My new fortress was started about five days ago. I haven't unpaused a single time. I've been planning what will be my first 200+ dwarf fortress.
It's built into a cliff that stands in front of a bottomless pit. I plan to tap the underground river and magma pipe soon, and start building properly bit by bit until the entire thing is done. This fort is meant for raw efficiency and the "wow" factor. I hope you guys like.
LARGE pictures ahead!
The more interesting structures are my dining hall, which is three stories, will have four waterfalls, and the dwarves will have to walk through the waterfalls to get to the food stockpiles. No wash=no dinner. It seats 204 dwarves comfortably.
The Living quarters of all dwarves are located less than 50 steps from their respective workshops. Each floor houses a set number of dwarves for each profession in that area, a few haulers, and a few "support types" as well. (refuse haulers near kitchens and farms, etc.)
Each element has quick access to the dining hall, and the only folk that do a lot of walking are haulers and woodcutters. Pretty swanky.
Nobility's getting a nice castle erected with a large, cylinddrical three-story cavern dug for them. There are 6 noble suites, and the castle will house as many as four more people per floor, which means... 18 noble rooms. The noble suites all come with their own individual plumbing, if you know what I mean...
The catacombs are gonna be set up underneath the fortress, near the bottom of the map. They will house my dead, and build upwards while I build downwards. Each dwarf will be sealed in a chamber depending on status. Group chambers will be for dwarves that die in worthless ways. My original seven will have their own chamber, and my nobles will have their own surrounding the originals. Legendary Dwarves will get group tombs in the legendary dwarf rooms for their profession. Their posessions will be put in front of their casket and sealed away.
This fortress is going to be promising and fun. What do you guys think of the layout plan?
[UPDATE!]
These new photos are of the revamped layout. I have completely changed the drainage and pipe structure so that if all goes well, no flooding should occur. I've got a MASSIVE pressure-fed cistern that feeds my obsidian foundry (new), and a new way of mitigating pressure on exposed pools of water.
I completed the hospital design, and put the work into all the plumbing on that, and then did most of the castle design. The king should be a happy camper, especially once i build it out of either clear or volcanic glass.
I added a barracks that will house all 24 soldiers I plan to keep, and the other 163 regular dwarves have been housed. I still need to get the start of the catacombs mapped out, but other than that, the design is final.
I've located the magma pipe and the underground river after a bit of save-scumming, and have optimized my design to account for them.
Below I go into detail about my water intake/output system. I believe I have mitigated all flooding issues completely before they begin. Read below, but be warned, it's a bit lengthy. Long story short: My fortress is capable of dumping 108 water per step, while my pumps only pull in 35 water per step, but using several clever pressure-based filling structures, I've managed to retain water without actually using any kind of switches to monitor water level.
For anybody who thinks that my plumbing is going to be problematic, I can prove that it won't.
There are three pressure-fed regions in the Fortress. The pump tower brings up water with five pumps. The pumps take in 5*7 maximum water per step. The water then flows down one tile wide tubes until it reaches the waterfalls, which widen to 3. The waterfalls will split the water into two tiles of 2 and one tile of 3 per step. The fifth central waterfall (which is new) is only 1 tile wide.
The water then drops down about five z-layers, cascading through my dining room (three story), and into a redundant drain system. First, it falls into the cistern, filling it. The cistern should hold an obscene amount of water, and can be drained by opening the floodgates by the obsidian farm.
When the cistern fills completely, the water will then begin to overflow into tunnels above the cistern, which lead into the royal quarter's magnificent pond. The tunnels converge, forming a width of 3. Meaning, 35 water per step flows in, only 21 water per step can move. This means that the tunnels will fill faster than they drain. This is intentional. There are three pumps above this tunnel, which mitigate the pressure, safely feeding the water into the royal quarter's supply. I have not devised a way to drain the water... Yet... These pumps, however, will NOT work unless the cistern is full, and the royal quarter's intake tunnel is overflowing (which it always will be unless of course the cistern is empty).
This is where the third backup comes into play. Two layers above the royal quarter's intake, There are drainage ditches with widths of 3, 3, 3, 3, and 1. These ditches meet seven waterwheels inside of my tower cap farm, and seven pumps. These pumps will turn on. There is also a large bridge structure in the tower cap farm that will allow me to flood the farm. Note that the pumps DO NOT block the drainage tubes below.
The Farm is HUGE, and will take some time to fill, but once it is full, the pumps will stop, I can pull a lever, and open the releases, which open floodgates. These floodgates punch into the end of the drainage tunnels, allowing the water to be removed safely. When these floodgates are open, no new water will flood in, as the floor hatches that stop the waterfalls will swing shut. That way, even if the drains back up, my fortress will not.
There are seven more waterwheels in the end of these drainage tunnels, which are fed absolutely last. This fuels my hospital's water supply with a way to depressurize from the cistern. The cistern is so heavily pressured, that I cannot use it for anything other than making obsidian, so I have installed another redundant flood tunnel much like that of the royal quarter, which will pump water safely into the hospital so that I can help cure, and help kill the patients.
The hospital has its own drainage system, which can be controlled independently for each room. The cistern will actually refill faster than a room can drain it. Again, 35 water in, 7 water out. However, if I were to kill off five or more patients at a time, it would drain very quickly.
Note what I said earlier about the main drainage tubes, and the pumps that allow me to flood the tower cap farm. the water will flood past the pumps if they are off, and the pumps will redirect the water and create another small waterfall if they are on, so really, there is absolutely no chance of flooding anywhere in the fortress... I hope...
I'm still hammering out a few details here and there, like burial, but for the most part the entire fortress is designed, and will be ready for me to unpause and have at tomorrow when I get off of work.