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[Shaostoul]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The stairs going up lead to an area for storage, make your own adjustments. The fortification area is for marksdwarves. Above both the MD and Siege is ammo storage.

[aepurniet]

The many problems are: Trade depot needs 3 wide entrance, and this makes it hard to make everything symmetrical and have doors.

NO!

Odd numbers are the only way to have symmetry! The trade depot is 5 tiles wide, all workshops are 3 tiles wide, and all furniture is 1 tile wide. If you don't have rooms which are odd-numbers along the sides, you can't, for example, have a piece of furniture exactly in the middle, or furniture every-other-space without it looking odd.
Oddness is the true symmetry.

NO!

no one says you have to put the trade depot in the middle.  i like a 2 wide corridor leading to a 4 wide bridge.  i place 2! trade depots on either side of the corridor.  the perfect symmetry is undisturbed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

.=====.DDDDD.
.=====.DDDDD.
.=====.DDDDD.
.=====.DDDDD.
.=====.DDDDD.
.............
.............
.=====.DDDDD.
.=====.DDDDD.
.=====.DDDDD.
.=====.DDDDD.
.=====.DDDDD.

= - refuse pile
D - depot
. - floor
surround the above with a wall, then a moat.  add a bridge to the end.  add fortifications  and a cat walk one z level up.  place traps on a 4x4 pad where the bridge goes to.  and that is my standard entrance.  it looks kinda castley, but the meat is all underground.  now if you raise the bridge, you should have a seigers entrance that seigers would want to go through where they get torn to bits.  all sorts of downing chambers, trapped rooms, and shooting galleries.

[Reese]

NO!

no one says you have to put the trade depot in the middle.  i like a 2 wide corridor leading to a 4 wide bridge.  i place 2! trade depots on either side of the corridor.  the perfect symmetry is undisturbed.

I was under the impression that placing multiple trade depots had some sort of bug associated with it.

[Lemunde]

Symmetry is boring.  Nothing turns me off more than a perfectly orderly fortress.

[Foa]

GUYS, when you [bad word: threetoe edit] post designs, USE THE [bad word: threetoe edit] TELETYPE TAGS!!!
Here is what it looks like:

And here is what it does.
╔═══════╗
║+++++++║
║+O███O+║   ███   █ █   █  ██
║+█████+║   █░    █ █       █
║+██O██+║   █     ███   █  ██
║+█████+║
║+O███O+║
║+++++++║
║+++++++║
║+++++++║
║++▲▲▲++║
╠╪╪═══╪╪╣
║++XXX++║
║++XXX++║
║++XXX++║
╚═══════╝

[bombcar]

For some reason, I don't know why, even the teletyped stuff looks wrong in Firefox on Mac OS X.

[bombcar]

Ha! Firefox was set to Courior for monospace - Menlo fixed it right up!

[Doomshifter]

My entrances are normally corridors that are 3 wide, with a bulge to just fit the depot in. Then directly behind the depot is a 5x5 area with 3x3 of down stairs in the centre. I usually have a big central staircase leading all the way down.

HFS SPOILER

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This got me in trouble once, though. I dug all the way down to the bottom and found out that my staircase nearly breached the funhouse. I was spammed with 'You have struck Adamantine! Praise the Miners!' the whole way down. On the plus side, I have a bunch of adamantine ready to be used.

[silhouette]

Hah, i had a similar one.
My staircase JUST narrowly missed digging into a magma pipe, if it had been 1 square over i would have dug right through the hot rock. Instead i dug ontop of the magma vent and saw it, i moved palces after that.

[BurnedToast]

I just make a 3 wide tunnel straight to the edge of the map, with a 3 wide ramp as close to the edge as possible. Then wall it off as much as possible, and make sure the 'real' front door can't fit a wagon in.

The wagon will always spawn right on the edge of the ramps because it wants to get into the depot and that's the only possible path. The chances of enemies attacking it before it slides down the ramp is very, very low - so it will pretty much always make it in (and out!) of your fort. Since it's underground the whole way, it's protected too.

Then just extend the tunnel to the heart of your fortress, plop the depot down there (and some traps if you are so inclined) and use an 'airlock' system to keep enemies from getting in.

You can then make the real entrance as decorative as you want without having to worry about fitting the caravan in

An alternate idea is building the depot UP inside the mountain somewhere above ground level, then extending a bridge to the edge of the map (bridges, like roads, can go right to the edge). The wagon will automagically spawn on top of the bridge to drive in to your depot.

[shadowform]

Code: [Select]

+.....+
+.....+
+.....+
+DDDDD+
+DDDDD+
+DDDDD+
+DDDDD+
+DDDDD+
++X+X++

Wall= +
Floor= .
Door= X
Depot= DSimple design for a depot.  Optionally you can narrow the tunnel to 3 wide instead of 5.

As for defending this entrance, set up the z-level above the corridor as follows:

Code: [Select]

+ooooo+
+ooooo+
+ooooo+
+ooooo+
+#####+
+.....+
+.....+
+.....+
+.....+

Wall= +
Floor= .
Open space= o
Fortification=#
Depot= DEssentially it's an elevated archery tower.  The elevation prevents enemies from using fortifications for cover, and the entire thing is contained underground so your marksdwarves won't suffer from any sort of sun sickness.

If you want an easy surface access route other than the depot without walling off a huge area, you can do this:

Code: [Select]

........
..+^^+..
..+..+..
..+bb+..
..+bb+..
..+..+..
..+SS+..
..++++..
........

ground= .
wall= +
pressure plate= ^
bridge= b
stairs= SSet each pressure plate as a single-use plate linked to the bridge.  When an enemy tries to enter the bridge will seal automatically -although you'll also have to manually reset the bridge with a lever, and build new pressure plates each time it gets used.

[FaultyLogic]

This thread inspired my to try something new.

So, my new entrance is a vertical chasm. And you have to run down along the ledge (that I've dug out a bit) a few laps to get to a draw-bridge that leads into the main hall of my fortress. 

And with the outside being a desert filled with scorpions and mountain gnomes (damn them to hell!), there is really no reason to ever go outside. Except maybe working on pointless mega-projects.

There is a natural plateau above my entrance with a cliff in the shape of a half-moon, making it look like an amphi theatre or something. I think I'm going to make that into a gladiator arena.

[Andir]

I always try to build from the exact center of the map outward.  The map is even numbered width and height so I usually have an even numbered structure in the center... if I plan on having my entrance on the same axis with the center line I tend to make my entrance into something like so:

Code: [Select]

############......############
#############D##D#############
#########O###....###O#########
#######.....#....#.....#######
#######.....X....X.....#######
#######.....X....X.....#######
#######.....X....X.....#######
#######.....#....#.....#######
#############....#############
             ....             
             ....   moat?     
In the 5x5 spaces I'll build a trade depot (or 2 for symmetry) with Floodgates(X) for security.  I sometimes route optional Doors(O) to my resource silos reserving the main entrance for non-workers.  If I put in two depots, I'll alternate openings.  If I don't put in two, I'll make one spot into a crossbowmen "trap" with ammo dumps(A) and fortifications(F).  If I do that, I usually leave a moat between them and the main path and extend a bridge(B) from the depot space.  (This also adds security for the optional direct path to the stockrooms.)

Code: [Select]

#####...#............#...#####
#####...######DD######...#####
#####...##   BBBB   ##...#####
######D###   BBBB   ###O######
####A....#   BBBB   #.....####
####A....F   ....BBBX.....####
####A.L..F   ....BBBX.....####
####A....F   ....BBBX.....####
####A....#   ....   #.....####
##########   ....   ##########
             ....             
             ....   moat?     It kind of breaks the symmetry of buildings/purpose, but it retains digging symmetry.

[bamorrow]

I like to wall off a courtyard type area on the surface.  Put an armor stand in the middle of the courtyard.  Make that the barracks.  Place the Depot beyond the barracks.  Both caravans and enemies must pass through my sparring military.

[mal7690]

Depending on the amount of space I have around my chosen entrance I either build the trading area (with traps of course for those pesky elves) outside in a secure courtyards or just inside the fortress.