I have been making so many energy sources for my massive magma pump system, and just as I was about to finish the last one the gam crashed.
It had already crashed before but I figured it was a random crash. Looks like they may be connected. In that case...it may be game over.The game is already chugging along as it is, with too much going on on the map. 260 dwarves and animals moving around + moving windmill park + water physics from my countless water wheels is taking its toll. Not sure if it's related to the bug (memory overload or something) but it sure is annoying.
Maybe it'd be for the better if it ended there - I dunno. I sunk so much time into DF the last month, it's ridiculous.
And the surface of my fortress site looks like Morder. 
Chopped almost empty for wood, with mechanical gears and axles running everywhere. And blood and vomit, and bones. The inside of the fortress looks a lot nicer, I swear.
Statistics: Posted by Rinox — Wed Oct 20, 2010 3:01 am
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Problem is I am running low on wood. Building water wheels, windmills and axles is extremely wood intensive and for some reason caravans stopped bringing me shitloads of wood (they used to in the past). I have to resort to the slow-ish proces of cutting nearby trees for my wood resources.
This probably means that I'll get attacked by the Elves in the near future, but I'll probably cut down those pansy treehuggers in a microsecond anyway. The only thing I'm afraid of is that they might damage my windmill park. Suffered some work accidents too....a miner stuck in the river, a mason walling himself in, etc. I usually would try and save them but the fortress can do with a little whittling down of numbers.
The grand plan has changed from a single golden tower to a golden dome spanning over the entrance of the fotress. The dome will hold magma.
The entrance of the fortress is tucked away in a dent in the mountain, like this:
MMM
E
MMM
With E being entrance and M standing for Mountain. So, if I build an arc grounded in the two mountains on each side it shouldn't be too hard.
Statistics: Posted by Rinox — Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:02 am
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- requires a system of 100-ish pumps to be built that runs in one long line from the bottom to the top, taking into account caverns and other "fun stuff"
- these pumps must all be built from [urlhttp://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Magma-safe]magma safe[/url] materials, ie materials that have a melting point that is higher than than heat of regular magma. Since a pump is made from 3 components (a block, a pipe and a giant corkscrew) this is quite the task.
- it also requires energy. I can have dwarves operate each pump by hand technically speaking, but for a 100 pumps that is a titanic task (not to mention that you can't trust dwarves for shit, they may get a sudden craving for cave lobster and leave your entire operation in the dust.
). So I will resort to other energy sources.So, first thing I had to do was to start up a production line of parts for these pumps. For this I started smelting all my now (with the adamantine) useless iron and steel armor and weapons into base materials and build a range of magma-fueld smelters and blacksmith workshops deep in the bowels of the earth.
I also started planning the power provisions. Since the river near me isn't deep enough for water wheels, I resorted to a windmill park.
I now have about 12 windmills on the surface, which are all connected to the same power 'net' through gear assemblies and producing a nice amount of power. And then...I made a retarded mistake that would set me back quite a while. Basically, I digged out and constructed a long, loooong shaft of vertical axles and gear assemblies to transport my power deep into the earth, towards the first pumps (I wanted to run a preliminary test). The test ran fine btw, but then I realised: I DIDN'T NEED A SEPARATE (power-sapping) SUPPLY LINE TO THE BOTTOM! I can just link each pump to the one above it (which is easy as they're all close to each other by design) and then LINK ONE PUMP TOPSIDE TO THE POWER GRID AAAARRGGGH. So basically I just built an elaborate and extremely pointless power line a 100 levels down.
I ended up disconnecting it from the grid to save power. It's now completely defunct. :-/ But who knows, maybe I can still find a use for it later on? So now I am constructing a seemingly endless row of pumps to the surface...I started at -96, at around -63 now and about to work my way around a cavern (I hope). In the meantime my hard as nails militia has slain a slew of Forgotten Beasts and a Colossus that came knocking down the front door/hung around in the caverns. I made some nice leather backpacks from one of the Forgotten Beasts' hide, which I will symbolically bestow on the militia commander.
I may even have it embroidered, in the hope that the craftsdwarf puts an image of one of my dwarves dealing the killing blow to a forgotten beast on it. Statistics: Posted by Rinox — Mon Oct 18, 2010 4:38 am
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There are no goblin civilizations, and the humans and elves are friendly. So I may just piss them off. 
My main 5 elite guys are all clad in nothing but adamantine already, and I'm working on the other squad (of 10). And I'll still have spare adamantine....wonder what I'll do with it.
I still want to pump up magma from below but that's gonna be one hell of a job since it's around 96 levels below ground, so it'll need 95 pumps. :-/ I got a half a mind to start over in a much harsher region to see how long I hold out.
There's always the option of trying to dig into hell (or accidentally doing so), but that would be hard even for my elite dudes to counter.
Statistics: Posted by Rinox — Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:17 am
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Statistics: Posted by Rinox — Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:30 am
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The fortress has been thriving. The King has arrived and was installed in his opulent throne room, and I created a new 10-man militia squad (apart from the original team of 5). The main idea was to have a force stationary who could defend any incoming attacks from below, as I was about to dig deeper for precious minerals and magma. The original 5-man legendary squad could then hold the top and, if necessary, run down the stairs while the new squad kept any intruders at bay.
As you dig deeper you typically will stumble upon huge underground caverns, full of plant growth, minerals, underground trees (yes, they exist), things like cave spider webs which can be used to make silk and, of course, dangerous beasts.
The cavern I had breached didn't seem too dangerous in terms of regular critters (animals, cave humanoids) but it wasn't long before a giant eyeles dinosaur Forgotten Beast showed up. I walled it out before it could reach my guys, and left it to roam around for ages while I trained some more. I was digging down along a shaft I created, ever deeper, hoping to find magma and other useful or precious stuff.
At around level -130 I strike semi-molten rock! I carve out a room and start making preparations, I cut open the wall and discover the huge underground Magma Sea.
I then flooded the lower reaches of my stairwell TWICE with magma, once severely burning a miner and the other time almost trapping my chief medical dwarf in a slowly filling room of magma death. He got out in time tho, since magma moves relatively slow. Clearly I had to be more careful. I backtraced my steps to the 'highest' (ie not too deep) magma reaches so I could actually mine it from above and judge the danger/risks properly before diving in there and digging out walls. After some trial and error I managed to cut out a huge room around a uppermost layer of the magma sea. Now I need to make sure I don't a) fuck up some crazy magma experiment and b)keep watch for any magma creatures to pop out (if at all).I immediately started building a few magma-fueld workshops and furnaces down there. Up until now I've had to work with coals of all kinds, which is a pain since they are rare to make and require a production process of their own (you can for example put a guy on wood-burning dutes, which will produce charcoal. But that burns through a lot of wood very fast, and it's not always easy to come by). Not so with the magma furnaces...they are infinitely powered by the magma below them.
As I was cutting out some debris, one of my miners strikes a strange blue mineral ore...ADAMANTINE!!! OH GOD YES!
To be clear, adamantine is the most valuable, strongest, sharpest and most lightweight of all ores in DF. It's rare and is only found in veins near the magma sea, making it really hard to mine. Somehow I found a relatively upper later, since there is no magma near to it (yet). I've mined a 30-40 blocks but I stopped there - before I can make some 'magma safe' doors to block off a potential magma flood from flooding my new furnaces I shouldn't keep digging. (magma safe items are made from materials that have a higher melting point than the heat of magma, there are only a handful of stones and metals that qualify). I produced two adamantine battle axes already. More stuff to follow. I also managed to build a magma-safe pump and install it above the magma sea. As it was finished, I called a pump operator in there to start it...hilarity ensued. It would appear that I had underestimated the speed with which the magma would be pumped up.
I flooded like half the room with magma before barely being able to turn off the pump (brave pump operator!). It was only a single floor layer so it dried pretty quickly, but if he hadn't been able to go in and turn it off I'd have been in a really shitty position again. So we're not touching the pump until I figure out what I want to do. Let's hope some dwarf doesn't go insane and start pulling levers and activating machines. In the meantime I'd let the Forgotten Beast in that was wandering around and told you about the epic fight (see above post), but I didn't say everything.
I 'forgot' to mention that the reason the first squad couldn't hurt it for ages was because I'd equipped them with fucking empty crossbows. They were using them to bash the Beast over and over again, hahahah. Most of them became legendary hammer users after those days and days of melee figthing with an empty crossbow tho! So at least SOME good came of it. Mental note: manually pick militia weapons next time...and pay attention while doing so.I'm also suffering from a population explosion of kids. Almost half of my fortress is kids and babies, my dwarves are breeding like SHIT. Since they're fairly useless until they grow up and have a tendency to get themselves hurt (and hence make their parents upset) they're kind of a pain. I may just gather them all up in a room and drown it with magma for laughs.
But I think that might cause a fatal spiral of berserking and melancholy parents. Mm. Oh and if I DO manage to make a system to get that magma topside, I'm totally still building that golden tower. With magma shooting from it, down on Elven and Human carvans. P.S. My hospital has one permanent resident: a dwarven child with a permanent spine injury.
He's a paraplegic, basically. Adult dwarves can learn how to use crutches to get around ('crutch walking' is an actual skill), but it appears children don't. There were actually 2 paraplegic children -both danger room accidents - but one was brutally murdered in his bed by ANOTHER dwarven child who had gone into a berserk rage because he felt his wounds weren't tended to in time. Statistics: Posted by Rinox — Mon Oct 11, 2010 3:25 am
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It's late so I'll give some more explanation of what happened today tomorrow, but I'll post some screens first.
The first one is pretty awesome - remember how I killed two Titans who attack my base earlier? And how one of my dwarves dragged the huge body to the butcher's shop, providing loads of meat, bones and other goodies for my dwarves to feed on/craft with? Well...looks like the fucker ended up being used (partially) for SOAP. Hahahaha! How's that for an undignfied end, being processed into dwarf soap.
(in case you wondered: a butchered 'animal' will, among other things, provide fat which is rendered by a cook. It's then stored in the food stockpile until it's used for cooking or, in this case, as basis for soap. Most soap is from more mundane animals like dogs, horses and donkeys naturally).The following two pics are related: there was a Forgotten Beast (kind of like a Titan but underground, and tougher) wandering around in some caverns I had unearthed before. I had walled off the entrances so it couldn't get it, but it was wandering around in there. Seeing as I'd just provided my new and heavily drilled crack force of 10 young dwarves with shiny new all-steel plate uniforms and weapons, I decided to let them loose on it. So...I opened the wall. What followed was a titanic battle in which the FUCKER WOULD JUST NOT FUCKING DIE. What's worse, it had a sort of dust blowing attack that made my soldiers nauseous and stunned them. The hardened guys just fought on regardless (while vomiting all the time) though. Check this out...this was shortly before he actually died. After like days and days of in-game fighting.
He broke everything in his body, was bleeding from every fucking orifice and still killed two guys, injured a few others and kept out for DAYS. :O
Statistics: Posted by Rinox — Sun Oct 10, 2010 6:34 pm
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Statistics: Posted by Satis — Sat Oct 09, 2010 5:31 pm
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