Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JoshBrickstien]

For a Mega Project (Dwarrowdelf) I'm having to dig out 4-Z level tall columns in a massive great room. What's the best way to do this? Furthermore, will engravings be destroyed in the tile next to them is channeled? I can foresee this challenge being very difficult...

[HermitDwarf]

No they won't, and the easiest way is to just designate one entire floor for channeling at a time.

[JoshBrickstien]

No they won't, and the easiest way is to just designate one entire floor for channeling at a time.

Won't that cause cave-ins though?

[Lord Vetinari]

The engravings on the wall are destroyed only when the wall itself is destroyed. You can do whatever you want with the floor nearby. My suggestion is to dig one z level at a time, engrave what you want to be engraved, and then proceed with the next floor. It's slow, but safe.

If you already dug all the four levels, you'll have to build artifical floors and stairs as scaffold for your engravers and then destroy them when all the artwork is done. Remember to start from the higher floor, when you destroy the scaffold.

EDIT: ninjaed twice.

[Lord Vetinari]

Won't that cause cave-ins though?

No. Caveins courrently happen only when a tile has no connection with the rest of the world. You can support the whole fort with a single tile of floor. A more realistic cavein system will be done, eventually, but now that's how it works.

[JoshBrickstien]

Won't that cause cave-ins though?

No. Caveins courrently happen only when a tile has no connection with the rest of the world. You can support the whole fort with a single tile of floor. A more realistic cavein system will be done, eventually, but now that's how it works.

I was speaking more of the inevitable of my miners making little islands of stone....

Also, what's the best way to get lava out of my Volcano to start my glass industry at ground level?

[Lord Vetinari]

I can't help with the volcano (i usually go for the magma sea). As for the giant room, that's exactly why it's safer to dig one level at a time: this way there's no hole on the lower level that can cause caveins.

[JarinArenos]

I was speaking more of the inevitable of my miners making little islands of stone....

If you're working with entirely solid stone at the start, with nothing mined, you should be fine. Just go one level at a time, then when you're done engraving, designate the entire floor (minus the columns, of course) for channeling. No chance for cave-ins.

[JoshBrickstien]

I was speaking more of the inevitable of my miners making little islands of stone....

If you're working with entirely solid stone at the start, with nothing mined, you should be fine. Just go one level at a time, then when you're done engraving, designate the entire floor (minus the columns, of course) for channeling. No chance for cave-ins.

And.... What if I was an idiot and started on the bottom Z-Level? Should I just shift the designs so that it becomes the top?

[JarinArenos]

Unless you really like micromanagement, yes. Alternately, carefully mine out every level, channeling the floor away one square from the pillars so the pillars and walls provide no support. Instead, have all four floors completely supported by a single collapsable pillar on the bottom, rig a lever to it, get everyone to cover... and enjoy the big boom as you pull the lever.

[NecroRebel]

The best way to dig out a large, multilevel chamber is to first designate the entire thing to be made into staircases (top level down stairs, bottom level up stairs, everything else up/down stairs), then let it be dug out. This will give your dwarves access to everywhere in the chamber, including the walls, for smoothing and engraving. Once that's done, designate the whole top layer to be channeled. The dwarves will do it from below, and the staircases will support the top layer, so no caveins will occur even when your miners dig a checkerboard pattern. Then, once that's done, designate the next level for channeling, let it be done, and repeat until you're at the bottom. At that point, simply designate the room full of unconnected up stairs for up stair removal, and in the end, you'll have a complete, clear, open space, several z-levels high, and all with no danger of caveins and relative ease of designation.

To get magma out of a volcano, designate part of the volcano's wall to be dug out. Watch it. As soon as a miner is working on it, designate several other places for digging elsewhere far away. The idea is to make it so that as soon as the volcano wall is breached, the miner sees another dig job waiting, and goes to do it, sending them running away from the inevitable wall of magma coming their way. They will almost always outrun the flow, in my experience. If you'd like, you could even cancel the "extra" dig job after your miner is out of harm's way, though if you've got multiple miners the others might get to the dig zone first and so cause trouble if you really didn't want that wall dug, so make sure it's somewhere unimportant.

[JarinArenos]

Huh, I'd never heard the stair trick. That makes a lot of sense.

[Lord Vetinari]

And.... What if I was an idiot and started on the bottom Z-Level? Should I just shift the designs so that it becomes the top?

It's longer and requires a little bit of micromanagement, but nothing really serious. Leave the bottom (fourth) level alone for now, start from the first (top one) and do all the normal work for the first and second level. You'll end with a floor on the third level, just above the fourth. Then channel away only small amounts of floor tiles per time.  Work woth rows starting from the opposite side of your exit and everything will be fine.

[pixl97]

I was speaking more of the inevitable of my miners making little islands of stone....

Also, what's the best way to get lava out of my Volcano to start my glass industry at ground level?

make good sized rooms close to the volcano, dig out the top room first, then channel down at one place and cut the second room. Make sure the bottom room has no way out but the channel up, we don't want !!fun!! do we? cut a path to the side of the volcano, then smooth the tile on volcano (the hot tile), cut fortifications in to the volcano (d - a). The bottom room will fill with lava. Now you can channel holes out in the top room and make your glass factory.