mining sites...

[Catteus Of Mars]

anyone not mining straight down from your fortress? like usually my forts end when i mine into something i cant handle... so i was drinking coffee while watching another fort get demolished from inside. why do i do it... why not just mine straight down from OUTSIDE the fortress so if something nasty comes up its outside the wall :/ how wel do the mining carts work like is it viable to have mining far away and just truck the stuff over with carts?

[McFuzz]

Normally I just stick the mineshaft straight down behind the Captain Of The Guard barracks. So that anything from the caves has to walk through the barracks (it usually dies). Extra cage traps also help.

[pawelkrzyzak]

I usually go straight down to find first cave (moss and cave vegetation grows on underground soil from cave discovery and it is possible to make pasture underground). After that I quick back up, seal the cave off and carefully dig deeper manouvering between caves until I get to magma. There I set up my magma forges and furnaces and prepare for clearing out caves.
All abovementioned works in theory - in practise there is always some flood, starvation, cave in or forgotten beast that finishes my dwarves before they get to be warriors :)

[High Lord Denix]

I usually have main stairway I build my fort around, and I'll build another stairway somewhere off to the side that leads down to the caverns, usually having to go through a barracks to get from the main fort to the caverns.

[Honking Capabilities]

I saved several levels for building in and then went down to the caverns with another shaft about a hundred spaces to the east. It's in a long hallway blocked by doors, raising bridges and surrounded with fortifications for my archers to fire through at whatever comes up. I have a similar defensive set up on the cavern floor before they reach the stairs. Cage traps help too, I've trapped five elk birds so far.

[Athos the Mad]

Originally posted by Catteus Of Mars:

how wel do the mining carts work like is it viable to have mining far away and just truck the stuff over with carts?

They work pretty well however it is a really large timesink. They can only go up slopes and have to be pushed by a dwarf. They are generally good for moving large amounts of stone. You also would have to deal with the forgotten beasts coming up to the surface and blocking you from accessing the mine.
Mining straight down in a 3x3 or a 2x2 isn't usually a fortress wipe. That's how I design my fortresses in general. I would recommend watching the game while you have them staircase down. When you pierce the cavern level, pause and designate a side stair leading back to the main corridor. Then designate for them to build floors over the bottom of the stair tower. Then unpause. It usually takes a few seasons to spawn a nasty forgotten beast.

You could also wall off your main fort, go outside the walls and mine a 2x2 down until you hit caverns. This should reveal the roof of the caverns and allow you to build the main fort avoiding them. However, forgotten beasts trapping you from accessing trade/the map would still be a problem as well as every migrant wave being wiped.

[pawelkrzyzak]

Originally posted by High Lord Denix:

I usually have main stairway I build my fort around, and I'll build another stairway somewhere off to the side that leads down to the caverns, usually having to go through a barracks to get from the main fort to the caverns.

I used to build fortress around main staircase as well, until I saw/heard Tarn Adams (co-founder) saying, that it helps significantly with framerate and pathfinding to have build staircases all around your fortress. I am trying it now and it seems to be working. At least with hauling time and such. Which is huge part of calculating consuming factor, I guess.
I thing pathfinding forces dwarves to look for another rock to haul up/down stairs 'because it is closer in z-levels to the workshop or stockpile. even though walking to the staircase and back takes looong time. Seems to be this way. Hence multiple "smaller/shallower" staircases seems to be working for me, as for now.

[pawelkrzyzak]

Originally posted by Athos Atreides:

Originally posted by Catteus Of Mars:

how wel do the mining carts work like is it viable to have mining far away and just truck the stuff over with carts?

They work pretty well however it is a really large timesink. They can only go up slopes and have to be pushed by a dwarf. They are generally good for moving large amounts of stone. You also would have to deal with the forgotten beasts coming up to the surface and blocking you from accessing the mine.
Mining straight down in a 3x3 or a 2x2 isn't usually a fortress wipe. That's how I design my fortresses in general. I would recommend watching the game while you have them staircase down. When you pierce the cavern level, pause and designate a side stair leading back to the main corridor. Then designate for them to build floors over the bottom of the stair tower. Then unpause. It usually takes a few seasons to spawn a nasty forgotten beast.

You could also wall off your main fort, go outside the walls and mine a 2x2 down until you hit caverns. This should reveal the roof of the caverns and allow you to build the main fort avoiding them. However, forgotten beasts trapping you from accessing trade/the map would still be a problem as well as every migrant wave being wiped.

It is pretty doable to seal fortress off the cave before nasty beast got you. Most of forgotten beasts are building destroyers, so you cannot really wall yourself off. But in order for beast to use this perk and destroy wall/door/HATCH/fortification..etc, the beast NEEDS to be on the same level, that building is. When you hit the cave and do as follows:
- immediately stop further digging
- designate to build the floor on the lowest level of staircase that actually "punctured" to the cave + simultanesly carve "small emergency staircase" next to existing one, just to get level up and to give constructor space to stand while building the floor.
Basically you will end up with staircase plugged by floor and any creature trying to get from under, automatically would be a level below, therefore not able to destroy building. I believe it would have worked with hatch as well, never tried it, though.
I have it read on dwarf wiki, very, very useful source of information. Really.

[Helios]

Originally posted by Catteus Of Mars:

anyone not mining straight down from your fortress? like usually my forts end when i mine into something i cant handle... so i was drinking coffee while watching another fort get demolished from inside. why do i do it... why not just mine straight down from OUTSIDE the fortress so if something nasty comes up its outside the wall :/ how wel do the mining carts work like is it viable to have mining far away and just truck the stuff over with carts?

put down metalbars over the stairs and link them to a lever that way you can close the stairs quick when something happens.

[Vivisectus]

Plus, you can give that one annoying dwarf the job of gathering silk and then close the stairs behind them.

Do turn off the two auto-jobs for weaving all thread and auto-gathering silk. It is super annoying otherise.