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[Time Kitten]

Though tales of failure are all our interest, sometimes we need to look at how they could have been avoided.

I will start with my first.

Paving all my excessively long corridors with doors.

This has saved me from ambushes, countless cat miasma related problems, flooding by digging up into a magma pipe, zombie cave spiders, flooding by pressurizing my underground river, flooding by letting the ocean in the back door, fires of all sorts, and generally makes building destroyers move at ten steps a week, archer squads... all at no cost to dwarvern lives, as the doors behind the dwarf swimming to safety tend to close before they get anywhere, and each next one gennerates more air for them.  Don't ask me how the miner that dug up into the magma pipe survived.  I think he carved the next stair up while swimming in it or something.

And let's not forget 100+ admired a fine door recently every drink a dwarf goes for.

[Jetsquirrel]

ehhh.... ahhh the not finished magma fall, it died due to the magma and lagg, ITS SUCH a pain in the ass to pump all that magma and do all the shit to not leak etc. and it still leaked >.>

[Shrike]

Being VERY careful to leave a layer of undisturbed rock over my magma workshop area/stockpiles. No unwanted punching through of the floor and unleashing flooding on my unsuspecting populace.

And... Digging out below the magma channels so I don't have to deal with the "Digging canceled: Warm stone detected" if I ever want to check down there.

[yuriatayde]

I seem to be a very careful builder, I see lots of stories of "fun" but my fortresses, even my very early designs, never really get into any trouble. So I've started challenging myself with plans to work with magma, water, and no trap designs, but still my fortresses are invulnerable to accident. My worst mistake ever failed to kill a single dwarf!

My BEST idea ever though, would have to be that above ground apartment complex I built. More then 100 1x3 rooms spanning 4 z-levels, all built above-ground, good access by hallways, food delivered to the building, and it didn't take much space. That was my Tower to the Moon project, where I built a huge tower using nothing but green glass. I never got around to finishing it, lost my save file, but that apartment building was my Masterpiece.

[DaReaper]

making a 1x1 pit with a door that dosnt allow animals through

then putting all my animal in the pit from above.

its a 1 tile orgy of puppies, cows and god knows what.

saves a tone of fps aswell

[Itnetlolor]

Taken from the HAPPY thread:

I designed a pretty nifty cliffside fortress that should work well with the next version that I want to try out (sketched out of course).

Spoiler: Sketches are uploaded now (click to show/hide)

It involves a series of drop-bridges that serves as a path for merchants to cross, as well as a nasty surprise for any invaders.

It involves up to about 5-9 3x10 bridges, depending on how far out the fort goes, has a series of levers mapped out in a map/switch room with the lever setup as (1-(5-9)), (even and odd), and a red master switch take toggles all of them. Come along a siege, wait for them to cross halfway, then trigger the fort-most bridge, then the cliff-most bridge, then the master switch. The collector burrow at the bottom of the fall will collect the flattened treasure. To add to it, I have an interesting fortress style I'd like to try out that utilizes it.

For added security, the bottomside collection burrow has a similar defense, a small pit moat with it's small amount of drop-bridges (3-5 3x10, with gradually deepening pits funneling into the collection door/barracks, minimum depth is 3-5 Z, with the bridges 3Z above ground-level.) that'll make any bottom-side invaders fall into a pit either incapacitating them, or obliterating them, and further pulverizing any way-up invaders that took the express elevator to hell. Any survivors will have to answer to a pocket military force within the burrow. The closer to the bottom-side entry, the deeper you'll fall. And those bridges will have a similar nasty surprise disposal. If trapped in the middle bridge, you might survive, you reach the front door, and plummet... yeah; oh, and I forgot to add that there would be 2 floodgates to make full use of a progressive dropping of the bridges as well. It'll apply to topside and bottomside fort entries.1 at the gate, another at the cliffside ramp; and below, 1 at the bridge access, and 1 at the front door. Happy base jumping!

Oh yeah, and the levers will be color coded definitely as well as acting as a mini-map to make telling them apart heck of alot easier. The whole setup is to make use of at least 25-50 Z levels.

Oh, and after the initial keep is built, the main fort project will be purely aesthetically planned and beautiful, and the temp-keep will be made of the excavated stone, so that will be almost exclusively above ground, and serve as a farm and flank barracks burrow if I decide not to drop the bridges. To be equally fair, I would also have marksdwarves at the ready placed around the first series of bridges. So it'll either be a battle on the bridge, or a splatterfest for the utter hell of it. Heck, the system can also dispose of annoying or useless merchants (elves) if I feel up to it.

Now, the next challenge, to find a suitable location that'll work that I won't need to worry much about having to carve out the whole cliffside manually. And for additional aesthetic effect, I would carve a ramp-way to a slightly deep level to make the whole cliffside fort thing work out with a keep up above as overwatch/temporary fortress. Even watching it get built is going to be interesting. And if there's enough wood to collect, I might try to reproduce the Bloodfist as a cameo (with far less challenge/stress than my current setup). So i guess I'll need a magma source to make things work out even better. Finding a good spot might be a bit of a challenge.

The amount of thought put behind it makes me happy. Now for a suitable name for it.

When I finish Bloodfist, and/or when the next release is out, I wanna take the time to craft this sucker.

Plus, there could be plans to install an aerodrome, and maybe rebuild Bloodfist inside as a cameo appearance.

I hope cliffs return in the next release. This would work so well with them. Otherwise, I'll have to hunt for a place that's buggy enough to have it (one of those insane waterfall locations I guess).

And yes, I drew it first, then colored it in on Photoshop.

EDIT:
Oops. Took the thread for title value.

I recall rehydrating an almost lost fortress by channeling a river into it. It didn't end well.

[Time Kitten]

And... Digging out below the magma channels so I don't have to deal with the "Digging canceled: Warm stone detected" if I ever want to check down there.

This... I will do this from now on.

[wagawaga]

I still remember the day I decided to carve fortifications in the magma pipe to shoot the imps...

[Demonic Spoon]

I still remember the day I decided to carve fortifications in the magma pipe to shoot the imps...

Genius! You sir have given me a new sig.

[Banana]

I still remember the day I decided to carve fortifications in the magma pipe to shoot the imps...

you sir, are a winrar

im not sure what my best idea was so far; im a bit new to dwarf fortress.

although I would have to say my best idea so far was when-*sits for 5 minutes*-

I dont think ive had a good idea so far, lol

[Untelligent]

In my current fort, I made a device to store rainwater and pump it to a fountain at the base of my fortress. Unfortunately, I hadn't quite fully understood how u-bend pressure works, and I ended with water that was pressurized 1 z-level higher than it should have been.

The good news? I was toward the end of project move-everything-in-the-old-fort-site-to-the-new-fort, and I was wondering where I was going to put the farms (what with the new fort not having any soil). Oh, hey, this room's full of mud now! Brilliant! >_> <_< >_>


The other idea was an automatic pet removal system that I thought of back when the annoying cat bug first popped up, that consisted of utilizing pet-unpassable doors, a pressure plate, and a floor hatch near the dining room, but I never got around to making it and now my dining room doesn't have room for it. Maybe next version.

[Tenebrous]

I don't have any really genius ideas which have ever worked out particularly well for me in a fort, but I have a couple of minor good ideas:

• When I need to transfer power, I find that rather than using gears and axles it's far more efficient to just pump a small stream across my fort to power water wheels closer to where the power is needed.
• I've safely killed pond carp before simply by draining their pond.
• In many of my forts I create two entrances: one with a raisable bridge across a moat for trade wagons and another through a narrow winding maze full of repeating spikes.
• Never make anything my dwarfs might conceivably want to own. Ever.
• Seems obvious, but walling off exhausted mines to improve pathing speeds.
• Using [C]onstructed staircases for my central shaft so that all of my dwarfs get regular light exposure.
• Using a small piece of land I plan on obliterating later as a 'mining camp' (temporary fort) which will be demolished when my actual fort is ready for habitation.

[Darkond2100]

I built a 6 z-level upside down pyramid on top of a support. And a building destroyer came along....

[smokingwreckage]

A massive stockpile of booze, a massive stockpile of turtle shells.
Making making remote work-sites into remote towers accessible via tunnel.
Making sure the "inside" ie underground is outside of line-of-sight of my first row of defenses to avoid entrance-dance goblin bowman slaughter.


And moving that damn well from near that barracks.

[Satarus]

I built a 6 z-level upside down pyramid on top of a support. And a building destroyer came along....

I loled.

I dug out out a well that I fed from a brook. I had a floodgate linked to the lever right next to the well so it wouldn't overflow.  I wasn't paying attention and next thing I know water is gushing out of the well and all I see is Urist McDwarf cancels task Pull Lever: Dangerous Terrain.


In terms of brilliance, I constructed a small hammer outside my fort enterence on a support with a lever to it in my meeting area.  When a goblin seige came, I pulled the lever and the entire hammer collapses and the dust cloud knocks out the goblins.  Never lost a single marksdwarf to bowgoblins again.  I dubbed that little defense feature, the Hammer of Armok.