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[ledgekindred]

I've breached all three caverns and currently have three FBs running around in various levels.  All three have Deadly Dust, so I'm hesitant to send my feeble military after them.  What I'd ideally like to do is safely connect the caverns to the surface with some way of being able to block it off until a Siege shows up.  Then I can pull a lever and pop open a hatch, door, something, and let the FBs out to handle the greenskins. 

I've already dug a stairwell that goes from the surface outside of the fort proper, and goes just past all three caverns, but haven't breached them yet.  The two problems are:

1) The FBs happen to be loitering around the area near where I've dug the stairs.  So I will likely lose miners when I breach the caverns.  I'd prefer to avoid this, but as I have six of them, I could afford to lose one if necessary.  (My current worst option is to draft some cheesemaker into a temporary miner, burrow him outside, then close the drawbridge behind him.  Then send him off to breach the caverns.)

2) I need to figure out a way to block the stairwell off until I want to release the FBs.  Best would be something repeatable, so that, under perfect conditions, I'd be able to let the FBs out one at a time.  If one pops out, I can pull the lever and close off the remaining two from being able to get out.

Suggestions?  Ideas?

[doublestrafe]

Build a floor hatch on the level above where the miner will dig out the last stair down. As soon as it's open and (if possible) when the miner is back through, forbid it. Hatches can't be destroyed from below. You can then build whatever you want in terms of airlocks and whatnot above it.

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hatches = start of ramp

Dig a really big hole and attach a spiral 1x3 rampway covered with retractable bridges/hatches, all you need to do is connect it to the caverns.  A long term solution, not a short term one.

[Scruffy]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hatches = start of ramp

Dig a really big hole and attach a spiral 1x3 rampway covered with retractable bridges/hatches, all you need to do is connect it to the caverns.  A long term solution, not a short term one.

That remind me of another portal to the depths..
You know, the horizontal or slanted giant stone door that opened to the dark depths where Cthulhu crawled out.

[Loud Whispers]

That remind me of another portal to the depths..
You know, the horizontal or slanted giant stone door that opened to the dark depths where Cthulhu crawled out.

Once I've got a few thousand clowns and FB's roaming down there it'll be just like home

Also fliers will absolutely ignore the rampway and just fly out and kill everyone. Roof is advised. Marksdwarves are advised.

[Scruffy]

That remind me of another portal to the depths..
You know, the horizontal or slanted giant stone door that opened to the dark depths where Cthulhu crawled out.

Once I've got a few thousand clowns and FB's roaming down there it'll be just like home

Also fliers will absolutely ignore the rampway and just fly out and kill everyone. Roof is advised. Marksdwarves are advised.

Instead of a roof you will need a series of bridges that you can open like a giant door. Then all you need is a forgotten beast.
The forgotten beast Cthu.. Snodub has come! A great two-legged squid. It has a thin wings of stretched skin and it has a bloated body. Its green skin is waxy. Beware its poisonous vapors.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was Rodriguez the Portuguese who climbed up the foot
of the monolith and shouted of what he had found. The rest
followed him, and looked curiously at the immense carved
door with the now familiar squid-dragon bas-relief. It was,
Johansen said, like a great barn-door; and they all felt that
it was a door because of the ornate lintel, threshold, and
jambs around it, though they could not decide whether it
lay flat like a trap-door or slantwise like an outside cellar-
door. As Wilcox would have said, the geometry of the place
was all wrong. One could not be sure that the sea and the
ground were horizontal, hence the relative position of
everything else seemed fantasmally variable.

Briden pushed at the stone in several places without
result. Then Donovan felt over it delicately around the
edge, pressing each point separately as he went. He climbed
interminably along the grotesque stone moulding - that is,
one would call it climbing if the thing was not after all
horizontal - and the men wondered how any door in the
universe could be so vast. Then, very softly and slowly, the
acre-great panel began to give inward at the top; and they
saw that it was balanced.

...

The aperture was black with a darkness almost material.
That tenebrousness was indeed a positive quality; for it
obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been
revealed, and actually burst forth like smoke from its
aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it
slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping
membranous wings. The odour arising from the newly
opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quick-
eared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound
down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening
still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly
squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black
doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of
madness.

Sound anything like your giant hole? Just replace the names with Urists.
By the way, it should be public domain in most parts of the world so don't hate me for making such a long quote.

[They Got Leader]

I had a fun time making a fort like this once before. I dug my fortress and made a basic sealed hallway that had a bridge that would retract up that would keep enemies from getting inside. Then, from the shaft, I did what they were describing (in smaller form). Sealed the entrance from all sides and made a bridge connected to a lever in my fortress to keep invaders from going down.

[ledgekindred]

If I cover the Portal To The Underground with a hatch, won't the FB be able to destroy it once he's reached the surface?

[doublestrafe]

Sure, but if you've got bait animals or goblins or whatever nearby, he'll have other things on his mind.

What about this? (side view)

Code: [Select]

+---+
|>dh|   Outside
|X|≤d_____
|X|
|h|__________
|≤____Caverns

Constructions: |+-
Open hatch, operated by lever: h
Stairs: >X<
Bait dog: d
The hatches open, the FB goes after Dog #1, then Dog #2, the hatches close.

[Loud Whispers]

If I cover the Portal To The Underground with a hatch, won't the FB be able to destroy it once he's reached the surface?

Use a retractable bridge instead

[ledgekindred]

Muahaha, one of my dorfs just made an artifact hatch cover.  Artifacts are not destroyable by FB correct?

[Fujuki]

Correct.