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Author Topic: War dogs are nice.  (Read 1389 times)

Vehudur

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War dogs are nice.
« on: October 17, 2010, 02:36:57 pm »

I just had a strange mood fail and the guy went berserk and started to chase my legendary mechanic around.

And then 10 war dogs jumped on him.  So much blood.
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...and a third died in his bunk of natural causes - for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one's life.

I used to have an avatar, but I was told to remove it after it kept making people go insane.

mrtspence

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2010, 02:38:07 pm »

That is the main purpose of wardogs, IMHO. They really stand no chance against anything armoured or armed, but are great against berserk dwarves.
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Vehudur

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2010, 02:39:07 pm »

yeah, because my military was on the other side of my fort.
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...and a third died in his bunk of natural causes - for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one's life.

I used to have an avatar, but I was told to remove it after it kept making people go insane.

Drakeero

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2010, 02:39:48 pm »

I love dogs period.  I had a batch of dogs fresh from the dwarven convoy who were waiting to be trained into war dogs.  The pack ran off into the woods one afternoon, dragged back a dead giant eagle carcass without a single loss.  I can't wait to turn them into killing machines.
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Cage traps are my magma.

Von Aether

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2010, 02:55:09 pm »

If you assign a wardog to a dwarf and then said dwarf goes beserk, will the assigned wardog attack the dwarf or attack the target of the dwarf?
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SkyRender

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2010, 03:10:54 pm »

War dogs automatically attack anything deemed hostile to your civilization.  This includes Dwarves they've been assigned to.  As such, you'd do well to assign a pack of war dogs to any Dwarf who is definitely going to fail a strange mood.  Then chain them up outside after the mad Dwarf is ripped apart or otherwise dies so they don't clutter up whatever workshop or other location that Dwarf died in.
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Sanity is for the weak.

Xenos

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2010, 03:12:35 pm »

I like war grizzly bears ;D
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This is a useful feature..and this is DF.. so im gonna assume its bugged
That's what cages and minecart shotguns are for!  We don't need to control them.  We just need to aim them.
[DWARFINEERING]

Zaik

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #7 on: October 17, 2010, 03:45:23 pm »

war elephants or go home


that's really the only use for war animals though, that and i guess thief eating. An war elephant can take on one or two goblins without getting killed(and actually, I had a siege from a modded race that is size 40000 and all wrestlers all focus on one elephant, and they couldn't kill it, but it was unconscious after a while. They eventually gave up and ran away.), but any more and they'll drop, and if they were assigned to someone they take a "lost a pet" unhappy thought.

I had a guy with 45 war unicorns lose them all one time. Ecstatic -> miserable in 6 seconds.
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[MILL_CHILD:ONLY_IF_GOOD_REASON]

Namfuak

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #8 on: October 17, 2010, 05:24:48 pm »

One time i tossed about twenty war/hunting dogs and about 30 puppies into a pit, and tossed a lone, unarmed goblin thief in.  The limbs, oh god the limbs.
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GuudeSpelur

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #9 on: October 17, 2010, 06:08:11 pm »

war elephants or go home

In my current fort, I have a cage filled with war elephants (and a war grizzly bear) that I unleash on the goblins that make it past my traps.  War Elephants are hilariously awesome and crushing goblins into paste.
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This fortress is turning into some kind of supervillain lair or something.
You do remember that you've been farming gigantic wingless dragon-fish for profit and Fun, right?

Victuz

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #10 on: October 17, 2010, 06:43:50 pm »

Two words: War Dragons.

Even though they are basically "friendly fire" turned into a living breathing creature, the sole fact of having them just for gloating makes them worth it.
Not a good idea it's a good idea to have one on a restrain in your meeting hall though, if a dwarf goes berserk there you can expect both him and 1-20 other dwarves getting some fire powered love going on. (as in it spreads... you know...)

PS. Also because I don't want to write it all again:

As I mentioned in another topic I once had (yes had... I accidently flooded my fortress with magma) a really epic war dog in my fortress.

He and 3 of his fellows entered the danger room when my dwarves wanted to train. Not knowing how to get rid of the stupid dogs I ordered to pull the lever (repeatetly). His fellow dogs died quickly, one got his brain pearced, other one his heart and both his lungs (suffocated) and the last one bleed to death. Had his internal organs and pretty much every bone in his body damaged, but he survived. After that he regenerated (everything. that's just what dogs do) and he was in the danger room 3-4 times since that "event" (he had no problems with it when he repeated the "test").

Few seasons later I got attacked by a goblin ambush (2 of them to be more exact). I sent my small military (6 dwarves at the time) to deal with the annoyance and sadly one of them (my militia commander) died. Now willing to risk any more casualties I sent my dwarves back to the fortress (unassigned them from the military, being a civilian means they RUN from goblins). But the dog stayed. He was standing next to the corpse of his fallen master and I thought he's done for.

I was wrong

He killed 5 goblins himself and when he was done with them he went chasing after the other group that was reaching him at the time. They didn't even bother shooting bolts at him. When they saw what happened they just RAN. Sadly he didn't catch the rest of them but still he had higher kill list than any of my soldiers :>.
In the battle he lost both his ears, one eye and his toe. No less, no more...

Afterwards I kept him in the military barracks (on a restraint) not wanting him to get harmed. ;).
Sadly no other war dog passed the "danger room" test ever again in my fortress. He was an epic unit (sheds a single tear).
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I once flung a migrant off a bridge. He collided with the brook cliff and died.
A year later, my legendary engraver engraved him colliding with an obstacle and dying.

Macalano

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #11 on: October 17, 2010, 06:47:16 pm »

I've never checked, but do the dogs have personalities/physical perks? That would be neat.
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Zaik

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #12 on: October 17, 2010, 06:53:23 pm »

I've never checked, but do the dogs have personalities/physical perks? That would be neat.

All animals *seem* to have stats, they're just not as clearly detailed. There's things in their description like "Isn't very muscular but has a huge build" "Is huge and fat" "Is huge and muscular", etc.

Might be nothing, but i'd like to think they have stats.
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[MILL_CHILD:ONLY_IF_GOOD_REASON]

Victuz

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #13 on: October 17, 2010, 07:31:09 pm »

From what I checked animals can't increase their skill (since they don't have proper raws for that) but they CAN increase their stats (as Zaik said).

Animal with high stats would probably win over similar animal with low stats. Even though right now most animals seem to be born muscular and all powerful (so do the adventurers who start up with superhuman stats).
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I once flung a migrant off a bridge. He collided with the brook cliff and died.
A year later, my legendary engraver engraved him colliding with an obstacle and dying.

Knigel

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Re: War dogs are nice.
« Reply #14 on: October 17, 2010, 08:09:47 pm »

They can't have skill because they lack the "can_learn" tag, but I think everything can raise attributes.

^I'm pretty sure Adventurer's just start with stats that good because amount of skill effects attributes, so if you spend all of your skill points you'll have high attributes.
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