Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lycaeon]

By making minor changes to the honey bee's raws, a means of precision injection of any syndrome possible is made available by the production of these artificial bees in a vermin reaction. Building a custom workshop that can produce [PRODUCT:100:10000:VERMIN:NONE:ARTIFICIAL_BEE:NONE] in a sealed chamber will guarantee that every living thing in that room will be injected with the venom and subsequently fall ill with your custom syndrome (Including the dwarf conducting the reaction, as bees will sting even if created already tame). Severe pain in every part of the body, continuous dizziness, permanent unconsciousness...or any combination, etc.

So, in essence, we now have infinitely customizable gas chambers.

All this is straightforward enough. However, the real problem is getting rid of the 10000 bees in your "gas" chamber after all the goblins within have succumbed to the "gassing". Releasing such dangerous vermin into the wild is out of the question (Unless you want to cause the death and/or suffering of every living thing on the map), so the chamber has to remain sealed until all the bees have died. I can't think of anything other than purging the room completely with magma or water, but that somewhat reduces the point of making the bees in the first place.

I would appreciate some thoughts and comments on solving this issue.

(Also, vermin stings apparently go through all clothing and armor...I've already tried the hazmat suit route in arena and it didn't work.  )

Edit: It seems now that customizable vermin can be perfectly produced in any amount in adventure and fort mode reactions.

[3]

There are two flaws in this plan:
1. The bees won't behave properly. I don't know if that means they won't "bite" or not, but they won't be entirely functional.
2. If I remember correctly telling the reaction to create more than one creature won't work at all (presumably because the game tries to create a "stack" of vermin and then gives up after one).

[Lycaeon]

I've only tested it in arena mode as an adventurer reaction, and it worked perfectly fine.

I'm to hear it won't work in fortress mode.

[Alem]

There is a tag that can be used, i don't remember off the top of my head, that causes vermin to immediately die after attack. With some clever juggling this might be a useful tool. A ridiculously low max age might help too, off the top of my head.

[Lycaeon]

Some quick searching revealed that deconstructing the reaction building will "release" the produced vermin and allow them to function normally. I'm currently in the process of making a playtesting version of the large mod I'm making, so I won't be able to test this.

Alem; that tag is the [DIE_WHEN_VERMIN_BITE]. Maxage also occurred to me, but that has a minimum of around a season to a year, and that's a rather long time to leave a gas chamber unused.

[3]

Ahahaha, you don't even have to deconstruct the workshop any more. It works beautifully.

Besides this being a potentially more effective means of causing death than the standard boiling-material approach, it also opens the way for curses if inorganic curses don't exist by the time of the next release. I can imagine a bad roll on a "pray" adventurer reaction resulting in plagues of locusts and/or possibly getting turned into a weregnat or something.

[Lycaeon]

That's great news! I knew something was up, as using my vermin reaction to make 1000 "killer bees" in a closed room in arena mode caused every living thing in that room to die within 5 seconds to bee stings (Using a custom hyper-lethal syndrome).

There must have been a stealth update to the vermin making reactions in one of the previous updates.

However, the problem of "neutralizing" the artificial bees in fortress mode still exists. At the moment, it seems waiting until they all die is the only practical means of doing so (Also ensure your artificial bees aren't capable of reproducing themselves). Still, this is a small price to pay to be able to inject customizable syndromes freely into any captured living being. The potential advances to dwarven science when the next update including curses and advanced syndromes are tremendous!

And this doesn't even include the possibility of unleashing swarms of death on that elven village you raid in adventure mode! (When elven villages are reintroduced, of course)

[Reelyanoob]

This is cool! btw Toady has some more detail on regular Syndromes - they can now be linked to phases of the moon or some such!

[Lycaeon]

I have discovered a solution. By modding the same workshop used to make the bees with a reaction that makes a stone that boils at room temperature with a syndrome that only affects the artificial bee, running this reaction will neutralize all the bees in the room, if it's small enough so that the evaporating gas can reach all corners of it. It will also have to be run multiple times to ensure all the bees are infected. After infection, the bees become paralyzed and soon die. Your original dwarf must still be alive as well to run the reaction, so the bee venom syndrome you use must not affect dwarves for this to work.

Bee_inhibitor raws

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[INORGANIC:BEE_INHIBITOR]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]   
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:frozen bee inhibitor][TILE:8]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:LIQUID:liquid bee inhibitor]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:GAS:bee inhibitor]
[DISPLAY_COLOR:4:0:1][TILE:15]
[ITEM_SYMBOL:'*']
[MATERIAL_VALUE:0]
[SPEC_HEAT:10000]
[MELTING_POINT:9858]
[BOILING_POINT:9898]
[SOLID_DENSITY:1562]
[LIQUID_DENSITY:770]
[SYNDROME]
   [SYN_NAME:bee killer]
      [SYN_AFFECTED_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
   [SYN_AFFECTED_CREATURE:ARTIFICIAL_BEE]
   [SYN_INHALED][SYN_CONTACT][SYN_INJECTED]
   [CE_IMPAIR_FUNCTION:SEV:10000:PROB:100:BP:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:ALL:START:5:PEAK:10:END:100000]
   [CE_PARALYSIS:SEV:10000:PROB:100:START:5:PEAK:10:END:100000]
   [CE_UNCONSCIOUSNESS:SEV:10000:PROB:100:START:5:PEAK:10:END:100000]

[Necro910]

I have discovered a solution. By modding the same workshop used to make the bees with a reaction that makes a stone that boils at room temperature with a syndrome that only affects the artificial bee, running this reaction will neutralize all the bees in the room, if it's small enough so that the evaporating gas can reach all corners of it. It will also have to be run multiple times to ensure all the bees are infected. After infection, the bees become paralyzed and soon die. Your original dwarf must still be alive as well to run the reaction, so the bee venom syndrome you use must not affect dwarves for this to work.

Bee_inhibitor raws

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[INORGANIC:BEE_INHIBITOR]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]   
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:frozen bee inhibitor][TILE:8]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:LIQUID:liquid bee inhibitor]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:GAS:bee inhibitor]
[DISPLAY_COLOR:4:0:1][TILE:15]
[ITEM_SYMBOL:'*']
[MATERIAL_VALUE:0]
[SPEC_HEAT:10000]
[MELTING_POINT:9858]
[BOILING_POINT:9898]
[SOLID_DENSITY:1562]
[LIQUID_DENSITY:770]
[SYNDROME]
   [SYN_NAME:bee killer]
      [SYN_AFFECTED_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
   [SYN_AFFECTED_CREATURE:ARTIFICIAL_BEE]
   [SYN_INHALED][SYN_CONTACT][SYN_INJECTED]
   [CE_IMPAIR_FUNCTION:SEV:10000:PROB:100:BP:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:ALL:START:5:PEAK:10:END:100000]
   [CE_PARALYSIS:SEV:10000:PROB:100:START:5:PEAK:10:END:100000]
   [CE_UNCONSCIOUSNESS:SEV:10000:PROB:100:START:5:PEAK:10:END:100000]

Make the syndromes start about 100 urists after contact, so the bees can have to to murder. Also, remove the "END:" tag. If you remove the end, it will never stop.

[clockwork]

Hmmm, I've always thought about making bee hive surrounded spiked pits near my weapon traps, but, the lack of toxicity in their venom kinda put a halt on that idea.

[i2amroy]

Probably the best way to do this would just be to set the reaction to create the bees as well as the bee inhibitor stone. This should make sure that all the bees are infected with any luck since they should both be at the same place. Then just set the stone's syndrome to wait a while before it begins to affect the bees like Necro910 said and then you should end up with a deadly cloud of bees that erupts from the workshop and sting everything in sight before all falling down dead.

[Lycaeon]

The problem with that is that gas imparted syndromes are highly unreliable...even saturating the room with a couple gassings of the inhibitor is not guaranteed to infect all of the bees. (This is why bees are a preferable means of syndrome transmission in the first place).

That's why a dwarf is needed to continuously run the reaction, making enough inhibitor to ensure all the bees are nailed.

Edit: Apparently, the bees in arena mode are dying of old age, not the inhibitor. I'm not sure if this is because vermin can't be affected by syndromes or because arena mode is glitching their age (They disappear even without the maxage token), but testing in fortress mode is going to be necessary.

[Wyrm]

Use Benign Asian Giant Hornets to kill your bees.

[Thundercraft]

I've only tested it in arena mode as an adventurer reaction, and it worked perfectly fine.
I'm to hear it won't work in fortress mode.

Can someone share the code (or link to code) to such an adventurer reaction?

The bees won't behave properly. I don't know if that means they won't "bite" or not, but they won't be entirely functional.

...Some quick searching revealed that deconstructing the reaction building will "release" the produced vermin and allow them to function normally.

Is there a way to get them to function normally in adventure mode? And will it be hostile, or will it be treated like a companion? I'd like to be able to "summon" a vermin in adventure mode and use it as a companion...