I thought of this after a cat chose the wrong moment to wander out a door and got swept into the current, luckily he hit one of my emergency rescue bridges and crawled to safety.
Annoyingly though the door stayed open just long enough to let a gush of water into my seed stockpile. A couple of barrels somehow ended on TOP of a farmers worshop and i had to deconstruct it to get at them, aggravating.
Anyhow that got me thinking. What if we could build permanent raised sections of flooring. How it works is pretty simple:
1. You designate an area in the same way you "paint" the space that you want excavated. This space can be any shape and size but must be connected on the horizontal or vertical or else you will have to build seperate "plots". 2 squares side by side forms a single patch, 2 squares connected on the diagonal count as seperate patches. Nothing happens just yet.
2. You go into the build menu and select build foundations. You place the cursor over the patch of foundations you designated earlier, if this is all in one piece, then you are done, if it is fragmented you will have to do this multiple times.
3. From here on it would like bridge building, architect brings the materials to the site and the proper worker shows up and completes the design. The same formulas for materials also apply.
Foundations are permanent and for all intents and purposes count as regular flooring, it is simply raised about 2 feet. If you want to get rid of it, you simply reverse the construction process, designating which tiles of foundation you want removed.
Anything on top will be protected from moderate flooding. This makes it handy for making secure walkways over floodable areas such as large indoor farms. Foundations built beside an indor river will prevent objects from being swept into the river
You can build workshops on top the of foundations. This especially handy for mills beside the cave river as anyone working inside will be protected. Any items or tools sitting inside the workshops will also be unnafected by the water.
Stone foundations can be engraved same as other stone floors. Wooden and glass foundations do not support extra detail, but can still be tiled if that option was added later.
The platform itself is about 2 feet tall, any edges not butted against a wall are fitted with a short set of built in stairs.
Wooden foundations can be built up to 1 square deep into a body of water. This forms a short flight of stairs leading into the water. A dwarf that falls into the river will have an easier time pulling himself out of the river on a shore built this way. Any task that involves the river such as fishing or drinking will also be slightly safer this way as invading creatures will have a harder time sneaking up on your dwarves.
The cons:
One problem with these foundations is that stuff can get under them where you cant reach. This is only a problem in floodable areas. The flood will carry seeds and mud under the platforms and these will happily grow because they do not need sunlight. You might build over an area and suddenly have random boards pop up due to growing mushrooms.
To get around this you can get a mechanic to rig the platforms so that each tile acts like a 1 square raising bridge. You can then access any square underneath to gather cave herbs. Cave spiders in particular like the area under the platforms and will build many webs there, raising the floor will let you collect them.
Other than that not much to say. In the upcoming release water will most likely be even more dangerous and this would allow you to work with it a bit more safely without resorting to abstract means.
[ June 02, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]
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Topic: Bridges as foundations (Read 399 times)