)

[Slogo]

Drowning chambers that work on water pressure are fun to watch (they can be a bit unreliable though).

So something like a passage with floor grates above a pool of water. That pool of water has a bend & passage that leads to a high z-level water tank. A door sits at the bend, when it's opened water pressure pushes water through the grates at an alarming rate.

Rather than filling like a normal drowning chamber they cause a wave of 7/7 water to flood into the passage. It's just entertaining to watch the giant wave crash into goblins.

[Mishrak]

"Suffered injuries recently. Was comforted by a lovely waterfall recently."



I did unlink the bridge so it is on a different lever now, because while it was awesome, and I giggled for half an hour every time I thought about it, I don't need a legendary hammerdorf killed by flying bodyparts during another bloodcano.

I needed this laugh.  Thank you.

[Bumber]

As far as technology goes, I like to use an impulse ramp spiral to lift magma-filled minecarts to the surface, so I don't have to build pump stacks.

Or derail the minecarts on a stockpile and have dwarves haul them. You don't risk minecart collisions (breaking your setup) and Sir Urist Newton won't roll over in his grave.

[Larix]

But wouldn't M. Carnot roll over in his grave because dwarfs can handle magma-filled carts without being affected by the heat?

You can also build an ordinary ramp track up and have dwarfs "guide" the cart, which is about 10 times as fast as hauling it and usually completely safe (some people have managed to get runaway carts and collisions with guided routes, but i've no idea how they did it).

[khearn]

I just assume that dwarves are wearing oven mitts when handling magma filled carts.

Actually, I've never had my dwarves haul magma filled carts, but that's beside the point.

   Keith