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[assimilateur]

Tax collector makes a mandate for large gems. I carve my entire stockpile of gems, and do exploratory mining to find more. I barely finish the mandate on time after going through all 50 gems I had plus ten or so more I found mining while the mandate was active. Before the season ends, he makes another mandate for large gems.

If he mandated just large gems, without specifying their type, then you could have tried churning out raw green glass and cutting that shit up. Of course, that is assuming you've got both sand and magma. If not, then I recommend getting rid of the tax collector.

[Xort]

Water even very fast under huge pressure water freezes basicly instantly when leaving the warm inside to the cold outside.

Picture if you will a mountain with a massive empty hole in the middle of it. Like any good dwarf would do, it was filled with water in case something needed to be watered. The size was on the order of 10 in radius and 15z levels, the bottom had a 16 (4x4) wide opening that fed into a 4 wide flood tunnel. Floodgates held the water back at the bottom and the inflow at the top was a presure plate controling a set of 15 flood gates that were holding back an aquifer that was oddly enough located at the top of the mountain. Secondardy flood gates prior to the pressure control gates were under lever control for safety and maintance.

Anyway the flood tunnel lead to the side of a rather sizable cliff face where it would dump into a open plain, normaly flooding goblins, because it's aways nice to wash goblins before picking them over for loot, and fighting while wet sucks.

The flood tunnel crossed a mine access tunnel a few squares back from the cliff face, I had floor grates installed in an 4x4 drain grid so I could flood at any time and not stop my mining operation. (The flood tunnel and mine access tunnel met, at the crossing the grates dropped the water down one Z level and spit it out the side of the cliff).

For safety I only use floodgates because I like the style of massive gates snapping shut trapping the slow on the other side, and because unlike doors stupid people can't open them and flood new areas. I also like to build a level of automation into my forts.

This fort had a multi level drainage system that drained different parts of the fort as pressure plates activated and started water wheels driving drainage pumps. Also the very lowest level drained into a massive dwarf made lake as a final back up if all other automation failed. I think the lake was 5 Z levels deep and about 1/4 of the map. This lake had floodgate controled drainage to a bottomless pit, but also a number of controled pump stacks that would pull water from the bottom level and transport it to 3 Z levels above the surface and just dump it. While not part of the story the massive lake was also connected to the same top of the mountain aquifer, but was ran through a set of controlable* pressure reducers to head off any flooding. (* controlable because what if I wanted to flood my fort from the bottom up?)

Anyway on the plain I had finished some walls ment to extend the water flow and incress the distance traveled to get to the fort's main gate. I wanted to test the flow rate of the water and I also wanted to even out the main flood chambers walls with some selective digging. So I was going to compleat a two part test, one to messure the flow rate of the water, two to test the output of water from the aquifer to see how much sustained water would flow.

I was worried about the 4x4 grid of floor grates as I had not done a full scale full flow test before.

~
I open the safety and maintance flood gates at the top, the pressure plate controled filling gates are shut because the cistern is full. Next I pull the bottom flood tunnel gates, and water start to rush out.

Water flows, flows, flows turns to ice and starts to backup and flood. I can't stress enough how fast high pressure water flows between the first 'cancels dangerous ground' and when I paused it I had water in the main part of the fort.

So after taking a look at the problem I deside to:
A: close the flood tunnel gates
B: close the safety and maintance aquifer gates
C: activate the internal division floodgates
D: standby to bury our dead

Frist thing that happens, water races across the mine access level, drops a level and seals off the main crafting and dinning hall level. Automated systems seal areas and start draining water. Problem is, the drains all dump outside so they all freeze as soon as the water hits outside. So now I have half drained rooms that are floodgate locked, I do have manual levers for opening closed gates but that will have to wait because I need to shut the incoming flow off first.

The lever room is best discribed as a level dedicated to levers. It has a single access point that was sadly located beside the main stair stack but on the water side. I still had the one dwarf on the lever level that pulled the first 2 switches, however after a hard day of work he was going home and some dwarf halfway across the fort had taken up the job to pull the lever to stop the flow of water.

If that dwarf has turned around the instant I issued the order to pull the lever, I think he still migh have been too late. So water rushes into the lever level, trips a pressure plate and floodgates close around enterance; Other floodgates open to the drainage level below, still more floodgates open and water starts to power waterwheels, screw pumps start to drain the closed off lever level and the enterance were my lever man that was going home for the day is stuck. Water flows in, then gets pumped out, then freezes and the water rises.

So water slowly fills the fort, the main stair stack keeps water from flowing into the far side, but at least half the fort is under some water. The auto floodgate system sometimes closes off before a lot of water gets into an area, so that area is able to drain the water, get it backed up in the drainage system, reopen the floodgates which then pour in more water till the gates close for good with the screw pumps stopped.

All my waterwheels drain into my bottomless pit so they keep running. A few of the areas also drained into the pit, and I think those dwarfs had it the worst as areas flooded, closed, drained, opened and then reflooded.

I was thinking I was going to need my fortress in a box reboot kit, (A set number of dwarfs locked away in a self sustaining sub fort, able to repopulate a fort after any possible disaster). However when I started this test it was about mid winter.

My worry was the massive lake was going to fill up and start a bottom up flood, however it was able to handle the water and sring came while it was still 1 z level from full.

With the spring, water started pouring from every opening and pipe, frame rate crashed for a while. About halfway drained a dwarf was able to get to the lever room and stop the flow of water. It was touch and go for a while as a few dwarfs raged over dead friends, and lack of sleep/food/drink. More than a few learned to swim.

The flood tunnel was moved down a level and walled off, access control by lever flood gate. The enterance to the lever room was moved. Most of the drainage systems were reworked to create mushroom like drainage covers so the water wouldn't freeze instantly. Others were routed into the pit.

So remember water freezes, fast. Not like I thought it did. Face palm, tears of joy and fear.

Oh and I'm glad no tantruming dwarf set off the 'enemy' deep inside the fort, the fort must be lost, flood the place with magma pressure plate.

[Lord Shonus]

Unless one was incredibly tough.

I don't think anyone is that tough in reality (which was what I was comparing the game to). In a fantasy setting in general, or in DF in particular, that's obviously different.

As best as we can tell from the historical record, during his Indian campaign Alexander the Great suffered a very serious chest wound, probably a punctured lung, and survived it.

Of course, that may well have contributed to him catching and dying of the common cold.

[Halmie]

Unless one was incredibly tough.

I don't think anyone is that tough in reality (which was what I was comparing the game to). In a fantasy setting in general, or in DF in particular, that's obviously different.

As best as we can tell from the historical record, during his Indian campaign Alexander the Great suffered a very serious chest wound, probably a punctured lung, and survived it.

Of course, that may well have contributed to him catching and dying of the common cold.

We don't know it was the common cold. Some speculate that he was poisoned.

[Lord Shonus]

One works in the joke. The other is irrelevant.

[Chewykittens]

I was setting up to cave-in on a UG river. Suddenly I get an announcement "-Doc- Urists Mc Starter died from colliding with obstacle"  I zoom to the corpse and it's in the chamber below the cave-in site.  I figured that a rock dug out from channeling hit him in the head.

me="ooooh!" -> Facepalm -> savescum

[64-bit]

I just lost a fort to 20 some orcs (with dig deeper) it took me a while to figure out how they got in. oddly enough, right as my last dwarf died, my computer crashed (a unrelated issue with my sound card) and i don't have pictures of the bloodbath, but i do have a picture of the hole. the worst part is that this was the second time i lost the fort to this hole.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[darkflagrance]

I was setting up to cave-in on a UG river. Suddenly I get an announcement "-Doc- Urists Mc Starter died from colliding with obstacle"  I zoom to the corpse and it's in the chamber below the cave-in site.  I figured that a rock dug out from channeling hit him in the head.

me="ooooh!" -> Facepalm -> savescum

Rocks don't kill people. Cave-ins kill people. -Doc- channeled the cave-in himself, and the dust knocked him off from wherever he was down, down to his death.

[Asmodeous]

I just lost a fort to 20 some orcs (with dig deeper) it took me a while to figure out how they got in. oddly enough, right as my last dwarf died, my computer crashed (a unrelated issue with my sound card) and i don't have pictures of the bloodbath, but i do have a picture of the hole. the worst part is that this was the second time i lost the fort to this hole.

You should totally fix that.


I had dug out a very dwarvenly, large, intricate aquaduct system of absolute dwarven engineering, complete with five waterfalls (including one waterfall in each noble's room and their own personal clear glass wells that were just waiting for the adamantine chains to be built before they were constructed -- this part is key, but yes). Thinking myself crafty, I figured instead of building a complicated floodgate system complete with cisterns and pressure-bleeding pumps/basins, I would take advantage of DF's inability to share pressure across a diagonal on the floors where the wellgaps were - you know, to save time. . .

So I channel the river. The water starts flowing, and the waterfalls look splendid, the dwarves dance happily at their miracles of engineering --- and then the rooms with the well-channels in them start having water bleed up, and the dwarves scatter before I can lock the doors (yes, I would have left them to die) - opening them so the water can flow through!

I look around trying to figure out what happened... guess who mis-clicked the diagonal paths and made them L-turns. *facepalm*


Another great one, and far better than the first -- I was on a terrifying mountain range in a sinister forest with a terrifying foothills surrounding. There were exactly 2 (yes two) non-dwarven creatures that were not undead (not counting my pack animals), and also did I mention there were 3 Giant Cave Spiders? (Hint: None of them were the 2 living creatures).

So all is going well, I've survived two goblin raids and have been equipping my military with adamantium plate mail -- zombie trolls are scary things after all, especially when they're partying-hard with a skeletal GCS -- and another siege comes in. Easily dispatch the siege, and since my soldiers scattered the goblins all over the map, I decided that I didn't want to search the cliff-sides to try to find all the bodies, went into the stocks menu, and blanket-unforbid all the goblin equipment, then allowed my dwarves back outside, and returned to the job of carefully mining my way through the Adamantium in hopes I don't begin a new bit of "fun" while I have a number of wounded wrestlers.

"Urist McStupid Has been struck down."

Wait--what?

"Urist McDinnerplate has been struck down."

....what the devil is going on here?

Game paused, I begin searching around trying to figure out where this death-camp they're marching into is...

At the head of the chasm: A pile of dead goblinoids, a few dead dwarves, an ARMY of dwarves running over to pick up the socks of the dead dwarves (and the equipment from the goblinoids), and all three undead GCS looking around like "OH HAPPY DAY IT'S A BUFFET!!"

*facepalm* And that day I learned why "blanket unforbid" is bad.

[assimilateur]

Rocks don't kill people. Cave-ins kill people.

Correction: people using cave-ins kill people.

[RedKing]

Putting the finishing touches on my porticullis, only to see "The caravan has bypassed your inaccessible site."

Wouldn't have been so bad except I was out of booze, low on food, and the caravan was slated to bring my first anvil.

[HatfieldCW]

I know how that can be, RedKing.  I built a sophisticated entryway, with various bridges and floodgates that would allow me to exploit pathfinding to send invaders pacing around my guard tower, and three years in a row I was testing the switch setups at the very moment dwarf caravans arrived.  Can't they just hang around for thirty seconds before deciding my site is inaccessible?

[Percival]

So far my biggest facepalm also happened to be the time I learned that the "Digging designation canceled: Warm stone located" message only occurs once. If the miners have already let you know about the presence of magma, they consider the safety part of their job done, and they will happily mine into their deaths the second time you designate it.

Not knowing this, I selected a square to be dug around one level of my magma pool, not worrying about boundaries. Obsidian = profit. (I should note at this point that I have temperature turned off.)

Next thing I know, I have two of my legendary miners swimming for their lives. Although, in general, I am trying not to cheat (i.e., considering magma instantly deadly), I wanted to see if it was possible for them to survive, so I built a door for them to head towards at the end of the magma channel. Apparently magma is really hard to swim through. They managed about 10 squares in a long period of time (a couple months, maybe). By the time they were (I think) talented swimmers, the magma was all 7/7, and they fainted from hunger and thirst, then drowned. So sad.

[Tcei]

A few gens back I embarked on a haunted river. Living carp have nothing on their undead brethren  My dwarves landed in between 2  small ponds filled with zombie carp and a river overflowing with them as well. In a matter of minutes after I unpaused I only had one dwarf left, some how this poor fellow actualy managed to grab a pick before being scared off by the hoards of undead carp crawling up on land to slaughter his fellows and start digging out the fort.

After the initial die off I figured hermit fort would be a good new challenge. So I let him keep digging while I went and browsed the internet. I looked up just in time to see the hoard of zarp a mere the tiles away from where the miner was digging... the carnage was impressive.

[Chewykittens]

I was setting up to cave-in on a UG river. Suddenly I get an announcement "-Doc- Urists Mc Starter died from colliding with obstacle"  I zoom to the corpse and it's in the chamber below the cave-in site.  I figured that a rock dug out from channeling hit him in the head.

me="ooooh!" -> Facepalm -> savescum

Rocks don't kill people. Cave-ins kill people. -Doc- channeled the cave-in himself, and the dust knocked him off from wherever he was down, down to his death.

Thing is, I wasn't even close to dropping the slab, and 5 other dwarfs who were standing on the thing were just fine.