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[NewoTigra]

I decided to build a Gigantic 14z level high wall in front of my fortress, made almost entirely out of iron with certain parts of it in gold so that when viewed in a 3D view (that showed colour) it would display the words "Screw You" to all invaders in front of my fortress.

After 5 years I was on to the 'Y'. I got bored. Also - iron? not good for making huge walls. Massive amounts needed. The goblin sieges throughout helped with iron acquisition though.

[LordBucket]

imagined for megaprojects
but were unable or unwilling to see through

I once started a 40x40 glass tower on a map with no magma and the rule of "no digging."

I got bored and abandoned on the second or third level when I started trying to accomodate nobles in rooms without engraving value bonuses.

[Chicken Launcher]

The entrance to my fort would be a dragon's head, carved into the side of the mountain. In the event of invaders, the 'mouth' would close, people would get underground, the inside of the entrance (the mouth) would be filled with lava with a lever, and then released. A cat would serve as bait to draw the goblins closer.

Yeah, this didn't go anywhere.

I recently got the idea to build an aboveground fort in the shape of a dragon, lying on top of a magma pipe. The mouth would be able to be flooded with magma during sieges. I haven't gotten around to planning it out yet though.

[Retro]

Whenever I get tired / give up on my current fort, my next plan is to make a really, really, really big castle. This one's going to take quite a lot of planning and will probably have its layout be based on real castles and be designed for aesthetic pleasure.

Odds of this happening are slim, of course, which is how it ended up in this thread.

[NewoTigra]

The entrance to my fort would be a dragon's head, carved into the side of the mountain. In the event of invaders, the 'mouth' would close, people would get underground, the inside of the entrance (the mouth) would be filled with lava with a lever, and then released. A cat would serve as bait to draw the goblins closer.

Yeah, this didn't go anywhere.

I recently got the idea to build an aboveground fort in the shape of a dragon, lying on top of a magma pipe. The mouth would be able to be flooded with magma during sieges. I haven't gotten around to planning it out yet though.

My current fort has a rendition of Armok's head rising out of a (nearly filled) magma moat for the entrance, made entirely from dark rock, with bauxite for the inside of the mouth and ruby windows for eyes.
The next megaproject is a giant arm bursting out of the ground to serve as a barracks for the soldiers, holding an equally-giant sword that will be hollow and filled with bridges and hatches for deploying soldiers onto the battlefield post-haste.

So far only 4 migrants have arrived.

There are also some plans to incorporate some of the empty space in the head as either a royal quarters or a magma-cannon, but I doubt I'll get that far.

[Foehamster]

I've been wanting to build both a waterfall and magmafall fort where at the top of 5z level high walls magma drips through the fortification down the sides of the walls and into the moat to be recycled.  Working on the distributor system to make it pour evenly bored me too much.

Oh for fast drowning depot construction build it low and use floodgates/bridges to flood/seal it then cut off the input and drain it with an atom smasher strained by fortifications.

If you don't mind me I'm trying to cast in place my obsidian keep.

[Argonnek]

I wanted to make an Eternal Sadness fort once, but the logistics of it threw me off.
My original thoughts: "It can't be that hard to keep dwarves unhappy all the time; I manage it without even trying!"
The Problem: tantruming  dwarves destroying the farm-flood control levers. Those that didn't drown starved.

[Fossaman]

I was forced to abandon my last fort, 'Poolspike', because I underestimated the FPS drain that my massive excavation would cause. It was to be a huge tower, stretching from the bottom-most z-level to the top-most, with a pump stack powering a waterfall all the way up running up the center.

I'm trying again now with about half the z-levels, and a smaller excavation around the tower for the waterfall pool.

[alway]

I've given up dozens of projects. The reason for almost every one of these was FPS. Take this for example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On that one, I spent hours digging out a massive underground chamber with a huge left in the center, then flooded the bottom 2 layers of it with magma. I never got around to relocating my dwarves into their new home of awesomeness, mostly because of the distance from the fort and FPS.
This is after I had given up my fort Axekey, where I had successfully built a magma cannon (and a darned good one too!) and was attmepting to build a large obsidian pyramid. That one the fps dropped to under 20, so I left it.
Then there was Oraclepalace, which I built 3 large pyramids, a stargate, and a large colosseum. FPS dropped once again, and I left it as well.

[The Mad Engineer]

I wanted to, at a point, create a dwarven drawbridge "tank", by paving the ground with drawbridges, and digging out a z-level underneath, paving it with pressure plates, and hooking up each pressure plate to a 3*3 area drawbridges directly above.  Then, when a siege comes along, I recruit the "driver" of the tank, ask him to move to the location underneath the siegers, causing an animation of drawbridges that seem to move to the invaders and crush them.

This project would require about 4 z-levels worth of stone, and infinite patience and planning to, when in the pressure plate "linking up" menu,  navigate to the correct drawbridges.  And there would be no good way to test it, or even film/screenshot it, since 1*1 drawbridges look the same whether raised or not.  You could do it with floodgates, except that it would be difficult for dwarves to navigate to the right floodgate to link up when the whole map is practically filled with them, and floodgates can't crush invaders.  Not to mention that they are "raised" in reverse order than a drawbridge.  So you would have a pretty animation of a car made of floodgates moving around your map, doing nothing except causing path cancellation spam and breaking whenever a groundhog is in the way.  Also the dwarf in the car would, in reality, be 1 z level under it, walking through a massive underground cavern filled with pressure plates.

Besides, it would be easier just to, once the ground is paved with drawbridges, hook it all up to a single lever that would effectivelly crush any object on the whole map at once.

[xtank5]

Then there was Oraclepalace, which I built 3 large pyramids, a stargate, and a large colosseum. FPS dropped once again, and I left it as well.

Did you at least make the stargate?  It would have been really cool to make a dwarven version of the SGC.

[alway]

There are various images of it in the df visualizer thread, heres the stargate one: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=39541.msg795347#msg795347

Oh... and building stargate command? That's another 2 failed attempts I forgot about.

[SkyRender]

I had at one point intended to form a "carved from the living rock" fortress out of the biggest mountain ever genned (ie. not one construction in the entire place, but still a grand underground megafort), but that fell flat when I noticed that I was getting pretty laggy FPS on that map even with just 7 Dwarves.

[Dermonster]

i had an idea to mine out EACH AND EVERY Z LEVEL of a mountain, save underneath the fort and a natural bidge thing, so invaders and caravans alike would have to pass over this giant stone bridge leading to my fort, and also having an absolutely gigantic Dwarf ststure standing over the bridge.

Caravans pass beneath his all-mighty adamantine crotch.

[Itnetlolor]

I had an idea for a mega-pump entryway; but the mechanics of it are really complicated (at least, to establish; structure is really simple, however), as well as how to build into the water like I have illustrated.

Consider this image, up top are the windmills, on the sides are water wheels, these structures are pumps that take from the central area, rendering it a walkable surface into an airlock that leads into the fort.

If anyone can come up with a method of executing this, I'll be amazed. Refining ideas are also welcomed. Basically, this was an interesting concept idea I had some time ago, but I have trouble working with water and aquifers.

Spoiler: Illustration of concept; mind the quality. (click to show/hide)

Note: The perspective is looking down 1 Z-level.

As you can see in the picture, the water is being pulled faster than it can be filled up; causing an odd inverse flow effect.

If anyone is willing to take on this challenge, make a video of it activating, deactivating, and in use.

Kinda gives me an idea; why not make a building challenge thread? Of course, I'm nominating my idea as an engineering challenge.

Switches could be in the fort or outside from a watch tower or "Ancient Key" method.