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[PatrikLundell]

@Pseudo: I've tried to understand what you did with this, but don't get it:

Deconstruct the wagon immediately. Dig 2 ramps down and a small area connected to one of the two ramps, and a tunnel just disconnected from the other ramp. Also: rush down to get two stone.

Pasture the animals in the small area, and make a 1x2 stone stockpile there as well. It will be needed.

Dump everything into the disconnected ramp. Connect it. Unforbid everything there and build a wall under both ramps. Now you're "safe".

My interpretation (skipping some clear bits) is this:
Channel out two separated tiles from the surface, and enter the nice darkness through one of them, while all the embark gear is dumped down the other one. Connect the second ramp and unforbid the dumped stuff, and build a wall on the ramp tile, with the wall building forcing the builder to move the stuff dumped off the ramp tile in order to get a clear access to it.

However, with that interpretation I cannot see any advantage of using two rather than one ramp, since you should be able to do exactly the same with a single combined access and dump ramp.
Another way using two ramps would be to channel the second ramp down an additional level (requiring an access/exit tunnel at the level just below ground to get the miner in/out) and then build a wall covering the upper level (the hole at the level just below ground) from the side once everything has been dumped. The stuff would then be inaccessible below that wall, but if you dig a ramp up below the stuff (3:rd level below ground) the things should fall onto a ramp that's not considered to be surface, and thus should be completely safe to unforbid and get stuff from.

The part that throws me is the building of a wall under the ramps, since there's sand there?

[Max™]

They meant build a wall under the channeled tile, where the ramp was.

When I wall in a fort for a face of armok I do a similar thing.

Whip up a perimeter wall around the wagon with one tile left as a ramp, the dorfs put the walls up and once the ramp and adjacent wall are up I have them slap a floor into place, when that is finished they remove the ramp and put a wall there to seal it.

[Pseudo]

@Pseudo: I've tried to understand what you did with this, but don't get it

Walking through:

You need to get your stuff under cover ASAP. There are two ways of doing this: either move the stuff under cover or construct cover over the stuff.

Constructing cover over the stuff would require a minimum of 12 constructed tiles (9 to cover the wagon itself, 1 to cover the stairs down, and a constructed up and down stair to get to the roof). Given that you don't start with 12 blocks, good luck with that (either you'd need to dig ~48 stone tiles to get ~12 stone, or you'd need to dig ~16 stone tiles to get 4 stone, 1 for a mason's workshop and 3 for blocks, make blocks, etc...). Probably possible, but not easy.

So, you want to get the stuff in the wagon under cover ASAP. There is ultimately two ways to do this: either via a stockpile or via a garbage dump. Either way, you'll either need to dig out a relatively large amount of space or quantum stockpile the stuff somehow. If you're going the QS route, you'll either need a minecart or a drop. Minecart's pretty much out (again, it'd take too much time, and use valuable wood too...), so you'll need a drop. Except you'll need to be careful or the dwarves will drop things on each other's heads. Easiest way to do that is to have an entirely separate area for the dump.

The "build a wall" thing is just the easiest way to move the items actually under cover and to seal up the hole in the surface. (Also: note that building a wall can be a viable method of moving large numbers of items quickly. When building a wall, the dwarf doesn't wait the usual "find a new job" length of time before moving the next item...)

...Except that I just remembered that garbage dumps QS even if there isn't a pit to dump things into. Derp.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks for the explanation.

OK, I now understand why you use two ramps. I'm not sure that's needed, though, since the items are sort of sliding down, but I haven't tried to find out if dorfs actually do get hit.

Building a roof probably won't help on that embark, even if it was doable with a reasonable effort, because the tiles under the roof are still "outside" and thus probably lethal when the temperature check sets in.

A dump generates a QS effect, yes, but if the wall builder doesn't enter the ramp dumped into while moving the things (quickly, as you pointed out), it would be completely safe and faster than a dump tile inside. However, does the builder keep into safety, or does he subject himself to the elements while moving the stuff away? I'm not sure we'll get an answer to that question (well, if the answer is "no" someone might find out the hard way).

@Max: It's not quite the same thing, but along the same lines. When I build a courtyard I place the ramp up the outside wall so I don't have to remove it to seal the box, but I'm not concerned about the looks.

[Pseudo]

The question is: does the temperature check set in? I thought it was the rain that triggered the temperature updates...

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, that's what vjek said. However, it can trigger in several ways:
- As soon as it starts to rain, everything that's "outside" is evaluated.
- When it rains, everything hit by rain is evaluated.
- When it rains, everything that's in contact with blood (from above of from the ground) is evaluated.

My experiences are inconsistent, since i believe I've had migrants arriving during rain who made it without harm, while other seem to have died without there being any rain at all, as well as migrants dying when the rain started while they were well into my tunnels. I also had one case where I resumed the embark up and it ran at 30-40 FPS. A DFHack clean all returned the FPS to full speed, which to me indicates there were some severe temperature calculation effects going on (nothing was outside at the time, or even due to arrive shortly, so it shouldn't have had any effect.

I'm considering mustering the energy to restart to create a "surface" pasture for wool producers by digging out an area 2 levels under ground and then ramp/channel away the soil above one tile at a time, plugging the hole with a wall afterwards. The result would be a two tile wide, arbitrarily long strip sealed away from the rain. Ideally, you'd have blood on the pasture when you pasture animals there, and then wait for a couple of rains. If they die, DFHack the blood away and repeat. If it's done as a test save scumming can be used to set up the pasture "safely", without the single tile at a time method, and save scumming can obviously be used to retry the pasture with the same animals but without the blood.

Edit: I've mustered the energy:
I built a 12*2 or so slit, let it rain down it (not complete), and covered it. I then pastured animals there. When it rained a peafowl standing on blood died.
I then repeated it using DFHack to clean off the blood, and neither dorfs nor animals seemed to fare ill while in the area during the rain. I thus suspect death is caused by being contaminated by the blood (either by standing on it or having it on the body) when temperature calculations are made. That also matches what I've seen with animals who first hurt their paws. Dorf shoes ought to have provided some protection, one would have thought.
The above also indicates using DFHack to clean away blood to see when it's raining and when it's not increases caravan and migrant survivability, and thus shouldn't be allowed for the challenge.
A consequence of the above is that an above ground shelter ought to actually be safe if free of blood, and that a drawbridge might be a safe way to create a larger sheltered area.

Another note is that I didn't see any vegetation in the area, despite the second attempt took a long time for the rain to appear, so I suspect the grass growth is rather slow, requiring a large grazing area. I also built a farm plot in the area, and, as expected, it supported various over ground crops (rather useless without the seeds, of course, but if a dwarven caravan did actually bring some vegetables you could get seeds).

Building a wall and then removing it gets rid of the blood without using DFHack.

[vjek]

Regarding inconsistent temperatures..

I'm trying severe cold.  It works, but it's not quite as deadly as I would like.  In 4 days on the surface, everything is dead, but that's actually quite a while in game time, plenty long enough for caravans to get inside and migrants, too.

The other problem is that... everything not a dwarf/pack animal is pretty much instantly destroyed on the surface (non-homeotherms/corpses/supplies) due to cold damage, to the point where I don't think re-animation will work.  I'm still testing it, and will be happy to provide the embark, but another problem has come up, too. 
I've set mineral scarcity to max (100000) and I'm getting tons of metal bearing ores, platinum, gold, iron, everything.  It's really strange, I've never seen a world produce so much below-ground wealth with this value set where it is, so I'm suspicious there may be a bug at play with wrapping/negative values somewhere, but I'm not sure what the root cause is? (the goal here is to have zero ore of any kind, which normally is quite easy to achieve)

Spoiler: mmm, frostbite (click to show/hide)

A short, sturdy creature fond of drink and industry.
  Stukos Megidatîs, "Stukos Slidestake", Clerk   
"So easily broken...  Begone fear!"
He is afraid after experiencing trauma.  He is horrified after seeing Kûbuk Galleypuzzle die.  He is horrified after seeing Såkzul Goldenskinned die.  He is horrified after seeing ònul Girderhammer die.  He is horrified after seeing Amost Spearsafe die.  He is horrified after seeing Asmel Wheelchanneled die.  He is horrified after seeing Rigòth Mirrorteeth die.  Within the last season, he didn't feel anything after seeing a yak bull die.  He didn't feel anything after seeing a yak cow die.  He felt fondness talking with a friend. 
He is a worshipper of Keshan Minesizzled and a worshipper of Tumam the Wondrous Steed. 
He is a citizen of The Hoary Lancer.  He is a member of The Absolute Coal.  He arrived at Abraslolor on the 15th of Granite in the year 100. 
He is seventy-five years old, born on the 20th of Felsite in the year 25. 
His right floating ribs is mangled beyond recognition.  His left floating ribs is mangled beyond recognition.  His right false ribs is mangled beyond recognition.  His left false ribs is mangled beyond recognition.  His right true ribs is mangled beyond recognition.  His left true ribs is mangled beyond recognition.  His lower left back teeth is mangled beyond recognition.  His upper left back teeth is mangled beyond recognition.  His lower right back teeth is mangled beyond recognition.  His upper right back teeth is mangled beyond recognition.  His lower front teeth is mangled beyond recognition.  His upper front teeth is mangled beyond recognition.  His skull is mangled beyond recognition.  His head is frost-bitten.  His right eye is frost-bitten.  His left eye is frost-bitten.  His brain is frost-bitten.  His right eyelid is frost-bitten.  His left cheek is frost-bitten.  His right cheek is frost-bitten.  His left eyelid is frost-bitten.  His right ear is frost-bitten.  His nose is frost-bitten.  His left ear is frost-bitten.  His upper body is frost-bitten.  His heart is frost-bitten.  His liver is frost-bitten.  His left lung is frost-bitten.  His right lung is frost-bitten. 
He is corpulent.  His eyes are brass.  He has a square chin.  He has a high-pitched, clear voice.  His sideburns are clean-shaven.  His very long moustache is arranged in double braids.  His medium-length beard is arranged in double braids.  His very long hair is neatly combed.  His teeth are crowded.  His nose bridge is concave.  His ears have large hanging lobes.  His nose is slightly upturned.  His hair is dark tan.  His skin is copper. 
He is agile, but he is very quick to tire and really slow to heal. 
Stukos Megidatîs likes obsidian, silver, aquamarine, phantom spider silk, bucklers and desert tortoise men for their longevity.  When possible, he prefers to consume raccoon, moghopper and durian wine.  He absolutely detests toads. 
He has a good kinesthetic sense, but he has a meager ability with social relationships, little willpower, quite poor focus and very bad analytical abilities. 
Like others in his culture, he holds craftsdwarfship to be of the highest ideals and celebrates talented artisans and their masterworks, has a great deal of respect for the law, greatly prizes loyalty, values family greatly, sees friendship as one of the finer things in life, believes that honesty is a high ideal, greatly respects artists and their works, really respects those that take the time to master a skill, deeply respects those that work hard at their labors, respects fair-dealing and fair-play, finds merrymaking and partying worthwhile activities, values martial prowess, respects commerce and finds nature somewhat disturbing.  He personally finds leisure time wasteful and dislikes cooperation.  He dreams of crafting a masterwork someday. 
He is incredibly brave in the face of looming danger, perhaps a bit foolhardy.  He has an overinflated sense of self-worth.  He is extremely confident of himself in situations requiring his skills.  He tends to be a bit stubborn in changing his mind about things.  He is somewhat uncomfortable around those that appear unusual or live differently from himself.  He tends to be a little tight with resources when working on projects.  He is pleased by his own appearance and talents.  He has a tendency toward forming deep emotional bonds with others.  He could be considered rude.  He can handle stress.  He has a greedy streak.  He is not particularly interested in what others think of him.  He is a friendly individual.  He occasionally overindulges.  He needs alcohol to get through the working day.  He likes working outdoors and grumbles only mildly at inclement weather. 

A short, sturdy creature fond of drink and industry.

[PatrikLundell]

I usually use 80000 as mineral scarcity, and I don't have too much trouble finding embarks devoid of ore. The reason I don't set the scarcity to max is that I'd prefer my mother civ to have iron/copper, since bronze/steel eats up a lot of embark points.
I doubt the issue is a wrap around one, both since it usually works and because the value range is way outside of 16 bits. I'd rather double check you didn't lose a zero ending up with 10000 instead, or, for that matter 1,000,000, since out of bounds probably ignores the value and uses a default, rather than shifting the value to the closest legal one.

And I doubt a frost bitten brain has any impact on the average dorf's intelligence...

Are there any other horrible environments possible? Such as e.g. a 99 degree Celsius environment with a lot of water that creates a lethal heat shock after a short time (thus not quite as hot as your boiling ocean)? I'm not sure the heat load of humidity is modeled by DF, though. Another possibility is if it's possible to create a permanent noxious haze over a swamp (again, instakill is pointless). You might consider Fortress of the Blind, where a permanent surface effect causes blindness (and/or other non lethal disabilities). The only hale dorfs would be children born inside.

[vjek]

I've tried swamps for high temp, and it doesn't work (thinking all the surface water would help).  It -only- updates with actual rain falling from the sky, or non-rivers flowing, or being covered in ocean spray.  Even then, it's more a matter of it being less inconsistent (or more consistent) rather than it being 100% working as expected.  For example, while being covered in ocean spray eventually kills the dwarf, it doesn't instantly kill them, which it should, as rain does.

I've found an embark where a riversource empties over a 1Z cliff, next to the ocean, and that works ok, as soon as the flowing surface water touches the dwarves, they die.

But honestly, it's all a bit... contrived?  Given that the real source of the problem is high temps are simply bugged.  If it's over 10078'U, those dwarves should be dead in a matter of seconds, as all their fat melts off. 99% of the time that never happens.

If that were true, then I could tune it so finely that dwarves could only go on the surface for a single day, or a single week, or any variation on that theme up to 1, 2, or 3 seasons being deadly, if desired.  If only the temperature updates occurred asynchronously based on the dwarf entering the new temperature/environment/biome/z-level/tile, rather than the rainfall/liquid-flow trigger. 
I mean, all you'd need to do is a compare, tile to tile while a creature is moving, is this temp more than 1 degree different than the old one?  Call the temperature update.  If it's not, don't bother.
---
EDIT: Hm, I tried this again, and although it does have some... interesting side effects, it may be possible that super high temps (over 10180'U) might do as you suggest, PatrikLundell.  I'll do some more testing here today.
EDIT2: 10176 is fatal, and permits pathing.  Over 10200 is also fatal, and does not permit pathing. (dwarves won't walk on 10200+)  So this may work, and it might be faster than freezing to death. 

[PatrikLundell]

I'm happy if acting as a sounding board to bounce ideas off (while still having little knowledge of the underlying mechanisms) helps you to find new angles to explore.

It sounds by Edit2 that you've found a small wriggling room to tweak the melting probability?

[vjek]

Yeah, 10175-10199 works, and it's fatal, and requires no rain, as far as I can see.  Large pack animals survive, but dwarfs do not.  I'm not actually sure what the lower range of "open hot air" fatality is, but it's likely somewhere between ~10150 and ~10174.

I had a migrant wave show up in a test world and while most of the dwarves made it inside, a peafowl died before it could path inside, which is ideal.

I'm going to re-gen the second Pseudo world with higher temps and see if works as expected, long term.  I also had the idea of a world with 9200 <-> 10199 temps right next to each other, which could be all sorts of fun.

EDIT: The surface... is sand, that's normal, but every tile of surface sand also has "a pile of human boiling blood" on it.  I think... that the rain is falling, but there's no message, and then it's boiling on the surface?  In any case, the message showed up that migrants arrived, but there were no migrants.  Also, in spring, the temperature is below 10200.  So, things will path on the surface.  But then in summer, the temperature is above 10200, and you can't station military, build, pen/pasture, or do anything else, on the surface.
Caravan message... and... no caravan.
I mean, it's neat and all, and meets some of my goals of basically cutting off the surface, but it might be a bit punitive?

[PatrikLundell]

I assume the boiling blood is red on top of the white/black/yellow sand? If you're using DFHack you can remove the blood to see if it rains or not in the form of more red tiles appearing.

Have you tried to zoom to the migrants/caravan to see they haven't immediately melted into a puddle or something?

If the temperature is unpathable I wouldn't be surprised if nothing actually enters the map despite the message. For the summer, I would prefer the migrant wave not to appear rather than having them die immediately (or slowly, while standing still in agony) and litter the surface. For the autumn you might want to adjust the temperature so that the caravan can actually path to the fortress, or change the dwarven caravan season to winter. Possibly a better alternative?

No caravans at all means no metal at all (except RNG luck with getting miners, hunters, or woodcutters as immigrants), unless you provide black towers (they quickly run out of steam, in my experience: 2-3 sieges) or goblins. Those would usually quickly be zombiefied and fight their former comrades, for a really messy surface, and the goblinite would be quite hard to get since it's mostly lying outside (and with goblins you'd probably want to change PROGRESS_TRIGGER_SIEGE_POP [if I remember the parameter name correctly] to 1 so they may arrive with a pop of 20).
With the Pseudo 2 embark I don't consider metal to be a big deal except for moods, but I send militia out as a last resort, not as the first response, so it might very well be quite punitive to some play styles. Ehrm. Scratch that. I remember having a significant lack of weapons (using most of the metal for armor), and I didn't find any obsidian for "stone" ones.

If you want to cut off the dorfs completely, I'd just state that dorfs are required go down, seal up, and never open up again in an otherwise non lethal embark (so the caravan can mill around before leaving). I'd then also set the pop cap to 1 to block immigration to stop the formation of a hill dwarf community topside.

[vjek]

Yeah, it's on top, and if you clean it, it comes back, so I think it's some kind of boiling/vaporizing blood-rain situation.

The migrants/caravan haven't melted, they just don't appear, even if you zoom to their location after the announcement, there's nothing there if the temp is 10200+.  Under that, they appear and then start melting.

As far as setting guidelines, I've been down that road before, and while it's true Pseudo is only one person, my long term goals are a bit more ambitious.  If I can put together an embark that doesn't rely on init settings, that would be better for community competitive forts.

I think a starting embark temp of ~10190 would be ideal.  It means summer and autumn nothing can arrive/path, but in winter and spring, you can go out on the surface for short periods of time.  The problem now is I can't seem to get a re-animating evil biome. 

DFHack wishlist:  prospect and/or probe would tell you the nasty features of the biome, if evil. (evil rain, evil cloud, re-animation, undead trees/animals, etc)

[PatrikLundell]

I'm not quite following you regarding init settings. If you mean guidelines I agree, the less the better. If you mean changing things like caravan seasons and attack limits I don't see that as different from changing other world settings. I assume the starting position would be an embark save with all of these set up (although I wouldn't mind an instruction on exactly where to embark on a provided world, allowing the challengee to spend the embark points as desired, as well as getting a chance to see the pre world).

I think you need guidelines anyway, but I agree the less of those you have the better.
One example is that you may have to mandate not to "clean all", or those who do might get more migrants/caravans through. Obviously temperature calculations have to be on.

Inaccessible summers and autumns leads to a slow pop growth. Sieges blocking migrants can sometimes cause them to arrive during winter, but it's obviously unclear what happens if the migrants "vaporize" during summer/autumn. Also, summer/autumn inaccessibility means the two guaranteed migration waves are blocked off.

By the way, how do you determine the temperature? I tried to figure out what it was as my meeting area zone was marked as "hot", but checking the temperature of boulders and other item (via DFHack extended info) gave a temperature of 8 degrees Celsius, which is rather chilly...

I think your DFHack wishlist items make sense. have you proposed them in the appropriate thread?

[vjek]

What I mean by init settings is that if you prepare a community fort, and set a goal, and then give it out for people to play, everyone needs to be able to reach the goal regardless of their init settings.  For example, if someone sets their population settings such that there are no babies, ever, and no child migrants, and a pop cap of say 1 or 20, and someone else has tons of kids and a pop cap of 200, you want either to be able to compete.  In particular, for settings like the single pick challenge, or the starting 7 only challenge, and similar scenarios.

Init settings like invaders, artifacts ( moods ), and a few others can have a drastic impact on difficulty.  In any case, I've seen situations in the past where things like the LNP will overwrite existing saved world raws, as well, so if you change those, to stop caravans for example, there's no guarantee that will actually 'stick' for some people.

So, I agree, guidelines like: don't use DFhack are great, except when people want to play with tweaks, or binary patches to fix bugs, or performance improvements.  Anyway, you get the idea.

As far as temperature goes, I use 'probe' in DFhack to determine temperature.  It's sort of .. odd that the worldgen temperature settings have no relation to what you get in game.  For example, the typical below ground temperature is 10015'U, but if you set the temp limits to -1000 and +300, you get something like ~9200 to 10200, which... isn't linear and/or doesn't correlate.  Further adding to the muddy water is that these values are completely different with or without a pole or poles (north/south) in the world.  In particular, you can't get lethal temperatures without a pole, and/or if you use PSV's to place temperature values. 
As well, where the temperatures end up is different based on world size, as is the gradient between regions.
It's only when you have a pole or poles, and you let the game create the gradient that you get lethal temps.  Finally, a min temp setting of -1000 (cold) isn't instantly lethal to dwarves walking around, despite it being the lowest you can set, but if something dies, it instantly removes the corpse and any non-metal items.   Those non-living items are far LESS resistant and affected far more than dwarves.  In fact, if you get a caravan in 9200'U?  Everything dies, and everything is destroyed (even corpses) by cold damage.  All that's left are metal/gem items on the ground.

I've asked about nasty/evil feature enumeration before, in DFHack, but there was no interest/no response, maybe with the new version I'll bring it up again.