my first ever learning fortress had a magma pipe nearby. i had read the wiki so i knew about water pressure, and i thought the same would apply to magma. so i had a destroy fortress passage on the bottom z level that led from my main stairway all the way to the bottom of the magma pipe. i was so disappointed when i mined it out.
all my fortresses since save one have been on a chasm, and i sortof considered it important for the sake of difficulty, as my one haunted volcano had only zombie hairy marmots to fight. im actually unhappy at how chasms run out of things to kill so quickly.
by far the most exciting was my second ever fort. i wanted everything a fort can possibly have, so i kept increasing the area with the site finder till i got one. it was an untamed wilds/terrifying mountain/sqamp, with a complete chasm, the end of which was exposed to the surface, brook, cave river, two magma pipes, cave pond, HFS and bottomless pit. and it was huge.
the chasm critters were incredibly thick all over the surface. there were mountain cavefulls of troglodytes and ratmen, and the swamps were filled wolves, slug and snail men. i had to make a map long passage to let the migrants in, otherwise they tried to trek the surface and three quarters would die, and i would have to spend ages on pause trying to find and forbid every last bit of clothing on my giant map or lose my entire fort. and dont even talk to me about the giant olm that killed 14 hapless dwarves before i FINALLY got it with a simple rockfall trap.
that fort was awesome. even had 2 artifact weapons and 3 artifact armors. too bad the fps couldnt survive more then 40 dwarves before it became unplayable, luckily the critters kept the numbers down for quite a while.
and to mr waterfall man, i once moved a cave river 30 z levels up to the surface using clusters of 3 pumps per z level. it all went into a huge tank, where at a few lever pulls it could create a waterfall over my entrance, or seal my main entrance hall, open near bottomless channels along each side of the path, and flush anything present with 10 z levels of water into the channels. surprisingly goblins would actually survive somehow, and ended up fighting off chasm critters riled by the water draining into their home.
the water from the giant tank also ran along three giant aqueducts and waterfalled into a series of fast flowing moats that drained through my whole fortress, through a tower cap plantation, through a huge multi z level artificial cave, and back into the chasm at multiple points. i threw a cat into it to see what would happen and after ages it popped out of the waterfall in the tower cap farm. a puppy ended up in the chasm.
what i learnt was - flowing water eats fps a lot. have levers that cotrol your system many many z levels above any possible water. im talking a set of control rooms with a well drained channel around them in the peak of your highest mountain. put grates over everything linking to chasms, ponds and rivers, because batmen and frogmen and a random goblin who dodged into the moat coming out the well in your dining room sucks. and yeah, did i mention having levers attached to any relevant floodgate, door or power system, and having the levers far enough out of reach that the flood biblical book of genesis would not touch it?
final thing - quadruple check everything before you turn your masterwork on, and be very careful where you channel. like, don't dig into the very very high pressure water pipe which is under the floor next to your magma forges, gems, adamantium supply, weapons/armor piles and above the main dining rooms, which is what ended my fort. i had 210 dwarfs. at least it was spectacular.
Author
Topic: Fortress design screw-ups. ( was about pressure.) (Read 4569 times)