When I started my mountainunder-the-jungle-home, I'd slammed down a cheap small moat. A couple years in, I mad a larger moat so I'd have access to more of the trees, etc.
Finally, I get to the point where it's megaproject time. And so there's going to be a moat-around-the-whole-region. With a five tile border so everyone can enter the map and march around the edges to the designated entry area(s).
But there's a brook. And I'd like to be able to run the moat as either wet or dry (just for giggles.) So I will need to be able to "turn off" the brook - meaning floodgates, etc.
Excellent. I wanted to start the dwarven exercise program anyway. (Constructs rows of pumps, walls to direct the water away from all the staircases, etc.) A small oops as I realize “Hey, the brook is an infinite water source, and this isn’t quite enough drainage.” But I’d recognized the possibility - all I had to do was stop pumping and wait a little to add more walls to corral the water on the upper level better.
At this point, I have roughly fifteen legendary pump operators, and all of the brook except for the first five (or so) tiles are completely drained. So there are projects going on all over the place in the brook-and-moat-bed. Sally ports, ramps-with-bars into the moat from the edge at 8 spots, various floodgates to allow shuffling water between the inner moat, the second moat, and the edge moat.
So, second trial. I’m pumping a lot of water up a level into what’s effectively a very large cistern that goes pretty close to the edge. The target tiles for my floodgates are dry, lets slam them down. Um.... too close to edge.
What?!?! I checked this! Arrrgh! Ok, don’t panic. The pumping is keeping the status quo just fine, it just means there will be a whole lot more water up there. Send runners to go build even more walls around the cistern so it can hold more water. The ‘cistern’ ends up being about eight tiles wide and runs the length of the map before spilling onto the moat with a lot of the water remaining on the upper level, crossing the moat and leaving the via the edge.
Careful consideration of exactly which squares I could put walls and floodgates in. But this third plan involves removing a couple of constructed walls in the brook-bed from the last plan. This should all be fine - legendary pump operators make the whole area bone dry.
But.
Removing the two constructed walls also removes the floor above them. (Because there wasn’t a floor - the top of the wall was holding up the water in the cistern.) Unlike flow all along one Z-level, flow down a level is damn fast. Still not an issue - I’ll be able to reconstruct the walls in no time - because they’re right next to a pump. But, wait. The tiles that have been bone dry for quite awhile now are accumulating water? WTH? That’s the pumping area! And... shifts Z-level. Yep, those are the tiles that are supposed to be pumped. But... no one is pumping. Arrrgh! Let’s see... “Drink, drink, party, sleep, sleep, store owned item, drink, No job, no job, no job....” Hum. Pumps, plenty of pump operators, - but no pump operators. Flood in progress. Zillions of workers in the damn brook/moat. (There was also a massive deforestation-of-moat and harvest-the-shrubs activity going on right then.)
1) Cancel all in-moat activities.
2) Flip all levers for the in-moat sally ports. (They all are on levers as anti-kobold entrances.)
3) Flip levers to limit the water flow by blocking flow into the other moats, etc.... oh crap. That’s a Champion’s Sock. And that’s a freaking rock on the other main floodgate. Arrrgh. Unflip the levers to prevent them from deconstructing.
4) Examine pumps closely. Not forbidden, was working fine. Hum. The only change was removing a couple of walls. How the hell. Poke, poke, poke. Aha, “Hanging Pump!” Well, damn.
5) Tried sending in a couple masons to build walls as insta-flood-prevention. I manage to complete one (of three) just in time for...
6) SIEGE. Wave of Beak Dog riding goblins appears very close to that wall I just mentioned. One level up, five squares away. With archers. Masons slaughtered. Then they cross the freaking moat on the top of the wall. Ok, this isn’t good.
7) PANIC. Insert fight here. Be happy I had ‘inner moats’, a glut of champion marksdwarves, and plenty of safe raised fortifications, etc.
So eventually, the fight is over and my whole ‘moat level’ has a whole lot of water in it. There was never any flood into interior structures - but FPS sure took a major hit.
Plan. Four. Sigh.
Well, I dislike using bugs, but I can’t deal with the speed here. Down to the level two below the moat, fortifications-to-edge. Floodgates nicely placed in nicely dry positions. Ok, levers test. Ok... lock miners in the room, designate lots of ramps up all over the place as drainage for the moat. Ramps dug, miners released, no casualties. Water disappears at double-time.
VICTORY!
Some ridiculous amount of in-game time has passed (4 years?) plenty of hassle with other sieges and whatnot. An inordinate amount of real-life time spent micromanaging the project.
Facepalm: Hey, you mean if I’d built a bridge-as-wall I don’t have the same limitations on how close to the edge I can build?
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Topic: Face Palm moments you had in Dwarf Fortress (Read 2144146 times)