Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Vanguard Warden]

I'm actually testing magma spawn as I write this, waiting for a tube to refill. As far as I can tell, magma spawns only shoot out directly from the magma vent tile at the bottom z-level. If there isn't a clear path through magma directly upward from the magma vent into open space, it won't spawn. If there's less spaces with vertical access to magma vents (like if a level of the tube is very narrow), the pipe refills much slower as well. The magma jets will shoot INCREDIBLY high sometimes. I've seen them two levels above the current surface of the magma, but no higher. This is easily dealt with just by not building that deep into the pit.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

a clear winning idea to me, would be to make your fort inside of a bottomless pit in a cone or elevator shaft-esque design, and pour magma on the top of it resulting in magma falls.

Aethetics? Bah! Cant have that without a little madness!

[orbcontrolled]

Hmm... Can that volcano-on-top-of-a-bottomless-pit bug be reproduced at will?

I vote for that.

[mattie2009]

Floor one of the levels with grates and regular lavaproof floors, and make it so that the invaders have to come down a flight of stairs onto the floored level and then lock both the front doors and the exit while they're all on the grated floor. Wait for the release and you get flashfried goblins.
Of course, you might need to substitute grates with hatch covers if you expect a liason. But what's the fun in having either no lava or all lava?

[slink]

Do they just destroy the bins outright, or do they destroy them because they're made of wood? I'd be willing to convert all my bins and barrels to iron if the goblins brought me enough.

That also might explain what kept happening to my pump.

I imagine it was because the bins were made of wood.

[qwertyuiopas]

Floor one of the levels with grates and regular lavaproof floors, and make it so that the invaders have to come down a flight of stairs onto the floored level and then lock both the front doors and the exit while they're all on the grated floor. Wait for the release and you get flashfried goblins.
Of course, you might need to substitute grates with hatch covers if you expect a liason. But what's the fun in having either no lava or all lava?

Have two layers, one hatches below the grates?

Better, use a retracting bridge one z-level under the grated room.

[Dorf3000]

Do they just destroy the bins outright, or do they destroy them because they're made of wood? I'd be willing to convert all my bins and barrels to iron if the goblins brought me enough.

That also might explain what kept happening to my pump.

I imagine it was because the bins were made of wood.

This is exactly why I no longer build my workshops/forges near to the magma pipe.  Damn snakes.

Right now I'm digging out a huge square pit in my ex-magma pipe, so I can construct a giant glass magma tube which will be the central feature of my fort.  It also keeps the snakes from being able to spawn anywhere important.

[assimilateur]

the pit creatures aren't all that tough if you have marksmen

Do pit creatures respawn now? I ask this, because your (and the OP's) wording suggests they do.

no bolts were being fired, which is the usual way in which I lose masterpieces.

I don't remember ever seeing spent masterwork bolts count as lost masterpieces in my forts. I thought they were exempt from that rule, the same way prepared meals are. Are you sure that's what's happening?

[Vanguard Warden]

Do pit creatures respawn now? I ask this, because your (and the OP's) wording suggests they do.

As far as I remember, they don't, and they haven't since DF was 2D. I kind of wish pit/magma pipe/UG river creatures did respawn, it would be another resource to harvest.

Do fire snakes destroy things that aren't magma proof, or just things that aren't fire-proof? If it's the latter, could I just make all my barrels and bins out of copper to protect them? I have a surplus of it I could use for the things steel and iron are too valuable for.

[Nadaka]

Are ye daft dwarf? Why would you build a fortress in a drained magma pipe... When you could build a fortress in a full magma pipe? I would be absolutely dwarven.

[qwertyuiopas]

Take the middle ground: Build the fortress in the drained pipe, then close the floodgates to refill it.

Maybe have one room at the bottom that can be used as an obsidian farm, a single aquaduct in and one out, no surface access, except over a bridge mid-pipe, and that would be covered with magma when the fort is fully surrounded...

[100killer9]

There should be a resovoir that refills itself (diagonal connections to a river), along with some pumps to let you obsidian farm and wet some stones for normal farming (or just breed livestock...)
It would be cooler if it was made of cast-obsidian. Or ice.

[Vanguard Warden]

I started working on a 3x3 site recently with an uncovered magma pipe in the middle and 5 tiles of underground river, coming south from the NW corner and hooking around the pipe to a chasm in the SE corner. I've already drained the pipe (though I had to un-drain it for a second to get a fire imp back in the magma without killing it) and it's staying steady at the bottom Z-level around 5/7. I set up a secondary pump and routed some water from the sealed-off UG river to make a small (though functional) obsidian factory around the chasm end of the river, which should double as a web-collection area when drained, though it could potentially grow tower caps as well when the obsidian is cleared out. I'm just starting to produce obsidian blocks to build everything with, and I'll move all my supplies down into the first levels of the chamber after they're properly constructed.

I'm building the fortress with a few rules in mind to force me to build things differently than I normally do. Firstly, I'm not building any hallways, just a 3x3 walkable balcony around the edge of the 19x19 central pit on each floor, all the way down to the magma vent itself. Secondly, I'm not building a vastly tall central staircase. Instead, I have a 9x9 spiral ramp structure three tiles wide going up the center of the entire structure connecting each floor. I can't think of any way to fit the tube's refilling into the design of the fortress as anything over than a doomsday flood, as it would render the central ramp unusable, stranding every dwarf on their individual level (or worse, individual rooms) unless I sealed it from the outside, which would ruin my security plan of shooting seigers on the spiral from the balcony.