even so 100 rats shouldn't be able to realistically kill an armored dwarf with a weapon
Well if each of those rats weighed 2 pounds (making them large rats) then they have the weight advantage. Meaning they can just as easily just bowl that Dwarf over (especially and armored one) and gnaw him to death inspite of his weapon and armor.
Though 100? Rat swarms can be even larger.
We never see that many in the game though and although their swarms are large there's not much coordination.
Well with sleep most people wake up a lot more than that to fix things like their breathing. I'm not sure if turning over to stop cutting off circulation to your arm or butt or whatever involves mini-waking up though.
Cthulhu is not people :/
Might still have sleep apnea.
(behavioral ecology stuff)
Most animals are actually not very smart.[/quote]This is well recognized but you don't have to be very smart to judge if another animal is in the same ballpark as you in terms of standard killing potential. They're obviously not writing out math equations in their heads to evaluate risk vs reward but the end result is the same as if they were.
They've got a few rules they adhere to, and may have some capacity for behavioral plasticity depending on their wiring. Arthropods in general are particularly unintelligent. They're exactly like little robots with a limited repertoire of behaviors.
Kind of strange that you're correcting/elaborating about this when I basically described the equation for what animals will perform lethal combat. If you know jack squat about algebra you can easily translate the words into a formula.
Dawkins' The Selfish Gene has a lot of good information about behavioral strategies and the sort of cost-benefit calculus animals have evolved to. Mostly, you don't see animals fighting to the death . . . it's virtually never worth it in cross-species conflicts, and even in intra-specific conflicts loser animals will often just sit in the corner quietly and starve to death while more successful animals take all the territory, mates, and food rather than fight with a nothing-to-lose attitude.
Depends on how likely it was for them to face that in their lifetime. In insects that have like a three day window to mate fighting in bad matchups is worth it just because they might get lucky.
Anyway, the book is good as long as you can stand the occasional shrill snipe at religion.
I thrive on that sort of thing but try to keep it out of my own writing unless I'm stuck talking about religion because I recognize that most of the people I prefer to associate with don't really care.
Anything is possible.
Would small creatures be able to crawl under your garments/armour and bite your naked flesh?
Creature sized would be giant rats eg about the size of a cat.
Will there ever be vermin/swarm combat? (aside from being accosted)
venomous vermin? such can be disproportionately dangrous for their size.
edit: rats can attack in swarms. usually under stress, population density and lack of food. etc.
I don't think it's possible for a giant (10+ ft tall) love lobster from the depths to crawl into into my greaves.
There are generally a lot of possibilities but as has been mentioned animals are usually pretty dumb and just following some simple equation type behaviors. As such the complex maximum benefit swarm-type attack upon a humanoid in armor is, well, beyond them.
Anything is possible.
Would small creatures be able to crawl under your garments/armour and bite your naked flesh?
Creature sized would be giant rats eg about the size of a cat.
Will there ever be vermin/swarm combat? (aside from being accosted)
venomous vermin? such can be disproportionately dangrous for their size.
edit: rats can attack in swarms. usually under stress, population density and lack of food. etc.
I don't think it's possible for a giant (10+ ft tall) love lobster from the depths to crawl into into my greaves.
There are generally a lot of possibilities but as has been mentioned animals are usually pretty dumb and just following some simple equation type behaviors. As such the complex maximum benefit swarm-type attack upon a humanoid in armor is, well, beyond them.
If the rats are fast enough, they might be able to avoid the dwarf each time he attempts to smash them with his weapon. Furthermore, 100 rats attacking someone? It must be that the rats are hungry, meaning that when they attack the guy, they're not just biting, they're eating him alive. If they eat things like his eyes first, they could potentially cripple him.
If they went for the jugular they could score a lethal hit but you only ever have to worry about intelligent opponents aiming for that.
Things with ranged attacks like those spitting cobras know to aim for eyes but how many animals bite an opponent's eye while fighting?
You'd think we were talking about trained war-rats here.
On the subject of rat swarms, I would like to remind people of the old blood sport known as "ratting", wherein a dog and a bunch of rats would be put in a pit, and they would fight. The dog often lost. They never, to my knowledge, put armor on the dogs, but that has little relevance, since rats would go under armor on a dwarf anyway. Weapons are not more fast than jaws.
Plate armor sure but a but of fitted leather armor? No, they'd have to bite through it and that just wouldn't happen. Some might still get under the clothes but definitely not the majority.
On the subject of rat swarms, I would like to remind people of the old blood sport known as "ratting", wherein a dog and a bunch of rats would be put in a pit, and they would fight. The dog often lost. They never, to my knowledge, put armor on the dogs, but that has little relevance, since rats would go under armor on a dwarf anyway. Weapons are not more fast than jaws.
O.o
Well the rats WERE fighting for their lives.
Swarms taking down larger critters doesn't just happen to rats, ants are also a good example and what they take down is often many times their size.
Ants have more elegant swarm behavior and are expendable while something like a rat wants to preserve itself rather than fighting for the good of the colony. They whole "me dieing is still probably good for passing my genes on" thing makes it a different story with ants.
Y'know, speaking as an ecologist I think it's important to note that competition between species is almost never a matter of physical fighting. It's usually the species which can breed faster, use resources more efficiently, or survive harsh conditions better that winds up winning...basically the species which is better fitted to it's environment. If an animal winds up in a real fight in some sense it has already lost out, because it has to spend a lot of energy fighting and runs a serious risk of injury or death. That's why most combat within a species is ritualized and usually harmless, like deer butting antlers together, and why the vast majority of prey species are tuned to hide or run, not to fight (again, take the deer. show a deer a wolf and the deer will run, not turn to use it's antlers)
I figured describing the exception was good enough to get that point across and I didn't want to try to explain the Lotka-Volterra model, even though that might work for world gen. Defining values in the raws that lead to suitable isoclines would probably be asking too much though.
It's actually the first one I've heard, Toady one sounds pretty sexy, if you don't mind me saying. I think it's nice to hear the developer, and hear that he's just like us. o-o;
He is more than a man, he's a shiny golden god!
Well as we heard he does emit light.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items (Read 3529865 times)