This is a thread for investigating unorthodox military strategies... which may or may not involve removing extraneous limbs.
To start off, I decided to create a squad of platinum crutch wielders. It's definitely not a new idea, but I have yet to find a post where anyone details the process or reports any results. I will describe how to create such a gimp squad and give some general impressions on its effectiveness. Unfortunately, I do not know how to test crutches as weapons in a controlled environment, since you can't get them in the arena.
Preparing the VolunteersThe first step is to... persuade each recruit he needs a crutch:
The rig is pretty simple. The floor is covered with weapon traps (red), each with 1-2 green glass serrated discs. The patient must wear full metal armor (steel definitely works, but you could probably make do with iron, maybe even copper), with a mail shirt AND a breastplate. He should wear exactly one boot, which always goes on the right foot, incidentally. To begin surgery, cave in a floor tile behind some fortifications (upper left in the picture). The dust will toss the patient around the room, giving the discs plenty of opportunities to work their magic, i.e. sever the left foot. Amusingly, the dwarf often comes out of the cave-in with both feet intact, only to lose a foot later when he passes out due to pain.
This technique is pretty reliable in safely removing unwanted feet, since the discs only bruise through steel armor. However, the discs can break fingers, noses, and ears, and these will often become fatally infected. I lost 4 of 14 dwarves this way.
Incidentally, the same surgery rig can be used to amputate the hands which own the infected fingers.
Equipment and TrainingThe easiest way to ensure your recruits get platinum crutches is to forbid all other crutches from the stocks menu ('z'). If you want the dwarf to use his crutch as the primary weapon, he must equip it BEFORE equipping a shield. If he's already equipped a shield, just remove it from his uniform and add it again.
Training pretty much proceeds as usual, although you'll probably want to make your soldiers run some laps to level up their crutch-walking ability. As weapons, crutches use the Misc. Object User skill, so these dwarves will become better shield bashers while they learn to cane things to death.
Dwarves appear not to gain Misc. Object User or Crutch Walker from the upright spear glitch. However, I did have one dwarf gain about 500,000xp in Fighter while holding no weapon besides his crutch.
Combat PerformanceThese logs were taken from my last siege. Most of my crutchdwarves were in the Adept-Professional skill range for Misc. Object User. Platinum crutches are clearly as effective as any blunt weapon vs. goblins, shattering limbs with almost every strike. Against trolls, not so much--typically, nearly every strike was a bruise until the troll finally gave in to pain, at which point the dwarves would bash its skull in. For the record, that was not a controlled experiment, and the dwarf attacking the troll may have been less skilled than the one attacking the goblin.
I haven't yet had a chance to try these guys out on a forgotten beast. I think they'll actually do better than vs. trolls, since the trolls' extra-thick clothing is probably the reason for the crutches' poor performance.
ConclusionIt's actually a good idea to try to get your injured military dwarves platinum crutches if they're going to need crutches anyway. Deliberately maiming dwarves to make a cripple squad is actually a viable choice for siege defense, but it's not the easiest or the best defense. Still, it's not a bad plan if you want to give yourself...
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a handicap.
Update 1/25/14: Read
Part II: A Farewell to Arms!
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Topic: Dwarven "Special" Forces (Read 20777 times)