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[Luraien]

Just wondering, what's everyones favourite type of fort? I'm currently digging a huge square out underground and making buildings with walls, though I don't know if it's better than just having 'cavern' style rooms.

[Ares]

the problem with built walls is that you can't engrave them. Not an issue for workshops but a ballache for dining rooms.
I usually dig straight down about 3 levels, add a defense tunnel (traps, fortifications, bridges) then dig my main strairwell up and down. Most of my farms, storage and workshops I build on a soil/sand level. I frequently need to add more in a hurry and soil saves a load of time in rock dumping.

[magic dwarf]

I usually dig a 50 square long hallway into the center of the mountain, filled with traps and bridges ofcourse.  From there I just create big rooms to store all my crap in. I give dwarfs 3x3 rooms ussually.

[Variance]

Hallway into the mountain also, but with a big square room for furniture/armor/weapons/ammo/finished goods storage and a big staircase in the middle. Workshops in another square room with the staircase below; then another level of storage for food and raw materials, as well as routing magma to workshops, and then below that, the bedrooms. I can place relevant stockpiles directly below and above their workshops that way, and reduce general pathfinding distances.

[azrael4h]

Usually, I dig a tunnel into the mountain, then dig out a large chamber for temporary storage. This serves as store rooms, barracks, and a few needed workshops while I'm digging out and building my real fortress.

In my current fort, I'm trying to build it according to how the two heads would work. I'm writing a story based on it, alternating between "live" accounts of events, journal entries from the main players, and random exposition. As such, the fort has effectively two personalities; the grandeur of the actual manager, and the practicality of the defender. It's also terribly inefficient, the farms are 3 levels above the food storage, and are isolated from the rest of the fort. It's connected by a long circular stairwell.

It's an interesting exercise, but it's hard to divorce myself from my tendencies and build according to two divergent personalities. I don't even have one personality of my own.   

[Heron TSG]

well, i try something that will cause massive awe and wonder followed by questions of 'is that a worm drooling tar?' when they should be telling me how awesome my obsidian-breathing basilisk is. 

[Angellus]

the problem with built walls is that you can't engrave them. Not an issue for workshops but a ballache for dining rooms.
I usually dig straight down about 3 levels, add a defense tunnel (traps, fortifications, bridges) then dig my main strairwell up and down. Most of my farms, storage and workshops I build on a soil/sand level. I frequently need to add more in a hurry and soil saves a load of time in rock dumping.

I always keep my defenses outside, to prevent the entrance dance to take large effects on casualty's on my side.

[Luraien]

azrael4h, that sounds pretty deep. Let us know how that goes

Some nice fort designs, I'm currently practicing traps. I've made a river run through the mountian then made an entry to the fort, so I've got a crossroads with the main gate and the river. I'm planning on having some sort of mechanism which drops enemies and unlucky dwarves into the water underneath. On the floor below this I have my storage room with workshops stationed surrounding it for easy access to materials. I plan on putting the river to use here aswell, as it flows right next to my dwarves sleeping quarters. Maybe it could flood the whole quarters if I get bored or something.

[Faces of Mu]

It was simple, but I really liked both this bedroom/workshop layout, and how I laid out the entrance road into the fort: Glazedstop.

[The Orange Mage]

I usually run a 3-tile wide path to the Depot, and either have a grand meeting hall along the path or actually have the Depot in the center.

One of my more interesting designs was building a big square pit in a desert wasteland, leaving hunks of soil types to build a pueblo-type valley fort, and the coolest part was that the river ran through and above the place, supported by some buildings and walls to make a natural aqueduct-type thing, with man-made offshoots for my wells and such. It wasn't very practical for quickly doing things, but it just felt nifty.

[Faces of Mu]

ooooh, I'd love to see a fort on the archive with dugout surface water features. Having a brook just float in the air with tap-like floodgates coming off it would be pretty cool looking, esp if the taps were really incorporated into the fort somehow.