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[stolensteel]

So, I've been looking around for a while trying to find out ideas for forts near oceans. I recently discovered someone saying I can drop magma into the ocean to create my own obsidian dams (with much effort of course). However, I wanted to be able to use the pressure of the ocean to fill any waterworks that I had underground quickly, and I couldn't find a way to breach the ocean safely. But, I have now! I looked to see if anyone else had mentioned this method, didn't find it, so I thought I'd share. Here's the video:

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1832-safepressurizedwater

Essentially, build X+1 doors next to the ocean, one tile away, X being how many tiles wide you want your channel to be. Lock the first door (preferably with a lever, since you will want to open the doors later), and designate a miner (the higher skilled the better) to dig the ocean wall behind it. He will approach at an angle, mine the tile, and get a little wet. Since the water has to go in diagonally, it is temporarily de-pressurized. Once you pull the lever though, you have the full pressure in all its glory. Rinse and repeat with as many tiles as you want!

[Kanddak]

Not bad.

You're not "using doors as floodgates", really. You're just using doors as doors. People seem to just get kind of confused by the names, or maybe hold onto ideas from 2D, and think something like "doors are for creatures and floodgates are for fluids."
I almost always use doors to control fluid flows, because they switch instantaneously rather than having a delay like floodgates. I only use floodgates when I'm synchronizing them with bridges in logic systems, or when I need to stretch out over more than two tiles but don't want the crushing risks of a drawbridge.

My preferred method of ocean-breaching is to have the miner come in through an access tunnel with multiple doors. The miner digs orthogonally, gets instantly flooded to 7/7. He then flees through the door he came from, and ocean water instantly fills the middle section while the door is open. The miner swims across to the far door, by which time the first door has closed, and opens it. The water has been cut off from the ocean water by the outer door, and just slowly diffuses through the second door. The miner then passes through a third door into dry areas of the fort.

[stolensteel]

I tried having a miner dig straight into the ocean, but the two times I tried it, he was washed out to sea. He swam to shore fine, but it still worried me. I can worry less with this method though.

[kefkakrazy]

I once committed science. I set a bunch of miners to dig into an aquifer layer to see how it would interact with an adjacent bottomless pit.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Urist McMiner has fallen into a chasm.
Urist McMiner has fallen into a chasm.
Urist McMiner has fallen into a chasm.
Urist McMiner has fallen into a chasm.
Urist McMiner has fallen into a chasm.

...Oops.

[Count Dorku]

I once indulged my taste for science. I decided to investigate the distance an Orc could fall before it died, using a bridge that dropped them between 1 and 9 storeys. 6 storeys down and they could die, could live. Above that, minor injuries. Below that, all dead.

Then I flooded it to kill as many of the survivors as possible, and got bored before the water reached the two surviving mace-orcs five storeys down, teaching me to always use a pump to fill the drowning chamber.

I love this game.

[Retro]

I once indulged my taste for science. I decided to investigate the distance an Orc could fall before it died, using a bridge that dropped them between 1 and 9 storeys. 6 storeys down and they could die, could live. Above that, minor injuries. Below that, all dead.

Not to hijack the thread (and very clever ocean-digging method, by the way), but has anyone tested the effects of dropping dwarves / goblins large distances into various depths of water? Could prove similar but more reliable way of dropping the military from orbit with a landing tank equipped with drains sync'd with the lever used to drop the dwarves down in the first place.

[BlazingDav]

If I recall correctly, no it'd have no effect, when a critter such as your dwarf falls it is sort of not there and doesn't interact with fluids it goes through till it hits rock bottom (literally unless you smoothed it), which is how prisoners dropped into magma pipes don't burn up till they hit the bottom of the map.

Also I like the ingenuity here, personally I'd just channel from above and then floor where it was, whilst having already mined just a square short of it below and blocked it with a floodgate for security, reducing direct potential dwarven interaction with the water, though with the doors you have the advantage you can link them up to a lever making them behave like floodgates after you are done, release the water at your leisure and never having gone above-ground which is better in an early fort (or one that is regularly sieged).

[Astramancer]

My preferred method for tapping oceans is to dig a tunnel 1 zlevel below the ocean, and build a walkway above the ocean and collapse it -- the cavein will punch through into the tunnel, allowing it to flood, all with complete safety to my dwarves (as I use supports linked to levers to cause the collapse, rather than the 'deconstruct from the wrong side' method).

[Kanddak]

I once indulged my taste for science. I decided to investigate the distance an Orc could fall before it died, using a bridge that dropped them between 1 and 9 storeys. 6 storeys down and they could die, could live. Above that, minor injuries. Below that, all dead.

Oh, too bad. You just barely missed the best part. Orcs dropped 9 levels will just take red wounds to everything and immediately die. Orcs dropped 10 levels will explode in a shower of body parts.

[Kazindir]

If I recall correctly, no it'd have no effect, when a critter such as your dwarf falls it is sort of not there and doesn't interact with fluids it goes through till it hits rock bottom (literally unless you smoothed it), which is how prisoners dropped into magma pipes don't burn up till they hit the bottom of the map.

Sounds right to me.

I had a fortress with a nice big water temple once, with waterfalls down some huge engraved columns around a statue garden and the unavoidable sacrificial pit. Goblins were hurled down it on holy days (which often conveniently occured shortly after a siege ), the same pit as the waterfall emptied into. It had a constant 4zlevels of water at the bottom beneath the pump back out but all the goblins went straight down to the bottom layer. A lot died on impact, others were merely broken (in all possible ways) and then promptly drowned.

It was about 8zlevels from the top to the top of the water IIRC.

[Count Dorku]

Not to hijack the thread (and very clever ocean-digging method, by the way), but has anyone tested the effects of dropping dwarves / goblins large distances into various depths of water? Could prove similar but more reliable way of dropping the military from orbit with a landing tank equipped with drains sync'd with the lever used to drop the dwarves down in the first place.

Well, I dropped some more orcs into the flooded bit when the next VFOD came. They died. I'll look into your suggestion in future; I like the idea of dwarven paratroops too much to not do so.

[loser]

If I understand it correctly, creatures that land on other creatures are 'caught' and do not suffer falling damage.

If you could ensure there were a carpet of kittens for your dropdwarves to land on, you should be safe.  Or, at least, as safe as any other day.

Since chained animals can wander around a bit, I'm not sure how you'd create the kitten carpet.

Perhaps the kitten is chained on top of a single-tile pillar and the squad of dropdwarves are all dropped on the same tile?

It should be possible with a wide, retracting bridge over a ramp-lined funnel with a 'trickle' or 3/7 or 4/7 water running down its sides.  Your next problem is the water washing the kitten off the pillar before the dwarves land on it...  So that's no good.

I'm sure someone will figure it out, soon enough.

[Firnagzen]

Pet-impassable door, chained kitteh.

The only problem would then be building destroyers. Which can be averted if the drop zone is isolated with a retracting bridge over a moat, synced to the dropper for style points.

Blood for the blood god!

[expwnent]

Not bad.

You're not "using doors as floodgates", really. You're just using doors as doors. People seem to just get kind of confused by the names, or maybe hold onto ideas from 2D, and think something like "doors are for creatures and floodgates are for fluids."
I almost always use doors to control fluid flows, because they switch instantaneously rather than having a delay like floodgates. I only use floodgates when I'm synchronizing them with bridges in logic systems, or when I need to stretch out over more than two tiles but don't want the crushing risks of a drawbridge.

...so if there's a door, and a room filled with 6/7 water (or so) past the door, whenever someone tries to enter the room, they'll get washed away and the door will close behind them?

[balath]

"committed science"

At first I thought, "Science isn't a crime."  But it Dwarf Fortress, it might be a crime against Dwarvenity if it's not Dwarfy enough.