Print

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

[Nikita]

So I captured a lot of prisoners, some of them rather exotic (undead, werebeasts, ettis, etc) and I want to put them to some practical use.

What would be the best way to set up an arena for pitting, live training, etc?

My ideas so far:
- drawbridge, retracting for water/magma pouring/obsidian casting
- drawbridge, retracting for drainage
- drawbridge, rising on the drainage level to atom-smash the prisoners if things go south
- drawbridges, rising on every entrance
- a "kennel" full of angry war dogs, behind a forbidden door. They will have fortifications instead of walls so they can see enemies and get angry in the first place. If the dwarves need some help in the arena, I can un-forbid the door and the dogs should immediately pour out... in theory.
- if I ever catch a GCS, I would like to incorporate it somehow for mass-webbing potential.

Also, what are good and bad candidates for live training? Can I train my proficient-level militia on an unarmed zombie (undead gobbos,elves,dwarves,humans) for example?

[PatrikLundell]

Undead are dangerous even if unarmed, so live training against them carries some risk. I don't do it intentionally, but the buggers sometimes manage to escape when being pitted, and I have my militia stationed by the pittery to put them down. It works, but not without occasional injuries.

Live, but stripped gobbos are probably fairly safe, but they will probably go down fairly quickly to anything other than raw recruits. Live unarmed but armored gobbos would probably be a slightly better challenge.

Trolls are probably somewhere between stripped gobbos and stripped undead in danger level.

Cage traps on the exit from the arena would probably work to recapture the prisoners, but they probably won't leave the arena until the militia has been pulped...

I wouldn't use a GCS for that purpose, as webs don't distinguish between friend and foe. I'd rather use a silk farm with an undead as a bait, but you're supposed to be able to convert traps into trap avoid capturing cage traps by lacing them with webs. Again, this is not an arena application, though.

You can pit prisoners into the arena, you can hook up cages to levers to release them, or you can use either method to get them into cells that you then open via a lever to the arena. I'd use a drawbridge rather than a door for cells, given that trolls, ogres, and the various giants are building destroyers.

Also not that you'll have to mop up the left overs afterward, i.e. haul body parts. Take care so that don't overwhelm the dwarven horror thresholds.

It's probably better with a steel clad elite squad as a backup than dogs, but you'll have to use what you can get hold of. War trained Jabberers are probably a really tough backup, but you'll need luck to get a breeding pair, and then a few years to get some adults.

[Nikita]

Thanks for the reply, I'll take this into consideration.

Oh, and if anyone wants to see how the arena turned out, here's a screenshot:



Full fight here: http://imgur.com/a/bnE8D

[Niddhoger]

Your best bet is pitting.  Build your arena, then at least 2 z-levels up build your "pit."  Dorfs are stupid, instead of hauling the cage to the pit, they'll actually release the zombie and try to lead it like a cow to the butchers.  This... never ends well.  However, if the cage is built adjacent to the pit, you can easily dump them from there.  Otherwise, you'd have to set up lever-activated cages to release prisoners.  Basically build an animal stockpile but disable empty cages.  Now, dig out channels (covered with forbidden hatches) so that every square of the stockpile is at least diagonally adjacent to the pit.  So long as you don't have any other caged animal stockpiles everything gets diverted here.  Alternativelly, you can intentionally build cages next to the channels if you catch several usable beasts (like you trapped a cavern entrance and want to butcher/tame/breed crocs, jabberers, etc).  Then make the entire area a pit.  You can then freely (and safely) pit the animals/prisoners into the arena below. 

As far as the arena itself... I usually just dig a pit near the dinning hall.  I smooth all z-levels of stone for my pit (to thoroughly prevent climbing), although if I'm feeling fancy I'll engrave the upper layers as I dig.  There is only one entrace, a bridge.  Behind this entrance is a barracks for the dorfs I want to live train. Behind this barracks is another bridge.  I toss the victims in and then lower the bridge for the soliders to poor out.  You just really want to avoid pitting creatures directly on top of your soldiers, as falling ANYTHING can be deadly (them worn out socks can be deadly!) There really is no need for that many bridges unless you just feel a burning need to be that fancy.  War dogs also tend to be poor attackers- they are mostly good for sniffing out ambushers/thiefs and being fodder.  If you want a way to kill off anything that gets out of hand, you can always use bridges... however this means sacrificing any wounded dorfs in the arena.  Personally, I'd just have a second squad on standby if things get harry. 

Personally, I love setting up the tops of the arenas as meeting areas.  I'll place statues and engravings along the walls, and windows to form the inner "wall" to both keep over-excited Urists from jumping into the fun and dumbass kids from just falling down.  Windows don't block sight either.  The main reason for this is that witnessing fights trains both observer and discipline.  Its one of the few things you can do to train useless leeches... er I mean children.  Gaining observer and discipline on your whole fort also helps keep them from freaking out over bodies/intruders, and helps them spot thieves and ambushers.  Lastly, observer is very important in combat itself, and can help a civilian fight off wild animals or such.  It mostly helps when a dorf is surrounded though, which your civy likely won't survive anyways... but it does help!

[taptap]

I have a shooting range where dwarves can fire at live targets, but will never hit them (door opens shortly to expose target, but closes before bolt arrives). Works fine, gives more xp than target shooting, keeps prisoners alive. It does drain fps a lot when active, so I am happy to have a prototype, but don't use it much. My dwarves also complained that mock executions are something only depraved creatures like humans would do.

Instead of training your dwarves, you could try training the prisoners, which can be pretty useful given how many animals / invaders / visitors are hostile to each other nowadays.