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The Undergrove

6 (40%)

The Corpselight Grove

9 (60%)

Total Members Voted: 12

[Halfling]

Um, clubbing them to submission might work if we had somebody who really knows how to fight. Sending in recruits or even somewhat decent fighters results in the zombies mostly getting smacked down for a few minutes, of course, but they also get vicious lucky hits in, and they are really strong. I once had a severed dog head instakill a somewhat trained and fully armored dwarf. And that means the zombie now has an ally, soon to be allies.

Training warriors by using controlled undeath (like dumping mussel shells and pearls in their barracks, which will then reanimate) is a good idea, but I wouldn't recommend using dwarf corpses for that purpose.

Honestly, Cog, I'd be interested to hear how you would engineer getting them out of the cages and retrieving the cages too. I mean you could just order the dwarves to take them out of the cages and pit them, but that would probably be equivalent to violent suicide slightly hazardous.

Having thought about it a bit more, I can come up with some solutions, but they all involve a lot more work than it takes to just make a new cage.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Here is how I'd do it

Code: [Select]

Legend:
O = wall
. = empty space
X = floodgate/door/raising bridge
c = cage

O O O O O
O O c O O
O O . O O
O O . O O
O O X O O
O . . . O
O . . . O
O . . . O
O O O O O

So you prepare a 3x3 room, and have a short tunnel leading to it. The tunnel is disconnected from the fort after the cage is set up, and the cage is connected to Lever 1. The X designates a floodgate or a door, something that breaks line of sight. Connect that to lever 2.

Seal the entire contraption away from the fort, and pull Lever 1, releasing our dear friend. He or she will then wander the area, eventually reaching the 3x3 room. When that happens, pull Lever 2 sealing them in. Now I'm not sure whether zombies can break doors/floodgates so the next part has to happen quickly. You would take down the isolation wall, and build a new one farther in, just beyond the cage. When that is done, the cage is accessible and the zombie is completely sealed within constructed walls.

An improvement on the above would be an empty tile (NOT A RAMP) below the X, and X being a raising bridge. That way, once it retracts, it blocks line of sight to the zombie and prevents movement. It can be lowered once the area is sealed.

A more complicated, but even safer way (because I don't know whether zombies break floodgates/doors) would be using a cave-in. In this case, you would set up a larger room, say 5x5, and a smaller room above it, say 3x3.

Code: [Select]

Legend:
O = wall
. = floor
_ = empty space
c = cage
# = horizontal bars
* = support


Z=0
     O O O O O O O
     O . . . . . O
     O . . . . . O
     O . . * . . O
     O . . . . . O
     O . . . . . O
     O O O O O O O

Z=1
     O O O O O O O
     O _ _ _ _ _ O
 O O O _ . . . _ O
 O c . # . . . _ O
 O O O _ . . . _ O
     O _ _ _ _ _ O
     O O O O O O O

So empty the cage, collapse the support, and the zombie tumbles down. I don't think we care whether they get injured, or even die. Then the cage can be safely retrieved and recycled.

Alternatively, replace the # with a retracting bridge that retracts away from the room. This would create a LOS seal.

FINALLY! You could set up a contraption where the zombies are stockpiled in cages in an isolated room with a minecart just below. Pit the zombies to be dropped INTO the minecart, and then deliver it to drop off ABOVE their designated room. This would be complex and slightly risky to set up, but would allow the system to be reused with only minor modifications to minecart tracks.

So, Z+2 = zombie stockpile with a hole in the floor which is a pit
Z+1 = minecart receptacle and minecart tracks leading to a hole above destination room
Z=0 is where the room is located
I, however, don't know how to set it up. I just know HOW it works.

I have more ideas. I may post them later.

[Orange Wizard]

Really? I'd just stick them in a room and hit them with my swords and/or axes.

[Destra]

then you have someones severed left hand crushing baby skulls

[Halfling]

I'm interested in the minecart idea. Can dangerous creatures be pitted safely that way or not? Pitting them to free cages would make it much easier on the overseer than having to build a cage and connect it to a lever each time.

I think zombies inherit tags from whatever they were before becoming undead, leading to things like the stealing raccoon corpses we have here or the booze drinking undead bears of Horrorfailed. That implies, and my gameplay experience seems to confirm, that they are only building destroyers if they were building destroyers before dying.

[Halfling]

Okay guys. I think I figured it out. It's ridiculously simple. I'm most likely not the first one to think of doing it like this, but whatever.

Credit mostly goes to whoever thought up this: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Mass_pitting
However, before you get too excited about that one, see: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.31_Talk:Mass_pitting
- may be risky to your dwarves and inefficient. The arrangement below should not have a possibility of dwarves falling into a pit. Nor should there be a moment when the creatures are out of a cage and not in a dwarf's grip unlike I think there is if you're throwing them into a pit, which interrupts jobs and which I assume is why the mass pitting system does not work. it actually does work too, see next post. But here's this:





I fired up alternate reality Ghoullights and tested it. Moved some zombie yaks and camels into the center cage from the stockpile. No problems appeared, everything went flawlessly.

[Halfling]

Sorry about the triple post, but the previous one would be too long and confusing if I just edited this in.

I did some more testing, a few hours' worth, and yes, the mass pitting system advertised on the wiki does not seem to work as intended. The creatures apparently tend to interrupt the pitting upon being pitted and it's steep downhill from there on when it's a giant or a water buffalo zombie that just got loose. Disregard that, I was just being a derp. The wiki's mass pitting system seems to work perfectly when you use the hatch covers as intended. I realized that and used it to discard dozens of goblins and blizzard men with no problem. The problems come when you don't use hatch covers, then the creatures being pitted interrupt. The cage flower is very reliable too, hasn't failed once and does seem to transfer creatures instantaneously to the transport cage.

Examining it step by step, when pitting a creature, it can spend some time on the edge of the pit depending on the dwarf's pathing, but then teleports into the pit and is free on the same level as the dwarf for no time at all. That's why hatch covers prevent it from interrupting things. The cage to adjacent cage transfer has the dwarf walking on top of the cage, taking out the creature, and the creature spending exactly 1 frame outside its cage in the dwarf's control before teleporting into its new home.

However, apparently you don't really need the cage flower either, because I was completely unable to get any creature to interrupt the process of a dwarf transferring it from one cage to another, even if the cages are on the opposite ends of the map. That's right, you can transfer a live cyclops from cage to cage just by having a dwarf grab its ear and drag it along. I actually tried it.

Also, you are apparently unable to transfer dwarf zombies between cages, even if it's a dwarf corpse with a new name of its own. Nor can you pit them. Probably because they're not animals and are still somehow members of your civilization/faction. Unlike elves, for example, that you can. So both designs are equally useless for our purposes.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The cage flower may still be the best and safest option for non-dwarf zombie handling though, because if there's zombies loose in the fortress, they can't interrupt the animal handling and set the other zombies free when it's near-instantaneous.

[Yuli Vlasi]

Uhm, what about throwing living animals down a long shaft and letting their dead remains zombify instead of atom smashing them?

Code: [Select]

Legend:
c = useless animal
- = wall/floor
. = empty space
^ = cage trap
:D = happy dwarf

Side view:

     c
OOOO . OOOO
   O . O   
   O . O
   O . O
   O . O
   O . OOOOO
   O :D . ^^^^   ---> fortress/sealed quarters
   OOOOOOOO

We could add whole living quarters for our military down there. The food would be dropped in through the ceiling to prevent escaping zombies. We could add artificial waterfalls the soldiers could opperate manually in their 'free time' to provide happiness and increased strenght atributes.

[Yuli Vlasi]

Of course, the animal zombies would probably be too dangerous too handle. Just drop in something harmless.

[Remuthra]

What if we got a vampire to do the hauling? Would that still trigger the too dangerous messages?

[Halfling]

What if we got a vampire to do the hauling? Would that still trigger the too dangerous messages?

As far as I know there is no such thing as too dangerous to pit/stuff in a cage. Or if there is, it has to be pretty terrifying, since dwarves were perfectly happy to drag along a living cyclops and a zombie dragon in my testing. It didn't even spook anyone on the way, it was just business as usual in the fortress. I can post a save with lots of caged things if people want to test it for themselves.

I don't currently have any thieves to test whether they work differently, but the wiki seems to imply that there is a risk of large animals escaping, and a risk of dangerous creatures being transported scaring dwarves, and that just did not happen in my tests. They get pitted through the hatch like everything else and are moved from cage to cage like everything else.

As for getting fine zombie powder to train the military, good idea. Could also do it by butchering or using serrated disks.

[Hotaru]

That information on animal pitting and caging should probanly go to the wiki if true. Wiki page is misleading and your idea is simpler.

[Halfling]

If true?

If somebody else wants to verify it, here's (DFFD) a random save with several metric tons of creatures in cages, including a zombie dragon. There's a whole breeding tribe of blind cave bears in one stockpile, and a complete goblin siege with blizzard men trapped in the cage trap complex in the west. Phoebus tileset enabled. Just build either design and try it out. To open safe access to the cage trap complex, pull both the red and white levers nearest to it on the same level.

Spoiler: Caution, Ghoullights spoilers. (click to show/hide)

Incidentally it's also a backup save of one playthrough of Ghoullights, this one in the year 1008. There's an undercity where lots of minecart-based gold mining and smelting takes place, a large tower made of black bronze being built on the surface with a nether-cap basement for food storage that I especially like, and about half of the population is trained as weaponsmiths IIRC to produce artifact weaponry. Downloading it pretty much equals using reveal on the map I think.

I don't really know if the wiki people would want a nobody like me who did one testing session editing their work, so I'll probably not push it. Not that passionate about the issue anyway.

[Yuli Vlasi]

Wtf is that website? The save sounds awesome, but I'd prefer not to pay for it, you know?
Please try to upload it at the dwarf fortress file depot (http://dffd.wimbli.com/) instead, I'd be very grateful.

[Halfling]

Heh. Sure. Here you go: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7543

Now that it's out there, before somebody calls me out on it, yes I did use dfhack for the ore mining designations to save time. Also used it to clean blood from the surface and useless stone from the underground to preserve FPS. And yes, the dwarves mostly have royal bedrooms which are actually 112 beds in one room with an extremely valuable weapon trap. I don't really play a rp-worthy game when not expecting to upload, I guess.