Bay 12 Games Forum

I think, for it to be a legit aquarium, you need to have dwarf access. walling off an ocian and proclaming its an aquarium is well, not. now you could have two walled off squares, the inner being the aquarium the other being the viewing hall.

Ofcourse. That was never my suggestion - what I meant was more to the effect of having some tunnels through large, walled-in sections of the ocean, like those aquariums you can walk through. Not what I'll be doing, but still.

'Righty, just checking.

Anyway, I'll probably start a fort for this, assuming I can find magma, sand and an ocean on the same map. Basically, a beach with magma somewhere in there. Shouldn't be too hard. Then I just need to strain the ocean through my aquarium


...Why do I have the horrible feeling that this system will backfire and possibly explode?

Couple questions.

Do any fish in the game have building destroyer?

Do merfolk and frog/olm/eel/whathaveyou men count as fish?

Do the fish all need to be tamed? Because there are ways to get them in an aquarium from the ocean or whatever without any dwarven intervention after the setup, beyond pulling levers and pumping, which would eliminate the need for taming unless some of them can blow buildings up. They'd scare your dwarves, but still.

One last question: To oceans ever freeze?

I might be tempted to stop being lazy and do some insane version of this myself.

So I'd like to suggest something that may or may not work. Make your aquarium. Make two channels connected to it - one so that water from the ocean comes in, another under a grate (which is itself under a hatch) that takes the water back out. The way out, if you're not using a hatch, will be floodgated, as will the way in. Again, hatches are ideal here as they close faster.

Water comes in from the ocean, and brings fish with it. Water flows right out again, but the grate leaves fish inside. As they get water pouring through the whole time, the fish shouldn't airdrown - not that it's an issue if you use undead fish. Once you've reached the requisite amount of fish, close the hatch over the grate, and, once the aquarium fills up, close the hatch letting the water in.

The hatch over the grate, by the way, is so that you can stop water from leaving, but whatever you do, fish stay in. Also, this, if it works (feel free to shoot down and flame me as you see fit if it doesn't), should apply to rivers and brooks as well.  If you have one of these as well as an ocean, than good. More variety in fish.

Why yes, I am way too lazy to do this myself. Anyways, good luck to all involved, feel free to try this, and, ofcourse, rage away as you like if it turns out that I've failed completely

Oh, and I think that's the biggest post I've made on this forum. Glee.

Dungeon masters. And if record keepers count as nobles, than I dedicate this post to every last one that locked themselves in a room to keep an account of the entire fortress's stocks Useful dwarves, those.

My first artifact was from a secretive mood that hit a carpenter. A carpenter/woodcutter/axedwarf/woodcrafter that was one of the starting seven, actually, and generally awesome. I got all excited thinking I'd have an awesome artifact. Instead, I got The Oily Zeal. A cedar grate encircled with bands of cedar and larch, which menaced with spikes of larch.

Worth only 4800, but for some bizzare reason, engravings of it started popping up all over my fortress. Weird, but semi-neat.

Just an idea, and more for flavor than anything else, but here's something I came up with.. remember, it hasn't been tested yet.

Get a small room with a floodgate to release magma on the front, grates all along the ceiling (or hatches, if you can place them vertically), and a floodgate to release water on each side. The grates are all keyed to one lever (I think that's possible. I'm new and moderately clueless). Basically, when some invaders or some such thing walk over the grates, pull the lever. This drops them down, and traps them. Proceed to pull some more levers, releasing magma followed by water. This fills the chamber up with obsidian, hopefully trapping/encasing whatever it was you dropped. Yes, I know magma would kill them already, but this is far more dwarfy.. and might even get around fire immunity, I don't know.

Make sure you have another way to access the pit so you can mine out the obsidian later, to clear the room if nothing else. Oh, and this might well make a neat trap to put in trade depots too (killing elf merchants and such).

Thoughts?

Expert hammerdwarf
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...Yes, I specialize a little.