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[Drakeero]

Location: found!
Savescums: Ready! [gonna need a lot of them for this project]

Idea? a small, thin tower as high as I can make it.  Sort of like the Tower of Babel mega-project idea except I want to vary it a little.  For starters, its not going to be "as thin as I can make it."  I'm not that good at planning ahead.

There will be numerous balconies sticking out for decoration/workshops/farms.  I also have a bad feeling that if a balcony has another balcony above it [even if its 80 z-levels higher] and is completely open to the air in all other directions it will still count as underground.

I have all three alignments present, terrifying mountains, joyous wilds hills [two sets of them with different rock layers], and untamed wilds forest.  To make things even better I got a candy-land castle.

DF Prospector has gone crazy at the mineral wealth on this map.

Valuable Metals Ores:

Platinum -  2,286
Gold - 222,491
Native Silver - 80,785
Horn Silver - 6,463

Regular Metal Ores:

Cotton Candy - 6,662
Aluminum - 8,356
Native Copper - 33,355
Hematite - 46,708
Tetrahedrite - 30,8358
Galena - 185,235

B Coal - 1842

Important Construction Stones:

Microcline - 1,212,984
Cobaltite - 183,336
Malachite - 13,236
Olivine - 103,902
Kimberlite - 9,832

EDIT: Flux stones:

Calcite - 1192 [wth?  Embark said I had both a chalk and marble layer!]


The blue and green range stones are important because I've decided to make the tower mainly out of microline [think a more elegant sky-blue to greenish blue variety you see on google images rather then the eye-raping bright cyan you see on screen] with various other blues and greens for highlights.

Still though, pretty much every stone in the game is available to some degree or another [and I think I got some sand] and I have a seemingly endless supply of gemstones in the ground.

The caverns are incredibly massive especially the 2nd and 3rd ones.

Here's the stages of construction I have in mind:

1: Establishing a base of operations.
2: Massive massive massive strip mining.  Think open air strip-mine straight down to the candy land castle [yes, I'm going to expose it to the air, and most likely numerous caverns along the way].  Each level will have some portions along the edges still "underground" to act as storage for supplies but will be open to the massive open-air column.
3: Channeling to use the magma sea to make a large moat around the castle [after clearing it out of course.
4: Construction of the tower shall begin with the castle as a foundation and will reach as many z-levels as I can make it.
5: Decorations.  Beautiful bridges to underground passages for the "under" part of the tower to roadways through the caverns and to the surface.  Bridges from the surface to higher up on the tower.  And of course the decorative ledges.

Any ideas, suggestions, recommendations, warnings?

Keep in mind, I'm going to be save-scumming like mad in case total wipe-outs happen [like one of those really really nasty FB's].
An entire tower height pump-stack is planned to bring glorious magma to the very top [magma-falls optional]
I'll be importing pitchblende to hand-wave the "magic" of dwarven water reactors in the tower core.

Warnings I'm looking for:

Stuff other then stairs that could cause too much lag.
Any other pitfalls from people who have done similar projects.

Recommendations:

Planning ahead on where to construct rooms, workshops, etc.  Eventually looking to move everything of note into the tower except maybe some external bulk-stockpiles of junk. [Trade Depot goes inside as well].

Suggestions:

Style!  Appearance! [no arguing the micrcoline please].  Putting the gold, silver, and platinum to good use!  Any other uses for other colors [I probably got them.  Cinnibar, whatever.]

Edits likely!

[dogstile]

Make it a 3x3 tower, with stairs going up the middle then a balcony for anything you need if you want it to be thin and safe.

[Xenos]

Make the stairs of cotton candy.  Only the best for your dwarves of course. 

(Alternate microcline and cobaltite.  Just because )

[Drakeero]

Make it a 3x3 tower, with stairs going up the middle then a balcony for anything you need if you want it to be thin and safe.

Well, its gonna be a little bit bigger then 3x3 if I'm going to incorporate a pumpstack and water reactors into the main part of the tower.  Balconies may be a little dangerous if I end up with too many skeletal giant eagles.... even though the mountains are terrifying I was HOPING against fate that I would get a regular Giant Eagle or so that I could breed and train into vicious tower protectors.

By the way, what do you mean by "safe"?

[Graebeard]

Warnings I'm looking for:
...
Any other pitfalls from people who have done similar projects.

Lag.  Lag, lag, lag.

I'm down with the strip mining but I urge caution.  If you dig too much stone that you won't need for construction you'll slow it to a crawl.  I'd try to limit digging the stone you don't need and smashing the stone you do dig.

[Lormax]

What Graebeard said.  I'm in the middle of a megaproject as well (I have a thread around here somewhere).  Recently I had to stop all work on the project itself and go into save-fps mode.  Mass dump designations into a atomsmasher setup specifically built to get rid of excess stone, blocks, etc that I'll never use.

[veok]

Calcite - 1192 [wth?  Embark said I had both a chalk and marble layer!]

I believe DF Prospector specifically ignores layer stones. Since Calcite occurs only within limestone or MARBLE, its presence merely confirms that you have a marble layer.

[Drakeero]

oooh, that stinks.

I'm kinda OCD and wanna use everything... EVERYTHING

I suppose I can get a healthy crafts program going to help fund this monstrosity.  The strip mine itself is actually supposed to form a sort of funnel rather then a straight tunnel for the tower.  It would start as a small magma moat around the candy castle and widen as it goes upwards [requiring larger and larger bridges and connecting walkways] until its a rather large crater in the ground looking down over a series of exposed ledges [and sliced open caverns].

So.... basically quantum stockpiles do not reduce lag?  That sucks.

Also, I'm capping my population at 30 dwarves and turning off invasions.  Anything past 30 and the hauler army is heavenly but laggy.  I wonder if I can clear out the candy castle with 20 troops....

[Urist Imiknorris]

Ten years of danger room training would go a long way.

[Halnoth]

I wonder if I can clear out the candy castle with 20 troops....

Maybe, if they are all legendary and decked in full candy suits + weapons.

[Double A]

Hey, you can have my microcline if you need any more.

(Also, cotton candy?)

[jei]

>>Any ideas, suggestions, recommendations, warnings?
>>Keep in mind, I'm going to be save-scumming like mad in case total wipe-outs happen

Beware of the savescummers' curse, the filled up hard drive or disk space and the fact that DF does not check for available diskspace
but instead quietly creates a corrupted save and won't tell you about it until your next restart.

[Drakeero]

>>Any ideas, suggestions, recommendations, warnings?
>>Keep in mind, I'm going to be save-scumming like mad in case total wipe-outs happen

Beware of the savescummers' curse, the filled up hard drive or disk space and the fact that DF does not check for available diskspace
but instead quietly creates a corrupted save and won't tell you about it until your next restart.

Duly noted, I have about 800 GB free and I do tend to police my saves and stuff.

[Double A]

That's what back-ups are for.

*makes back-ups of saves*

[breadbocks]

Tha- That's a lot of Microcline. More than 1.1mil? That's ridiculous and not even funny. But seriously, that is a luck draw, there.