So... it's the year 19 now (I started in the year 4), and there has been progress. I only need to complete the magma-duct planning and plumbing, and then the magma pouring will begin.
To celebrate the occasion of the closing of the casting form, I will post some screenshots.
First, a bird's view on the madness. I had to move the camera very far up so that I could get the whole 13 tile length into Visual Fortress' window. The map's orientation isn't right in this way, I rotated the north to the right side.
Here's the view from a camera floating over the glacier:
.. and from the northeastern corner, which is over the ocean:
This round shape will be filled with the godly magma. I realized when I was creating that artificial island below the nearby pump stack that I needed to raise the magma-duct to the very top of the map, or I wouldn't be able to create the top part of the tower.
That's why there is this microcline tower standing in the middle of the view. But no worries, this pumpstack tower will be deconstructed in the end.
And finally a view from the top of the ooze layer (if I move the camera into the sea, the water just vanishes).
Note how the entire thing, including the artificial "floating island" is supported only by that 1 tile wide constructed floor. I like that, a lot.
You can also see some obsidian mess below the artificial island. I hope that I can keep this obsidian mess below my real tower to a minimum.
The fps are still quite decent, but I think I need to prescribe the antibaby pill to some of the ladies. They are at 80 dwarves now, and I don't really want them to have 16+ babies each. Maybe I'll do some gender-bending with Dwarf Companion. If that works with cats, then it should also work with dwarves.
But to my horror I realized that two of the original breeding pairs worship a god named "Ostar Rakustostar" (aka "Ostar Tombsburial"). He is associated with death - this means that half of my fortress' population are essentially goths.
Year 24The magma plumbing is done. It looks like a giant tri-dent with some extra spikes at the center one now; I went for extra door hatches to have full control over everything. Linking those 30ish doors and hatches drove me a bit nuts, but it works now. There is even an emergency lever system near the meeting hall.
Also, a bronze colossus made his way to my amazing fortress in this year. He spawned right inside of the caravan entrance; so the drawbridges wouldn't have helped even if I had remembered to keep them closed. I had no military at that point (or now), so I had to hope that there was no TRAPAVOID in his stats... which it wasn't. Quite anticlimactic. I don't really know what to do with him now, so I just keep him in the animal trap stockpile. Contrary to that lonely male polar bear, he can't be tamed or anything.
By the way, if I place his cage outside during mid-winter, he will become white instead of yellow. Nice!
Year 25Half a year later, the first obsidian disk is done!
The cave-ins below the central, unsupported blob didn't behave as expected though. There is just one 1x1 wide pillar below the center of it, instead of a whole mess of obsidian pillars.
Instead of that, the other obsidian blobs did drop some junk, so that the bottom of the sea looks quite messy now... but that will have to do.
I also ramped my way down to the bottom floor of the blob, so that the access for the downward level will be easier. I realized that all of this ramping will provide me with more obsidian than I could ever wish for... but I won't recover all of it, simply because dumping all of it would take years per z-level.
Oh, in other news, the baron and his followers appeared several years ago. The baron is a bit whiny about Nish living in a bedroom just as good as his, I think, but he will have to cope with that. I also dumped a silver statue into his bedroom to shut him up.
This is my first time with the economy, the baron, and 100+ dwarves, by the way. Previous fortresses died earlier because I grew bored or because the fps bomb had hit them.
Also, it's the first fortress where "there are no criminals" at all (also never a sheriff was appointed), so I let the hammerer roam around freely. The nobles so far don't have the really insane mandates as on previous fortresses ("build 3 star metal items", indeed... grr.) Nish the mayor is in particular very easy to deal with. She usually forbids the export of high boots, which my civilization can't produce at all; and there are no human or elven caravans.
It is, after all, a very peaceful map with mammoths, penguins (I took their [CHILD] token away, because they stole FPS at an alarming rate), the occasional polar bear, and one bronze colossus. I can't have any annoying siege distractions while I pump the magma.
I find it unsettling that pests like the concubine of the baron or the
tax collector can make mandates though.
Also, I've had 3 fathers-of-17 kids neutered by Dwarf Companion. Actually, they are female now, because I think that neutering them might not be the nicest thing ever or that DF will know what to do with a neutered dwarf at all. I went for the fathers because I don't know if there might be problems if I neuter the mothers while they're probably pregnant yet again. The 3 transsexuals still show up as "Husband" and "Father" in the relationship lists of their relatives, but know themselves that they are female now. This should keep the population explosion a bit at bay; and I am thinking of doing the same to the other fathers as well. Chinese style 1-baby-per-marriage policy might be coming up too.
It's sort of funny, actually. After the gender change surgery, they dropped unconcious and exhausted for a while (I had to set their exhaustion to lower levels so that they would get up again instead of lying around on the narrow catwalk.)
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Topic: 40d: Icemooon. Casting obsidian in an ocean (Read 2931 times)