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[Thisfox]

Way back when I was making the magma forges in my new fort (Letmosashock, Cobalttimes, a volcano fort), we dug a lava pipe to the forges, which had two drains for emergency burning rock release. The first was off the side of the map many levels down in the usual "smooth and fortify" manner. The second was what I was thinking of as a "joke release" (I remember Boatmurdered) through a long pipe that then went out of the side of the mountain above one of the two fort entrances, to make a fiery waterfall I never intended to use. It had a magmaproof floodgate, with magmaproof mechanisms, and a lever deep in the heart of the mountain connected to it. Because I'm a paranoid player, I also had a vertical grating just outside the floodgate. I then pretty much forgot about it. So did the dwarves of Cobalttimes, far as I know.

A decade later, the latest wave of goblins arrives, and they bring a dozen trolls. I don't really pay much attention, as they attack often and we survive easily, although trolls are new. We follow the usual protocol: the dorfs block off the trade entrance around the side and the military are summoned. The enemy will have to enter through the main entrance, which is full of traps. Go for it goblins, we've got a military well covered in steel on the other side of the doors and traps. Have at thee!

...They didn't go for our entrance though. Perhaps they knew about my steel-clad military. They all trooped up the mountain, and wandered in little circles, while the trolls walked down a long-forgotten pipe above the entrance. I watched them for a bit, realised what was happening, and sent someone to Pull The Lever. By this time, the trolls had taken out the grating, and were heading for the floodgate.  The whole thing was under rather a lot of pressure....

I thought at first that the Lever Had Been Pulled, until I saw my magmaproof mechanism surfing the front of the wave of smoke and fire and charred furry loincloths. Oh dear. None of the enemy survived, as the few horrified survivors who had been further from the pipe sought shelter from fiery death by cowering in my entrance, and dying in my traps. The military was not needed. It was all so fast that I didn't even consider taking some screenshots.

I now have a permanent red burning river. I cannot turn off the flow. The lever, of course, does nothing. We are digging a drain to let it flow off the map, and a bridge over it, and a new trapped entrance.... Without a magma trap. But if I did instruct the dorfs put a new one in, it would have a lot more gratings and extra floodgates, and vertical bars, between it and the great outdoors! Or I would arrange, somehow, for the mechanism to be placed on the INside of the floodgate, because that was evidently the mistake the mechanic made!

[carnivorn]

those goblins must have felt awful smart just before the floodgate came down

may i suggest building fortifications instead of a grate? building destroyers can't get through fortifications while there isn't significant amounts of liquid in them, protecting your floodgate from being deconstructed and flooding the world
random incidents of "outside world is lava" do sound pretty !!fun!! though

[A_Curious_Cat]

Hmmm…

I’m thinking a bridge instead of a floodgate, maybe?  Also, an inverted u-bend with grates.

[PatrikLundell]

U bends work poorly with magma, as it doesn't follow water's pressure rules, and thus won't flow through it unless pressurized with pumps. However, I never use floodgates, but instead use drawbridges.

I don't think the mechanic placed the mechanism in the wrong place, but rather that this is what happens when a construction to which a mechanism is hooked up is destroyed.

You should be able to block the magma flow through obsidianization, and then release it again (down to the newly installed drawbridge) through channeling.

[Foxite]

Question. How do you get magma to the surface, exactly? If it's fed directly from a pump stack you could just turn off the power to it, but of course if it's a reservoir that might not be possible.

[Thisfox]

It's a volcano fort, and the volcano is above the level of the fort, and the entire surrounding land, by about 10z. They're magma forges, but I'm actually dealing with a lava situation, as it's molten rock already at the surface.

[Salmeuk]

Volcano forts feel the most like old, 2d DF, with the generous assumptions you could make about the presence of certain features. I kind of think some charm was lost in the transition to 3d, if only because the knowledge there would always be a river, a chasm, and a magma source, allow a certain ease of access to this kind of complex, interactive simulation.

So, having a large tube full of dangerous is quite a throwback. I only wish the cave rivers would still generate, like they (buggily) did during the earliest 3d versions. those were fun, and a great source of cheat-free underground power. I remember the would twist and turn, and form waterfalls even!

I have taken to designing fortresses with fatal flaws, if only to act as a set piece for the catastrophes of imagination. after all, if losing is fun, then winning is boring. your grate's encounter with the troll saboteurs is the perfect example of a story worth telling, lol

People often decry the presence of digging enemies in games like this. Look at the thread for Rimworld, with the recent update adding certain enemies to dig with insane speed. It seems as though this frustration is due to the inelegance with which these enemies approach their penetration. I think players would love a Two-Towers 'mining the drain' moment in their fortresses.. but generating that situation would take some creative game design. Perhaps enemies would gain knowledge of specific walls via spies and traitorous visitors. Later, sneaking goblin sappers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv5e-40ct6M) would pick apart the foundations, perhaps forcing a collapse to occur within a certain radius?

that would be exciting, eh?

[Thisfox]

I will admit that one of the reasons I love Volcano Forts is the nostalgia for 2D. I don't want to go back to 2D (things are better now!) but the way lava works is just so cool. Plus unlimited glass forges are just so excellent.

Underground waterfalls were awesome, I have since started making underground waterfalls landscaped through my caverns from the aquifer, to a drain on the other side. Lots of pretty. Lots of fun! Fiery forgotten beasts beware!

I am interested in when and whether we start getting digging enemies. I expect there will be ways of redesigning forts to not allow a digging enemy much success. Perhaps living under the first cavern layer could be the only way, if all diggers enter the map on the surface. Perhaps built structures wouldn't be diggable, meaning you have to "strongbox" your fort with manufactured walls, and build a real fortish sort of fort. Really, though, we've gone through just so many different changes in Dwarf Fortress that I don't think this will harm the game or break the game, it will just result in a different playstyle, as all the changes have so far. I mean, I'm now walling my artifacts into strongrooms if I don't have the ability to surround their pedestal with chained wardogs. Perhaps in a future fort, I will be building a fort on stilts above a pool of magma (or a heavy aquifer) to prevent digging artifact stealers. Who knows? I am sure of one thing: I will still be enjoying and playing the game.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(Unless the game is reduced image tilesets instead of ascii, of course, hahahaha  (yes, I am aware and delighted that I can keep using text instead of images!))

[PatrikLundell]

I see two major risks with digging invaders:
1. Invaders get the ability to dig, but the player gets absolutely no tools to prevent it apart from military assault (essentially forcing the defenders into becoming the attackers).
2. It is POSSIBLE to set up defenses, but doing so require huge amounts of work, taking huge amounts of time (such as having to line everything with unbreachable constructed walls, or having to build moats of unlimited depth).

If, however, enemy ability to dig is complemented with new defender abilities to counter it in a reasonable manner I'm for it, but I'm still wary of a repeat of the Villain disaster.

[Quarque]

Do you have any specific defender abilities in mind?

It sounds really hard to get the balance right here. My biggest fear is that cavern dwellers might be able to dig into your fortress before you are ready and willing to discover and open the caverns yourself.

[Mobbstar]

I am interested in when and whether we start getting digging enemies.

This is getting off-topic, but in my opinion, it depends on the creature and its intention.

Ordinary wildlife should probably not do any significant digging, at least not unprovoked.  It would be cool to have forgotten beasts see marksdwarves behind fortifications and promptly dig through the barrier.  Moles and molerats could get away with making little burrows if the pre-myth map rewrite allows filling those in rather easily, or perhaps even naturally with softer material like soil or quick-built "loose stone".  Perhaps the currently occuring natural cavern tunnels could be innately filled with a secretly flagged stone that is allowed to get mined by wildlife.

Invaders might want to bring miners once the military rewrite is happening.  The commander would consider all avenues of attack (e.g. direct charge into the totally not trapped corridor, climb over walls, hold siege outside) and if the easier approaches are impossible or too dangerous, they'd plot a tunnel underneath your walls and/or completely skipping your traps.

In all cases, as hinted by the original purpose of this thread, the digger should

• prefer opening up old tunnels rather than excavating natural rock, if possible
• have enough wisdom to understand when they've struck an aquifer or the magma sea
• generally not dig damp or warm tiles

These measures are both to mitigate the players frustration, and for the diggers own survival.  Additionally, constructions could be mining-proof as suggested before.

[PatrikLundell]

Do you have any specific defender abilities in mind?

It sounds really hard to get the balance right here. My biggest fear is that cavern dwellers might be able to dig into your fortress before you are ready and willing to discover and open the caverns yourself.

Anything that allow the player to counter the new attacker abilities. Historically sappers have been attacked with poison gas, fire (with the attendant gases), explosives, and military assault as a minimum. All of those are probably hard to implement. Useful siege artillery capable of collapsing tunnels would be another alternative.

The easiest to implement is probably invader inability to dig through constructed walls/roofs/floors, as well as keeping them unable to deconstruct those. I suspect, however that a water or magma filled moat reaching down to hell would work, but it's a lot of work which isn't tossed up in the second year (apart from it also completely sealing the fortress off from the surroundings that you might have wanted to have outside the fortress, but connected to it). Even "just" sealing everything in a constructed shell is a multi year task few would be done with at the time of the second gobbo siege (i.e. after the 10 member "we're coming for you" one), let alone for the first summer necro ones.

I see no reason for why cavern critters should dig at all. It just messes things up with a high risk of making DF unplayable (in fact, I'd rather have the underworld capable if breaching out of spires into caverns than cavern denizens digging up into the fortress). Once the cavern tribes are revamped from complete losers waiting to be killed into some kind of hostile force it would make sense that they might be organized enough to dig, but that's arcs beyond Myth & Magic.

[Salmeuk]

Fair points. Now that I think about it, it isn't very exciting when the castle walls are absolutely meaningless. I mean in a storytelling sense, you want the castle to be assured safety, and this allows for the dramatic moment we are all familiar with: Open the gates! Remove that assurance and the drama is just not there anymore.

Would digging invaders make dramatic moments of their own? For sure! Imagine certain creatures could be given the 'digger' property, and much like fire-breathing or webbing, they would have the chance to spawn in. Of course, DF being DF I don't think we will ever get the sort of free-form tunneling behaviour that would be ideal, but the creature might become aware of your presence through activities that generate noise, and then dig straight to their target. . I think the reason we see them brought up so much is they represent what the game needs most, as least as a game and not a simulation: excitement and challenge.

But it would be not so fun if these creatures did that EVERY time. Then, it would be like Rimworld: endless exercise in gaming the A.I. mechanics to produce predictable perimeter penetrations.  or something like that..

Considering how the game reacts to flyer pathfinding I truly doubt we will every see a creature that digs intelligently.. it will perhaps always dig towards singular targets or known pathways.

[Eric Blank]

Your real mistake here was in sealing your pipes with vertical bars instead of fortifications. Building destroyers can't break fortifications and creatures won't path through them unless they're submerged and swim through them.

I also build magma drainage pipes on occasion, usually not on volcano embarks though. You should try digging a channel underneath the pipe to drain the lava into so you can build a wall across the pipe. Of course you'll want a magma proof bridge to seal off the drain and cut off the flow after the wall is built.

Maybe you can drop a solid natural stone wall across the pipe somewhere along it? Less engineering that way

[Thisfox]

Like I said, I didn't use vertical bars, just a vertical grate. Fortifications would have made the lava flow very slowly out of the pipe, I was looking for a more explosive rate, something more weaponised, than an over-the-fortification flow. I didn't realise how suicidal and fast the trolls would be, so the grate seemed like enough to keep my dorfs out of it while I dealt with everything else.

I don't much like making sacrifice of my dorfs, so I don't dig channels under molten rock flow. It became a very nice narrow river of fire, and we got a bridge over the top of it, and dug a new entrance. No big deal.