Bay 12 Games Forum

Edit: See page 2 for info on my new project.

Welcome to Rimslaughters!


Rimslaughters is a huge above- and below-ground megafortress, constructed over the course of 17 dwarven years.  It isn't "finished," but it's close enough that I want to brag.   The fort center is 74x74, and the geometric cross design is repeated faithfully up and down approximately 20 z-levels.  My goal was to use the power of bridges to kill anything that might attack.  As armies enter the fort, they spiral around the exterior through a variety of traps, each of which can be isolated for cleaning or repair.  By abusing bridges, I think that everything is building destroyer-proof.

Let's start with the upper fort's footprint.  As you can see, it takes up most of the map:
Game map Overseer Stonesense (huge version)
The outer walls are cast obsidian, extending 6 stories up from the moat level.  The larger, inner walls are made of rock salt, which made up the stone I hacked the lower fort from.  I actually had plans to build a giant axe suspended over the fort, but it turned out I only had 3 more z-levels to play with, so this was the best I could come up with (after about 4 different designs looked idiotic). 

The roof is composed of approximately 3000 clear glass blocks, along with rock salt, obsidian and green glass "trim."  If anyone can come up with a good logo for Rimslaughters to put in the middle, I'll put it in.  The inner square is 30 x 30.
The roof:
DF SS
As you travel down in z-levels, you encounter the outer walls, which are smoothed but unornamented on top, save for some curious looking drawbridges.  They enable what I like to call "lockdown mode."
Open: Closed: Handy for fliers!

Of course, at this point, you're probably wondering what that giant sphere (I know it's blocky, use your imagination) is doing dangling from a tiny wooden post.  Let's take a closer look.
Stonesense: Overseer: Well, that fellow is called the Army Crusher, and it is the First Way To Die.  It it made of steel, adamantium, and gold, with an inner core of stone, and a flick of a switch drops it.  Visitors to Rimslaughters pass directly underneath the adamantium "tip."  Needless to say, this is a one-shot weapon.

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There are three entrances to the fortress.  Let's deal with the two back doors first.

The first is rather plain.  A simple obsidian entryway extending across the moat, sealed with a steel bridge. 
Stonesense I like to think of sealing bridges as gates or secret doors, which thanks to dwarven engineering are impregnable when closed.  This gate opens to reveal a row of extremely lethal traps, as you can see here:   A special drawbridge opens to simultaneously display the bait, a puppy (sorry little guy!) chained underneath the stone, while sealing entrance into the fort.  This makes the back door a quick and effective way to kill non-trap-avoid baddies, and the Second Way To Die.

The other back door is particularly clever, I think, although it could use a little bit of polish.  A row of clear glass bridges sits underneath the moat, ready to spring open at the pull of a lever.  When pulled, the bridges form a seal around a 3-wide entrance to the fort.  (I thought that they would also hurl the water into the air, but that is rectified by pulling it multiple times, smashing the water underneath.)  The following screenshots don't quite do it justice, but it's cool when it works.
Closed: Open: Since this map does freeze, directly underneath this section of the moat is a long series of bridges which can be filled with magma. 
When full, the ice above them melts.  When the bridges are retracted, the magma falls back down, and the little bit of water left in the entrance turns to ice... turning anything inside into a popsicle.  This is the Third Way To Die.

OK, back to the main entrance.  As you approach, dwarven marksmen have free range to track and fire across the entire third and fifth floors of the outer walls.  Steel bolts hit hard!  Pincushions everywhere know that this is the Fourth Way To Die.

Moving across the adamantine bridge presents one of the great engineering feats of Rimslaughters: the a-maze-ing (ahem) entryway.  A crude axe drawn in the ground warns of what is to come.
Depending on which levers are pulled, invaders can have a straight shot into the fort, or can be forced along one of four different paths, allowing different traps to be "in play."  The final path leads directly to the barracks.  They have been practicing for a while.
And their equipment isn't too bad.
Astesh does not like to be bothered.  This is the Fifth Way To Die.

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The longest pathway leads down, directly underneath the barracks, circling around the outside of the inner fort.  An invader walks over 33 iron bridges, as you can see from this picture (my apologies for the size of these screenshots):
A flick of a switch, and the Dwarven Catapult is fired.  Each bridge flings up and back, leaving a gaping space for creatures to fall through.  I've seen rocks as high as 10 z-levels after a launch.  This is the Sixth Way To Die.
Note: some dwarves were harmed in the making of this screenshot.

An army which is allowed to pass through the Catapult reaches a curious little section, visible from the previous screenshots:
Did I mention that I had a lot of steel?  Each of these spikes is hooked up to a 300-step repeater, making it a very good source of goblin juice.  The Juicer is the Seventh Way To Die.  For your reference, blue ramps represent the "main" pathway, so the blue down ramps there is where enemies will path.  The other ramps there go to the entryway - if you can follow it, they allow me to skip the Catapult, or send an army through a humongous number of cage traps.

Moving down to z-1, and bypassing some more weapon traps, we come to the Catwalk.  A series of steel bridges is layered across the 7-wide walkway, like so:
Easy breezy, right?  Well, flick the switch, and things look decidedly more lethal.
I mentioned the magma moat before, and here it is.  If you don't fall off when the bridges retract, the stone-fall traps and weapon traps will get you on the dodge.  This is the Eighth Way To Die.

Look to the upper-left corner, and you can see two ballistae nestled amongst the levers.  This is the Dwarven Control Room, and it spans 12 z-levels of lever after lever.  During times of war, three dwarves are locked inside, with nothing to do but pull the levers that generate the Fun.  Oh right, they have one more thing to do: fire steel ballista arrows at any army coming around the bend.  That is the Ninth Way To Die.

The path branches again after the Catwalk is cleared.
Follow the green arrow, and you will climb up the stairs until you reach a series of bridges, crossing back and forth underneath themselves.  A lever retracts the bridges, and you will fall, fall, fall, fall, fall... either 47 levels to the Splatterer (a retractable blood thorn bridge), or 63 levels to the water below.  This is the Tenth Way To Die.

Follow the red arrow, and you descend to the Drowning Chamber.
The Chamber: The level above: Unlucky goblins enter a short walkway with steel bridges above.  The dwarves in the Control Room have their choice: do we feel like drowning or immolating in magma?  Some contestants may get the "sampler package," which comes with a side of obsidian.  This is the Eleventh Way To Die.

Now, an invading army might squeak through all of that, but a titan might simply ignore it.  Never fear, we have a special room just for them: the Dropper, and the Twelfth Way To Die.
z: z+1: This is a pretty straightforward trap, with the fun benefit that building destroyers can commit suicide by simply breaking a support.  For smarter prey, the dwarves in the Control Room can punch out any support.  This is another one-time weapon, although there are 6 different cave-in areas, and another z-level above if necessary.

Bypassing the Dropper, we come to one of my favorites, the Squishee Machine.  A series of silver bridges linked to a repeater, some say that those affected are hit so hard it's like they disappear from the world.  Whether or not that is true, there is something devilishly enjoyable about such a simple but effective trap.  I hope you like the Thirteenth Way To Die.
Up:Down:
I'm getting tired of screenshots, so this tour is almost complete for now.  But first I would like to show you my favorite method, with the giant caveat that I'm pretty sure it can't kill anyone: Kaboom, the Fourteenth Way To Die.  Caravans and armies are routed through this curious chamber full of old, disused booze.
Several stories above, a carefully designed trap waits to unleash 4 7/7 squares of magma.  Not enough to kill an army, of course, but certainly enough to set some of those wooden barrels on fire... along with the HIGHLY FLAMMABLE alcohol inside.  That's why we call it "Kaboom."

Now there's a lot more to see in Rimslaughters - for example, the entire outdoor passageway can be flooded with magma.  There is a sealed underground grotto with an overkill bridge/floodgate/bridge intake system.  The cemetery hangs over a huge pit.  See all this and more at the DFMA!

I've been trying to generate power underground, and I've run into some frustrating problems with my dwarven reactor.  Basically, I have water cascading down channels with water wheels above them, but the wheels seem to rarely activate. 


Here is an illustration of two levels of the reactor.  The green arrow represents the path that water travels.  There are more levels to it, but this is the basic idea.  Imagine a waterwheel above the water on level "Z", and water continuing below the waterwheel visible on "Z-1."



At the moment those screenshots were taken, I have three levels of waterwheels turned on, with each one holding 15-20 waterwheels.  I currently have 500 power, which means only 5 of those 50+ wheels are generating power (each creates 100 power).  The power generation fluctuates crazily, between 2000+ and 0.  All I want is a sustained 1500 power or so, but the wheels simply refuse to turn.

I've tried everything I can think of to make them work - varied levels of water, wheels over single/double/triple wide channels, gravity force feed, pump force feed.  If I turn off "show water levels" to see the flow state, almost the entire thing represents as ~~ (having flow).  Is there anything I'm missing?  It's making my current project very frustrating and slow!

I am trying to pump magma up to the top level of my fort, and I need some power for my pump stack.  I don't have a river on the map, but I have lots of caves with water in them.  I have some questions:

1)  If I drain one cave into another cave, or off the map, will the cave water have flow?

2)  Does the water in caves replenish?

I think the answer to both is "yes."  My plan is basically to use the flow from draining cave water to jumpstart a perpetual motion machine whenever necessary.  I used to have a dwarf go down and manually start it, but this is nicer.  The machine will just pour water down a series of ramps, it will look like this:


Level Z
+-----+
|>....|
|~~+--+
|~~|ww|
|~~|ww|
|~~|ww|
|~~|ww|
|~~|ww|
|~~|ww|
|~~+--+
|~~~~<|
+-----+

Z+1/Z-1
+-----+
|<~~~~|
+--+~~|
|ww|~~|
|ww|~~|
|ww|~~|
|ww|~~|
|ww|~~|
|ww|~~|
+--+~~|
|....>|
+-----+

Legend
w = waterwheel
~ = water
> = down ramp
< = up ramp


The diagram is simplified - it will be longer, and include gear assemblies.  The sides will alternate, with one side water and the other one waterwheel.  Then a pump stack at the end will return the water to the top, or else I will drain it off the map or into another cave (when jumpstarting).  Will that work?  Or will water teleportation screw me? 

Does anyone have a better trick for generating power underground?

Lately I have been having problems with my fortress repeatedly crashing under Windows 7. After taking a look at the game log, it seems to be crashing every time the human caravan arrives (this would be the first contact with humans for the fortress).

Example:

*** STARTING NEW GAME ***
** Loading Fortress **
You have struck Tetrahedrite!
A human caravan from Alpethanthath has arrived.
*crash*

Here is my DF directory with save; the only mod I can remember adding is the orc mod (although they have not even been encountered yet).  The caravan comes about 30 seconds or so after the save.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/261199/Dwarf%20Fortress.zip

The only other wonky thing is that I have been playing the same fortress on two different computers using Dropbox. I had a crash with my previous fortress stored in Dropbox as well, although I hadn't saved in so long that I essentially gave up and never tried to figure out the cause.