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[TheCoolSideofthePIllow]

Nearly all my military are females, so when they have kids, they constantly leave them in the danger room to be impaled on the training spears.

[Drewigi]

To repeat myself "We need to do this to elven children, then kill them once they grow up, if its peaceful  (by getting a female and male elf to mate in a cage), then kill them.

[Wimopy]

To repeat myself "We need to do this to elven children, then kill them once they grow up, if its peaceful  (by getting a female and male elf to mate in a cage), then kill them.

Let me clarify something. We do not make potentially dangerous elves. Unless we can adapt them to turn on the others.

[nekoexmachina]

Image pops in my head.
An Elven 12-years-old guy is standing near the entrance of what he has ever known as his home.
His father and his mother are living down there on chains, he never seen them since he was 1. He never knew anybody, but a bunch of dogs who bit him for last 10 years. His genes tell him every animal is saint, but he tends to disagree with that.
He never knew a woman.
He can't understand the concept of friendship.
He can't understand anything, but pain. He feels he became what he is because of that pain, and over the years he learned himself to even like it.
He stands there because a beardy dwarf told him to.

And then, he hears "Release testing object #21. Test chamber 38, goblin ambush Z2Y".

Floor under his feet cracks up, and he falls down to the darkness.

He slams into some green-skinned creature moments later, and he sees evil in the creature's eyes.

Next thing he remembers is a smile on his beardy master's face and a pile of corpses he sits on.

I feel Cacame.

[jcnorris00]

I always think of this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157/quotes?item=qt0201706

[gtaguy]

For the purposes of testing out the effects of personalized daycare attendants, can I get a list of sentient creatures that do not require water or food?

I know that plump helmet men satisfy this, but they are quite rare. (Only ever had 2 fortresses with them in it, while serpent men, lizard men, caveswallow men, and ant men seem to be much more abundant.)

I have most of the daycare complex built, and am working on a modified version of the mist generator, and how to power it effectively.

I am not against using DFHack to accomplish certain physical ends, (like spawning the water for the mist generator) since I have created a fortress explicitly for this purpose.

I know dfhack can spawn items, but can it spawn entities too? That would make this considerably easier in regard to obtaining some plump helmet men for the test protocol.

Is there room to put in a trap door system to replace dead sentient beings? Or is the current goal aiming for completely hands-off system?

What about vampires? You could do the same thing but they'd never die or even need extra stuff besides maybe a small room and clothes.

[Drewigi]

I always think of this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157/quotes?item=qt0201706

Who cares if they are traumatized? It helps narrow down on how to fix the process and it is probably not gonna make them care anymore, we have achievements in dwarven !!science!!.

[redpikeman]

It looks like Science has progressed since my experiments. I'll add this little bit of information to the knowledge pool.

Six subjects were contained in a 3x3 room which was periodically flooded with water for three in-game months.   
Subjects were given enough time between treatments to eat and sleep, and the rooms were cleared of water only when the subjects indicated they required food and drink. A separate 2x3 "resting room" was designated adjacent to the containment cell, separated by a locked door where furniture and food was stored.   
The containment cells were flooded to levels 4-5.

All Physical and mental stats were recorded before and during treatment so that gains could be accurately assessed.

After 3 months of this treatment, subjects gained an average of 10 in all physical stats except for Toughness, which suffered by 1 point for all subjects. Additionally Willpower, Spatial Sense and Kinesthetic Sense showed gains of +10.

Happiness dropped from 200 to roughly 150 for two of the test subjects, while the other four subjects showed slight increases in happiness. This was likely due to a low starting happiness.
Subject B-1 began with a Happiness of 38 (Unhappy) and improved to Happiness 102  (Content) throughout treatment. Notes show that subject B-1 had previously lost its father in the obsidian factory during an unfortunate magma related accident, which accounts for its original depression. It is interesting to note that treatment actually improved its mood.

All subjects showed decreases in their mental and social abilities, losing roughly 1 point in all mental/social traits except for Willpower.

The program was ultimately discontinued, as appropriate water flow was difficult to control, often resulting in the drowning death of subjects.

I believe that if water flow could be accurately managed, long term treatment in this way would markedly improve the physical stats as well as the Willpower, Spatial Sense and Kinesthetic Sense of the test subjects. Longer trials are required, and better water flow mechanisms must be set in place. The current design requires too much oversight to be effectively automated, though engineers are hard at work to overcome these circumstances.   

I will be testing new chambers exploring this avenue of research soon, using controlled flow chambers and static pools in which the subject will have to swim should it wish to attain food, drink, and sleep.
 

[mate888]

I don't know if call the author of this a genious, or a soulless monster...

[Tomcost]

I don't know if call the author of this a genious, or a soulless monster...

We are in Bay12, so it's both.

[mate888]

I don't know if call the author of this a genious, or a soulless monster...

We are in Bay12, so it's both.

Oh, rigth. I forgot that to enter Bay12 Forums you must sell your soul to Toady so he also sells it to some unspecified being in exchange for more letters to add into the game 

[Sadrice]

The program was ultimately discontinued, as appropriate water flow was difficult to control, often resulting in the drowning death of subjects.

What was the problem? Did you have trouble reliably getting 4-5 depth?  Fill your 3x3 submersion training facility via a 2x3 measuring room in the z above.  2x3 is 42 units of water, meaning if spread out over a 3x3 area it would  be 4 on three tiles and 5 on six (you get the same 4 2/3 depth whenever you increase the area by 1/3).  Alternately, you could put lever controlled doors on 3 tiles of the room.  Fill the room, disconnect water, open doors, the area of the room increases by 3.


If you want more fine grained control over water depth than working in units of 7, use mine carts to dump the water.  For a one dwarf testing chamber, just make a u bend, with a grate for the dwarf to stand on one side and a chute to wherever the minecart's dumping from on the other.  Keep it filled up to below the grate with a diagonal pressure reducer on the water supply and a door to block it.  Station the dwarf, close off the water supply, and send some mine carts.  Since there are only two tiles being filled, connected by the full u bend, 1 cart = 1 unit of water on the dwarf's square.  How to automatically send a specific number of minecarts full of water on command (or better yet, on schedule) is left as an exercise to the reader.

[Urist McWhatTheHellGuys?]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the original goal was to produce flayed, steel skinned, fatless, friendless killing machines for the military from dwarven children which otherwise merely get in the way and cause tantrum spirals later in life due to the fact they spent 12 years socialising.

What progress has been made towards this ultimate goal, for example I haven't heard the fat melting method tested at all merely discussed.

[Magistrum]

The fat melting program actually worked, they are immune to bleeding out from common fire.
Friendless... Check.
Steel skinned... Check?
Flayed... Well, sometimes, but with discretion.
They get really good at fighting, but the other skills improve really slowy.

[redpikeman]

The program was ultimately discontinued, as appropriate water flow was difficult to control, often resulting in the drowning death of subjects.

What was the problem? Did you have trouble reliably getting 4-5 depth?  Fill your 3x3 submersion training facility via a 2x3 measuring room in the z above.  2x3 is 42 units of water, meaning if spread out over a 3x3 area it would  be 4 on three tiles and 5 on six (you get the same 4 2/3 depth whenever you increase the area by 1/3).  Alternately, you could put lever controlled doors on 3 tiles of the room.  Fill the room, disconnect water, open doors, the area of the room increases by 3.


If you want more fine grained control over water depth than working in units of 7, use mine carts to dump the water.  For a one dwarf testing chamber, just make a u bend, with a grate for the dwarf to stand on one side and a chute to wherever the minecart's dumping from on the other.  Keep it filled up to below the grate with a diagonal pressure reducer on the water supply and a door to block it.  Station the dwarf, close off the water supply, and send some mine carts.  Since there are only two tiles being filled, connected by the full u bend, 1 cart = 1 unit of water on the dwarf's square.  How to automatically send a specific number of minecarts full of water on command (or better yet, on schedule) is left as an exercise to the reader.

That was the issue - the flooding mechanisms were poorly designed.

What you suggest, however, would work incredibly well. I will have to test this.

Currently, I've switched to a manual pump system to control the water flow, with four 3x3 test cells. Water is pumped from the second story, taken from a filled chamber adjacent to the training cell.

I'll be setting up new cells to test your method. It is much more efficient to flip a lever than to tie up an overseer with pumping.

Water training does not increase fighting abilities, but it does seem to raise physical attributes significantly. I plan to run a year long training schedule to see if skill increases raise steadily or plateau. If the training program produces significant results, a few years in a water chamber may increase the value of the overall product.

If I can find time, a second control group will be studied using only animal training (turkeys, peacocks), so we can compare methods.