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[Bomepie]

It's been a while since my last fortress, but I think I'm going to try for another ridiculous Megaproject.

I plan to mod bones so I can use them for construction, then make a ridiculously large structure entirely out of bones.

A background note: I tried this before, my intention was to more or less build a giant Khornate temple complete with workshops to turn the remains of enemies into magic armor and such, but I got too wrapped up in modding and got bored, so this time I'm gonna stick to just making something big and cool.

Location
I'm up in the air about this. I would like to embark in an evil biome, but I've never been super good with military and I'm not familiar with the latest updates (since 40d) to undead and such. I would appreciate advice on how harder an evil biome would make this.

Functional Fortress
There needs to be a part of the fort that is functional no matter what I build, but I don't want to get caught up building a ridiculous below ground fort and not having energy for the main project. I will either need to build a smallish separate fort then concentrate on the parts of the Megaproject that can be used for housing dwarves, or build a somewhat larger separate fortress. I intend to keep the population low so the speed stays good, either through modding or murder.

Military
Since goblins will be an important bone source there will be no simply turning invaders off and building in peace, the problem is that I suck at running a military in DF. I don't want to get completely sidetracked building a giant army, but I know I'll need one, so I'd appreciate advice on building a tight and efficient military that can still handle invaders.

Bone Source
While the bones of my enemies would be the ideal material source I'm not sure I'd get enough of them from enemies alone. The second dwarfiest source would be migrants, but I'm not sure that would work given the ghost and such. I'm hoping I can just give them all a slab then desecrate their corpses all I want, but I'd appreciate any knowledge on the subject you folks can offer. Finally I can get bones through animal husbandry, but a giant fortress made out of cow and capybara bones does not seem very dwarfy, I will have to see what the construction speed is like before I decide if this is necessary.

The Megaproject
I'm still not decided on what to build and am open to suggestions. The ones I'm currently considering are:

• A giant skeleton reclining with a functional fortress in the skull
• A giant tower/temple of doom

I will of course feel the need to work some other cool stuff into this, so I expect pumped magma and water will be used at some point in whatever I create.

Modding
I am not a super proficient DF modder, but I'm hoping that modding a bones so I can use them straight or turn them into blocks then use them shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully this will be the only required modding, I don't want to get bogged down in the raws. Any suggestions that would speed me figuring up how to do this would be welcome.

Logging
If there's enough interest I intend to keep a journal of this project complete with images for a timelapse, any other suggestions are welcome though.

I'd appreciate some help brainstorming this, I'm open to suggestions and advice on any facet of this project, if you can think of something you'd prefer me to build, or a rule you think I could stick to, or some modding advice I'd love to hear it.

[Talvieno]

Evil biomes are evil. Very evil. You could get anything from... Nothing... to fog that turns your dwarves into berserk husks... to corpses (and any partial corpses) spontaneously reanimating... to rain that acts like acid and kills your dwarves in seconds... to all of the above. You're likely to wind up with a lot more than you bargained for, but that's good! (provided you survive)

I don't know if they had "danger rooms" in 40d (haven't been playing that long, sadly), but I would advise you get some up and running. Basically, wooden upright spikes auto-pulled (rapidly on and off from a single lever) in a small room - small enough to keep dwarves from dodging the spikes. Your dwarves will be military geniuses in no time. Note: this is considered an exploit by some.

Sounds like you have the bone source problem under control. +1 for dwarfiness of killing migrants. Taming wild animals is much easier in the newer versions - if you embark in an area with plenty of creatures, you'll find falling back on animal bones to be a viable option.

A giant skeleton reclining with a functional fortress in the skull

If you do this, it will be epic. I will demand pics. I honestly prefer this one over the tower... But it would be a lot harder and more time-consuming, I would think.

As to modding the bones, I honestly don't know how to go about doing it, but I know someone here will. I was actually considering doing it myself recently - but with corpses (or really, anything dead and organic). I would assume you would need to make a new item definition for bone blocks and then a reaction to allow turning bones into blocks... But I don't know the specifics off the top of my head.

Only other thing I can think of - use Fortress Overseer if you can. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63484.0 Epic visualizer.

[Girlinhat]

For modding, you'll want a new item, probably a stone that never occurs in nature.  Name this stone "bone".  The make a custom reaction that takes "elk bone[5]" and produces "elk bone blocks".  This works because the animal material is carried, the bone is not.  So if you set it "make a block of this material" it would be "elk block".  You need a fake item named "bone" to get it to appear right.  Of course if you want a non-specific "bone block" that's the same idea, just don't have it inherit the material type.

As for construction, take a reference from Venture Brothers:

Spoiler: Props if you know what this is before looking. (click to show/hide)

Don't make that, but make something in the same vein.

[Bomepie]

Spiderskull island, where do I collect my props?

[masquerine]

Husks/thralls in evil regions are pretty much the deadliest entity you'll encounter in the game. They retain anything they were wearing and learn new skills as they fight. They don't count as being killed when they turn, instead acting as a transformation (meaning urist mcfisher that gets thralled won't appear as "missing", as he technically didn't die. He'll still be a hostile entity though). They don't feel pain and don't need organs. The only real way to kill them in combat is beheading or bisecting, which is usually easier said than done. Better off atom smashing if you can, as thralls are usually made by interaction through ash clouds/coatings. The ash leaves a coating on the thrall and objects/map, which will instantly turn anything into a thrall if it touches the coating. So if the ash covered thrall attacks a wandering kitten, the kitten will become a thrall.

Sometimes the very region itself can raise any dead pieces into zombies, including skin and hair. It can make butchering a nightmare if you don't have spare haulers to get the job done quickly, and a military to put down any pieces that zombify if they were too slow.

Evil rain can be harmless blood that simply gives a negative thought, or it can be deadly. Some examples include: blistering on the entire body, leading to swelling and massive blood loss, necrosis or acid that instantly melts your dwarfs. Evil rain can be very problematic if you get the bad stuff.

Along with these, sometimes you'll notice there's a "Tower" in worldgen. These belong to necromancers. They'll siege you with various undead, and often the necromancer(s) come stealthed and will happily raise any and every dead thing he can find on the map. Be careful where you keep your refuse pile.

There's also vampires. They come disguised as normal dwarves, and will suck blood and kill while the dwarves sleep. Keeping an open dorm for new members from migrant waves can weed out vampires with little interaction, though there are signs you can look for. Some things include white hair, being a member of many different places, wearing sentient bone jewelry (dwarf, elf, human - animal ones could just mean it was a hunter. Sentient is vampire.) Vampires don't eat, drink or sleep. They don't drown in water. If they are unable to feed for a long period of time, they become slow to move. They usually come with hundreds or thousands of kills, depending on how long your history is.

[Graebeard]

Sounds super fearful, can't wait to see it!  I modded in a bone block workshop a ling while back.  It mostly worked OK.  I'll have to track down the link for you when I get back to my computer in case it's useful.

It's been a long time since I looked, but when I played around with this I ran into the issue that the game tends to treat stacks of bones as one object.  That means a goblin left arm bone will (or, at least, used to) create one block and so will a stack of 25 elephant bones.  One solution to. This is dropping your future construction materials from a healthy height.  If you combine a goblin grinder with a dodge trap, you may also address your military issue in the same breath.

You could also integrate this into your design.  Picture a skull tilted back, jaws gaping open.  It's radius, ulna and phalanges thrusting into the sky above.  Your material plummets, one by one, into the gorey maw before becoming incorporated, fueling the unholy growth of this monstrosity.

[AdeleneDawner]

Context: I've never played 40d, but I've read a fair bit about it.

Location
I'm up in the air about this. I would like to embark in an evil biome, but I've never been super good with military and I'm not familiar with the latest updates (since 40d) to undead and such. I would appreciate advice on how harder an evil biome would make this.

Evil areas have a few different effects depending on what the random number generator has decided to give you, ranging from a few hill orcs coming by every so often to being unable to have dwarves go aboveground without passing out from the toxic ooze raining from the sky or butcher any animals without having their parts come back to life and attack the butcher.

Functional Fortress
There needs to be a part of the fort that is functional no matter what I build, but I don't want to get caught up building a ridiculous below ground fort and not having energy for the main project. I will either need to build a smallish separate fort then concentrate on the parts of the Megaproject that can be used for housing dwarves, or build a somewhat larger separate fortress. I intend to keep the population low so the speed stays good, either through modding or murder.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'functional', but if you're looking for layout tips, I've had good results with building a stack of these:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's enough space for a dozen workshops (you can't really put workshops in the corner rooms, but those are excellent for other things, like dorms or garbage storage), plus enough materials storage to keep them very well stocked, and a central area that you can use for whatever you like - I've put booze there, mostly because I have an absurd amount of it in this fort, but you could make it a dining hall for that layer's workers, item storage, whatever you like.

Bone Source
While the bones of my enemies would be the ideal material source I'm not sure I'd get enough of them from enemies alone. The second dwarfiest source would be migrants, but I'm not sure that would work given the ghost and such. I'm hoping I can just give them all a slab then desecrate their corpses all I want, but I'd appreciate any knowledge on the subject you folks can offer. Finally I can get bones through animal husbandry, but a giant fortress made out of cow and capybara bones does not seem very dwarfy, I will have to see what the construction speed is like before I decide if this is necessary.

You'll have to mod your dwarves' ethics if you want to do this. If you do, I'm fairly sure you can mod the ethics to allow them to use dwarf bones as well as goblin/elf/kobold/human. Slabs will be good enough to stop migrants from coming back as ghosts, in any case. If you're not comfortable with modding (and modding the ethics is very simple), you could also go with underground-beast bones - cave crocodiles or giant olms or whatever.

The Megaproject
I'm still not decided on what to build and am open to suggestions. The ones I'm currently considering are:

• A giant skeleton reclining with a functional fortress in the skull
• A giant tower/temple of doom

I will of course feel the need to work some other cool stuff into this, so I expect pumped magma and water will be used at some point in whatever I create.

If you're really looking for a challenge, cast whatever you make out of obsidian. ^^

Modding
I am not a super proficient DF modder, but I'm hoping that modding a bones so I can use them straight or turn them into blocks then use them shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully this will be the only required modding, I don't want to get bogged down in the raws. Any suggestions that would speed me figuring up how to do this would be welcome.

Yeah, that shouldn't be hard at all. A quick trip to the modding subforum should help you figure out how to do that.

Logging
If there's enough interest I intend to keep a journal of this project complete with images for a timelapse, any other suggestions are welcome though.

Sounds like Fun; I'd read it.

[Darkmere]

If it was me, I'd do a general setup something like this:

Wall in most of the map. Leave 1 or more entrances for traps (see below), to allow traders in, and funnel goblin bone-fodder through "processing". Token militia cleans up whatever gets through, and it should be simple enough to automate.

Entrances: Dozens of weapon traps with serrated disks, 3-5 disks per trap. IIRC, every butcherable chunk yields bones, so... more chunks = more bones. Alternative: long passage of retracting bridges over a 7+ Z-lvl drop. Pressure plates linked to all bridges on 1 strip of land in the center. Whatever isn't splattered will be crippled and easy to mop up with token militia. Build a bridge-sealed atom smasher trash pit/dump zone nearby for extra trash, and just harvest the bone/meatscrap pieces for construction material.

Also, if you're planning to use water/magma, you could supplement bone with obsidian to lighten the material load. Probably not what you had in mind, but it's an option if construction starts to drag waiting for the next siege. And speaking of construction... the skeleton idea would be more intensive than a monolithic temple, due to scaffolding deconstruction. I hate that part, so that's more personal preference than practicality.

Functional fort:
10 Z-level inverse tower, between surface and the cavern (assuming you worldgen only 1 cavern for FPS/magma pumping reasons), housing near the bottom for noise concerns. Most of the fort would be generic haulers/masons(bonecarvers?), so... no real need to make them happy.

[Naryar]

Make the giant skull pour magma out of it's mouth and eyes !

[AWdeV]

Have it breathe noxious fumes and roar at every dawn!

More practically; Use steel-clad, axe-wielding, danger-room trained two-dwarf squads for defence. They're good at killing anything while being incredibly hard to kill themselves. Invest in shields.

I don't know how you'd go about using Dwarf bone though. It's an easy thing to mod the ethics so that humans, elves, and goblins can be butchered but Dwarfs? No. Not as far as I know, anyway.

[Garath]

And while I agree that goose bones don't really cut it for something like this, I think giant tiger bones, cave crocodile bones, jabberer and other "monster" bones should fit in well enough with the scenery.

[AWdeV]

Yeah, cave beasts, savage beasts, evil beasts, (semi)megabeasts, forgotten beasts, titans and invaders are all acceptable. Mr. Cluckers, stray chicken is not.

[Garath]

and perhaps not the giant peach faced lovebird. It sounds slightly out of place. Bonus points if anyone can mod it so I can decorate walls with skull totems.

[Bomepie]

I'm thinking that unless someone has any better suggestions I'm going to build one of these three designs:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A reclining skeleton will be the easiest to build. If I build this version I think I'd like to put it in a coffin, but I worry that it may block the view of the skeleton in the screenshots.

The skeleton on a throne would probably win out for sheer menace, and still be fairly easy to build since most things would line up at nice right angles. I would plan on carving the throne out of a mountain face instead of constructing it all.

A natural skeleton would be the most difficult, and the goal with it would be to make it not an obvious construction. I'd be shooting for more or less reconstructing the corpse of a fallen god, and perhaps I'd try to work the functional fort into the area around it, so it seemed like it was colonized much like the giant in Ender's Game.

[Conrad]

Sounds sort of similar to the game I'm playing (modding it myself).

Have you played Fortress Defense? I would try looking there for enemies and modding the entity file for dwarfs to consider butchering sentient creatures and taking trophies to be acceptable. Fortress Defense should provide you with enough meat and bones to complete the construction. I'd consider adding leather blocks too as you'll have a decent amount of that and might add some cool constructions ( * Goblin leather blocks * ), though I'm not sure how that would go.

In my my current mod, I've also toyed with making skulls, bones and meat brew-able to skull brew, marrow beer and blood ale if you want to continue with the feel. I've done a few other things focusing on making use of the extensive bone supply but I think you'll have no problem with that. I'd be willing to contribute all the modding I've done if you're interested.