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[Revenant342]

So, my newest world has a sweet volcano site, but it's on an island just offshore of the mainland and hence is only accessible to dwarven civs.  The ocean is spannable by a 6x6 embark site, though.

My question is, if I make a fort that spans both sides and build a stupidly huge bridge (with a massive castle at both sides, Game of Thrones-style, if course!) and retire the fort, will that connect the island to the mainland for route purposes on a future embark on the island?

[Astrid]

Yes. That's been done.

[Skuggen]

Oh, cool. I've always assumed that wouldn't work, so never even tried it.

[Revenant342]

Perfect!  I know exactly what my next project is, then.  Assuming my wagon doesn't spawn in the middle of the water...

[milo christiansen]

You don't even need to build a bridge...

Somewhere there is a thread where science was done that show that all you need to do is embark once in the area and it then become passable to caravans, when paired with embark anywhere and an ocean it allowed connecting an island to the mainland, despite the two being far apart.

[Revenant342]

Well, I've already got the eastern bridgehead up and a plan to sink pilings when the ocean freezes in winter, sooo...

[BlackMuffin]

For good measure, make sure the castles/forts on each side have a lever to pull up the bridge. Better yet, make it two bridges that meet in the middle and pull up towards their respective castles/forts.

[Mrandom]

It will be cool if we can build a bridge-catapult that is guaranteed to send whoever on that raising bridge across a strait...

[Revenant342]

You don't understand, the bridge is 9 embark tiles long :p

I'm going to have drawbridges at each bridgehead, as well as on either side of a large bastion center-span... which is why I'm sinking pilings down to the ocean floor.  Facepalmed when I realized the whole center fort would fall into the ocean if I raised the bridges...

Whole span is going to be about 700 urists by 10 urists and constructed out of granite blocks, with steel drainage grates every 10 urists and two bands of steel bar walls reinforcing the structure underneath because why not?  Might also have "!!boiling oil!!" at each drawbridge if I can get it up there without exposed pumpstacks dirtying up the look.

[Pirate Santa]

Facepalmed when I realized the whole center fort wod fall into the ocean if I raised the bridges...

That would a pretty awesome final resort, unfortunately anything that is connected only to bridges will collapse the instant it is built.

[Revenant342]

Hmmm... could build it on supports tied to a lever?  Might cause gremlin problems, though...

[Pirate Santa]

That would probably work, but you would have to get dwarves to install the supports on the ocean floor, and then also to link them to the lever/s, which is doable, but a ginormous pain in the ass.

Also if you're worried about gremlins have several supports hooked up to different levers that all have to be pulled to drop the bridge.

[TheKaspa]

What about suspending the fixed portion of the bridges from arches unaccessible (after being built)?

[Revenant342]

Well, I'm building the bridge about 3 Z-levels above sea level with ramps leading up on both ends, so I can just install the supports on top of the support pilings once I get them in place. 

Current method for making the supports is digging down stairs through the ice when the ocean freezes, mining out a layer around them, then building a walled caisson before the thaw.  Kinda touch-and-go, but the mining portion is almost instantaneous and I have a staged area of granite blocks nearby. 

[escondida]

You'll be fine for support if you build walls around it, as long as they're anchored to something. So, for instance you could build a raising bridge at landfall, then build walls from the shore to the end of the bridge--carefully, one at a time, so they're each supported by the last. When you hit the spot where you want to start constructing floors, build floor scaffolding out from the bridge instead of the last few wall segments, then build a layer of floor anchored to that at the end of the bridge. When the floors meet up with walls build on the other side of the bridge (so now you have a u of constructions all the way around the bridge), you can remove the scaffolds and put up walls. The rest of the way, you can build floors first, then walls, which is much easier.

The hardest thing with this method is remembering to do all this a tile at a time to prevent cave-ins due to lack of support.

Good luck!

P.S.: Your plan sounds great! Will you post pictures when it's finished?