I designed a pretty nifty cliffside fortress that should work well with the next version that I want to try out (sketched out of course).
It involves a series of drop-bridges that serves as a path for merchants to cross, as well as a nasty surprise for any invaders.
It involves up to about 5-9 3x10 bridges, depending on how far out the fort goes, has a series of levers mapped out in a map/switch room with the lever setup as (1-(5-9)), (even and odd), and a red master switch take toggles all of them. Come along a siege, wait for them to cross halfway, then trigger the fort-most bridge, then the cliff-most bridge, then the master switch. The collector burrow at the bottom of the fall will collect the flattened treasure. To add to it, I have an interesting fortress style I'd like to try out that utilizes it.
For added security, the bottomside collection burrow has a similar defense, a small pit moat with it's small amount of drop-bridges (3-5 3x10, with gradually deepening pits funneling into the collection door/barracks, minimum depth is 3-5 Z, with the bridges 3Z above ground-level.) that'll make any bottom-side invaders fall into a pit either incapacitating them, or obliterating them, and further pulverizing any way-up invaders that took the express elevator to hell. Any survivors will have to answer to a pocket military force within the burrow. The closer to the bottom-side entry, the deeper you'll fall. And those bridges will have a similar nasty surprise disposal. If trapped in the middle bridge, you might survive, you reach the front door, and plummet... yeah; oh, and I forgot to add that there would be 2 floodgates to make full use of a progressive dropping of the bridges as well. It'll apply to topside and bottomside fort entries.1 at the gate, another at the cliffside ramp; and below, 1 at the bridge access, and 1 at the front door. Happy base jumping!
Oh yeah, and the levers will be color coded definitely as well as acting as a mini-map to make telling them apart heck of alot easier. The whole setup is to make use of at least 25-50 Z levels.
Oh, and after the initial keep is built, the main fort project will be purely aesthetically planned and beautiful, and the temp-keep will be made of the excavated stone, so that will be almost exclusively above ground, and serve as a farm and flank barracks burrow if I decide not to drop the bridges. To be equally fair, I would also have marksdwarves at the ready placed around the first series of bridges. So it'll either be a battle on the bridge, or a splatterfest for the utter hell of it. Heck, the system can also dispose of annoying or useless merchants (elves) if I feel up to it.
Now, the next challenge, to find a suitable location that'll work that I won't need to worry much about having to carve out the whole cliffside manually. And for additional aesthetic effect, I would carve a ramp-way to a slightly deep level to make the whole cliffside fort thing work out with a keep up above as overwatch/temporary fortress. Even watching it get built is going to be interesting. And if there's enough wood to collect, I might try to reproduce the Bloodfist as a cameo (with far less challenge/stress than my current setup). So i guess I'll need a magma source to make things work out even better. Finding a good spot might be a bit of a challenge.
The amount of thought put behind it makes me happy. Now for a suitable name for it.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16331687 times)