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[herocrafter]

I seem to have lots of Giant Wrens all the time and I'd like to kill them but don't know how. My crossbow can't reach them so if I give the kill order they just sit tight.  My thinking is thst if kill them off I get something else that my military can practice on.  Any Ideas?

[Psieye]

If you want to cheat by fiddling with raws, remove their [FLIER] tag and reload your save.

Else you'll have to build some shooting towers.

[herocrafter]

Shooting towers sound useful.   I could tunnel to them and make a patrol.   But at a 5X5  embark I'd need quite a few.  Any idea of the range of a Xbow?

[NW_Kohaku]

Crossbow range is 20 tiles, including z-changes. 

Loud Whispers created a DOWDING "ravendar" system that might be of interest to you.

[herocrafter]

Ok great. Thanks.   The link gives me something to think about too.

[Albedo]

The thing w/ towers is that they are fast, and they can see further than you can shoot, so you have to "ambush" them to get a shot - keep your archers hidden down a level on the tower until the target(s) (hopefully more than 1) are close enough to get a few shots at.

Or use the Hunting/Ambush skill.


In theory you could cage-trap them (they're breedable, and good meat/egg sources), but not sure how you'd do that reliably enough to remove them from the map and make room for the next beast(s) to spawn.

[GOTO10]

Sooner or later they will leave on their own and you’ll get something different then. If you’re problem is that new groups of them keep spawning there isn’t much you can do about it. In that case if you manage to get rid of a group another will just show up and you’re back at the same place. I haven’t had that issue with giant wrens before, but I’ve seen it with keas multiple times.

If it’s a common problem for you then you could always modify the raws so they are less frequent. Or at least I’m pretty sure you can.

In theory you could cage-trap them (they're breedable, and good meat/egg sources), but not sure how you'd do that reliably enough to remove them from the map and make room for the next beast(s) to spawn.

You most definitely can trap them and they are an effective food source. However its always been hit and miss for me trapping any bird. I don’t know of a way to guarantee you get every last one of them.

[NW_Kohaku]

Catching benign fliers is rather difficult.  Basically, your only choice is to create "sky funnels", since benign fliers don't respond to bait. 

A Sky Funnel is basically the aerial equivalent of "crosshair traps".  Basically, when birds fly, they tend to try finding a random spot within a few tiles of where they are.  If there's an obstacle on the direct route, they'll try to path around. 

If you are prepared to put out a bajillion cages, (I.E. magma glassworks and you don't care how much you abuse free materials) you can create a vertical "checkerboard" of alternating walls and then put cages on the floor tiles right above those walls.  Wall off a significant portion of the sky up to the top, and you'll ensure that any attempt to path from one side of that embark to the other MUST pass through a tile covered in cage trap.  Just make the access scaffolding a giant series of up/down stairs one tile from the checkerboard and don't bother taking them down.

If you aren't prepared to make a bajillion cages, feel free to reduce the number of cage tiles by the amount you are willing to build in walls that block movement. 

To cut off any possibility of escape, you can build a series of drawbridges you raise along the last 5 tiles that you can't construct normal walls over. 

Depending on the size of your embark, building just a couple skywall checkerboards on 1/3rd marks of the width or length of your fort should be plenty. 

[Oaktree]

Another alternative is to trap a few, release them in a sealed-off space (like behind a locked door), and then just wait for the current set to leave the map.  The ones you let go under control count towards the wildlife loose per biome.

I got sick of raven flocks, so I eventually caught four and unleashed them this way.  No new wildlife generated.  I miss the unicorns and kangaroos a bit, but they turned up less often than the ravens who disrupted workers and were a general pain.  I also have a few named pets in the fortress who have each killed 5-6 ravens.

Get wild animals or other beasts into a "corral" situation can be useful in terms of controlling what you get in terms of incursions.  And useful if you have poor pasture space and get a wild animal that will breed for you and not need grazing space.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yeah, my current fort has a stream with milkfish and tigerfish.  The originals left, but before that they spawned.  Then the children spawned... Etc.  I'm working on setting up some cave-ins to allow me to start excavating the streambed into something artificial and fortified so I can play around with setting up cage traps on the stream floor and taking out some gators and such when they can spawn again.

[TheFlame52]

I use a squad of legendary markdwarves to take care of my giant sparrow problems. I've also caught quite a few and they constitute part of my aerial defenses.

[herocrafter]

I don't recall a month w/o them on the map; currently 9 of them and a giant mole in a cavern which was breached and  immediately sealed.  I don't want to go spelunking yet.  I think I'll try to spam watch towers/raised platforms and hope my Xbow users get lucky.  Besides, the towers can also be use for real military purposes if I set it up correctly.  I like the Idea of breading them but from your post, breeding them will stop all the other game/wildlife/freaking almost useless sentient Giant xyz men/women from showing up so that is not an option I'll pursue.  I'm not against altering the game - I just don't want to resort to altering the raws to much/often; so far I've  changed the underground crops to yearlong planting because it just makes sense to me and I use Quantum Stockpiles because bins can be wonky.  i suppose on the dwarfy scale I'll consider attacking Giant Wrens maybe a minor challenge.  Frankly they just annoy me because I can't get at 'em, they're there season after season taking up space, and I want my military to be able to tromp across the map and kill something - anything.  I'm sure if after I build some towers and the Xdwarfs  still can't kill 'em I'll be pissed enough to clip their wings and make them more like ostriches.  The tower spam pattern and their height I'll have to give some thought on though.

[NW_Kohaku]

I like the Idea of breading them but from your post, breeding them will stop all the other game/wildlife/freaking almost useless sentient Giant xyz men/women from showing up so that is not an option I'll pursue. 

A) They taste great breaded, so I suggest you do so.

B) If you cage, tame, and/or domesticate units, they are removed from the "wildlife" section, so you'll keep getting tons of wildlife after that.  I personally make a point of trying to cage every single critter that I possibly can.