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[Slashes-With-Claws]

It was a slow day at work so I loaded up DF and was messing around in arena mode.  As I am sure you all know, pressing w then l makes a rock wall, so I thought it might be fun to try this in the air.  Doing this on the highest Z level leaves a floating rock, but one lower and it falls.  The arena did not survive long.  I ended up collapsing the lava pyramid, collapsing the bridge in the upper right part, punching holes in the fort, and even breaking through the floor in the lowest part of it the map in the upper right.

Upon seeing the large hole in the floor with blue showing through I decided to do some science on it.  Spawned a test subject, took control, and walked into the "Open Space".  Turns out humans can fly when over void in the arena.  Indeed the status bar said "Flying"  I could not move elsewhere in this void, or fall, but I could step back onto the stone floor.  Second test, test subject spawned at highest Z level directly above the center of the void hole.  They fell, sprawled, and took no damage and were flying.  They were also unable to move as they were surrounded by "Open Space", even Alt move would not work.  So, seems there is an odd bug on the arena that a character cannot fall into the void.

Also, it is surprisingly fun to drop a rock into a cluster of characters and see what happens.  Or onto the fort and watch it punch through several floors.  Strange stuff about flying over void though.  Anyone else do weird messing around with the arena?

[Loud Whispers]

Mainly ridiculous pitched battles and hypothetical scenarios.

There was that one time as a demonstration for my friends I modded in an incredibly powerful metal. The thing was, it was incredibly volatile and prone to vaporizing in a cloud of pink smoke.
I would arrange fights with them, seeing units of Titanic proportions fighting until someone or some temperature check ticked and everything exploded. Or sometimes someone would win and walk off, or you would see random bits of armour and weapons vaporizing for no discernible reason.
Even arranged the notorious 3 bunny vs elephant scenario, where I got one of them to try and take the elephant down. He failed.
[It is possible!]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ah, I'll just pick my last one.

Something along the lines of 300 humans, 100 heavily armoured (steel), the rest either wearing lead training armour or peasants with sticks, against elfs lining the battlements with bows and elfs in the lower levels armed with spears and more bows. At the top was a necromancer surrounded by zombies with silver daggers, and somewhere on a spire was a flock of grand master nightwings. My goal was to sneak in as an adventurer and take out the generals of all four sides.

Damn nightwings.

It started off as that. Then I got bored again and one upped it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One thousand humans against each other.

Yes.

Then I got bored and one upped it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Topped my record. What started off as 300 Dwarf grandmasters vs several hundred mook goblins, goblin corpses, trolls and grandmaster vampire trolls *kinda* spiraled out of control as just when one side seemed to win, another wave would be created to balance the fight and perpetuate the bloodshed.

Creatures worthy of special recommendation :
*The necromancer dogs were very entertaining, and turned the Dwarf victory of repelling the goblins on the ground level into a very fun situation.
*The were-jackal trolls were a fun one. They were all grandmasters AND were created during the full moon - so they arrived as fully armoured and armed were-jackals. They unsurprisingly tore through the entire right wing of grand master crossbowdwarves.
*The vampire Dwarf suicide squads. Fact : Being undead does not make you immune to the hatred of undead if you're on team #1 and they're on team #2. They demonstrated this well by decapitating many heads. The crowning moment of glory for these lots is when the surviving two vampires fought against each other for ages, one taking a toe from the other, the other taking a finger, before getting swamped by grandmaster hammerdwarves. The hammerdwarves got killed by attrition.
*The crossbowgoblins from the very start. They held their line valiantly, but even their superior weaponry and numbers could not best against the elite marksdwarves in their fortress.

And now for the pic!



Case and point, I don't always play arena mode. But when I do, the angels cry and puppies worldwide implode in a shower of gore.

Dwarves - 487
Goblins - 987
Trolls - 60
Dogs - 40

And then I thought up a scenario. Many things were tested, of note was that I discovered in a humanoid against humanoid engagement the force which holds the fortified high ground with artillery will win as long as they maintain supplies.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ahem... Dwarf Fortress is two and two halves a game. Arena mode:

I would do a section going into depth of the depthness of each mode. As it stands, each game currently has enough depth to drown yourself in (barring maybe arena mode).
Also I would like to mention that adventure mode, much like Fortress mode, takes its appeal in that it is capable of creating such amazing stories, of outcast citizens returning as Necromancers who assaulted capital cities with legions of corpses, to the smallest Kobold making the largest impact in a terrible world. There is more to it than grind grind grind.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wow. That is an impressively set up arena battle. What happened?

First volley



(It injures a lot in the front ranks of both sides - but they just step over the fallen and continue to advance, Kobold front ranks noticeably suffer due to the biconcave surface whilst the human casualties are limited to the tip of the formation).



Kobolds attack a legendary vampire warlord and his body guard - they all have either a dagger or a single steel bolt to fire.


After a couple dozen (around 30 or so) more volleys, it's over.



No one isn't injured except maybe 4 of the Dwarf lords who fought among the Kobold ranks. Dem martial trances. Biconcave formation works well for assaults apparently. Every casualty could be safely ignored by the masses. The battle went on for so long, some of the Kobolds from the first volley had actually recovered and got back up to continue fighting... Not very well admittedly, but a valiant effort. The human guardsmen in the front ranks fell shockingly quickly, and though their champions fought well, superior numbers either drove them back or killed them outright.



Brutality. The humans above only lost because they ran out of ammo. The vampire lord attacked by the Kobolds took out all of the attackers - sustaining major injuries, and most of his bodyguard was slain or critically injured, having fallen down far. The vampire lord however escaped underground, fleeing before any Kobolds or Dwarves caught sight of it.
In the tower on the left, nearly all of the humans within rushed out to fight off the Dwarf and Kobold assault in a last ditch attempt to save the fortifications, and while the counter attack was effective, the true damage was done by the commanders in their black bronze armour who stayed within and fought the invaders from the high ground with morningstars in hand.
A Pyrrhic victory to the Dwarves and Kobolds.

And I've used it to conduct many and more esoteric scenarios since.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As well as damming the river so that the entire south-east side floods (you have to close the bottomless pits first).

Also those floating rock pillars appear as the roof is not actually sky, but a literal ceiling. The sky is the limit because it supports the walls. I'm tempted to do a new Arena mode scenario, but I'll probably learn how to mod the environment first.