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[Jimmy]

It's nice to know I'm not the only ramp fort fan out there.

[Indricotherium]

If you see yourself in that wall of quotes, you have just been challenged!

lol! If it makes you feel any better, in my current ongoing fort the project after the New Grand Hall Entrance With No Traps is to build a ramp spiral off to the north of the current Shaft of All Things. After which the staircase in the middle of said shaft is to be decommissioned. I'm pretty new to actually playing DF and am using this fort to actually learn how to do various things.

[Tenth Speed Writer]

I've long since moved far, far away from efficient construction.


My living spaces have lately incorporated a three-z-level format. 2x3 townhouses are laid out in visible avenues, with up and stairs interspersed between them. These lead to either similarly designed structures or legendary/champion manors. If a water source is available, I may dig the level below out to resemble a canal and place peasant housing alongside it.

Workshops are given individual walls and doorways (good for isolating failed strange moods!), and are typically branched off in an opposite direction from the residential area. Fancy meeting areas are placed wherever possible; yes, the parties are annoying, but it keeps moods up and looks quite spiffy.

Joining the two distinct areas, I like to place a massive meeting hall with all the trimmings; platinum statues, artifact items (which aren't already in noble rooms), and such things. The Trade Depot is usually adjacent, and is every bit as lavish (you gotta make a good impression on them merchants, y'know?).

One goal I keep in mind with each fort is to leave a direct path from the entrance to a spot reserved for the ruling noble's throne room and personal space. I haven't been able to get a ruler to appear in this version ( :[ ), but when I do, I'll be ready. : D

The primary mineshaft is typically plopped down in the middle of the aforementioned central hall. The prison and barracks are often set down a few z-levels, but not far from the shaft itself. The tombs are even further than that, and are smoothed and decorated for even the most lowly dwarf. (The proletariat often have clustered burial chambers; soldiers, legendary craftsdwarves, and nobles receive individual monuments with varying levels of bling.)



That's all urban design, though. When it comes to small scale architecture , I'm personally a fan of multi-z-level complexes, diagonal room corners (which can be just gorgeous with a good tileset), and the odd extended corner or staggered wall. Lately I've been playing with above-ground forts, and I'm considering trying to design a star-fort style layout. Marksdwarves and fortifications can stand in for the cannon ports, but by using multiple entrances and overlapping fields of fire, it wouldn't be hard to both split up siege squads and funnel them into kill zones.



It's easy enough to get a fortress to have substance, but style is another game entirely. : )

[Snook]

Tenth... Your sig is oddly fitting for this thread.

[ECrownofFire]

That is extremely fitting, but what would cruel and unusual architecture look like? I'm thinking of something designed by Escher. Somebody go raise him from the dead, he has to design a fortress.

[ThaMuzz]

Hollow out the floors of every hallway.  Build bridges instead, rigged to random pressure plates scattered around the fortress.  What passage may be used change randomly.  There is always the chance that the floor will fall out from beneath you.

That cruel and unusual enough?

[Snook]

It's only cruel if the drop cripples them but doesn't kill. And only unusual if you have FB's under the bridges.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

I made a giant wooden tree once.
was friggin hard to do.

[Tenth Speed Writer]

Hollow out the floors of every hallway.  Build bridges instead, rigged to random pressure plates scattered around the fortress.  What passage may be used change randomly.  There is always the chance that the floor will fall out from beneath you.

That cruel and unusual enough?

I approve.



I'm a fan of the classics, myself: The pressure plate spike hallway of butchery greeting, the drawbridge/dwarven atom smashers, and so forth.

If we're going for the caves, I do enjoy giving my grand retracting entrance bridge a lovely view of the GCS slik production range. There's also the nifty idea, if you've fooled with a pump stack like in my last fortress, of having a strategically plated, pressure plate linked molten deathshower overflow release valve for your overhead magma reservoir.

[Dorten]

Modular and effective, and still not boring
Modular and effective, and boring (the main fort, not the top castle)
Modular and ineffective, and died from tantrum spiral

I like modular design

[Cruxador]

Hollow out the floors of every hallway.  Build bridges instead, rigged to random pressure plates scattered around the fortress.  What passage may be used change randomly.  There is always the chance that the floor will fall out from beneath you.

That cruel and unusual enough?

Changing passageways are not the most unusual. Surely we can think of better? Also, filling the under-passageways with some annoyance would be rather grand. I'd say single whip traps. Or, if modding were involved, train some small impotent creature as a war animal, and chain many of them there. Or both.

[Protactinium]

I tried a ramp-only fortess once, to avoid dullness caused by a vertical supershaft.

I had a "circular" "stairway" made out of ramps. Basically a supershaft that was slightly less effiecent.

My standard fort-building involves building a circular stairway made out of ramps AROUND the vertical supershaft. The 3x3 or 5x5 supershaft in the middle, surrounded by double-thick walls with two doors in a row at each cardinal direction, with a 3x3 spiraling pathway.

I take huge issue with making organic and inefficient building designs because they're less "boring": they're bad for being functional. With the SuperShaft-RampWay setup, I allow a way for caravans to travel to the bottom floor where the trade depot is. I allow a way for the invaders to get funneled into a small passageway. I allow a way for gravity to pull the riverwater down that small passageway and push the invaders into the traps surrounding the trade depot at the bottom. I allow for a way for water to drown the visiting elves if I cannot afford everything I want from that caravan. I allow a way for the dwarves to travel to the surface quickly through the supershaft but can lock the doors and cut off the shaft halfway with a Panic Level if invaders are coming.

You can make a curvy, fancy piece of art or whatever. I'm going for the most effective fort at that sacrifices neither production nor defense from the brutal orcs. I appreciate functional, plain, modular, boring and love my dull grays, my cold concrete; it's all the beauty I need.

(I do limit myself from making the most defensible and functional ever because I feel things like making every scrap of unused floor into up/down staircases and mass-producing cage traps along the borders as overpowered.)

[Snook]

Having been inspired by the design of Ardentdikes, I've decided to co-opt this plan and make it my own. Specifically, cramming more workshops into the workshop "areas" and by using ramps to allow me to make very dense, yet spacious, housing for my dorfs, as such:

Code: [Select]

z0

#############
#+++#+++#+++#
#+++#+++#+++#
#+++#+++#+++#
##=###=###=##
##+###+###+##
##V###V###V##

z-1

#############
#+++#+++#+++#
#+++#+++#+++#
#+++#+++#+++#
###=###=###=#
###+###+###+#
#VA+#VA+#VA+#

z-2

#############
#+++#+++#+++#
#+++#+++#+++#
#+++#+++#+++#
#=###=###=###
#+###+###+###
#A###A###A###
z-1 is on the main walkway level, and z0 and z-2 are above and below the walkway, connected by ramps (A, V). Each room is 3x3 with a door and enough room for a bed, cabinet, chest, table, chair, and statue. Not shown: I also put noble housing at the ends of the hallways. Anywhere from 3 3x4 rooms to 3 5x5 rooms can be placed, since it's relatively out of the way. It's also the ONLY place I'll be using stairs, to connect each floor of noble housing.

Using this allows for 18 dwarves to live in style in a very small area, with space for even a king! Very modular, very efficient, and very, very pretty. I can't remember whose fort I got this idea from, but if you read this: Thanks!

[RCIX]

90% of this thread is rephrasing "I like to have a square/circular design with a central staircase/rampway that everything else branches off of." This is something that's always kind of annoyed me when I skim the DFMA - regardless of the specifics, the general designs are always the same. People also seem to repeat the same kind of designs across their own forts as well. I don't really come across really interesting, unique designs very often any more, probably about once a month. I'd like to see more gentle curves and sprawling organic waterways, that sort of thing. All this modular design is efficient and all, and no offense to those who use it because it's a good tactic and I completely understand why, but frankly I find it really damned boring.

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V

Personally, I favor the vertical shaft design.  Everything in the fortress grows out of this central shaft

In a nutshell, a horizontal hall leading to a Shaft of All Things.

A vertical shaft with all common areas around it a few Z levels deep.

I tend to use a Greek cross layout.  It's laughably easy to designate, too: a 3x3 staircase array in the center

Between each 19x19 block there is 3-wide up/down stair, which goes from top of cube to the very bottom.

I go with a highly modular design. Every room, including apartment complexes, are eight-by eight and laid upon a grid, with stairways in the middle and two by two doorways leading between rooms

I usually make one massive center hallway with rooms off of that, one of those being the central staircase shaft.

a single shaft which i build off of on various levels to do stuff.

Cross shaped hallway with staircase in the middle and with three 7x7 rooms in each corner.

In the center was a 3x3 stairwell.

For now I just use a tower type thing most of the time. 3x3 staircase in middle.

If you see yourself in that wall of quotes, you have just been challenged!

@All in that list: Sign up with Nutfallen, and you get honour

[alway]

I've recently taken up building dumbbell tenements for housing. If done right, they actually look pretty neat from DF's top-down view. By making them somewhat large, you can fit groups of dwarves into one rental unit. And since the floorplan for dumbbell tenements calls for a living room and parlor, it actually ends up making your dwarves happier than your standard 3x3 or 2x3 bedrooms.

I've pretty much given up on boring efficiency. If I wanted to deal with efficiency I would go program.