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[anotherthing]

Most cavern lakes that I've seen go to the edge of the map in most places. So, assuming I want to drain one, will a simple channel do it eventually or do I need to do something funky with them in order to drain a lake that goes off the map? I've got one channel draining dumping water in to a deeper cavern right now(and I was too stupid to put a floodgate in there just in case).

[gtmattz]

Water will flow in from the edges indefinitely, so you need to dam it somehow.

[smjjames]

If they touch a map edge, then it will have the same sort of infinite water source as rivers, lakes, and oceans use.

Still, it can be like an ocean where the cavern lake fills up the entire or almost the entire cavern layer.

To answer your question, you've got an eternal waterfall there unless you plug it up (or the refill rate can't keep up) if its a lake that touches the edge.

eit: ninja'd

[anotherthing]

Erg. Okay, that's going to be rough. There's a few places where there are tight choke points, which should be easy to dam up by pumping water over the location and putting up a wall. The other place is 10-14 squares wide. That'll be tough without magma, which I have yet to find. Then again, I've also never had the pleasure of pumping magma!

[smjjames]

If you have enough room for the digging involved, you can also drop a chunk of undug rock on the spot.

[Hyndis]

Build a pump over the channel to pump water out of the channel. Then build a floodgate or bridge there. Link it up to a lever and then remove the pump once its done.

Its the same way you build a dam across a river.

[anotherthing]

Will it drop 15 levels and stay in tact? Because that's how far that thing is going to have to fall.

[smjjames]

As long as you don't accidentially reduce it to flooring, yes it will stay intact. Just be careful with the channeling if its your first time doing something like that, but once you get the steps down, its easy.

You WILL have to sacrifice someone to dig away the final bit of flooring that will let it drop, unless you rig up something.

[anotherthing]

I figure I'll mine it out first, then channel it out. That should make things fairly easy. Then plug up the hole so flying FBs don't get in to my fortress. Here's to hoping this works!

[Hyndis]

Build a support and link it to a lever. Completely safe to do. You can use a grate to allow dwaves to escape the area before you trigger the collapse. Dwarves can walk across grates over open space, but grates are not structural and will not support objects, so even though the grate is linking the collapse area to the rest of the fortress the grate will not prevent the collapse. Only the support will.

[anotherthing]

I see why you were talking about supports now. I didn't think the cave in would cause such suction that it would suck the dwarf chipping away the last piece of natural floor 15 levels down with the rock chunk. Good thing supports also work from the ceiling as well as the floor. The next chunks will be support dropped!