Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Atom Smashing Elephants  (Read 631 times)

Schmaven

  • Bay Watcher
  • Abiding
    • View Profile
Atom Smashing Elephants
« on: March 25, 2020, 05:59:36 am »

I believe the threshold for size, at which a bridge is destroyed is 1200000 when lowered onto a creature.  Elephants and their reanimated corpses easily cross this threshold.  Unexpectedly however, some of the butcher's elephant waste products also caused the destruction of a drawbridge when lowered onto them.  It was just a reanimated elephant skin, mangled elephant calf cartilage, and some nervous tissue. 

The reanimated skin was killed, the nervous tissue disappeared somewhere, and the mangled cartilage and mangled skin were now able to be atom smashed. 

I believe that when the skin reanimates, it assumes the form of a whole elephant, and despite being now somewhat hollowed out by the butcher, still crosses that size threshold.  But when killed, it flattens out and is under the threshold for smashing. 
Logged

delphonso

  • Bay Watcher
  • menaces with spikes of pine
    • View Profile
Re: Atom Smashing Elephants
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2020, 06:44:56 am »

Fascinating. Also... Horrifying. I always imagined reanimated skin as evil carpets, but a hollow form of its previous self is much spookier.

Sarmatian123

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Atom Smashing Elephants
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2020, 07:05:28 am »

So long it is not lava-safe... use 1x1 lava pond (6/7 lava should do I believe). Automate it with some stop and minecart. Even heaviest and largest items (with exception of wagon) are of 1x1 size.
Logged

PatrikLundell

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Atom Smashing Elephants
« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2020, 07:22:33 am »

Yes, reanimated hair and skin get the size and shape of the original creature. The issue here is that while the volume of the creature is the same, the mass isn't, but DF does not take into consideration that most of the volume is air.
Logged

SQman

  • Bay Watcher
  • Gnot a gnelf
    • View Profile
Re: Atom Smashing Elephants
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2020, 07:43:13 am »

Reanimated nerves and cartilage crawling on the ground beside a hollow elephant... That's enough to drive a man stark raving mad.

muldrake

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Atom Smashing Elephants
« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2020, 02:41:33 pm »

Reanimated nerves and cartilage crawling on the ground beside a hollow elephant... That's enough to drive a man stark raving mad.

It's funny how dwarves can be completely unperturbed by stuff like this and then lose their minds over seeing a finger repeatedly, of some goblin they actually enjoyed killing, but for some reason, refuse to haul to the waste dump.
Logged

Schmaven

  • Bay Watcher
  • Abiding
    • View Profile
Re: Atom Smashing Elephants
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2020, 04:14:36 pm »

To be fair to the stress system, the atom smasher is at the bottom of a pit, directly adjacent the butcher's shop which itself is walled in entirely.  So they are only exposed to the guts for 5 tiles, and handle them for 3.  Once they toss it into the pit, it's out of sight.  Most skins get dumped before they turn, so as to avoid scaring dwarves away from hauling all the meat to the stockpiles.  But in the case of elephant skins, it stops the whole operation if they turn before the bridge can come down on it.  It would be interesting to let the pit fill for some time, then expose a dwarf to the mess and see how big of an impact a whole lot of reanimated limbs and guts has on their stress levels all at once. 

I have magma pumped up nearby, but with the caverns where they are, it will take some work to get it to a good central waste disposal location.  Ideally the elephants wouldn't have to be butchered and I wouldn't have this problem.  They're being bred into war elephants to be turned into zombies only when they're big and strong, then stored in cages for future use.  But from time to time one of the elephant calves is killed by the others.

A more robust trash disposal system would probably involve something like a magma pit that periodically empties, then washes all the magma safe bits to another chamber for smelting or atom smashing, then filling again with magma.  I've never tried anything like that though.
Logged

Sarmatian123

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Atom Smashing Elephants
« Reply #7 on: March 25, 2020, 08:08:42 pm »

Floor hatches, closed for animals and forbidden should deal with Dwarves seeing things at the bottom of a pit. Like in a mass-pit design.
For magma pit you need just 3 steel minecarts and 3 steel wheelbarrows to bring magma where ever you want it. It covers 6/7 of magma in a 1x1 pit.
Like in this link: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Magma#Design_3:_Minimalist_magma_moving
For a magma forge or a magma smelter, you just need one 1x1 pit filled with 4/7 magma, so you could try to go for 4/7 instead of 6/7 magma in your disposal pit.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2020, 08:18:32 pm by Sarmatian123 »
Logged