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[acetech09]

So, occasionally, I find myself in positions where I want to do something fun with DF, but don't want to get in-depth with a fort since I'm currently running a megafort that I want to keep in my mind.

What projects can be done in just a couple hours as quick entertainment? Preferably they'd be dorfy, and any modding is allowed - this is for fun. Here are some of my ideas:

1. One I thought of is starting out with 500 turkey hens, and seeing how efficient I can make a dwarf egg production center.

2. Embark with my starting seven all thoroughly trained in swordsmanship, create free steel armor at embark, but no food/drink. Leave them alone and watch. +1 if in a terrifying/savage embark.

3. Use starting seven to dig an underground complex into a stone layer, with a plump helmet farm, brewery, and kitchen, bedrooms, living room. While the legendary engraver is engraving the whole thing, all the other dorfs will be socializing up above. When one pair finally gets married, they get burrowed into the room, sealed off from outside. Leave DF running overnight/for a few days. See what happens.

[Girlinhat]

Try and disable caravans, they'll pause you right up~

[Tevish Szat]

Enable mining on all dwarves, embark with 7 picks.  wait for them to gather equipment, then pause.  Burrow each dwarf in a random square and order it channeled.  Then have each one channel straight down until
1) They hit an obstruction (water, magma, tall caverns) and fall to their deaths
2) They hit SMR that's revealed somehow and can no longer dig.
3) They breach the circus.

See how many dwarves get how deep before their inevitable demise, and if migrants arrive to "salvage the fort" before the entire starting seven commit suicide somehow

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Back in the day there was a program called "Nano Fortress" that allowed to set your embarking screen to 1v1.
I used to embark with 7 military dwarves (usally marksdwarves), embark in an evil forest and attempt to hold out against the endless horde of undead wildlife while trying to dig trenches to ensure my safety.

Got quite a few interesting fortresses out of it. Migrants and Traders would have to run the guantlet while a Pillbox of hardened warriors would hold out against the dead. Good times! 

[SpiralDimentia]

Back in the day there was a program called "Nano Fortress" that allowed to set your embarking screen to 1v1.
I used to embark with 7 military dwarves (usally marksdwarves), embark in an evil forest and attempt to hold out against the endless horde of undead wildlife while trying to dig trenches to ensure my safety.

Got quite a few interesting fortresses out of it. Migrants and Traders would have to run the guantlet while a Pillbox of hardened warriors would hold out against the dead. Good times! 

This is the best idea I have ever heard of ever.

[Nightscar982]

Add the no eating,sleeping and drinking tag to the Nano fort military fight?

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Don't see the point of that. My pillbox troops lived, slept, ate and died defending the entrance. The first and last line of defence.

[ASCIt]

Hate to be that  guy, but it's "defense"...

[Starver]

Depends if you're British or not.

(My own spill-chucker likes "defence" but not "defense".  Also not "chucker", but I should change that, given how many times I mention my spill-chucker. )

Miniproject: Having decided that you can fit everything you want into a (say) 20x20 tower (up to the sky and in basements deep into the ground), set a cohort of miners to dig a trench around the site (maybe one or two tiles wide, depending on how you're accessing the materials) and use exclusively those rocks to build the walls upwards, as you increase the height.  (All else from the internal underground excavations can go towards the internal overground floors/etc, except for whatever minerals you process.)

Easier done than described, actually.

[Martholomule]

Back in the day there was a program called "Nano Fortress" that allowed to set your embarking screen to 1v1.
I used to embark with 7 military dwarves (usally marksdwarves), embark in an evil forest and attempt to hold out against the endless horde of undead wildlife while trying to dig trenches to ensure my safety.

Got quite a few interesting fortresses out of it. Migrants and Traders would have to run the guantlet while a Pillbox of hardened warriors would hold out against the dead. Good times! 

This is the best idea I have ever heard of ever.

Seconded.  When my current experiment collapses on itself (fully mined out, walls only, lots of magma) I'm going to approximate this.

[Shinotsa]

Perhaps you could try an above ground sparta fort, embarking only with bronze spears, shields, breastplates and helmets along with leather cloaks and loincloths. See how long you can last in a terrifying biome through gathering food from the land. Actually, aside from the horrible armor that might work depending on if there'd be enough points for all the dwarves to have proper shield/doding/armor skills.

[Sutremaine]

I probably have a different idea about what constitutes 'fun' in DF, but if I had a little time to kill or wanted a breather from a main fort I'd go off and mess with a part of the interface that I wouldn't normally. Embark somewhere different and see how the setup changes with it, mess around with a feature I haven't really used, try and build a fortress feature as efficiently as possible (the combined pumpstack / water reactor hasn't gotten off the drawing board, but I might get a decent danger pool set up next time), test that one thing I never get round to doing in a main fort...

Actually, aside from the horrible armor that might work depending on if there'd be enough points for all the dwarves to have proper shield/doding/armor skills.

You can have three skills at Proficient if you make the embark profile in a text editor. You do lose the ability to edit these skills on the embark screen proper, but that wouldn't matter in this case.

Hate to be that  guy, but it's "defense"...

I'm going to follow you around and correct you every time you use an American spelling now.

[Kattel]

Hate to be that  guy, but it's "defense"...

only if your American.

[SpiralDimentia]

Hate to be that  guy, but it's "defense"...

only if your American.

Who isn't these days. Even in England, you can enjoy our Cocacola and McDonalds.

[Jake]

Here's one that doesn't require starting a new fortress, and with several practical benefits: Universal conscription. Make or buy enough weapons and armour for every able-bodied adult and set schedules so that they each get at least a month of training every year, possibly a month of active duty as well. (I set up twelve marksdwarf squads and stagger their schedules so that one squad is guarding my gates while the next perform refresher training throughout the year, while my melee squads train all through winter.) Meet every megabeast and goblin siege with full mobilisation and watch the epic battles unfold.