Bay 12 Games Forum

Can hatch covers be opened by lever?

As to what I'm trying to do.. I'm an Evil Dictator who will sacrifice brokers to the magma gods in thier own rooms if they wont get off thier rears and go to the Trade Depot instead of sleeping

Essentially, I've got a 3x3 tunnel like so:
__________
__________
__________

I want to know if I can did channels in the 'o' spaces (revealing the room below) and build a level-operated floodgate in the 'o' space, without magma leaking through when the floodgates are 'up':
__________
_o__o__o__
__________

I want to build a system to drop magma into rooms below. I know liquid doesnt move diagonal across z-levels, but can I build a floodgate over an empty space? Basically, I wanted to have a 3-wide corridor of magma - can I put holes every few center tiles and cover them with floodgates?

Anything under a bridge when it comes down gets atomized.

I have this vision of building drawbridges inside dwarves' rooms to smash them and their belongings all at once. Dunno if you could build on the tiles when its raised though. Still, it would be amusing.

However, I've already got plans for filling rooms with magma.

Hehe, I had a Craftsdwarf in my last fort who was like that. He actually showed up with 3 cats, and rapidly picked up 2 more.

I'd actually recommend a different means of setting up farms. I've got a pretty simple method thats pretty newbie-friendly.

First, find a pond or murky pool with water in it already. (Dont use Brook/River!). Usually there will be at least one if you got forest/grassland/swamp. Putting one or two spaces between the nearest ground space next to the pond, dig a channel or staircase down one space. Then, move down a z-level to where the channel you dug is, dig a short tunnel, and then a big open square area, at LEAST 3 times in size as the number of water spaces in the pond. Once it's finished, channel (dont dig!) out the spaces you left between the ramp/stairs and the pond, allowing water to fill the cavern you just dug. The water will pour into the cave, eventually becoming 1/7 layers - these will evaporate, leaving behind mud squares. If you find the water level's still a little high, you can widen the area as long as the water isnt higher than 3/7 - your dwarves will be fine then, just keep widening until it all levels out.

As long as you make sure to make the initial cave at least 3x the number of water spaces, you should be fine to widen it if it wasnt big enough.

Once the cavern is drying, you can tunnel from there into your fortress so your dwarves can move underground there. For added security, remove any ramps you had from channeling (d -> z) so baddies cant come down that way. If you're concerned with rain filling up a small pool, you can also wall off the original pool, since all you care about is the underground farm.

Edit: Heh, you beat me to the suggestion of emptying the pool into the farm I added some detailed instructions.

I disagree with the "cats must be caged" tip from the poster above. Wait until your first catsplosion, then you'll have plenty of meat for the butcher!

I'd agree with the above. Once you've got 1.5 to 2 pages of pets/animals on the animals tab (press z for your fortress status), building butcher shops and then butchering every new foal/kitten/puppy/calf that gets born is a GREAT way to do things. It keeps you well-stocked in Bones for Crafted Goods, Skins for Leather and Bags, Meat for food preparation, and Fat/Tallow for other stuff.

However, that being said - it may be a bit much to take in / pay attention to all the alerts as a new player, and it IS simpler to just build one cage and assign pets to it.

I would highly advise doing a search on 'Catsplosion' and 'Meat Industry' on the Dwarf Fortress Wiki for more info there. Dealing with Catsplosions IS important to learn about as a newbie, because it can kill your framerate.

On the embark site side, I can make a few suggestions that might help.

1st, dont look for rivers near the ocean. For some reason, I've found they often end up being saltwater.

2nd, look for Brooks instead of Rivers. Brooks are listed in the info screen to the right if they are present. It will say something like 'Brook: The  <Insert Name Here>' just above where it lists the kind of stone. Streams and Rivers actually show up on the Region Map (the middle one), but Brooks can be in any region tile, giving you more leeway.

3rd, I'd recommend looking in Mountain tiles that border Forest tiles on the region map. There is almost always some spillover between region tiles. When you find a tile thats a mountain next to a Forest of some kind (Jungle/Swamp/Temperate Forest, doesnt matter), you can move around with umhk to select the proper spot - center it where theres some mountain and some forest in the local tab on the left. Mountains rarely ever have aquifers, and many of them do have brooks.

I can verify Queen. Got that right after getting baron, actually. I had a ridiculously high created wealth at that point, but it happened as soon migrants came once i had a baron.