Razorlength - 1004 Mid Spring by Jong89

Map Description:

Year 3 of Construction

The dwarves completed the construction of the external fortifications shortly after consolidating the blocks last year. With the fortress secure, the focus turns towards the construction of a tower cap farm.

The tower cap chamber is planned to be massive and extravagant. The cavern is to be 4 z-levels in height (although the tower caps are to grow only on the base of the cavern) and will contain hills, natural columns and a dwarven canal system.

Obviously this will generate a massive amount of stone that prevents tower caps from growing.

At first, I thought that I ought to get the tower cap farm up as quickly as possible. Thus I prepared for a huge block creation spree. This was highly effective, producing 300+ blocks in the opening weeks of the year, out of the 4000+ stones covering the floor. The trick was to build masses of mason workshops close together on the piles of stones, and switch workshops as soon as they became cluttered as the smallest amount of clutter doubles job time. The plan for the other levels was to flood them with magma before collapsing it all down.

However, I decided that wood is not an essential resource at the moment, thus I should just hollow out the chamber first before flooding it with magma. In addition, I thought that I needed more magma to fill the planned magma ocean.

Vital stats:
Population: 8
Built Blocks: 734
Stones: 4203

The Challenge: Construct a mega fortress without immigrants!

Point of Interest: Tower cap chamber

( 1004 → 1006 Late Winter )

This is the currently incomplete tower cap chamber.

The only thing of note at the moment is the monumental scale of the design. - Jong89

There are 26 comments for this map series, last post 2010-11-04

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Comments

Submitted by: Aristoi - 2009-06-11 to 1001 Early Spring

Best of luck on your plans.

Submitted by: Noble Digger - 2009-06-12 to 1004 Mid Spring

Working deep is not easy for a young fort... Good luck clearing all that stone out. I would build an atom smasher down there and (d)ump the stone on the path of the drawbridge once it's hooked to a lever and raised.

Or build some catapults! It takes a few jobs to get a working catapult but then you have glowing red dwarves after a while. :D

Submitted by: Jong89 - 2009-06-12 to 1004 Mid Spring

Well I think using atom smashers and quantum dumps on such a grand scale would be a bit cheap :P However I've already decided that since the wood situation is not dire, I can afford to delay the tower cap farm and just use magma to melt all the extra rock.

Plus Siege operating skill is not immediately useful for the construction of the fort.

Submitted by: Noble Digger - 2009-06-16 to 1008 Mid Spring

Interestingly, any skill is useful to the fort. Because any skill can cause your dwarves' agility to increase, leading to them doing every job faster (including hauling).

Submitted by: Jong89 - 2009-06-17 to 1008 Mid Spring

True but pump operating levels faster than siege operating
I don't need to haul stone either :D

The only problem is that I don't always get agility. The chef even though he has multiple legendary skills, is only agile :(

[Message edited on 2009/06/17 at 10:47 by Jong89]

Submitted by: RavingManiac - 2009-06-19 to 1009 Late Spring

You have an underground lake or river, right? Tower caps will not grow even on muddied ground until an underground lake or river has been discovered.

Where does the water for the sprinklers come from anyway?

Submitted by: Jong89 - 2009-06-19 to 1009 Late Spring

Ah sorry, I do indeed have a underground river, just that I haven't bothered to breach it yet. All will be made known shortly.

Submitted by: Dakira - 2009-06-21 to 1012 Mid Spring

I look forward to more engineering projects and the completion of the tower.

Submitted by: Quantumplation - 2009-09-23 to 1016 Mid Spring

=( You stopped providing regular updates. Tis a shame. Any news as to how this project is going now? It's quite epic.

Also, Where's your food being produced? I can't see any farms. ^^

Submitted by: Markavian - 2009-09-23 to 1012 Mid Spring

uhh, wow, what a tower ... what a fort! What huge mountains as well... !

Submitted by: Ambivalence - 2010-03-03 to 1029 Late Spring

That's a tall, tall tower!

Submitted by: FJH - 2010-03-03 to 1029 Late Spring

Wow. That's--all that I can say. Wow.
This needs to be added to the wiki megaconstruction page.

Submitted by: Itnetlolor - 2010-03-04 to 1029 Late Spring

Looks like the perfect kind of location for my ship and it's crew to visit.

Submitted by: Retro - 2010-03-13 to 1034 Mid Autumn

I understand next to nothing about dwarven computers and fluid logic, but this looks impressive/scary as hell. Bravo! (cool tower too btw)

Submitted by: Urist McOverlord - 2010-03-19 to 1036 Early Winter

Awesome Computer!

You know the next step, however:

Create a dwarf fortress computer...
capable of running dwarf fortress!

Submitted by: Markavian - 2010-04-01 to 1038 Mid Spring

Kudos for continuing even though NEW VERSION IS OUT.

Submitted by: Jong89 - 2010-04-05 to 1041 Early Spring

Oh wait! I can put my obnoxiously big pics here!

Ground-level perspective of the fort
Ground-level perspective of the fort


Close-up of my site symbol
Close-up of my site symbol


I probably could crop them better.

[Message edited on 2010/04/05 at 12:00 by Jong89]

[Message edited on 2010/04/18 at 03:38 by Jong89]

Submitted by: Ambivalence - 2010-04-05 to 1041 Early Spring

That view of the tower is fantastic.

Submitted by: QMarx - 2010-04-16 to 1036 Early Winter

Have you considered using pressure plates, floodgates, and non-pet-passable doors to have a kitten-based clock? It seems like that would work out.

Submitted by: Jong89 - 2010-04-18 to 1044 Early Spring

Well I didn't. The issue with the clock was that I wanted it to be manually triggered from a single lever. If I wanted to set it up to be automatic, it wouldn't be too difficult to fiddle with it until it became a repeater.
The biggest problem with animal powered devices is that my fort is already very old. All my animals are already dead. Except the mule.
I could get more, but that would lag up the fort even more.

Submitted by: savanik - 2010-04-19 to 1036 Early Winter

What'd you generate that picture of the fortress in? I'm not familiar with the view style.

Submitted by: Markavian` - 2010-04-19 to 1036 Early Winter

Link back from Boing Boing - Colossal Turing Machine.

Submitted by: Markavian - 2010-04-19 to 1036 Early Winter

@savanik, I can't see the image, but I'm going to guess that it was made using one of the 3d Visualiser tools that have been made by the Dwarf Fortress community. Check the dwarf fortress wiki and the bay12games forums for more info...

Submitted by: Jong89 - 2010-04-22 to 1036 Early Winter

Gah! Imageshack ate my pics! I did not expect that to happen.

Thanks for the link Markavian. It was rather surprising to find myself mentioned in a blog post.

I wonder how many people have read the design manuscript though..

Submitted by: Blargh - 2010-05-08 to 1041 Early Spring

This is insane, in a good way.

Submitted by: Quietust - 2010-11-04 - Removed

Submitted by: Quietust - 2010-11-04 to 1044 Early Spring

How exactly was the computer clock generator originally hooked up? It looks similar to MrFake's n-step cyclic repeater, though that design wouldn't have suffered from the flaw of residual pump inertia moving the water multiple cells.

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