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[100killer9]

I feel that a fortress on an island is boring, since nothing kills your dwarves (aside from a few wolves mangling your hunters). So, I shall build a megaconstruction. Basically, a self-sufficient fortress in the middle of water connected to land only by a drawbridge (maybe), a magma pipe, and a patch of sand at the bottom.

Steps:
1. Build in a two z-level high base with 9 squares of space and cave-in it over 1 z-level deep water.
2. Rip up the floors, and collect sand as magma is pumped to the base.
3. Produce blocks of green glass like crazy, and expand upwards.
4. Make sure food production is working, and close connection to the underground fortress.
5. I don't know, a waterfall from the top of the map into the caldera of the volcano I guess.

The only problem is food production, but I plan to build a sort of filter pool to murder merpeople for their bones, and I bet a whole bunch of dead anchovies to butcher. Lacking that, cat biscuts.

[Magua]

The other problem is that constructions deconstruct when caved-in -- you won't get a base in the water, you'll get water, with whatever the constructions were made out of.

Only natural rock/soil stays intact during a cave-in.

Your choices are:

1) Drain the water into an aquifer, if available
2) Install enough pumps to allow you to build walls for your base
3) Drop magma into the water to make an obsidian base.

[Beanchubbs]

I was going to mention you should build a fotress on the ocean floor, but then I tried to think of how you'd go about doing that, but unless you have magma, I can't think of how.

[100killer9]

I had a feeling that was the case. Luckily, I have a volcano, and an aquifer, and I can make pumps. However, I'm not sure if the ocean can be drained into an aquifer, so pumps or obsidian casting it is!
Well, just obsidian casting. But how to get a base of it? The caldera of my volcano is ONE z-level above the water, and magma isn't pressurized...

[Jude]

Pumps!

[Dameleth]

If there's stone there was some talk of a glitch that you can drain water by smoothing stone at the map edge and building fortifications. Done it as a artificial cave river exit, works perfectly. Make it big and long enough you got yourself a nice drainage point. Also an aquifer is a perfect drain. An aquifer will take any amount of water you pour into that open space in the level.

[Tallefred]

There are two ways of building an underwater fortress without using magma that I know of. One is a ring of pumps, the other is the burning-lignite-in-a-bin trick. You need magma for the second one though, unless there's some other source of fire I'm unaware of.

[Magua]

I had a feeling that was the case. Luckily, I have a volcano, and an aquifer, and I can make pumps. However, I'm not sure if the ocean can be drained into an aquifer, so pumps or obsidian casting it is!
Well, just obsidian casting. But how to get a base of it? The caldera of my volcano is ONE z-level above the water, and magma isn't pressurized...

If the aquifer is underneath your ocean, the ocean will drain into it; whether it'll drain faster than it'll refill is open to debate, but you'd want to make a big a tunnel as possible before breaching the ocean to find out.

Anyways, you can use pumps to pump the magma up, and floors and walls to direct it onto the ocean.  There's a really good DFMA map that shows someone making an obsidian curtain wall to build their underwater city in...

Ah, here it is.  BlockadeRhyming

[100killer9]

I have magma. I'll just obsidian-cast a 5x5 block 2 z-layers deep, cause a cave-in that snaps the bridge out to the spot, and build another bridge. This gives the benefits of giving me free obsidian, having no chance of a flood, and not forcing me to actually fool with fire.
Oh, and fire imps can cause fire easily, too.

[Innominate]

There are two ways of building an underwater fortress without using magma that I know of. One is a ring of pumps, the other is the burning-lignite-in-a-bin trick. You need magma for the second one though, unless there's some other source of fire I'm unaware of.

Thermonuclear catsplosion.

[Satarus]

Drop a burning lignate block in a magma proof bin into the ocean.  That will drop your FPS to about 1, but will drain the ocean.

[100killer9]

I guess I made myself unclear. I could easily blindly pump magma into the ocean, mine it out, and BOOM! Underwater fortress. However, I need to build up from the glass. And I care about my framerate, so I want to do it with as little fluid flow as possible.

[DaPatman]

The three methods that do not involve pumping magma into the ocean are, as has been mentioned:

• Drain the ocean into the aquifer.
• Dump a magma-proof bin containing a !!lignite block!! in.
• Concentric rings of pumps.

These are listed in order of both increasing difficulty and increasing fps. You need to decide whether it's worth the added effort to experience less of an fps drop.

[Kanddak]

If there's stone there was some talk of a glitch that you can drain water by smoothing stone at the map edge and building fortifications. Done it as a artificial cave river exit, works perfectly.

I got a pretty nasty surprise when I tried that on an ocean site; water will come in through the map edge rather than going out. Apparently the rule for oceans is "any map edge tile below sea level is a water source."

Oh, and while we're talking about fire bins, I need to post my usual it's not just for lignite notice.

[slink]

If there's stone there was some talk of a glitch that you can drain water by smoothing stone at the map edge and building fortifications. Done it as a artificial cave river exit, works perfectly.

I got a pretty nasty surprise when I tried that on an ocean site; water will come in through the map edge rather than going out. Apparently the rule for oceans is "any map edge tile below sea level is a water source."

   I just had that happen to me, a few moments ago.  Luckily I had saved not long before, because my project was to make a waterfall from an aquifer by piercing it from below and letting it drain through grates in one end of my dining room.  I was worried that the piercing operation would not work and I would be left with a silly disfigurement in the dining room, so I saved just before cutting the channels in the dining room floor.  I never dreamed that my miners in the drainage passage below the dining room were going to let the whole ocean in through the wall.  It was a nice, wide, fortification, too.