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[Baffler]

So I was excavating a very large circular room for the newer, nicer fortress I'm excavating below the one I have now, and decided I needed to draft some new miners. I drafted about half of the next migrant wave, and the other half was put on smoothing duty. The picks were premade, so there was no hitch with equipment. But none of them were going to work. Only two or three were actually doing anything. I was halfway through my angry note to Urist when, while checking around the site, I noticed that the down stair leading in had been smoothed over, blocking access.

I'm almost afraid to think what kind of stupid mistakes I'll make when I have to build scaffolding later.

[Dunfee]

I had built an awesome fort. It survived countless goblin waves, had an elaborate trap system in the entrance and it had just become a mountainhome. I had no need for a huge military. I had just enough to get by.

I had my fortress set into levels.
Level 1 was storage and my trading post, 2 was crafting (with stairs going up from the crafting stations to stockpiles)
Level 3 was my living quarters.
Level 4 was my well and dining rooms.

I went down another 5 levels and that is where my mines started. Nothing special. I found an underground area and would send patrols into it every so often to train/hunt
I figured I wanted to fill those middle spaces with something. An arena!
I had a grand plan. I would set traps out front to capture parts of goblin waves. I would then bring those goblins to the arena, set them up and then have them fight my military dwarves for fun.
I went all out. I had a large pit with fortifications around it. On the lower level I had doors on each side of the arena. One would hold my warriors and the other had cages. On the top level I built a legendary dining hall, new throne room and everything. I wanted this thing to be the entertainment hub of the fortress.

Enemy wave. Great. Now I have things to fill my cages.
I capture about 15 enemies. Goblins and trolls both.
I set them up in their room and go to attend to something else. I found a forgotten beast in the caverns. The first I've ever seen. I sent all of my military (and conscript all of my hunters too) to slay the thing before it makes it to the entrance to my mines... Fire and blood everywhere. I killed it though. I only had a marksdwarf and a hammerdwarf left.

I send them back upstairs only to find that a handful of trolls and goblins had escaped their cages (I didn't know this could happen). I lost somewhere around 10 dwarves before I could finally bring everything under control.

10 dwarves plus another dozen fighting a forgotten beast. All because I thought "Hey, bringing enemies into the deepest level of my fortress won't cause any harm"

[smjjames]

Was the FB anywhere near the cages? It's possible it set the cages on fire.

[Dunfee]

No, It was at least 20 layers below and a half map away. I assume I goofed placing/moving the cages and the baddies escaped.

[arcturusthelesser]

I got a nice facepalm moment yesterday. I've built a wall around my fortress entrance with a drawbridge, but I forgot to set it to raise, instead when a dwarf pulled the lever the bridge just retracted. I found this out when a goblin siege started, but I stayed calm, because I digged a two tile wide moat full of water around the wall, so I thought I was safe and went to check on my workshops. When I scrolled back to the wall area, the goblins were happily murdering my dwarves .. only then I noticed that they were riding cave crocodiles, which ferried them through the water.

Facepalm..
Reclaim..
Edit:
Note:
Change the water to MAGMA!

If you build a door the only difference is lack of atom-smashing power and vulnerability to building destroyers. Granted, that costs more resources than just going with a drawbridge from the start.

I hurled giant boulders with my catapults against human invaders, only to see my dwarves hurriedly chase after the rocks to bring them back to the fortress.

I think you can set it so the rocks are forbidden after they hit the ground with 'set orders'. If not, then I guess I'm going to go get some ballistae.

[Francinator]

I was making a 4 way waterfall system in my dining room today, all was going well except for the fact that the tunnels draining the water into the caverns were too small for the amount of water that was flowing in so I sent my miners down to widen the tunnel.

The system had 4 floodgates for the 4 waterfalls and what i didn't realize was that one of them was being blocked by a rock, so i was sending all 10 of my miners down into what i thought was some shallow water in the tunnel but was actually a 7/7 deathtrap that managed to nearly cause a tantrum spiral from the amount of drownings that took place (my fort was saved by the very waterfalls these guys died for!).

Luckily the picks didn't fall down into the deadly FB caves below the fort so I'm able to train a new mining team to replace the others .

[klefenz]

I spent a long time building a magma piston, when i deply it i realize the bridges to contain the magma were not magma safe. All the magma fell down again :´(

Well, at least i have this to confort me in this fort:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Pukako]

"Utterstake" was carved into the cliffs above the open crater of a volcano.

It prospered, despite only having copper ore - nothing else. Just starting to put windows in the rooms to overlook the magma, when goblins & trolls attacked. I knew that my emergency exit was a weak point, but stationed the military above it. Trolls & goblins were slaughtered easily, but, looking again, so were my dwarves. The military were happily killing EVERYONE!!!

I'm still mystified, but it's sure one way to lose a fortress...

[mate888]

The one and only time I sent Urtist Mc Mostpopulardwarfintown fishing I found him in this situation:
Well done, Urtist! I hope you enjoy seeing the tantrum spiral slowly eating my wonderful job FROM F*CKING HELL!!

[RegalStar]

I set up a live target/enemy mount execution chamber, which can only be entered through a route below it, which is protected by a drawbridge. So after everything's set up and done, I flip the lever that release the cages, then realized that the freed beasts somehow disappeared?

Yeah, I forgot to actually raise the drawbridges before releasing them. Go me.

[milo christiansen]

So I have been perfecting the ultimate fortress entrance, complete with at LEAST two bridges between every intersection and a sealable trade depot with optional cavern exit. The whole thing is saved as a macro (generated via QuickFort) so I can just ctrl+p and be ready to dig. It works really well as far as I can tell, but so far all my forts die before it is finished.
My last one died to the fastest tantrum spiral I have ever seen in my 1+ years of playing DF. I had all the bridges connected to levers and was starting to forge spikes for the trap hall when I noticed a food problem. I had brewed too many plump helmets, so while I had almost 1000 alcohol  was out of food and harvest was about a week away. I could have waited it out with only minor unhappy thoughts, but I had all these haulers just sitting there...

As soon as the last hauler reached the surface to gather plants a massive undead siege arrived (149 undead, to be exact) killing all but two of my 60+ haulers almost immediately. I got the fort sealed (rather easily) but the ~20 survivors were ALL "miserable", apparently everyone was friends with everyone else, oops.

The fort lasted less than a month after that.

[Sugarlevi]

Horror, all over the fort. Siege. Dead dorfs.

Tantrum spiraling inside the fort. Nothing is being build. Dorfs going melancholic. Dying of starvation and dehydration.

From 160 dwarfs, back to 60.  And only then I notice the central staircase on one of the layers, which I accidently turned into down stairs. *major facepalm*

So problem fixed, surviving dwarfs are rescued, all the dead dwarfs are buried.

Finally a new caravan. From the dwarven civilization along with a major vile of darkness!

Tells all the dwarfs to go inside. All dwarfs inside? Good! Pull the lever, omg, where did the lever go?
Of course destroyed by one of the berserk/stark raving mad dwarfs... Bridges don't close. I try to get them to build some walls, sealing themselves in, but the first trolls are already in the hallway, and all dwarfs are running around in panic, incapable of even building themselves a wall. Bye bye, other 59 dwarfs... Grr.... Ah well, at least my vampire bookkeeper managed to survive! Maybe I should set him loose to see how long he will last...

[Fallenworldful]

I minecart railgunned my meeting hall/test chambers by accident. How was I supposed to know a minecart at sufficient velocity impacting a fortification turns its contents (Spears and shortswords) into deadly projectiles?

Everything is bloody now

[D34dlock]

I minecart railgunned my meeting hall/test chambers by accident. How was I supposed to know a minecart at sufficient velocity impacting a fortification turns its contents (Spears and shortswords) into deadly projectiles?

Everything is bloody now

Sounds like a good fort defense in the making. Try to replicate it against Goblins, Hippies, and Forgotten beasts. Was it better than ballista?

[ChildofSolitude]

I started out in a terrifying biome, and before I even had time to cut into the mountain a thralling cloud hit the wagon and got everyone.