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[Nilik]

I've had the same pattern emerge several times since I started playing DF. I get a basic fort set up, think "Ooh, lets explore the caverns!", then realise how far down the caverns are and give up ever doing anything useful with them.

Is it normal for the first cavern to be about 50 levels down? I've always wanted to use cavern-water to supply my fort, but having to build 50+ screw pumps for the privilage seems excessive. Likewise, starting my fort proper near the caverns makes getting to the surface a pain.

Is there any way to squash the caverns up a bit? If I'm literally going to have to dig through hundreds of Z levels to get to the magma sea, I'll probably never get there at this rate!

[Starver]

It might be different in mountainous areas compared with plains, but even when I specifically extend my caverns (changing the ?5? level default separations between each cavern layer to 15 levels) I rarely get the first cavern 50 levels deep, so my first impression is that this is odd.

It may depend on which world-template you go for (pocket to large), but I wouldn't really know as I rarely build entire worlds less than Large (and the non-island version of that, also, in case there's a difference between them).


The only thing I can immediately suggest is perhaps you've unwittingly punched through the topmost cavern, probably even the second cavern down, by sending your stairwell down where there just happens to be no cavern (or, like a recent fort I played, it turns out I'd happened to send my exploration stairwell straight through the middle of a 3x3 rock pillar in the middle of a cavern).


Finally, I've never yet dragged water up from the caverns via screw-pumps.  For emergency/therapeutic drinking water, I've dug a set of deep wells (the method that I use having been mentioned in several other threads, recently, so I won't repeat it).  Although if you're actually trying to irrigate a desert then obviously that wouldn't cut the mustard, so you have my sympathies and you probably have to do something with pump-stacks after all.  Still, I've also managed to bucket-brigade from the massed ranks of wells to empty into a farm-to-be area for underground (non-soil) farming.

[Starver]

Forgot to say, to make them less deep, edit the parameters of the world-gen you use (or copy and change them on that copy).  The bits that I change from 5 (I'm still only half sure that's what it is by default) to 15 you can turn down to 1.  It's fairly obvious, being in amongst various bits and pieces regarding the nature of the caverns, but I just can't remember the setting names right now.

Somebody else will doubtless be along with the exact titles, anyway.

[elpizo]

actually, i think it just depends on the biome you're on, one time i was on a desert, the caves stqarted at 30 but ther was empty spaces for 30 levels until touching the ground

but in a plain i dug just 15 levels down to find the first cave this tinme there was no empty spaces

[vogonpoet]

... edit the parameters of the world-gen you use ...

The problem is there seems to be an awful lot of variability anyway, depending upon your biome.
In my ideal world I would have about 25 +/- 5 levels between the 1st cavern and the surface, to give me enough space for my fairly vertical fort layouts.

So after lots of forts where I only had 10 +/-5 levels, i increased the world gen parameter from 5 to 20 something, embarked, and the first cavern ended up 72 levels down, with something like 146 z levels to the magma from the surface, I forget exactly. Ok, I had enough space, but it was a bit too much of a good thing.

If anyone knows how to adjust those parameters for more control, or have any results from biome-related !science, it would be really nice to hear.

[BuGGaTon]

My first level of cavern ranges from 9 below to 42 below.  My 2nd level is anywhere between the first and 3rd.  My 3rd layer is usually anywhere below the 2nd down to a couple of layers above the magma sea.

Right now I've got a top layer 25 layers below and my 2nd+3rd layers are 110 and 117 below.

[Nameless Archon]

Assuming you want finer control over the number of Z levels underground, you need to adjust THESE settings to taste. More levels means farther from surface to magma. Less means less. Adjust to suit. (I like 15 above the first cavern, and about 5 between each cave.)

You also need to adjust:

[CAVE_MIN_SIZE:5] - The minimum "height" of a cavern, from its peaks to its valleys, in Z-levels. I use 1, which means caves can be "short" and relatively (or completely) flat. (Sometimes they could have more than one z-level, sometimes not.)

[CAVE_MAX_SIZE:25] - The maximum "height" of a cavern, from its peaks to its valleys, in Z-levels. I use 2, which guarantees "short" and relatively flat caves. (Because I set the minimum to 1 and the max to two, a cave can only be 1 or 2 levels "in height" in my setup.)

My worlds tend to look like:

15 levels of air above surface
Surface
15-levels-of-rock
Cavern1 (1 or 2 floors)
5-levels of rock
Cavern2 (1 or 2 floors)
5-levels of rock
Cavern3 (1 or 2 floors)
5-levels of rock
Magma Sea (varies)
SMR (varies)
Circus (left at default)