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[Zorgn]

I'm looking for ideas for new and wastefull ways to spend my dwarves' time, and perhaps a story or two as well.



My current megaproject is a massive drain system consisting of a central walled shaft spanning the entire height of the fortress with floodgates on opposing sides of the shaft. I plan to have this first shaft empty out into a massive caven cleared way below my fortress. As I expand my fortress on each level, I will be adding in more shafts to insure than any flooding is less of a threat and more of an inconvience.

The possible military side to this is I could during a siege retreat my dwarves far underground and lock them there. With a lever, I could close the floodgates on the intakes for the drain shafts and flood any level I wished. Later, once the invaders drowned, I'd just need to open the drain again and wait for the water levels to fall to a surivable level before venturing up again.



Giant walls, towers, statues, deathtraps... What have you done? What would you like to do?

[sneakey pete]

So far i've done a few water related ones: diverted an entire cave river through my statue garden (well, actually, from 15z levels up , and i've also dammed a waterfall and made a cool wall of water releasing death trap kind of thing.

[Proteus]

Especially large overground fortifications with multiple wall rings and towers/keeps that rise into the sky.

My unfinished project in 40c also was the creation of a huge underground arboretum, 44*44 tiles.
The only thing that kept this project from getting finished before 40d came out was the slowness with which my mechanics connected the 16 floodgates to the lever that should control them (well, a huge area needs several openings in the ceiling to equally distribute the water among the area upon irrigation as ell as a huge ater reservoir )

[Foa]

My current megaproject is a massive drain system

Well, you want a flooder.
A large one, yes?

I just happened to plan one out a while ago, and also, I was planning to join this, lucky you!

All it needs is a start/stop switch, a little more calibrating ( so it'll fit your demands ) .
Oh yeah, the current version, powers itself enough for 28 levels ( power input level + power/core level + 26 levels ) .

[lambskin]

Build a floodable colliseum made of clear and green glass for some family friendly entertainment. 

[Bryan Derksen]

I embarked a fort at a goblin tower once and discovered a most wonderful landscape. The map had impassible cliffs completely dividing the lower goblin-inhabited half from the upper half aside from one six-tile-wide choke point that was right at my starting point, which I walled off immediately. I had a huge four-z-level-deep ravine in the area I'd claimed, and on top of that I had a brook at the highest elevation. It was perfect. I dammed the ravine, filled it with a gigantic lake of water, then dug a tunnel down into the basement of the goblin tower.

Did you know that huge amounts of high-pressure water squirting out the stairways of a goblin fort will actually form a pyramid of water over the structure, briefly? Three legendary goblins drowned, one of them actually drowned while standing on the roof of his tower.

I just got started on a project to build a giant stepped pyramid in the desert that I think I'll stop and put off until after the save compatibility break. My plan is to dig away all the sand underneath so that the foundation of the pyramid rests on bedrock, and pump water up from the aquifer to cascade down the sides of the pyramid ala the hanging gardens of babylon. I've got the hang of penetrating aquifers, but doing it on such an enormous scale is a bit more of a challenge. Bring lots of logs along (assuming you're in a desert with no vegetation, like I was).

A project I started but never completed was an attempt to build a fort that was completely surrounded by magma - all four sides, top, and bottom. Just stone pillar "stilts" holding it up. Wound up drastically underestimating how fast I could drain a magma pipe, next time I try it I'll build the whole thing in a separate cavern and then flood it with magma afterward.

Of course, I've also done an elaborate underground towercap farm. Always a good 'starter' megaproject. With lessons learned, my next one is going to be stupendous.

[userpay]

Not sure that this really counts as a megaproject but I'm building a tower out of steel (not sure how high its going to go) and I'm slowly going to be pushing out steel furneture, floors and walls (unless its in a metal or gem spot), ect. Basiclly a fortress of steel 

[Zorgn]

Not sure that this really counts as a megaproject but I'm building a tower out of steel (not sure how high its going to go) and I'm slowly going to be pushing out steel furneture, floors and walls (unless its in a metal or gem spot), ect. Basiclly a fortress of steel 

That is going to be a serious pain... Good idea.

You do have your army decked out in steel, right? I mean, no sense in having a fortress made of steel while your soldiers do battle with shell armor and stone weapons. Unless the goblins got genocided in world gen. If so, by all means steel fortress ftw.

[userpay]

Not sure that this really counts as a megaproject but I'm building a tower out of steel (not sure how high its going to go) and I'm slowly going to be pushing out steel furneture, floors and walls (unless its in a metal or gem spot), ect. Basiclly a fortress of steel 

That is going to be a serious pain... Good idea.

You do have your army decked out in steel, right? I mean, no sense in having a fortress made of steel while your soldiers do battle with shell armor and stone weapons. Unless the goblins got genocided in world gen. If so, by all means steel fortress ftw.

My main 16 dwarf army has steel stuff, though I haven't accually equiped them yet, and got ten extra dwarves that I'm gonna wait till next immigrant wave to do anything yet (like I've got no fort guard yet, and what makes a good captian and should I try to make him a soldier first then give him position?). At any rate I've had a fare amount of coal and lignite veins, still have about 30 coal and 150 lignite to process, and I've got magnitite clusters so I have shitloads of iron.

edit: oh forgot to mention, I've also am making jaguar leather armor to go underneth the steel 

[Paul]

A 7x7 tower with a 3x3 ramp spiraling up 5 levels to the trade depot, with the entire fortress built on top of it. The center of said 7x7 tower (5x5 room) containing two separate pump towers, one pumping magma (the tower was built right over a magma vent, it was at the center of a 3x3 area) and the other pumping water from the aquifer. Water pipe leading off to a well chamber for fresh water, and magma pipe ascending above the trade depot into a magma chamber, with forges and such above it. A multi story windmill tower right above that, powering all the pumps.

It was completely built out of green glass blocks. Great fun to build - took quite a while to completely finish. I had an army of legendary glassmakers just from making the raw materials. All the metalwork was done with imported metal, not a single fey mood in the fort since I never dug anything except for the tiny bit required to set up the magma and aquifer pumps.

I eventually grew bored with it and collapsed the entire thing 5+ Z levels, to the death of every living thing inside - including the human caravan who was waiting in the depot.

[sneakey pete]

The only thing that kept this project from getting finished before 40d came out

You do realize that any save that was made since DF went 3d last year is compatible with every other version up to, and including, .40d, don't you?

[Wolfius]

I've got the hang of penetrating aquifers, but doing it on such an enormous scale is a bit more of a challenge. Bring lots of logs along (assuming you're in a desert with no vegetation, like I was).

I suspect the cave-in method would be more effective, especially when attempting such an enormous breach.

[Mohreb el Yasim]

A 7x7 tower with a 3x3 ramp spiraling up 5 levels to the trade depot, with the entire fortress built on top of it. The center of said 7x7 tower (5x5 room) containing two separate pump towers, one pumping magma (the tower was built right over a magma vent, it was at the center of a 3x3 area) and the other pumping water from the aquifer. Water pipe leading off to a well chamber for fresh water, and magma pipe ascending above the trade depot into a magma chamber, with forges and such above it. A multi story windmill tower right above that, powering all the pumps.

It was completely built out of green glass blocks. Great fun to build - took quite a while to completely finish. I had an army of legendary glassmakers just from making the raw materials. All the metalwork was done with imported metal, not a single fey mood in the fort since I never dug anything except for the tiny bit required to set up the magma and aquifer pumps.

I eventually grew bored with it and collapsed the entire thing 5+ Z levels, to the death of every living thing inside - including the human caravan who was waiting in the depot.

haven't you uploaded the map i would like to see it if possible (befor collapsed ;P)

[Proteus]

The only thing that kept this project from getting finished before 40d came out

You do realize that any save that was made since DF went 3d last year is compatible with every other version up to, and including, .40d, don't you?

Of course I know this.
But I made it as a rule for myself to always start with a clean new world in every new version of the game. For one to have new challenges (new locations and so on) for the other, to live through the interesting early phases of a fortress again (enabling me to maybe follow another path than in other fortresses and maybe also to fuly appreciate any new features the new vrsion of the game gives me).

Although I built beautiful fortresses in the earlier versions I never found this reason enough to violate this rule

[Viprince]

Well I'm not exactly to the point of building so much "elaborate" megaprojects but I did start a progect I like to name "Fight Club" oh wait the first rule is not to talk about it...
Since the rule's already shattered well, I basically mass cage trapped my map with a full size net of cage traps as close as it could get to the edge (6X6) map, with a small army of mechanics its 75% done and is into year 4 of its begining. This is only part of it though. I also walled around and floored an open air chasm and cage trapped the only exit. Another botomless pit I simply dug into and placed cage traps on the exit, Then the magma pipe was a similar thing with metal cages and bauxite mechanisms. (its actualy a volcano and some imp managed to get the wooden traps burtned down
Add to that A crazy cage trapped entrance defence system and you get a stockpile of animals and beasties which could destroiy an army! I am currently building this up and I plan to basically use all of these beasties and hostiles as a defence system and to recreate wars between civs. I also trapped multiple guards from the human caravan(it was a challenge as I couldn't "cage" them properly but I got them into their cell eventually. I'm keeping those to see what happens to them if the Civ goes to war with me and seiges me, if they stay friendly I may try and get them slaughtered by their own peopel

Anywho that's pretty much it slave armies. If you wanna do this the cage trap net isn't that much necessary as you can get away with simple defence syste but it catches me crazy amounts of wildlife and all the snatchers and ambushes. I may train each "camp" a champion using sacrificial puppies and possibly dogs and war dogs depending on how buff i can get them.