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[denito]

So after reading about the Oceanside succession game on the wiki, (quote, "The basic goal is to create an underwater city of clear glass (think Bioshock)."), I thought, why not build a dome above the water first and then sink it in the ocean?  Kind of like the ship/city on Stargate Atlantis.

It would have to be made of natural stone walls because I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure constructions deconstruct upon impact.  Unfortunately that rules out building it from glass (a pity); it has to be done with cast obsidian.

I decided to try a "small" scale prototype first, just big enough to lock a few dwarves inside, Pull The Lever, and see if anyone recovers consciousness after the vessel strikes the ocean floor!

And so I present to you, the dwarven Obsidian Bathysphere!  Screw making pirate ships, I'm making a submarine.  Here's the plan (side view):

Code: [Select]

XXXXXXXXX
X @  @ D
XXXXXXXXX____SSS

Legend:  X = solid obsidian wall, __ = constructed floor, S = shore, D = locked door, @ = undersea dwarf explorers

I've just finished the overhead magma channel and I'm about to start casting the obsidian in the ocean.  In order to build this I found an ocean with a volcano on it.  The volcano is extremely tall, many Z levels above the ocean, so I've built a very long suspended lavaduct high over the ocean to drop magma from a very great height.  I don't have any bauxite for mechanisms/floodgates, so I can't stop the magma once I start the pump.  I'll probably screw it all up once I start pouring, unfortunately...

[SquirrelWizard]

if I remember my cave ins right.

those dwarves are going to get smushed.

basically

Code: [Select]


XXXXXXXXXXX
X  D   D  X
XXXXXXXXXXX

will turn into

X         X
XXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXX

Upon cave in.


[denito]

if I remember my cave ins right.

those dwarves are going to get smushed.

basically

Code: [Select]


XXXXXXXXXXX
X  D   D  X
XXXXXXXXXXX

will turn into

X         X
XXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXX

Upon cave in.


Ah, man.  Really?  That stinks.

Hey what if I didn't need a chamber in the bathysphere?  What if it was all a solid block of obsidian and I just dig two or three isolated columns of stairs into it?  I could seal the tops of the stairs with hatch covers to lock the dwarves in and keep the water out.  Then if any survive the fall they can dig out the chamber after it's on the ocean floor.

Code: [Select]

  _
OO^OO
OO^OO
OODOO
OO^OO
OOOOO

O = obsidian
_ = hatch
^ = stairs
D = dwarf trapped on stairs

Drat!  Just realized the hatch would deconstruct and let the water in.  Well how about this:

Code: [Select]


Before cave in:
  O
O^OOO
O^ODO
O^ ^O
OOOOO

After cave in (middle column of obsidian fell and plugged open space, sealing stairs on the right):
   
O^OOO
O^ODO
O^O^O
OOOOO

O = obsidian
_ = hatch
^ = stairs
D = dwarf trapped on stairs


[Lesconrads]

You could also seal the entrance with a hatch, then POUR MAGMA ON IT! (and then obsinianify it with water).
Caveins are hard to control, at least for me. Your example would not work, I think :\

But I'm interested in your stories from the deep seas!

[Dorf3000]

From the Wiki:

Mined stairs and ramps will settle like unmined rock; Stairs down that fall onto previously empty floors will reveal the level below. If there's rock or floor above them, it'll cover the stairs.

From the previous threads and experiments I've seen here on the forum, there is no way to drop any kind of constructed or natural hollow object into the sea that remains watertight and/or doesn't make dwarf jam.  If you don't mind tunneling under the ocean floor then you could dump in a huge pile of magma to make some kind of obsidian undersea hill, tunnel under and up into it, and then drop a little more magma in to punch through the access tunnel and seal it off.

[Niyazov]

Another option is to have the top of the original structure be level with the ocean surface and then have a sacrificial dwarf channel out the top level once everybody's inside. This will work only if you don't mind having a shallowly-submerged fortress.

[denito]

From the Wiki:

Mined stairs and ramps will settle like unmined rock; Stairs down that fall onto previously empty floors will reveal the level below. If there's rock or floor above them, it'll cover the stairs.

Funny I interpreted that exact same line to mean the opposite - that mined stairs and ramps wouldn't break on impact.  The second part - that if there's rock or floor above them it will come to cover the stairs, I interpret as meaning that any hollow space the dwarves used to get to the stairs collapses, but that doesn't seem to say that the stairs got deconstructed, just that they got buried.

It's ok though - I've decided I'm going to collapse a mountain peak first with all of these different configurations dug in it to see what actually happens.  The bathysphere was supposed to be a prototype but it has taken too much work to pour the magma to waste it; time to test it with a proto-prototype!

Thanks Lesconrads for the magma sealing idea, and I will hopefully have some tales from dwarf Nemo 20,000 tiles under the sea this weekend to share with you!  Or just a lot of squished dwarves.

@Dorf3000:  Yeah tunneling under the ocean floor occurred to me later, and would work, but I guess my main incentive is to answer the question of whether it's possible to design any structure at all that can survive a cave-in fall with dwarves inside it.  I also thought about using the magma tube and playing "Journey to the Center of the Earth" that way.  But if any dwarves survive the undersea voyage, maybe I'll use a tunnel under the ocean floor to retrieve them.  They'd have a hell of a story to tell.  I should put them on permanent engraving duty after that.

[Jude]

I don't think dwarven technology has yet developed far enough to allow undersea diving. There have been several theoretical models proposed but all of them have theoretical flaws, enough that whether or not they've been tested, we know they wouldn't work.

Hopefully somebody will manage it. It might, of course, have to wait till a new version.

[SquirrelWizard]

i think the ultimate problem you will run into is that any open space within a building (wether mined or not) will be collapsed upon a cave, regardless.

[denito]

Jude and SquirrelWizard are right.   

I just finished the proto-prototype experiment (collapsing a mountain top) and here's the results:

- previously open spaces filled in
- stairs became empty spaces but they don't protect dwarves; the ceiling falls in and breaks all the stairs and kills the dwarves
- hatch covers fall apart (of course)

So, the result was 4 smushed dwarves.  There's two basic problems:  ceilings fall in and break everything underneath, and the falling walls don't hold their horizontal connections to each other.  For instance, if you were to drop a flat horizontal block of walls on a step pyramid, you won't have a flat block resting above when it settles; instead it will be "draped" over the pyramid - the horizontal connections aren't considered.

[PTTG??]

When I attempted the Underwater Fortress, I went with an artificial lake, which I filled only once I had already built the fortress.
 The other option is to use a natural lake that can freeze over, at which point you dig out the ice and build your walls. For the pro, I suggest doing this without turning temperature off once it's frozen. This will mean that you have to build in sections each winter, which might be fun.
 

[denito]

Interesting.  I might do that some time.  I would definitely play with temperature on, it would be more fun.  What's even more interesting is if I understand it right ice constructions don't melt, so you could build your under-lake fortress out of constructed ice walls with ice mined from the lake itself.

[SquirrelWizard]

Ironically enough all the stuff I learned about cave ins was when I was reading a post on how to make an obsidian cassion (not sure on spelling) to allow construction underwater.

[Grek]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Innominate]

For the obsidian submerged sphere: you could perhaps try casting the obsidian above the water in a solid format, sinking through cave-in and then using a lignite bin to evaporate the water above the sphere, allowing your dwarves time to tunnel in and begin construction. That is, assuming the lignite bin is close enough to evaporate the water but not melt your dwarves. Alternatively, skip the cast and simply dump magma into the ocean, shaping afterwards (or keeping the end result).