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[Rowanas]

but can my dwarves ceiling the space above their heads or do they have to start next to the stairs and work outwards?

[ShadowDragon8685]

but can my dwarves ceiling the space above their heads or do they have to start next to the stairs and work outwards?

They need to start next to the stairs or the tops of the walls (which are also floors, but not Constructed floors) and work out from those. Note that Dwarven Engineering is very good - you can quite easily create an inverted ziggaraut. Have fun with it, build soaring bridges attached to towers!

[Lord Dakoth]

Build a forest of spike traps in your main entrance, and link them all to a single lever.
New wave of unwanted immigrants? Command a dwarf to repeatedly pull the lever.
See how many corpses you can collect!

One thing I like to do is make a huge labyrinth of traps, and only immigrants that survive are allowed to join my fortress. That takes the Spartan mindset to the extreme! It's especially fun if you bet with someone on which dwarf will make it the farthest.

[piesquared]

Meh, my early fortresses did this for defense:

1.) Like all true dwarven fortresses, 95% was underground, precluding the need for walls.

2.) A 3-or-more tile wide entrance road - smoothed where there's stone, constructed road where there isn't - from the entrance to one wall.  Somewhere between the outside and my trade depot were the soldiers' rooms and a barracks designated from an armor stand so that anything entering my fort has to walk through my entire army practicing to get to any dwarf.

3.) Between the barracks and the outside, my road would cross a bottomless pit or magma pipe.  A 10-tile-wide drawbridge would stand in above the center.

4.) A simple lever in my Epic Dining Room (legendary before engravings + waterfall >.>) raises the drawbridge.

5.) There is an alternate path around the bottomless pit or magma pipe.  This isn't floor/road or anything, so traps are possible.  It's also long and winding and has magma and/or water drowning areas, often archery overlooks, and re-joins the entrance road before the barracks.  Oh, and a ballista or two stares down the final approaches before the barracks.

[Graven]

In my initial fortresses, which, come to think of it, were far better off than my current monstrosity, but hell, I used to go for the ubiquitous "corridor of pain". A three tile-wide bridge-blockable corridor for the caravan, and a 2 tile-wide, winding corridor intersecting it right next to the entrance of the fortress, filled with weapon traps containing a single wooden weapon, and my military in a bend right next to the end.

I guess I should illustrate it.
                     :............ X
_____    _____ :     ....... X
|   _   |  |  _m _     :
|  | |  |  | |     :     :
|  | |  |_|  |    :     :
|  | |_____|     :    :
                      :    :
                       bbb
Oh hell, it turned out as ugly as it could possibly be in this universe.
 __
|  |  - 2 tile wide trap corridor
|  |
m -  military (usually 2 dwarves)
....
:  : - caravan entrance
:  :
bbb - bridge
X - fortress entrance
X

It's fun to watch, and when sieges get bigger, it allows for quite an influx of crippled goblins to your hammerdwarves to splatter around. Adjust number of traps so it doesn't become boring. It's often advisable to put a 3x3 square of cage traps in the very beginning of the trap corridor, so you have prisoners to torture.

Fun times...

[Mr.Elendig]

My current favorite design consists of a 100x5 corridor, draw bridges, and a 10+ z-level drop. Makes lots of single bone stacks for my bonecarver to turn into decoration and trinkets. My dungeon masters bedroom and office both have a wall made of crystal glass, overlooking the splatter zone at the bottom. The whole corridor is also open to air, to prevent miasma from the 200 orc parts rotting away in it at any time.

[Rowanas]

How can you all build so much overground? I don't want cave adaptation to happen so I keep sending them outside. To be fair, cave adaptation sets in after a couple years, but I won't even let my dwarves stay inside for a month. I think I might be a little bit paranoid... I won't even let my kittens out to be butchered, I'm too scared they'll attach.

[Graven]

Heh, there's nothing quite like having your Godlike Champions pause in the midst of a 100-goblin siege to puke, then continue slaughtering the newly-repainted goblins.

[Thexor]

How can you all build so much overground? I don't want cave adaptation to happen so I keep sending them outside. To be fair, cave adaptation sets in after a couple years, but I won't even let my dwarves stay inside for a month. I think I might be a little bit paranoid... I won't even let my kittens out to be butchered, I'm too scared they'll attach.

The fear of kittens it totally justified. Just trust me on this one. 


So long as you let key dwarves (soldiers) come up occasionally, cave adaptation isn't a bad thing. So long as Urist McSmith never has to leave the magma forge, there's no fear of sunlight.
Thought of another way, if a dwarf becomes cave adapted, they probably don't need to go outside much anyways. If they needed to go outside, they wouldn't get cave adaptation.

[Skorpion]

How can you all build so much overground? I don't want cave adaptation to happen so I keep sending them outside. To be fair, cave adaptation sets in after a couple years, but I won't even let my dwarves stay inside for a month. I think I might be a little bit paranoid... I won't even let my kittens out to be butchered, I'm too scared they'll attach.

It's simple; I don't care that everyone hurls when they step outside. If I build a rough olivine road by the entrance, I don't even see the puke against the puke-coloured surface.
And with the hauling goblin shite and unnecesarry masonry, everyone gets plenty of fresh air.

[Synzig]

A dwarf's scaffolding:

Build a set of stairs up.
Build a set of up/down stairs the next z level up.
Repeat the last step until you're at the top level, the level where your ceiling would be the floor.
Build flooring around the perimeter of the building.

Now you have full access to the roof, and your can build your floor-ceilings quick and easily.

(This message has been brought to you by the Dwarfish Workers Union [DWU].  Build it fast, build it high, build it of stone!)