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[Tamren]

I decided to experiment and do something crazy. This is how it worked:

1. Picked a nice flat savannah 2x2 fortress. Embarked and abandoned a couple of times to build up fortress wealth with abandoned posession. (also free guards to feed the lions)
2. Took in a reclaim party of 6 squads, made them all miners and proceeded to dig channels. lots and lots of channels all around the circumference of the map. These channels were lined with an inner ring of up/down staircases so that the miners could acess every level. This arrangement ended on level -14 leaving a 15 level channel all the way around the map. Halfway through this my party ran out of food so i reclaimed again and got 60 miners this time.

3. installed ONE support on the lowest level and mined everything else out. Rigged that support to a lever.

You can probably imagine what happens next. But the outcome surprised me greatly.

This is what happened:

Welcome to undermine fortress!
   
Just NE of the trade depot is the lever of doom.
   
This here is level -15. 94x94 tiles all mined out.
   
Click goes the lever and.... OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?
   
AARGHSDJKFNELJKFNWEKJNFKJHDFJKSBDFLKJBFDLBJK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
   
THUMP!, impact.
   
The aftemath. Yup that is what used to be level -14. It landed INTACT apart form a large crack that I can't explain. It also got revealed all at once. Note the ring of corpses. Every miner on the bottom got squished to the side, and a lot of the stuff on top fell into the ring of death.
   
This is what used to be ground level. Apparantly, ant hills can fly.
 

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[Tamren]

(image limit is

Whats this? A dwarf is hidden here?  

The aftermath was also amazing. 40+ dwarves all lost a lot of friends from the collapse. So AS ONE they all went apeshit factor 300 and started to throw items at each other. Since there was a giant mass of abandoned weapons from all of the reclaim parties brought in, this ruckus turned out hilariously deadly.

[Christes]

The DF community never ceases to amaze me...

How much damage (if any at all) did the dwarves on top take from the fall?

[Tamren]

Oddly enough, none that I could find. A fall of one level is something most dwarves can survive without a scratch.

I can't say the same for the aftermath, one of the dwarves was on the food stockpile and was throwing barrels of wine in all directions. As I watched he was taken out by his neighbor with a thrown battle ax.   By the time it boiled down all the dwarves were festooned with yellow and red wounds and every one of them had at least one grey.

I re-did it a couple times and on the third reload there was a ring of corpses surrounding one irate dwarf who happened to be throwing steel bolts. No wonder there.

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[Tamren]

Whups, quoted instead of editing.

Oh well ill just use this post then. As I probably should have mentioned in the beginning this experiment is to try to find a way to get rid of mountains efficiently. Specifically getting rid of them from the bottom up.

Apart from discovering that ant hills are buggy this shows that solid blocks will simply fall and settle as far as they can. In fact I used this to draw a happy face on one of my re-dos. Thus you could mine out the bottom of a mountain, separate it from the "wall" or zone boundary and cut the single support. This will then topple and crush down until the mountain is one level shorter.

From further experimentation it shows that levels which are open floor will disintegrate upon falling. So if you mine out a hill which is one level high, the floor up on level 2 will collapse and vanish.

Will continue to experiment but I will need to bring in more workers as the current ones happened to run out of booze.

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[Demonic Gophers]

Nice!

Now, mine out all 14 layers, and see what happens when you aren't just dropping a solid block...

EDIT: From your edit, I take it you were already planning this.

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Demonic Gophers ]

[Tamren]

Thats the next step. I'm going to mine whole floors empty and see what happens. What i THINK will happen is they will simply crush down to nothing and the solid block will fall as normal. But I have no idea if the block itself will stay together over a fall longer than one level.

When I tried mining out patches and small section the effect was kind of strange. Those pockets will collapse as expected (making a happy face in my case) but nearby other small pockets will collapse as well creating potholes on the surface.

Presumably you could use undermining like this in a "controlled demolition" sort of way. It should be easy enough to make something like a pyramid.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Did anyone see what I did to a human keep a few months back?  it's on the movie archive and the thread is around here somewhere.

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Ioric Kittencuddler ]

[Fishersalwaysdie]

quote:Originally posted by Ioric Kittencuddler:
<STRONG>Did anyone see what I did to a human keep a few months back?  it's on the movie archive and the thread is around here somewhere.

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Ioric Kittencuddler ]</STRONG>

That was legendary, I do it all the time now.

[Tamren]

Undermining lower levels results in elevation changes at the surface. Resulting in something like this:

[Rictus]

A smiley face?

[loser]

I've used this for mass executions.

code:

surface
.......
.     .
. ... .
. ... .
. ... .
.     .
.......
1st sub
XXXXXXX
X     X
X XXX X
X XXX X
X XXX X
X     X
XXXXXXX
2nd sub
XXXXXXX
X.....X
X.....X
X..|..X
X.....X
X.....X
XXXXXXX
3rd sub
XXXXXXX
XXXXXXX
XX...XX
XX...XX
XX...XX
XXXXXXX
XXXXXXX
'.' flooring
' ' open space
'X' solid rock
'|' trigger support

Scale to need.

I'll conscript all the ones I want dead and station them on the bottom.  Then I pull out the support and everyone on the bottom is reduced to a thin sedimentary layer.  After they rot their possessions show up as occupying the same space as the solid rock wall left behind.

The surface ensures no attachements to what's above while channeling out florring attachements.

The 1st sub level serves as the rock you're dropping and also channells out floor and wall attachements.

The 2nd sub undercuts the droppable block and holds the trigger.  The rock will drop through the flooring on this level since there's nothing under it.

The 3rd sub holds the things you want to mash in the space in which you'll mash them.

Add doors and stairs as necessary.

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: loser ]

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

quote:Originally posted by Ioric Kittencuddler:
<STRONG>Did anyone see what I did to a human keep a few months back?  it's on the movie archive and the thread is around here somewhere.

[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Ioric Kittencuddler ]</STRONG>

Awww... I feel significant now!

[Tamren]

So experimenting. What I have learned so far:

1. Floor tiles without solid rock beneath them collapse and vanish whether they are cut loose themselves or as part of a larger collapse.. Solid rock tiles fall until they hit solid ground where they stay.
2. All constructions such as statues bridges and trade depots become deconstructed. Stockpiles are deleted and the items are scattered all over the place.
3. A fall of one level is rarely injuring to an adult dwarf.
4. A fall of two levels can result in at least yellow wounds, usually to the lower body, legs (and presumably, the spine). Red injuries as well but are rare.
5. A fall of three levels is about 60% fatal. All survivors are seriously injured with multiple red wounds and TONS of less severe injuries.
6. Fall of 4 levels. Even more deadly. Couldn't find a single dwarf who didn't have less than 4 yellow wounds, or a dwarf who had less than 2 red wounds.
7. Ant hills levitate where solid ground used to be.
8. Vermin levitate as well, this is rather strange since most of them (lizards in this case) can not fly.

[ June 13, 2008: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[Sheezy]

So that effectively removes vermin?