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[Garrie]

OK. So I want to build a dining room my dwarves will be proud of.

I am thinking about 5 z-levels, with some sort of engraved obelisks in a geometric pattern stretching up 4 of those levels - ie so the very top level is just a large engraved room.

I will go about this by just digging a room the full size at the top, leave a ring around the outside (for the smoothing/engraving), then work down.

Any ideas for a nice way to design this? ie - use bitmap view on paint? Calc? Some other block-based drawing tool?

I don't want to designate it and get it wrong!

[Starver]

OK. So I want to build a dining room my dwarves will be proud of.

I am thinking about 5 z-levels, with some sort of engraved obelisks in a geometric pattern stretching up 4 of those levels - ie so the very top level is just a large engraved room.

I will go about this by just digging a room the full size at the top, leave a ring around the outside (for the smoothing/engraving), then work down.

Any ideas for a nice way to design this? ie - use bitmap view on paint? Calc? Some other block-based drawing tool?

I don't want to designate it and get it wrong!

There are several ways I'd do it, but I don't think I would necessarily design 'off fortress'.  You can 'paint and unpaint' your ground-level (or whichever level you'd prefer to start on) to your heart's content before letting the miners in there, and then replicate it to the other levels accordingly.

And while you could leave 'engraving platforms' around the edge, and even build stairway scaffolds to get into and out of them (including when you finally remove them), I I think the way I would do it is to define each level of the dining room by normal "dig" squares, to either:

• To carve out 5 single Z-level rooms, which I would then (safely and carefully, to avoid cave-ins!) channel the floors away from all Z+ levels, as each level is complete (i.e. walls and obelisks smoothed/engraved where they are present), as well as removing the access stairwell(s) if required, and not kept as a permanent feature, or
• Only have access to the top level, and then once you have your miners (and the requisite engravers) in there trap them by any means at your disposal, wait until the walls (or some of your walls) are properly finished then re-designate all the appropriate non-obelisk tiles on the layer below as ramps, to let the miners carve away that layer and sink everyone (miners and engravers) down a level, repeating until at the intended 'ground' level of your room, from which you can now define the intended exits.

Either way: a pro-tip for the top of the obelisk, after removing the rock from around it, designate it to be dug as a ramp.  A ramp on an isolated rock gives (at least the appearance of) a spire.  But a ramp next to one or more bits of un-mined rock will disappear if you 'rampify' all adjacent un-mined ones.  This is as an alternative to building an isolated ramp on a floor tile.  Though don't forget that this does make the Z+1 level into a down-tile, so don't create your up-ramp on the maximum Z of your dining room unless you want a 'down-ramp' inclusion on the Z above.

(My suggestions really could do with diagrams, but I'm sort of hoping I've not made the description so obtuse that they're obligatory.)

[Garrie]

I've just played for the night followed by killing the process. Somehow I left a disignated pathway and my legendary minor wreaked havok in his random spirally way while I was busy with another job (walling in my overground section).

I'm thinking to let them in from the bottom, dig scaffolding around my central obelisk, then start digging down from the top as you mentioned. Something like, a free-standing set of up/down stairs in a large ring concentric around my central obelisk - which I will channel out. If I can get one obelisk right working from outside of it, then I should be able to do the rest.

I was hoping for a legendary engraver before I started (for masterpiece engravings) but that doesn't look like happening.

[Dorf3000]

Pro-(no, really)-tip: designate what you want the room to be, then convert all the tiles next to the walls and pillars as up/down stairs (except the bottom floor which should be up stairs of course!).  That way you'll have access for your engravers and you can mine away the floors and stairs from the top when you are done.  It's not uncommon to be able to dig out a large room in half a season and then wait 6 months for it to be smoothed and engraved, even with legendary engravers.

If it's an exceptionally large room you could use the ramps method, but you have to be careful then not to have miners dig ramps under unmined ramps on the level above.  That leaves a floor behind that promptly falls and crushes your dorfs or at least knocks them out.

[Starver]

If it's an exceptionally large room you could use the ramps method, but you have to be careful then not to have miners dig ramps under unmined ramps on the level above.  That leaves a floor behind that promptly falls and crushes your dorfs or at least knocks them out.

Indeed.  When I ramp-remove (e.g. my current long-standing mega-project, which is taking a lot of playing time for not very much game-time), I often do the ultimate micromanagement by setting ramps around the perimeter (when taking away outside hills) or the centre (if mining out caverns) and then as this external(/internal) ramping is completes around any part of the border, I designate the exposed areas.

Of course, with the take up of new ramp jobs being biased towards those that are adjacent to a just-finished ramp, and then a preference for northerly/westerly positioned ramps if necessary, you can see how with a number of miners wandering onto and out of the worksite, it all gets a mite muddled, so I've come up with coping strategies.

I aim, in the end, for external ramp-removal to end on a single lone ramp (or a 2x2 square designated to be ramped, which itself ultimately degenerates into a lone ramp without any fuss), which I can [d]esignate for [z]ramp-removal (just to keep things tidy, not necessary), and then start on the level below.  Or I could even start on the level below under any successfully ramped Z+1 spot (or one away from the edge, to allow ease of movement by both the rampers and other agents wishing to route across my worksite) without risk of cave-in.  Although this is one reason why I wish there was a "down-ramp" designation option...  You could apply it to any spare square without having to ">" and "<" your way through the levels to make sure you're not digging in a problematic tiles (also, avoiding any trees that you haven't yet harvested, when still working at 'ground' level or anywhere else with two z-levels or more of soil laying undisturbed for long enough).

If I wasn't so anal about it, I could of course just designate ramps across the whole lot, and ignore all the isolated ramps that end up getting left on any level but the lower one (they don't cave-in, once dug, although there are other dangers).


I'm wondering whether to upload a map or even movie of my current mining operations. 

Spoiler: Brief verbal summary of the project (click to show/hide)

The whole 'quarry' is approx 125x125, with raw bedrock left in pillars (and a central pyramid) and currently varies from about four or five levels below the original surface at the moment to some still largely untouched plateaus that I'm nibbling away at (though I think I've rid myself of all tree-bearing soil) from a terrain which originally varied by a couple of Zs at the most).  Over the seven dwarf years, the four miners have between them (in-between injuries when I haven't been too careful, or failed to shield them from combatant archers peering down on them) mined out maybe 50,000 stone units (and an unknown number of soil ones), but could have done more if I hadn't been supporting a working 'side fortress' dug into the walls of the pit and building loads of walls/maintaining a trap'n'breed facility/water-management/keeping a trading post up and running/protecting myself from sieges and and lone hostiles/maintaining a largely non-dissatisfied (and ever growing) non-mining population.

[gtmattz]

Instead of going through all the trouble with the ramps, simply designate the whole 5 z levels as stairs (up stairs on the bottom, up/down for the middle levels, and down stairs on the top.  After carving out the 'block' of stairs have your detailers come in and do their thing, then, working 1 level at a time, designate all the stairs on each level to be channeled out and then remove the bottom level of stairs and smooth/engrave the floor of your now hollowed out 5 z level room.  This method is the most simple and safe way to do it, as there is no risk of cavein. 

[Starver]

I've never measured it, but carving a stairwell then channelling them away always seemed to me more time-consuming (in Dwarf-time) than putting one ramp (or carefully-sequenced channelling) option onto each tile of a level, plus a relatively small number of (d)(z)s as and when needed to tidy up.

Of course, it's far more time-consuming (player-time) to do the latter from a micromanagement POV.  Although it just occurred to me that the channelling away of the stairways process, alone, has more or less the same magnitude of management required as the non-anal ramp method.

(Without, of course, taking into account potential speed differences between enramping and the various other (d)esignation enactions.  Maybe next time I have some novice miners at hand, I'll do some relevant tests.)

[gtmattz]

When ramping you have to designate each layer individually and wait for the ramps to be dug, then you have to pause each level to get your detailers in to smooth the walls before doing the next level down.  With the stairs method you can designate all the layers of the room to be mined out in one go, then designate the whole area to be smoothed/engraved in one go.  The only real time sink is when it comes to remove them when you have to do it 1 layer at a time, but I have found that the benefits outweigh this small inconveniece (for me anyway).

[Hyndis]

I carve up/down stairs. Then smooth and detail the walls. I cut away the stairs linking the rest of the stairs to the walls and ceiling, and then all but one stair at the bottom.

I then send a dwarf I don't like to go remove that last up stair.

I can do the entire thing in 5 designations regardless of size or Z levels:

Carve stairs.
Smooth walls.
Engrave walls.
Remove perimeter stairs.
Remove last stairs to collapse.

[Starver]

YMMV.  (YMD)  I spend so much time with the game on pause doing trivial things like recording preferences and relatives and pets owned and skill levels to an external spreadsheet, never mind attempting to micromanage stockpiles, that playing-time for anything else matters little to me, and game-time alone is my yardstick.

(Not that I min-max everything to be done the fastest possible, and I'm wasteful of game-cycles in many other ways, although I admit it might look like it.)

Of course, if I actually used Dwarf therapist and various other tools (especially ones with export functions) I'd have far less work to do, but for one reason or another I don't

[gtmattz]

I carve up/down stairs. Then smooth and detail the walls. I cut away the stairs linking the rest of the stairs to the walls and ceiling, and then all but one stair at the bottom.

I then send a dwarf I don't like to go remove that last up stair.

I can do the entire thing in 5 designations regardless of size or Z levels:

Carve stairs.
Smooth walls.
Engrave walls.
Remove perimeter stairs.
Remove last stairs to collapse.

I like this, christening important spaces with fresh blood is always a good thing 

[Hyndis]

I could rig up a support and lever to collapse the excavation safely, but whats the fun in that?

[Garrie]

k, I think I've done something a bit wrong here.
I went in from the bottom. I've got a lot of stuff sorted out. My designs are happening.

For my stairs, which are attached to the part I want constructed:
How do I remove stairs from below, rather than having a dwarf stand on the thing that will be left inacessible when the stairs are removed?

I have 9 of these obelisks with quite a few stairs to take down. I get I need to remove the down stairs first... how do I do that "from below"?

Oh yeah, they are "dug" stairs not "built" stairs.

[Starver]

k, I think I've done something a bit wrong here.

If you have, I do it the same wrong all the time.

Designate the top level of a stairwell stack for channelling, with up-down tiles beneath that turning into 'just down's and ups clearing out, IIRC.  The miner that does the job will be forced to stand on the square he or she is on (perhaps with a little mutter, like a stranded miner seems to if they've trapped themselves on an isolated free-standing block during an unwise mass-channelling manoeuvre) and 'suffer' a 1-Z drop when it happens.  But I've honestly never noticed an injury from a miner doing that.  Though maybe a complete newbie miner without any decent S/A/T advances could be susceptible.

If it's a built stairway, designated removal of top-of-the-stack down/up-down stairwells works by the agent doing the job working from below (from my observation, please correct me if I'm wrong), and if you're really worried, build an adjacent stairwell, use that as a platform to channel from, then get any old Joe/Urist to deconstruct the scaffolding.  More work, but if there are any issues about channelling one's own footprint away, this would avoid them.

(IMHO, ICBW, YMMV, HTH, HAND)

[Haspen]

Dwarves won't 'destroy' dug stairs from below if they can access the them from higher ground.