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Author Topic: Walrus Trapping  (Read 30482 times)

Kanddak

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Walrus Trapping
« on: November 23, 2009, 11:49:09 pm »

This will be of practical interest to anyone who is stuck watching aquatic wildlife sitting in one spot on the ocean floor, of theoretical interest to those interested in the details of fluid behavior, and entertaining to those who like to hear about oceans being drained.

So I was recently trying to get a walrus breeding program going, because seriously, what's cooler than walruses?
After a bunch of fiddling around with worldgen to make a map with a lot of arctic oceans, I managed to get a site with some walruses.

The walruses immediately marched into the ocean and found a nice spot on the ocean floor to sit and breed for a year. They just all sat on their tile and didn't move. Meanwhile, no other wildlife entered the map while the group of walruses was there.

I determined to capture the walruses by any means necessary.

I mined beneath the ocean, put an up staircase in the tile directly beneath the unsuspecting odobenidae, and then dug DIAGONALLY to make a hall full of cage traps leading to a drain into an aquifer. The plan was that I would send a miner to breach the ocean floor by channeling the floor out from beneath the walruses, causing them to fall into the hole and then be washed by the local water flow into the cages.
Unfortunately, it didn't work. Walruses can swim. They stayed in the same tile even with no floor beneath them.

So I raised the stakes. I dug out the corners in the walrus trap to allow water to flow through it orthogonally. This time I imagined that the entire ocean would drain into the aquifer, and then the last bit of flow on the ocean floor would wash the walruses into the hole and thence into the cage traps.
Well, you have not lived until you have drained an ocean into an aquifer. I have drained an ocean using the fire bin method, but it's totally different.
When you drain an ocean using a fire bin, only a few tiles full of water can be destroyed in a given frame. In each frame, the bin destroys all the water near it, and a finite amount of other water teleports to the now-vacant space, ready to be destroyed on the next frame. The ocean drains gradually, and demonstrates the order in which tiles are evaluated for water motion, since it's always the first few remaining tiles that end up moving on each pass.
When you drop an ocean into an aquifer, you learn something else about the way water movement is evaluated: the water tiles take turns, and only certain ones are evaluated on each frame. You learn this because the aquifer can destroy arbitrarily many tiles of water per frame; tiles can pressure-path into the aquifer and vanish without occupying any space to prevent the entry of more water. And it takes a few frames for the ocean to vanish; they don't all go on the first frame, and you can see the order they go in. You can see it very clearly because each individual frame takes about 30 seconds to happen, as thousands of water tiles path to their demise.
Anyway, it still didn't work. After the ocean finally drained, the water entering the map from the exposed map edges kept the entire ocean floor level, as well as the trap hallway, filled to 7/7. Any further water landing on top of that would of course find its way into the aquifer and vanish, but any vacancies were immediately filled. And this, of course, does not cause any flow that would push walruses into my trap. No good.

For my third attempt, I dug a tunnel around the map edges. I actually went two levels below the ocean and dug a lot of ramps to remove the walls above so I could avoid the endless damp stone messages. I then built drains from this tunnel into the aquifer. Then I went up a few levels and built a ring of suspended floors exactly over the tunnels, themselves separated from the ocean only by floors.
I pulled the collapse lever and again waited for the ocean to drain, and oh how it drained. With the continuous drain wrapping around all of the oceanic map edges, newly-entering water would always find its way into the drain instead of refilling the middle of the map. Finally I reopened the walrus trap. With no pressurized water to instantly refill vacant tiles, the walruses immediately fell into the hole, and were swiftly washed into the cage traps by the water's diffusion.

I had captured the entire herd of walruses.

When I had done this, other wildlife finally began to enter the map. My breeding program now has large herds of elk and muskoxen as well as walruses, and a few wolves. I also have two female polar bears.

Eventually, however, another group of walruses entered the map and settled into place on the ocean floor, thereby blocking all other wildlife activity.
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stolensteel

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2009, 12:02:27 am »

Wow... I just... Wow. Do you have a breeding program for the walruses now? This might help towards another thread I read about breeding mermaids.
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Firnagzen

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2009, 01:32:48 am »

You, sir, win +3 Internets for sheer dwarfishness.

Radically re-engineering the ocean to trap walruses= DWARFY.
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balath

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #3 on: November 24, 2009, 01:40:05 am »

Firnagzen said most of what I was going to say.

Next, partition the ocean into blocks you can drain/flood independently of each other, all with trap-tunnel access.  Let the ocean refill.  That should give you some FPS that you won't get draining the ocean, and easy access to the Walruses.
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Pandarsenic

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #4 on: November 24, 2009, 02:18:34 am »

Please upload your map to DFMA. I want to see this.
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Vattic

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #5 on: November 24, 2009, 02:34:21 am »

Your first solution is exactly what jumped to mind while reading of your predicament. Your final solution however is amazing and while not unthinkable certainly outside the realms of sanity. Personally having the first solution fail on me I'd likely try and shoot the beasts and have traps on the shore waiting for the next ones to arrive.
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Blargityblarg

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2009, 04:21:20 am »

How is that even remotely dwarven?

I mean, it worked, for Armok's sake.
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Osmosis Jones

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2009, 04:30:44 am »

Kanddak, I salute you. Now all that's left is tile the drained ocean and fill it with fresh water.


@Blargitblarg, whether or not a project works is entirely beside the point of dwarven engineering.

As long as it is
a) ridiculously over-engineered overkill (figurative or literal),
b) physically impossible
c) involving magma
d) any combination of the above

...it is dwarven.
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Retro

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2009, 05:28:57 am »

Kanddak: Incredibly impressive, but the ocean-draining brings to mind another idea. You now have complete control over a massive once-oceanic basin. Build your fort entrance into the basin, using some diagonal tiles to divert pressure past the entrance, and make some ramps into the basin at one end and into the fort at the other. When sieges come, wait for them to cross the susceptibly dry ocean floor and then seal the drains. It's like the world's biggest natural (well, sort of natural) drowning chamber!

But seriously, that's wicked. I suppose the next step is for someone to set up a Giant Eagle caging plan.

Kanddak

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #9 on: November 24, 2009, 08:31:53 am »

Yes, I do now have a breeding program. There is a room where all of the female walruses are tied up, plus one male "alpha walrus". The other males and the calves are in a cage. It is working splendidly.

I actually shut the drain and allowed the ocean to refill, which was itself interesting to watch.
I have come to suspect that pressure causes more lag than water diffusion. During the early stages of the refilling of each z-level, water from the edges would just be diffusing around near the edges, and my FPS would not be seriously affected. The latter part of a level refilling would go more quickly in frames, because a constant amount of water coming into the map was going to refill a decreasing area, but it would be more slowly in realtime, because the pressure pathfinding involved in the new water finding its way from the edges to the middle of the map apparently consumed more processor time than water just sloshing around near the edges.

Then I built a similar trap underneath the second group of walruses that showed up and redrained the ocean, but this time it didn't work as well. They were near the map edge, and flow from the water going into the drains pulled them away from the trap tile. They also, once the water level got low enough, became unstuck and all decided to leave the map. I trapped two females anyway, but most of them escaped.

My intention is to built a gigantic wall around the map edges to provide permanent control over the ocean.
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Sheb

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #10 on: November 24, 2009, 09:03:31 am »

May I ask a blasphemous question?

What is the point of Walruses breeding? At least, do you have some War Walruses around?
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BlazingDav

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #11 on: November 24, 2009, 10:41:14 am »

I'd build a gigantic wall of fortifications personally, just so water can still get through it, then you can exploit the pull of the drain next time creating a line off traps all round the ocean to catch future colonists when you feel like draining it. Maybe creating a bridge wall on the beach would be appropiate to catch them as well so they can't up and leave.

Also, no point in catching walruses unless you train them (can you on that note?), but thats beside the point, we do what we do, because we feel like it and can.

Though taming walruses then letting them back out into the ocean sealing them into breed like crazy and creating a beach side animal training program would have hilarious consquences. If experiencing problems, designating a meeting area on the bottom of the ocean might help

Siege -> pull lever -> bridges go up -> war walruses feel the call of battle -> <guess>

Release the walruses!
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Duuvian

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #12 on: November 24, 2009, 10:55:17 am »


What is the point of Walruses breeding? At least, do you have some War Walruses around?

Obviously it's to answer a common dwarven question: how many walruses does it take to kill a polar bear?

Also, aren't walruses South pole and Polar Bears North Pole? I thought I remember seeing walruses next to penguins before. This makes the earlier question even more dwarfy if they live on opposite sides of the planet.
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Kinoko_Otoko

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #13 on: November 24, 2009, 11:27:59 am »

Why would the walruses prevent all other wildlife from appearing? Because of the high population?
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Hobgobwin

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Re: Walrus Trapping
« Reply #14 on: November 24, 2009, 11:31:18 am »

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."


This reminds me of the mermaid farming thread.
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