Bay 12 Games Forum

1) They don't need to be very deep if you put steel spikes at the bottom....

2) I consider killing them on the ledge to be a bonus so I utilise steel serrated discs... Or you can use some form of spike/spear linked to a lever if you want it to work on FBs/Kobolds etc. Even if you use weak traps to get them to dodge, put some steel ones at the end to kill anything that makes it past the others.

3)Yes, except magma-safe metals. It also does a great job of killing things you drop in, and incinerates the corpses to prevent them being resurrected by a passing necromancer.

Unless everything goes horribly wrong (and this being DF, it tends to do that), most ordinary threats (monsters, goblins, zombies, FBs etc) will only endanger those dwarves whose professions may take them out of the fortress. So miners, woodcutters, weavers, fisherdwarves and soldiers might expect high casualty rates, but normally you don't lose your best "inside" dwafves like weaponsmiths, farmers, cooks, brewers, strand extractors etc, unless you're unlucky or the fort is collapsing anyway.

Enter Urist McVampire.

Suddenly your legendary armoursmith winds up dead. Then you have to either put off that massive order of steel armour you were making, or accept it being of substandard quality. Either decision could lead to a disaster if your military meets something nasty in the meantime.

Or he might feed on your legendary cook. "That's OK," you say. "Quality doesn't matter too much on food anyway." You might notice when his replacement is cooking MUCH slower and you run out of food. Tantrum spiral may ensue.

In short, yes indirectly vampires can destroy a fort, though they seem fairly easy to spot most of the time. It is a bit of a shame that they don't resist arrest when the hammerer comes for them, but hopefully Toady will fix that in future. THAT could result in serious fun, especially if the vampire picks up a weapon, or was part of the fortress guard. Another reason not to draft new migrants straight into the army...

How about:
THIS! IS! SPARTAAAAA!

Or:

I am your father!

Especially incongruous when it's some random tentacle demon...

Demons are building destroyers - won't it smash the bridge?

Also, they can fly, so if you don't use fortifications it will fly across, kill the cats, then annihilate your fortress.

But I believe they don't need a path to the target, so try to trap it in a small room with fortifications on one side, and cats on the other with the ability to block them off using either bridge or floodgates, out of the demon's reach.

That will be easier said than done due to aforementioned flying. How are you planning to capture it?

I've heard they are the only civ other than dwarves which can use steel, though. Which could be nasty depending on what sort of equipment they bring.

Do kobold ambushers wear armour/use weapons like a proper goblin siege? Or is it just a dagger and nothing else, like the thieves?

Don't channel it all, it takes longer to mine. Instead dig out each floor, then build supports to connect them, linking one of them to a lever that isn't in the future hall. Channel out the tiles around the edge and around any pillars you may have, so that now the only thing holding up the floor is the bottom support. Get all your dwarves and any valuable minerals out, then PULL THE LEVER! and watch all those floors disappear leaving you with a lovely great hall. Added bonus is that this destroys most of the junk stone left behind, as well.

This is going swimmingly for my current project, a recreation of the Theed Generator Complex from the Phantom Menace. Only trouble is it's taking quite a lot of time since I'm running at a grand total of 6 FPS...

They're random. FBs made of stuff like grime, steam and water are hilariously weak. On the other hand, FBs with deadly blood can wipe out an entire fortress if their blood gets tracked into the wrong place, sufficiently deadly vapours can kill the entire squad sent against it (happened to me ) and deadly dust is the worst. I have a granite forgotten beast with deadly dust locked up, and I'm to afraid to let it loose in case it destroys the entire fort (though I am working on a way to weaponise it instead)