Fort Designs and Layouts

[Trooper Trouble]

Hello you wonderful rock gems! I've only recently picked up DF thanks to it coming around on steam and have been having an absolute blast. I've quickly picked up on the game and learned about a lot of the basics, including even making really basic layouts and etc. It had me curious though, what are some of your guys favorite builds, layouts, and forts you like to build? Many thanks, and may the rocks protect you well!

[Onlysane1]

I just started my first volcano fortress, and it's interesting because it requires a much more vertical build due to less real estate from the lava, but at the same time the abundance of lava at all elevations makes for some interesting ideas (maybe I can open a floodgate to fill my fortress entryway with lava when the goblins attack?).

Having access to lava for day-1 lava powered furnaces is a good benefit, as well. Realistically, though, I'm probably gonna wind up flooding my entire fort and sending my dorfs to a fiery death.

[Commisar Jon Fuklaw]

Volcano/lava tube/divine spire forts aside, a preferred layout of mine is building every level around a 5x5 spiral staircase with a 1x1 or 3x3 waterfall (either diverted or pumped from natural sources) in the middle. It's a simple core design with a lot of options for security and fort management/optimization, though underground response times may suffer if you keep the entire fort shallow (though that may be remedied with a secondary access stairway).

[oo]

50x50 squares running 50 z deep i call it dweorf cube

[Trooper Trouble]

Originally posted by oo:

50x50 squares running 50 z deep i call it dweorf cube

Nice, toss our enemies right on in

[noa12390]

in my case i work out where things are first then restart the fort to better work around the area since finding say shallow caves is not a fun thing