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[Kay]

I don't think there's a topic like this yet. Basically this thread is to tell stories about the marvelous plans or designs you laid out that went horribly, horribly wrong.

Here's an example (Keep in mind I'm still rather new to this whole thing, I make stupid hilarious mistakes). I built a tower around my fortress staircases because my fortress was entirely underground. I thought it needed a little something to look cooler if I ever explored it later, so I channelled a moat around it from the nearby brook...

Completely forgetting that this was right above my fortress. The entire thing flooded, and in the end two dwarves survived by eating vermin and drinking the one barrel of beer they rescued in the fiasco (While letting the second miner die trying to save everyone). They managed to survive long enough to last through winter and recieve migrants, which is where I'm at now.


So what stories do you guys have?

[SolarShado]

Well... there was the first time i tried to set up magma workshops and ended up flooding the entire fort with magma... i don't remember if anyone survived...

[Duke 2.0]

 Well, knowing many failed plans for magma workshop systems I decided to create a massive pumping room for magma. It would take advantage of fortifications to filter the magma and ensure that nothing would enter the 'blood' of the fortress.

 Advice: Pumping magma does create pressure and if you don't attach it to a switch it can be impossible to turn off.

[magic dwarf]

My worst failure happened on a map with an aquifer.  I was gonna block it up by collapsing the level on top of it.  My first one was ineffective so i Decided to collapse a bigger area from 2 floors up.  Apperently my miners didn't reallize which part was gonna collapse cause they were on the wrong side of the channel.  Both of my miners died by falling into the pit (which was still flooded by the aquifer). the rest of my miners started throwing tantrums and another one of them ended up in the pit before i decided to abandon the fort.

I know its not that bad, I plan ahead usually

[Marlowe]

I managed to get through an aquifer for the first time, got some nice workshop and accommodation spaces chiseled out underneath, and then decided to do some exploratory mining DIRECTLY UNDER THE AQUIFER.

I didn't realise that an aquifer will flood if you undermine it.

I got a damp stone warning, but ignored but because I assumed it was just another of those harmless situations like digging under a pool.

Wrong.

It was impressive to see the water flood down my up/down staircases in a torrent of mist, but also heartbreaking. I abandoned like a big chicken. It retrospect, I probably could have walled off the breach if I'd been determined enough.

[Volfram]

This is why I use doors extensively in my fortresses.

Since I started making communal bedrooms(faster and more space-efficient than giving everyone a 3x3 bedroom like I used to... no, I've never had a fortress of more than 50 dwarves before, why do you ask?), I like putting a pool in the bedroom so sleepy dwarves can get a drink(OK yes, I started the practice using a custom race that wasn't alcohol dependent.)

First time I tried adding a pool, I neglected to take pressure into account.  The doors to my bedroom were stuck open, and the only part of my fortress that didn't get flooded out was the entrance hall with the trade depot at the end of it.

I later managed to drain it all out, flood it a second time, drain it again, and take measures against future flooding incidents.  I haven't managed to do anything catastrophic yet.

[detinith]

I claimed a bunch of items directly from the stocks menu without bothering to see if they were in my fort.
And...yeah... 

[Thuellai]

Don't run a water tower off a river without a way to turn it off.  Just a tip.  And if you must?  Make sure there's a lid on the tower first.

[Foa]

Failures range from minimal damage to regional ragnarok.

Spoiler: Examples (click to show/hide)

Force fields ( 2 by 3 ) (  water or magma ) - Lets just say I didn't plan out the drainage system.

Protection Pylons ( Depends on the pressure, length of use, drainage, and other things ) - Erm, forgot to seal the forts.

Bulkheads - Half the Pop were trapped in the moats.

Booze Bombs - Fucking cats/haulers.

Self Destruction - I tested it on the full scale 'model' , that or I forgot to connect the sections together.

Atom Smashers - No metal scraps

Portcullis ( Water, Magma ) - Magma Mist, Carp.

Arena ( Purple Suite, Exclusive, or community ) - Friggin tames, and GCS not breeding/ mis-captures...

Cog's Dwarven Camp - Morons, Magma, Catapults, Water, and Petrification, Quit Job spam...

The Pillars of Fire and Ice - Fucking Wanderers!!!

Gobbo-lympics - Fatalities, and general failure to connect the right things

...

[Muz]

I built a cool castle, with a moat. The moat flooded the fortress. Yeah, normal.

So, in order not to waste the walls, I build another tunnel, next to the flooded castle. I even used up a lot of stone to make the walls stone, so that the water doesn't seep in from the sand when I finish the new moat.

Well, it worked great. I had large underground fortress, with a well-protected castle. This time, I had some safety features to drain the moat.

I later finished the moat. I forgot to seal in one corner of the entrance tunnel, and water seeped in from there, flooding my entrance tunnel, and trapping all the poor dorfs inside. The drainage system failed because the lever was flooded.

Then I decided to make the best use of the flooded entrance and use it as an underground well. No, it didn't flood. It was just that the seeping water was so slow that the well went dry.

Now half my fortress is tantruming because of the lack of water and food and luxuries.

[Marlowe]

A near miss. I once came within two seconds of channeling a brook into my perimeter ditch forgetting that the ditch was actually open on the downhill sides (eg, it was a ditch on the south and east sides but the base of a small cliff on the west and north). If I hadn't wised up in time I'd have flooded the map and turned my mountaintop into an island. Also killed my FPS.

[Rhenaya]

plan out a realy huge fortress with all the needs, well nearly all. just to remember in second year you dont have any food/water source to bring you through the second winter.

[andrea]

building magma forges, but forgot how to do it. needless to say, my fortress start flooding with magma, and forges were at top level. to try to stop it, i break some pools that were above workshop level (ok, i lied: there was stockpile level above workshop one). water flooded workshops and barracks,  which didn't stop magma but allowed my dwarves to be saved. a miner was stuck underground, and i had him digging channels to survive from the magma and then dig stairs to go out.
seeing as murky pools couldnt stop magma, i decided to make a pool near the bottleneck from which magma entered my fortress. but i made an error and i couldn't use it. now, i make another, a costructed and higher one this time, filling it with buckets while my miners fight magma on the bottom. at the end i manage to open the pool and close the hole in the pipe. and the fortress was, somehow, safe. magma wasn't deep enough, and it didn't take much for it to go away.

[LegoLord]

I made a convoluted trap that utilized pressure plates to automatically dump magma on enemies.  An ambush came, and since one of the goblins was following close behind my legendary woodcutter, both the woodcutter and the goblin wound up burnt to a crisp.

[Pilsu]

My waterworks leaked all over the countryside. The underground site still wasn't finished so everything was outside. 1s and 2s of water everywhere, no biggie right?

The winter came.