Print

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

[Ipslne]

I have a caged Giantess, about a dozen caged goblins and several caged vultures and buzzards. I want to build a nice room for them to relax in. I would prefer that levers and great distance be involved. I also want to recover the very precious cages as I have yet to reach magma and the most wood I get I steal from dirty hippies elves. Lastly, the Giantess needs to be recaptured if not killed or maimed to the point of an easy kill. Urist McHelplessslaughter could use the happy points.

I've run through a few ideas in my head... though most would likely end with inaccessible cages and a really pissed off Giantess; bloodlusty and in full health. Any suggestions?

[Quiles]

Urist mcnoob has suggestions

For the goblins conduct some !!SCIENCE!!
Hypothesis: goblins can relax while being used as target practice for marksdwarves.

Maybe for the giantess a VERY long fall and spikes at the bottom would do the trick, just make the fall long enough to surely incapacitate her (Dunno about height, never dealt with dropping stuff a cliff

For the birds me personally would cook them, not sure what else you could do with them since they can fly, a drowning trap maybe?

[i2amroy]

I'd release them all into a single room with a closed bridge that you can then lower to the cage-trap lined corridor on the other side. You might want to remove the goblin's weapons first so they don't kill the giant completely depending on how many goblins you have. Wait until the bloodbath is over and then simply recapture whatever comes out on the other side in order to save it for the next time or training, whichever you prefer.

[Ipslne]

Thought about bridges, but Giantess is a building destroyer. I have little experience with the likes of 'em, but I'd imagine they destroy buildings. Not enough cages without deconstructing existing cage traps that keep my dorfs docile in their ignorance of the enemy.

Also I want to watch it swat at birds for a little while.

Hm. Will a cage break open if it falls far enough? Maybe I can make an interesting cage-fall trap.

[i2amroy]

No cages don't break no matter how far they fall. And as for the building destroyer bridge if you set it up right

side view

Code: [Select]

B  __
X /XX
where / = an up ramp, _=floor B=bridge and X=un-dug area

Then it is possible to keep a bridge safe from all but flying building destroyers. Make sure it is a bridge that raises and doesn't retract though, or the flying creatures will just go right over the empty space.

[Ipslne]

Derp. I knew that ¬_¬ That's exactly why I had channeled out a section before my entrance bridge; but I forgot why over time. I just thought I was going to build a moat and had gotten lazy. Maybe bridges will work after all.

[fluiddruid]

One of my favorite ways of killing beasts and enemy leaders is to build their cage on a platform over a magma pit, with the only door out forbidden.  Spring the cage with your crossbowmen standing in view.   This gives them a choice: dodge into the magma, or get shot to death.  Not so good for ranged, or flying enemies, but it's fun for goblin warchiefs and giants and such.  So far it's about 75/25 death-by-alpaca-bolt to becoming ash in magma.

If I just want to churn out dead bodies, I prefer a mass drowning room.  Just set up a bunch of cages and link to a single lever -- the hardest part is recycling the water, if you're not by a constant source, but if you have good supply then a few pumps are fine (if you have a small supply, there's no way to do this that isn't a bit lossy from evaporation, so I would recommend against it).  If water's a problem, the classic room-leading-to-a-windy-hallway-full-of-traps works fine, too.

For things my military should be able to beat easily, I usually just spring the cages in a combat room as a training measure.  I prefer not to use danger rooms, and this accelerates my military's training.  This is good for untrainable wild animals, but be careful, too -- my engravers are still carving the horrible visage of the giant badger that killed two recruits in a single training exercise into my fortress walls.

[Ipslne]

I like this idea to train my bowdorfs, but I really wanted to watch the Giantess beat the crap out of some goblins and swat at birds.

I have a mass drowning room where the cages are currently built. The source is a river that was dug into from a small room with floodgates. It would take a long time for the "drowning-room" to flood because it is my entire entrance hallway. I have it draining into the caverns via one of two massive chasms, though I really need to work on cavern security. Anything that can fly could just pop in and say hey. The second chasm is being channeled down to magma, where I hope to build some forges down there as well as an extensive series of pumps to bring the magma to my entrance. Who needs to worry about draining when I can just dig out obsidian?

One thought is to just have my military train on unarmed goblins, and leave the Giantess at the entrance to release in case of emergency goblin onslaught. What are the chances that the Giantess would not attack them?

[i2amroy]

Um, the chance is pretty good that she would attack them however she will probably just attack whatever is closest to her. This would mean that if you got unlucky and there was some dog or something nearby she might take that as a que to dive right into your fortress and start slaughtering dwarves instead of goblins. Combine this with the chance that the goblins ahead of her might trigger the majority of any traps so she can get past them and I see a large potential for !!FUN!! in this scenario. If you are planning to go that route, I would instead suggest that you make it so that enemy invaders fall into a pit (possibly by expanding the one you said you already had beneath your entrance bridge) and then just throw the giant in there. Combine this with a cage trap exit from the pit that you could open in order to catch the giant and retrieve any dropped goblinite.

[Ipslne]

During the event of a siege or multiple concurrent ambushes, I keep the entrance clear of any such dorf... other than military dorfs. The only case in which anything should make it to that deathtrap is if all 50 militia dorfs are dead or dying. The Giantess' cage is linked to a lever that also controls the exits and entrances to that area, worst case scenario is a pet or two gets caught in there. Urist McRecentlypetless may be a little upset, though I'm sure he'd rather not be Urist McRecnetlyheadless.

And if the Giantess decides not to kill anything, and all the traps fail... well I flush her into the caverns. All I'd have to worry about then is septic backup.