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Author Topic: Glass floor for lookout animals?  (Read 3700 times)

Hamek McEisenfaust

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Glass floor for lookout animals?
« on: May 30, 2012, 08:11:06 am »

I currently have a small above ground area housing my depot and barracks. outside the walls of those areas, i have a small cross shaped set of walls with bridges closing off the ends. in the center of the cross, i want to remove the stone, and replace with with glass, pasturing some turkeys up there as watch animals. i know glass walls work for critter spotting, but do glass floors/ceilings? thanks for your gracious assistance.
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imperium3

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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2012, 08:16:55 am »

Neither glass walls nor glass floors/ceilings are see-through. You can use floor grates (or was it bars?) instead though, they are see-through, just make sure they have support (as they don't support each other.
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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2012, 08:47:39 am »

Glass walls and floors are the same as rock walls and floors - you can't see through them.

You can see through fortifications and glass windows.

You can see through floor grates and floor bars. No, you can't shoot arrows through floor grates or floor bars yet.

vjek

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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2012, 10:17:54 am »

I currently have a small above ground area housing my depot and barracks. outside the walls of those areas, i have a small cross shaped set of walls with bridges closing off the ends. in the center of the cross, i want to remove the stone, and replace with with glass, pasturing some turkeys up there as watch animals. i know glass walls work for critter spotting, but do glass floors/ceilings? thanks for your gracious assistance.

Best system I've found are gem windows next to fortifications, with a 1x1 pen for a non-grazer, with a wall behind them, and a non-pet passable door.

Like so:

Pets can't run, so they don't need to be re-penned, and they spot all ambushes!

daveralph1234

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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #4 on: May 30, 2012, 10:23:35 am »

I currently have a small above ground area housing my depot and barracks. outside the walls of those areas, i have a small cross shaped set of walls with bridges closing off the ends. in the center of the cross, i want to remove the stone, and replace with with glass, pasturing some turkeys up there as watch animals. i know glass walls work for critter spotting, but do glass floors/ceilings? thanks for your gracious assistance.

Best system I've found are gem windows next to fortifications, with a 1x1 pen for a non-grazer, with a wall behind them, and a non-pet passable door.

Like so:

Pets can't run, so they don't need to be re-penned, and they spot all ambushes!
I currently have a setup like this but with a ditch (with ramps removed) instead of fortifications, but for some reason nothing gets detected.
I am using 2 trained male war dogs (one either side of the hallway). Do ditches interfere with line of sight or are my dogs just incompetent?

vjek

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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #5 on: May 30, 2012, 10:29:17 am »

Only thing I can think of is...

They will never detect thieves. Only ambushes/ambushers.  Goblin thieves, kobolds, and those actual sneaking creatures, they can sneak right by.

It seems strange to me as well that a ditch wouldn't work...  Nope, I got nuthin'. :)

daveralph1234

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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #6 on: May 30, 2012, 12:54:56 pm »

my current setup as described above:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
it is yet to detect anything, at all......

NecroRebel

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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #7 on: May 30, 2012, 01:02:04 pm »

Stealthed creatures can be detected only within 3 tiles, and aren't detected reliably by unskilled observers (like animals) unless the thief is adjacent. So, in both of those designs, the animals, being behind 2 tiles of protective devices, can detect only thieves that are on the edges of the pathways, and then not at all reliably. You should goad invaders into passing through a 2-wide tunnel with detector animals on both sides, and have a lot more watch animals so you get more chances to spot.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #8 on: May 30, 2012, 01:30:04 pm »

Theoretically, if you can see through grates and bars, you could just have a ceiling of grates with some sort of long-lived animals sitting on the tiles there, looking down at everyone coming and going from the fort - wouldn't that be "adjacent" as in only one tile away for spotting purposes?
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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #9 on: May 30, 2012, 07:54:16 pm »

Theoretically, if you can see through grates and bars, you could just have a ceiling of grates with some sort of long-lived animals sitting on the tiles there, looking down at everyone coming and going from the fort - wouldn't that be "adjacent" as in only one tile away for spotting purposes?

Yes. You can have grates on the ceiling and/or on the floor, with animals on the other side, as detectors.

Fredd

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Re: Glass floor for lookout animals?
« Reply #10 on: May 30, 2012, 09:29:56 pm »

I am not using the latest version, where Toady fixed the vision bug, but in my version if a pet is next to a fortification, it can only see anything just on the outside edge. Case in point was my latest GCS silkfarm design.
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