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Author Topic: Soldier toughening: Item Drop Training  (Read 83101 times)

Hans Lemurson

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Soldier toughening: Item Drop Training
« on: October 01, 2012, 03:10:20 am »

(For clarity, I have renamed the thread "Item Drop Training"

I have recently tested a new experimental training method for boosting the Armor User skill level of my dwarves: DROP THINGS ON THEM!!!

I created a setup similar to a 1-tile danger room, with a barracks that had only 1 useable tile (weapon rack behind a locked internal door) and placed this underneath a garbage dump zone.

I then proceeded to dump 100 plump helmet spawn onto my a dwarf squad to see what would happen.

Results:
-Only one dwarf at a time took the impact of the falling seeds.  It seemed to be the last dwarf to arrive in the tile, so I presume he was at the top of the dwarf-pile.
-Boosts Armor User. Each seed deflected boosted armor-user skill by a small amount (as I had hoped)
-Boosts Attributes.  Looking at the attributes in splinterz' Dwarf Therapist version, I noticed that the toughness of the dwarf was raised by 1 every 2-3 deflected items.  I was pleasantly surprised to see this, and noted that strength and agility were also boosted, but possibly at a lower rate.
-Armor MATTERS.  Testing this on a dwarf wearing leather armor, he ended up getting bruised all over.  A falling stack of quarry bush leaves will leave a bruise through leather leggings.  Also, a child not wearing anything on his head was killed by a falling seed.  Falling objects are dangerous, but can be completely shrugged off by wearing metal armor.
-Object Weight Matters.  A dropped boulder broke the leg of my militia commander through his =copper greaves=.  Stick to dropping small objects.
-Labor Intensive.  Dropping small objects one at a time is a bit labor intensive, requiring the attention of many many haulers.  Having them retrieve items while more are being dropped can result in hauler injuries, because armor matters, so a continuous cycle could be difficult.

Conclusions:
Given the non-trivial effect this has on dwarven attributes, I think that this is a valid method for a "Dwarven Super-Soldier Program".  All you need to do is drop items on a dwarf 2,000 times, and they should be "Basically Unbreakable".  Hrrm...2,000 per dwarf could go a little bit slow.
Given how labor intensive dropping small items one at a time is, I think I might see if I can use mass-dumping via minecarts to industrialize the process.  Alternately, just ready batches of items on top of a hatch ready to be dropped when a soldier comes by, since I don't actually know how to use minecarts yet.

Using this to train super-soldiers will involve a lot of hauling and labor on the part of other dwarves, and can only be targeted at one dwarf at a time, which limits it.  It DOES have one advantage over other attribute-boosting methods that I know of: It has absolutely no effect on the profession of the Dwarf.  Using screw-pumps as a "gym" will eventually give you a legendary pump operator, but this will only train Armor User, and a little bit of Dodging and Fighting.  It also boosts attributes relative to other skills much more so than say a danger room which can give you a Legendary Axedwarf who's still "flimsy".

Post your thoughts and or ideas on how to "industrialize" this training method to yield a group of super-tough soldiers.

« Last Edit: October 02, 2012, 02:51:14 am by Hans Lemurson »
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Foolprooof way to penetrate aquifers of unlimited depth.  (Make sure to import at least 10 stones for mechanisms)
Toughen Dwarves by dropping stuff on them.  (Nothing too heavy though, and make sure to wear armor.)
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And into every face he saw
his sooty foot he put."

I am Leo

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #1 on: October 01, 2012, 04:36:24 am »

I'm a tad rusty on modern physics, but would a stack of, say, coins fall as one object or many individual ones? If they fall individually, are they automatically re-stacked if they land on the same tile?

If this works, you could burrow your military dwarf on one tile, have him load and push a cart of coins up a slope that then dump their glittering payload on him from on high.

On a scale of 1-10, how incorrect are my assumptions?
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dwarfhoplite

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #2 on: October 01, 2012, 04:40:37 am »

At first I thought you do like me and drop the dwarves down the garbage chute.
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wagawaga

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #3 on: October 01, 2012, 05:14:25 am »

I have an idea to ease the making of an almost contiuous cycle: make the single-tile barracks a retracting bridge over a hole. Connect the bottom of the hole to the garbage chute via stairs.
When you run out of small items to dump on the head of the trainees, remove the barracks or somehow get the soldiers away from the bridge (not entirely necessary if the drop is a single z-level, i'm not sure wether falling together with items make the items damage the dwarf) and open the bridge.
Items will drop down to the bottom of the hole, and once the bridge is closed again, your haulers will be able to bring the items back up to the chute in just 4-5 steps (stepping up a stair counts as just 1 step) without having more items dropping on their head. Just make sure no-one is hauling when you open the bridge and discharge the whole heap of items down.

Automating the dumping via a minecart stop might make it even faster: put hauler/s in a burrow on the bottom floor with all he requires to live close by (small booze & food stockpile, personal dining room and bedroom and nice stuff for happiness), where he will fill up carts at a cart stop before pushing them up a roller-powered track up to the garbage dump, where the load is dumped on the head of the trainee via a track stop. The cart is then pushed back down by another hauler, possibily through a different route since the rollers will make the track one-way.

Streamlining the process by using a minecart also has the nice side-effect of not using dump designations and garbage dump zones. This means you can quantum-dump your stones as normal without having to play around with designations and zones while using this training method, although minecarts do require additional setup.

Make the cart do small 1-tile jumps across open space if you want to make the bottom hauling area completely secluded from the main fort.


I'm actually not sure that bridges stop rooms from expanding across z-levels - if they expand across z-levels at all to begin with. Also, all that I'm writing here is purely theoretical since I don't have access to the game proper right now to test it.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2012, 05:44:38 am by wagawaga »
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Hans Lemurson

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #4 on: October 01, 2012, 05:47:02 am »

Right now I have a 1 tile barracks located directly beneath a Hatch which has 100 plump helmet spawn sitting on it.

When I pulled the lever, my Militia Commander took the hits, and gained ~1000xp in Armor User, +40 Toughness (to 1149) +20 Agility, and I forgot to check the strength beforehand, but I'm pretty sure that increased too.

How many seeds can a minecart hold?
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Foolprooof way to penetrate aquifers of unlimited depth.  (Make sure to import at least 10 stones for mechanisms)
Toughen Dwarves by dropping stuff on them.  (Nothing too heavy though, and make sure to wear armor.)
Quote
"Urist had a little lamb
whose feet tracked blighted soot.
And into every face he saw
his sooty foot he put."

wagawaga

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #5 on: October 01, 2012, 06:00:59 am »

According to the wiki, "five times the capacity of wheelbarrows", which translates into five times the capacity of a single stockpile tile.
Assuming this means five barrels, each barrel can hold 10 bags.
Each bag can hold 100 seeds.
5 x 10 x 100 = 5000.

I'm really unsure of this calculation. This calls for science.

I fear "five times the capacity of a single stockpile tile" might actually mean excluding containers (since we don't want to drop full barrels of bagged seeds, do we? or maybe we do?), totaling a wimpy five seeds stacks.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2012, 06:06:26 am by wagawaga »
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nbp

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #6 on: October 01, 2012, 06:56:41 am »

Is there a good way to get the seeds back out of the sacks/barrels?  De-containering items is not something I've had good luck with.
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Reelya

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #7 on: October 01, 2012, 06:59:02 am »

You will have to deal with the 200 seeds per crop type limit. I'd suggest finding something else besides seeds if you want 1000's at once. Maybe 2000 socks, or other used clothing. That might reduce the number of times this thing has to be reloaded per dwarf. Perhaps quarry bush leaves would be good, since there's no 200 limit on those.

btw, seeds inside a bag will probably count as just the bag hitting the dwarf. I'm pretty sure they need to be unbagged. To unbag things, tag the contents for dumping, but not the containers.

Hey, things falling into a square with a minecart don't end up in the cart, do they? That would be really handy.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2012, 07:05:57 am by Reelya »
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I am Leo

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #8 on: October 01, 2012, 08:56:43 am »

AH HA! Quantum stockpile all your refuse/seeds/etc on a bridge over a series of bridges leading vertically downwards. Stand a dwarf on the one unerneath the top, open the top bridge. Move your dwarf down a level, open the next bridge. Repeat all the way down, then have a chain of minecarts to stockpile it back at the top.
Whatever method you use to load the stockpile, it's many drops for the price of one.
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Reelya

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #9 on: October 01, 2012, 08:57:51 am »

^ I like that one!

ansontan2000

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #10 on: October 01, 2012, 09:02:52 am »

AH HA! Quantum stockpile all your refuse/seeds/etc on a bridge over a series of bridges leading vertically downwards. Stand a dwarf on the one unerneath the top, open the top bridge. Move your dwarf down a level, open the next bridge. Repeat all the way down, then have a chain of minecarts to stockpile it back at the top.
Whatever method you use to load the stockpile, it's many drops for the price of one.

Geneal! Pure genius! Time to test this...
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When a soldier makes a mistake, one man dies.
When a captain makes a mistake, a dozen men die.
When a commander makes a mistake, a thousand men die.
When an emperor makes a mistake, well, there is a game save for retry.

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #11 on: October 01, 2012, 09:18:52 am »

1. Falling stacks of objects impact as single items (arrows [5] is a single item).

2. Objects in containers don't pop out unless you shoot them sideways at "shotgun" velocity.

3. Things falling into a square with a container, including minecarts, don't end up in the container.

4. Rooms don't expand across z-levels.

5. Armor user boost verified in the arena. Steel armored dwarf. 600 items led to "talented armor user 900/1100". 1000 items led to "professional armor user 900/1400". This means 9 xp per item. So you need about 12900 items to reach legendary (someone verify my calcs?). Note very high endurance, willpower gains.

dwarfhoplite

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #12 on: October 01, 2012, 09:26:57 am »

I can't believe we're discussing about dwarves training combat by dodging trash dropped on them.
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Volfgarix

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #13 on: October 01, 2012, 09:47:21 am »

I can't believe we're discussing about dwarves training combat by dodging trash dropped on them.

In this forum, everything is possible.
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krisslanza

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Re: Soldier toughening: Garbage Chute Training
« Reply #14 on: October 01, 2012, 09:50:30 am »

I can't believe we're discussing about dwarves training combat by dodging trash dropped on them.

In this forum, everything is possible.

If anything, this is one of the forum's more NORMAL and SANE ideas. It doesn't involve magma or horrible death for one.
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